Soldier's Pregnancy Protocol

He didn’t see the other thug, but that could mean the man was still slumped in the back seat.

A shadow shifted near the front fender, and Alec tensed. He pulled out the knife he’d been using to cut the seat belts and narrowed his gaze. Grass rustled by the driver’s-side tire.

Alec moved out, skulking toward the SUV with the knife ready. He’d only made it a few steps before cretin number two sprang from behind the vehicle.

The bastard lofted a thick branch and closed in on Erin.

“Erin, look out!” Alec shouted.

Too late. The heavy branch crashed down on her skull, and she crumpled to the ground. Alec’s gut lurched with a sickening dread.

As her assailant bolted down the driveway, he snatched something from the front pocket of her jeans. An envelope.

Alec cursed. Racing to Erin, he fished the SIG-Sauer out from under her shirt and darted down the drive after the escaping thief. He fired a shot as the man dashed around the corner of a clapboard house. Training told Alec to go after the fleeing suspect, but the woman lying, unmoving, in the dirt spoke to something deeper in Alec’s soul.

You left Daniel.

He stared at the spot where Erin’s assailant had disappeared another moment, a razor pain slicing through him when he thought of the lost letter, the danger Daniel could be in with his missive in the wrong hands.

Yet seeing Daniel’s handwriting had fired new hope in him that his partner was alive. Guilt and regret fueled his determination to get his search back on track.

As soon as he was certain Erin was safe.

He’d be damned if he knew why this woman compelled him to break with procedure, to jeopardize his mission, to act counter to everything he’d been trained to do. The inconsistency needled him.

Rushing back down the driveway, he dropped to his knees beside the unconscious woman and felt for a pulse. He released a deep breath when he found a strong throbbing beat in her neck.

Pulling her into his lap, he carefully examined her head for the goose egg sure to be swelling on her scalp. Her feminine scent teased him, and her silky curls coiled seductively around his fingers. Her limp body, her slack face, her vulnerability speared to his core. He’d been trained to steel himself against softer emotions, sympathies that could jeopardize a mission and blur his professional focus. But something about this woman slipped under his defenses and burrowed deep inside him.

Wincing, Erin jerked and raised a hand to the spot on her head where he probed. “Ow.”

Her eyelids fluttered open. With a gasp, she tried to sit up, but he caught her shoulders and eased her back to his lap. “Easy. You took a nasty blow. Go slow.”

Her puppy-dog eyes turned up to his face. “Alec?”

So she could talk and her short-term memory was intact. Both good signs. He focused on her pupils rather than the sexy sweetness of her mahogany eyes. Even. No abnormal dilation.

“Are you dizzy? Numb anywhere?” he asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her head. “I … No. My head hurts like fire, though. What happened?”

“Your charge cracked a limb over your head.” He was prepared to chastise her for her inattention to her prisoner, but she moaned in misery as she sat up.

“Knife! Where’d he—” She whipped her head around, apparently looking for the thug, then yelped and cradled her head again.

“I said go slow.” He slid a hand under her elbow to steady her. “And your man got away after he whacked you.”

“Sorry.” She grimaced, and her face paled as she clapped a hand to her jeans pocket. “It’s gone. The envelope—”

Alec gritted his teeth as renewed frustration wrenched inside him. “He took it.”

Next, Erin patted her chest, and a corner of her mouth curled up. When she unfastened the top button of her shirt and jammed her hand inside her bra, Alec arched an eyebrow, undeniably intrigued. A flash of heat spun through his blood as his attention was drawn to the curve of breast that peeked from her open neckline.

Erin chuckled and drew something out of her clothes. A folded paper.

He sent her a dubious frown. “What’s that?”

Her answering smile beamed, its wattage hitting him like a punch in the solar plexus. “Your letter.”

Alec stilled. “What?”

She extended the folded sheet to him, smug satisfaction glowing in her eyes. “I figured Knife might try to steal the letter again, so I hid the contents of the envelope. Just in case. I put the envelope in my pocket, so it’d look like I was at least trying to protect it. I figured if I left it completely unguarded Knife might get suspicious. I made the slit in the side as small and inconspicuous as I could.”

As Erin prattled on, explaining her reasoning, Alec slipped the letter from her fingers and heaved a mental sigh of relief. Amazing. Erin’s forethought and creativity, the fact that she’d bothered at all to protect Daniel’s letter, stunned him. Impressed the hell out of him.

When she stopped chattering about her ingenuity, she met his gaze with an expectant expression. “Pretty good, huh?”

“Smart thinking. I could kiss you.”

She sent him a startled look, and he realized belatedly what he’d said.

When her gaze shifted to his mouth, adrenaline kicked his pulse up a notch. As if he’d just spotted a tango in the jungle. As if he’d just blown a hole in a building with a chunk of C4. As if … he had the opportunity to taste the lips of a gorgeous woman.

He dropped his gaze to her mouth, and the air around him charged with a crackling energy. Acting purely on impulse, Alec leaned toward Erin, zeroing in on his target. But before he reached his goal, Erin drew a sharp breath, moaned softly and clutched her gut. “Oh, geez. I—I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Alec shook off the fog that had momentarily muddled his mind. Another lapse in his thinking, another failure to let his training guide his actions.

He clenched his teeth, shoved to his feet and turned his attention back to the pale-faced woman who held her stomach. “What kind of pain are you having? Any dizziness or ringing ears?”

She flashed a chagrined smile. “Nausea. Sorry, this won’t be pretty.”

With that, she rolled to her hands and knees and retched. Not good. Vomiting was indication she could have a concussion. He crouched beside her and helped her trap her long hair inside the collar of her shirt. A loose curl escaped, and he held it away from her face as she heaved again. “You need to see a doctor.”

She shook her head and several hanks of hair fell loose again. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Like he had room to talk. He’d almost kissed her. Stupid, stupid …

Slipups like that in the field could get you killed. Falling for a pair of seductive brown eyes or the temptation of a kiss was just the kind of mistake his enemies banked on. If he was going to find Daniel, he had to pull himself together.

Erin glared at him over her shoulder.

He gentled his voice. “You’ve had a serious head trauma, and you’re throwing up. You could have a concussion. You need a CT scan.” He gathered her loose hair again and re-tucked it in her shirt, painfully aware of the silky texture against his skin.

She rocked back on her heels and swiped her mouth with her sleeve. “All I need is some crackers or something to settle my stomach. I’ll be fine.”

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. He didn’t have time to argue with her. “You’re going to see a doctor.”

Erin twisted her lips in a frown of disagreement. Pushing to her feet, she dusted the seat of her jeans and, with a wobble, stepped toward the SUV. “Just take me home. Please?”

He shadowed her, ready to catch the stubborn woman if she toppled over. “I already told you why you can’t go back to your house. Especially now with your buddy Knife, as you called him, and his cohort on the loose again.”

“You really think they’ll come after me again?” She furrowed her brow and held a hand to the knot rising on her scalp.

An external knot. A good sign.

“You really think they’ll give up?” he returned.

Fear flickered across her face, and her shoulders drooped. “Great.”

Alec calculated which emergency room was closest and internally groaned at the three- to four-hour wait they’d likely have on a Saturday afternoon. He toyed with, then nixed, the idea of leaving Erin at the hospital. She was in no condition to take care of herself. Hell.

More delays. More time for the people on his trail to track him. More opportunity for Erin to be found, caught, used against him, perhaps killed when Knife figured out she’d duped him and he didn’t have Daniel’s letter. He’d have to stay with her. Rather, she’d have to stay with him….

His gut tightened at the thought. Could he risk taking her with him to the safe house in the mountains? And did he really have any other options if he was going to keep her safe?

Maybe if she weren’t in danger because of him, he could justify leaving her at the E.R. The staff at the hospital would take care of her injuries. But the staff couldn’t guard her from knife-wielding thugs the way he could. And Alec was certain the men who’d kidnapped her to force his hand would try again.

“Look, I appreciate your concern, Alec.” Erin’s face had more color, but she still visibly trembled. “But my head already feels better. It’s only a sharp throb now.” She tossed him a wry grin. “And I’m only sick to my stomach because I’m—” Her eyes slid closed, and she staggered. “Whoa, why is the ground moving?”

Alec caught her as she toppled. “That settles it, sweetcakes. You’re coming with me.”

“I don’t—”

“Stop arguing and get in the truck.”

While he helped her to the front seat of the SUV, Alec mentally ran down his list of contacts in the area, wishing he hadn’t tossed his cell phone quite so soon. He stopped at a small insurance office, parking the damaged SUV out of sight, and convinced the receptionist to let him borrow the office phone and call in a few favors.

Within minutes he was escorting Erin into a private, outpatient radiology lab. The facility’s owner was the brother of a former black ops teammate Alec had once rescued from a Honduran prison. Though the private lab was typically closed on Saturdays, the owner/radiologist met Alec to repay his brother’s debt. While Erin was in the back getting her scan, Alec took a seat in the waiting area and recalculated his plans, adding Erin into the mix. Inconvenient, but doable.

He pulled Daniel’s letter out and stared at the folded sheet. Erin had been lucky as hell the letter hadn’t been a bomb. He’d been waiting until he could dust the envelope for fingerprints, x-ray it and check for explosives before he opened the letter. Now there seemed no reason not to take his first close look at his only clue to Daniel’s whereabouts.

Carefully, Alec unfolded the stiff paper. Colorful artwork and old-fashioned script decorated the page. Dotted lines connected one small drawing to another, superimposed on a map of a fictional Caribbean isle. In the top corner, the skull and crossbones of a pirate’s flag smirked at Alec.

He frowned. Why would Daniel send him this child’s souvenir? Was his partner simply telling him he was alive or did the map mean something else?

“Good news.”

Drawn from his perusal of the pirate map by the radiologist’s voice, Alec hastily refolded the sheet and shoved it in his pocket.

“Your friend has only a minor concussion,” the radiologist said with a grin. “Chances are she’ll have a whopping headache for a few days, but I see no other damage, nothing that concerns me. She should be just fine.”

Alec nodded. “Can she travel?”

“Some, but she’ll need lots of rest. Keep tabs on her, especially for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Watch her pupils, her pulse rate. And wake her every couple hours and ask her basic questions about her name and the date. If her condition goes south, get her to a hospital immediately.”

A technician escorted Erin into the waiting room, and Erin glared at Alec. “If you have any humanity at all, you will stop at the first hamburger joint we see and buy me a large cheeseburger with fries. I was hungry before. Now I’m famished.”

Hypoglycemia, Alec thought, sizing up Erin’s glower. That’d explain her crankiness, too.

He drove them to a fast-food restaurant drive-through where he ordered himself a double hamburger, then watched in amazement as Erin put away her dinner in record time. After devouring her meal, she settled back in the seat with a satisfied sigh.

“If you’re sure I can’t go home …” Erin yawned. “Then drop me at a hotel. This has been a heck of a day, and I’m bushed.” Her eyelids drooped, and she nestled her cheek against the shoulder strap of the seat belt.

“Don’t worry,” Alec said. “I’m taking you someplace safe.”

Erin woke to a loud droning sound and a throbbing ache at her temple. The pounding headache she understood—Knife had clobbered her when he escaped. The noisy rumble confused her, concerned her.

She cracked open her eyes and surveyed the dim, confined space where she lay. This wasn’t the SUV. “Alec?”

“You’re awake. Good.”

She angled her head toward his voice and found him peering over his shoulder from a narrow seat at the front of the confined space. He wore a headset over one ear with a microphone at his mouth. The green glow of a control panel cast harsh shadows on his angular face and square jaw. “I was just about to wake you. Can you tell me who the president is?”

She did. “Now can you tell me where the heck we are?”

“North of Denver. At about 15,000 feet.”

The tiny space she was in jostled and dipped. Her stomach rose to her throat. “15,000 feet? In the air?”

“Don’t panic. I have hundreds of hours’ flying experience.”

Despite the hammering protest of her head, Erin struggled to sit up and take stock of her situation. “Oh God.”

She was in a small propeller plane from the looks of it. And Alec was alone at the controls. She fought the swell of nausea and anxiety that swamped her. “Wh-why am I here? Where are you taking me?” She heard the shrill note in her voice but didn’t care.

“Easy, sweetcakes. I’ve got everything under control.”

“That doesn’t answer my question!”

Deep breath. Slow exhale. The exercise didn’t help. Her nerves still jangled, and her stomach pitched.

“Alec, why am I in this plane? How did I get on this plane? I thought you were taking me to a hotel!”

He angled another look over his shoulder. “Anyone ever tell you that you sleep like the dead? I decided I’d get fewer arguments from you if I didn’t wake you until we were in the air.”

“You’re kidnapping me now?” She gaped at him, stunned by his stunt.

“Trust me. It’s better this way. Because of your concussion—a minor one, the doc assures me—you needed someone to watch you for the next day or two.”

Erin’s heart gave a little kick. She hadn’t had anyone looking out for her interests in a very long time.

“But I had to get out of town, shake the men who’ve been following me.” Alec returned his attention to the dials and gauges in front of him. “At the safe house, I’ll have the facilities to start tracking Daniel and protect you at the same time.”

She grabbed the back of Alec’s seat as the plane jolted through another air pocket. “So why are these men following you? What do they want?”

Alec didn’t answer.

“Can you at least tell me which side of the law you’re on? Are you one of the good guys?”

He shrugged. “Depends who you ask. We’re getting close. Better get ready to go.”

Erin shifted to look out the front windshield at the mountainous terrain. “I don’t see any airstrip. Where are we supposed to land?”

“We’re not landing.”

A prickle started at the base of Erin’s neck. “Pardon me?”

“We’re jumping. I only had one chute in the plane, so I picked up a tandem harness before we took off.”

Pinpricks of dread crept down her spine. “We’re jumping? As in parachuting? As in … No!” A cold sweat beaded on her lip as an image of Bradley’s final moments flashed in her mind. “No, Alec! I can’t!”

He flipped some switches and slid out from behind the controls. “Fine. Stay on the plane. Although you only have a couple minutes’ worth of fuel. Do you know how to land a Cessna?”

“No. I—” Erin’s breathing grew ragged, and her heart clambered. “A couple minutes of fuel? But if we jump, the plane—”

“Crashes. I know. That’s the point. With luck, the people after us will believe we’re dead.” Alec stepped over her toward the back cargo area of the tiny plane.

“But—” Erin’s head pounded, and her mind spun.

This was a nightmare. No, worse than a nightmare. This was real.

“Please, Alec. There’s got to be another way to do this! I can’t jump!”

“You’ll be strapped to me. Perfectly safe. I’ve done this dozens of times.” He handed her a nylon mesh harness. “Put this on.”

Bile burned her throat, and she swallowed hard, searching for her voice. “Alec, wait! You don’t understand. Bradley died—”

A screeching siren from the controls interrupted her. “Low fuel! Low fuel!”

“This is our stop.” Alec cinched a strap tighter across his chest, then looked at the harness still in her hand. “You coming or not?”

Erin scrambled to don the device, and Alec stepped closer to show her how to arrange the straps and clips. “Please, don’t make me do this, Alec! Stay with me! Turn the plane around and land it somewhere. I can’t do this!”

He tested one of her straps with a firm tug. Then, grasping her shoulders with strong hands, he met her eyes with his piercing blue gaze. “Yes, you can. I’ll be right there with you the whole time. I won’t let you get hurt.”

His assurances echoed with a distant familiarity. Her stomach lurched. “That’s what Bradley always said.”

Alec forcibly quashed the sympathy that stirred in him when he looked in Erin’s terror-stricken eyes. “Turn around so I can hook up your harness.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and a tear leaked onto her cheek. The sight of that tear as she dutifully complied with his directive landed a sucker punch in his gut.

He had to shove down his reactions to Erin and focus on the jump, focus on getting them both safely to the ground. Drawing a cleansing breath, Alec slid a hand around her waist and pulled her back against him. With his hand splayed on her belly, he held her in place while he fastened the D-rings of her harness to his. With effort, he shut out the sweet scent of her hair, the odd firmness and round swell of her stomach, the shudder that shimmied through her.

“Alec,” she said, her voice trembling, “It has to be dangerous for a woman in my condition to—”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll protect your head when we land.”

“I don’t mean—”

“Time to go. Walk with me.” He nudged her forward. Opened the rear cargo door. Braced as the slipstream roared into the plane.

“Alec!”

“We jump on three! One … two …”

“Alec!”

“Three!”

Chapter 3

After their canopy opened with a crisp snap, Erin opened her eyes and drank in the view of sprawling mountains, the terra-cotta sunset, and the bushy evergreens dotting the jagged slopes of the Rockies. Beautiful.

She inhaled the pine-scented air and felt the tension in her muscles seep away. The spectacular view, the exhilarating freedom as they floated on a pillow of air was heady stuff. Despite her fears, every adventure Bradley had taken her on had given her something she treasured. She came away from each challenge energized with the joy of being alive.

The joy of being alive …

In a flash, the thrill of their descent evaporated, replaced with chilling memories of the last trip she’d made with Bradley, the trip that had left her bereft and alone. Erin tensed every muscle and turned her attention from the sunset to their rapid approach to terra firma. Rather, toward a stand of lodgepole pines.

“Alec, we’re headed for those trees!” Erin gripped Alec’s arm, digging her fingers into his hard muscles, as he toggled their parachute toward the hillside below. She could barely hear herself over the swoosh of blood in her ears and the adrenaline-charged cadence of her heart.

“We’re fine, sweetcakes.” His voice was irritatingly calm and assured.

When they landed, she was going to deck him for putting her through this.

“Right on target,” he crooned.

“You’re aiming for the trees?”

She felt the vibration of his answering grunt against her back, reverberating in her own chest as if they were one.

“Of course not. I’m gonna set us down in that clearing to the left. When we land, bend your knees—”

“And roll. I know. I’ve done this before.” But when she’d parachuted with Bradley, she hadn’t had a throbbing knot on her head or memories of her husband’s death replaying in her mind like a film clip looped to repeat ad nauseam.

“You’ve been skydiving before?” Alec sounded truly shocked.

“A couple times. With Bradley.”

They glided over the treetops, and she heard Alec’s smug hum of satisfaction, imagined the I-told-you-so gleam in his eyes. As they sailed smoothly to earth, Erin readied herself for landing as Bradley had taught her. Alec wrapped his arm around the top of her head and held it securely against him, protecting her head from further injury as he’d promised he would.

Her feet met the rocky ground with a jarring thud, and her knees buckled. She tried to roll as Alec had instructed, but he lunged the opposite direction. She was hauled with him in a tumbling heap, falling awkwardly on top of him, butt first.

Alec groaned. “I told you to roll!”

“I tried to, but you went the other way! Next time, be more specific about direction.”

He snorted. “Roger that, sweetcakes.”

She heard the click of metal, and the pressure of the straps restraining her loosened. With a firm shove, Alec scooted her off him and sat up. Erin crawled to her hands and knees and stayed there while she fought for control over her ragged breathing and scampering nerves.

Alec cupped her chin in his hand and brought her head up. “Look at me.”

She did, jolting again when her eyes connected with the stunning color and intensity of his. The warmth of his hand on her chin and steadiness of his gaze made her pulse stagger for reasons that had nothing to do with their perilous jump from the airplane.

“Pupils are still normal and even,” he said matter-of-factly.

A twinge of disappointment plucked her. The intent of his touch, his level look was clinical, not comforting. Yet he didn’t release her chin. “You all right?”

“I’ll live.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. The closest thing to a smile she’d ever seen cross his face. “See. That wasn’t so bad.”

She scoffed.

His thumb stroked her cheek, and ribbons of warm sensation streaked from the spot he caressed to pool in her core.

“I know you were scared, but you did great. Good job, sweetcakes.”

Erin sighed and tugged her chin from his grasp. “Stop calling me that. My name is Erin, not sweetcakes.”

His expression hardening, Alec squared his shoulders and started unfastening the parachute straps crisscrossing his chest.

“Roger that.” His tone was as biting as the rocks cutting into her knees.

She tugged at her own harness, wondering where the chastisement about his moniker for her came from. She’d never detected any condescension when he used the name, and she could think of plenty of things worse than sweetcakes he could call her. Hormones, she supposed. She’d been emotional and moody a lot lately.

“Who’s Bradley?”

Erin snapped her head up. “What?”