Their Baby Girl...?: The Baby Mission / Her Baby Secret

What’s more irresistible than a gorgeous, sexy man? What’s more adorable than a sexy guy and a cute, cuddly baby?

Two lucky women might get to have both in

THEIR BABY GIRL…?

Two bestselling authors deliver two

compelling, emotional stories.

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humour and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

The Baby Mission

MARIE FERRARELLA

Her Baby Secret

VICTORIA PADE

To

Patience Smith

and our bonding process

The Baby Mission

MARIE FERRARELLA

Prologue

She was back. He’d seen her. Seen Claire.

Held her.

Her eyes were closed now, but she knew it was him. He knew she knew. Because Claire was his.

Now and forever.

He’d been away for three long, aching years and when he’d finally been allowed to return, he was afraid that he’d never see her again. That she would be gone.

But he had found her, found Claire. No one else would ever have her again. Would ever touch her again.

There were no words to do justice to the emotions that were skittering through him. Elation, joy, empowerment, those were all good words, but not really good enough. Not nearly good enough to begin to describe what it was he was experiencing right at this moment, just looking at her lying here on the grass.

He sifted a strand of her hair through his fingers. Bending down, he closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply.

Her hair smelled of something herbal. Something nice.

Silky blond hair.

Hair that would continue to grow even though she no longer would. She wouldn’t have the promise of another sunrise, another star-filled night.

He sat back on his heels and looked at her.

She looked so beautiful.

In his other hand, he held a rose. A single, perfect red rose. A rose as perfect as the young woman who lay here before him.

There were bruises on her throat, which marred that perfection. But he had hidden them. Nobody would ever see.

Carefully he placed the single red rose in her hand, then arranged the fingers of her other hand around the stem. He sat back and studied his handiwork.

She looked as if she was sleeping.

Perfect.

The pressure in his chest was gone. It felt good to be back.

To have Claire again.

Because he loved her.

Chapter 1

“Guess who’s back?”

Special Agent Chris Jones, C.J. to her friends, looked up from her desk, the same desk that had kept her a virtual prisoner in the Southern California office for the past two months. She struggled against a very strong inclination to frown.

By the tone of her partner’s voice, her completely free-to-work-in-the-field-while-she-withered-on-the-vine-in-the-office partner, Special Agent Byron Warrick was either going to give her more paperwork to cope with, or worse, he had something going on in the field that she was barred from. The powers that be didn’t think a pregnant woman belonged out there.

Bracing herself, she tossed her long, straight, blond hair over her shoulder and asked, “Who?”

Warrick perched on the edge of C.J.’s desk and looked down at her. All of her. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a week, and every time he was away from her, he had to admit it was a shock when he first saw her again.

He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her this way. When they had first been teamed up, she’d weighed scarcely more than his equipment bag for the peewee softball team he used to coach. The last couple of months had certainly taken their toll on his partner.

He shook his head. She dressed well, and there was a certain amount of camouflage involved, but there was no way she could hide what was going on.

Warrick stole a peppermint from her desk and began to remove the cellophane. “You know, C.J., I can’t remember what you looked like when you weren’t pregnant.”

Why was it that men felt compelled to bury affection in a sea of banter, barbs and teasing? There were times when Warrick acted just like one of her brothers.

“Very funny.” C.J. sighed, then admitted, “Neither can I.” She pushed the keyboard back on her desk. Something was clearly up. “Okay, what has you so all-fired chipper this morning?”

“Not chipper, C.J.” Under the circumstances, that was rather a disrespectful word to apply to the situation, but then, she didn’t know yet. “Just energized.”

He played out the moment, reeling C.J. in. He felt bad for her, knowing how she felt about being stuck behind a desk. But he also felt relieved. Her reflexes had to have slowed down in this condition, and he didn’t want to have to be worried about something happening to her if she tried to go about business as usual. Business was definitely not as usual.

“Remember our old friend, the Sleeping Beauty Killer?”

Recall was instant. C.J. stiffened. The Sleeping Beauty Killer was the name she had dubbed the serial killer who had killed twelve women over the space of two years. All his victims were blue-eyed blondes, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. The name had been given him not for any missives the killer had left in his wake, but for the way he had arranged all the bodies postmortem. He strangled his victims, put a costume jewelry choker on them to hide the marks on their necks and then lyrically placed them on the ground with their hands folded around a single long-stemmed, perfect red rose. The women all appeared as if they were just sleeping, waiting for their prince to come and wake them up with a kiss.

Except that no kiss could undo what he had done to them.

Ordinarily, since all the murders had taken place in the vicinity of Orange County, the FBI wouldn’t have gotten involved unless requested to do so by the local authorities. But victim number two had been found in the parking lot of the federal court building. That made it a federal case and gave the Bureau primary jurisdiction. She’d been the first to come aboard.

Capturing the Sleeping Beauty Killer had been C.J.’s own personal crusade, one that had gone unfulfilled. The killings had abruptly stopped three years ago and the trail had gone completely dry.

The drudgery of the morning with its data inputting was forgotten. C.J.’s eyes brightened as she looked up at Warrick.

“Are you sure?” She made no attempt to hide the eagerness in her voice. If the serial killer was back, that instantly increased their chances of finally getting him for all the murders. “As far as anyone knows, he’s been out of commission for three years.”

The unofficial theory was that someone had turned the tables on the Sleeping Beauty Killer and killed him. Serial killers rarely lost the blood lust, so the abrupt termination hadn’t been voluntary. C.J. had spent countless hours scouring the crime databases herself, looking for any murders that had been committed using a similar MO. But none had come to light. Eventually C.J. decided, with no small relief, that although she wasn’t the one to bring him to justice, chances were that the Sleeping Beauty Killer was answering to a higher power for his crimes.

Obviously, relief had been premature, she thought.

“Take a look at what just came in.” Separating the photograph from the rest of the folder he was carrying, Warrick tossed it on her desk.

C.J.’s stomach tightened. She found herself looking down at an angelic face that was all but devoid of makeup. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked them fresh, untouched by anything but death.

The girl in the photograph couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her whole life ahead of her, and now it was gone. With effort C.J. pushed down the anger that rose up within her.

She took the photograph in her hands, studying it. The girl was holding a single red rose in her hands. It was too eerily similar. But there were the three years to consider.

C.J. raised her eyes to Warrick’s face. “Copycat?” Not that that was a cause for celebration. Copycat or original, the girl was still dead.

“Maybe.” But somehow Warrick doubted it. He tapped the folder. “But he got it right, down to the last detail. Including the polished pink nails.”

It was the one detail they’d withheld from the public when the story had broken. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked to give the women he strangled a manicure, also postmortem. He used the same shade of nail polish every time, a shade too common to be useful in their search.

C.J. shivered. “Sick bastard,” she muttered under her breath. In an unguarded moment, her hand slipped down over her belly in the eternal protective movement of expectant mothers everywhere, as if trying to shield her baby from this kind of horror. It’s not the best place I’m bringing you into, baby. She let the photograph drop back on her desk. “I guess he isn’t rotting in hell the way he was supposed to be.”

Warrick tucked the photograph back into the folder. “Guess not.”

C.J.’s eyes were drawn back to the photograph. They had to catch this killer before he struck again. She tried not to think about how many other times she’d thought the same thing. “Okay, what have we got on this?”

There was that word again, Warrick thought. We. They weren’t a “we” at the moment. And they wouldn’t be until after her baby was born. She made things hard on both of them by not remembering that fact.

“Information’s just coming in, C.J.” Looking at her, he could read her mind the way only some members of her family could. They’d been partners for six years now, covered each other’s backs on the job and offered silent support outside the job’s perimeters when the situation called for it. “Hey, this isn’t a signal to leap out from behind your desk.” His green eyes swept over her considerable bulk as a hint of a smile played on his lips. “Not that leaping appears to be in your repertoire at the moment.”

“Thanks a bunch.” C.J. shifted in her seat, wishing she could get comfortable, knowing it was a futile effort. These days comfortable was only a word in the dictionary. “I wasn’t about to leap, just walk out with as much dignity as a pregnant elephant can muster.”

He’d crossed the line and hurt her feelings, Warrick realized. So he backtracked a little. “I wouldn’t say elephant.”

“Not verbally,” C.J. countered, knowing she had him and skewering him just a little. Because he owed it to her. “But I can see what you’re thinking in your eyes. I always could, you know.”

He liked being able to read her, but he didn’t like being transparent himself. “What I’m thinking is that any normal woman would have already gone on maternity leave by now.”

She’d been over this subject ad nauseum, with both Warrick and her family. Four brothers, two parents and a partner, all of whom thought they knew better than she did what was best for her.

“We both know I don’t fall into that category,” C.J. reminded him. “And we superwomen have an image to maintain.”

He grinned. It was the kind of grin that raised women’s blood pressures and lowered their resistance. At times, C.J. mused, it was hard to remember that she thought of him as another brother and was thus immune to him. He did have one hell of a smile. Lately she kept finding herself attracted to her partner at very odd moments. For some reason, Warrick had been looking sexier and sexier to her. Had to be the hormones, she decided. They were completely out of kilter. She was usually better at keeping a tight rein on her thoughts.

“Superwoman, huh?” Warrick nodded at her stomach. “I don’t exactly picture you flying around right about now.”

She eyed the folder in his hands. It was like waving a piece of ham in front of a starving dog. “Did you just come in here with this to torture me?”

Following her eyes, he tucked the folder under his arm. “No, but it was our case. I thought you’d want to be in the loop.”

Impatient, she shifted in her chair again. It creaked its protest over the change of position. C.J. frowned. “These days I feel like the whole damn loop.”

One more month, she thought, squelching a note of desperation. One more month like this and then it’d be over. One more month and she’d have this baby so she could try to get her life back on track again. It was going to be a lot better when she could finally hold her baby in her arms instead of carrying it around like a leaden weight.

She tried not to let her mind drift. There was time enough for maternal feelings after the baby arrived, healthy and strong. Until then, she was determined to keep her emotions under tight wrap.

That wasn’t going very well right now.

C.J. noted where her partner’s eyes were resting. On her abdomen. Annoyance rose up three flights.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got my whole family watching my stomach as if it’s a pot about to boil, and I don’t need my partner doing the same thing.”

Warrick straightened. “The person you should have watching your stomach is—”

She shut her eyes, searching for a vein of strength. They’d been down this road before, too. Too often. “Don’t start, War. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t want to hear what?” He meant to make his question sound innocent. It sounded heated instead. But he wasn’t exactly impartial when it came to the FBI special agent who, until seven months ago, had a prominent place in his partner’s life—a partner he was extremely fond of. If he felt anything else toward her, well, that was something that wasn’t going to be explored in the light of day. It couldn’t be. Never mind that, pregnant or not, C.J. was the hottest-looking woman he’d ever come across. “That your insignificant other should at least be around to lend you some emotional support?”

They’d already been through this, she and Warrick. Why couldn’t he get this through his thick black Irish head? “He’s not my ‘other’ anything, War.”

The hell the man wasn’t. He had no idea what the attraction had been, but it was obviously hot enough to get her in this condition. Hot enough for her to want to keep the baby instead of going another route.

Restless, Warrick got up. “I just think that after he got you pregnant—”

C.J. took instant offense. From the moment she’d first opened her eyes on the world, despite the fact that she had a warm, loving family, she’d been her own person. She resented the implication, even for a moment, that she wasn’t.

“Nobody got me anything. We took precautions, they didn’t work. The pregnancy was an accident.”Again her hand went over her belly, as if to block out any hurtful words the baby might hear. “It happens, okay? Now if you don’t mind, Special Agent Warrick, let’s drop the subject.”

She watched the deep frown take root on his face and tried to tell herself she appreciated where he was coming from. He just cared about her, the way she did about him. Cared the way she had when his wife of two years had left him three years ago because she couldn’t stand the instability of the life he led.

“Don’t talk to me like that, C.J., as if we’re two characters out of the X-Files, calling to each other by our titles. It’s not natural. And neither,” he added vehemently, “is walking away from a woman you’re supposed to be in love with.”

He’d never liked Tom Thorndyke, hadn’t liked him from the first moment the man had stared unabashedly at C.J. But he’d made concessions because C.J. obviously cared about the jerk. He hated to see her hurt and abandoned. For two cents proper, he’d make the man eat his perfect teeth. If he could get to him. The man had taken an assignment out of the state right after he’d told C.J. that they were better off going their separate ways.

Which was right after she’d told him she was pregnant.

“Forget about Tom Thorndyke and tell me who’s been assigned to the case.” C.J. shrugged. She’d made up her mind to only look ahead and not back. Looking back never got you anywhere, anyway.

Because he knew they weren’t going to get anywhere waltzing over old ground, Warrick backed off and told her what she wanted to know. “Rodriguez, Culpepper…”

The two other special agents who had been on the original task force. A flutter of unfounded hope passed through her. “And?”

“Me.”

C.J. knew what he was telling her. Disappointment jabbed her with a sharp, extra-long knitting needle. “But not me.”

He’d gone to bat to get her on the team over the assistant director’s reservations. On the team safely. “Unofficially.” Warrick pointed to the computer. “You can cross-check information for us, go through the files, things like that.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I’ve got too much seniority to be a grunt, Warrick, and I’m not old enough to be stuck behind a computer.”

He looked at her for a long moment. She should never have gotten involved with that character. For once it seemed as if her keen instincts had completely failed her. “Should have thought of that before you tripped the light fantastic with old shoot-and-scoot.”

She’d never been long on patience. Pregnancy had cut her lag time in half. She struggled to hold on to her temper. “Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped with the cute references?”

“I’ll stop when he materializes out of the Bermuda Triangle to live up to his end of it.” He looked at her long and hard. “And there’s nothing ‘cute’ about a man who ducks out on his responsibilities.”

She’d given the matter a great deal of thought even before she’d told Thorndyke about the baby she was carrying. She’d found herself drawing up a list of the man’s pros and cons. Disgusted, she’d crumpled them up. Love and marriage was not decided by a safe, sane list of pros and cons, but on a gut feeling, a lack of breath and an X-factor that defied description. None of the latter applied to Tom Thorndyke. The relationship, short as it was, had been a mistake. A misjudgment on her part because she’d been lonely, and she took full responsibility for it.

She just wished Warrick would let it drop. “The worst thing in the world would have been for Thorndyke and me to get married.”

Part of him felt that way, too. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “If you felt that way, why did you sleep with him?”

Very simply because she hadn’t thought about any consequences arising from the liaison. For once in her life, impulse had guided her. But once she’d discovered she was pregnant, changes in her outlook followed. She saw Tom’s true colors. And maternal instincts came out of nowhere. She never once doubted that she wanted this baby. But even so, she refused to allow herself the luxury of making plans. Plans had a way of falling through, dragging disappointment in their wake.

She looked at Warrick. “Since when do I owe you any explanations?”

Holding the folder in one hand, he opened his arms wide and shrugged. “You don’t.” With that, he turned away.

Annoyed at him and herself, C.J. called after him. “You can have a serving of ice cream without wanting to marry the ice cream vat.” Warrick stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. She shrugged. “Besides, it was just one of those things that happened. It would be a mistake to have three people pay for one night of passion.” And a birth control method that had failed, she added silently.

He crossed back to her slowly. “I guess that makes sense.”

She’d known all along that Warrick hadn’t liked Tom. Maybe, in some perverse way, that might have even spurred her on, although she couldn’t have actually explained why. In any event, as far as she was concerned that was all behind her.

“Okay, enough atonement, Father Warrick.” She put her hand out for the folder. “Give me the information. Do we know who the victim is?”

He nodded. There’d been no mystery here. “Same as always.” Warrick handed her the folder. “There was a wallet. He doesn’t get his jollies challenging us.”

As far as serial killers went, the Sleeping Beauty Killer wasn’t unduly cruel. He’d always made a point of making sure that the victim could be readily identified, that her next of kin, if there were any, could easily be contacted and informed of the person’s death. The only secrecy was his identity. And why he killed in the first place.

C.J. glanced at the information. She felt heartsick for the family. No one should have to put up with this kind of thing happening.

“A serial killer with heart. How lovely. Damn it, Warrick.” She slapped the folder down on her desk. “I want this guy in the worst way.” Emotions weren’t going to catch the killer. Only cold, hard, deliberate investigation would do it. And a great deal of luck. “What do you think made him stop for so long?”

He perched on her desk again. She was wearing a different perfume, he noted. It was sexier. He couldn’t help wondering if she was trying to compensate for her present state. At a different time…

He caught his thoughts before they could slip off to somewhere they shouldn’t.

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just shifted his base of operations,” he theorized. “Maybe our guy discovered that the world is a hell of a lot larger than just Orange County in California.”

It was a theory, but not one she subscribed to. Not after all the hours she’d logged in, looking for the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s pattern and coming up empty. “I don’t think so. No other murders matched this particular, meticulous MO. No, something made him stop. How do you crawl into the head of someone like this?” she wondered out loud.

He looked at her. There was a danger in that. “Careful that once you crawl in, you don’t forget how to crawl out again.”

She laughed, knowing exactly what he was referring to. “Been watching Al Pacino in Cruising again?” Though he denied it, the award-winning actor was clearly one of Warrick’s favorites.

“Hey, things like that happen,” he protested. “You become one with the criminal and forget where you end off and he starts.”

She shivered. “Never happen. There’s no way I would ever mentally bond with this character. He gives me the creeps.” Just touching the folder made her skin crawl. He had to get these women to trust him, played on their vulnerability and then struck. He was a loathsome creature of the lowest order.

Warrick was more concerned about her right now than the Sleeping Beauty Killer. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while?” He glanced at his watch. It was close to two. If he didn’t miss his guess, she hadn’t left her desk, except for bathroom runs, since she’d come in this morning. “Want to pick up some late lunch?”

She tilted her head, studying his face, suppressing a grin. “You buying?”

“No way.” Warrick laughed shortly. “I’ve seen the way you eat lately. We’ll go Dutch.” He moved behind her. “I will, however, help you out of your chair.”

Another crack, however veiled, about her weight. She could do without that, even though she’d gained a good twenty-eight pounds in the past two months. Before then, she’d stayed rail thin, actually losing weight because of an extra-long bout of morning sickness.

“Forever the gentleman. Thanks,” she waved him away, “but I’ll pass.” She opened the folder and spread it out on her desk. “I want to go through this file.”