“But Adam needs Super Mommy.”

Laura’s voice cracked, sending a glass shard of pain through him. How was she ever going to move past the fact that he’d done this to their child? Even assuming Adam returned home safe and sound—and he refused to consider any other possibility—how were they going to move forward as a couple?

He asked slowly, “Do think you’ll ever forgive me for all of this?”

She stared across the dark interior of the car at him a long time before she answered. “I don’t know. After you lied to me in Paris and then spent the past year knowing you were living under an assumed identity and never told me, I don’t know how I’m going to trust you again.”

If only he could remember why he’d deceived her in Paris! For the first time, he regretted not really trying to work with the doctors who’d attempted to help him regain his memory.

“Now what?” Laura asked.

What indeed.

Dear Reader,

I cannot tell you how much fun it is to get to revisit a few of my favorite characters of all time, and to get to write about babies and children again, all in one book! I was absolutely thrilled when I was asked to write another book in the TOP SECRET DELIVERIES series. Thanks so much to you for supporting these books and giving me and my fellow authors an opportunity to play in this universe again.

There’s nothing quite as powerful as the love of a parent for their child, and it was a challenge to combine this with a grown-up love story and a tale of suspense and danger. Thankfully, Nick and Laura knew exactly how they planned to proceed. It seemed like every day when I sat down to write, certain I knew what was going to happen in that day’s work, those two up and took me in some completely different direction altogether.

So, I take no credit for this book. This is truly Nick and Laura’s story. I was just the typist along for the ride. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Happy reading!

Cindy Dees

About the Author

CINDY DEES started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan. After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the US Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories. Her hobbies include medieval re-enacting, professional Middle Eastern dancing and Japanese gardening.

This RITA® Award-winning author’s first book was published in 2002 and since then she has published more than twenty-five bestselling and award-winning novels. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.

The Spy’s
Secret Family

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

This book is for Shana Smith because it absolutely,

positively couldn’t have happened without her. Truly.

You’re the best!

Chapter 1

Why wasn’t he dead?

Nick stared up at the featureless white ceiling of his hospital room as the beeping of a heart monitor punctuated the panic flowing through his veins. Why hadn’t they killed him? Why five years of captivity instead—in a shipping container, on a cargo ship, floating around in international waters?

And why couldn’t he remember what came just before his kidnapping? The doctors told him he’d sustained a serious head injury at some point during his incarceration. Whether a captor had hit him during an interrogation or he’d fallen during one of the massive open-sea storms that had tossed him like a cork inside his steel prison, he had no recollection.

He coughed thickly. Supposedly, his pneumonia was mostly under control now. It had been touch and go there for a while. But the worry lurking in his nurses’ eyes had eased in the past day or so. He gathered he was out of the woods, which was good news.

They were still working on clearing his body of various other infections and trying to restore normal function to his digestive tract. The only way he was putting on weight was via the massive calorie infusions running through his IV.

They’d cut his dark hair and shaved off his matted beard, revealing the unnatural paleness of his usually olive complexion. The psychiatrists said he might never remember the lost time, a memory gap spanning approximately two years prior to his capture and the first three years or so of his imprisonment. Funny how the shrinks were trying so hard to retrieve those memories and he was trying equally hard not to retrieve them. Absolute certainty vibrated ominously in his gut, warning him that whatever lurked in that black hole of lost time was best left there.

Was whatever he’d forgotten the reason he was still alive? Had his captors been waiting for him to remember something? Or was there some other, more sinister reason that someone had been hell-bent on imprisoning him?

Maybe he was just being paranoid. Although it wasn’t paranoia if someone was really after him. Even now, he expected his keepers to burst into his hospital room and haul him back to his box. The idea actually made a certain sick sense. If his captors had orders to keep him alive and he’d gotten too sick to treat on the ship, they could’ve cooked up this whole rescue ruse to fatten him up and get him healthy enough to toss back in Hell.

Laura Delaney—the woman who’d rescued him from his metal prison and one of the only faces he remembered from the lost years—claimed the two of them had been lovers before he’d disappeared. She’d introduced him to a little boy who looked so much like him it was hard to discount her story that he was the child’s father. He desperately hoped it was true.

She was an extremely attractive woman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine dating someone like her. But was she for real? Or was she part of his captors’ evil head games? Was she here to trick him into revealing whatever secrets his subconscious was guarding so fiercely?

If only there was someone he could trust, really trust, to tell him what was real and what was not.

And then there was the troubling fact that he knew for certain his name wasn’t Nick Cass. Nor had he grown up entirely in Rhode Island. But Laura apparently believed both to be true. He must’ve told the lies himself. But why? If he and Laura were lovers like she claimed, why hadn’t he told her his real name or the most basic facts about his past? Why the deception?

Everywhere he turned, there were only questions and more questions. Frustration sang through his blood as sharply as his secret hope that his freedom, at least, was real. But he dared not share that hope with anyone. Not until he knew if anyone at all was telling him the truth.

Laura paused outside the hospital room, steeling herself not to react to Nick’s emaciated state. It wasn’t his fault he looked fresh out of a Nazi concentration camp, and he didn’t deserve to see her cringe at the sight of his skeletal frame, hollow face or his shadowed blue eyes. God, his eyes. The haunted look in them was terrifying. Would he carry it with him forever?

The shrinks doubted he would recover the years stripped from his memory. But they felt he should recover enough to be a functional member of society once more with time and counseling. He should recover. Not he would.

At this point, she didn’t care if his memory ever came back. She just wanted him back. The man who’d swept her off her feet in a whirlwind romance in Paris. The man who’d captured her heart and taught her what true love could be. If even part of that amazing man came back to her, it would be better than the hollow shell of a man on the other side of the door. She vowed to be grateful for whatever piece of him survived his ordeal. It was surely better than having no part of him at all. The past five years of waiting and wondering had been pure hell.

She knew he wasn’t convinced yet that his rescue was real in spite of that first night of freedom they’d shared. They’d gone to her estate, where he’d bathed and eaten. Then she’d made love to him with all the pent-up passion and relief in her soul.

They’d both cried that night. She’d interpreted his tears as a cathartic release, but she’d been wrong. The shrinks told her he believed that night to have been some sort of elaborate torture by his captors to taunt him with what freedom would be like. Apparently, he’d been crying because the idea of going back into his box after what the two of them had shared had finally broken him. She’d broken him.

The man hadn’t even known who she was, and she’d been so caught up in her euphoria at finding him that she’d never slowed down enough to realize how lost he’d been. Guilt at her thoughtlessness rolled through her. She’d always been a take-charge, full-speed-ahead kind of person. But that tendency had hurt the man she loved. Part of his paranoid state now was her fault. When would she learn to rein herself in? Had her impulsiveness cost her his trust forever?

She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. “Hey, handsome. How are you feeling today?”

“You’re back.” The abject relief in his voice broke her heart a little. What he clearly meant was, “So I get to live another day in this beautiful illusion? Thank God.”

“The doctors say you can go home soon. You’ll still need around-the-clock medical care, but I can hire nurses to look after you.”

Terror flashed in his eyes at the mention of leaving the hospital.

She pretended not to see it and asked lightly, “Do you think when you actually come home to live with me and Adam you’ll believe all of this is real? That you’re free and you have a family?”

He answered slowly, “I don’t know. I hope so.”

Hey, progress! He’d spoken of his feelings. Maybe he’d finally accepted that he was not living in a dream or a terrible trick. She picked up his bony hand and cradled it in hers. It had been so strong once, so capable of giving her pleasure, so confident in its gestures. She murmured, “I love you, Nick. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.”

“Even if you’re lying, the notion makes me happy.”

She smiled down at him. “Give it some time. Give me some time to prove this is real.”

He shrugged. “It isn’t like I have any choice. I’m along for the ride, here. So far, it’s a great dream.”

She smiled bravely while the knife twisted in her gut. “You’ll be on your feet and kicking up your heels in no time. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

And please God, let that include staying with her and Adam. Their son desperately needed a father, and she desperately needed the man she loved. Yes, she hadn’t seen him in five years. And yes, he might be an entirely different person than the one she fell in love with way back then. But surely, at least part of the intelligent, passionate, confident man who’d swept her off her feet was still in there, somewhere.

“How can you possibly be real?” he asked reflectively. “You’re too perfect.”

She laughed lightly, praying her panic at his declaration wasn’t audible. “I’m far from perfect. Trust me.”

“Trust. That is the thing, isn’t it? Who will trust whom first in this little chess game?”

“This isn’t a game, Nick. You’re free, you’re going home soon and I love you. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

He made a noncommittal sound, and his cobalt gaze slid away from hers.

He really did have to give his captors credit for playing out this farce to the hilt. Six weeks since his “rescue” and still no hint of tossing him back in his box. He gazed around the plush bedroom suite, decorated in dark woods and deep, comforting colors. It was a far cry from his former prison. Hard to believe he actually caught himself missing the container’s bare metal walls now and then. After a while, its confines had felt safe. Comforting. A steel embrace that kept out worse horrors.

He supposed if he had to trade one cage for another, this one wasn’t bad. It was warmer and softer, and definitely had better food. The hallway door opened and Laura slipped into the room, wearing a slim wool skirt and a silk blouse that clung to her elegant curves in all the right places. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright. He added better-looking captors to his list.

In all fairness to her, she’d been nothing but kind and loving to him since she’d opened his box and let him out. She really was a delightful woman, witty and warm, with a quick smile that made her impossible to resist. And she was a devoted mother.

She moved to his side, and he closed his laptop. Yet again, his unreasoning fear at what lurked in his past had prevented him from typing in his real name to an internet search engine. Just a few simple keystrokes, and he’d finally know what monsters lurked in the recesses of his mind. But his terror was just too great. He’d sat there for an hour with the damned computer in his lap and never managed to type a single letter.

Leaning over the chair, Laura kissed him warmly. He didn’t find it hard to believe that he’d loved her once. The only thing keeping him from giving in to serious attraction to the woman was the prospect of losing her. He figured as soon as he fell for her, that would be when the rug got yanked out from under him.

“How’re you feeling today?” she asked eagerly, almost impatiently.

“Fine. You look about ready to burst. Do you have a surprise for me?” His gut clenched. He hated surprises. He was still waiting for the big, nasty one where his captors swept him out of this paradise and whisked him back to Hell Central.

“I do have a surprise for you, Nick. A good one, I hope. Are you strong enough for a bit of a shock?”

Every cell in his being froze. This was it. Sick heat and then icy cold washed through him, leaving him so nauseous he could hardly breathe. His heart pounded and his breathing accelerated so hard that, in seconds, he was light-headed.

His gaze darted about, seeking escape. Seeking a weapon. Anything to defend himself from the attack to come. His gaze lighted on the window. He could make a dash for it. Fling himself through the glass. It was three stories to the ground. If he went head first, the fall ought to kill him. If nothing else, maybe he’d be hurt so bad they couldn’t throw him back in his box. Maybe they’d have to hospitalize him for a few more months.

“I’m pregnant, Nick. We’re going to have a baby.”

His mind went blank. Ever so slowly, his brain managed to form a thought. Not a particularly coherent one, but a thought. What new game was this?

“Did you hear me?” Laura asked excitedly. “You’re going to be a father again.”

His brain simply refused to absorb the information. He couldn’t find a context to put the words in. Couldn’t comprehend the purpose of this new torture.

Laura was laughing. “… too fertile for our own good … first time we made love we got Adam, and now, after that first night you were free, we’re going to have another baby … should really be more careful about birth control in the future …”

She was making words and sentences and probably was even stringing them together in some sort of logical order. But he didn’t understand a thing she was saying.

He did understand, though, that the hallway door was not bursting open. No thugs had come for him yet. The next few minutes passed with him murmuring inane nothings at proper intervals in response to Laura’s babbling joy. And still no one had come.

Could it be? Was this real? Was Laura really pregnant and expecting his child?

Something cracked in his chest. It hurt, but it was a good kind of pain. Was he truly free? Was a life, a future with Laura and his children a possibility? Did he dare hope?

Hope. Now there was a concept.

A baby, huh? His and Laura’s. A little brother or sister for Adam. How he’d love to experience all of it—the morning sickness and messy delivery and midnight feedings. Another child to crawl inside his heart and hold it in his or her tiny, precious hands. Lord knew, Adam had already completely wrapped him around his little finger in the short time he’d spent with the boy. Nick said a fervent prayer every night that, even if all the rest of this was a horrible, cruel lie, God would please let Adam be real. He loved the little boy with all his heart.

And now there might be another child for him to love?

Something exploded in his gut with all the bright fury of a fireworks display, burning away everything that had gone before, cauterizing old wounds, and leaving him empty. New. Reborn.

And then he gave that something a name. Joy.

He was free. Really, truly free. The nightmare was over. He surged up out of the chair and wrapped Laura in a crushing embrace. And then, for the first time, he cried for the right reasons.

Laura didn’t know what clicked for Nick, but after she told him she was pregnant, he changed. He took new interest in food and exercise and spending time with Adam and generally engaged in life more. He got stronger, and gradually, as her belly grew, the haunted look faded from his eyes. He quit eyeing closed doors suspiciously, and the nightmares seemed to fade.

For a while there, she’d wondered if he was too far gone, if she’d be able to pull him out of the emotional abyss into which he’d fallen. But this baby seemed to have done the trick. She rubbed her rounded tummy affectionately. Things were working out better than she could ever have dreamed. Life was darned near perfect.

Nick stared at the laptop on his desk for the hundredth time. He’d been avoiding the thing for months, ever since Laura had told him she was pregnant, afraid to rock the boat of this new life. Everything was so good for him—for all of them—that he had no desire to do anything to threaten the perfection of it all.

But his curiosity had been building. Maybe it was a sign of his recovery that he was starting to feel the tug of waiting answers. What had happened during those lost years? Why the lies about his identity? Who’d had him kidnapped and thrown into a box? And why hadn’t that person or persons just killed him outright?

Certainty that he did not want to know the answers, no matter how tantalizing they might be, still raged in his gut. Whatever his former life had been, he had no pressing need to resume it. Laura was wealthy enough for them and their children to live in the lap of luxury for several lifetimes. Whoever else he’d left behind in his old life had no doubt made peace long ago with his disappearance and gotten on with their own lives. His return now could only cause disruption and chaos.

But what if his old life, his old identity, came looking for him?

Nah. Surely that had been the whole point of his kidnapping. To turn him into a ghost. Make him disappear for good. As long as he stayed a ghost, made no effort to resume his former life, there was no reason for his past to come looking for him. Right?

The key was to keep a low profile. He closed the laptop with a solid thunk. Nope. Curiosity or no curiosity, he was not going anywhere near his old life.

Chapter 2

Laura sighed. Her perfectly orchestrated schedule for the day had been blown to heck by her obstetrician running nearly two hours late. Not that she begrudged some other patient an emergency C-section. But today, of all days, she’d really needed her doctor to be on time. Because of the delay, she hadn’t had time to swing by home and drop off the baby with the nanny before this important meeting with Nick’s lawyers.

She winced at the sliding noise of her minivan’s side door. Baby Ellie, six weeks old today, was asleep inside, and Laura desperately needed her to stay that way for the next hour. She detached the baby carrier from the car seat base, threw the baby bag over her shoulder and hurried across the parking lot toward the glass and chrome high-rise housing Tatum and Associates, the law firm that would be representing Nick in the upcoming AbaCo trial.

Nick was the star witness for the prosecution. As such, Carter Tatum expected him to come under withering cross-examination by the defense lawyers representing the company’s chief of security, Hans Kurtis Schroder. He’d been accused of masterminding a kidnapping and human-trafficking ring using AbaCo ships without the company’s knowledge. Personally, Laura doubted Schroder was the top dog in the scheme. He was the sacrificial lamb to protect his bosses.

Today was a coaching session for Nick in how to act on the witness stand. It was guaranteed to be stressful. A part of her that she was trying darned hard to ignore worried that Nick wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he’d endured worse. He’d be fine, right?

She stepped out of the elevator and a receptionist ushered her to a plush conference room. Nick smiled and came over to relieve her of baby and bag. Her heart still swelled when he looked at her like that, so tall and dark and handsome. He’d filled out in the past year, lost the gaunt pallor, rebuilt the athletic physique that had first caught her attention in Paris. A shorter haircut than he’d worn then gave him a polished air that felt more Wall Street than European Bohemian. He cut a smashingly gorgeous figure. Her hands itched to get inside his shirt.

As observant as ever, his gaze went dark and smoky. “You are quite a temptation, yourself,” he murmured. “Shall we cancel this meeting and go somewhere private?”

She smiled regretfully even as she leaned toward him, pulled in by his magnetic appeal and completely uninterested in resisting it. He stepped forward and his head lowered toward hers. Her breath hitched and she was abruptly hot from head to toe.

A door burst open behind her and several people walked into the room. Nick’s gaze shifted briefly to the intruders and then, ignoring them, he completed the kiss. It was a relatively chaste thing, but her toes still curled into tight little knots of pleasure in her Jimmy Choos heels.

“Ahh. You’re here, Ms. Delaney. Good. We can get started.”

“Sorry I’m late,” she murmured. “The doctor was backed up, and I had no time to get home and back here.”

Nick cupped her elbow, escorting her to the table and holding her chair for her. “And how’s our little angel?” he asked, gazing down at his daughter fondly.

Laura’s heart swelled at the adoration in his voice. “Mother and daughter both received clean bills of health.” More precisely, daughter was over her mild jaundice, and mother was finally cleared to have sex again. The past six weeks of abstinence had been murder on her. Nick had just laughed, saying that five years locked up had taught him a great deal of patience.

“Can I get you something to drink, darling?” Nick asked. She shook her head, and his fingers brushed lightly across the back of her neck as he made his way to his own seat. She shivered from head to toe in anticipation of tonight.

Carter Tatum spoke from the end of the table. “This afternoon we’re going to try to approximate how AbaCo’s lawyers will question Nick. As unpleasant as it may be, I would remind you we’re on your side.”

Laura, a former CIA operative, had been through training at their infamous Farm, and she highly doubted a bunch of lawyers could throw anything at Nick that she hadn’t seen before.

Carter gestured and in short order a trio of lawyers was taking turns rapid-firing questions at Nick. They started with his kidnapping. The Paris police believed he’d been drugged at the Paris Opera and taken to the shipping container in which he spent the next five years. Nick denied remembering any of it. If only she’d gone to the opera with Nick that night, but her CIA partner—and ex-lover, truth be told—had been missing, and she’d been following up a lead.

The lawyers pressed Nick about any enemies who might have paid people to ghost him, and she listened with interest. This was a subject he’d flatly refused to discuss with her. It worried her mightily that whoever’d had him kidnapped was waiting to pounce again. Again, he denied knowing anything.

The next lawyer pushed harder and Nick’s shoulders climbed defensively. When the third lawyer pressed even more aggressively for information about Nick’s past, he crossed his arms stubbornly and quit speaking altogether. Darn it. That was the same thing he did to her whenever she brought up the subject.

“Water break,” Carter announced abruptly.

Laura released the breath she’d been holding. Nick slumped in his chair, his head down. She put a supportive hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he answered roughly. But his arm trembled beneath her palm, and his jaw clenched so hard he looked about ready to crack a molar.

She suggested gently, “Let’s call this for today. We’ll come back another time when you’re feeling better—”

“We finish it now,” he snapped uncharacteristically.

She drew back, startled. Nothing ever flustered Nick. He was always the soul of gentlemanly composure.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I have no past. It’s over and gone. My life started anew when you rescued me. This is who I am now. You are my life. You and the kids.”

She appreciated the sentiment, but he was going to have to face his past eventually. The psychiatrists had told her repeatedly not to push him, to let him investigate his previous life at his own speed. But it had about killed her to contain her curious nature for so long.

The lawyers’ badgering resumed, continuing until Nick finally declared, “Gentlemen, this line of questioning is over. My past is not relevant to the fact that I spent five years in an AbaCo box on an AbaCo ship at the hands of kidnappers in the employ of AbaCo.”

Laura stared. It was the first time he’d shown even a flash of the decisive streak he’d had in abundance in Paris.

Carter replied mildly, “AbaCo’s lawyers will, without question, go on a fishing expedition into your past in hopes of finding something they can make seem relevant.”

Nick scowled. “As far as I know, I never had anything to do with AbaCo before I wound up on that damned ship.”

The lawyer sighed. “President Nixon’s lawyers had the eighteen-minute gap to explain. We’ve got your five-year blackout to overcome. Have your doctors said anything more about the chances of you regaining some portion of your memory?”

Nick shrugged. “They think everything’s gone for good. I remember Laura’s face, and that’s it.”

“Can’t you remember something from before your memory loss to give you a clue about who you are and what you do?”

“I know who I am and what I do. I’m Nick Cass, and I spend every waking moment enjoying my family.”

The lawyer looked regretful, but said firmly, “You’re going to be under oath at the trial, and I guarantee they’ll ask you for explicit details of your past. If you won’t talk, they’ll have investigators dig up everything they can find.”

Laura observed closely as Nick’s gaze went hard. Closed. He’d never talked with her about his past in Paris before he disappeared, either. What was the big secret? She’d lay odds he wasn’t a criminal. She’d worked with plenty of them over the years, and he just didn’t have the right personality for it. He was too honorable, too concerned about doing the right thing.

The lawyers started up again, asking about Nick’s connection to AbaCo. He stuck firmly to his story that he’d never had any dealings with AbaCo that he was aware of, and knew of nothing that would’ve provoked the shipping giant to kidnap him of its own volition. Nick maintained steadfastly that his had to have been strictly a kidnapping for hire.

Frankly, she agreed with him. Laura tapped a pencil idly on the pad of paper before her. With first his long months of physical and emotional recovery and then the new baby coming, she’d been distracted enough this past year to abide by his wishes to leave his past alone. But she felt an investigation coming on.

Somebody’d messed with the father of her children, and that meant they’d messed with her. Furthermore, that person or persons might still pose a threat to her man. She smiled wryly. Her mama bear within was in full force these days. Must be the baby hormones raging.

She listened with a mixture of anger and sadness as Nick tonelessly described his incarceration. The psychologists said he had completely disassociated himself from his imprisonment and would have to make peace with it in his own time. For now, though, he held the emotions at arm’s length.

The lawyers moved on to the night of Nick’s rescue. He didn’t have a lot to say about it other than his door opened and a man named Jagger Holtz let him out, and Holtz and Laura led him to safety.

The lawyers left alone the events to follow Nick’s rescue—his weeks in a hospital recovering from various illnesses and malnutrition, his paranoia, the long silences, his difficulties with crowds and open spaces. None of that would help AbaCo’s case, apparently.

Then the lawyers attacked the veracity of Nick’s whole story, claiming it was entirely too far-fetched to be true, doing their damnedest to trip him up or get him to contradict himself. The only evidence he had of this supposed capture of his was a grainy video that could just as easily have been faked, and they demanded to know why he had it in for AbaCo.

She was ready to explode herself by the time Nick surged up out of his chair. “Why do I have to withstand this sort of character assassination? I’m the victim here! And now you make me a victim a second time!”

Carter nodded soberly. “You are correct. It’s the nature of our legal system that the victim often endures outright assault in the courtroom. That’s what we’re here to prepare you to face.”

Nick shoved a hand through his hair. “Why exactly do I have to testify?”

“Because AbaCo will try to convince the jury that the video is faked. The government has to have your direct testimony that the events on the tape are real.”

“Other people were there that night. Why not put my rescuers on the stand?” He sent Laura a quick, apologetic look, no doubt at the notion of dumping this mess into her lap. Not that she minded. She’d love to say a thing or two about AbaCo to a jury.

Carter grinned. “AbaCo won’t touch Laura with a ten-foot pole. She’s a former government agent, which gives her credibility, and they bloody well don’t want to give her a chance to vent her righteous fury in front of a jury…. The mother of your child alone and frantic for years? Oh, no. Way too damaging a story for AbaCo.”

He omitted the part where the government prosecutors wouldn’t put her on the stand because she’d illegally obtained most of the information that led to Nick’s rescue. They’d rather not open up that can of worms for AbaCo to pry into.

After his outburst, Nick settled into stoic silence, refusing to respond to any of the leading and obnoxious questions the lawyers threw at him. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t shake him. Laura was proud of him, but she didn’t like the way he was hunching into his chair, physically withdrawing into himself. He was approaching overload but too macho to admit it.

Thankfully, Ellie woke up and gave Nick the excuse he clearly needed to call a halt for the day. Laura gathered up their fussing daughter apologetically and adjourned to the minivan to nurse and change her.

Nick came outside a few minutes later and stopped by the van to tell her to drive carefully. With troubled eyes, she watched him guide his sporty BMW out of the parking lot. A worrisome, brittle quality clung to him.

Ahh, well. She would make that all go away tonight. The nanny had instructions to entertain the kids for the evening, leaving her and Nick to enjoy a romantic dinner by themselves in the master suite. Smiling, she turned out of the parking lot and pointed the minivan south toward the rolling hills of Virginia’s horse country and home.

Nick drove like a man possessed. Heck, maybe he was possessed. What madness was this to subject himself to cross-examination under oath with as many secrets as he clearly had to hide?

If Laura ever found out he wasn’t who he said he was …

She couldn’t find out. Period. He had too good a thing going, they had too good a thing going, to let anyone mess it up. As appealing as revenge against the bastards who’d held him captive might be, it was a no-brainer that his family came first. He’d made that choice months ago, and he’d had no reason to regret it since.

Someone honked at him. He jerked his attention back to the highway and the traffic streaming along it. He could do this. He could hold himself and his life together. One day at time. One hour or one minute at a time if that’s what it took. The only honest and good things in his life were Laura and the kids. He wasn’t about to lose them.

As the city turned into suburbs and the suburbs into open countryside, his jumpiness increased. After all that time in a shipping container, he’d have thought he would love nothing more than big, blue skies and broad horizons stretching away into infinity. But it turned out the exact opposite was the case. He’d become so used to living in a tiny, mostly dark space that anything else seemed strange and scary.

The panic attack started with sweaty palms and clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles hurt. Then his forehead broke out in a sweat, and an urge to crawl under a blanket in the backseat nearly overcame him.

As Laura’s estate came into view, he stopped the car and parked by the side of the road. He had to pull himself together before he got home and scared her or the kids. He hyperventilated until he saw spots before he managed to slow his breathing. He concentrated on Adam’s laughter, on Ellie’s tiny perfection, on Laura’s warm brown eyes looking at him with such love it made his heart hurt.

Gradually, his pulse slowed. He mopped his forehead dry. There wasn’t anything he could do about his sweat-soaked shirt, but hopefully Laura would put it down to the grilling earlier from the lawyers. Relishing the car’s smooth purr, he put it into gear.

After keying in his security code he drove through the tall iron gates, as always enjoying the bucolic sight of Laura’s prized horses grazing in manicured pastures behind freshly painted oak fences. As he pulled into the six-car garage, he was relieved to see that Laura’s van wasn’t inside yet.

Mumbling a greeting to Marta, the housekeeper, he hurried upstairs to take a shower. The enclosed shower stall with its rain-heads and steam jets soothed away the last remnants of his panic attack. When he emerged from his dressing room/walk-in closet, he heard Laura cooing to Ellie in the nursery. She was a great mom. It added a whole new dimension to the courageous woman who’d rescued him and spent the past year saving his soul.

He poked his head into the nursery. “Anything I can do to help?”

Laura smiled up at him. “I’m afraid you lack the proper anatomical equipment to provide what Ellie wants at the moment.” He gazed at his daughter’s silky, dark head nestled against the pale globe of Laura’s breast. He might have missed Adam’s babyhood—another outrage to lay at his kidnappers’ feet—but he was savoring every minute of Ellie’s.

“Dinner will be ready in a half hour,” Laura murmured. “I’ve asked Marta to serve it in our rooms.”

He nodded and retreated to the other end of the hall to play with Adam. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to sleep with Laura. Far from it. She was as generous and adventurous in bed as she was in life. It was just that he was still rattled from the interrogation, panicked that his past was about to rear its ugly head and ruin all of this perfection. What had happened during those lost years to make him hide his identity, even from the woman he loved?

“Daddeeeeeee!”

Grinning, he braced himself as Adam launched into the air and splatted against Nick’s chest. He caught his son’s small, wriggly form against his, savoring the smell of soap that clung to the boy’s still-damp hair.

“Did you do anything fun today?” he asked as Adam dragged him over to the corner to play with the toy du jour—Hot Wheels race cars.

Adam described his day in charming detail while the two of them built an elaborate racetrack. With dark hair and blue-on-blue eyes so like his own, Adam bent over the task with concentration far beyond his years. He was a frighteningly intelligent child and would go far in life if he used his talents to their maximum potential. They laughed together as too tight a turn sent cars shooting off the track and across the room in spectacular crashes.

Lisbet, the English and shockingly Mary Poppins-like nanny, interrupted the crash fest to announce that Adam’s dinner, and Mummy and Daddy’s, were served. Nick gave his son a bear hug and tickled him until Adam was squealing with laughter before turning him over to Lisbet.

Nick stepped into the private sitting room in their suite and stopped in surprise. The space was lit by hundreds of candles and a white-linen-covered table sat alone in the middle. A red rose in a crystal bud vase sat between the two place settings, and a sumptuous meal was laid out. Marta had really outdone herself. It was some sort of exotic fowl served en croute—grouse, maybe. Among other things, the German woman was a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. A real treasure. But then Laura didn’t settle for less than the best in any aspect of her life. She’d be as intimidating as hell if she weren’t such a genuinely warm and kind person. No doubt about it. He didn’t deserve her.

Laura stepped out of her dressing room and his breath caught. She was wearing a little black dress that highlighted her newly slender body, which had already mostly regained its pre-pregnancy shape partly due to long hours with a personal trainer over the past month. Frankly, the additional curves added to her appeal.

“You look ravishing,” he announced.

“And you are as handsome as always,” she replied as he held her chair for her.

Something within her called to him at a fundamental level, a pull at his soul to protect her and make her happy. It went so far beyond mere attraction he didn’t know how to give it a name. Even calling it love didn’t seem adequate to encompass his need for her or the bond he felt with her. Maybe it was sharing parenthood of two amazing children.

Or maybe it was the fact that he owed his life to her. He would never forget the sight of her the night he was freed. His own private angel. And then the long months of patiently nursing him back to health, gradually convincing him his ordeal was actually over. Putting up with his unwillingness to face his past. And through it all, her love had been steadfast.

He wondered sometimes if there was anything that could shake her loyalty to him. What was it that lurked so dark and frightening in his past? Was it bad enough to drive her away? It really wasn’t something he wanted to find out.

“How are you holding up after being raked over the coals by those lawyers?” Laura asked.

He shrugged. “Today wasn’t fun. But I expect the trial will be worse.”

She sighed. “It’ll all be over in a few weeks, and then we can get on with our lives.”

His gaze dropped involuntarily to her naked left hand. She never once hinted at it, but she had to be thinking about marriage and wondering why he never brought it up. The truth was, he didn’t know if he was married or not, and the only way to find out would be to investigate those ominous, lost years.

He picked up his water glass—since Laura couldn’t drink wine while nursing, he wasn’t drinking either—and said, “A toast. To a long and happy future for us and our family.”

She sipped her water and then asked reflectively, “Why don’t you ever talk about the past?”

He frowned. “I’ve told you why.” Repeatedly, in fact.

“I’m concerned that, with all the publicity this trial’s going to receive, whoever had you kidnapped five years ago will see you and come after you again.”

He swore mentally. He hadn’t thought about the publicity. Was there some way to declare a moratorium on filming or photographing him during the trial?

“Talk to me, Nick. Between the two of us, we can beat any threat that comes our way.”

A naïve notion at best. “My previous life happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Let it be.”

“The psychiatrists keep telling me to let you deal with your imprisonment and the memory loss in your own time. But I have a gut feeling that your time is running out.”

So did he.

Thankfully, she let the subject drop. For now. He had no doubt she would bring it up again, though. And one of these days, she wasn’t going to back off. She’d insist they find answers. His throat tightened until he could hardly swallow the delicious food. What the hell was he going to do? His entire being shied away from thinking about the past. What could have freaked him out at such a soul-deep level? He put the problem in a mental drawer and slammed it shut. Later. He’d think about it later.

They finished eating, and he changed the music. “Dance with me?” he asked her.

“I thought you’d never ask, Mr. Cass.”

Nick held a hand out to her and she took it, rising gracefully to her feet. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she made up for it by being impossibly elegant in build. He might not remember meeting her, but he had no trouble understanding why he’d fallen for her the first time around. Or the second time around. He figured falling in love with the same woman twice was proof positive he’d chosen the right one.

She came into his arms, soft and willing and smelling of Chanel No. 5, his favorite. “Have I told you today that I love you?” he murmured as they swayed to the slow jazz tune.

“I do believe you’ve been remiss in that department.”

“My sincere apologies. Perhaps I can show you how much I love you instead?”

She laughed. “I really never thought you’d ask that. I was beginning to think you didn’t miss making love with me.”

“Ahh, sweet Laura. I was only trying to think of your health. I will want to make love to you until the day I die.”

“Here’s hoping that’s a very long time from now.”

He smiled down at her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to live to be one hundred and fifty years old.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

They danced in silence after that, letting anticipation build between them. Finally, he turned her in his arms toward the bedroom. Her dress had a long zipper, which he drew down by slow degrees as they went, his fingers dipping inside to relish her satin skin and the inward curve of her back. Gratitude swelled in his heart for whatever fate had brought them together.

For her part, Laura tugged his shirt clear of his trousers and made a slow production of unbuttoning it, kissing her way down his chest button by button. His stomach muscles contracted hard as she approached his belt buckle. Her clever fingers did away with that barrier, and then he was sucking in his breath hard, falling back onto the bed when she pushed him gently. She’d obviously given tonight a great deal of thought, and he was happy to go along with her plans for them. For now, at least.

She took her time, teasing him until his entire body thrummed with terrible tension. Finally he rolled over to return the favor. He kissed every inch of her body, re-acquainting himself with it, enjoying the new firmness across her flat stomach, loving the extra fullness in her breasts—and the added sensitivity that came with it. Her soft gasps of pleasure were just as he remembered, the way she arched up into his hands, the fire in her eyes as he stroked her body until it sang for him.

A shadow of fear crossed his mind, but he shoved it away. Nothing must hurt her. Hurt them. He ordered himself to stay in the moment. Focus on the now. “You drive me out of my mind,” he muttered against her skin. “I’ll never get enough of you.”

Moaning as his fingers made magic upon her body, she pulled him down to her impatiently. “Nick,” she gasped, “Please. I’ve waited so long for you. I want you now.”

Ahh, always direct, his Laura. “I could never deny you what you want, my love.”

Taking into consideration her long abstinence, he entered her gently, stunned at how tight and slick she was. She surged up against him immediately, crying out in pleasure. Her eyes glazed the way they always did when they made love, and he relished the way she bit her lower lip. As if she’d actually be able to hold back the cries of pleasure about to claim her. He withdrew slightly and then filled her again in a single slow stroke. She cried out against his shoulder, shuddering from head to foot.

He smiled down at her. “Let us see just how much pleasure you can stand, shall we?”

He paced himself carefully, driving her farther and farther over the edge. With each climax, her smile became more brilliant, her eyes more limpid, his own pleasure more intense. And the happier he became, the more afraid he became. He drove himself mercilessly, forcing himself not to think of the darkness creeping up on him, holding it back from Laura by sheer force of will.

Finally, when his mental strength was at an end, the battle lost, he gave in to the dark tide sweeping over him, surging into her, driving her over the edge one last time. As they climaxed together, it was so magnificent and terrible that, as tears of joy ran down her face, he wasn’t far from tears himself. Tears of sheer terror. The better things were between them, the more certain he was that all of it could end at any moment.

He was losing it. Happiness made him unhappy. Joy terrified him. It was all coming apart before his eyes, his life unraveling because he was too screwed up just to enjoy what they had. But he couldn’t shake the sense of something bad approaching, something stealthy and evil. And it was coming for him.

“I love you, Nick.” Her gaze was clear, untroubled. She sensed nothing, and she had the finely honed instincts of a CIA agent. Desperate, he ordered himself to hold on. Keep it together. He mustn’t lose what little sanity he had.

He rolled to his side, propping himself up on one elbow to gaze down at her. “I love you, too, darling.” Must concentrate on that. Laura. Love. The darkness retreated a little from his mind. His left hand idly stroked down her rosy body. “Better?” he murmured.

“Spectacular. I feel like a woman again.”

He leaned down to kiss her. “You were always a woman. A beautiful one. You’re an amazing mother, and it only makes you sexier.”

“You’re just saying that to be polite.”

“No, I’m not.” He frowned. “Never doubt your attractiveness. The more sides of you I see, the more attracted to you I am.”

“Never change, Nick.”

If only. He felt as if he’d been living in a state of suspended animation for the past year. As if time was passing, but he wasn’t really living. As Laura drifted to sleep beside him, the darkness pushed forward again, nearly choking him with certainty that this sweet interlude was about to end, and life was about to come looking for him with payback in mind.

Chapter 3

The bedside clock had passed 2 a.m. when Nick gave up on sleep. He slid out from under the covers and dressed quietly, tiptoeing downstairs in anticipation of Ellie’s imminent feeding. He pulled a bottle of pumped breast milk out of the refrigerator, warmed it in the microwave and went back upstairs.

Turning off the baby monitor, he sat down in the rocking chair to wait. Sure enough, in about ten minutes, the baby started to stir. He picked her up, inhaling the sweet scent of her. “Good evening, little angel. What say we let Mommy sleep tonight?”

Ellie, a happy and cooperative baby, readily took the bottle from him, snuggling close against his chest with a trust that took his breath away. He loved Laura with all his being, but the feelings that swelled in his heart as he gazed down at his daughter pushed his capacity for love to new heights he’d heretofore had no idea existed. Adoration mixed with protectiveness, hope for her future, and wonder at the miracle of her existence expanded in his heart to make room for his tiny daughter.

He changed her as she grew sleepy and rocked her for just a minute or two before her eyes closed. He laid her down gently in her crib and watched her sleep until it dawned on him that he was standing there grinning like a blessed fool.

Restless, he wandered downstairs. Predictably, his feet carried him to his office. Or more accurately to his laptop computer. He sat down at his desk in the dark and cranked it up. He didn’t stop to question what he was doing. It was time.

He typed in the name, Nikolas Spiros, and hit the search button. Skipping the tabloids, he read story after story from the business pages chronicling the tragic mental breakdown of Greece’s richest shipping magnate. There were even pictures of him, bearded and wild looking. Abrupt memory flashed of his captors hanging a white sheet in his box and taking pictures of him standing in front of it. Bastards.

According to the articles, he’d been institutionalized at a private facility. Later stories talked about his withdrawal from public life. His wish to live quietly and not involve himself with business affairs. How in the hell could anyone who’d known him have believed that drivel? He’d loved running Spiros Shipping. Had thrived on it. The company had been his life, dammit!

He checked his anger. Nikolas Spiros was dead—or at least resting comfortably in an asylum and happy to stay there.

His shipping company had been sold quietly about a year after his “breakdown.” Such a pleasant word for such an unpleasant thing as kidnapping. An entirely new management group had taken over the company. A bunch of Germans. They’d renamed it—

His heart nearly stopped right then and there. Spiros Shipping had been renamed AbaCo. The betrayal of it was breathtaking. He’d been kidnapped and held by his own employees! Had they known who he was? Had he been that bad a boss? Surely not. Morale had been great at Spiros before his memory went black. A sense of family had pervaded the firm. Sure, the work had been hard and times were tough, but he’d prided himself in never laying off an employee and paying as much as he could afford to every single worker. Surely so much hadn’t changed after his memories stopped that his employees would have turned on him so violently and completely.

In shock, he researched the financials of his renamed company. Profits were down, but AbaCo was still in the black. He shrugged. It would have been darned hard not to make money given how financially sound the company had been when he last remembered it. He studied the quarterly earnings reports for the past few years and cracks were definitely starting to show. But nothing that couldn’t be corrected with wise and careful management for a few years—

Not his company any more.

At least not in any way that mattered. He had Laura and the kids. And at all costs, this other part of his life had to be kept away from them. The new owners could have Spiros Shipping.

Best to just stay hidden. A ghost.

But how in the hell was he supposed to do that with this trial coming up?

What had happened to Nikolas Spiros? Had he gone mad for real? Had something horrible happened at the shipping company that had driven him over the edge? What would leave such a residue of terror within him?

The walls of his office started to close in on him unpleasantly—which was a first—and he actually felt a driving need to get out of there. He erased his browsing history and shut down the computer before heading for the kitchen.

Pulling on a jacket, he turned off the elaborate security system and headed out the back door toward the woods behind the house. Tonight he didn’t feel up to trekking across one of the pastures and challenging his agoraphobia. He’d been taking secret hikes for several months now, trying to desensitize himself to open spaces. It was getting better, but by maddeningly slow degrees.

He’d been walking for a few minutes when the panic attack hit. It slammed into him like a freight train, sudden and overwhelming. He stopped, breathing as if he’d been sprinting, and glanced around in terror. And then something odd dawned on him. This panic attack was different. It was accompanied by a strange certainty that he was being watched. Great. Was he slipping back into the paranoia of the early days, too?

He couldn’t help himself. He slid into the darkest shadow he could find and crouched, pressing his back against the trunk of a huge sycamore. He let his gaze roam, his peripheral vision taking in a wide angle view of the woods. The night sounds had gone dead silent. Maybe he wasn’t so paranoid, after all. The crickets never lied.

Who else was out here? And why?

The motion sensors at the house would warn of any human-sized intruders … if he hadn’t turned the alarm system off before he came out here. He swore at himself. Laura and the kids were unprotected. He had to get back to the house. Get the alarms back on. Protect his family.

He stood up and was stunned to discover his feet wouldn’t move. Literally. By sheer force of will, he overcame his panic, ignoring the hyperventilation, ignoring the wild imaginings of being kidnapped again, crammed in another box. His family came first, dammit. He’d die for them!

His stumbling walk turned into a jog, and finally into a full-out run. Whether he was running toward Laura or away from the bogeyman in the woods, he couldn’t say. But either way, his long legs devoured the distance with powerful strides and his lungs burned with exertion by the time the mansion came into sight. Its Georgian grandeur was dark. Quiet. Undisturbed.

The silliness of his terror struck him forcefully. His mind was playing tricks on him. It was only his past pursuing him. A figment of his imagination. With a last look over his shoulder into the shadows of the night, he let himself into the house and turned on the security system.

Shaken to his core, he climbed the stairs quietly. No sense waking everyone because he’d had a panic attack. He put his hand on the doorknob to let himself into the master suite, but he couldn’t bring himself to enter. He was still too wired to lie down beside Laura as if everything was perfectly normal.

Instead, he headed for another door farther down the hall. A small, walk-in linen closet. About six feet by eight feet inside, its tight quarters felt like a comforting embrace. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his head on his arms. He had to get over this. Get a grip on himself. But how? If anything, he was getting worse, not better.

As understanding as Laura tried to be, she couldn’t begin to comprehend what he’d been through, what the past few years had been like. It was his own private hell, and no one could climb into it with him and lead him out. He was lost, and getting more lost by the day. Oh, the shrinks said all the right things, but they had no more clue what he’d been through, really, than Laura did. They had a little more book learning about it, had a list of suggestions to offer out of some counseling text, but their psychobabble was mostly crap.

How could everything be so perfect and yet so screwed up? He ought to be insanely happy. But instead, he was marching at a brisk pace toward the mental meltdown he’d been falsely accused of having six years ago.

There hadn’t been anyone in the woods. A deer or some other creature had moved, and the crickets had gone quiet for a minute. He’d flipped out over nothing. So why was his fight-or-flight response still in full readiness? He took several deep, calming breaths, the way the yoga instructor had taught him, breathing out the fear and stress.

It accomplished exactly nothing, dammit.

He sat there, panting in terror for who knew how long when, without warning, the door swung open. He started to surge to his feet when a little voice whispered, “Daddy?”

Nick sank back down to the floor, his heart about pounding through his rib cage. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing up at this hour?”

“I dreamed a bad man was coming for me.”

He held out an arm to Adam, who wasted no time climbing into his lap. “No bad man will ever get you. Mommy and I will always protect you and keep you safe.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?” Adam added.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he repeated. “Need a pinkie swear on it, too?”

Adam held out his right pinkie finger, and Nick hooked his much larger finger in his son’s. They shook on it soberly.

“Why are you in the closet, Daddy? Are you hiding from the bad man, too?”

“I didn’t want to wake up you and Ellie and Mommy, and I needed some time to think.”

Adam’s little palms rested on his cheeks. “Is your heart hurting again?”

Since when were five-year-olds so damned perceptive? “I guess it is, a little. I’m so happy it hurts. I think about all the ways it could go wrong …”

Adam nodded wisely. “And then you’re not so happy anymore.”

He stared down at his son, but it was too dark to make out his face. “Nothing’s going to go wrong, Adam. Not if I can help it.”

“Don’t be scared, Daddy.”

“I won’t if you won’t. We can be brave for each other.

Okay?”

Adam nodded against his chest. They cuddled in the dark for several more minutes, and predictably, the boy drifted back to sleep, his nightmare long gone. Nick stood awkwardly, careful not to wake his son, and carried him back to his rocket-ship bed. He tucked the little boy in and kissed his forehead, memorizing Adam’s face in that peaceful moment.

He was going to defeat his own demons if it killed him. No way was he about to let his paranoia bleed over to his children and damage them. And furthermore, his past wasn’t going to hurt them, either. He knew what he had to do. And he had to do it alone. Leaving no note that Laura could use to track him down, he treaded quietly back down the stairs, this time being sure to reactivate the alarm from the panel in the garage, and headed out into the night.

* * *

Laura woke up to Ellie’s fussing amplified through the baby monitor, disoriented at how well rested she felt and that the first light of dawn was peeking in around the curtains. She looked at the clock. Six o’clock? Nick must’ve taken the 2:00 a.m. feeding, bless him. She rolled over to thank him and was startled to see his side of the bed empty. He hadn’t struggled with insomnia for months, now.

Shrugging, she got up, threw on a bathrobe and headed for her daughter. Ellie was hungry, and nursed for longer than usual. Laura carried her into the bathroom and laid her on a big soft bath towel on the heated floor while Mommy jumped into the shower. She dressed herself and Ellie and headed downstairs in search of Nick.

He wasn’t in the kitchen watching the financial news and drinking coffee, as was his habit. She strolled through the entire downstairs and didn’t find him. Had he crawled into bed with Adam sometime last night? He did that now and then when Adam had a particularly scary nightmare. The boy had had periodic bouts with them ever since a team of killers had broken into the house after Nick’s rescue in search of her and Nick. Thankfully, the babysitter had gotten them into the mansion’s panic room and locked it down before Adam was hurt or worse. But the incident had left its mark on the little boy.

She headed upstairs and peeked into Adam’s room. He was sleeping alone. A low-level hum of alarm started in Laura’s gut. She checked the linen closet and Nick’s walk-in closet. No sign of him.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his. Not in service? What was going on? She ran down to the garage to check the cars—they were all in their places. The alarm system was still on, too. Where had he gone? He hated being outdoors. It wasn’t like he’d have gone for a morning stroll.

Starting at one end of the house, she searched it methodically, checking every place a grown man could possibly hide. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Memories of Paris flashed through her head with horrifying clarity. How he’d just disappeared. No trace. No evidence. No ransom call. Nothing. He’d just been gone. Please, God. Not again. She couldn’t live through losing him again. Not like that.

An hour later, she was on the phone to the police and local hospitals. Nada. And then she started calling their friends and associates, the early hour of the morning be damned. No one had seen or heard from him overnight. Panic hovered, vulture-like, waiting to close in on her.

Adam came downstairs and didn’t help matters one bit by immediately picking up on her stress. The child was far too observant for his own good sometimes. “What’s wrong, Mommy? Where’s Daddy?”

“I don’t know, honey. But there’s nothing to worry about.”

Adam frowned. “His heart is hurting again.”

She turned on the child quickly. “Why do you say that, sweetie?”

“He was in the towel closet again last night.”

“When last night?”

Adam shrugged. “It was dark. I had a bad dream and was coming to sleep with you. I heard him breathing funny in there.”

“What did he say?” She tried not to sound hysterical but suspected she’d failed when Adam frowned worriedly.

“He promised he’d keep me safe from the bad man. He pinkie swore.” The little boy started to cry. “The bad man got him, didn’t he?”

She gathered him into her arms. “Daddy? Are you kidding? He’s big and strong and smart. No bad man has a chance against your daddy.”

But the bad man had gotten Nick once before. Had history sickeningly repeated itself? Had he been ghosted out of their lives yet again?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.