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Horror filled her as she realized that the man who had lit up her world, who was her baby’s father, was one of the lowest life-forms on this earth: a drug dealer.
The bookstore was just a cover.
Her soul twisted in disappointment. She couldn’t even bring herself to confront him, to demand to know why he hadn’t told her he was immersed in this dark world before they’d gotten involved with one another.
Before she’d fallen in love with him.
She’d felt so sick, so betrayed and so lost. She’d slipped out of the store quickly and silently. Hurrying to her apartment, she’d called him, struggling to hide her anger and hurt, and told Adam that she wasn’t feeling well. Sympathetic, he’d offered to come over to keep her company, but she’d turned him down, saying she was afraid she might be contagious. Promising to call him the next day with an update, she’d hung up.
It took her less than an hour to pack.
She’d left Adam a note, telling him she knew what he was involved in and begging him to get out before he became just another dead statistic. And then, after calling the clinic and telling her assistant that there was an emergency and she had to leave, Eve did just that.
All water under the bridge, she told herself now wearily. Can’t unring a bell. Adam was what he was—and she was pregnant. She was just going to have to make the best of it.
Right now, that actually involved doing something else she’d never thought she would do: pouring out her heart to a perfect stranger.
But then, that was exactly what made it so safe and cathartic. She was never going to see the stranger she’d found online, never going to meet MysteryMom, the woman who ran the support Web site she’d discovered several weeks ago. At the time, she hadn’t thought she would write more than once, but venting, getting it all out, proved to be almost euphoric. And it really did make her feel better to unburden herself like this, cloaked in anonymity. Though she wanted to be, she just couldn’t remain tight-lipped right now.
Besides, confession was supposed to be good for the soul, right?
God knew, she hadn’t intended on going back to the Web site when she’d sat down tonight, but it had been a long, trying day and after hunting for answers regarding her nearly blind patient, answers that had turned out not to be very optimistic. She’d found herself drawn back to MysteryMom and the woman’s easygoing, low-keyed common sense. It was like having a friend, and right now, she could stand to have a friend. A female friend who seemed to know exactly what she was going through.
Once she logged on, all it had taken were a few well-intentioned questions from MysteryMom and suddenly the floodgates had been tapped and Eve found herself typing so fast, there was almost smoke coming from her fingers.
Maybe tomorrow, she’d regret all this, Eve thought philosophically. But then, how could she possibly be in any worse shape than she already was? Wildly in love nine months ago, then wildly disappointed—and now, wildly pregnant.
Hell of a journey, she thought, typing words to that effect to the sympathetic MysteryMom.
And then Eve stopped, leaning back in her chair. She glanced toward her sleeping shadow. “I just hope that ‘MysteryMom’ isn’t some cigar chomping, hairy-knuckled oaf getting his jollies by pretending to be a sympathetic single mom,” she said to Tessa.
Tessa merely yawned and went back to sleeping.
Eve was about to type another thought when she heard the doorbell ring.
More trick or treaters.
With a sigh, Eve gripped the arms on her chair and pushed herself up.
She missed being able to spring to her feet, but she supposed it could be worse. At least she could still see her feet. When Angela had been pregnant with her first child, Renee, she couldn’t see her feet after entering her seventh month.
Tessa was on all four of hers, padding quietly behind her, a four-legged, furry shadow determined to remain close.
Eve passed a mirror on her way to the front door. “At least I don’t look like a blimp,” she consoled herself.
A goblin, a fairy princess and what looked like a robot, none of whom could have been over ten, shouted “Trick or treat!” at her the moment she opened the door. Delighted, Eve grabbed a handful of candy from the bowl she had placed by the front door and divided the candy between them.
The goblin paused, relishing his booty, and obviously staring at her. “What are you supposed to be?”
Eve didn’t even hesitate. “A pumpkin.” It sounded better to her than “beached whale.”
“But you’re not orange,” the robot protested.
Eve snapped her fingers. “Knew I forgot something. Thanks for letting me know.”
Only the fairy princess said nothing beyond, “Thank you,” looking at her knowingly, as if, even at that age, there was an unconscious bond that existed within the female gender.
And then her little visitors ran off, laughing, all beneath the distant, watchful scrutiny of one of their parents.
As she slowly closed her front door, Eve realized that the feeling was back. The one that whispered there was someone out there, watching her. Hoping to either catch him or her, or render a death knell to the unnerving feeling, she swung open her door again and looked around.
Nothing. Again.
She frowned, closing the door all the way this time. The excitement over, Tessa turned away from the door. “If there is someone out there, promise you’ll rip them limb from limb if they try to break in, Tessa.”
The dog gave no indication that she heard any of the request. Instead, she trotted back to the office and reclaimed her position beneath the desk.
“I feel so safe now,” Eve murmured to the dog as she lowered herself into the office chair again and once more immersed herself in the comforting words of MysteryMom. It wasn’t that she was a believer in the old saying that misery loved company. It was just that knowing someone else had gone through what she was going through and survived made her feel more heartened.
It was something to cling to.
Chapter 2
After more than two years undercover, disappearing into the shadows had become second nature to Adam Serrano.
Usually the object of his surveillance was an unsavory character involved in the ever-mushrooming, lethal drug trade, not a female veterinarian with killer legs, liquid blue eyes and a soul Snow White would have been in awe of.
The anonymous tip that had appeared without warning on his computer yesterday morning had been right. Eve Walters was right here in Laguna Beach, practically right under his nose.
Who would have thought it? The irony of the situation was still very fresh in his mind. She had disappeared on him eight months ago, doing what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do: leaving. Reading her letter, a letter he still had in his possession, had cut small, jagged holes in his soul. His first instinct had been to go after her, to find her and bring her back.
But he’d forced himself to refrain.
It hadn’t been easy. Eventually, his common sense had prevailed. This was for the best.
Though he missed Eve more than he would have ever thought possible, Adam had every intention of allowing her to stay out of his life. Being part of his life would have been far too dangerous for her.
The nature of his “business,” searching for the source of the latest flood of heroin, had brought him here, down to southern California. These days, the hard reality of it was that, despite his agency’s efforts, the drug culture was alive and thriving absolutely everywhere. The drugs on the street apparently knew no caste system, bringing down the rich, as well as the poor. The only difference was that the rich didn’t need to knock over a liquor store, or rob an elderly couple or kill some unsuspecting innocent to feed their habit. That’s what Mommy and Daddy were for, blindly throwing money at the problem instead of helping their spoiled, pampered offspring morph into respectable people.
Life didn’t work that way. But it was obviously still full of surprises.
Not the least of which was that his work had brought him down here, almost at Eve’s door, as it were.
But moving the base of his “operation” to Laguna still wouldn’t have had him skulking around, camping out in unmarked cars and hiding in doorways to catch a glimpse of her or acting like some wayward guardian angel if that anonymous message on his computer hadn’t knocked him for a loop.
“Eve is pregnant with your baby.” The terse sentence was followed by an address. Nothing more.
He’d presumed the address belonged to Eve. Minimal effort via his computer had proven him right. He recalled her mentioning that she had grown up somewhere in this area and that her dad had had an animal hospital here.
When he looked up the animal hospitals in and around Laguna, he found an “E. Walters” listed. He remembered her telling him that her father’s name was Warren. That meant that she was now running the Animal Hospital of Laguna Beach.
And she was pregnant, supposedly with his baby.
Even so, Adam had debated ignoring the message, telling himself it was some kind of trick to have him come forward. And even if it wasn’t a trick, he could do nothing about the situation. It was her body, not his. Whether or not she kept this baby was up to her, not him.
That argument had lasted all of ten minutes, if that long. Even as he posed it, Adam knew he had to see for himself whether or not it was true.
He fervently hoped that it wasn’t.
But it was. Or, at least, she was carrying someone’s child.
In his gut, he knew it was his.
Juggling things so that he could put everything else temporarily on hold for the evening, Adam stationed himself in a nondescript vehicle on the through street that ran by Eve’s house. He was careful to park on the opposite side, waiting to catch another glimpse of the only woman who had managed to break through his carefully constructed barriers.
It was Halloween and he knew the way Eve felt about kids. The same way she felt about helpless animals. No way was she going to be one of those people who either left their home for the evening every Halloween or pretended not to hear the doorbell or the noise generated by approaching bands of costumed children.
Personally, he never liked the holiday. Dealing with the scum of the earth for the last ten years, he knew what was out there. And what could happen to trusting children.
Hell, if he had a kid …
He did have a kid, Adam realized abruptly. Or would have one. Soon, if his math served him.
Damn, he hadn’t gotten used to that idea yet. A father.
Him.
Maybe the baby wasn’t his, Adam thought. A woman as beautiful as Eve Walters had to have a lot of men after her. A lot of men trying to get her to sleep with them …
Even as he made the excuses, Adam knew they weren’t true. Eve wasn’t the type to sleep around. He’d known that even before they’d made love. And when they had, he’d discovered to his everlasting surprise that she was a virgin. He’d been her first.
How?
How the hell had this happened? he silently demanded.
He’d made sure he used protection. Pausing in the middle of heated passion had been damn awkward, but he had done it, mindful of the consequences if he didn’t. Even so, she had made him lose his head and it had been all he could do to hold on to his common sense.
Common sense, now there was a misnomer. Common sense just wasn’t common. If he’d actually had any, he would’ve gotten a grip on himself then and there. Instead of reaching for a condom, he would have reached for his jeans and walked away.
Adam shook his head. Who the hell was he kidding? A saint couldn’t have walked away from Eve, not when things had reached that level. Not with that delicious mouth of hers. Not with that body, slick with sweat and desire, his for the taking. And God knew he wasn’t a saint—far from it. He was just a man. And she had made him vulnerable.
And now, apparently, he had returned the favor and done the same to her.
He had no family, not anymore. And when it was only him, the danger didn’t matter.
But now it mattered.
If she was pregnant, he was going to need to protect her. If these rich lowlifes he dealt with found out she was pregnant with his baby, there was more than a slim chance, if things went awry, that they would do something to her. He put nothing past them, nothing past the middle man he was currently working with, a college senior majoring in heroin distribution. Danny Sederholm might kidnap Eve—or the baby—if it gave the kid the advantage and secured leverage against him. Nobody trusted anybody in this so-called “business.”
Adam shifted in his seat, feeling restless and confined. Where were the hoards of kids, wandering around the neighborhood and ringing doorbells in their quest for cavities? Had they all suddenly come to their senses and abandoned the trick-or-treating ritual?
Get a grip, Serrano.
He wasn’t usually this impatient. But this was different. This wasn’t just about him.
Hell, he would have felt a lot better just knowing who the message had come from.
The fact that it could all be a trap was not lost on him. No computer novice, he’d spent a good part of yesterday trying to trace where the message had originated. A good part of yesterday was spent in frustration.
Striking out, he’d gotten in contact with his handler, Hugh Patterson, who in turn had turned Spenser onto the task. Spenser was a wunderkind when it came to the computer. When Spenser failed to find where the e-mail had come from, he knew that they were dealing with a five-star pro.
Good pro or bad pro?
Adam hadn’t the slightest idea, but for now, his anonymous tipster didn’t seem to have an agenda, other than passing on this tidbit of information. Why he or she had done that, Adam hadn’t a clue. Was it to taunt him, to show him he was vulnerable, or to get him to stand up and do the right thing? Or was this tipster just out to entertain himself or play deus ex machina behind the scenes?
Adam wished he knew.
But he did know what his next step had to be. And he took it.
Laura Delaney sat down at her desk, getting back to her Web site. Jeremy was finally in bed, asleep, or at least, asleep for the time being. She had no doubt that at least some of the candy he’d collected tonight had found its way into his bottomless tummy despite her strict rules about his only eating two pieces tonight and evenly doling out the rest for the following week. She’d offered those terms, hoping that a compromise would be reached at five. Maybe six.
Bid low, go high, she thought, amused.
She loved this holiday, loved seeing the excitement in her young son’s eyes. Taking after her, Jeremy had started planning his costume right after school began in September. Most of all, she loved seeing life through his deep brown eyes. Everything felt so fresh, so new again seeing it from Jeremy’s perspective. After all the time she’d spent in the CIA, this new outlook was a godsend to her.
Getting pregnant with Jeremy was definitely the best thing that had ever happened to her.
Although it certainly hadn’t felt so at the time.
At the time, making the discovery a week after her intense debriefing in Singapore, the pregnancy had knocked the pins right out from beneath her world. And there was never any question as to who the father was. Jeremy’s father was a dynamic, larger-than-life handsome man who had quite literally saved her life.
The whole thing had been almost like a scene out of the movies. The one where the hero put out his hand to the heroine and growled darkly, “Come with me if you want to live.”
She’d wanted to live all right. Pinned down in a hopeless situation, knowing she’d be dead by dawn if she stayed, she’d had no recourse but to come with the man who had suddenly burst into her life.
In true knight-in-shining-armor style, he’d used his body to shield hers and had hustled her out of what would have been a terminal situation. A hairbreadth away from being captured by the people she, as a CIA operative, had been sent to spy on, Laura had had no illusions about her situation. Had he not suddenly materialized in that embassy room, seemingly out of nowhere, she knew she would not have lived to see another sunrise.
Instead, she’d lived to watch the sunrise in a small fishing hut, sequestered in his arms. Funny how almost dying makes you so anxious to live, to experience and savor everything. The escape, the pursuit and then hiding in a fishing village, posing as fishermen, had all contributed to her heightened desire to live. Her desire to seize all that life had to offer.
What life had offered was a man whose name she never learned.
She had learned that she hadn’t been afraid to seize the moment, and neither had he. They were drawn to one another like the missing two halves of a whole. Their coming together was nothing short of earthshaking. It had been predestined.
Then came the dawn and the rest of life.
He smuggled her out of the village, put her on a transport plane and then, much too quickly, faded out of her life. Faded even though she asked more than one operative who the masked man was. Time and again, she received conflicting answers. The upshot was that no one seemed to know who he was or where he came from. It was almost as if he was a phantom.
Laura went on asking more urgently when she discovered that she was pregnant. But the result remained the same. No one could tell her. The few leads she had all ended in a dead end, taking her to operatives who turned out not to be the man who had saved her life and planted another inside her.
