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Mommy Under Cover
Delores Fossen
Agent Tessa Abbot: This take-no-prisoners, tough-as-nails operative of a top secret U.S. security agency was prepared for anything…except a surprise pregnancy.Agent Riley McDade: His sexy yet deadly smile had seen him through dangerous missions around the world…except the one that mattered most - and cost him his heart. Mission: Posing as man and wife, apprehend Dr. Barton Fletcher, aka the Baby Maker.He has killed before and won't hesitate to do so again - see memo on Agent McDade's past broken heart. Avoid complications at all costs - such as an unexpected pregnancy or falling in love with your partner.
“I’m pregnant.”
The air in Riley’s lungs was sucked out of him. “I didn’t see this one coming,” he finally managed to say. “Hell, in the past two years, I haven’t even been able to commit to a phone plan,” he mumbled, a bit louder than he should have.
Tessa lifted her head, met his gaze and laughed. A single burst of pure uncut irony. “Riley, this isn’t your problem.”
Despite the jolt of the news, Riley didn’t have any trouble carrying it to the next step. Tessa had already admitted it had been months since she’d had sex, so that meant the child had been conceived during the doctor’s medical procedure.
“In case you have any doubts about how this will play out, the baby’s mine,” Riley said. Powerful words, life-changing words. Words he thought he’d never hear himself say.
“Our baby,” he corrected.
Mommy Under Cover
Delores Fossen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Viki and Jan—thanks for being there
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she was genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Agent Riley McDade—A Justice Department bad boy on assignment to bring down a murdering fertility specialist known as the Baby Maker, who was responsible for Riley’s fiancée’s death.
Agent Tessa Abbot—She’s always played by the rules. She’s a dedicated agent who’s trying to climb to the top.
John Abbot—Tessa’s father who’s also a mission director in the Justice Department. Is he so desperate to collar a killer and clear his name that he’s willing to risk Riley’s and his daughter’s lives?
Dr. Barton Fletcher—aka the Baby Maker. He’s already murdered one federal agent who threatened to shut down his illegal medical procedures.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Prologue
Assisted Fertility Clinic
Dallas, Texas
“The Baby Maker,” Dr. Barton Fletcher read from the personal memo clipped to the file.
So that’s what people were calling him these days. He chuckled. It made him sound a little like God.
Which in a way, he was.
On occasion he’d created life. And on other occasions, he’d taken life. It all evened out in the end.
He glanced through the Tates’ quarter-inch-thick file that his staff had put together for him. Aston Tate, a reclusive California software guru with an ego purportedly as large as his net worth, and his heiress wife, Isabel. Eccentric tendencies. Situational values and ethics.
In other words, his kind of people.
He’d been lucky finding his kind of people. Or rather, they’d been lucky in finding him—all through word of mouth, of course. He couldn’t advertise certain…aspects of his business. Not that lack of traditional advertisement had hurt. In the three short months the clinic had been open, he’d already assisted eleven couples with his procedure. The Tates would make it an even dozen.
Like the other eleven couples, the Tates were looking for a perfect baby. A baby genetically engineered to their specifications. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Male. Athletic build. Above average intelligence. Well above average. No imperfections of any kind.
In other words, the usual.
The hair and eye color varied from couple to couple, but the rest was a given.
There was something comforting about predictability.
Well, maybe.
Barton Fletcher took another look at the Tates’ file.
The paperwork and requests were indeed predictable and in order, including the attached memo from Isabel Tate that lauded him as the Baby Maker for a couple who desperately wanted the child of their dreams. However, the fact that everything was in order did nothing to rid him of the knot tightening in his gut.
Was something wrong?
The obvious quickly came to mind. Maybe this was some sort of sting operation. The latest attempt by authorities to apprehend him.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Because he was always careful.
Always.
If these clients were indeed working for law enforcement, then he’d just have to deal with the situation as he had before.
Give life…take life. It all evened out in the end.
Chapter One
Washington, D.C.
Agent Tessa Abbot walked into the briefing room of the Justice Department’s Special Investigations Unit, took one look at him and came to a complete standstill.
Her steel-blue gaze riffled over his uncombed hair, down to his three-day-old beard. Possibly four.
Riley had lost count.
And then her gaze kept on riffling. Down to his scruffy black T-shirt, jungle fatigues and combat boots caked with mud. Thankfully the color of the T-shirt camouflaged a multitude of other stains that he didn’t want to identify, but blood was a distinct possibility.
“Why are you here?” Tessa asked.
Riley lifted his hand in a wait-a-second gesture, gulped down the rest of his lukewarm coffee and prayed the caffeine would kick in soon. The all-night cargo flight from Liberia had left him with a wicked case of jet lag and the mother of all headaches.
“This is where I’m supposed to be. I’m your husband.”
And with that, he waited for the excrement to hit the proverbial fan.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“You’re what?” Tessa adjusted her stance, shifting her weight from one fashionable snakeskin leather shoe to the other. Not her usual choice of footwear, which Riley knew for a fact tended toward something flat and more functional.
In her case, functional often included kick-butt, steel-toed boots.
This morning she was obviously dressed for the mission. And those three-inch-plus, mission-directed heels put her close to six feet tall.
Practically eye-to-eye with him.
That eye level allowed him to see her baby blues narrow significantly.
“I’m your husband,” Riley repeated, even though he was dead certain she’d heard him the first time. “Well, your husband for this mission, anyway. After I get cleaned up, we’ll be the undercover team going into the Assisted Fertility Clinic in Dallas.”
Somehow, Riley managed to say that without any emotion. Inside—well, that was a whole different story. There was emotion, all right. Lots of it. And he intended to channel all those still-raw feelings into apprehending Dr. Barton Fletcher, aka the Baby Maker.
“You’re mistaken.” And Tessa didn’t say it with affection, either. No surprise there. This would not be an affection-generating conversation. “I’m teamed with Agent Trapanna for this.”
So the mission commander hadn’t informed her yet. Riley was afraid of that. That meant he’d have to be the messenger. Not his first choice of duties for 0600 hours. Or any other hour for that matter.
“There’s been a change in plans,” Riley explained. “Trapanna came down with some kind of throat infection last night. He’s on antibiotics and bed rest. I heard what happened and volunteered to fill in for him.”
That heard-what-happened part was really glossing over things.
For days Riley had been calling for permission updates on the Baby Maker case. It’d been no accident that he’d learned of Trapanna’s medical condition and within five minutes had arranged a flight out of Liberia. Of course, he’d had to finish a really nasty confrontation with two armed guerrillas before he could get to the airport—hence the possibility of blood on his shirt. Their blood. But he’d made it back to D.C. in time for the mission brief.
Tessa stared at him. And stared. Apparently processing his impromptu situation report. Judging from the way the muscles stirred and jumped in her blush-touched cheeks, she didn’t process it well.
“You volunteered?” she questioned.
Riley settled for a nod.
“Oh, mercy.” She groaned, tossed her mission folder onto the conference table and aimed her index finger at him. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t want you anywhere near this ops, got that?”
As Riley guessed she would do, Tessa reached for the sleek black phone on the wall. Probably so she could call the mission director and complain about the turn of events. Riley didn’t want that to happen.
Not yet anyway.
Some fast talking and lots of luck had gotten him this ops and he wasn’t about to let Tessa Abbot take it away from him.
There was too much at stake.
Riley deposited his empty foam cup onto the table and, in the same motion, caught her arm—a little maneuver that earned him a glare. Man, she was good at it, too. Those steely eyes practically tapered to slits as she shook off his grip.
“If you’ve got a problem with our working together, then say it to me,” Riley insisted. “Not to our boss.”
Without even a second’s hesitation, she gave him an Okay, I will nod. “Oh, I have a problem, all right. A huge one. There’s no way you can be objective about Dr. Barton Fletcher, and you and I both know why.”
Riley didn’t hesitate, either. “I’ll take a wild guess here and assume you’re referring to the fact that Fletcher killed my former partner?”
It wasn’t a wild guess.
That was exactly what this was about.
“Fletcher allegedly killed your former partner,” Tessa amended, using the politically correct term. “Your fiancée.”
“Your friend,” Riley added.
