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Security Blanket
Delores Fossen
Security Blanket
Delores Fossen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u21a2a03a-a6c3-55ee-b09e-8cc014698b8f)
Title Page (#u3adf833b-e8f6-5fa7-95e4-11a88b78974f)
About The Author (#u99bf71c0-18ed-52aa-bac4-8b1d359cf97b)
Dedication (#u1964962b-37ea-5551-9604-08b639039ecc)
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
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
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.
To the Magnolia State Romance Writers. Thanks for everything.
Chapter One
The man was watching her.
Marin Sheppard was sure of it.
He wasn’t staring, exactly. In fact, he hadn’t even looked at her, though he’d been seated directly across from her in the lounge car of the train for the past fifteen minutes. He seemed to focus his attention on the wintry Texas landscape that zipped past the window. But several times Marin had met his gaze in the reflection of the glass.
Yes, he was watching her.
That kicked up her heart rate a couple of notches. A too-familiar nauseating tightness started to knot Marin’s stomach.
Was it starting all over again?
Was he watching her, hoping that she’d lead him to her brother, Dexter? Or was this yet another attempt by her parents to insinuate themselves into her life?
It’d been over eight months since the last time this happened. A former “business associate” of her brother who was riled that he’d paid for a “product” that Dexter hadn’t delivered. The man had followed her around Fort Worth for days. He hadn’t been subtle about it, either, and that had made him seem all the more menacing. And she hadn’t given birth to Noah yet then.
The stakes were so much higher now.
Marin hugged her sleeping son closer to her chest. He smelled like baby shampoo and the rice cereal he’d had for lunch. She brushed a kiss on his forehead and rocked gently. Not so much for him—Noah was sound asleep and might stay that way for the remaining hour of the trip to San Antonio. No, the rocking, the kiss and the snug embrace were more for her benefit, to help steady her nerves.
And it worked.
“Cute kid,” she heard someone say. The man across from her. Who else? There were no other travelers in this particular section of the lounge car.
Marin lifted her gaze. Met his again. But this time it wasn’t through the buffer of the glass, and she clearly saw his eyes, a blend of silver and smoke, framed with indecently long, dark eyelashes.
She studied him a moment, trying to decide if she knew him. He was on the lanky side. Midnight-colored hair. High cheekbones. A classically chiseled male jaw.
The only thing that saved him from being a total pretty boy was the one-inch scar angled across his right eyebrow, thin but noticeable. Not a precise surgeon’s cut, a jagged, angry mark left from an old injury. It conjured images of barroom brawls, tattooed bikers and bashed beer bottles. Not that Marin had firsthand knowledge of such things.
But she would bet that he did.
He wore jeans that fit as if they’d been tailormade for him, a dark blue pullover shirt that hugged his chest and a black leather bomber jacket. And snakeskin boots—specifically diamondback rattlesnake. Pricey and conspicuous footwear.
No, she didn’t know him. Marin was certain she would have remembered him—a realization that bothered her because he was hot, and she was sorry she’d noticed.
He tipped his head toward Noah. “I meant your baby,” he clarified. “Cute kid.”
“Thank you.” She looked away from the man, hoping it was the end of their brief conversation.
It wasn’t.
“He’s what…seven, eight months old?”
“Eight,” she provided.
“He reminds me a little of my nephew,” the man continued. “It must be hard, traveling alone with a baby.”
That brought Marin’s attention racing across the car. What had provoked that remark? She searched his face and his eyes almost frantically, trying to figure out if it was some sort of veiled threat.
He held up his hands, and a nervous laugh sounded from deep within his chest. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s just I noticed you’re wearing a medical alert bracelet.”
Marin glanced down at her left wrist. The almond-shaped metal disc was peeking out from the cuff of her sleeve. With its classic caduceus symbol engraved in crimson, it was like his boots—impossible to miss.
“I’m epileptic,” she said.
“Oh.” Concern dripped from the word.
“Don’t worry,” she countered. “I keep my seizures under control with meds. I haven’t had one in over five years.”
She immediately wondered why in the name of heaven she’d volunteered that personal information. Her medical history wasn’t any of his business; it was a sore spot she didn’t want to discuss.
“Is your epilepsy the reason you took the train?” he asked. “I mean, instead of driving?”
Marin frowned at him. “I thought the train would make the trip easier for my son.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer to his intrusive question. When his attention strayed back in the general direction of her bracelet, Marin followed his gaze. Down to her hand. All the way to her bare ring finger.
Even though her former fiancé, Randall Davidson, had asked her to marry him, he’d never given her an engagement ring. It’d been an empty, bare gesture. A thought that riled her even now. Randall’s betrayal had cut her to the bone.
Shifting Noah into the crook of her arm, she reached down to collect her diaper bag. “I think I’ll go for a little walk and stretch my legs.”
And change seats, she silently added.
Judging from the passengers she’d seen get on and off, the train wasn’t crowded, so moving into coach seating shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, she should have done it sooner.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I made you uncomfortable with my questions.”
His words stopped her because they were sincere. Or at least he sounded that way. Of course, she’d been wrong before. It would take another lifetime or two for her to trust her instincts.
And that was the reason she reached for the bag again.
“Stay, please,” he insisted. “It’ll be easier for me to move.” He got up, headed for the exit and then stopped, turning back around to face her. “I was hitting on you.”
Marin blinked. “You…what?”
“Hitting on you,” he clarified.
Oh.
That took her a few moments to process.
“Really?” Marin asked, sounding far more surprised than she wanted.
He chuckled, something low, husky and male. Something that trickled through her like expensive warm whiskey. “Really.” But then, the lightheartedness faded from his eyes, and his jaw muscles started to stir. “I shouldn’t have done it. Sorry.”
Again, he seemed sincere. So maybe he wasn’t watching her after all. Well, not for surveillance any way. Maybe he was watching her because she was a woman. Odd, that she’d forgotten all about basic human attraction and lust.
“You don’t have to leave,” Marin let him know. Because she suddenly didn’t know what to do with her fidgety hands, she ran her fingers through Noah’s dark blond curls. “Besides, it won’t be long before we’re in San Antonio.”
He nodded, and it had an air of thankfulness to it. “I’m Quinn Bacelli. Most people though just call me Lucky.”
She almost gave him a fake name. Old habits. But it was the truth that came out of her mouth. “Marin Sheppard.”
He smiled. It was no doubt a lethal weapon in his arsenal of ways to get women to fall at his feet. Or into his bed. It bothered Marin to realize that she wasn’t immune to it.
Good grief. Hadn’t her time with Randall taught her anything?
“Well, Marin Sheppard,” he said, taking his seat again. “No more hitting on you. Promise.”
Good. She mentally repeated that several times, and then wondered why she felt mildly disappointed.
Noah stirred, sucked at a nonexistent bottle and then gave a pouty whimper when he realized it wasn’t there. His eyelids fluttered open, and he blinked, focused and looked up at Marin with accusing bluegreen eyes that were identical to her own. He made another whimper, probably to let her know that he wasn’t pleased about having his nap interrupted.
Her son shifted and wriggled until he was in a sitting position in her lap, and the new surroundings immediately caught his attention. What was left of his whimpering expression evaporated. He examined his puppy socks, the window, the floor, the ceiling and the rubyred exit sign. Even her garnet heart necklace. Then, his attention landed on the man seated across from him.
Noah grinned at him.
The man grinned back. “Did you have a good nap, buddy?”
Noah babbled a cordial response, something the two males must have understood, because they shared another smile.
Marin looked at Quinn “Lucky” Bacelli. Then, at her son. Their smiles seemed to freeze in place.
There was no warning.
A deafening blast ripped through the car.
One moment Marin was sitting on the seat with her son cradled in her arms, and the next she was flying across the narrow space right at Lucky.
Everything moved fast. So fast. And yet it happened in slow motion, too. It seemed part of some nightmarish dream where everything was tearing apart at the seams.
Debris spewed through the air. The diaper bag, the magazine she’d been reading, the very walls themselves. All of it, along with Noah and her.
Something slammed into her back and the left side of her head. It knocked the breath from her. The pain was instant—searing—and it sliced right through her, blurring her vision.
