скачать книгу бесплатно
“Stop where you are.” Tate didn’t want her anywhere close to the house and his son. A crazy man who’d gotten past security had ultimately been the cause of his father’s death five months ago. He refused to take any intrusion onto his property lightly. Without waiting for the woman to cross the fence, Tate marched across the manicured lawn.
Perched precariously on the top rail, the blonde swayed and fell over the fence, landing with a crash, her head hitting the post with a sharp crack.
When Tate reached her, she lay on the ground, her eyes staring up at the sky, blinking.
For a moment, Tate forgot to be angry with her.
Dirty and sweat-soaked, she was still a beautiful woman beneath the layer of smeared dust. When fat tears rolled out of the corners of her pale blue eyes, Tate couldn’t help a sudden swell of protectiveness. He chalked it up to the fact that her eyes were the same pale blue as Jake’s.
He dropped down beside her, forcing his voice to sound stern and distant when his instincts urged him to pick her up and carry her into his house. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on private property?”
She raised a hand to her head, and scraped it over her eyes. “Please. I only want to see him.”
Tate’s brows furrowed. “See who?”
“My son,” she said, her voice wavering, dropping down to a whisper. Her eyes closed, and the woman had the nerve to pass out.
“Damned woman.” His gut knotted and Tate swore. What did she mean by “my son”? He reached down and shook her. “Wake up.”
She didn’t budge.
He bent low, pressing his head to her chest to listen for breathing.
Although shallow, her breaths came regularly. Impatience gnawed at him. He couldn’t shake her awake to answer his questions, and he couldn’t really leave her out in the full force of the Texas sun. With his luck, her fall might have given her a concussion.
“Whatcha got there, boss?” C.W. trotted up beside him. When he got close enough to see the woman on the ground, he whistled. “Another stray?”
Tate glared at his foreman. “Looks like it.”
“Want me to call the sheriff?”
“No.” Why he didn’t do just that, he couldn’t explain. Something about the way she’d looked up at him, her gaze pleading with his, made him want to question her before he turned her over to the sheriff. Maybe she’d been mistaken, gotten the wrong place, hallucinated due to dehydration. She couldn’t mean Jake. Jake couldn’t be her son. He’d met Jake’s mother. She’d signed the papers allowing him to adopt the boy. This woman was a stranger.
“If you’re not going to call the sheriff, do you want me to call an ambulance?” C.W. rocked back on his boot heels. “Looks like she hit her head, and she’s got a gash in her leg.”
Tate’s frown deepened. “No.”
“Can’t just leave her in the sun. She’ll die of heat stroke.”
He knew that, still he hesitated. “She’s trespassing.”
“Maybe so, but she is another human being. If you leave her here, you could be up on charges of negligent homicide.”
If he took her into his house and she threatened his son, he’d be up on charges of murder anyway.
C.W. bent and reached for the woman.
“Don’t.” Tate held out his hand, blocking the man’s attempt to lift her. “I’ll get her.” With all the trepidation of a man cornering a poisonous snake, Tate lifted the woman into his arms. Thin, light and limp, she had curves in all the right places and a soft pink mouth much too close to his own for him to think straight. What did she want? And why did he have this feeling that he wouldn’t like what she had to say?
Morbid curiosity made him carry her into the cool air-conditioned interior of his home. He’d force-feed fluid into her and get her back on her feet, hear what she had to say and then send her packing. If that didn’t work, then he’d call the sheriff and have her forcibly removed.
Rosa stood in the living room, Jake propped on her hip. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” Tate shot a pointed look at Jake’s caregiver, a woman he’d hired not only for her skills with a child, but also for her skills as a bodyguard. A former Austin police officer, she had a proven track record taking out bad guys. “Take Jake to the nursery.”
“But it’s dinnertime.”
“Feed him dinner in his room.”
“Sí, Señor.”
He laid the woman on the brown leather sofa in the living room.
Maria, Rosa’s mother and also the housekeeper, entered through the doorway leading to the kitchen, carrying a damp rag and a glass of ice water.
Tate took the damp rag and laid it across the woman’s forehead, mopping away a layer of dust and sweat. “Wake up, lady,” he muttered, willing her eyes to open.
“Get her to drink,” Maria urged.
Tate lifted the woman in one arm and touched the cool glass to her lips, letting the liquid slide down her throat.
At first the liquid filled her mouth and trickled out the sides. Then she swallowed and coughed, her eyes blinking open.
“What…” she said, her voice hoarse, her gaze blurred. “Are you—” she coughed again “—Tate Vincent?”
He frowned. She knew who he was, which meant she’d found her way to his place on purpose. Was she just another gold digger out to get money from him? “Yes,” he answered, his tone clipped. “Who are you?”
Her eyes closed for a moment and then opened again. “I think you have my baby.” After delivering that punch in the gut, the woman had the audacity to pass out again.
Chapter Two
Something blessedly cool stroked across Sylvia’s forehead as she swam through the murkiness inside her head. A deep baritone hummed in the back of her mind, pulling her closer to the light. When the strokes moved to her cheek, she turned her face into the coolness and surfaced, her mind inching toward clarity. “Ummm, that feels good.”
“Glad you think so. I’d appreciate it if you’d wake up before the sheriff arrives.”
Sylvia’s eyes popped open and she stared up into intense, brown eyes, so dark they could be considered black. A man with midnight-black hair and thick dark brows drawn into a frown glared down at her.
Fear and something else shot through her veins, pushing her to a sitting position. As soon as she sat up, her head swam and her world turned fuzzy around the edges. When she would have toppled over onto the floor, strong arms circled her shoulders and eased her back to cool leather.
“Who are you?” she asked as she edged one eye open and attempted a look around. All she could see was the broad chest and intimidating glare of the incredibly sexy man in front of her. He smelled of dust, sweat and leather. Very earthy and tremendously appealing.
“We’d already established the fact that I’m Tate Vincent. You’re trespassing on my property.” The man’s countenance didn’t change, except the glare deepened until his black eyes shot sparks. “Who the hell are you?”
She sighed, draping an arm over her brow to block out her unwanted attraction to the grouchy man. “Sylvia Michaels.” As her vision cleared, so too did her memory. After a moment, she dropped her arm, her eyes widening. “You’re Tate Vincent?” She sighed. “Oh, thank God.”
“Don’t be thanking Him yet. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you hauled off to jail for trespassing.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to get an appointment to see you, but your assistant wouldn’t give me one.”
“That’s why I have an assistant.” His frown deepened, his face fierce. “Now that you have my attention, what exactly do you want?”
She stared up at him, her determination wavering briefly under his angry countenance. “I’m here because there’s a good possibility that you have my child.”
For a moment he said nothing, the only sign he had heard her was the muscle ticking dangerously in his jaw. “How much do you want?”
Sylvia’s brow furrowed. “Want? What do you mean?”
“Most people who trespass or sneak onto my property want something, usually money. What’s your price?”
Anger and indignation shot into her veins, stiffening her spine and forcing her back into an upright position. This time her vision didn’t waver. “I don’t want anything from you. I only want my child.”
“And what makes you think I have him?”
Her eyes widened and a gasp whooshed from her lips. “The baby I saw outside is a boy?” Joy filled her chest. “I knew it,” she said, her happiness stealing breath from her lungs. “How is he? Where is he?” She leaned to the side to look around Tate.
Strong fingers gripped her arms, forcing her to look at him. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I don’t have your son.”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Did you adopt a child about six months ago?”
“Anyone who follows the gossip columns would know the answer to that.” The muscle ticked in his jaw again. “Besides, it’s none of your business.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, she’d scored a hit and she wasn’t backing off until she got answers. She stared up at him, her mouth firming into a determined line. “It is my business if that child was stolen from me.”
“You’re wrong. I met the mother of my son. She signed the papers in front of an attorney swearing the child was hers and that she was giving away all legal rights to him.”
“Was her name Beth Kirksey?”
Tate’s eyes narrowed. “And if it was?”
“She wasn’t the mother of the baby you adopted. The birth certificate was forged. She’d given up her real baby for adoption four months earlier. The baby she gave you was mine.”
“I don’t believe you.” He reached for the cell phone in his back pocket. “A quick call will confirm.”
“Don’t bother, Ms. Kirksey won’t be answering.”
“Why?”
“She’s dead.” Sylvia swallowed hard. “She was killed in a hit-and-run ‘accident’ a week ago.”
“I’m calling the sheriff.” He stood, towering above her.
If he’d intimidated her before, he terrified her now. Well over six feet tall, his massive presence and his ferocious scowl could stop an angry bull in his tracks.
But Sylvia hadn’t come this far or risked this much to give up now. “Just let me see him. Please.”
“No way. For all I know, you’re crazy and might hurt my son. You’d do well to get the hell out of my house now while I’m feeling generous enough to let you go without a police escort.”
Sylvia crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not leaving until I see my son.”
“We’ll see about that.” He nodded to the man standing in the doorway. “C.W., call the sheriff.”
“Will do, boss.”
“Wait.” Sylvia couldn’t afford to waste time in jail. She had to see her son. “I can prove he’s my son.”
“Yeah, and I’m the King of Hearts.” Tate turned away. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Keep an eye on her, will you, C.W.?”
Sylvia rose from the couch, swaying but determined, and reached for his arm before he could walk away. “He has blond hair and blue eyes just like mine, doesn’t he?”
“So what if he does? His mother had blond hair and blue eyes.”
“Does your son have a star-shaped strawberry birthmark on his right hip?”
About to take a step, the man stopped in midstride, his back to her, his body rigid. “That proves nothing.”
Her hand tightened on his arm, her nails digging in. Then she let go, her fingers going to her waistband. She loosened the button of her jeans and unzipped the fly. Then with a deep breath, she shoved the jeans down low enough to expose her right hip. “Does it look like this?”
The man Tate had called C.W. stopped in the doorway and let out a long, low wolf whistle.
Tate’s chest expanded and contracted before he finally stared down at the mark on her hip. “How do I know that’s real?”
“Touch it,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. The thought of the big cowboy touching her made her tingle all over, but she held steady. She had to do this to get her son back.
His hand came out and he rubbed a work-roughened thumb across the birthmark. “It could be a tattoo.”
Sylvia’s breath caught in her chest and she held it for a moment before replying, electric current tingling throughout her body from where his fingers touched her. “You know it’s not. It’s as real as the one on my son’s hip.” She pulled her jeans up and zipped. “Can I see him now?”
His mouth drew into a tight, forbidding line. Then he caught her by her arms and shook her. “Get it through your head, he’s not your son! Now, get out of my house.” He practically flung her away from him.
Steadying herself against the back of the couch, Sylvia struggled to remain calm. Even with Tate breathing fire down on her, she refused to give up. “Not without my son.”
“You won’t see him without a court order. I’ll be contacting my lawyer. I suggest you contact yours.”
Sylvia’s heart dropped to her stomach. She didn’t have a nickel left in her account and she’d been living on credit cards for the past month until they had maxed out. A long court battle would be way out of her league. She flung her long hair back and stood with her shoulders squared, her feet wide, hands propped on her hips. All she had left was false bravado and her conviction that she’d really found her son. “If you want me to leave, you’ll have to call the sheriff. I’m not going anywhere until I see my son.”
“Let me remind you who is trespassing and who is within legal rights to shoot you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been shot at trying to find my son. Go ahead.” Inside she shook, but she refused to show him an ounce of fear. “I want to see the son stolen from me in Mexico six months ago.”
“What’s it going to take to convince you that he’s not your son?”
“Show me his right hip. If the birthmark isn’t there, I’ll leave, no argument.” Sylvia held her chin high and when her mouth threatened to tremble, she bit down hard on her lower lip.
Tate sucked in a deep breath and let it out. It did nothing to calm the racing beat of his heart. He sucked in another breath and tried again. But as long as the woman who claimed to be his son’s mother stood in his living room, he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.
After all the years he’d begged Laura for children…then she’d left and his father had died. Tate refused to give up the only family he had left. Ever since he’d adopted Jake, he’d had that niggling worry in the back of his mind that someone would someday come and claim him. Hadn’t he seen court cases where the mother came back and claimed she’d been wrong to let her child go? Never afraid of anything in his life, Tate feared losing Jake. He stiffened.
No way in hell.
