Kitabı oku: «Newborn Conspiracy»
“I’m not going to leave my son”.
“He’s not your son,” Mia snapped.
“Well I might have started off as the sperm donor, but we’re past that now.”
“I don’t want or need a man in my life. That includes you.”
“Then think of it this way. I won’t be the man in your life, Mia. I’ll be the man in Tanner’s life.” Logan paused, waiting for an objection. “You’re aware that you could be in danger.”
A burst of air left her mouth. “I’m aware of it. I’m also aware that I wouldn’t be in danger if it weren’t for you.”
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Mia Crandall – Shocked to learn that someone rigged her artificial insemination so that the father of her newborn son is dark and dangerous security specialist Logan McGrath, she has to turn to him for help when someone tries to kill her. But their immediate attraction also makes Logan a target.
Logan McGrath – When he learns he now has a son, Logan must work with Mia to protect their child and discover who’s responsible for creating their child.
Tanner – Logan and Mia’s six-week-old baby.
Genevieve Devereux – Logan’s scheming ex-girlfriend might have orchestrated the plot to get Mia pregnant with Logan’s baby.
George Devereux – Genevieve’s criminal father. He would do anything to give his daughter what she wants, and what the infertile Genevieve wants is Logan’s baby.
Royce Foreman – He’s Genevieve’s lawyer, but he also has a personal grudge against Logan. Just how far would he go to get revenge?
Donnie Bishop – The businessman might be trying to cover his illegal activity by eliminating Logan and Mia.
Collena Drake – The troubled former cop who now devotes her life to finding out what happened in the Brighton Birthing Centre where Mia was artificially inseminated.
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 were 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.
Newborn Conspiracy
DELORES FOSSEN
MILLS & BOON
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To Anita G. Thanks so much for answering
all my research questions.
Prologue
Fall Creek, Texas
The muffled scream woke Logan McGrath.
He snapped to a sitting position in the leather recliner, turned his ear toward the sound and listened. Even through the haze of his heavy pain meds and bone-weary fatigue, he didn’t have to listen long or hard to hear the raspy moans and gasps.
Someone was in a lot of pain, perhaps dying.
And that someone was on the front porch.
Because he was a man who usually dealt with worst-case scenarios, Logan automatically considered that this might be a burglar or a killer. But since he was at his brother’s house in the tiny picturesque town of Fall Creek, which wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity, he had to consider another possibility: that his brother, a doctor, had a visitor, a patient who was about to die on the porch. It made sense since there wasn’t a hospital in town.
Just to be safe, Logan grabbed his Sig-Sauer from the end table next to him and maneuvered himself out of the chair. Not easily. It took effort. Lots of it.
He cursed the intrusion, the throbbing pain and the unidentified SOB who’d put a .38 jacketed slug in his right leg four days ago—on Christmas day, no less.
Some Christmas present.
Logan wore only his bathrobe and boxers, and he considered a detour to the guest bedroom for a shirt and shoes. But after two steps, he changed his mind. If someone was truly dying on the porch, they’d be long dead before he could get dressed and back to him.
Another moan. Another muffled scream.
Yep, he had to hurry. Logan jammed his cane onto the hardwood floor to get better traction, and with thirteen excruciating steps, he made it to the door. He aimed his gun, and braced himself for whatever he was about to have to deal with as he glanced out a side window.
The sun was just starting to set, but there was still plenty of light for him to see the blue car parked in front of his brother’s isolated country house. Logan had to look down, however, to see the driver.
She was lying on the porch. Her tan wool coat and long, loose dark-green dress were hiked up to her thighs, and she had her hands clutched on her swollen, pregnant belly.
She was writhing in pain.
Logan dropped his gun onto the pine entry table, threw open the door and maneuvered himself onto the porch. It wasn’t freezing but it was close and he felt the chill slide over his bare chest and feet.
She turned her head, snared his gaze, and he saw the horrible agony in her earthy brown eyes.
“Help me,” she begged. Her warm breath mixed with the frigid December air and created a misty haze around her milky pale face. “My water broke when I got out of the car and the pains are already nonstop.”
So, not dying. In labor. Not the end of the world but still a huge concern.
She needed a doctor now.
Logan turned to go back inside to make the call to 911, but she latched on to his arm and didn’t let go. For such a weak-looking little thing, she had a powerful grip. She dug in her fingernails and dragged Logan down beside her.
He banged his leg on the doorjamb and could have sworn he saw stars. Still, he pushed the godawful pain aside—after some grimacing and grunting of his own—and he tried to figure out what the heck he should do.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip, but he still heard the groan. “It’s not the time for introductions,” she grumbled. She fought to rip off her panties and then threw them aside. “Help me!”
“I’ve never delivered a baby before,” he grumbled back, but Logan knew he was in the wrong position if he stood any chance of helping her.
Another of her muffled screams got him moving. Plus, she drew blood with her fingernails. Somehow, he managed to get to the other end of her.
What Logan saw when he looked between her legs had him wanting to run for the phone again. Oh, mercy. The baby’s head was already partially out and that meant they didn’t have time for an ambulance to arrive.
“I think you’re supposed to push,” Logan suggested. Heaven knows why he said that. Maybe he’d heard it on TV. Or maybe this was just some crazy dream brought on by prescription pain meds. Man, he hoped that’s all it was.
The woman obviously didn’t doubt his advice, because she pushed. Hard.
Logan positioned his hands under the baby’s head, and he watched. That long push strained the veins on the woman’s neck, and it also eased the baby out farther. He didn’t just see a head but a tiny face.
Realizing he had to do something, Logan pulled off his terry-cloth robe and laid it between her legs so that the baby wouldn’t land on the cold wood. It was barely in time. As the woman pushed again, the baby’s shoulders and back appeared.
“One more push should do it,” Logan told her.
She made a throaty, raspy sound and bore down, shoving her feet against the porch. Seconds later, the tiny baby slid right into Logan’s hands.
Wow, was his first reaction.
Followed quickly by holy frickin’ hell.
Logan had experienced a lot of crazy and amazing things in his life, but he knew this was going to go to the top of his list.
“It’s a boy,” he let her know.
And that baby boy had some strength because he began to cry at the top of his newborn lungs. Obviously, he wasn’t having any trouble breathing on his own and Logan was thankful for that. He wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if there’d been complications.
Going purely on instinct, Logan bundled the bathrobe around the baby, especially around his head, and pulled him to his chest to keep him warm.
“A boy,” she repeated. She sounded both relieved and exhausted.
The woman pushed again to expel the afterbirth and then tried to sit up. She didn’t make it on her first attempt, but she did it on her second. She reached for the baby. Logan eased him into her arms.
It was strange. He immediately felt a…loss. Probably because he was freezing and the tiny baby had been warm.
The mother looked down at her newborn and smiled. It was a moment he’d remember, all right. Her, sitting there with her fiery red hair haloing her face and shoulders, and the tiny baby snuggled and crying in Logan’s own bathrobe.
“My son,” she whispered.
And then she said something that nearly knocked the breath out of Logan.
“He’s your nephew.”
Oh, man. Oh. Man. It was obviously time for him to talk to his brother.
“I’ll go inside and call an ambulance,” he told her. He began the maneuvering it’d take to get him up. “By the way, we should probably do those introductions now. But you obviously already know that I’m Logan McGrath.”
Because he was eye level with her when he introduced himself, he saw her reaction. It was some big reaction, too. She sucked in her breath, and her mouth began to tremble.
“You can’t be,” she said, her voice trembling, too. “This is Finn McGrath’s house.”
“My brother isn’t here,” he told her. “He’s on rounds at the hospital in a nearby town.” In addition to confusing him, she’d also captured his attention with that comment and her reaction. “Who are you? Are you a friend of my brother?”
She frantically shook her head and put her index finger in the baby’s mouth. He began to suck and stopped crying. “I need a doctor.”
He wanted answers, but they would have to wait. “Come inside,” he insisted. “It’s too cold out here.”
“I don’t think I can get up. Please, just call an ambulance.”
Well, he certainly couldn’t help her get to her feet. He could barely get up himself. So, Logan tried to hurry as much as he could. With lots of pain and effort, he made it back into the living room. All thirteen steps. He dialed 911, reported the incident and requested an ambulance. He also requested that they contact his brother and have him accompany that ambulance to his house.
“Get the baby and mother inside ASAP,” the emergency operator insisted. “It’s dangerous for a newborn to be in the cold.”
Logan agreed with her, hung up, then wondered how the heck he was going to accomplish that with his bum leg. He was more likely to fall than to be able to lift them. Still, he’d have to do it somehow.
With his cane clacking on the floor and his mind racing with possible solutions to his lack of mobility, Logan went back to the porch.
He got there just in time to see that it was empty. No mother. No newborn baby.
Just a lot of blood.
And the blue car was speeding away.
Chapter One
San Antonio, Texas Six weeks later
Mia Crandall peered out the double glass doors of the Wilson Pediatric clinic to make sure there wasn’t anyone suspicious lurking in the parking lot. There were a handful of cars, no one on the adjacent sidewalk and no one who seemed to be waiting for her to come out.
Everything was okay.
Well, everything but the niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach, but Mia had been living with that particular feeling for months now. She was beginning to wonder if it would ever go away.
She looked down at her newborn son, Tanner, and smiled. He was still sleeping, tucked in the warm, soft covers of the baby carrier. For his six-week-old checkup, Mia had dressed him in a new blue one-piece baby outfit and a matching knit cap. Still, it was winter, so she draped another blanket over the top of the carrier so he wouldn’t get cold. She retrieved her pepper-spray keychain from her diaper bag and hurried out into the bitter weather.
It was already past five-thirty and the temperature had plunged since she’d first gone inside nearly an hour earlier. She’d had one of the last appointments of the day. Not accidental, but by design. The winter sun was already low in the sky and Mia hoped the duskiness would prevent her from being easily seen.
The wind slammed into her face, cutting her breath, but she kept up the fast pace until she made it to her car. During the past year, she’d learned to hurry, to stay out of plain sight, to go out as little as possible. It was second nature now.
She strapped Tanner’s carrier into the rear-facing brackets mounted in the backseat and then slipped in behind the steering wheel. She started to turn on the engine, but the sound stopped her.
There was a sharp rap on the passenger’s side window.
Mia’s gaze whipped toward the sound and she saw a man staring at her. But this wasn’t just any ordinary man.
Oh, God. He’d found her.
Choking back a gasp, Mia grabbed for the lock, but it was already too late. Logan McGrath pulled open the passenger’s door and calmly got inside her car as if he had every right to do just that.
He was dressed all in black. Black pants, black pullover shirt and black leather coat. His hair was midnight black, as well, and slightly shorter than it’d been when she had seen him six weeks earlier. Maybe it was all that black attire that made his eyes stand out. They were glacier blue. Cold, hard. Demanding.
She remembered that he’d been hurt the night she had given birth to Tanner. He’d used a cane and could barely walk. But he didn’t seem at a disadvantage now. She couldn’t say the same for herself. He outsized her and no doubt had years of martial arts training. Still, she had something he didn’t.
A maternal instinct to protect her son.
Mia forced herself not to panic. She thrust her hand in the diaper bag and located her cell phone. She was about to call 911 when Logan McGrath caught her wrist and took the phone from her. He also took her keys with the pepper spray and the diaper bag, shoving all the items on the floor next to him.
When he moved, his leather coat shifted, just a little. Enough for her to get a glimpse of the shoulder holster and gun tucked beneath it. But then, he probably didn’t go many places without that firearm.
Mia lifted her chin and put some steel in her expression. There was no way she was going to let this man take control of the situation.
“Get out!” she ordered.
“Soon. I came to pick up my bathrobe. You took it with you when you left Fall Creek.”
So, he obviously knew who she was. Not that he would likely forget delivering a baby on his brother’s front porch. He was also obviously good with the sarcasm. Calm and cool under pressure.
Unlike her.
Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might leap out of her chest. Mia couldn’t let him see that fear, though. For her baby’s sake, she had to get this man out of her car. Somehow. And then she had to get far away from him so he could never find her again.
“I’ll mail you the robe,” she informed him. “Write down your address and then get out of my car.”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. It didn’t soften the rock-hard expression on his square jaw or high cheekbones. But that expression did soften when he glanced back at the infant seat.
Mia’s heart dropped to her knees. God, this couldn’t be happening. She’d been so stupid to go his brother’s house that day. Now, that stupidity might cost her everything.
She couldn’t physically fight him off, though she would try if it came down to it. However, maybe she could defuse this awful situation with some lies.
“I’m grateful to you for delivering my baby,” she said, hoping that it sounded sincere. Because she was sincere about that. The rest, however, was pure fabrication. “I went to your brother’s house because I was driving through Fall Creek and realized I was in labor. I saw the MD sign on his mailbox and stopped.”
He turned in the seat, slowly, so that he was facing her and aimed those ice-blue eyes at her. “How do you think I found you, Mia Crandall?”
She froze. Gave it some thought. And her mouth went bone dry. Because she couldn’t speak, she shook her head.
Logan McGrath calmly reached over, locked the doors, retrieved her keys and started the engine. He turned on the heater and waited until the warm air blew over them before he continued.
“I had DNA tests run on the blood you left on the porch,” he explained.
Of course he had.
Logan McGrath was a man who thought like a criminal. Too bad she hadn’t wiped up after herself, but then she hadn’t exactly had the time or energy for that chore. Mia had barely been able to get Tanner and herself to the car so she could get to the hospital in San Antonio. During that entire drive she’d been terrified that McGrath would follow her. His injury had probably prevented that from that happening, it was highly likely that he hadn’t been able to drive.
“I’m sure you know that your DNA is on file because of your former job as a counselor in a state women’s shelter,” he continued. “Once I had your name, I found an address for you here in San Antonio. You’d moved, of course. So, I took a different approach to locate you.”
And Mia thought she might know what that approach was. “You hacked or bribed your way into the appointments of pediatric clinics all over the city because you knew that I’d be taking my baby in for a six weeks’ checkup.”
He nodded. “Hacked is not quite the right word. I had police assistance to help me put all the pieces together.” He lifted his hands, palms up in an exaggerated gesture. “And here we are.”
“Not for long.” Because she needed something to do, Mia clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “Look, if you want money because you delivered my baby—”
“You know what I want, and it’s not money. It’s not my robe, either. I want answers.”
Mia glared at him. “No. No answers. Get out of my car and out of my life.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
He leaned closer, violating her personal space. He smelled dangerous. And very virile, which she was sorry she’d noticed.
“Let me help you with those answers,” Logan continued, his Texas drawl easy but somehow dark. “I already know a lot about you, Mia Frances Crandall. Born and raised in Dallas, you’ve had a tough life. When you were fifteen, two drug-crazed teen burglars broke into your home, murdered your parents and left you for dead.”
Mia automatically touched her fingers to her throat, to the scar that was still there. It was faint and barely visible now. Unlike the invisible wounds beneath.
Those scars would never fade.
“I don’t have time for a trip down memory lane,” she grumbled. She forced back the brutal images of that night in Dallas. “I need to get home. My baby will be waking up soon and will want to nurse.” Now, she leaned closer, hopefully violating his space. “Nurse, as in breast-feed. You might make your living doing shocking, violent things, but I’m guessing you’d be very uncomfortable watching me nurse Tanner.”
Something went through his eyes. “Violent things?” He looked genuinely insulted.
Mia wanted to curse. Now, he obviously knew that she was aware of who he was. She just kept getting deeper and deeper into this hole she was digging.
“I own a private security company,” he corrected.
Since there was no going back, Mia just charged forward. “You lend your services and your guns in war zones,” she challenged.
“Occasionally.” He lifted his shoulder. “When it’s necessary to rescue people and protect American interests abroad.”
Mia huffed. “That’s semantics. You’re an international hired gun.”
“I’m the good guy.” He hitched his thumb to his chest.
“That’s debatable.”
“Says who?” he fired right back at her.
Now, she put her thumb to her chest. “Me.”
There was slight change in his breathing pattern. It became heavier, as if he were annoyed.
“We obviously have strong opinions about each other,” he concluded. “Care to hear my opinion about you?”
“No.” And Mia didn’t even have to think about that.
“Tough. You’re going to hear it. A little less than a year ago, right around your twenty-eighth birthday, you decided that you wanted to have a baby. There was no man in your life, no immediate prospects of marriage, so you went to Brighton Birthing Center just outside San Antonio. They have a fertility clinic there, and you made arrangements to be artificially inseminated. It was successful. You got pregnant on your first try.”
He knew.
Mercy, he knew.
“How did you learn that?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“Careful investigative work over the past six weeks.”
“It’s not illegal to use artificial insemination to become pregnant. It’s a private matter. And it’s none of your business.”
Even though she knew it was his business.
Hopefully, he didn’t know that.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and waited a moment. During that moment, he looked even more annoyed. “I don’t know why you did what you did, but obviously something started to go wrong. You got suspicious of the Brighton Birthing Center. So, days before the center was closed because of illegal activity, you made an appointment with your fertility counselor, and when the counselor left the room to get you a glass of water that you requested, you took some files from the counselor’s desk drawer.”
Mia hadn’t thought it possible, but her heart beat even faster. “If I did or didn’t do that, it’s still none of your concern.”
“But it’s true. I managed to get my hands on some surveillance tapes. You took two files.”
That was correct. Unfortunately, it’d also been a mistake. Mia had intended to take only her own file that day. She’d taken the other one accidentally because it had been tucked inside hers.
She wished to God that she’d never seen that file.
“The police have already questioned me about this,” she admitted. “They agreed that I was right to have had doubts about Brighton. I gave them the files I’d taken and they let me go. End of story.”
“Not even close. What made you suspicious of Brighton?”
She almost refused to answer, but maybe he knew something about this, as well. Maybe the tables would be reversed and he could provide her with some answers.
“Someone was following me,” she explained. “Then once, someone actually tried to kidnap me. After that incident, I went to the police and they found a miniature tracking device taped on the undercarriage of my car. By then, there were rumors that Brighton was being investigated for illegal adoptions and lots of other criminal activity.”
He shrugged. “So why take the files?”
“I thought I was just taking my file. I wanted to make sure there were no…irregularities. Because by then, I’d gone through the insemination and was nearly five months pregnant. I wanted to verify that they hadn’t done anything that would ultimately harm my baby.”
That earned her a flat look.
“And you know the other file that you took was mine,” he tossed out there to her.
Because Mia didn’t think it would do any good to deny it, she nodded. “I don’t know how it got mixed in with mine.”
“Don’t you?”
Surprised with his increasingly icy accusations, she shook her head. “No. I don’t.”
“Did you read the file?” he demanded.
“I glanced at it, because I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought it was part of my records.”
He made a sound to indicate he didn’t believe her. “I’ll bet you did more than glance. But then, you already knew what was in it, didn’t you? You’re the reason that file was at Brighton.”
Stunned, Mia stared at him. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Nor did she know why he’d said it. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course, you do. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’m cured now, but because my treatment could have left me sterile, I decided to stockpile some semen. It was stored in Cryogen Labs, here in San Antonio. That file you took, the one tucked inside yours, was my file from Cryogen.” He paused. “What I want to know is why you did it?”
Tired of the ambiguous questions, Mia threw out her hands. “Did what?”
He huffed as if he thought she were stonewalling him. But she wasn’t. Mia had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
“He’s your nephew,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “That’s what you said right after I told you that you’d had a son. You said that because—”
“I was delirious.” Her voice was so filled with breath that it hardly had sound.
“No. You said it because you thought it was true. You thought I was my brother. Therefore, you thought my brother had a nephew. And since he’s my only sibling, there’s only one conclusion I can draw from that.”
Logan McGrath stared at the carrier seat. “Judging from what I’ve uncovered, the little boy that I delivered is my own son.”
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