Peekaboo Baby

by Delores Fossen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan got a split-second glimpse of Emmett Montgomery, and his gun, before he heard the shot. He reacted out of instinct.

  A reaction that probably saved his life.

  Ryan dove to the side, his shoulder bashing into the stair railing. He ignored the jarring impact and the pain and came up, ready to return fire.

  But he was too late.

  Montgomery had already ducked inside the office where Ryan had left Delaney and Patrick. Where he’d told her to stay. And she no doubt had.

  Which meant both of them were in danger.

  The thought of losing them triggered the flashbacks. Ryan forced the images aside. He couldn’t let Sandra and Adam’s deaths make him lose focus. There was nothing he could do to bring them back, nothing, but he sure as hell could do something to save Delaney and Patrick.

  So Emmett Montgomery was the man responsible for all of this? Not that it surprised Ryan. After all, Montgomery was one of the top suspects. But then, so was Keyes, and Ryan had no idea where the man was. Dead perhaps, since Montgomery didn’t appear to be injured, that blood trail no doubt belonged to Keyes, and Montgomery was probably the man responsible.

  Montgomery had apparently initiated his own personal crime spree. A spree that would soon end, one way or another, especially considering the sheriff and probably Quentin were on the way.

  Unfortunately, Ryan couldn’t wait for backup.

  He heard Patrick cry. It was little more than a fussy whimper, definitely not a cry of pain. But it was enough to get Ryan’s heart pounding and his body moving. Keeping close to the stairs and with his gun ready, he crept up. One step at time. He kept his attention focused on the office door.

  “Montgomery?” Ryan shouted. “Are you ready to bargain?”

  “Not with you.”

  Ryan watched for shadows and listened for any sound or movement to indicate that Montgomery was about to dart out the door and fire another shot. If he did, Ryan intended to fire first.

  He had too much at stake.

  “Then what we have here is a standoff,” Ryan said. “Because I won’t let you hurt them.”

  “No?” Montgomery stepped out then.

  But not alone.

  He had Delaney positioned in front of him like a shield. Her back was against his chest. His gun pressed to her right temple.

  Ryan froze.

  And no matter how hard he fought, the nightmarish memories returned with a vengeance. So did the grief and the pain of losing his wife and son. If he tried to shoot Montgomery, he could end up hurting Delaney instead. It was too big a risk to take, and yet he had to risk something to get them out of this.

  “Drop your gun, Mr. McCall,” Montgomery ordered.

  Ryan met Delaney’s eyes for only a moment. It was all he could risk, since seeing the fear in her eyes would only distract him. With that brief glance, he tried to reassure her that he would do everything within his power to keep Patrick and her safe. But it wasn’t everything within his power that was troubling Ryan. It was the things he couldn’t control.

  Like Montgomery and his gun.

  “He said he’s going to kill us,” Delaney whispered.

  Not said with fear. Her voice was low and dangerous. Ryan understood completely. Their child had been threatened by this man who could take everything that mattered away from them.

  Patrick cried again, and Ryan heard Lena trying to soothe him. But that wasn’t all he heard. In the distance, there were sirens. Montgomery obviously heard them too, because he turned his right ear to the sound and cursed.

  “I said drop your gun,” the doctor warned. “And if you think I’m bluffing, just ask Bryson Keyes. Oh, wait. You can’t ask him because he’s already dead in your hydrangeas.” Montgomery jammed the gun harder against Delaney’s temple, digging into her skin and causing her to gasp.

  Rage slammed through Ryan. Hearing her gasp and seeing the pain on Delaney’s face made him want to launch himself at Montgomery and tear the man limb from limb.

  And in that moment, that one horrible moment, Ryan realized how important she was to him.

  But had he realized it too late?

  “Time’s up,” Montgomery taunted. “I have no plans to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

  And Ryan had no plans to die today. No plans for Patrick and Delaney to be hurt or worse.

  Ryan met Delaney’s eyes again. And in that look he tried to convey what he wanted her to do, which was get out of his way so he could go gun-to-gun with Everett Montgomery.

  Yes, she mouthed.

  Just yes. But it was the only green light he needed. Because Ryan was watching her so closely, he saw the muscles in her arms tighten. Just a second before she dropped to the ground.

  Montgomery reacted, too.

  He fired.

  Straight at Ryan.

  The bullet slammed into the railing right next to Ryan. Montgomery didn’t stop there. He dropped, landing way too close to Delaney and reaiming his gun at Ryan.

  Delaney kicked the man, her foot smashing against his arm. It was enough of a distraction for Ryan to come off the stairs and aim his own weapon. He kept his hand steady by thinking of Delaney, of Patrick, and of how he wouldn’t—couldn’t—lose them.

  Ryan fired. The bullet slammed into Montgomery’s right hand. The man howled in pain, and his gun went flying.

  Delaney didn’t waste any time. She scurried across the floor, seized his weapon and came up prepared to fire.

  Montgomery held up his hands. An act of surrender. But the operative word was act. From all appearances, the doctor might be giving up, but Ryan didn’t trust him.

  “Go to Patrick,” Ryan told Delaney while he kept his Glock aimed at Montgomery. “Make sure he’s okay.” And in doing so, it would get her away from the man who’d nearly succeeded in killing her.

  Delaney hesitated, volleying uneasy looks between Montgomery and him.

  “The sheriff will be here any minute,” Ryan added, praying she would leave. “Then he can arrest this worthless excuse for a human being.”

  She nodded, clamped her teeth over her bottom lip and slowly got to her feet. She’d barely managed to stand upright and hadn’t even gotten her balance when Montgomery lunged for her.

  It seemed as if everything was happening in slow motion. Yet it all seemed fast, too. As if everything were spinning out of control. Ryan felt his finger tighten on the trigger. Pressure that he knew would deliver a shot. And this time, he shot to kill. A double tap of the trigger, and both shots hit their target.

  Montgomery clutched his chest and fell forward, his body slumping on the top of the stairs.

  Ryan waited, checking for any sign of life while he kept his Glock aimed at the man.

  But Montgomery didn’t move.

  Delaney waited, too, until the sounds of the sirens were so close that Ryan figured the ambulance and the sheriff were already on the grounds.

  “Is it over?” Lena called out. With Patrick cradled against her, she peered out from the doorway.

  Delaney hurried to them. Her breath was gusting, and she stumbled, but somehow she made it to them, and she took Patrick from Lena. She pressed a flurry of kisses on Patrick’s face.

  Only then did Ryan move. Up the stairs. Past a lifeless Montgomery. He went to Delaney and Patrick, and he pulled them both into his arms.

  Delaney’s breath broke into a sob, and she buried her face against his shoulder. “It’s over,” she whispered.

  Ryan held on to them and didn’t let go.

  Chapter Seventeen

  With the phone pressed to her ear, Delaney looked out the window and saw Ryan’s car making its way up the road to the estate. Her heart did a little flip-flop. Not an unusual reaction. In fact, it was becoming somewhat routine. Whenever she saw him, her heart did the flippy thing and her breath vanished for a second or two.

  Talk about a ridiculous response.

  She smiled.

  Actually, it was an incr
edible response. One that made her feel alive.

  “Delaney,” she heard her father say on the other end of the line. Not exactly a greeting, but at least he’d accepted her call. She hadn’t been sure that he would.

  “How are you, Dad?”

  “How do you think I am? I’m in this mental health prison where you had me sent.”

  “It’s not a prison. I checked it out myself, and it’s a very nice place with some of the best therapists in the state.”

  “I don’t care how nice it is—don’t expect me to forgive you for putting me here.”

  “Maybe not. But I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I didn’t get you some help. Dad, you need help.”

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds. “I suppose you’re getting on with your life now that Dr. Montgomery is out of the way?”

  He wasn’t just out of the way, he was dead. As was Dr. Keyes. According to the police, Keyes had been a hostage, and Montgomery had planned to frame him to take the blame for not only the guards’ deaths but also Patrick’s and hers. The police had even managed to find computer records to verify that Montgomery hadn’t just assisted with the cloning, he’d been the instigator so he could be a pioneer in a field he was certain would one day be legal. He’d been behind all of it. Including the attempts to kill Ryan and her.

  Montgomery had almost succeeded.

  Delaney figured she could let that haunt her for the rest of her life, or she could try to put it into perspective. For all the bad Montgomery had done, he’d also been the one responsible for Patrick’s birth, and in doing so, he had given Ryan back his son. Thankfully, he hadn’t done more than that. The police had learned that Montgomery had successfully cloned only one embryo from Adam’s DNA. One embryo, one baby. Montgomery’s other attempts to clone babies had failed. That meant someone out there wouldn’t have to go through what Ryan and she had.

  She glanced at the split-screen monitor and saw that Patrick was still taking his afternoon nap. She also took another look out the window. Ryan had just parked in the side driveway. “Yes. I’m getting on with my life.”

  “And I suppose you’re doing that with McCall?”

  Well, it’d been over two weeks since Montgomery had tried to kill them, and her father was no longer a threat to himself or others. Yet she was still at Ryan’s estate. Delaney hadn’t sat down to analyze that, but she wasn’t in a hurry to leave, and Ryan didn’t appear to be in a hurry for her to go.

  A no-pressure kind of arrangement.

  Neither of them talked about it, which, of course, created a different kind of pressure. One that had caused her a few sleepless nights. Delaney had asked herself a thousand times how he felt about her, but she hadn’t asked Ryan.

  Nor had he volunteered it.

  Pressure, indeed.

  “I’m not sure how Ryan fits into my life yet,” she admitted.

  “That’s fine and dandy,” he said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Just don’t expect me to ever like him.”

  “I don’t expect that.” But she didn’t rule it out as a possibility. Once her father was better, he might be able to see the man behind the facade.

  And there was an incredible man behind that facade.

  “By the way, McCall rescinded the buyout of my company,” he said, trying to sound grumpy. But for the first time in years, there was hope in his voice. “He gave it back to me.”

  Delaney had to speak around the lump in her throat. “Did he, now?”

  “He did. It has conditions, though. He’ll continue to manage it until I’m out of this place, which might not be for months.” He paused. “Tell him I said thanks.”

  “You can tell him yourself when you’re better.”

  “Maybe.”

  That “maybe” was a huge leap for her father. One that Delaney thought might never happen.

  She glanced out the window again, saw Ryan exit his car and immediately became alarmed when she noticed that his clothes were dirty. “Dad, I have to go. I’ll call you soon.”

  “Do that. I’d like to hear from you every now and then. If you’re not too busy.”

  That caused her to smile again, but it was short-lived when she got another look at Ryan. His clothes weren’t just dirty, they were covered with mud.

  He was covered with mud.

  She tossed aside the phone and hurried out of her suite and down the stairs. She made it to the foyer just as Ryan opened the door and stepped in. He brought in a significant amount of mud with him.

  Delaney went to him, immediately checking for injuries, but she didn’t see any. Out of relief, she kissed him, mud and all.

  “If I get a welcome like that,” he drawled, “I’ll have to get dirty more often.” He slid his arm around her waist and led her back up the stairs.

  The drawling and the smile he flashed didn’t relieve her concerns. “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “I had a crew combing the irrigation ditch with some highly sensitive metal detectors, and I decided to help them out.” He stopped, opened his hand, and in the center of his grimy palm she saw the tiny butterfly charm that she’d lost from her ring.

  Her heart and stomach did another flip-flop. “You actually found it?”

  He nodded. “I thought about buying you another one, but it wouldn’t be the same. So we’ve been sifting through pounds of mud and water since early this morning. I now totally understand the needle-in-a-haystack analogy.”

  And here she’d thought he was working at his office in San Antonio.

  It wasn’t the fact he’d found the butterfly that tugged at her heart, it was that Ryan had gone through so much trouble to search for it.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say, but it seemed inadequate.

  With his arm still around her waist, he led her to his suite. “I need a shower. Care to join me?”

  Perhaps because he thought she needed some coaxing, he planted a kiss on her cheek. Then her mouth. And he followed it up with a rather well-placed kiss to an extremely sensitive spot on her neck. In the past two weeks she’d learned that Ryan was very good at not only locating her erogenous zones, he knew what to do with them.

  “Well, Patrick should be asleep for another hour or so.” Delaney leaned into the neck kisses, leaned into him, and that unbalanced them. They practically fell through the doorway of his suite.

  Ryan saved her by taking the brunt of the impact. While they were still wrapped around each other, he turned, his back landing against the wall. In the same motion, he kicked the door shut.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he mumbled.

  It was definitely a yes, and those kisses were already causing her to burn. Delaney went after his clothes. No finesse. Since the shirt was no doubt ruined away, she jerked open the front and sent buttons and thread flying.

  Ryan didn’t bother with finesse, either. As if ravaged with need, he stripped off her clothes, lifted her and wrapped her legs around his waist. He pressed her back to the wall. He entered her slowly. Too slowly. Delaney wanted hard and fast, but he actually stopped and looked at her.

  “This is right. You know that, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes. Definitely, yes.”

  He brushed her hair away from her eyes. “I don’t just mean the sex. Don’t get me wrong—it’s great. But there’s more between us than this. Think about that for the next couple of minutes.”

  But she couldn’t think about anything except the fact Ryan was inside her and moving exactly the way she wanted him to move. It was deep. It was perfect. But then he slowed just when he had her so close to the brink she could taste it.

  “How do you feel about me?” he asked.

  Ryan started to move again, the right way. Her mind turned to mush, and she was suddenly so close again. A few more of those well-delivered strokes, and she would—

  He put his mouth next to her ear. “I love you, Delaney.”

  That did it. Her mind registered brief shock. Very brief. Then Ryan sent her spinn
ing out of control to a place where words weren’t even possible. She clung to him. He latched on to her. And they went over the edge together.

  For several long moments the only sounds were their heavy, rushed breaths. He pulled back slightly and looked at her.

  Somehow, Delaney managed to smile. “I love you, too.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Do you really?”

  “Mercy, yes.”

  “Is it because of the butterfly?”

  “No. I was in love with you before you found it. That just sealed the deal.”

  The lifted corner of his mouth turned into a smile. “This calls for a celebration.”

  She glanced down at where they were still intimately joined. “I think we just did that.”

  He eased her to a standing position. “We can do a whole lot better than that.”

  “Well, even if we can’t, it’ll be fun trying.”

  “While I admire your insatiability, I had something else in mind.” He picked up her clothes and handed them to her. “I want you to marry me.”

  “Marry you?” she repeated, her breath still choppy. If she thought the sight of him could flip-flop her heart, that was minor compared to this.

  He put his fingers to her mouth to stop her from saying more. “For the record, I’m not asking you to marry me because of Patrick, because you’re his mother and because I’m his father. That’s not the reason I fell in love with you.”

  She eased his hand away. “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s because you make me a better man. A whole man. You’ve told me a couple of times that I’ve jumped in and saved you. Well, you saved me, too, Delaney. And you didn’t just save my life. You saved me.”

  Okay, that did it. She felt the tears and couldn’t stop them. Didn’t want to stop them. Because these were tears of happiness.

  Ryan circled his arm around her waist and pulled her back to him. “So what do you say? Will you marry me?”

  He didn’t let her answer right away though. Ryan kissed her. Until she was breathless. Until Delaney could manage to say only one word. But it was the only word that mattered.

  “Yes.”