by Cindy Dees
Could it be? Was this real? Was Laura really pregnant and expecting his child?
Something cracked in his chest. It hurt, but it was a good kind of pain. Was he truly free? Was a life, a future with Laura and his children a possibility? Did he dare hope?
Hope. Now there was a concept.
A baby, huh? His and Laura’s. A little brother or sister for Adam. How he’d love to experience all of it—the morning sickness and messy delivery and midnight feedings. Another child to crawl inside his heart and hold it in his or her tiny, precious hands. Lord knew, Adam had already completely wrapped him around his little finger in the short time he’d spent with the boy. Nick said a fervent prayer every night that, even if all the rest of this was a horrible, cruel lie, God would please let Adam be real. He loved the little boy with all his heart.
And now there might be another child for him to love?
Something exploded in his gut with all the bright fury of a fireworks display, burning away everything that had gone before, cauterizing old wounds, and leaving him empty. New. Reborn.
And then he gave that something a name. Joy.
He was free. Really, truly free. The nightmare was over. He surged up out of the chair and wrapped Laura in a crushing embrace. And then, for the first time, he cried for the right reasons.
Laura didn’t know what clicked for Nick, but after she told him she was pregnant, he changed. He took new interest in food and exercise and spending time with Adam and generally engaged in life more. He got stronger, and gradually, as her belly grew, the haunted look faded from his eyes. He quit eyeing closed doors suspiciously, and the nightmares seemed to fade.
For a while there, she’d wondered if he was too far gone, if she’d be able to pull him out of the emotional abyss into which he’d fallen. But this baby seemed to have done the trick. She rubbed her rounded tummy affectionately. Things were working out better than she could ever have dreamed. Life was darned near perfect.
Nick stared at the laptop on his desk for the hundredth time. He’d been avoiding the thing for months, ever since Laura had told him she was pregnant, afraid to rock the boat of this new life. Everything was so good for him—for all of them—that he had no desire to do anything to threaten the perfection of it all.
But his curiosity had been building. Maybe it was a sign of his recovery that he was starting to feel the tug of waiting answers. What had happened during those lost years? Why the lies about his identity? Who’d had him kidnapped and thrown into a box? And why hadn’t that person or persons just killed him outright?
Certainty that he did not want to know the answers, no matter how tantalizing they might be, still raged in his gut. Whatever his former life had been, he had no pressing need to resume it. Laura was wealthy enough for them and their children to live in the lap of luxury for several lifetimes. Whoever else he’d left behind in his old life had no doubt made peace long ago with his disappearance and gotten on with their own lives. His return now could only cause disruption and chaos.
But what if his old life, his old identity, came looking for him?
Nah. Surely that had been the whole point of his kidnapping. To turn him into a ghost. Make him disappear for good. As long as he stayed a ghost, made no effort to resume his former life, there was no reason for his past to come looking for him. Right?
The key was to keep a low profile. He closed the laptop with a solid thunk. Nope. Curiosity or no curiosity, he was not going anywhere near his old life.
Chapter 2
Laura sighed. Her perfectly orchestrated schedule for the day had been blown to heck by her obstetrician running nearly two hours late. Not that she begrudged some other patient an emergency C-section. But today, of all days, she’d really needed her doctor to be on time. Because of the delay, she hadn’t had time to swing by home and drop off the baby with the nanny before this important meeting with Nick’s lawyers.
She winced at the sliding noise of her minivan’s side door. Baby Ellie, six weeks old today, was asleep inside, and Laura desperately needed her to stay that way for the next hour. She detached the baby carrier from the car seat base, threw the baby bag over her shoulder and hurried across the parking lot toward the glass and chrome high-rise housing Tatum and Associates, the law firm that would be representing Nick in the upcoming AbaCo trial.
Nick was the star witness for the prosecution. As such, Carter Tatum expected him to come under withering cross-examination by the defense lawyers representing the company’s chief of security, Hans Kurtis Schroder. He’d been accused of masterminding a kidnapping and human-trafficking ring using AbaCo ships without the company’s knowledge. Personally, Laura doubted Schroder was the top dog in the scheme. He was the sacrificial lamb to protect his bosses.
Today was a coaching session for Nick in how to act on the witness stand. It was guaranteed to be stressful. A part of her that she was trying darned hard to ignore worried that Nick wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he’d endured worse. He’d be fine, right?
She stepped out of the elevator and a receptionist ushered her to a plush conference room. Nick smiled and came over to relieve her of baby and bag. Her heart still swelled when he looked at her like that, so tall and dark and handsome. He’d filled out in the past year, lost the gaunt pallor, rebuilt the athletic physique that had first caught her attention in Paris. A shorter haircut than he’d worn then gave him a polished air that felt more Wall Street than European Bohemian. He cut a smashingly gorgeous figure. Her hands itched to get inside his shirt.
As observant as ever, his gaze went dark and smoky. “You are quite a temptation, yourself,” he murmured. “Shall we cancel this meeting and go somewhere private?”
She smiled regretfully even as she leaned toward him, pulled in by his magnetic appeal and completely uninterested in resisting it. He stepped forward and his head lowered toward hers. Her breath hitched and she was abruptly hot from head to toe.
A door burst open behind her and several people walked into the room. Nick’s gaze shifted briefly to the intruders and then, ignoring them, he completed the kiss. It was a relatively chaste thing, but her toes still curled into tight little knots of pleasure in her Jimmy Choos heels.
“Ahh. You’re here, Ms. Delaney. Good. We can get started.”
“Sorry I’m late,” she murmured. “The doctor was backed up, and I had no time to get home and back here.”
Nick cupped her elbow, escorting her to the table and holding her chair for her. “And how’s our little angel?” he asked, gazing down at his daughter fondly.
Laura’s heart swelled at the adoration in his voice. “Mother and daughter both received clean bills of health.” More precisely, daughter was over her mild jaundice, and mother was finally cleared to have sex again. The past six weeks of abstinence had been murder on her. Nick had just laughed, saying that five years locked up had taught him a great deal of patience.
“Can I get you something to drink, darling?” Nick asked. She shook her head, and his fingers brushed lightly across the back of her neck as he made his way to his own seat. She shivered from head to toe in anticipation of tonight.
Carter Tatum spoke from the end of the table. “This afternoon we’re going to try to approximate how AbaCo’s lawyers will question Nick. As unpleasant as it may be, I would remind you we’re on your side.”
Laura, a former CIA operative, had been through training at their infamous Farm, and she highly doubted a bunch of lawyers could throw anything at Nick that she hadn’t seen before.
Carter gestured and in short order a trio of lawyers was taking turns rapid-firing questions at Nick. They started with his kidnapping. The Paris police believed he’d been drugged at the Paris Opera and taken to the shipping container in which he spent the next five years. Nick denied remembering any of it. If only she’d gone to the opera with Nick that night, but her CIA partner—and ex-lover, truth be told—had been missing, and she’d been following up a lead.
The lawyers pressed N
ick about any enemies who might have paid people to ghost him, and she listened with interest. This was a subject he’d flatly refused to discuss with her. It worried her mightily that whoever’d had him kidnapped was waiting to pounce again. Again, he denied knowing anything.
The next lawyer pushed harder and Nick’s shoulders climbed defensively. When the third lawyer pressed even more aggressively for information about Nick’s past, he crossed his arms stubbornly and quit speaking altogether. Darn it. That was the same thing he did to her whenever she brought up the subject.
“Water break,” Carter announced abruptly.
Laura released the breath she’d been holding. Nick slumped in his chair, his head down. She put a supportive hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he answered roughly. But his arm trembled beneath her palm, and his jaw clenched so hard he looked about ready to crack a molar.
She suggested gently, “Let’s call this for today. We’ll come back another time when you’re feeling better—”
“We finish it now,” he snapped uncharacteristically.
She drew back, startled. Nothing ever flustered Nick. He was always the soul of gentlemanly composure.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I have no past. It’s over and gone. My life started anew when you rescued me. This is who I am now. You are my life. You and the kids.”
She appreciated the sentiment, but he was going to have to face his past eventually. The psychiatrists had told her repeatedly not to push him, to let him investigate his previous life at his own speed. But it had about killed her to contain her curious nature for so long.
The lawyers’ badgering resumed, continuing until Nick finally declared, “Gentlemen, this line of questioning is over. My past is not relevant to the fact that I spent five years in an AbaCo box on an AbaCo ship at the hands of kidnappers in the employ of AbaCo.”
Laura stared. It was the first time he’d shown even a flash of the decisive streak he’d had in abundance in Paris.
Carter replied mildly, “AbaCo’s lawyers will, without question, go on a fishing expedition into your past in hopes of finding something they can make seem relevant.”
Nick scowled. “As far as I know, I never had anything to do with AbaCo before I wound up on that damned ship.”
The lawyer sighed. “President Nixon’s lawyers had the eighteen-minute gap to explain. We’ve got your five-year blackout to overcome. Have your doctors said anything more about the chances of you regaining some portion of your memory?”
Nick shrugged. “They think everything’s gone for good. I remember Laura’s face, and that’s it.”
“Can’t you remember something from before your memory loss to give you a clue about who you are and what you do?”
“I know who I am and what I do. I’m Nick Cass, and I spend every waking moment enjoying my family.”
The lawyer looked regretful, but said firmly, “You’re going to be under oath at the trial, and I guarantee they’ll ask you for explicit details of your past. If you won’t talk, they’ll have investigators dig up everything they can find.”
Laura observed closely as Nick’s gaze went hard. Closed. He’d never talked with her about his past in Paris before he disappeared, either. What was the big secret? She’d lay odds he wasn’t a criminal. She’d worked with plenty of them over the years, and he just didn’t have the right personality for it. He was too honorable, too concerned about doing the right thing.
The lawyers started up again, asking about Nick’s connection to AbaCo. He stuck firmly to his story that he’d never had any dealings with AbaCo that he was aware of, and knew of nothing that would’ve provoked the shipping giant to kidnap him of its own volition. Nick maintained steadfastly that his had to have been strictly a kidnapping for hire.
Frankly, she agreed with him. Laura tapped a pencil idly on the pad of paper before her. With first his long months of physical and emotional recovery and then the new baby coming, she’d been distracted enough this past year to abide by his wishes to leave his past alone. But she felt an investigation coming on.
Somebody’d messed with the father of her children, and that meant they’d messed with her. Furthermore, that person or persons might still pose a threat to her man. She smiled wryly. Her mama bear within was in full force these days. Must be the baby hormones raging.
She listened with a mixture of anger and sadness as Nick tonelessly described his incarceration. The psychologists said he had completely disassociated himself from his imprisonment and would have to make peace with it in his own time. For now, though, he held the emotions at arm’s length.
The lawyers moved on to the night of Nick’s rescue. He didn’t have a lot to say about it other than his door opened and a man named Jagger Holtz let him out, and Holtz and Laura led him to safety.
The lawyers left alone the events to follow Nick’s rescue—his weeks in a hospital recovering from various illnesses and malnutrition, his paranoia, the long silences, his difficulties with crowds and open spaces. None of that would help AbaCo’s case, apparently.
Then the lawyers attacked the veracity of Nick’s whole story, claiming it was entirely too far-fetched to be true, doing their damnedest to trip him up or get him to contradict himself. The only evidence he had of this supposed capture of his was a grainy video that could just as easily have been faked, and they demanded to know why he had it in for AbaCo.
She was ready to explode herself by the time Nick surged up out of his chair. “Why do I have to withstand this sort of character assassination? I’m the victim here! And now you make me a victim a second time!”
Carter nodded soberly. “You are correct. It’s the nature of our legal system that the victim often endures outright assault in the courtroom. That’s what we’re here to prepare you to face.”
Nick shoved a hand through his hair. “Why exactly do I have to testify?”
“Because AbaCo will try to convince the jury that the video is faked. The government has to have your direct testimony that the events on the tape are real.”
“Other people were there that night. Why not put my rescuers on the stand?” He sent Laura a quick, apologetic look, no doubt at the notion of dumping this mess into her lap. Not that she minded. She’d love to say a thing or two about AbaCo to a jury.
Carter grinned. “AbaCo won’t touch Laura with a ten-foot pole. She’s a former government agent, which gives her credibility, and they bloody well don’t want to give her a chance to vent her righteous fury in front of a jury…. The mother of your child alone and frantic for years? Oh, no. Way too damaging a story for AbaCo.”
He omitted the part where the government prosecutors wouldn’t put her on the stand because she’d illegally obtained most of the information that led to Nick’s rescue. They’d rather not open up that can of worms for AbaCo to pry into.
After his outburst, Nick settled into stoic silence, refusing to respond to any of the leading and obnoxious questions the lawyers threw at him. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t shake him. Laura was proud of him, but she didn’t like the way he was hunching into his chair, physically withdrawing into himself. He was approaching overload but too macho to admit it.
Thankfully, Ellie woke up and gave Nick the excuse he clearly needed to call a halt for the day. Laura gathered up their fussing daughter apologetically and adjourned to the minivan to nurse and change her.
Nick came outside a few minutes later and stopped by the van to tell her to drive carefully. With troubled eyes, she watched him guide his sporty BMW out of the parking lot. A worrisome, brittle quality clung to him.
Ahh, well. She would make that all go away tonight. The nanny had instructions to entertain the kids for the evening, leaving her and Nick to enjoy a romantic dinner by themselves in the master suite. Smiling, she turned out of the parking lot and pointed the minivan south toward the rolling hills of Virginia’s horse country and home.
Nick drove like a man possessed. Heck, maybe he wa
s possessed. What madness was this to subject himself to cross-examination under oath with as many secrets as he clearly had to hide?
If Laura ever found out he wasn’t who he said he was…
She couldn’t find out. Period. He had too good a thing going, they had too good a thing going, to let anyone mess it up. As appealing as revenge against the bastards who’d held him captive might be, it was a no-brainer that his family came first. He’d made that choice months ago, and he’d had no reason to regret it since.
Someone honked at him. He jerked his attention back to the highway and the traffic streaming along it. He could do this. He could hold himself and his life together. One day at time. One hour or one minute at a time if that’s what it took. The only honest and good things in his life were Laura and the kids. He wasn’t about to lose them.
As the city turned into suburbs and the suburbs into open countryside, his jumpiness increased. After all that time in a shipping container, he’d have thought he would love nothing more than big, blue skies and broad horizons stretching away into infinity. But it turned out the exact opposite was the case. He’d become so used to living in a tiny, mostly dark space that anything else seemed strange and scary.
The panic attack started with sweaty palms and clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles hurt. Then his forehead broke out in a sweat, and an urge to crawl under a blanket in the backseat nearly overcame him.
As Laura’s estate came into view, he stopped the car and parked by the side of the road. He had to pull himself together before he got home and scared her or the kids. He hyperventilated until he saw spots before he managed to slow his breathing. He concentrated on Adam’s laughter, on Ellie’s tiny perfection, on Laura’s warm brown eyes looking at him with such love it made his heart hurt.
Gradually, his pulse slowed. He mopped his forehead dry. There wasn’t anything he could do about his sweat-soaked shirt, but hopefully Laura would put it down to the grilling earlier from the lawyers. Relishing the car’s smooth purr, he put it into gear.