Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Darcy considered lying for a split second, but dismissed the thought. He would find out soon enough. “My leg,” she admitted. “He kicked me pretty good.”

  Ridge made a low sound in the back of his throat and pressed his lips together. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” she assured him. “Just stay put and I’ll get us some ice packs.”

  Ridge opened his mouth as if to protest, but Darcy pushed herself off the couch before he could stop her. “I’ll be right back.”

  It took her a few minutes to find what she needed in his kitchen, but she managed quickly enough. When she came back out into the den, Ridge was focused on Penny, gently stroking her side and talking to her in a low voice. The dog lifted her head and placed it in his lap, then leaned her body against his legs with a sigh of contentment.

  Ridge continued to pet her, and Penny cocked one ear to listen to his words. She heard only snatches of the conversation, but Ridge was clearly praising the dog for her good work. It was well deserved. The dog had been a lifesaver—the only reason the baby was still with them was because Penny had kept the intruder occupied until Ridge had arrived. If it were up to her, Darcy would buy the dog a whole truckload of chew toys as a reward.

  She hung back, watching the pair of them. It was a sweet moment, one she didn’t want to interrupt. But her lower leg was beginning to protest and she wanted to get the makeshift ice pack on Ridge’s head to keep the swelling down.

  “Is she all right?” Darcy nodded at Penny as she handed Ridge the package of frozen corn wrapped in a towel. “She took a hit to the shoulder when she was protecting us.”

  “Which one?” Ridge asked, casting a concerned glance down.

  “Her left side.”

  Without another word, Ridge took the package from his head and pressed it to Penny’s shoulder. Darcy didn’t bother to protest, knowing no matter what she said he would put the welfare of his dog above his own.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were said so softly that at first, Darcy wasn’t sure she’d really heard them. But then Ridge turned to look at her, his dark eyes troubled. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get back.”

  She shook her head. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I know he was wearing a mask, but did it slip at any point so you could see his face?”

  “No. And I didn’t recognize his voice, either.” But that was no surprise. Darcy hadn’t been back in town very long, and the number of people she could identify by voice alone was in the single digits. “You might know him, though,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He didn’t speak after you came on the scene. He only talked when it was just the two of us.”

  Ridge lifted one eyebrow, considering. “Did he say anything that could help identify him?” When she shook her head, he frowned. “But who would want to take the baby? More importantly, who knows she’s here with me? The only people I told are you, Sam and Annabel. Unless you think it’s someone from the hospital?” He let the question trail off suggestively, but Darcy shook her head.

  “No. I would recognize someone from the hospital. And I can’t imagine anyone working there has a motive to kidnap an abandoned infant.”

  “I agree,” he said. “Which means whoever that guy was, he must somehow be connected to the mother. Or the serial killer,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  A chill skittered down Darcy’s spine, and goose bumps broke out on her arms. “If the Alphabet Killer really is after this baby, then you can’t stay here. You need to take the baby and go someplace safe. Can you stay with one of your siblings? Or maybe a hotel?”

  “Maybe,” Ridge said thoughtfully. “And the same goes for you—now that he’s seen you, he’ll know you’re connected to us. We need to get you away from here, the sooner the better.” He passed the baby to her and stood, then began to gather up the supplies she’d brought earlier.

  It took him only a few minutes to pack up the essentials. “Do you have someplace safe to go?” he asked.

  “I’m staying with my parents. I should be fine there—they have a pretty extensive alarm system.”

  Ridge frowned slightly but didn’t argue with her. “Sounds good. Make sure you call the police if you notice anything suspicious.”

  “Where are you going?” She handed the baby back to him, and he buckled the infant into her car seat.

  “I think we’ll find a motel for the night,” he said, straightening up. “If that man decides to follow us, I don’t want to put any of my siblings in danger.”

  “But what about you?” Didn’t he understand that going off on his own left him unprotected? “You’re injured—you won’t be able to fight him off on your own if he does come back.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ridge replied drily.

  “This is no time to let your ego get in the way of a good decision,” Darcy said.

  Ridge shot her a wry half smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something. Now, let’s get you on your way.”

  He made a gesture with his hand and Penny hopped up, ever alert to her master’s signals. “Let’s go, ladies.”

  Darcy had no choice but to follow Ridge over to the door, but she was reluctant to part ways with him. Taking care of a baby was hard enough. Factor in a blow to the head and a crazy intruder and the task became almost impossible. Still, they couldn’t stay at his cabin—there was no telling when the man would strike again.

  Ridge opened the door just as a flash of lightning lit the sky. He stopped dead in his tracks, then let out a string of curses that turned the air blue.

  “What is it?” She strained to see around him, but his broad shoulders completely filled her field of view. “What’s wrong?”

  “The road is washed out.”

  Darcy’s heart sank and she pushed ahead of him, needing to see for herself. She stared dumbly at the river of mud that filled Ridge’s yard, hardly daring to believe it. “We’re trapped here.”

  She felt the breath of his sigh hit the back of her neck. “Looks that way.”

  “But that means—” She turned to face him, her heart starting to pound in her chest.

  Ridge nodded, his expression grim. “The intruder is still around, too.”

  * * *

  Ridge handed Darcy a steaming mug of tea and sank down next to her on the couch. “You doing okay?”

  She didn’t respond right away, and for a second, Ridge wondered if she’d heard him. Then she nodded, the movement a little jerky. “Yeah. I’m just...processing.”

  “It’s been a hell of a night.” He glanced over at Sara, who was now sleeping soundly. As far as he was concerned, Darcy was a miracle worker. She had fed the little one and then wrapped her up tight in a blanket—swaddling, she’d called it—and now the baby slept peacefully in the makeshift crib he’d assembled earlier.

  “You should try to sleep,” he said, noting the lines of fatigue around Darcy’s eyes and lips. “I have a guest bedroom where you’ll be comfortable.”

  She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “There’s no way I can sleep after what happened tonight.”

  “He’s not coming back,” Ridge said, injecting a confidence he didn’t feel into his voice. He had called Sam again after refortifying his cabin, but due to the weather the police couldn’t get close enough to his cabin to respond. All he could do was stay on guard and hope the intruder had been swept away by the storm’s floodwater.

  But he didn’t want Darcy to know his suspicions. Better for her to think the threat was gone so she could get some rest. In all likelihood, the man wasn’t coming back—he’d already failed once, and now that they knew he was out there, they were ready for him to try again. Besides, with the weather being so bad, even if he was able to take little Sara, whe
re could he go? No, he was probably off licking his wounds and planning another attempt.

  Darcy took a sip of tea and made a face. “Too strong?” he asked. “I can water it down some if you like.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. She leaned forward to set the cup on the coffee table and he noticed her hand was shaking. “I’m just not as thirsty as I thought.”

  Ridge put a hand on her leg and felt the fine tremors running through her muscles. “Hey,” he said softly. “You’re safe now. I won’t let him hurt you or the baby.”

  She nodded, blinking hard. “I know that. I just can’t stop reliving the moment when he came in.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “He just opened the door and walked in like he owned the place. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “That’s my fault,” Ridge said. “I forgot to lock the door after I let you inside.”

  “Yeah, well. It’s not like you were expecting him,” Darcy replied. “I just hope he doesn’t come back.” She shivered, and Ridge put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in, tucking her next to his side. She snuggled close and laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh.

  His heart tightened as he breathed in Darcy’s familiar smell. He couldn’t believe that after ten years, she still smelled the same—a potent combination of coconut shampoo and a soft, underlying sweetness that was all Darcy. How many times had he held her like this, while they snuggled together on the couch or went out to a movie? He couldn’t put a number to it, and even though it had been so long, his body remembered exactly where to put his hand and how to angle his shoulder so she fit perfectly against him.

  “It took years off my life, seeing him looming over you like that,” Ridge confessed, his hand automatically running up and down her arm in the casual caress he’d so often enjoyed when they had been together. He clenched his jaw at the memory of Darcy, on the ground and defenseless, while that stranger prepared to hit her again.

  In the past, Ridge had heard people talk about “seeing red” when they got angry. It was something he’d never really understood, but in that moment, seeing Darcy at the mercy of another man, Ridge’s vision had gone crimson and a burst of adrenaline had surged through his system. It was a heady, powerful sensation, and he’d felt as if he could have picked up the whole house and thrown it into the woods with no effort.

  Instead, he’d settled for tackling the man in a move that would have made a linebacker proud. And while it had been satisfying to feel the give of the man’s flesh beneath his fists, it would have been even better to interrogate him and get some answers. Why was he after Sara? What could he want with a helpless infant?

  “If it makes you feel any better, I felt the same way when he hit you with the bowl,” Darcy said, pulling him out of his thoughts. She reached up to touch the sore spot on the side of his head with gentle fingers. “I’m so glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

  “Sam’s always telling me I have a hard head,” he joked.

  “Yeah, well. A few inches over and he would have taken out your eye.” She shuddered and he gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  “But he didn’t,” he said softly. “So stop thinking about it.”

  “I want to,” she said. “But I just can’t. It’s playing on repeat in my head, like a bad dream I can’t escape.” The distress in her voice was plain, and Penny lifted her head and let out a soft, inquisitive whine.

  “It’s okay,” he said, to both girls. Penny laid her head back down on her paws, and he felt Darcy smile against his arm.

  “You keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it so.”

  Ridge was quiet for a moment, trying to come up with something comforting to say, something that would ease her mind and distract her from her bad memories. But the magic words wouldn’t come.

  “I keep saying it because eventually, it will be true,” he confessed. “It’s the only thing I know to do.”

  She pulled back to look up at him, her dark brown eyes wide and luminous. “Fake it until you make it?”

  He nodded soberly. “Something like that.”

  The corner of her mouth curved up. “That’s not a bad philosophy. It’s certainly worked for you so far.”

  Ridge got a queer feeling in his stomach, a sensation his grandma would have described as a goose walking over his grave. “What do you mean?”

  Darcy laid her head back on his shoulder. “You’ve always been that way, Ridge. Pretending like things were okay even when they weren’t. When we first started dating I thought you were just in denial, but after I got to know you better, I realized it’s how you cope.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t know what else to say. Her comments made him feel naked and exposed, as if she’d stripped him bare and was judging him. Now that she pointed it out, Ridge realized he did always strive to act as though things were normal. It probably stemmed from his family situation—having a dad for a serial killer had marked him, just as if he’d been forced to wear a scarlet A on his chest. Growing up had been hell, first with the murder of his mother at the hands of his father and then being put in the foster system, torn away from his siblings. And forget about friends—the other kids had avoided him or taunted him, but no one had ever wanted to be friends with him. Looking back, he couldn’t blame them. He was a freak by virtue of his dad, and what parent would want their child associating with the offspring of a madman? Still, it had been a lonely childhood and the only way Ridge had gotten through it relatively unscathed was to pretend as if everything was just as it should be. Even at a young age, Ridge had realized that to acknowledge the unfairness of it all was to surrender to a lifetime of anger and bitterness. Those emotions had ruled his father. He wasn’t going to let history repeat itself.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” Darcy asked. “You got quiet on me.”

  “Sorry. Just...processing,” he said, echoing her earlier words.

  “There’s a lot of that going around tonight.”

  “Probably because of the weather,” Ridge said, trying to keep his tone light. “Rain tends to make people reflective, likely because they’re stuck inside with nothing to do.”

  “Most people watch TV,” she said, a teasing note to her voice. “But I notice you don’t have one.”

  He shook his head, the stubble on his chin rasping against her hair. “Never did like it.”

  “I remember.”

  They were silent for a moment, the rain hitting the roof and Penny’s light snores the only sounds in the cabin.

  “Were you scared?” She spoke quietly, giving him the option to pretend he hadn’t heard the question.

  “I was, afterward,” he admitted. “But in the moment, when I rushed in and saw what was going on, I was more angry than anything else. And that scared me.”

  Darcy leaned back to meet his eyes. “You are not your father,” she said firmly, correctly guessing what was really on his mind.

  The fact that she could still read him after all these years should have bothered him. But it felt nice to be with someone who seemed to truly get him, someone who understood what he was feeling and didn’t make him explain everything.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” he remarked, turning away from her knowing gaze. “But when I had that man pinned under me, I wanted so badly to hurt him. To make him pay for what he’d done, even though at the time I didn’t know how badly he’d hurt you.” He shook his head. “If that’s not my father coming out, I don’t know what is.”

  “Hey.” When he didn’t look at her, she said it again, this time more forcefully. She waited until he turned back. “I won’t pretend to understand what makes your father tick. But I can tell you that your anger and aggression only emerges when you’re defending yourself or others. That’s normal and healthy. You can’t beat yourself up for the way you feel when you’re protecting what’s yours.” He opened his mouth to a
rgue but she pressed on, cutting him off. “And the other reason I know you’re not your father is because you didn’t go too far. Matthew Colton would have killed that man without another thought. But you didn’t. You had every excuse to do real harm, but you held back. That’s because it’s not in your nature to hurt others, Ridge.” She reached up to cup the side of his face, her touch soft and warm against his skin. “You have a good heart. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  Ridge blinked hard, touched by her words. Did she really see him that way? It was difficult for him to accept she was telling the truth. Especially considering the way things had ended between them. She said he had a good heart, but she had also believed he’d stolen her father’s watch. How did she reconcile her lack of trust in him then with her words now?

  “I wish I could believe you,” he said. He didn’t want to dredge up the old argument, so he settled for leaning his head back against the couch cushion and staring up at the ceiling.

  “Oh, Ridge,” she sighed, sounding disappointed. She shifted against him, and before he realized what was happening, Darcy climbed into his lap and pressed her lips against his.

  He sucked in a breath, the contact making his head spin. His body reacted instantly, rejoicing in the feel of her against him, the familiar weight of her in his arms. Her mouth was warm and inviting, and kissing her felt like coming home.

  He reached up to thread his hands through her hair, the strands sliding across his skin like silk. She let out a little sigh and shifted closer, pressing against his chest and gripping his shoulders. There was a small sting as her fingernails bit into his flesh, but he didn’t mind. The minor pain only highlighted the pleasure of having her back where she belonged.

  The kiss started out slow and gentle but quickly morphed into something hotter as his hands became reacquainted with the lines and planes of Darcy’s body. He had the oddest sense of déjà vu as he skimmed his fingertips over her slender frame. It was the same as it had always been, yet different. Her curves had matured into those of a woman—just that little bit softer, more pronounced. He marveled at the changes, wanting to take the time to fully explore and savor them. He needed to get to know this new version of Darcy. Was the inside of her wrist still sensitive? Did that spot on the back of her neck still made her knees go weak? These were the questions he desperately needed to answer.