“You remember that?” Duggan asked.
“No,” Willa reluctantly admitted. “But I haven’t had any short-term memory problems for the last two months. I remember everything that’s happened during that time, and I remember all the notes I’ve read about the incident.”
And that was the truth. Almost.
“We’re not sure who tried to get into the safe house,” the lieutenant admitted, “but it’s still under investigation.”
“Well, the investigation can continue without my help.” She looked at Brandon who was staring at her. “You said you have proof that you’re my ex-boyfriend?”
He nodded and shifted his head against the wind when another cold gust slammed into them. “Can we come in, and I’ll show you?”
“You can show me what you have from out there. And you’d better have more than a going-steady ring or a picture from our high school prom.”
Even though there was something that made her want to trust, and believe, the man. Willa groaned. Hadn’t the last four months taught her anything?
Brandon mumbled something she didn’t catch, and he reached into his pocket, prompting her to bring up her gun. Lieutenant Duggan’s hand went to the butt of his own weapon that was tucked in a shoulder holster inside his jacket.
Brandon held up his hands in a calm-down gesture. “I’m not going for a gun.”
But he had one. Willa saw it then. It was in a cowboy-style waist holster that rested low on his hips.
She also spotted the badge clipped to his holster, and she backed up a step.
“You’re a cop?” she accused.
Brandon nodded. “Not SAPD though. I’m the sheriff of a small town, Crockett Creek. It’s about a half hour from San Antonio.”
He was still a lawman. The very people her notes warned her not to trust.
“You didn’t remember that Brandon Ruiz is a sheriff?” Lieutenant Duggan asked.
“No,” she snapped. “And I think there’s a reason for that. You’re trying to trick me. You figured if you could convince me that this man, this stranger, is my ex-boyfriend that I would let you in so you could talk me into doing whatever it is that brought you here.”
Duggan and Brandon exchanged glances, and it was Brandon who continued. “It’s true. We do have things to tell you. Things that could affect your safety—and the baby’s.” He paused, his gaze heading back in that direction again.
He swallowed hard. And looked away.
So, he couldn’t even look her in the eye. Or the belly. He was lying.
“Get off my porch,” Willa demanded. “And stay away from me.”
“I can’t,” Brandon said. “I have the proof you want.” He took a piece of paper from his pocket.
Willa already had her hand on the door, ready to slam it shut, but that stopped her. “What is that?”
“It’s a medical report.” Brandon took his time continuing that explanation. “You had an amniocentesis done after the hostage incident.”
She had. There were notes about it on her computer. The doctors had been concerned that her injury might have affected the baby, so she’d had the test done to examine the amniotic fluid to make sure all was well.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Willa asked.
Brandon’s mouth tightened a little. “We, uh, were able to compare the baby’s DNA we got from the amniocentesis results that were on file at the hospital.”
Now it was Willa who held up her hand. “Wait just a darn minute. Why were you comparing DNA? I had artificial insemination, and I used an anonymous donor.”
“No,” Lieutenant Duggan disagreed.
And that one-word denial was all he said for several heart-stopping moments.
“We had the nurse tell you that,” the lieutenant explained, “because you were so upset—you were hysterical. The doctors couldn’t sedate you because you were in the first trimester of your pregnancy, and they thought you might lose the baby if we couldn’t calm you down.”
“So, they lied,” Brandon added.
Willa moved her hand to her heart to try to steady it. “Lied about what exactly?”
Brandon’s gaze came to hers. “There was no artificial insemination, Willa. And that baby you’re carrying is mine.”
Chapter Two
Brandon waited for Willa Marks to grasp what he’d just told her.
It didn’t take long. Within seconds, her eyes widened. She went pale, and she inched back farther away from the screen door, no doubt to put some distance between her and them.
She stood there, looking scared, lost and vulnerable in her maternity jeans and dove-gray sweater that seemed to swallow her. She was petite, barely five-three. Hardly big enough to be fighting off bad guys, but she’d had to do too much of that in the past four months.
From the corner of his eye, Brandon saw the lieutenant make another sweeping glance around the yard and street. Brandon did the same. Because it might not be safe for Willa or for them to be standing out here in the open like this.
“You’re my baby’s father?” Willa questioned. Despite her obvious surprise, there was still a Texas-size dose of suspicion in her expression and her tone.
Her memory might not be in full working gear, but her instincts sure were.
She had a reason to be suspicious.
But Brandon didn’t want her suspicions to get her and the baby killed.
“We need to come in,” Brandon insisted, and he tried not to make it sound like a question.
He immediately saw the debate in her wide blue eyes. She volleyed glances between Bo Duggan and him before she mumbled something under her breath. She went to the screen door, unlocked it and then stepped back.
She held on to the gun, and Brandon hoped like the devil that he didn’t have to wrestle it away from her.
Brandon walked in first, and Bo was right behind him. Bo closed the door, and Brandon immediately felt the warmth from the central heating. But not from their guest.
Willa was glaring at them.
He glanced around. Old habits. He’d been a peace officer for eight years. That was eight years too long to let down his guard. Willa had given no indication that someone was inside holding her hostage, but he needed to make sure that wasn’t the case.
The place was small so he didn’t have to look too far to take it all in. They were in a living-dining combination area, and there was a modest kitchen through the double doorway near the dining table. In the center of the table was a potted plant that had been decorated with tiny foil Christmas ornaments. No wrapped gifts, and judging from Willa’s situation, there probably wouldn’t be any.
On the other side of the house, he could see directly into the two bedrooms and the bathroom, with all the doors wide open. Apparently, Willa was trying to minimize the chance that anyone could sneak in through one of the windows without her hearing them.
The place was neat as a pin except for the yellow sticky notes all over the walls and surfaces of the furniture. He spotted one on the hardwood floor and reached down to pick it up.
“Don’t trust the cops,” he read and passed it to Bo.
Bo glanced at it as well and then looked at her. “I thought you weren’t having any more short-term memory loss.”
“I’m not. The notes are leftovers from a time when I was having problems. I just haven’t gotten around to removing them.” Her chin came up, causing her long blondish-brown ponytail to swish. It brushed against her shoulder and settled on the top of her left breast.
Brandon quickly got his attention off that.
Should he go to her, he wondered? Should he try to hug or kiss her? That was something Bo and he hadn’t discussed on the ride over, but Brandon wished they had. He knew what he had to say to Willa, what he had to do about her safety situation, but he hadn’t given much thought to the personal aspect of this.
Willa held out her hand. “Let me see that DNA report,” she insisted.
Brandon walked closer, halving the distance between them an
d gave it to her.
He watched her read through the report, and with each line her gaze skirted across, her forehead bunched up even more.
“It could be a lie,” she concluded, handing it back to him.
“Why would we lie about that?” Bo questioned.
Willa opened her mouth. Then, closed it. She shook her head. “I don’t know, but you just admitted you lied four months ago when you had a nurse tell me I was artificially inseminated.”
“We did that only because we didn’t want you to lose the baby. It worked,” Bo insisted. “You settled down, quit asking for Brandon, and you started to heal.”
“I asked for him?” She immediately wanted to know.
Brandon let Bo answer. “You did. You wanted to see him because he’s your baby’s father.”
Her accusing gaze came back to Brandon. “Then why weren’t you there at the hospital that day, when I was scheduled for my first ultrasound along with some other lab tests?”
“I didn’t know about it,” Brandon answered.
“SAPD thinks the ultrasound and lab tests were a ploy to get to you the hospital that afternoon because the appointment wasn’t on the schedule,” Bo explained. “We believe the gunmen called you with the bogus appointments because they’d researched the records of several of the pregnant women, and they knew you were a whiz with computers. They thought you could help them access some files.”
“I know all of that,” she snapped. “It’s in my notes.” She pointed to Brandon. “That doesn’t explain why you weren’t there.”
Brandon lifted his shoulder, trying to shrug. “We’d had an argument about a month earlier, and you told me to get out, that it was over between us. I was out of the state at the time, and I didn’t know you’d been taken hostage until two days after it ended. By then, you were in protective custody at a secret location.”
“He asked for your location,” Bo continued. “But there had already been an attempt on your life, and we thought it best if no one knew where you were.”
And then there had been another breach of security. Another intruder. That had caused Willa to go on the run, leaving the safe house and not telling anyone where she was. It’d taken SAPD all this time to find her.
Without moving her gaze from Brandon’s, she walked closer, her steps slow and deliberate. Until she was very close. So close he could take in her scent. There was some kind of floral fragrance in her hair. Roses, maybe.
She reached out and caught onto his arm. Brandon wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but he didn’t think she was about to launch herself against him for a welcome-home kiss.
No. Her suspicions were getting stronger.
She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. On the baby.
Brandon pulled in his breath before he could stop himself, but he did manage to hold his ground and not move away. He also kept eye contact with her, which was probably stupid.
Willa didn’t say a word. She just stared at him.
The moments crawled by and because Brandon didn’t know what the hell else to do he just stood there.
“Let me guess,” Willa said, her words as slow and deliberate as her steps had been. “We argued about the baby. That’s why we broke up. Because you weren’t ready to be a father.”
Brandon settled for a nod.
“What was I to you—your one-night stand?” she asked. No more of that slow and deliberate tone. She was riled now.
“No,” he answered truthfully. “Willa, you weren’t a one-night stand.”
She studied his eyes. Then she studied him. Her gaze eased down the length of his body. Back up. And then she groaned, turned and sank down on the sofa. She put the gun on the coffee table, something that probably pleased Bo as much as it did him.
They’d made it past step one.
But they had a hell of a long way to go.
“I’ll give you two some time alone,” Bo said, hitching his thumb to the door. “I’ll be in the car. But just don’t take too long.”
And Brandon knew why. This was not going to be a lengthy romantic welcome-home chat. They were in a hurry.
Bo opened the door, and the wind cut through the room again. The notes on the walls stirred, and two of them went flying through the air. One of them landed near Brandon’s boots.
“Take prenatal vitamins,” he read aloud and handed her the note. He eased down into the chair across from her. “Just how bad is your memory?”
“Just how much didn’t you want this baby?” Willa countered.
So, her memory wasn’t up for discussion. He wished she’d taken the baby talk off the table as well.
Brandon knew they had to discuss it, eventually. That was all part of the plan, but he hadn’t counted on having the emotional reaction of touching Willa. And he sure as hell hadn’t counted on this gut need to protect her. He’d planned on doing what SAPD wanted and then walking away.
Especially walking away.
He was good at that.
But he’d been in the room with Willa for less than fifteen minutes, and he was already having doubts about this plan. She deserved the truth.
The whole truth about why he was there.
“Tell me who you are,” she insisted. “Not just your name. I want to know who you really are.”
Brandon nodded and gathered his thoughts. “My full name is Brandon Michael Ruiz. Like you, I was born in San Antonio. I’m thirty-six. Never been married. I spent some time in the army before I came back to Texas and made it my home again.”
She motioned for him to continue.
“I’ve been sheriff of Crockett Creek for eight years.”
“And your bloodline?”
“My dad was—is,” he corrected, “Comanche. My mother was part Irish, part Italian, part German. Guess that makes me a real American, huh?”
Willa ignored his attempt to lighten up the conversation. “How did we meet?”
Thankfully, he didn’t have to pause to collect his thoughts. “At a restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. The place was crowded, and we shared a table.”
She stared at him again. “I think you’re probably lying about that. I don’t know why.” She waved him off before he could try to convince her otherwise. “It doesn’t matter. It’s obvious you don’t want to be here so that means the lieutenant brought you to convince me to do something.”
Well, he hadn’t expected her to give him that kind of opening.
“But first, you’re supposed to regain my trust,” she continued. “And SAPD’s theory is the reason I’ll trust you again is that we have a child in common.” She moved closer to the edge of the sofa. “But you and I both know how things really are, don’t we, Brandon?”
Yeah, he thought, maybe they did, so Brandon stuck with the truth. “I gave up the idea of being a father not long after I got out of the military. Let’s just say I didn’t think my gene pool was worth passing along to an innocent baby.”
She made a sound to indicate she was thinking about that. And he could see the doubt creep back into her eyes. “That probably has something to do with the was versus the is when you described your father’s bloodline, but I don’t believe you want to share that secret with me so I won’t push.”
Surprised, Brandon angled his head to the side and studied her. “Have you been taking deception-training classes since you’ve been in hiding?”
The corner of her mouth lifted, but the smile didn’t make it to her eyes. “When I couldn’t remember anything for more than ten minutes, I started relying on other things. Eye contact. Facial signals. My gut instincts,” she added in a mumble.
Brandon tried his hand at it. “The way you said the last part—my gut instincts—does that mean you don’t like what your gut instincts are telling you about me?”
Her glare returned. “Stand up,” she said abruptly.
“Excuse me?”
“Stand up. Please.” That last word was clearly an afterthought.
Brandon did stand, all
the while wondering where this would lead. And Willa stood up as well. She went to him, hesitating just a second, before she reached up and caught on to the back of his neck. She pulled him down and touched her mouth to his.
It was a peck, hardly qualifying as a kiss, but it lit a very bad fire inside him that shouldn’t be lit. A fire below the belt.
She pulled back and drew her tongue over her bottom lip. Yet something to stoke that blaze that he had to put out.
“Yes,” she said, “I think I remember kissing you.” Willa shook her head, stared up at him.
Brandon decided to do something to convince her to reconsider that I think part. His hand went to her back, and he hauled her to him.
And he kissed her.
Yeah, it was probably stupid, but he didn’t keep it a peck or at some wimp level to be merely a test. No. He wanted this to be a kiss she’d remember. So, he pressed his lips against hers, moving over her mouth. Taking in her taste, along with that incredible scent. He got an even better sample of her when his tongue touched hers.
She jerked away from him and stepped back. Way back. Her breath was gusting now. Brandon realized his was, too. And she propped her hands on her hips and stared at him.
“I’m attracted to you,” she said in the same tone as if confessing to premeditated murder.
The woman certainly knew how to keep him on his toes. “I’m attracted to you,” he echoed.
Her stare turned to another glare. “I hate that I just told you that because it gives you leverage over me. But don’t be fooled.” Willa walked to the foyer table and grabbed her PDA. “I will never put anything I feel for you over the safety of my baby. That means I’m not going to let you talk me into doing anything I could regret.”
Oh, man. Since they kept going back to that, Brandon figured it was time to move on to step two.
At least step two didn’t involve kissing her.
“The baby is my priority, too,” he clarified. “Yeah, I know. I said I’d dismissed fatherhood, but now that I know a baby’s on the way—”
“It’s a girl,” Willa interrupted. “I’m having a daughter.”
It took everything inside him not to react. He nodded. “A daughter,” he repeated.
Savior in the Saddle Page 2