It wasn’t exactly a friendly greeting.
The trek to his rural Crockett Creek house hadn’t been a friendly one, either. It’d taken them more than an hour to get far enough away from the hotel and to a pay phone he thought might be safe to use. He’d called one of his deputies, Pete Sanchez, a fiftysomething-year-old man who had arrived to pick them up in San Antonio, so he could then drive them out to Brandon’s place.
The drive had been long and tedious. Along with bathroom stops to accommodate Willa and the round about route the deputy had used to get them to the small Texas town, the trip was more than three hours. Willa was beyond exhausted, and that was probably a good thing because the exhaustion numbed some of the fear.
Temporarily, anyway.
The fear returned when she studied the house itself. Despite the barking dogs, it wasn’t a fortress, that’s for sure. It looked more like, well, a home.
Deputy Sanchez pulled to a stop in front of the porch and steps.
“Are you sure we’ll be safe here?” Willa asked, eyeing the cottage-style house.
With the iron-gray sky and the icy drizzle spitting at them, the house was the only spot of color in the winter landscape. It was a cheery shade of yellow and had dark green shutters and door. There were even flower boxes anchored beneath the windows. It wasn’t what she expected from a dark and brooding small-town Texas sheriff.
“The place was painted like this when I bought it,” Brandon mumbled, probably sensing her surprise. “Wait here,” he told her.
Brandon drew his gun, and just like that, the fatigue could no longer numb the fear. Willa sat there on the backseat of the deputy’s four-door black Ford and watched as Brandon got out. He didn’t say anything to the dogs. He merely lifted his left hand, and they both went silent. The pair followed Brandon up the steps and to the door he then unlocked. However, they didn’t go inside. The dogs waited for him on the porch.
“Please, don’t let there be anyone in there,” Willa mumbled. But she obviously didn’t mumble it softly enough because the deputy eased around in the seat and looked at her.
“Butch and Sundance wouldn’t have let anyone inside,” Deputy Sanchez drawled. “Brandon’s just being extra cautious. If the dogs are alive and kickin’, then no one got near the place and remained in one piece.”
Even though Willa didn’t like the idea of being around attack dogs, it was better than having no outside protection against a professional assassin.
Pete kept the windshield wipers on, and they scraped away at the sleety drizzle, smearing the ice on the glass.
“I’m assuming Brandon doesn’t need the dogs for security,” she commented. “Because I’d figured Crockett Creek was a safe town.”
“Don’t worry, it is. I think the dogs help Brandon make sure his privacy stays private. It’s probably why he lives all the way out here by himself. This place is a good ten miles outside of town.”
That said a lot about the man whose baby she was carrying. A private man. A man she trusted, she reminded herself.
A man she wanted.
Willa quickly tried to push that thought aside, but it flashed right back in her head. She huffed. Her memory was still a mess in parts, and yet she could remember in complete, agonizing detail every twinge of attraction she felt for a man who placed a high value on privacy and keeping secrets.
“So, who takes care of the place and the dogs when he’s out of town?” Willa wanted to know. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that Brandon might have a girlfriend.
“His neighbor’s boy does that for him.”
“Neighbor?” she questioned. Not a girlfriend. Though she didn’t see a nearby house or any other signs of a neighbor.
“Zach Grange,” the deputy provided. “He raised the dogs from pups, and he’s about the only one other than Brandon that they trust to get near them. I figure Brandon likes having ’em around. He worked canines for a while in Special Forces, you know.”
No, she didn’t know. That was another of the secrets he hadn’t been ready to volunteer.
Brandon came back out and returned to the car so he could open her door and take her overnight bag. The wet, cold air came right at her, sending a chill straight through her clothes. Brandon thanked his deputy, and the man tipped his Stetson and drove away.
“Will the dogs bite?” she asked, eyeing them as they went up the steps. Even though it was freezing, literally, she didn’t hurry because she didn’t want to alarm them.
“They won’t bite you.” And he aimed a glance at both, one that was effective because the two remained docile on the porch as Willa went past them and into the house.
Her first impression was that the place was toasty warm. Thank goodness. And everything was neat and orderly. There were no clothes lying around, no clutter. The living room had been painted a soft cream color that complemented the slate-blue sofa and recliner. He had a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall above the fireplace.
Other than the winter weather outside, there were no signs of Christmas here. Like her place in Austin. Hard to concentrate on the holidays when their lives were on the line.
“The kitchen’s through here,” he explained, pointing through a doorway.
Willa looked inside. Neat and orderly there, too.
“The bathroom’s over there.” He pointed to the first room off the hall that fed off the living room.
“Is it okay if I take a shower?” she asked.
“Of course.” He handed Willa her overnight bag and walked into the kitchen. “Then I’ll fix us something to eat, and you can get some rest.”
All three of those—a shower, food and rest—sounded heavenly, and Willa headed to the bathroom. But then, she stopped.
“I want the truth,” she told him, turning back around to face him. “Will Shore come here looking for us?”
Brandon had been about to open the fridge, but his hand paused in midair. He looked at her and then crossed the room toward her.
“He might,” Brandon confessed. “The dogs won’t let him get close, but he could try to neutralize them.”
Neutralize. What a benign word for kill.
“I have a security system wired to all the windows and doors,” Brandon continued. “It came with the house, and even though I’ve never had an occasion to use it, I will now that you’re here.”
“Good.” And she heard herself repeat it several times. Because she suddenly felt shaky, Willa placed the bag on the floor and held the doorframe to steady herself.
Brandon caught onto her. “Are you okay?”
She managed a nod. “I’m not very good with this whole trying-to-kill-us thing.”
“Few people are good at that,” he mumbled. He pulled her into his arms. “And you don’t want to be around them if they are.”
Since that sounded, well, personal, she eased back and met him eye to eye. She’d done that so she could see his expression when she asked him what he meant by that. But the question faded from her mind when she stared at him.
Mercy.
There it was again. That damn attraction. An itch, some people called it. Willa just thought of it as an itchy nuisance. It was clouding her judgment and drawing her to a man she should be questioning. Instead, she was falling for him.
“What?” he asked.
She had no intention of telling him what she was thinking. A man like Brandon would likely turn and run—after he made sure she was safe, that is. He was a natural protector. An alpha male. And she instinctively knew that a pregnant woman falling hard for him would take him right out of his very narrow comfort zone.
Willa shook her head to try to blow off his question, but she found herself leaning in closer to him. Why, why, why couldn’t she just back away?
Because she didn’t want to.
Because she wanted Brandon.
He reached to brush a strand of hair off her face, but he didn’t pull back his hand. His fingers stayed, touching her cheek.
“You’ve been throu
gh a lot,” he said as if that explained the coil of heat that was simmering inside her.
She made a sound of agreement and leaned in. Willa only intended to touch her mouth to his. Just a taste of what her body was begging her to have. But Brandon made a sound of his own.
Not of agreement.
The husky sound rumbled in his throat, and his hand went from her cheek to the back of her neck. He snapped her to him.
And it wasn’t just a touch.
BRANDON FORGOT ALL ABOUT the danger. About the fatigue. About all the other things he should be doing. However, he didn’t forget about this need inside him. A need that only Willa seemed capable of satisfying.
Why the hell did he want her like this?
He didn’t have an answer for that, and it didn’t seem to matter to his mouth, or to the rest of his body. He just hauled her as close to him as she could possibly get, and he kissed her as if he had a right to do exactly that.
He didn’t have that right, though.
Kisses and caresses would just lead her on. But that still didn’t stop him.
He tightened the grip he had on the back of her neck and angled her head so he could deepen the kiss. She tasted like…Willa. It was a taste he’d already sampled, and while there was the whole forbidden-fruit thing going on here, his response seemed about much more than that. He’d had forbidden fruit before, and it’d never tasted this good.
She made that mind-blowing sound of pleasure deep within her throat and pressed as hard against him as he did against her. They pulled away, only to catch their breath and, as if starved for each other, went right back for another round.
Soon, though, the kiss and the body-to-body contact wasn’t enough. Soon, certain parts of him started to demand more. That was Brandon’s cue to pull away, and he tried. But Willa held on, and he didn’t put up much of a fight.
“I’m on fire,” she mumbled against his mouth.
That was something he didn’t need to hear, but it wasn’t something he could forget, either. It was a primal invitation to his overly aroused body, and his instincts were to scoop her up in his arms and haul her off to bed.
That couldn’t happen, of course.
Brandon repeated that to himself but still didn’t pull away. Instead, he dropped some kisses on her neck and cupped her left breast with his hand.
“Still on fire,” she let him know, and she added more of those sounds of silky feminine pleasure.
Willa went after his neck as well and landed a few kisses in one of his very sensitive spots. Too sensitive. More of that, and a trip to the bed would happen whether it should or not.
Brandon forced himself to pull back.
Willa’s breath was gusting now, and his wasn’t much slower. They stared at each other, too close for him not to consider just jumping right back in. But he didn’t. If a simple kiss was leading her on, then this was a dozen steps past that at a time when Willa was most vulnerable. She was pregnant and scared. And he was taking advantage of that and this attraction between them.
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and made another sound of pleasure. Brandon’s body clenched, and he took a huge step back.
“So?” she said. “What happens now?”
No way was he going to answer that. Because a response—any response—could get him in even hotter water.
“Ah,” she mumbled when he glanced away. “I guess that means we aren’t going to do that.”
“No,” he agreed. “Wrong time, wrong place. Hell…wrong everything.” Brandon mumbled some harsher profanity under his breath.
“Wrong man?” she concluded.
“Especially that.” He glanced away again and was sorry he’d said anything.
“You have that look again, as if I just poked a stick at a raw wound. You obviously have secrets you don’t want to share.”
She grabbed his chin and drew his gaze back to hers. “Since you’ve saved my life more than once in the past twenty-four hours, I would tell you my deepest darkest secret…if I could remember it.”
She smiled.
He didn’t.
“You don’t remember your secrets?” he asked. This was the first time it had occurred to him that she hadn’t regained her full memory after watching that DVD in the hotel suite.
Willa shrugged. “I’d like to say yes to that, but there are still blanks.” She drew in a quick breath. “On the drive over, I kept trying to piece things together, but I don’t remember how I ended up on the floor of that hospital.”
Good. Maybe she wouldn’t regain those horrific memories. She had remembered what files the gunman had forced her to access, and that had to be enough. Willa had already had enough stress without recalling an attack that had left her in a coma.
She touched his face again, turning him in her direction. “I sense you’re pushing me away. That’s probably for the best, if I were in a sane mode right now. I’m not. I’m in pregnancy mode where I need to protect this baby at all costs. I figure you’re my best bet for that protection because you have a genetic link.”
He stared at her. “Yeah,” he settled for saying.
Brandon almost left it at that. Almost. But for some reason he decided that Willa deserved something better. A better explanation. And she certainly deserved something better than him.
“My birth father is a man named Wade Decalley,” Brandon heard himself say. “My mother never talked about him much, and a few years ago, I found out why.” He paused long enough to gather his breath. “He’s a convicted serial killer, and he’s spent the last thirteen years on death row.”
Brandon realized it was the first time he’d said that out loud. The first time he’d actually told anyone the truth about his father.
Willa didn’t blink. Didn’t gasp. She merely put her fingers on his arm and rubbed gently. “I’m sorry.”
“No need,” he practically snapped. “I didn’t know about him when I agreed to donate the semen I’d stored for my military tour in the Middle East.”
Now she blinked, and she gave him an ah-ha kind of look. “Now, I get it. You don’t want to pass on your DNA to a child because of your father.”
“But I did anyway. I’m sorry for that, Willa. I’m sorry you didn’t get the biological father you thought you were getting for this baby.”
The corner of her mouth lifted, but she was also blinking back tears. “I think this baby girl has an amazing biological dad, one who would risk his own life to protect her.” Willa leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I don’t regret her having your DNA.”
“You might,” he mumbled.
She huffed, pulled away from him and fluttered her fingers in the direction of the bathroom. “I think I’ll grab that shower now.”
Brandon hoped it would help her relax, especially after their kissing session and his confession about his family legacy. He sure as hell could use something to help him relax, too, but he had too much to do. While he fixed Willa something to eat, he needed to call and try to get some information about Jessie Beecham’s murder and the files that the gunman had wanted Willa to tamper with.
That meant contacting Cash.
Brandon took a prepaid cell phone from the kitchen drawer. A phone that couldn’t be traced. He’d bought it on impulse, a throwback to his Special Ops days when he had been trained to be prepared for anything. At the time of the purchase, he had figured it would never be used, that he would spend the rest of his life as a sheriff, not doing anything that required a prepaid cell. But he needed to return to his roots in covert ops in order to keep Willa safe.
However, it would have to end there.
Once he had the answers they needed and Martin Shore and the danger had been neutralized, there would be only one thing left for him to do.
The best thing he could do for both Willa and the baby was to get as far away from them as possible.
Chapter Ten
Willa sat at the cozy kitchen table and ate the turkey and cheese sandwich Brandon had fixed for her.
She wasn’t actually hungry, but she forced herself to eat because of the baby.
Brandon’s own sandwich lay untouched on the table across from her, and instead of eating, he was pacing while he talked on a cell phone. Since he’d been on the phone when she came out of the shower, she had no idea how long this conversation had been going on. But she did know that he was talking to Cash.
And Brandon obviously wasn’t happy about the answers he was hearing.
“Now you think Dr. Farris could be responsible for the leak?” Brandon challenged. He didn’t wait for an answer. He went to the laptop sitting on a corner desk and pressed some keys. “Because before we even met the doctor, Martin Shore found us at the safe house that SAPD provided.”
He paused, and she could hear the faint sound of Cash’s voice on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“You do that,” he told Cash. “You dig into Dr. Farris’s background, and I’ll do the same. If the woman is dirty, I want her arrested.”
So did Willa. She cringed because she’d actually been in the room with the person who might want her dead. And she’d trusted the doctor. Well, she’d trusted her enough to watch that DVD that had spurred her memory and almost certainly created more danger.
“Cash thinks the doctor is the leak?” Willa mouthed.
He shook his head and held his hand over the speaker end of the cell. “I think he’s grasping at straws. He has no proof.”
And they didn’t have proof of Cash’s innocence, either.
“Good,” Brandon said several moments later, removing his hand so he could continue his call to Cash. The printer next to the laptop began to spit out something. “Because I’d like to talk with Dean Quinlan, too. Yes, you can do that. Have him call me at this number.”
Dean Quinlan—the former CSI whose name had been on the files at the hospital. Willa didn’t think she’d actually met the man, but like Brandon, she wanted to ask him questions about his involvement in all this.
“No, I’m not bringing Willa in,” Brandon insisted. “And no, I’m not telling you where we are.” He hung up. “Don’t worry. Cash didn’t send the fax. My deputy did, so Cash doesn’t know we’re here.” He snatched the piece of paper from the printer.
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