Kade forced his eyes open, and his gaze immediately landed on the baby that Grayson was holding. The newborn was awake now, and she had turned her head in his direction. She was looking at him.
Kade swallowed hard.
He felt the punch, and it nearly robbed him of his breath. The doctor was right. He should have sat down for this.
The love was there. Instant and strong. Deep in his heart and his gut, he knew the test had been right.
This was his baby.
His little girl.
Even though he’d had no immediate plans for fatherhood, that all changed in an instant. He knew he loved her, would do whatever it took to be a good father to her. But he also knew she’d been abandoned. That left Kade with one big question.
Where was her mother?
Where was Bree?
And by God, if something had gone on at the clinic, why hadn’t she told him? Why had she kept something like this a secret?
Kade pulled in his breath, hoping it would clear his head. It didn’t, but he couldn’t take the time to adjust to the bombshell that had just slammed right into him.
He leaned down and brushed a kiss on his baby girl’s cheek. She blinked, and she stared at him as if trying to figure out who the heck he was.
“Take care of her for me,” Kade said to his brother. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Grayson nodded and stared at him, too. “You know where the mother is?”
He shook his head. Kade had no idea, since he hadn’t heard anything from her since that assignment eight and a half months ago at the Fulbright clinic. Right now, he was sure of only one thing. If the baby was here and Bree wasn’t, that meant she was either dead or in big trouble.
Kade had to find Bree fast.
Chapter Two
Bree heard the pitiful sound, a hoarse moan, and it took her a moment to realize that the sound had come from her own throat.
She opened her eyes and looked around for anything familiar. Anything that felt right.
Nothing did.
She was in some kind of room. A hotel maybe. A cheap one judging from the looks of things. The ceiling had moldy water stains, and those stains moved in and out of focus. Ditto for the dingy, paint-blistered walls. The place smelled like urine and other things she didn’t want to identify.
What she did want to identify was where she was and why she was there. Bree was certain there was a good reason for it, but she couldn’t remember what that reason was. It was hard to remember anything with a tornado going on inside her head.
She forced herself into a sitting position on the narrow bed. Beneath her the lumpy mattress creaked and shifted. She automatically reached for her gun and cell phone that should have been on the nightstand.
But they weren’t there.
Something was wrong.
Everything inside her screamed for her to get out right away. She had to get to a phone. She had to call…somebody. But she couldn’t remember who. Still, if she could just get to a phone, Bree was certain she’d remember.
She put her feet on the threadbare carpet and glanced down at her clothes. She had on a loose dress that was navy blue with tiny white flowers. She was wearing a pair of black flat leather shoes.
The clothing seemed as foreign to her as the hotel room and the absence of her gun and phone. She wasn’t a dress person, and she didn’t have to remember all the details of her life to realize that. No. She was a jeans and shirt kind of woman unless she was on the job, and then she wore whatever the assignment dictated.
Was she on some kind of assignment here?
She didn’t have the answer to that, either. But the odds were, yes, this was the job. Too bad she couldn’t remember exactly what this job was all about.
Bree took a deep breath and managed to stand. Not easily. She had to slap her hand on the wall just to stay upright, and she started for the door.
Just as the doorknob moved.
Oh, God. Someone was trying to get in the room, and with her questionable circumstances, she doubted this would be a friendly encounter. Not good. She could barely stand so she certainly wasn’t in any shape to fight off anyone with her bare hands. Still, she might not have a choice.
“Think,” she mumbled to herself. What undercover role was she playing here? What was she supposed to say or do to the person trying to get in? She might need those answers to stay alive.
“Bree?” someone called out. It was followed by a heavy knock on the rickety door.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The dizziness hit her hard again, and she had no choice but to sink back down onto the bed. Great. At this rate, she’d be dead in a minute. Maybe less.
“Bree?” the person called out again. It was a man, and his voice sounded a little familiar. “It’s me, Kade Ryland. Open up.”
Kade Ryland? The dizzy spell made it almost impossible to think, but his name, like his voice, was familiar. Too bad she couldn’t piece that hint of familiarity with some facts. Especially one fact…
Could she trust him?
“Don’t trust anyone,” she heard herself mumble, and that was the most familiar thing she’d experienced since she’d first awakened in this god-awful room.
She braced herself for the man to knock again or call out her name. But there was a sharp bashing sound, and the door flew open as he kicked it in.
Bree tried to scramble away from him while she fumbled to take off her shoe and use it as a weapon. She didn’t succeed at either.
The man who’d called himself Kade Ryland came bursting into the room, along with a blast of hot, humid air from the outside.
The first thing she saw was his gun, a Glock. Since there was no way she could dodge a bullet in the tiny space or run into the adjoining bathroom, Bree just sat there and waited for him to come closer. That way, she could try to grab his gun if it became necessary.
However, he didn’t shoot.
And he didn’t come closer.
He just stood there and took in the room with a sweeping glance. A cop’s glance that she recognized because it’s what she would have done. And then he turned that intense cop’s look on her.
Bree fought the dizziness so she could study his face, his expression. He was in his early thirties. Dark brown hair peeking out from a Stetson that was the same color, gray eyes, about six-two and a hundred and eighty pounds. He didn’t exactly look FBI with his slightly too-long hair, day-old stubble, well-worn jeans, black T-shirt and leather jacket, but she had some vague memory that he was an agent like her.
Was that memory right?
Or was he the big bad threat that her body seemed to think he was?
“Bree?” he repeated. His gaze locked with hers, and as he eased closer, his cowboy boots thudded on the floor. “What happened to you?”
She failed at her first attempt to speak and had to clear her throat. “I, uh, was hoping you could tell me.” Mercy, she sounded drunk. “I’m having trouble remembering how I got here. Or why.” She glanced around the seedy room again. “Where is here exactly?”
He cursed. It was ripe and filled with concern. She was right there on the same page with him—but that didn’t mean she trusted him.
“You’re in a motel in one of the worst parts of San Antonio,” he told her. “It isn’t safe for you to be here.”
She hadn’t thought for a minute that it was. Everything about it, including this man, put her on full alert.
But how had she gotten to this place?
“I was at my apartment,” she mumbled. Was that right? She thought about it a second. Yes. That part was right. “But I don’t know how I got from there to here.”
Kade shut the door, though it was no longer connected to the top hinge, and he slipped his gun back into the leather shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
“Come on,” he said, catching onto her arm. He gave a heavy sigh. “I need to get you to a doctor.”
“No!” Bree couldn’t say it fast enough. She didn’t want to add
another person—another stranger—to this mix. She shook off his grip. “I just need a phone. I have to call someone right away.”
“Yeah. You need to call your boss, Special Agent Randy Cooper. Or Coop as you call him. But I can do that for you while you’re seeing the doctor.”
Coop. That name was familiar, too, and it seemed right that he was her boss. It also seemed right that she’d get answers from him. Especially since this cowboy agent didn’t seem to be jumping to provide her with the vital information that she needed. She had to know if she could trust him or if she should try to escape.
Bree stared up at him. “Am I on assignment?”
Kade stared at her, too. Stared as if she’d lost her mind. He leaned down, closer, so they were eye to eye. “What the heck happened to you?”
She opened her mouth and realized she didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. How did I get here?” She tried to get up again. “I need to call Coop. He’ll know. He’ll tell me why I’m here.”
“Coop doesn’t have a clue what happened to you.”
That got her attention and not in a good way. “What do you mean?”
Kade moved even closer. “Bree, you’ve been missing nearly a year.”
Oh, mercy. That info somehow got through the dizziness, but it didn’t make sense. Nothing about this did. What the heck was wrong with her?
Bree shook her head. “Impossible.”
He shoved up the sleeve of his black leather jacket and showed her a watch. He tapped his index finger on the date. June 13.
“June 13?” she repeated. Obviously, he thought that would mean something to her. It didn’t. That was because Bree had no idea what the date should be. Nor did she know the date of that last clear memory—when she’d been at her apartment.
“I didn’t know you were missing at first, not until a little over a month ago,” he continued. His voice trailed off to barely a whisper, but then he cleared his throat.
“What’s the last thing you remember before this place?” Kade asked. But he didn’t just ask. He demanded it. He seemed to be angry about something, and judging from his stare turned glare, she was at least the partial source of that anger.
But what had she done to rile him?
She cursed that question because she didn’t have an answer for it or any of the others.
Bree pushed her hair from her face. That’s when she noticed her hands were trembling. Her mouth was bone dry, too. “Someone drugged me, didn’t they?”
“Probably. Your pupils are dilated, and there’s not a drop of color in your face,” he let her know. “What’s the last thing you remember?” he repeated.
She forced herself to think. “I remember you. We were on assignment together at the Fulbright Clinic. Someone figured out I was an agent, and they drugged us. We had to shoot our way out of there.”
Bree glanced down at the thin scar on her left arm where a bullet had grazed her. It wasn’t red and raw as it should be. It was well-healed. But that couldn’t be right.
“And?” Kade prompted.
Bree shook her head. There was no and. “How long ago was that?”
“Nine and a half months.” His jaw muscles turned to iron. She might have been dizzy, but she didn’t miss the nine month reference. Nine months. As in just the right amount of time to have had a baby.
Her gaze flew back to him. This time Bree took a much longer and harder look at the cowboy. His face was more than just familiar. Those features. That body. Kade Ryland was drop-dead hot, and yes, she could imagine herself sleeping with him.
But had she?
She wasn’t a person who engaged in casual sex or sex with a fellow agent.
“We didn’t have sex, did we?” she asked.
Something shot through his ice-gray eyes. Some emotion she didn’t understand. “No,” he concluded. “But there was an opportunity for you to get pregnant. We were in a fertility clinic, after all.”
Oh, mercy. Had the doctors in the clinic done something to her? No, Bree decided. She would have known. She would have remembered that.
Wouldn’t she?
“After the shoot-out, other agents moved in to arrest the two security guards who tried to kill us,” Kade continued. “But we didn’t manage to apprehend everyone involved. Key evidence was missing, but the FBI decided to send in other agents to do the investigation since my identity had been compromised.”
Yes. That sounded right. It wasn’t an actual memory, though. None of this was, and that nearly sent Bree into a panic.
“And then you called your boss,” Kade continued, his voice calm despite the thick uneasiness in the room. “You said you were taking some vacation time.”
Still no memory. Bree just sat there, listening, and praying he would say something to clear the cobwebs in her head and that it would all come back to her.
“Two weeks later when you were supposed to check back in with Coop, you didn’t. You disappeared.” Kade caught her chin, forced it up. “Bree, I need you to think. Where have you been all these months?”
Again, she tried to think, to remember. She really tried. But nothing came. She saw flashes of herself in Kade’s arms. He was naked. And with his hard muscled body pressed against hers. He’d kissed her as if they were engaged in some kind of battle—fierce, hot, relentless.
Despite the dizziness, she felt her body go warm.
Bad timing, Bree, she reminded herself.
“You, uh, have some kind of tattoo on your back? It’s like a coin or something?” She phrased it as a question just in case she was getting her memories mixed up, but she doubted she could ever mix up a man like Kade with anyone else.
“A concho,” he supplied. “With back to back double R’s, for my family’s ranch. You remember that?”
A ranch. Yes, he looked like a cowboy all right. She’d bet he wasn’t wearing those jeans, Stetson and boots to make a fashion statement. No, he was a cowboy to the core, and that FBI badge and standard issue Glock didn’t diminish that one bit.
“We kissed,” she recalled. Now, here was a crystal clear memory. His mouth on hers. A fake kiss with real fire. And a cowboy with an unforgettable taste. “To create the cover of a happily married couple.”
“But we didn’t have sex,” he clarified.
No. They hadn’t, and she was reasonably sure she would have remembered sleeping with Kade. She glanced at him again and took out the reasonably part.
She would have remembered that.
“How did you find me?” Bree asked. There were so many questions and that seemed a good place to start.
“I set up a missing person’s hotline and plastered your picture all over the state. I didn’t say anything about you working for the FBI,” he added, just as she was on the verge of protesting.
The last part of his explanation caused her to breathe just a little easier. As a deep-cover agent, the last thing she wanted was her picture out there. Still, his plan had worked because here he was. He’d found her.
But why had he been looking?
Was he working for her boss, Coop?
“An hour ago, I got a tip from an anonymous caller using a prepaid cell,” Kade continued. “The person disguised their voice but said I’d find you here at the Treetop Motel, room 114. The person also said you were sick and might need a doctor.”
An anonymous caller using a prepaid cell. That set off alarms in her head. “Someone drugged me and dumped me here. That same someone might have been your caller.”
“That’s my guess.” He paused, huffed and rubbed his hand over his forehead as if he had a raging headache. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to put it out there so you can start dealing with it. I think someone in the fertility clinic inseminated you with the semen they got from me… .”
Kade hesitated, maybe to let that sink in. But how the heck could that sink in?
Bree gasped and looked down at her stomach. “I’m not pregnant. If I were, I’d be about ready to deliver.�
� She stretched the dress across her stomach to show him there was no baby bulge.
“You’ve already delivered, Bree. A baby girl. She’s about seven weeks old.”
She heard that sound. A hoarse moan that tore its way from her own throat. “You’re lying.” He had to be lying.
Kade didn’t take back what he’d said. He just stood there, waiting.
Bree tried to figure out how she could disprove the lie, and she glanced down at her stomach again.
“Go ahead,” Kade prompted. “Look at your belly. I don’t know if you’ll have stretch marks or not, but there’ll likely be some kind of changes.”
Bree frantically shook her head, but her adamant denial didn’t stop her from standing. Still wobbling, she turned away from Kade and shoved up the loose dress. She was wearing white bikini panties that she didn’t recognize, but the unfamiliar underwear was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Just slightly above the top of her panties was a scar.
Unlike the one on her arm, this one still had a pink tinge to it. It had healed, but the incision had happened more recently than the gunshot injury.
Probably about seven weeks ago.
Bree let go of the dress so it would drop back down. “What did you do to me?” She turned back to him. She would have pounded her fists against his chest if he hadn’t caught her hands. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. It wasn’t me. It was someone in the Fulbright Clinic.” Now it was Kade’s turn to groan, and that was her first clue that he was as stunned by this as she was.
They stood there, gazes locked. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought it might come out of her chest.
“Who did the C-section?” she demanded.
Kade shook his head, cursed. “I don’t know. Until now, I didn’t even know you’d had one, though the doctor in Silver Creek guessed. He said Leah’s head was perfectly shaped, probably because she’d been delivered via C-section.”
What little breath Bree had vanished. “Leah?”
“That’s what I’ve been calling her. It was my grandmother’s name.”
“Leah,” she mumbled. Oh, mercy. None of this was making sense. “What makes you think she’s our child?”
Kade Page 2