by Julie Miller
Her heart went out to his plea. Okay. She was willing to try this again. She reached up and cupped her hand against his clenched jaw. “Give me a straight answer?”
She could see he had to think about it. “May I?” With her nod of permission, he lifted the baby carrier from her arm and set it back on the counter. He gazed down at the sleeping infant, and for one endless moment, his hand floated over Emma, as if he wanted to touch her, too, but was afraid to. Instead, he curled his fingers into a fist and turned back to Robin. “What do you want to know?”
Robin hugged her arms around her waist, stopping herself from going to him and showing him that Emma wouldn’t break beneath a caress as gentle as the way he’d stroked her own hair. “What’s your aversion to common civility and human kindness?”
Jake shook his head. “I can protect you, Robin. The kid, too. But this is how I work. I’m not a nice guy.”
“If you weren’t a nice guy, you wouldn’t be so good with my baby.”
He shrugged off the compliment and held out his hand. “Give me your keys. Tomorrow morning we’ll need to switch your rental to a truck or SUV that I don’t have to crawl out of, and that has a thicker chassis to offer us better protection.”
She didn’t try to mask her frustrated sigh. “You’re doing it again. You didn’t answer my question. What kind of mother trusts her family to a man who’s armed to the teeth and won’t answer a simple question?”
“What you’re asking isn’t simple.”
“Then I’ll give you another chance.” Robin crossed to him, demanding the truth, any truth, that seemed so hard for him to give. “Why should I give you the keys to my car? Detective Montgomery said you don’t have a driver’s license.”
“Just because I don’t own a car doesn’t mean I don’t know how to drive.” Robin didn’t budge an inch at the flippant reply. After a brief stare-down, Jake muttered a curse and circled around the table to unzip his bag and pull out a small plastic card from one of the inside pockets. “Here.”
She took the card he handed across the table. A driver’s license. State of Missouri. Current. So why had it been so hard for him to give a straight answer? And then she read the tiny print more carefully. “This says Ken Edscorn.” She looked up at the inscrutable mask on his face. “Did you used to live in St. Louis? Did you change your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He pulled another license from the bag and handed it to her. Now she was even more confused. “Otto Lundgren?”
He reached for the licenses, but Robin turned her back on him to study the cards more carefully. “This is you.” The same face as the man behind her, with longer, darker hair and no scar at the temple, stared back at her. “These are both you. I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
She spun around. “What kind of answer...?” Jake held up a placating hand and she bit her tongue, giving him a chance to explain.
“There are six different IDs in this bag. Jake isn’t even one of them. It’s a name I picked because I thought it went with Lonergan.” He paused, pressed his mouth into a grim line, then exhaled a quick breath. “And it’s easy to remember.”
“Easy to remember?”
“I, um...” he touched the scar in his scalp “...have gaps in my memory.”
She pulled her gaze from the ridge of scar tissue that bespoke some injury to his brain. “Gaps?”
“One big gap. I’m missing a whole lifetime.” He nodded toward the cards in her hand. “I don’t know if I’m Ken, Otto or someone else.” He dropped his hand on top of the black leather bag. “But I know how to use these things. Better than any man should. I know how to keep someone safe.”
“You have amnesia?”
“I was shot in the head. Two years ago I woke up in a Texas hospital in some no-name border town with this bag and no memory of the man I used to be.”
“Oh, Jake. How awful.” She hurried back to the table and lay her hand over his. When he turned his hand to capture hers, she squeezed him just as tightly. She stroked her thumb across his knuckles, offering him what comfort she could. “Why are you hiding away from the world? Why aren’t you out beating the bushes, trying locate your family or friends? Somebody has to be missing you.”
His thumb mimicked the same caress across the back of her hand. “There was nobody at my bedside in that hospital. No cards, no flowers. I’ve never once seen my face on a missing person news story. Nobody’s looking for me. Nobody I want to meet, at any rate. Every now and then I think somebody’s watching me and I move on. For all I know, Otto Lundgren or any of those other aliases could be a criminal wanted by the police. Or by some other lowlife.”
“Why would you think...?” She looked at his damaged face and down at the weapons cache beneath their joined hands and understood.
“Told you I wasn’t Prince Charming.” He let her pull away. He splayed his fingers at his waist, thickening his biceps and shoulders, and looking every bit the dangerous man he believed he was—the fugitive from the law he might well be. “Still want my protection?”
Robin turned away to watch her daughter sleep. She tucked the cotton blanket up beneath Emma’s chin and brushed a finger along one precious, chubby cheek. So Jake, or whoever he was, had amnesia. Did she risk her daughter’s life, and possibly her own heart, on a man who might have done something horrible in a life he couldn’t remember? Or did she believe in the man he was now? She stroked Emma’s cheek again. “Have you done anything bad—hurt anyone—that you can remember?”
“Stopped a guy from raping a woman one night.”
Turning at the deep, husky statement, Robin searched those uniquely handsome eyes for the reassurance she needed. “You won’t let anything happen to my daughter?”
Jake stood there, silent, imposing—showing her with his stance and demeanor that that had been a question he didn’t need to answer.
With her decision made, Robin crossed back to the table and handed him the licenses. “Then I don’t care who you used to be. You’re the man I need now.” She picked up the carrier while Jake slung the heavy bag over his shoulder and followed her to the door. “And I know we’re an imposition, so I’m going to repay you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Hot meal. Comfy bed. It’s what people do when someone helps them.”
He locked the door behind them and followed her down the hallway to the elevator. “Robin, that’s not neces—”
“I want you to talk to me, too. If you don’t know the answer, say so. But you have to try.”
“I still need your keys.”
She pushed the call button and fished the ring of keys from her pocket. “And I’m still calling you Jake.”
“Does anyone ever win an argument with you?”
“I don’t know.” The old bronze doors separated and she stepped inside. She made sure he was looking at her before she dropped the keys into his palm. “You’ll have to keep trying.”
Chapter Nine
Jake was screwed. He’d exchanged his stark downtown haunts where he knew every alley and fire escape, every place trouble could hide, for the domestic mousetrap of Robin’s rambling brick farmhouse on the outskirts of the city.
The twentieth-century home had more doors and windows than one man could watch at any one time. They’d been updated with new locks, but there were a detached garage, a barn and a gardening shed he’d need to keep an eye on, too. Plus, sight lines didn’t allow him much of a heads-up to anyone approaching the house on foot. While Robin didn’t run the place as a working farm, there were still rolling grass hills between the house and the highway, as well as a forest of native pines and deciduous trees running along her property to the south and east.
Despite its remote location away from the incidents around her downtown shop, her home would be a nightmare for one man to defend, even if he were at the top of his game. Jake was far too distracted tonight to be at the top of anything.
; First, there was the house. Even at night, its tree-lined drive appealed to his need for isolation in a much prettier way than the lumpy sofa bed, thrift-shop table and tight space of his apartment did. Then there was the food. Robin had claimed she could cook, but leftover stew and banana-nut muffins shouldn’t taste like the best meal he’d eaten in two long years.
Finally, there was Robin herself. She’d kicked off her shoes as soon as she got inside the house and ran around in her bare toes and butt-hugging jeans, somehow managing to pull off sexy while she heated up some dinner and gave Emma her bath. Every room of the house was a reflection of some aspect of her—practical and efficient, stylish and comfortable, beautiful in a subtle, take-a-man-by-surprise kind of way.
He liked it all. He liked her.
If he stayed here too long, he’d get soft and be useless as the protector Robin and Emma needed. He was equally certain that the moment he dropped his guard would be the moment that his past caught up with him. And whether he remembered the details or not, he doubted the reunion would be a pleasant one. Being with Robin and Emma would put them right in the middle of whatever dangers were lying in wait for him.
After another late-night sweep to make sure every door and window was locked, Jake wandered into the nursery, where Robin was cleaning up after putting Emma down in her crib. The dim light from the lamp on the dresser and the soft strains of classical music playing in the background made Jake drop his voice to a whisper. “Everything is as secure as I can make it.”
“Thank you.” Robin’s voice was just as quiet. She stifled a yawn before gathering up a towel and the clothes Emma had been wearing earlier. “I’ll get your room ready next.”
He was about to tell her not to go to any trouble on his behalf when a little whimpering noise came from the crib. Jake crossed the room to look down at the pink, squirming ball of Emma Carter. Her eyes were closed, but she was batting at the gingham sheet beneath her, pinching her face and moaning like she was gearing up to cry. “Is she okay?”
“Of course. Full tummy, warm bath. She’ll be asleep in no time.” Robin was folding up the Noah’s ark quilt that had been tossed over the rocking chair where she’d given Emma her bottle.
“Then why is she crying?”
“She’s not. She’s stubborn like her mama and fighting to stay awake.” Another yawn betrayed Robin’s fatigue and the late hour. She needed to get to bed. They all needed to get some sleep if they were going to stay sharp and vigilant against any other threats. “Just nudge her thumb to her mouth. She never took a pacifier, but sucking her thumb seems to calm her right down.”
“You want me touch her?”
Robin warmed the room with a smile. “Of course. She won’t bite.”
Jake was a grown man who outweighed little Emma by at least two hundred pounds. Still, he needed a fortifying breath before he reached over the oak railing and caught one of Emma’s tiny fists between two of his fingers. He guided the hand to her mouth. As soon as it touched her lips, the thumb popped right in and the unhappy noises stopped. And she did it all without opening her eyes. “That’s my girl.”
Entranced by the scent of baby powder and innocence, Jake splayed his hand across Emma’s tummy and got a little choked up in the wonder of how warm she was beneath the soft lavender sleeper she wore. Even his big, callused hand could feel her tiny lungs expanding and contracting, and her heart beating at a strong, even pace beneath his fingertips.
Oh, man. His boss, Robbie, was right. Jake was smitten with little Emma Carter.
He was distracted enough by the unfamiliar tumble of emotions that he didn’t hear Robin move up beside him until she spoke. “You’re good with her. You’re especially gentle.”
Jake pulled his hand away to wrap it around the top of the crib rail. “I figure I have to be. I don’t always know my own strength.”
She slid her hand over Jake’s and the emotions bombarding him almost made it hard to breathe. Her soft question echoed his own thoughts. “Do you think you ever had any children, Jake? Any nieces or nephews to dote on?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. But if he felt this pull, this protective vibe about a child he’d only known for a week, wouldn’t he have some sense of those same feelings about a child of his own—even if he couldn’t recall a name or face? “I doubt it. The kid here seems as foreign to me as she is beautiful.”
“She is, isn’t she?” Robin reached over to smooth that thick, dark hair off Emma’s forehead. “Beautiful, I mean.”
“Nobody’s going to hurt her, Robin.” He laced their fingers together and looked down over the jut of his shoulder at her. Good guy or bad guy, he felt that promise deep in his bones. “I won’t let anyone take her from you.”
With a slight nod, she tugged on his hand and led the way out of the room. Once in the hallway, she turned to the right while Jake pulled the door to behind them. “I’ll put you in the room next door where my parents stay when they visit.”
Jake released her hand and headed in the opposite direction, back to the room with the flat-screen television and stone fireplace. “I saw an easy chair in here that’ll do for tonight.”
Even with those silent bare feet, he sensed her changing course and hurrying after him. “You can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day. None of the threats or calls have come to the house. I think it’s okay to drop your guard for a little bit here.”
“Are you in the phone book?” He picked up his go-bag off the red-and-white-checked couch and looked for a better spot to stash it.
“Yes.”
“Then it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to track you down.” He saw the slightly hidden yet easy-access spot under the big square coffee table and stuffed it underneath. “It’s probably only a matter of time before your perp escalates his game and brings the threat here.”
“You’re doing it again—talking all doom and gloom like there’s no hope in the world.”
Robin stood at the edge of the couch, hugging herself in that nervous way that made him want to wrap her up in his arms and promise everything would be all right. But his concentration was already compromised by the difficult admission of his amnesia—a self-reliant secret he hadn’t shared with anyone in K.C. Then there was that fairy-tale interlude he’d just had in the nursery with Emma.
No connections. No commitments. No caring.
The Carter girls had blown the philosophy that had served him so well these past two years right out of the water. If he wanted to recapture the fighting edge that made him such a ruthless survivor, he needed to nip all this touchy-feely normalcy in the bud. “You want comfort, talk to your girlfriends. You want protection, I’m your man.”
“Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst? Is that how a man like you thinks?”
She deserved an honest answer. “There isn’t always hope. But I can always be prepared.”
Her skin paled at the bleak response. But she’d made him promise to keep talking, even if she didn’t like what he had to say. “What made you such a hard, unsociable man, Jake? Who hurt you?”
The pity in that question took him by surprise. He’d always thought of himself as the monster dealing out the pain. That was the story his nightmares told. He’d gotten so used to believing he was the bad guy that it was a challenge to consider he might not always have been this way. “You think I know? Say good-night to Sunshine in there and get to bed. If I get too tired, I’ll sack out on the couch.”
“I have guest rooms.”
Un-uh. A bed would feel too cozy. Too normal. And protecting the Carter girls from whoever was threatening them required those skills that normal men didn’t possess. “I’d rather be between you two and the front door in case something happens.”
“All right.” Giving up her insistence on civility, Robin left the room. She came back a minute later with pillows, sheets and a quilt. She unfolded one of the sheets to cover the couch, and set the rest of the bedding on top, letting him decide just how civilized
he wanted to be tonight. “I owe you more than you can know for the peace of mind you give me by being here. Someday I hope you’ll let me repay...” A clear conscience was the only payment he’d asked for, and this time she let the subject die. “I know. Good night.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she circled the coffee table, braced her hand at the center of his chest and stretched up on tiptoe to press a soft, gentle kiss to his lips. Her eyes sought out his before she gave him another kiss, just as tender, just as sweet. It was the gentlest, most beautiful touch he could remember and he couldn’t help but move his lips against hers.
As raw and passionate as that kiss at her shop had been, this one warmed and healed. The sweet, soothing connection tamed something raw inside him. It pulled him from the lonely curse he’d lived with for far too long. When the first sizzle of heat entered the kiss, Robin dropped to her heels and pulled away.
“Good night, Jake.”
Yeah. He wanted more than the satisfaction of knowing he’d done all he could to help these two damsels in distress. He wanted a thousand more kisses like that. He wanted to learn how to change a diaper. He wanted what other men had—a good woman, a beautiful child. Laughter. Love. A real home. But he wasn’t other men. So he let Robin walk to her room and close the door without voicing the wishes stirring in his heart.
* * *
THE NIGHTMARE HAD him at its mercy again.
Wheezing through the pain that seared him inside and out, Jake crouched in the darkness. “You have to stop him.”
A hazy apparition moved in the shadows, a faceless threat he had to destroy. He flipped the knife into his hand and hurled it. With a choking scream, the apparition sank into the darkness.
Just like that, his enemy was dead. But there were other threats in the shadows. If he couldn’t find them all, people would die. He’d seen so much death. He couldn’t survive another.
“Jake?”
He heard the soft voice calling to him through the mists and death of his dream.