The Mercenary and the New Mom

by Merline Lovelace

  “Heather Blake was a Washington attorney. She loved Jack, and she died because of it.”

  The denial came fast and instinctively. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Oh, they ruled her death an accident,” he said swiftly, almost bitterly. “A fatal mix of drugs and alcohol. I know Jack didn’t mean to hurt her, or leave her alone and wondering what she’d done wrong. He cared about her...just as he cared about you. I had to come, to make sure you knew that.”

  Stunned, Sabrina could only stare at him.

  “That bank loan Jack arranged for you wasn’t a pricey brush-off,” Trey insisted fiercely. “He didn’t mean it that way, whatever his people might have told you.”

  “They didn’t... I didn’t...”

  She stumbled for words, her mind whirling. Jack had told McGill about the loan? Why hadn’t he told her? Why had he left it to some smarmy bank official, who couldn’t resist smirking about her special “relationship” with the Wentworths?

  Caught up in a swirl of confusion, Sabrina watched as her visitor slipped an embossed card out of his pocket. When he reached out and pressed her fingers around it, she stared at it blankly.

  “I know all this is hard for you to deal with now. Call me if you need someone to talk to, or if old man Wentworth starts giving you grief.”

  “Jack’s grandfather?” Her numb fingers curled around the slip of shiny cardboard. “Why should Mr. Wentworth give me grief?”

  Trey paused with his hand on the doorknob, weighing his words.

  “Look, I don’t want to scare you,” he said slowly, “but I think you should know Joseph Wentworth is as ruthless as they come. He peddled a lot of influence and a whole lot of oil dollars to keep the Wentworth name out of the papers after Heather’s death. He wouldn’t appreciate seeing you sell your story or any intimate pictures of you and Jack to the tabloids before his grandson’s body is even brought home for burial.”

  She reeled, stunned anew by the very thought. “I wouldn’t go to the press! I wouldn’t try to make money off Jack’s death!”

  “No, I didn’t think you would.” His gray eyes gentled, filled once more with compassion. “Just watch yourself, Sabrina, and call me if you ever need help. As I said, Jack and I went back a long way.”

  The insidious doubts began to eat at Sabrina that very night.

  Trey had sworn that Jack had cared for her. She would have sworn that he’d loved her, however briefly. But had she read too much into his passionate kisses? Heard more than he’d intended in his smiling declaration the last night they were together?

  Oh, God, was that damned bank loan his way of saying it was fun, and thanks for the memories? The possibility tied her stomach in knots.

  Old doubts came rushing back with the new. Could Jack Wentworth really have fallen for someone so different from the sleek, cultured women who frequented his own circle? Even the tragic attorney Trey had told her about hadn’t been able to hold the elusive oil executive’s interest. Looking back at their time together, Sabrina realized that Jack had met most of her friends, but introduced her to few of his. He’d never even invited her home to meet his grandfather or the brother and sister he’d told her about.

  Maybe he’d been ashamed of her. Maybe he’d just been whiling away some long summer days...and nights...with the so-accommodating waitress. Maybe he hadn’t loved her, as she’d loved him.

  Like a complete idiot, Sabrina didn’t understand the reason for the unremitting hunger pangs that attacked her night and day until almost the middle of July. Finally, the truth hit her.

  She was pregnant.

  The realization came early one morning, while she was getting ready for work. She stepped into her favorite jeans and got them over her hips, but she was darned if she could get them snapped. She struggled with them for several moments before giving up in disgust.

  Grumbling, she kicked off the too-tight pair and rooted through her closet for something looser. From all she’d read, grief destroyed most people’s appetite. In contrast, she’d been wolfing down double helpings at the diner, except for those days she’d felt too queasy to—

  Suddenly, she froze. Her mind went absolutely blank, then strung together the symptoms she’d paid no attention to until this moment. Lethargy. Constant hunger. Unexpected bouts of queasiness.

  No! No, she couldn’t be...!

  She thought back to her last period. Her breath left on a whoosh.

  Oh, God, she was!

  The certainty grabbed her by the throat. Sabrina shook from head to toe with shock, disbelief and a wild, singing joy. She carried Jack’s child. She sank onto the bed and burst into tears.

  She was still sobbing when she snatched up the phone to call her twin.

  “You’re what!”

  Rachel’s yelp raised a misty smile.

  “Pregnant. I’m pregnant, Rach. At least, I think so.”

  A charged silence followed while Rachel assimilated the news. Sabrina tried not to sniffle into the phone. Finally, her sister probed cautiously.

  “Is the father anyone I know?”

  Pain kicked at Sabrina’s heart. “No. He’s...he’s gone, Rachel.”

  “You mean he’s left you alone to deal with this? Nice guy,” she said in disgust. “So how do you feel about the baby?”

  “Other than weepy and in shock?”

  “Other than that.”

  She flopped back onto the bed. Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. She recognized them for what they were.

  “Joyous. I feel joyous.”

  “Then I do, too,” Rachel declared before she, too, burst into tears.

  The two sisters laughed and cried and laughed some more until they ran out of breath for both. Happy and scared and more than a little overwhelmed, Sabrina stared at the ceiling.

  “What about your plans to buy the diner?” Rachel asked. “And the classes you were going to take this fall?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are you going to press ahead?”

  “Definitely. I want my degree and I want to buy the diner. More than ever now.” And Sabrina knew she had the means to do it. She hadn’t returned the unctuous bank officer’s calls. Nor had she gone to Tulsa to review the terms and conditions of the loan. Jack’s death, and the slicing little doubt about why he’d greased the skids had made her put her dreams on hold.

  She couldn’t let those doubts stand in her way now. For whatever reasons of his own, Jack had made it possible for her to buy the diner. She’d use the loan he arranged as collateral for her child’s future.

  Their child’s future.

  “Are you going to tell the father’s family about the baby?”

  Rachel’s quiet question triggered a whole new set of concerns. Unbidden, Trey McGill’s warning echoed in Sabrina’s mind.

  “Not yet,” she said slowly.

  “They’d want to know. They have a right to know, Sabrina.”

  She bit her lip. She didn’t want to share her baby with anyone except her twin just yet. Especially not with a man Trey McGill had labeled as completely ruthless. Even if she did, Joseph Wentworth might not believe the baby was his great-grandchild. He might think she was trying to play on his grief, or attempting to cash in on Jack’s estate. No, she wasn’t ready to face that yet.

  “It’s too soon to tell them. I’m not even sure myself. I’m just making an uninformed assumption at this point.”

  “Well find out, for heaven’s sake. Go get one of those little home pregnancy tests, and call me right back! Better yet, maybe I’ll drive over tomorrow and we’ll take the test together.”

  Sabrina shot upright. “Rachel, you’re not...?”

  “No way! I haven’t met a man yet I’d want to make babies with.”

  “I didn’t exactly plan on making this baby,” Sabrina said softly, fiercely. “But I’m glad, so glad we did.”

  After that, events seemed to rush forward with the horrifying velocity of a high-powered, high-speed, out-of-control train.r />
  Sabrina started seeing as well as feeling the subtle changes in her body. An OB/GYN from out-of-the-way Mason’s Grove prescribed megadoses of prenatal vitamins. Confused and still not ready to approach the Wentworths, she called Trey McGill to ask his advice.

  After a brief, tense silence, McGill painted an even more detailed picture of Joseph Wentworth’s forceful personality and ruthless determination to control his vast empire and everyone in it. Sabrina lay awake for several nights, debating whether to contact Jack’s grandfather.

  Then she heard a news report that the Wentworth family was attempting to identify a woman in a photograph they’d found among his personal effects.

  The photo flashed on the TV screen. It was her, Sabrina saw with a ripple of shock. Shaken, she knew she had to come forward, to let the Wentworths know she carried Jack’s baby.

  She fully intended to call them the next morning... until a car with darkened windows tried to force the Mazda off the road into a water-filled ditch. That same evening, a masked figure broke into her home. Sabrina fled out the back door and spent the next several months alone and terrified and running for her life.

  She didn’t stop running until utter desperation forced her to accept the aid of the man she feared would take her baby. Even then, she couldn’t shake her fear.

  Not when Joseph Wentworth offered her the sanctuary of the stone gatekeeper’s cottage.

  Not when her daughter was born three weeks ago, healthy and hale, with blue eyes so like Jack’s that Sabrina’s heart broke all over again.

  Not now, especially not now, with the cold March rain weeping against the windows and a gaunt, bearded ghost staring at her from the shadows on the other side of her baby’s bassinet.

  Chapter 13

  “I came back, Sabrina.” A muscle worked in the side of Jack’s face. “I promised you I would. The night I left.”

  Oh, God! How could she ache for him? How could she want his touch so desperately, and at the same time feel her fingers curling into claws at the thought of his hands on her body? How could he raise a flood of heat in her belly with that twisted smile, even as she furtively searched the room for her purse with its concealed handgun?

  Then he lifted a hand and took a half step toward her. The memories, the pain, even the agonizing shock of his return vaporized. All that was left was the fear that had driven her for so long, for so many tortured miles. She gathered her muscles, preparing to dive sideways, to snatch up her purse, to fumble inside it for the concealed 9 mm Beretta.

  Jack’s low, harsh voice held her where she stood. “I won’t hurt you, Sabrina. You or the baby. You don’t need a gun to protect yourself from me.”

  Her entire body quivered. “How do you know I have a gun?”

  “My grandfather told me.”

  Her breath hissed out. “You’ve talked to your grandfather?”

  “I didn’t know you were here. I went straight to the big house.”

  “And he sent you here?”

  For the first time since he’d stepped out of the shadows, Jack’s face lost some of its stark, unrelenting cast.

  “When he recovered from the shock of seeing a dead man walk into his bedroom, he told me to haul my butt over to the guest house...and to make sure I didn’t get shot in the process. He let me know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t about to conduct two memorial services for the same grandson in less than a year.”

  Sabrina lifted a trembling hand to push her hair from her forehead. Joseph had sent him to her. Even after all that had happened in the past months. Even knowing she’d do anything to protect her child from the nameless, faceless killer who’d almost taken her life and the baby’s.

  “What else did he tell you?”

  Jack’s glance went to the bassinet, then came back to Sabrina.

  “Nothing.”

  Her head whirled. Joseph had left it to her to tell Jack what she would, just as he’d kept her hidden and safe these past few weeks while the family friend Josie Wentworth had implored to find Sabrina and the sheriff Rachel had tumbled into love with had joined forces to discover who wanted her and her child dead.

  Sam Arquette and Riley Hunter were still tracking the culprit. Sabrina’s heart twisted with sharp, lancing pain. Could he be standing right here before her?

  Joseph obviously didn’t think so, or he wouldn’t have sent his grandson to the guest cottage. Sabrina didn’t want to think so, either. She longed to throw herself into Jack’s arms, to sob out her joy at his return and share the miracle of their daughter. She fought the need with everything that was in her.

  Until she knew where he’d gone and why the heck he’d let her believe him dead all these months, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, trust him. Only one thing motivated Sabrina as she dove for her purse. The baby came first. She had to.

  In a swift, practiced move, she pulled the Beretta from its holster. Her hand didn’t waver as she held the weapon steady on Jack. She’d spent enough hours at the firing range after she’d purchased the gun to know how to use it.

  “Move away from the baby, Jack. Move away, and we’ll talk. You’ll have to tell me where you’ve been all these months before I’ll trust you near my child.”

  She might have imagined the brief softening in his face a few seconds ago. At her low, urgent command, it became a mask again, so stark and tight that his cheekbones jutted below ice blue eyes as cold as death.

  The fire crackled and snapped in the massive stone hearth. The rain beat against the windows. Jack’s chest rose and fell under his hooded navy sweatshirt, once, twice. Then slowly, so slowly, he moved to the side, away from the bassinet.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded in a low, rasping voice. “Why did you let us think you were dead all these months?”

  “I was dead,” he said flatly. “Dead and buried. For most of the time, anyway.”

  She steeled herself against the emptiness in his eyes and voice. “Go on.”

  He stared at her, his body coiled and tense under the sweatshirt. The words came slowly, as though dragged from a well he didn’t want to tap.

  “I don’t remember much of the first few months. The explosion blinded me for a while, and they kept the bandages on as a blindfold for a long time after that.”

  She swallowed. “They?”

  “El Jafir.” His lip made a thin curl. “That’s what they style themselves. The Wind. They want to blow all the evil Western influence from their land. They call themselves true believers, but they’re simply a loose confederation of sadistic fanatics with no agenda but terror. They blew the rig and everyone on it.”

  “But...” She dragged in a jagged breath. “But we were told there were no survivors, that the explosion killed everyone on the rig.”

  “The blast blew at least two of us into the water. Maybe more.” Firelight flickered on his unshaven face. A muscle ticked in one cheek. “But I’m the only one who crawled out of the pit.”

  Icy chills rippled down Sabrina’s spine. This wasn’t Jack. Not her Jack. He wasn’t the same man she’d found smiling down at her when she opened her eyes that long-ago June afternoon. Or the same man who’d waded into a brawl with two drunken truckers. Or even the one who’d launched himself through the air to protect her from a falling roof. In the past, agonizing months, she’d remembered every moment of their days together, recounted his every expression, from laughter to pensive thought to the desperate fear of that moment in the motor court. Never, ever could she have envisioned the look she saw in his eyes now.

  “What pit, Jack?”

  He didn’t answer for long moments. Then the words dragged out of him, slowly, hollowly.

  “After the first few months, they kept us in a hole. They weren’t interested in ransom, didn’t even care about letting the rest of the world know we were alive. They simply wanted us to suffer, to live in darkness and reflect on the evil our insatiable greed for oil had wrought. They wanted us to know that we already inhabited our grave.”

&nbs
p; “How...how did you get out?”

  He stared at her for long, silent moments. Images only he could see drew the skin taut on his cheekbones. Then he shook his head with slow, absolute finality.

  “I got out. That’s all that matters.”

  She had just started to breathe again when his next words sent shock ripping through her lungs.

  “That,” he said softly, “and the fact that the terrorists timed the explosion to the exact moment I stepped on that rig.”

  “What?”

  “I only stopped on the mainland long enough to see Ali and leave my briefcase and travel gear with him. A helicopter was already preflighted and waiting to take me out to the rig. It blew just as the helo touched down. From what my captors let drop, someone tipped them off that I was on that bird.”

  “Ali?” she breathed.

  “I wondered,” he growled. “For a long time, I wondered. I had plenty of time to think in that hole. I paid a very private visit to the prince before I left Qatar.”

  Sabrina struggled to understand how the dark-eyed, mustachioed prince who’d good-naturedly vied with Jack for her attention last summer could have arranged the death of his friend.

  “It wasn’t him,” Jack said, putting that specter to rest. “But whoever tipped off the terrorists was the same individual who paid those supposedly drunken truckers to run down Ali and me.”

  “That was deliberate?” Sabrina’s jaw sagged.

  “That’s the way I figured it.”

  “But who...? Why...?” His intent, piercing stare raised a violent protest. “Oh, God, Jack, you can’t think I had anything to do with that attack? That I wanted you dead?”

  The hand holding the Beretta shook. Maybe that explained the subsequent attempt to force her car off the road. And the masked intruder who’d broken into her house the night she’d fled. Maybe someone had thought she’d contributed to Jack’s death, had been paid to set him up. Maybe they’d wanted to even the score.

  “No!”

  The savage exclamation sliced through her chaotic thoughts.