At the time he'd told her about the "training of a mountain sharpshooter," she hadn't thought him capable of shooting an innocent intruder. Now, however, she could see him striding silently through the densely forested hills, rifle in hand, ready and willing to defend his own. She wasn't certain she liked the image, but she couldn't seem to get it out of her head.
"I can't give you a name, Morgan," she said quietly in spite of the flurry of nerves in the pit of her stomach.
He narrowed his gaze to slits, and his mouth compressed. She felt the force of his will, the strength of his personality reach across the table to envelop her.
"If I have to, I'll get it myself. I'd rather you tell me."
"Why?"
The question seemed to throw him, but only for an instant. "Why the hell do you think? So I can make him an offer he can't refuse."
Because she was genuinely frightened, she tried for a light touch. "C'mon, Morgan, that's sounds like some kind of threat."
"No threat. I'll flat-out take the guy apart if he doesn't agree to get out of your life and stay out."
Raine gaped at him. "That's … ridiculous."
He lifted a brow. "Is it? I think not."
"But … but you've already admitted you don't love me."
Violence flared in his eyes, as hot as a flame, before it went out. "You're mine, Raine. You've always been mine." He leaned forward, his palms flat on the table. "Are you going to give me his name, or do I have to start making calls?"
She was cornered. She knew it, and so did he. Morgan never made threats he didn't intend to back up. His reputation as a man of his word was part of his carefully guarded credibility with sources and targets alike.
Sure, she could stall him for a few weeks, but in the end, he would win. And she would be worn-out from nerves and anxiety and anger. Serenity at all costs, she told herself. Her boys needed calm to develop calm personalities. Besides, once Morgan knew the truth, he would lose interest in the hunt and fold his tent.
"I can't give you his name because I don't know his name," she said with perfect truth.
"You expect me to believe you slept with a guy without knowing his name?" He shook his head. "Honey, you're selling as hard as you can, but I ain't buyin'."
"Hear me out before you start threatening me again," she ordered, raising her voice slightly.
"I'm listening."
Raine took a breath and wet her lips. It wasn't enough. She reached for her water glass and drained it
"I don't know if you remember or not, but I had some complications with Mike's birth."
He looked impatient. "A prolapsed uterus. Your obstetrician said you might have trouble conceiving again."
She acknowledged that with a brief smile. How could she have forgotten that awesome memory of his? Once Morgan heard or read something, it was with him forever.
"Exactly." She cleared her throat. "Over the years it's become progressively worse. This year, when I went in for my annual exam, Luke Jarrod—he's the obstetrician who delivered both Prudy's and Stacy's babies—told me that a hysterectomy was inevitable."
His face paled. "You're talking major surgery, right?"
She nodded. "Luke also told me that if I wanted to have another child, I had to conceive immediately. The weight of the baby would anchor the uterus long enough for the baby to grow safely to term. Then, when I delivered, Luke would also remove my womb."
He shoveled his hand through his hair, his expression grim. The sickly pallor of pain hadn't completely faded, and the lines bracketing his mouth seemed to have deepened.
"Sounds risky."
"Luke assured me it wasn't." Even if it had been, she would have taken the risk.
"Easy for him to say," he muttered, glaring at her.
"True." She swallowed, trying to decide how much to tell him. "I had to do a lot of thinking and soul-searching in a hurry. Was I ready for another child? Could I love him or her as much as I'd loved Mike? Would I be dishonoring Mike's memory if I gave birth so soon after his death?" She drew a breath. "It was a difficult decision to make. In the end I realized I wanted another baby more than anything else in the world."
"So you went out and got yourself pregnant by the first guy who got a hard-on in your presence? Is that what you're telling me?"
She refused to cringe at the crude description. "Not exactly, but in essence, yes."
Funny how simple and straightforward and unemotional it all sounded when it had been anything but. In fact, she had all but made herself sick agonizing.
"Hell, honey, if all you wanted was stud service with a smile, why didn't you call me?" He sounded almost bored, as though the question were asked out of idle curiosity, nothing more. Something told her that the more casual he became, the greater the danger.
"Because you were part of that soul-searching," she told him quietly. "Or rather, our marriage was."
He was very still. "Go on."
Her back was beginning to ache and she shifted position. It helped somewhat, but the dull throb remained. "I knew you didn't want any more children."
He scowled. "I didn't say that."
"But that's what you meant, wasn't it? When you said the time wasn't right to have another baby?"
"Yeah, that's what I meant," he conceded grudgingly. "But not because I don't like kids. Or … or because I resented Mike."
"But I did want another child. Desperately."
"I would have—"
"Forced yourself to rise to the occasion?" When he looked ashamed, she smiled sadly. "You're right. That's exactly what it would have been. A concession on your part. A gift to make me happy."
"You make it sound like there's something wrong with that." His steely control slipped. "I'm your husband, damn it."
"Yes, but a baby should be a joy to both parents. Equally loved and wanted."
"Sure—in the best of all possible worlds. Which this definitely ain't."
Raine drew a breath. "There was another reason," she said more softly.
In some secret way, he seemed to brace himself. "Which is?" he demanded in an equally soft tone.
"I wanted this child to have stability in his life. A solid sense of security."
He looked puzzled. "So?"
Raine stood and gathered the plates. The sudden movement made her queasy for a moment. She swallowed, and the sour feeling passed.
"Think about it, Morgan," she advised as she carried plates and silverware to the sink, returning with the coffeepot in hand. "Remember the first few times you came home after Mike was old enough to know there was someone new in his little world? Remember how he was afraid of you because he didn't know who you were?"
For an instant, he looked hurt. "He was just a little squirt."
"Little squirts are capable of recognizing the important people in their lives. It's called bonding."
She refilled his cup, then put the pot on the table and sat down. For once, both babies seemed to be resting. How long would that last? she wondered. So far the record was twenty minutes.
"Are you telling me my son and I never bonded?" His tone was belligerent, his jaw hard.
"No, but it took a long time, and according to the books I read on child psychology—"
Morgan offered his opinion on such books in his usual blunt and pithy fashion. "Mike was a good kid. He understood how things had to be."
His voice was sharp and shaded toward angry. She knew him well enough to know that his true feelings were often buried inside that anger. Feelings that he had consistently refused to share with her. Feelings that only surfaced in his dreams where no one else could intrude.
"Yes, he understood, but that didn't stop him from moping around for weeks after you left. Or later, when he got older, acting out."
"Acting out? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means he tried to ease the pain of losing you again by misbehaving."
"He didn't lose me, dammit. I went back to work, just like a father's supposed to."
"You weren't home every night, and he wanted you to be. To a child, that's tantamount to a loss—or abandonment."
"Hell, my old man was home every night, and it didn't seem all that positive to me."
"The circumstances were vastly different, as you well know."
He stared at her as though he'd never seen her before. "Is that how you feel, too, Raine? Abandoned?"
"Sometimes," she admitted softly.
Morgan felt a need to lash out, but made himself back off. She was being honest with him, which was as much a sacred trust as his wedding vows. Only a man who had been lied to by the best and the worst of the world's power players knew just how precious and valuable a commodity honesty truly was. Raine's openness was one of the things he'd found irresistible from the first.
"How many times did you sleep with this guy before he got you pregnant?" It hurt him to ask the question, but he had to know.
"I was artificially inseminated three times."
Morgan was rarely at a loss for words. Sometimes the ones he chose were inappropriate, far too often they were obscene, but he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been able to come up with something. Even when his daddy had switched him raw for being a smart-ass, he'd managed to have the last word. But now he simply sat there and stared at the shuttered look on Raine's face, unable to utter one damned word.
"Are you all right?" she asked softly when the silence turned so brittle, it all but crackled.
"No, how the hell could I be all right?" he managed to get out. "I just found out my wife would rather have a stranger's baby than mine."
Her eyes turned bright with hurt. "It's not like that, and you know it."
"Isn't it?"
He knew he wasn't really bleeding inside. Suddenly he wished he were. Anything was better than the feeling of utter emptiness. As though from a distance he realized that Raine was beginning to look alarmed.
"You wanted the truth," she reminded him.
"Yes. Thank you for that at least."
He took a long slow breath and began reciting the Hebraic alphabet. The heaviness in his head began taking on sizzling edges, and he ground his teeth. He realized he was clenching his fists and slowly relaxed his fingers.
The first slice of pain wasn't bad. The second would have taken him to his knees if he'd been standing. He waited for it to ease off, then managed to push back his chair.
"Excuse me, please," he said as he very carefully got to his feet. A phosphorescent arrow shot across his field of vision. He heard her call his name, saw her leap to her feet. There was a pulsating halo of light around her. A shimmer of vivid red, and then … nothing.
Seated behind the cluttered desk of his small office off the wing of emergency room cubicles, Dr. Boyd MacAuley flipped to a clean page in the folder bearing Morgan Paxton's name and continued scribbling, filling the paper with his own version of shorthand as the Saudi Arabian physician on the other end of the overseas call read from Morgan's medical record.
"How long ago was that?" he asked when the man paused to take a breath.
"One moment, please, Doctor, while I check the chart," Dr. Habib requested in his precise Etonian accent. "Ah, yes, here we are. January of this year."
Boyd frowned, very aware that Raine was watching him intently from her seat across the desk. "And you say he made a full recovery?"
"According to this, yes. As I said, my colleague, Dr. Rashid, actually treated Mr. Paxton and this other man, Stebbins. At the request of the U.S. consulate general."
Boyd shifted his gaze to Raine's worried face and smiled. "Thanks very much for the information, Doctor," he said into the receiver. "I appreciate your cooperation."
"Not at all, Doctor," Habib replied with clipped courtesy.
After another exchange of formal pleasantries, Boyd replaced the receiver in the cradle and let himself slump back into his chair. He'd put in two hectic days in a row and he was beat. He longed for a shower, a cold beer and a long, lazy session in bed with Stacy. Only for Raine would he have hung around to wait for the call he'd placed earlier to be returned.
"Looks like the guy you called in New York—what was his name?" He lifted a brow.
"Joel Bronstein," she supplied impatiently.
"Yeah. Looks like Bronstein was right. Paxton and his producer picked up a spore all right, something exotic that's indigenous to an isolated area in the Middle East."
Raine seemed to have difficulty swallowing. "Is … is it fatal?"
Boyd gave her a smile guaranteed to reassure the most confirmed pessimist. Or so Prudy had told him once.
"Not if it's treated quickly, which, in this case, it was. Apparently, the network takes very good care of its own. Brought in a chopper as soon as Paxton and this other guy showed signs of illness. Took them to the Royal Saudi Hospital at Riyadh. Kept them there two weeks before giving them both a clean bill of health. Other than the headaches you and I discussed yesterday and a low level of iron in his blood—probably the result of overwork—the man is fine. Or will be, once he surfaces again."
Disbelief clouded her eyes, and he braced himself. Stacy and her friends had a way of pushing a man to the wall when they wanted something.
"Boyd, he passed out cold in the middle of my kitchen floor." She drew a fast little breath. She was wound tight and was exhausted at the same time. Luke Jarrod would have his head if he didn't convince her to rest.
"You should have seen him. One minute he was getting up from the table and the next… God, he went over like a felled oak."
"A combination of the drug he'd taken earlier, jet lag and a fairly intense case of fatigue. Plus the fact that he'd been hit with another headache."
"How do you know that?"
He wondered when she'd slept last. He wouldn't ask, not yet. "He told me when he came to for a few minutes in the ER."
"He was in pain?"
"Yeah." He hesitated, wondering just how much to tell her. "Pain" was a mild term for the agony he'd seen in Paxton's eyes. Cluster headaches weren't serious in and of themselves, but the cumulative effect of recurring agony over a long period had proved too much for some patients to endure.
"We gave him a good-sized jolt of morphine and sent him back to sleep. It was about all we could do."
"So you're telling me he's fine, right?"
"Other than the headache which he just has to sleep off." He pushed back his chair and stood. "Which is exactly what I'm prescribing for you, neighbor. Eight solid, uninterrupted hours of sleep."
He came around the desk to offer her a hand, which she accepted with a wan smile. "These days I count it a victory if the boys allow me four," she said as he tugged her to her feet.
"I can prescribe something mild that won't hurt the babies."
She shook her head. "I'll be fine."
Boyd decided he didn't like the faint tremor in her voice. "Tell you what, I'm heading home myself in a few minutes. Why don't you let me drive you? You can leave your car in the lot. Pick it up tomorrow."
"No, I don't like to be without transportation these days. Just in case. It's silly, I know, but it makes me feel more secure to know I could get myself to the hospital if I had to."
"Sure, okay. We'll leave my car here and take yours. Stace can drop me off in the morning."
"That's really very kind of you, but—"
"Nothing to it, neighbor. Just give me a minute to check on a couple of patients."
"Thanks. I admit I'm feeling a little frayed at the edges."
Raine let him drop his arm over her shoulder and steer her toward the door. Boyd had been a tower of strength from the moment she'd placed a frantic call to the hospital while the 911 paramedics were loading Morgan into an ambulance.
Outside, in the corridor, a huge red-haired man with Popeye arms and an orderly's blue badge pinned to his white tunic approached, pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair.
"Hiya, Doc," the orderly said with a grin. "How're those pretty gals of yours?"
; "Blooming," Boyd replied. "And Stace says to thank you for sending her your fudge recipe. It was an instant favorite."
"No problem, Doc," he said as he passed.
It was well past the dinner hour, and the bustling air Raine had noticed earlier had eased off. She hated hospitals. Too many memories of Mike's last hours on earth were wrapped up with hospital sounds and hospital smells. Morgan had come running down a corridor very much like this one the night Mike died, his jaw bristling with a two-day beard and his eyes haunted and bloodshot.
He'd been nearly torn apart to discover he'd arrived too late.
Raine couldn't quite suppress a shiver, drawing Boyd's sympathetic gaze. "Cold?"
She offered him a tired smile. "No, a memory I can't seem to lose."
"For what it's worth, the worst of it fades with time." His voice was gentle, his eyes sad.
Raine knew that he'd lost his first wife and child in an auto accident a few years before he'd met and married Stacy, and that the grief he'd suffered as a result of his loss had driven him from medicine for a time.
"He was such a great kid." She squared her shoulders. "He would have made a wonderful big brother."
Boyd acknowledged that with a nod. "How much longer before you get a peek at the two you're busy brewing?"
"Ten weeks, give or take a few days. Luke keeps warning me that twins are early more often than not."
"Don't tell Prudy. According to Case, she's all but pacing the floor in the hope the activity will bring on labor."
"Yes, I know. She has great hopes for next Wednesday."
They turned the corner toward the patient rooms lining the first-floor corridor. "Why Wednesday?"
"Full moon. Prudy swears the pull of the moon's gravity brings on labor if a woman is anywhere close to her time."
Boyd laughed. "She's more right than wrong about that. Full moon time is always busier than usual in all the wards. The ER is always jammed when the moon is full. We get a lot of regulars then. 'Moonies' we call them."
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