He lowered his attention to the floor. No response.
“I can’t keep running. I’m going to be a mom in a few months, and the only way I can do that job justice is to make this baby girl a priority and to give her a life she deserves. Give her some stability.” She smoothed her palms over her still-damp shirt, but reassurance didn’t surface this time. “Even if that means her growing up without me.”
Beckett shot his head up, locked his gaze on her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Whoever framed me for taking that money is powerful, Beckett. They’d covered all their bases and made sure the evidence pointed to me. This doesn’t feel like some desperate move to steal millions of dollars of donation money. It’s personal. It’s outright destruction. They’ve planned every move from the beginning, and they’re obviously willing to kill me in order to make sure everything goes according to that plan. I’m not going to risk this baby’s or your life for the smallest chance of proving I’m innocent.” The muscles in her jaw ached with the pressure from her back teeth. “I want you to bring me in. You’ll have full custody after she’s born. Just...promise me to make sure she’s loved, and that she knows I did everything I could for her.”
“You told me you could prove you’re innocent, and now you want me to bring you in.” Strong fingers encircled her arm, tugging her into a wall of muscle. She pressed her palms against his chest, his heart thudding hard beneath her hands. “What’s changed?”
“Beckett, this is the only way to make sure you and the baby are safe.” Raleigh sucked in a deep breath, and her throat dried. “I’ve lost too many people in my life. I can’t handle the thought of losing her. And...I won’t lose you.”
“No one is taking you from me. Not again.” He crushed his mouth to hers.
Chapter Five
She was willing to turn herself in to protect their baby. To protect him.
The guilty ran, but they never surrendered.
Beckett had been fully committed to giving in to the anger and distance that’d been swirling inside him for the past four months, but then she’d up and asked him to bring her in to the feds. To raise their baby on his own. He wasn’t sure what’d happened next other than knowing, deep down, he wasn’t ready to let her go that easily, and he had pulled her right into him and kissed her.
He opened his mouth wider, took everything she had to give and more. Slipping both arms around Raleigh, he pulled her against him as tight as humanly possible. An explosion of need seared through him as he consumed her. Enough to decimate everything he’d been holding on to since her arrest. The anger, the betrayal, the fear of the past, of realizing the person he’d trusted the most had become nothing more than a common criminal. Reckless, untamed desire for the woman in his arms took control to the point he barely had enough sense to pull away to take a breath.
Damn it. She was everything he remembered, everything he’d wanted, and he wasn’t sure it was possible to ever get enough of her. These past few months—the isolation, the loneliness—disappeared in an instant as she penetrated the seam of his mouth with her tongue, and the entire world threatened to drop right out from under him.
She gasped as he trailed his mouth along the tendon at her throat, fingers fisting in his shirt for balance. “Beckett.”
His name on her lips only intensified the craze singing through his veins. Lean muscle flexed under his fingers as he maneuvered them back toward the single bed. A feral growl escaped his throat as she threaded her fingers through his hair and redirected his mouth to hers. Capturing his bottom lip between her teeth, she bit down, and electricity lightninged down his spine. No matter how many times he’d tried to move on, to forget her, she was just so damn perfect. Compelling, passionate and wild. Every cell in his body wanted every cell in hers, and he didn’t have the strength to pull away.
Her knees hit the edge of the mattress, and the muscles down her spine tensed under his touch. “Beckett, we need to stop. This isn’t...this isn’t what I want.”
He gripped her hips, drawing back. His lungs battled to keep up with his racing heart rate, his entire body lit up from a single brush of her mouth against his. Raw. Unbalanced. Warmth swirled in those green eyes, and his gut clenched with unsatisfied desire. Dimly, he understood this was a bad idea. He was a marshal tasked with bringing her in to answer for not appearing before the judge, and while they were having a baby together, that didn’t make his job any less of a reality. She was right. She couldn’t keep running, couldn’t hide forever. That wasn’t the kind of life either of them wanted for this baby. “You’re right.”
He sucked in a breath between his teeth as she swept her tongue along the edges of her mouth. Why couldn’t they go back to before she’d been arrested? To the moment when neither of them had been anything more than two people intent on living out the rest of their lives together. No secrets. No lies. No careers driving them apart. What they’d had together then hadn’t been flawless, but it couldn’t compare to any other personal encounter he’d experienced. She’d been a bright light in a sea of past darkness. For a while, she’d been his.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry. I...” Missed this connection. Missed her. Running one hand through his hair, Beckett put space between them, their exhalations mingling for a few breaths. No matter how this investigation ended, it’d never be the same as it once was. There was too much history between them, too much doubt.
He’d meant what he had said before. He’d fight like hell to ensure nobody—not even the US Marshals Service—could take her and this baby from him, but his offer of protection couldn’t equate to anything more than that. Partnerships thrived on trust, and until they were able to prove she had nothing to do with those stolen donation funds, he couldn’t trust her. “It won’t happen again.”
“I think that’s for the best.” Nodding, Raleigh swiped the back of her hand against her kiss-stung lips, the slight hint of brown sugar from the granola settling on his tongue. She hiked her thumb toward one of the closed doors attached to the bedroom. “I’m going to shower before we figure out our next move. It’s been a rough couple of days, and it’s going to take a while to get all this dirt off.”
Their next move. Right. Because there was still a gunman out there ready to rip her and their baby out of his life, and they only had one lead when it came to clearing her name of the embezzlement charges.
“Good idea. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can find us something to eat.” And maybe run off the heat still simmering under his skin to cool down in the rain. What the hell had he been thinking, kissing her like that? He’d set the lines between them, and it’d taken less than twenty-four hours for him to break his own rules. Guess that’d always been the problem when it came to Raleigh. He hadn’t been thinking. Not when he’d run to help her during the mugging all those months ago. Not when they’d fallen into bed together that same night, and not when he’d almost handed in his resignation from the Marshals after her arrest. Beckett headed toward the hallway and started to close the bedroom door behind him. Distance. He needed to clear his head, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get the chance sticking around here.
“Beckett, wait.” Her voice slipped through the crack in the door, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
He slowed. Long, dirt-stained fingers wrapped around the edge of the door to pry it wider. Perfectly shaped brows smudged with dirt, a shallow laceration across one sharp cheekbone, light pink lips with a bit of beard burn on one corner. None of it took away from the flawless beauty and strength underneath as she leveled those mesmerizing green eyes on him. She toyed with the bandages he’d secured along her forearms.
“You saved my life, even though I’m sure it was the last thing on your mind,” she said. “If you hadn’t been there when that gunman tried to shoot me, I’m not sure I’d be standing here, and I wanted to thank you. For protecting us.”
&
nbsp; Hell, no matter how many times he’d convinced himself he had her pegged, she’d deliver a devastating uppercut and sucker punch him with the unexpected. Raleigh wasn’t innocent, not in the least, but she sure wasn’t acting like a criminal either, and he had no idea what to do with that information. “Part of the job.”
“Is that all this is to you? What this baby and me are? A job?” A wave of vulnerability cracked through her carefully controlled expression as though he’d somehow gotten beneath her skin, but Beckett had been played before. Every change in body language, every look, every sweep of her hands over her stomach was meant to manipulate and confuse him. This intelligent, ambitious, beautiful woman only wanted one thing: to survive. He knew better than to believe any of what she’d told him had been used for anything other than getting her way. She only let him see what she wanted him to see, same game as his old man played until the day Hank got up and left Beckett and his mother behind, and he wasn’t going to let himself fall prey again.
“I’ll be back to check on you in twenty,” he said. “There’re alarm sensors on all the windows, so I’d stay away from them if I were you. Can’t be too careful.”
The fine lines between her brows smoothed. “Thanks for the advice, Marshal.”
She pushed the door closed, the lock engaging loud in his ears. The sound of water hitting tile registered through the thin wood a few seconds later. He gripped his hand around the doorknob to keep himself from barging back in that room and telling her the truth. He had to focus. They had one chance to get to Emily Cline, Raleigh’s assistant, without alerting the feds or the Marshals Service he’d found his fugitive, and he wasn’t going to waste it.
A loud trill cut through the tension-charged haze in his head, and Beckett reached for the phone in his back pocket. Saved by the bell. He swiped the green button to answer the call as his boss’s name registered and brought the phone to his ear. “Remington, what can I do for you?”
“Deputy Foster.” Disappointment slid into the chief deputy’s voice and pooled dread at the base of his spine. So much for holding off his team. “I’m surprised you answered the phone. Seems like you’ve hit a snag in your recovery assignment of Raleigh Wilde.”
Beckett leaned one shoulder into the wall beside him, folding one arm across his chest. The butt of his weapon scraped along his forearm. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“I’m going to let you figure that one out on your own.” Finnick Reed and Jonah Watson, damn fine marshals he’d worked countless cases with, and they’d just been sent in to take over his. Damn it. “I’ve got an unregistered vehicle that once belonged to Ms. Wilde’s deceased aunt parked next to your SUV at a cabin out at East Lake, bullet casings near the tree line, two sets of footprints heading into the woods, and another leading to a set of tire tracks we haven’t been able to identify.”
His back teeth ached from the pressure in his jaw, and Beckett straightened. Of all the successful fugitive recoveries he’d worked over the past decade, she’d brought in two other marshals? “You sent them to check up on me.”
“Wouldn’t you in my position?” Remi asked. “I gave you this assignment because you told me you could handle it, but from the crime-scene photos I’m looking at, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Tell me I’m wrong, Beckett. Tell me you’re not on the run with a known fugitive in some last-ditch effort to fix what went wrong between the two of you, and I’ll reassign Watson and Reed another case.”
Beckett turned toward Raleigh’s door, her earlier question still echoing through his head. Was this just a case to him? Or more? Remington Barton hadn’t gotten to her position as chief deputy of the USMS Oregon district office by avoiding the tough conversations or backing down from the challenges she’d faced as a female in their chosen profession. She was confident, persuasive and one of the best marshals he’d ever had the pleasure of working beside. She wasn’t going to let this go. He tightened his grip around the phone. The second he revealed Raleigh was pregnant with his kid, Remi would order him out of the field and pull in another marshal for the recovery.
No. This wasn’t just another case to him. Never had been. Not when it came to the woman on the other side of that door. He’d given Raleigh his word to see this through, to protect her and the baby, and that was exactly what he was going to do. But, more than that, that familiar scent of hers woven into his clothes, the feel of her soothing circles on his chest after he’d woken up from another fresh nightmare... She helped settle the agitation and restlessness permanently etched into his bones, and for the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, he felt like he could finally breathe. Who else had been able to do that for him but her?
“Beckett?” Remi asked. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Beckett slid his shoulder up the wall and straightened. “You’re wrong.”
He ended the call.
* * *
SEARING HEAT TRAILED along her skin and cleared the dirt and leaves from her scalp, but no amount of hot water could make her forget that kiss. She...hadn’t expected that. And she hadn’t stopped it either. She and Beckett had been together for six months before her arrest, but that kiss had taken her by surprise. Electrically charged, heated, almost starved. She could still feel the bruising indentations of his fingers in her lower back as he’d fought to bring her closer. Almost like he’d been missing a puzzle piece and wanted her to fill the empty space. The difference between the man she’d been with before her arrest and the one who’d kissed her as though he hadn’t been able to breathe unless connected to her mouth still rocked through her. Raleigh brushed the pads of her fingers across her lips, flinching at the immediate sting at one side. No one is taking you from me.
Taking her from him? Or taking the baby?
She stepped from the shower, air from the vent above fighting to cool the frantic rush of desire still heating her from head to toe—in vain. Drying off with one of the towels hanging nearby, she wrapped herself in a robe dangling on the back of the bathroom door. The same tile that’d lined the fireplace in the main living room added to the modern farmhouse feel of the bathroom. Her reflection skewed in gold light fixtures and plumbing as she ran her fingers through her freshly washed hair.
Didn’t matter what he’d meant before, or why he’d kissed her. No matter how much she wanted his presence and intentions to be for her, he’d made it clear that wasn’t the case. He was here to do a job, and she couldn’t let their past—however short it’d been—cloud her judgment now. She’d worked too hard to distance herself from falling back into old patterns, especially when it came to relying on others. She’d fight to clear her name of the fraud and embezzlement charges, with or without his help, move on with her life, and give this baby the life and love she deserved. She’d gotten by this far on her own. She’d learned to be strong, resilient, driven. Having Beckett here didn’t change that.
Raleigh stepped into the large walk-in closet attached to the bathroom, running her fingers through the clothes that’d been left behind by who she assumed were the previous owners of the house before the marshals had seized the property. Dark suit jackets, white shirts and an array of colorful ties hung on one side, the other filled with silk scarves, brand labels, heels and lingerie. Checking back over her shoulder, she skimmed her fingers across the soft fabrics and lace. Her arrest had forced her to leave her possessions behind, including all of her clothing, just as this couple had been forced. She’d worn the dirt-caked jeans, flannel shirt and cotton underwear from her aunt’s cabin in desperation. She’d discarded them on the unique tile a few feet away, but she couldn’t stand the thought of putting them back on. Not after reliving the gut-wrenching memory of her brother’s last moments.
She wasn’t desperate anymore. She didn’t have to rely on the pain, anger and resources from the past to carry her through the present. Because she wasn’t alone this time. Her heart jerked in her chest as footsteps echoed dow
n the hallway toward the bedroom door.
Three quick knocks accompanied that deep, all-too-familiar voice. “Raleigh, you okay?”
She pulled back her shoulders to counteract the instant warmth pooling at the base of her spine. She wasn’t physically alone anymore, but emotionally? She couldn’t depend on anyone but herself. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Okay,” Beckett said. “I found us something to eat when you’re ready.”
His boots echoed off the dark hardwood flooring installed throughout the house at his retreat, but the flood of heat refused to drain from her system. He’d always had that effect on her. One word, one touch, and an internal explosion destroyed her all over again without warning. But she’d meant what she’d said. She appreciated his help, but she couldn’t afford the distraction getting involved with him offered. Not with their baby’s life at stake.
Checking the label of the chunky dark green cable sweater in front of her, she tugged it from its position on top of a row of shelving. The sweater cost more than three months’ salary at the foundation, but it fit, and she wasn’t about to turn down clean clothes. A fresh start. She pulled a pair of black leggings, a white T-shirt and a set of nude lace lingerie from the drawers stacked against one wall and dressed quickly. The bra-and-panty set wasn’t practical for surviving a gunman in the middle of the Oregon wilderness, but it’d been the least sexy item compared to the rest of the options in those drawers. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was going to see it but her. Least of all Beckett Foster.
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