Читать книгу Secret Surrogate - Delores Fossen, Delores Fossen - Страница 8

Fall Creek, Texas

Kylie Monroe tightened her grip on the .357 Magnum and kept her index finger on the trigger.

She waited in the dark. Deep in the corner where she hoped the shadows hid her.

Listening.

Praying.

Mercy, was she ever praying.

Maybe those footsteps that she’d heard outside belonged to one of the deputies from the Fall Creek Sheriff’s Office. Heck, she was even hoping it was a neighbor who’d dropped by. Fat chance of that, though. Her nearest neighbor was nearly two miles away, and it was close to midnight. Hardly the time for visitors.

Besides, she’d seen no car lights. No sound of an engine. Or any other indication that whoever was out there had neighborly intentions. The footsteps likely belonged to the shadowy figures she’d seen in the woods on the east side of her property.

She made a quick check of the clock on the mantel. Sweet heaven. Where was the deputy? She’d made that 911 call well over a half hour ago.

Of course, it seemed more like an eternity.

Because her legs were trembling, Kylie leaned against the wall of the tiny foyer and tried not to make a sound. That included humming. Several times, she’d caught herself humming a little louder than was probably safe. Of course, maybe no sound was safe right now.

The baby she carried inside her kicked and squirmed as if he or she knew something was terribly wrong. That didn’t surprise her. After all, her entire body was tense—every muscle knotted, her breath thin.

It only got worse when she heard another sound that she’d anticipated.

And dreaded.

There was a sharp groan of wood. No doubt from one of the creaky floorboards on the porch. Someone was just outside her door. Mere inches away.

Her heartbeat began to race out of control, but she tried to stay calm. For the sake of the baby. And for her own sake. So she could respond accordingly.

Unfortunately, respond accordingly might mean she’d have to use deadly force.

She was a trained law enforcement officer, Kylie reminded herself. Except she hadn’t carried a badge or even held a gun for nearly three years. Maybe she wouldn’t even remember her firearms’ training. But it didn’t matter. She would do whatever it took to protect the baby and herself.

“Kylie?” a man called out. “It’s me—Lucas Creed.”

Oh, mercy.

That didn’t do much to steady her heart rate or her breathing.

However, Kylie did lower her gun, and she eased her finger off the trigger. Sheriff Lucas Creed wasn’t exactly the threat her body had prepared itself for.

But he was a threat of a totally different kind.

“I didn’t hear you drive up,” she informed him.

Lucas didn’t answer right away, but she thought she heard him mumble something. A not-so-pleased kind of mumbling. One she understood. Because, after all, her comment probably had seemed like some kind of accusation.

“I parked at the end of the road,” he responded. “You told the dispatcher you thought there might be trespassers on your property. I looked around. Didn’t see anyone.”

That was the good news.

The bad news was that Lucas Creed was standing on her porch.

Kylie eased her gun onto the foyer table and inched closer to the door until her ear was pressed right against it. “I asked the dispatcher to send out a deputy.” She tried to keep her voice level. Failed miserably. She had to clear her throat and repeat it so that it was more than an incoherent squeaky grumble.

Another pause. A long one. “One of my deputies is transferring a prisoner to Houston. He won’t be back till morning. The other’s out sick with the flu. I was the only one on call.”

Ah. So that explained it. Lucas had no choice but to respond to her 911. That meant he wasn’t any happier about this late-night visit than she was. No surprise there.

He despised her.

Worse, he had a reason to despise her.

“You plan to open the door and tell me what this is all about?” Lucas demanded.

That sent her pulse pounding. If she refused to let him in, it would make him suspicious. If she did comply, the same might happen.

And the one thing she didn’t want was Lucas getting suspicious.

“You know the drill,” he continued, sounding even more impatient. “I have to do a visual check to make sure you’re not being held against your will.”

Yes. It was standard procedure. Something Lucas wouldn’t violate. Even if she was absolutely the last person on Earth he wanted to see.

Kylie glanced down at her stomach. The darkness hid a lot of things but not the second trimester tummy bulge. Almost frantically, she loosened the tie of her flannel robe and fluffed up the fabric. It helped. Well, hopefully it did. Just in case, though, she angled her body behind the door when she opened it.

And she came face-to-face with a man who’d sworn never to see her again.

“Lucas,” she said, her throat closing up.

He didn’t acknowledge her greeting and didn’t make eye contact with her. Instead, he kept a firm grip on his lethal-looking Glock and swept an equally lethal-looking gaze around the yard.

“Is your porch light working?” he asked.

He didn’t say it as if it were a request, either. More like procedure. He had to make sure she wasn’t injured. Or that someone wasn’t lurking behind her, threatening her. To do that, he needed light.

Kylie reached over, hesitantly, and flicked the light switch on. If she thought it was tough to cope with Lucas in the dark, it was nothing compared to being able to see him.

He was every bit the rough-and-ready Texas cowboy tonight.

Just over six feet tall. Long and lean. Intense and imposing, with a fierce don’t-mess-with-me demeanor. He was the kind of man who could stop a heart in midbeat. Or send one racing.

He seemed to be doing both to her right now.

The past three years had been hard on him. She could see the stress etched on his rugged, naturally tanned face and in the depths of his eyes. Stress that she was responsible for.

Okay. That made her ache. Made her feel guilty. Worse, it made her want to do something to ease what he was going through. She wanted to reach out to him, to tell him how sorry she was. For everything. But Kylie knew Lucas wouldn’t appreciate the gesture or the words. And while they might make her feel marginally better, gestures and words wouldn’t do anything to help him.

The wind howled, stirring through his slightly-too-long mahogany-brown hair. His firm jaw muscles stirred, too. Moving against each other, as if he were in the middle of a battle about what to say.

Or, more likely, what not to say.

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he mumbled in a rough whisper.

She knew what he meant. He had to come inside, look around. He’d need to put that on the report. Especially this report. Lucas wouldn’t want anyone to question his procedure or accuse him of cutting corners because of the bad blood between them. But he also wanted to do this as quickly as possible so he could get the heck out of there.

Something she totally understood.

Kylie moved back, still using the door as cover. Lucas didn’t say a word. He stepped inside, bringing with him the scents of his well-worn buckskin jacket, the winter frost and the fragrant cedars that he’d no doubt brushed up against to get to her house. His unique scent was there, as well. Something dark and masculine. Something that reminded her that she was a woman.

Oh, no.

That little mental realization shocked her. All right, more than shocked her. It stunned her. Because it had been a long time—years, in fact—since she’d been aware of something like that. This was obviously some by-product of pregnancy hormones. Yes, that had to be it. Because there was no other option. She couldn’t be physically attracted to the one man on the planet who would never be attracted to her.

Stupid pregnancy hormones.

They didn’t have a clue.

“What happened?” Lucas asked, using his cop’s voice to go with the cop’s surveillance of her living room and foyer. “Why the 911?”

Kylie quickly tried to gather her thoughts. And not the ones set off by the hormones, either. Those she pushed aside, and she got down to business.

“Around 11:30, I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water.” Even though she was trying to hurry this along, she stopped when she heard how shaky her voice was and took a deep breath. This wussiness had to stop. “I looked out the window and saw two men dressed in dark clothes in the woods out near that cluster of hack-berries.”

He nodded. “I saw the fresh tracks. Could be hunters.”

“Could be.” And that’s what Kylie desperately wanted to believe. That the men were deer or rabbit hunters who’d accidentally strayed onto her property. Nothing more. “But they weren’t carrying flashlights, or if they were, they didn’t have them turned on.”

Lucas made a throaty sound of contemplation and walked across the living room. His scarred boots echoed softly on the hardwood floor. “It’s a full moon. Maybe they didn’t need flashlights.”

“Maybe, but they weren’t carrying hunting rifles, and they ducked out of sight when they spotted me at the window.”

While he no doubt processed that, Lucas looked around. At the rough stone fireplace. At her seriously outdated furniture. And at her spartan computer desk tucked between two corner windows. He flexed his eyebrows when he noticed an old-fashioned turntable and the stack of equally old-fashioned Bob Dylan vinyl albums.

Lucas gave a you-still-listen-to-that? grunt and walked on through to the kitchen.

Kylie gave a corresponding yeah-I-do grumble and followed him. She hunched her shoulders, hoping he wouldn’t turn that scrutinizing gaze on her.

“Any idea who the two men might have been?” With his back to her, Lucas bracketed his hands on the multi-colored mosaic-tiled counter near the sink, leaned closer to the window and stared out into the darkness. The gesture looked effortless. Casual, even. But she knew differently. Lucas Creed was a dedicated, thorough lawman. He was examining every inch of the woods.

And every word of her account.

“No. I don’t know.” Kylie shook her head. “I mean, not really. But I had an, uh, appointment in San Antonio late this afternoon. Then, I did some shopping at the mall on the Riverwalk. It was already well past nine o’clock before I started the drive back home, and I thought someone might have followed me. Dark blue car. Nondescript. There was dirt or something on the license plate so I couldn’t see it, but I’m pretty sure there were two men inside.”

Sheesh. No being a wuss that time. But her story did have a tinge of paranoia to it. His deep male sound of reflection made her think that Lucas might feel the same way. Hopefully, he didn’t believe this was some kind of ploy for attention. If she’d been the sort to seek attention—and she wasn’t—she wouldn’t have been seeking it from him.

“Have you gotten any suspicious phone calls lately?” he asked, moving from the sink to the back door.

“No.” She wouldn’t tell him about the eerie feeling, though, that something just wasn’t right. While she trusted her instincts and intuition, she didn’t think Lucas would. He was a man who required proof and facts, and she was seriously short of those.

He turned on the back porch light. While keeping his Glock ready and aimed in his right hand, he opened the door slightly, and eased out a few inches so he could take a look outside. The badge clipped to the waist of his well-worn jeans scraped against the wooden jamb. “You think this might be connected to one of the articles you wrote?”

That improved her posture. Kylie automatically stiffened, and her back went ramrod straight. She hadn’t realized that he knew she was a journalist. But then, why wouldn’t he? She had a degree in journalism and had worked briefly for a San Antonio newspaper before becoming a deputy. She hadn’t exactly kept that a secret.

Unlike other things in her life.

For the past three years since she’d resigned as Lucas’s deputy, she’d yet to step foot inside the city limits of Fall Creek, the town she’d once called home. Instead, she’d moved to the tiny country house where her late grandmother had raised her. Added to that self-imposed isolation, she’d been making trips into San Antonio for anything from groceries to doctor’s appointments. That minimized her chances of running into Lucas. And it’d worked. She hadn’t seen him.

Until tonight.

“The last article I wrote did cause some waves,” Kylie admitted.

“Yeah.” And Lucas let that simple acknowledgment hum between them for several long moments. “The one about illegal and unethical surrogacy activity.”

So, he’d read it. Or at least he was familiar with it. Maybe he was also familiar with the fact that she’d alluded to a powerful San Antonio attorney, Isaac Dupont, and the surrogacy clinic director, Kendrick Windham, who might have participated in those illegal activities.

“I didn’t name names,” Kylie quickly pointed out. Why, she didn’t know. However, she suddenly felt the need to defend herself and her approach to journalism.

“But along with the San Antonio Police Department, hundreds, if not thousands, of readers figured out that you were referring to Isaac Dupont,” Lucas countered just as quickly.

Kylie was sure she blinked. “San Antonio PD? What do you mean?”

He shut the back door and locked it. Then with that same quiet, almost graceful confidence, he strolled toward the laundry room. “On the way over, I made some calls, talked to a friend in SAPD. They might open an investigation based on the info in your article.”

The blood rushed to her head, so fast that she became dizzy. Kylie dropped back a step and pressed her hand to her chest. “I didn’t know.”

“Nothing’s official.” He didn’t even spare her a glance. He continued his investigation by examining the garage just off the laundry room. “Besides, it might not even happen. The police are just looking into it.”

She nodded and tried not to show any emotion. But inside that was an entirely different matter. Oh, mercy. She’d speculated that Isaac Dupont might be up to his lily-white neck in illegal activity, but she hadn’t thought that article would cause him to try to intimidate her.

If that’s what he’d indeed tried to do.

Had he hired those men to follow her? To scare her? If so, it’d worked.

She was scared.

“I’ll have another look around outside,” Lucas said, coming out of the laundry room. He engaged the lock on the door that blocked off the garage from the rest of the house. “If I see anything suspicious, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.” She stepped back, clearing the way so he could go around her. “And thank you for coming.”

It was an automatic, polite response. Something drilled into her by her upbringing. A goodbye meant to get him moving out the door.

It didn’t have quite the intended effect on Lucas.

He stopped, practically in mid-step, and his gaze slid to hers. Those jaw muscles went to work again, and it seemed as if he’d changed his mind a dozen times about what to say. “This is my job.”

A short, efficient, arctic comeback. His version of an automatic response. It was his way of letting her know that even though they were enemies—and sweet heaven, they were enemies—he wouldn’t lower himself to shirking his duties because of her.

“Yes, this is your job,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t think anyone in Fall Creek would have criticized you if you hadn’t come.”

His teeth came together, and the battle began. Not with just his jaw muscles, but with his composure. His eyes. His entire body. “I don’t intend to discuss this with you.”

No. But it was always there. An unspoken conversation. And it always would be, since he would never be able to forgive her for what she’d done.

But then, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself, either.

That didn’t make them even.

She would always owe him. Because of the promise she’d made to a dying woman. Because of the promise she’d made to herself. Kylie would always feel the need to make things right with Lucas.

“If I could undo everything that happened,” she said to him, “I would.”

He turned. An agile shift of his body. His gaze rifled to hers, a little maneuver that robbed her of what breath she’d managed to recoup. There it was, in the depths of his saddle-brown eyes. The accusations.

The pain.

God, the pain.

Lucas combed his hostile gaze over her face, hardly more than a split-second glance. Then he took that methodical scrutinization lower, to her body.

Kylie trembled.

Waited.

She didn’t have to wait too long. Lucas actually did a double take when he noticed her stomach.

Not that it helped, but Kylie adjusted her robe again. Seconds passed slowly, crawling by, until the silence settled uncomfortably around them.

“Are you…” But he obviously couldn’t even finish the question. Instead, he swallowed hard.

Since it would be absurd to lie, Kylie had no choice but to admit the obvious. “Yes. I’m pregnant.”

He fired a few more of those nervy glances around the house. “I didn’t know,” he finally said.

The words were void of any emotion. He’d done a better job of that than she ever could have. Because down deep, below the words, even deeper than his eerily calm demeanor, she figured this discovery had to be killing him.

Or maybe he wasn’t affected at all because, perhaps, he truly didn’t care. Maybe she was a nonentity to him. Nothing more than a 911 call on a frosty January night.

She shook her head, moistened her lips. “Not many people know about the pregnancy.” And because she feared other questions, both those spoken aloud and left unsaid, Kylie went on the offensive. “I doubt those men are still out there. But just in case, I’ll lock all the doors, keep my weapon nearby. I’ll call you if I see anything else suspicious.”

He nodded, turned and headed for the door. Lucas didn’t even look back, which shot to heck her nonentity theory. She wasn’t a nonentity to him, definitely not, because he still hated her.

However, as deep and as potent as that hatred was, Kylie knew that Lucas would hate her even more if he learned the truth—

That the baby she was carrying was his.