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Just Eight Months Old...
Tori Carrington


THE BOUNTY HUNTER'S BABYChad Hogan's tempestuous romance with Hannah McGee flatlined when he gave her a sports car instead of an engagement ring. The last thing the rough-edged loner wanted was to lose the only woman who made him feel alive again. But he hadn't been ready for marriage.…Well, he'd better get ready now.Because Hannah was back–and their passion burned brighter than ever. But time hadn't stood still. For she had a babbling eight-month-old baby–Chad's baby girl–attached to her hip. Was the brooding bounty hunter finally ready to relinquish his solitary ways and be a full-time family man?







“Chad, meet my daughter, Bonny,” Hannah said.

He stared at the baby and the sparse-haired, drool-covered little imp stared back, chattering as if saying something directly to him, then holding out the toy she chomped on in his direction. He swallowed hard, his heart expanding, surging against the bands he’d wrapped around it so long ago. Her large eyes were open, so trusting, her cheeks flushed, her entire face animated.

Chad awkwardly moved to accept the offering, only it appeared she hadn’t meant for him to take it, merely to feel it. When he released the slobbery rubber, she gave a peal of laughter then stuck it back in her mouth.

A grin edged its way across his face and he swore he could feel one of those intangible bands in his chest snap and begin to unravel.

Now there was no doubt in his mind that Bonny was his.


Dear Reader,

As the air begins to chill outside, curl up under a warm blanket with a mug of hot chocolate and these six fabulous Special Edition novels….

First up is bestselling author Lindsay McKenna’s A Man Alone, part of her compelling and highly emotional MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: MAVERICK HEARTS series. Meet Captain Thane Hamilton, a wounded Marine who’d closed off his heart long ago, and Paige Black, a woman whose tender loving care may be just what the doctor ordered.

Two new miniseries are launching this month and you’re not going to want to miss either one! Look for The Rancher Next Door, the first of rising star Susan Mallery’s brand-new miniseries, LONE STAR CANYON. Not even a long-standing family feud can prevent love from happening! Also, veteran author Penny Richards pens a juicy and scandalous love story with Sophie’s Scandal, the first of her wonderful new trilogy—RUMOR HAS IT…that two high school sweethearts are about to recapture the love they once shared….

Next, Jennifer Mikels delivers a wonderfully heartwarming romance between a runaway heiress and a local sheriff with The Bridal Quest, the second book in the HERE COME THE BRIDES series. And Diana Whitney brings back her popular STORK EXPRESS series. Could a Baby of Convenience be just the thing to bring two unlikely people together?

And last, but not least, please welcome newcomer Tori Carrington to the line. Just Eight Months Old…and she’d stolen the hearts of two independent bounty hunters—who just might make the perfect family!

Enjoy these delightful tales, and come back next month for more emotional stories about life, love and family!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor




Just Eight Months Old…

Tori Carrington





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


With warm gratitude we dedicate this, our first Special Edition, to Karen Taylor Richman and her own special “addition.” We’d also like to thank Kim Nadelson and Debra Matteucci for their initiative and limitless help.

The pleasure’s all ours!




TORI CARRINGTON


is the pseudonym of husband-and-wife writing team Lori & Tony Karayianni, who have been cowriters for nearly as long as they’ve been a couple. They describe their lives as being “better than fiction.” Despite their different backgrounds—Tony was born near Olympia, Greece, and raised in Athens, while Lori is a native of Toledo, Ohio—their shared love for romance and travel allows them to constantly redefine what follows “and they lived happily ever after.” In their books you’ll see Tony’s keen eye for plotting and hunger for adventure, and Lori’s love for vivid characters and the fundamental ties that bind us all. Along with their four cats, they call Toledo home, but also travel to Athens as often as they can.

This talented writing duo also writes for Harlequin Temptation under the Tori Carrington pseudonym. Lori and Tony love to hear from readers. Write to them at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612 for an autographed bookplate.




Contents


Chapter One (#u9584e6fa-d995-5c8f-80d9-61dbe8e67e6a)

Chapter Two (#u085580ac-1ca4-5b79-91da-19d088fdd000)

Chapter Three (#u6e4392f4-5969-58eb-a585-fef4df3743f6)

Chapter Four (#ua92293e3-bb85-5faa-b48b-f22903066f70)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


The dog days of summer in New York City held little appeal for Hannah McGee. Never mind the bittersweet memories they brought drifting back. The heat and humidity wreaked havoc on her pale, lightly freckled skin and turned her brick-red corkscrew curls into a Panama hat of frizz.

Standing on the sweltering asphalt, she closed the car door then wiped at a one-inch spot on her vest, a little memento her eight-month-old daughter, Bonny, had bestowed upon her that morning. Giving up, she pulled the vest closer to her torso, the weight of the stun gun she called The Equalizer and a small canister of pepper spray she had tucked into a belt just inside the waist of her gauze skirt reassuringly familiar. For the past few years she’d never needed anything more to protect herself. Which was good, because even when she was a NYC police officer, she’d never much liked carrying a revolver.

After today she wouldn’t need any of this paraphernalia at all.

Still, goodbyes were something she’d never much liked. Saying adios to rusty rental cars, meals caught on the run and chasing bail-jumpers wasn’t that big a deal. But bidding adieu to her boss, Elliott Blackstone, was going to be a little bigger. She’d worked with him for the past three years. In an indirect way, he’d made it possible for her to switch career paths to trade in her bounty hunter title for that of private investigator. After today, that’d be official. She eagerly looked forward to planting her feet firmly on that new path just as soon as she closed the gate to this one.

She pulled open the glass door to Blackstone Bail and Bonds and welcomed the swell of cold, air-conditioned air that swept over her.

Five minutes later, she wondered if the obstacle that had just plopped down in the middle of her path came any larger—and that by no means referred to Elliott’s considerable size.

“I can’t pay you, Hannah.” Elliott Blackstone hovered somewhere in his mid- to late-forties, his passionate dislike of parting with anything green that had a picture of a president on it one of his defining traits. She understood this about him. In fact, after the first few occasions, she’d come to look forward to their little tugs-of-war. But this wasn’t the usual Elliott pleading poverty even though his posh office could easily match that of a banker. No, Hannah had the piercing sensation he was serious.

“El, I’m already late picking up Bonny because you sent Jack Stokes out on the same run. Can’t we just finish up here and call it a day?”

Blackstone cleared his throat. “Where is Stokes, anyway?”

Hannah remembered the dim interior of The Bar in South Jamaica, Queens, where she had picked up bail-jumper Eddie Fowler an hour before. “Probably still handcuffed to a bar rail. Unless someone took pity on him.” She smiled. “Though that’s highly unlikely.”

Elliott tugged a handkerchief from the front pocket of his silk-blend suit and mopped his forehead.

Hannah glanced at her watch, then sat in the visitor’s chair opposite him. “Okay, why don’t you start from the beginning.”

He fell silent for a good thirty ticks of the antique grandfather clock in the corner. “You know I wouldn’t mess you around on something like this, Hannah. I always pay you on time.” He sighed.

But this time was different. She’d just completed her last run and her new business waited. She needed the money now.

“El—”

He shifted his bulk in the leather chair. “You been watching the news lately?”

“I haven’t turned on the TV or picked up a newspaper since last week.” She wanted to add it was because she was setting up her new business in a rented office downtown, but didn’t. “Are you telling me you did something newsworthy and I missed it?”

Elliott laughed without humor. “No, not me. Two of my clients.” He regarded her as if gauging her disposition then pursed his fleshy lips. “Would you mind if I introduce someone else into our discussion? There’s someone else waiting in the connecting office. Someone I need on this case as much as I need you.”

Case? Before she could ask him what he meant, he got up then crossed to open a door. “I think it’s safe.”

The moment the visitor strode into the room, Elliott’s warning made sense.

Oh, yes, the obstacle in her path could get bigger. And had. By two times.

Hannah looked at the man who had walked out of her life fifteen months ago without a second glance. The man she had loved and wanted to marry. Only it wasn’t Chad Hogan who had needed Blackstone’s warning. Chad had nothing to fear from her.

She, on the other hand, had everything to fear from him.

Chad’s gaze slid over her body, making her skin grow markedly warmer. Her vest and skirt more than adequately covered her, but the open way Chad looked at her made her feel as if she wore very little.

Elliott stepped between her and her ex-partner. “I know this must come as a shock, Hannah. But I think once I explain, you’ll understand why I flew Chad in from Florida.”

She barely heard Elliott’s words. She swallowed back a year’s worth of memories, hardly aware of the interrogation-like silence that had settled over the room.

“I can’t believe you did this, Elliott.” Hannah’s voice sounded like it had spiraled from the bottom of a barrel.

“Listen to me for a minute,” he pleaded. “I need you both—”

“I think you need your head examined,” she snapped. Reluctantly she looked at Chad, as if silently asking him to confirm her assessment of the situation. When he spoke, the deep timbre of his voice was as powerful as his presence. “You look great, Hannah.”

That was the last thing she’d expected him to say.

Through the door to the reception area, Hannah overheard someone arguing with the receptionist. In a corner of her mind that still worked, she distantly realized it was Stokes.

Elliott sighed. “Why don’t I leave you two alone to iron out your differences, huh? I’ve got to go straighten out…whatever is going on outside.”

The door closed behind Elliott. Like a spinning carnival ride, the room seemed to grow distinctly smaller. The distance Hannah stood away from Chad seemed to lessen by inches, though neither of them had moved. Chad was gazing at her with that…look. That half-lidded look that said so much, yet promised so little.

“How are you doing, Hannah?”

She absently rubbed the goose bumps spreading over her skin. “Doing? I’m fine, I guess. You?”

Often, she’d wondered what she would do on the off chance she ever saw Chad again. She’d rehearsed what she might say. Or rather, what she wouldn’t say. But now…now she realized all her preparations were for naught. Nothing could have prepared her for facing a man who commanded a room merely by standing in it. And time certainly hadn’t changed that trait, even if he displayed some other more noticeable changes.

“We never were very good at small talk, were we?” She thought she detected a measure of uneasiness in his question. Chad, uneasy? She walked to the wet bar in the corner of the office, needing to put distance between not only her and Chad, but between the present and the past. She picked up a delicate porcelain cup and poured herself some coffee, the shaking of her hands preventing her from pouring more than an ounce.

“I think any kind of verbal communication was a problem with us.” She took a deep sip of the hot liquid, barely recognizing it was bitter.

Fight or flight. Hannah’s heart beat double-time. She recalled the term she learned at the academy. Fight or flight was the immediate reaction you experienced when faced with a difficult and/or dangerous situation. And despite the time that had passed, the emotions that had dimmed, the obvious and inconspicuous changes in each of them, Hannah wished for the world that she could take flight.

“So…” She clutched her purse closer to her side. Where was Elliott? Her gaze flicked to the desk, the bookcase, anywhere but Chad’s face. Still, time and again it wandered to forbidden territory.

The filing cabinet…Chad. Had the slight crinkles around his eyes deepened, intensifying the mercurial gray of his eyes? The picture on the wall…Chad. Was that a little gray in his sandy brown hair, adding a hint of the distinguished to his rugged appearance? The closed window…Chad. Oh, God, why did he have to look at her that way?

Flight.

“Look, Chad, I don’t know what Elliott had in mind, but…” But what? Did she tell him she was hanging up the “out of business” shingle as far as skip-tracing went? Did she share that tomorrow she was going to open the doors to Seekers, a business they had once planned to run together? Or did she tell him she couldn’t possibly work with him because at a baby-sitter’s house in Brooklyn Heights waited her eight-month-old daughter. A child he didn’t know existed.

His daughter.

She chewed on the soft flesh of her bottom lip. “Why don’t you go ahead and hear Elliott out? I’m overdue for a vacation anyway.” Liar, she called herself. She moved to leave.

Chad stepped forward and grasped her wrist. She faced him, her heart surging up into her throat. “Hannah, I…”

She swallowed with difficulty, her gaze fastened on his mouth, waiting for the rest of his sentence to emerge, sure she wouldn’t hear it over the rush of blood past her ears.

He suddenly dropped his hand, then straightened. “You don’t have to leave. I’m the one real good at walking out, remember?”

She did remember. All too well. But why did she get the impression that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say? “Walking really isn’t the word for it,” she found herself whispering. “You ran. So fast you would have thought I was threatening a death sentence instead of proposing marriage.”

Chad stuffed his hands into the pockets of his well-worn jeans. “I see you haven’t thought about this as much as I have. Not that I blame you. If our positions were reversed, I’d probably have forgotten me the instant the door catch slipped home.”

Inexplicable tears burned the back of her eyes. She would never have expected this from him. She didn’t quite know what to do with this kinder, gentler Chad Hogan.

“Maybe you’re right, Chad. Maybe I haven’t thought about it much.” She slowly drew her shaking fingers through her hair, then dropped her hand to her side. “Anyway, none of that makes any difference anymore, does it? Things have changed, Chad. Everything has changed.”

She grasped the door handle.

“Has it, Hannah? Because from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like much has changed at all.”

If you only knew.

“Hannah…I made a commitment to you. We lived together for over a year. Certainly I get points for that.”

“Yes, Chad, you do. And when combined with your other scores, you’re way in the hole.” She cleared her throat. “You know, once I believed we had a future together. I even believed you loved me. But it was nothing more than wishful thinking, wasn’t it?”

His gaze was intense. “Wishful thinking? Is that how you see our time together? Wishful thinking?”

Hannah tried to deny the ribbons of memories that unfurled in her mind. Images of him training her up close and personal in the finer points of skip-tracing after she’d quit the force and Elliott had matched them up. The long, intense way he used to watch her before they got involved. Their first, hungry kiss and the countless stolen moments thereafter while they chased bail-jumpers across the country. Their uncomplicated lifestyle, until—

Hannah shivered. Until she got pregnant.

“Look, just because my idea of commitment wasn’t the same as yours doesn’t mean that we can’t work on this case together,” he said.

A spark of disappointment mixed in with the pain already pressing against her chest from the inside. “Don’t try to fit what happened into one little sentence, Chad. Things between us were more complicated than that.”

He took a step toward her, bringing him altogether too close. He gently curled his strong fingers around her arm. She swallowed hard, the clean, warm smell of his flesh filling her senses, her pulse drumming loudly in her ears. His attention lingered on her mouth and she caught herself running her tongue over her lips.

Oh, it had been so very long since she’d kissed him. Felt the dark intensity of his touch. For one long, desperate moment, she wanted to feel it again. To turn the hands of time back to when his mouth was hers to claim. When she’d have willingly given everything that was hers over to this man whom she had loved as deeply as she’d known how.

But she’d learned how fleeting that type of passion was. And realized it wasn’t what she wanted anymore. Wasn’t what she needed. If, indeed, she had ever truly wanted it for herself. She’d always longed for more. And it was for that reason their relationship failed.

Curiosity lay in the depths of Chad’s eyes as he moved closer still. A tiny cry erupted from Hannah’s throat, her traitorous body responding to the physical need vibrating through her at the feel of his body against hers, chest to chest, hips to hips.

She tugged herself free from his grasp. “No,” she whispered.

She quickly turned away, seeking to put not only physical distance between them, but emotional. And the only way to do that was to leave.

She opened the door to find Elliott standing there waiting for her.

Hannah tried to navigate her way around him. “Sorry, El, but I can’t do this.”

“Wait a minute.” Elliott’s thick hands grasped her shoulders, holding her in place. “I didn’t call you two here because I had some illusions about you reconciling. I did it because I need you. It’s your business if you don’t want to tell him—”

Fear eclipsed Hannah’s confusion. In a moment’s span Elliott could upset fifteen months’ worth of rebuilding. She shook her head as inconspicuously as possible.

Elliott sighed. “Anyway, that’s your business.” He dropped his arms but refused to let Hannah pass through the doorway. “If you walk out of here, McGee, Blackstone Bail and Bonds will cease to exist.”

Elliott glanced over his shoulder at the receptionist in the outer office, then stepped inside, closing the door after himself. “Look, just listen to me. There could be a great deal of money in it for you. Enough for you to…see through your plans more solidly.”

She remained silent. He stared down at something he held in his hand. “Here, my secretary took this call for you.” He handed her a small slip of paper. She read it, then slid it into her skirt pocket. Elliott glanced at Chad. “Hogan, why don’t you and I go outside and give Hannah a few minutes to think?”

Chad brushed her as he passed. Heat rippled over her skin. It wasn’t fair that after so much time, after all that had happened between them, she should still be so powerfully attracted to him. Or maybe it was because so much had happened between them that her body took on all the characteristics of a blanket longing to cover him.

The door closed after Blackstone, and Hannah found herself alone. She tugged the message from her pocket and crossed to the phone. The door opened again. Her stomach tightened, but when she turned, it wasn’t Chad staring at her from the doorway, it was Jack Stokes. Her anxiety melted into exasperation.

The bounty hunter was attractive what with his craggy, blond good looks. But at the moment, men in general didn’t appeal to Hannah.

She replaced the telephone receiver.

Stokes quickly closed the door. “Hey there, Hannah, luv, remember me?” The Australian held up his right wrist where her handcuffs were still solidly attached to his wrist.

Hannah closed her eyes. This wasn’t happening….

“I owe you big-time for this one, McGee,” Stokes said in his heavy accent.

“Yes, well, if you had been a little nicer to me, you wouldn’t be sporting that particular bit of jewelry, would you, Jack?”

“You always were a piece of work, Hannah.”

“I’m really not up for this.” She dug in her skirt pocket, then gave him the key to the handcuffs.

He made a show out of unlocking himself. “Tell me, Hannah, what’s our old pal Hogan doing back in town?”

Ah, now she knew the real reason he’d sneaked into the room. And sneak was exactly what he’d done because Hannah doubted time would have dulled Chad’s dislike for the wily, easygoing Aussie.

“That’s something you’ll have to ask him,” she said, pretending a nonchalance she didn’t feel.

Jack stepped a little closer, turning on what Hannah knew was his best charm. Only it had never really worked on her. “Come on, luv, you can be straight with me. What’s Blackstone up to? Tell me and I’ll call it even.”

“Even?”

He tossed her the cuffs.

Hannah tucked them into the holder on the back of her concealed belt. “I really wish I could tell you, but I don’t know what Elliott’s up to.”

“Come on, McGee. Admit it, you wouldn’t tell me if you did know. Which leaves us off at the same place we started, doesn’t it?”

“Which is?”

“I owe you one.”

Finally, the door closed behind him and Hannah leaned against the desk and rubbed her forehead. What, exactly, did she do to deserve today?

It seemed that no sooner had the door closed, it opened again.

She glanced at the message in her hand, then at Elliott Blackstone. While she didn’t think she’d ever completely recover from the shock of seeing Chad again, now that she’d had a little time to collect her thoughts, she couldn’t help wondering how much money was involved. Start-up costs for Seekers had drained more of her savings account than she’d expected. Then there was the plumbing that needed to be replaced; wiring that needed to be brought up to code. If this trace was as important as she was coming to suspect, then it could mean some much-needed earnings.

“Give me five minutes, Hannah. That’s all I ask.” A breath expanded Elliott’s cheeks.

She caught herself absently running her fingertip along the name listed on the phone message then nodded.

Elliott immediately seemed to relax as he said, “Okay. Two weeks ago I extended bail to two people. Normally that wouldn’t be important, but one thing makes these two different from the rest. Enough that they made the news.” He paused for a moment. “Money.”

Hannah tried to concentrate. To forget Stokes had thrown down a professional gauntlet she had no intention of picking up. To wipe from her mind that Chad waited on the other side of the door. “You deal in five-and-dime cases, Elliott. Small time.”

“Normally, yes, but no one else would take these two, so I made an exception.”

She latched on to the critical tone in his voice. “Who are they?”

“Two employees of PlayCo arrested for grand larceny.”

“Grand larceny?” She pushed her hand through her hair. “PlayCo’s a toy company. What did they take? Mickey Mouse’s pants?”

Shaking his head, Elliott tried for a smile, and failed miserably. “I wish it were that simple. My brother-in-law is the attorney for these two. I made bail as a favor to him. They were due for a preliminary hearing this morning and…well, you know the rest.”

“How much do you stand to lose?”

Elliott swallowed visibly and named an amount.

Hannah dropped her arms from where they were crossed over her chest. She didn’t know what shocked her more: the reappearance of Chad in her life or Elliott’s atypical behavior. She decided Chad definitely came out a painful first.

“Like I said, it was a favor.” Elliott glanced at his recently chewed fingernails. “Look, I could go on all day about how this was a first offense. About how they had worked for the company for ten years and all that, but I won’t.” He paused. “The fact is I put up the bond and they skipped.”

Hannah drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened in the past ten minutes. Ten minutes. Six hundred seconds. Such a short time, really. A short time she was afraid would affect every minute of her life thereafter.

Elliott wasn’t joking when he said he was in danger of closing down. If made to pay the amount of the bond, not only would his office be history, but Elliott himself would probably be paying off the debt for his next two incarnations.

“Why call Chad in?” She recrossed her arms over her chest.

“He’s the best there is, aside from you.” His expression was earnest. “Hannah, I need every ounce of manpower I have for this one. I swear, if I lose this place you might as well dig a hole for me six feet under. And don’t think I’m exaggerating. As much as I complain and manipulate, this business is my life.” Elliott shifted uneasily. “So…what do you say? Will you postpone your plans for Seekers and take this last one on?”

Hannah thought about her daughter, the cost of the day-care center she’d wanted to enroll her in and the one she’d chosen instead because it was more reasonably priced. If she succeeded in this trace, she’d be able to afford to send Bonny to the other one…plus a whole lot more.

“Does it mean working with Chad?”

Relief colored Elliott’s ruddy features. “That’s up to you.”

“You have files on these guys?”

He pushed a thin manila folder across the desk. “Here. Only they’re not both guys.” Hannah looked at him. “One is a woman.”

“What is this?” She examined the single sheet of paper in the file. The application form was skimpy at best, half the blanks left empty.

“Like I said, this was a favor.”

“Yes, you said that. What did you do? Just sign the bond without the normal paperwork? This isn’t like you, Elliott.”

“Believe me, if I had known this was going to happen, I would have got more.”

“It says here that the jumpers put their houses up.”

“Expensive houses, too. The only problem is they’re mortgaged to the hilt. Not worth the dirt they’re built on to me.”

“I don’t know, El…” She stepped away from the desk and chairs, pulling down the front ends of her vest. “Finding these two would be like finding—”

“I know, I know. Like finding needles in a haystack the size of Europe.”

Accepting the case meant more than postponing the opening of Seekers. It meant working with Chad again. A very risky prospect indeed. She wouldn’t even consider working against him. She might be afraid of what the man could do to her personal life, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of misjudging his professional talent.

She slid her hand into her pocket, fingering the message inside. Anyway, maybe it was time Chad knew the truth. The thought alone choked off her breath.

“Exactly how much money did you say there’d be in it for me?” she asked.

Elliott named an absurdly high figure.

“I’m in.”

“Good.” Elliott leapt to his feet. “You have four days.”

“Four days?”

“If you don’t bring them in within four days, you miss out on the money and I lose my business. Hell, I’m lucky the judge even rescheduled the hearing.”

Four days wasn’t much time, Hannah thought. That came out to two days apiece to find each bail-jumper.

“No problem.”




Chapter Two


Heat pressed in on Hannah from all sides as she left Blackstone Bail and Bonds. But the external heat didn’t concern her half as much as the emotions expanding inside her. She drew to a stop, as much to adjust to the change in temperature as to face Chad where he leaned against the building.

It was like someone had clipped an image from her memory and pasted it right in front of her: his right shoulder casually propped against the brick of the building; his hands stuffed into the pockets of his faded jeans; his legs crossed at the ankles, emphasizing the dusty cowboy boots he always wore.

Even as she compared him to the image, she noticed some changes that didn’t match up. Details that went beyond the physical.

When she’d known him before, there had been a sadness about him, a grief she’d later learned stemmed from the death of his wife and child in a car crash he’d refused to go into detail about. Now? Well, now he looked…more distant, somehow. Harder.

“Elliott really bought himself one this time, didn’t he?” Chad’s gray eyes focused on the cars streaking by on the ten-laned Queens Boulevard. “What was he thinking?”

The sun slowly sank behind the western skyline. Hannah gazed at it, then at him again. “Obviously he wasn’t.”

Hannah walked toward the battered Ford LTD. Chad picked up his duffel bag and followed, grasping on to the passenger’s door handle at the same time she opened the driver’s side. Her hand froze on the hot metal.

“Where are you going, Chad?” Her voice came out little more than a whisper.

“With you, of course.”

Her stomach plunged to her feet. “I don’t recall inviting you.”

He squinted at her against the sunlight. “Since you agreed to take the case, I thought we’d be working together. Are you saying you want to go out on your own?”

She wondered why her throat suddenly felt like sandpaper. “And what if I am?”

“I know you better than that. We each know exactly what the other is capable of. I’m certainly not interested in working against you.”

Hannah recognized her own thoughts only minutes earlier.

Chad drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Look, I just got in from Florida and took a taxi from the airport. If you want me to catch another one, let me know.”

Hannah remained silent, half tempted to take him up on his offer. She could do without him slipping back into her life right now. She wanted, needed time to grow accustomed to his being back, even if it was only in an official capacity.

But time was something she didn’t have. Besides, she suspected no amount of time would lessen the empty ache in her chest…or change the reality standing in front of her in the shape of Chad Hogan.

She leaned against the car.

“Okay, Chad, I’ll work with you.” She ignored his probing gaze. “But it doesn’t mean side by side, night and day. I just mean I won’t work against you.”

He spread his hands on top of the roof and drummed his thumbs against the hot metal. “You’re telling me aside from sharing information, you would rather not lay eyes on me. Is that it, Hannah?”

“Yes.” She gripped the door handle again. The squealing of tires ripped through the thick air.

She spotted the rusted monster of a car bearing down on her a nanosecond before Chad clutched her wrists and hauled her toward the curb and into his arms. She stared at the darkly tinted windows of the Monte Carlo as it sped down the street, the back end fishtailing as it turned right at the first intersection.

“Damn New York drivers,” Chad murmured, his breath disturbing the hair over her ear.

Tugging her gaze away from the empty street, Hannah became instantly aware of her position in Chad’s arms. She shivered at the solid feel of her breasts against his chest, took a breath of the familiar, tangy smell of his clean skin, wriggled to free herself from the hot, electric touch of his hands against her back.

“Let me go, Chad,” she whispered, uneasy with the knowing shadow in his eyes.

He released her.

Hannah turned on watery knees and got in the car. She watched him stow his duffel in the back then climb in next to her.

“Where did you get this rust bucket?” he asked.

If the heat outside was stifling, the stagnant air inside the car was even worse. Hot sweat trickled between Hannah’s breasts even as awareness continued to surge through her veins from their brief contact.

He ran his hand across the dust-covered dash. “A rental?” he asked.

She nodded. “I had to, for conspicuousness’ sake. I was just about to take it back in exchange for my own.”

Chad’s face was unreadable in the fiery hues of the setting sun. “You kept the Alfa?”

Longing swelled in her stomach. She had not forgotten the Alfa Romeo had been a thirtieth birthday gift from him. She turned the key in the ignition. The only gift he had given her during their two years together. An expensive gift—not only for the money, but it had been one of many things that had cost them their relationship.

“Yes, I kept the Alfa,” she said quietly.

She stared ahead at the sparse traffic. “Uncle Nash says my old room over the dry cleaners is empty, so let’s head there.” Chad’s voice cut through the thick air. “We’ll pick up some Chinese and—”

Hannah shifted the car into drive. “I am not going to Coney Island with you, Chad.” She pulled away from the curb, then remembered she hadn’t intended to take him with her.

“You’re being unreasonable, Hannah. You lived there…we lived there together. You’re as familiar with the place as I am. All I’m suggesting is we get out of this heat and get an early start in the morning. The last thing on my mind is getting you into bed.”

She took a corner a little too quickly. “Interesting you should say that. It’s one of the things you were very good at,” she said quietly. “Look, Chad, there’s no going back. Not to Coney Island. Not to the way things were between us, either professionally or personally.”

Despite her argument, the months they’d been apart began to fade into the background, leaving her feeling insecure and defensive. Which didn’t make any sense, really. She and Chad were no longer a couple. They no longer shared the same apartment. Their lives were completely separate. Still, that didn’t change the fact that one important thing connected them and always would.

Bonny.

Gripping the steering wheel, she concentrated on this important detail.

“I have something I need to do,” she said. “If you want me to drop you off, let me know. If not, you’re welcome to come along for the ride for now.”

“I’ll come along for the ride.”

“And after that, you’re on your own. Right?”

“Right.”

Something in Chad’s voice compelled her to look at him. She winced at the shuttered expression he wore.

“Why don’t we forget about the past and start from scratch, okay, Hannah? I don’t need the hassle any more than you do. We’re both adults. Why don’t we approach this like the professionals we are and forget the rest?”

Her hand shaking, she switched on the radio, the only part of the car that worked properly. The interior filled with the neutral sound of country music.

What would he say when he found out a reminder in the shape of an eight-month-old little girl made it impossible for her to forget?

Chad studied Hannah from beneath half-closed lids, then pulled at his collar. It was hot. But whether his new sense of discomfort had to do with the August heat or how right Hannah had felt in his arms again was unclear. He glanced at her slender ankles visible below the hem of her gauzy skirt, then budged his gaze up her long, almost too slim body to her blue, blue eyes. Everything about her spoke of freshness, strength and a love for life.

Face it, Hogan, you missed her.

While the admission didn’t come easily, he’d always known Hannah struck an unnamed chord in him. He watched the freckled backs of her hands as she gripped and released the steering wheel, and fought the urge to reach out, take one of those hands in his. It had taken a lot to walk away from her nearly a year and a half ago. But he’d had no choice. She had made that clearer than a Florida sunrise. He forced his glance away from where the humid breeze stirred her curly red hair. Why did he feel like someone had just taken a paintbrush to his gray, cynical life? And why did he feel that her vital presence was exactly the reason he had to freeze her out?

Because, he told himself, whatever primal urges made him ache to touch her, to lose himself in the taste, the feel of her, he couldn’t risk letting her in again. She had come too close the last time.

The moment he met Hannah nearly three years ago he knew he’d end up hurting her, but had been helpless to stop himself. He recognized instantly that the qualities that drew him to her would be the very traits that would eventually push them apart. Hannah demanded everything from life—and she’d expected everything from him. Only she hadn’t known that he no longer had everything to give.

The way he saw it, their breakup had been inevitable. It had never been a question of “if” but of “when” and “how.” He knew from the outset that Hannah would one day finger him for the fraud he was. Would notice his shortcomings and boot him out of her life. What he hadn’t banked on was that her rejection would cut so deep. Or that his hurting her would hurt him so much it was painful sometimes to breathe.

During his self-exile in Florida he had hoped his absence would help heal Hannah’s wounds. He had also sought forgiveness for having hurt her. From the sea where the Gulf met the Atlantic in the Keys, and from the vodka bottles that never had anything to give beyond illusionary escape. Each and every day he pushed himself to the limit in his two-bit assignments in order to feed his untouched savings account, and each and every morning when he awakened, he found himself more restless than before. He had moved his secondhand trailer from seacoast town to town, concentrating on local skip-traces and collecting license plates from uninsured vehicles for twenty bucks a pop. He had searched for a peace that proved as elusive as the answer to why his wife and son had been torn from his life four years ago, before he even met Hannah.

No, he had nothing left to give Hannah…except his apology. And he’d been offered the perfect opportunity to give it to her when Elliott called him that morning.

Hannah pulled into the no-parking zone outside the central Queens police station and turned off the ignition. Chad knew it was where she had served five years as a NYC police officer.

“I thought we were going to pick up the Alfa,” he said.

Hannah let herself out of the car and Chad followed. He tried not to watch her, appreciate the way she moved, the way she walked. He tried harder still to ignore the fear she tried to hide. He’d expected several reactions from her, but fear wasn’t one of them. Hannah had never been afraid of anything. Was it fear of him? Possible, but not probable. All he knew was he didn’t like to see the emotion coloring her eyes when she looked at him, which wasn’t often.

“We are,” she replied. “Right after I find out what the police have on these bail-jumpers.”

“Hey, McGee!” the uniformed officer at the front desk greeted Hannah as they entered. “What brings you back to this part of town?”

Hannah stepped up to the desk and smiled. “Slumming it, I guess, Smitty.”

The fifty-some-odd-year-old officer eyed her. “Slumming it! You’re a real barrel of laughs, McGee.”

Chad noticed the way Hannah relaxed, appearing comfortable with the precinct banter she must have mastered during her stint as a police officer. Much more comfortable than she was with him.

“Is Schindler around?” she asked.

The officer moved a hand to his right. “Just where he always is. Guy should have gone home hours ago. I think he’d die without those blasted files.”

She moved through the throng of people toward the records room, barely noticing that Chad had a difficult time following. Hannah greeted a few detectives as they slid through yet another room.

“Here we are.” Hannah stopped outside a plain wood and smoked glass door marked Records—Do Not Enter and knocked.

“Can you get into hot water for this?” Chad asked as she opened the door.

“Don’t let the sign scare you. I think more people enter because of it.”

She peered around a series of metal shelves. “Schindler?”

There was a long silence, then a short, brawny man stepped from between two of the metal monsters over-burdened with worn manila folders.

“Hannah, is that you?” She leaned closer to Chad. “The running guess around the precinct is Danny Schindler lifts file folders in lieu of weights in his spare time.”

Chad got a whiff of her skin. She never had idea one how much her nearness affected him while they were together. The passage of time told him she still didn’t have a clue. It was the innocent smiles, the innocuous comments, the spontaneous touches that always got to him more than any obvious overtures. Then again, Hannah was obvious about nothing but her opinion. And she’d welcome his reaction—innocent or otherwise—as much as she’d welcome a bad sunburn on her fair skin.

“Hey, Danny, I see you’re still buried up to your neck in files,” she said, oblivious to Chad’s thoughts. Which was just as well. If she caught a hint of what was going on in his mind, she’d likely push him into a taxi the instant they hit the street again.

“Yeah, well, you remember how it is. A crime a second and all that. Someone has to keep track of them all.”

Schindler scrutinized Chad as Hannah introduced him.

Chad crunched the clerk’s hand in his, giving the muscle-bound geek a once-over before Schindler turned back to Hannah.

“Tell me you’re not still living the life of a bounty hunter.”

“Bail enforcer,” Hannah corrected.

“Then this is more than a I-was-in-the-neighborhood-and-thought-I’d-stop-by visit, isn’t it?”

She appeared slighted. “Now, would I be so crude as to use our friendship for my own professional gain?”

The smile never wavered from Schindler’s face. “Every chance you get.” He dropped the files he held to his overloaded desk. Chad watched one slip toward the edge then fall to the floor. He didn’t move to stop it. “What can I do for you, Hannah?”

“What have you heard on the two arrested at PlayCo?”

“The team that unofficially skipped bail from Lower East?”

“That’s them. I need whatever L.E. has on them. Can you handle it?”

“There is nothing I can’t handle, you know that.”

Schindler picked up the telephone and called what Chad guessed was his fellow records clerk at the Manhattan precinct.

“Danny and I go back a ways,” Hannah quietly explained.

“So it seems.” Chad settled his weight more evenly as he listened to Schindler persuade the person on the other end of the line to fax him the information.

“What are the odds on them having something we can use?” Chad asked, shifting through the files strewn across the desk.

Hannah closed a file he had opened. “Better than average. I’m sure PlayCo kept files on them. Whatever was in them was no doubt turned over to the police.” She tried to take another folder from him but he refused to let it go. She sighed. “Would you quit? We could get in enough trouble as it is.”

Chad opened the file and scanned the contents. “You didn’t seem too concerned before.”

“That’s because I’m used to being in trouble with the hierarchy of this precinct.” She pressed her index finger into his chest. “You, on the other hand, could very well be arrested for just being in this room.”

Chad gazed at her finger, then slowly followed it up to her face. The finger against his chest grew suddenly hot. She quickly removed her hand.

“It might be an enjoyable experience. Provided you’re in the cell with me,” he said.

“It took a little doing, but Janice promised to fax the records right over,” Schindler said, hanging up the receiver. As he spoke, a telephone rang in the corner and the fax machine sprang to life. “And here they are now.”

The three of them watched the information roll in. The physical data sheets listed Lisa Furgeson as a thirty-five-year-old female with blond hair and blue eyes, five feet, six inches tall, one hundred and thirty pounds. Eric Persky was a thirty-eight-year-old male with light brown hair and green eyes, six foot two, two hundred and fifty pounds. Grainy black-and-white copies of pictures followed.

“Thanks, Schindler.” Hannah pulled the last page from the holder, looking to where Chad gazed over her shoulder. It took all of his restraint not to curve his arms around her waist and pull her against him, just as he used to do, back before—

He took a step backward, barely aware of putting distance between them. Her closeness reminded him of times he had no right remembering. He watched Schindler offer Hannah a manila folder to put the fax in. Her hands shook as she put the flimsy paper into the file folder. Apparently she was as aware of their closeness as he was.

“It’s a start.” Chad concentrated on something other than the shadow of fear in her wide blue eyes. “Mug shots, charges….” He reached around her, turning the top of the folder open, careful not to touch her as he did so.

Hannah moved farther away from him. He dammed the groundswell of emotion her rejection aroused.

“I’ve…I’ve got to make a phone call.” She hurried away from him and toward Schindler’s desk a few feet away.

“Be my guest,” Danny offered. “You need anything else, give me a yell. Oh, and I think that it goes without saying, but this little…transaction stays between us, okay? The last thing I need is Marconi coming down on me.” He grinned. “I think that’s the last thing you need, too.”

“You can say that again.” The records clerk disappeared between the towering metal shelves. Chad turned his attention back to Hannah. She tugged the slip of paper Blackstone had given her from her pocket and started dialing a number. Chad rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension bunched there. Who had left her a message at Elliott’s office?

“Hi, it’s Hannah,” she said into the receiver, turning away from where he looked on.

The familiarity of her tone didn’t sit well with Chad.

Had she become involved with someone else since their breakup? He stiffened, something similar to jealousy burning through him. He wanted to take the receiver from her pretty little hand and hang up on whoever was on the other side of the line. Instead, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.

“I see,” Hannah said into the phone. Chad slowly stepped around the other side of the desk, watching her brows draw together. What? Trouble in paradise? Good.

She caught him watching her and turned quickly away. “Okay. I can be there in a couple hours. Is that all right? Good, I’ll see you then.”

We’ll see about that, Chad thought, his jaw so tight he couldn’t say a word if he wanted to.

“Who’s Marconi?” Chad asked as they left the precinct.

Hannah vaguely noted the sun had set, but the air showed no sign of cooling. Not unlike her skin, which still tingled from Chad’s nearness in the records room.

It wasn’t fair that she should still be so attuned to Chad’s emotions, feel so much for him. But if there was one thing she learned very early on—a point proved time and again since—it was that life wasn’t always fair.

“He’s the precinct captain.” She glanced back at the plain, stone building. She had once wanted nothing more than to follow in her father’s policeman’s footsteps and become a cop. What she hadn’t counted on was Victor Marconi being just as determined to see her off the force.

It was easy to remember Uncle Vic’s face when he’d told her, “Your father and I went back to Hell’s Kitchen, Hannah. He was more than my partner, he was my best friend. You were your daddy’s little girl, and you’ll remain so in my eyes.”

“I am not a girl, Victor. I’m a woman.”

Mickey D. McGee was the only person who remained untarnished and uncorrupted in Hannah’s heart and memory, unlike the other men in her life. His strength had been equaled only by his faith in a Catholic God that had comforted him after his wife’s death following the birth of their only child. A God she hadn’t been able to turn to when her father was shot and killed in the line of duty when she was only eighteen.

“Your father turned in his grave the day you showed up here for recruitment, Hannah,” Uncle Vic had told her.

“My father trained me to be a police officer from the time I could walk. Far from turning in his grave, I bet he would have been proud.”

Now Hannah forced her gaze away from the precinct doors and the uniformed officers going in and out. It had taken Uncle Vic years to do what he promised mere weeks after he was promoted from commanding sergeant to captain: He’d made her quit.

Victor Marconi, whom she hadn’t talked to since leaving the force, was just another ghost from the past she’d just as soon avoid right now. She looked at the other. Chad Hogan openly returned her gaze.

She opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel. “I think it’s a good idea for you to catch a cab from here, Chad.”

“You want to talk about something?”

He got into the car after her and she started it. “About what?”

“About what you were thinking just now.”

Puzzled, she sat concentrating strictly on her breathing for a scant moment. “Victor Marconi is more than the captain of the precinct. He was…um, my father’s partner. Up until the night Dad was killed in the line of duty.” She handed him the manila folder.

Chad took the data and put the file aside without opening it. “You told me your father died, but left out that it was in the line of duty.”

She swept her hair back from her forehead. There were a lot of things she’d left out. And one of them was across the river now, waiting to be picked up. “Despite the history between Marconi and me, or maybe because of it, he won’t hesitate to have us both arrested if he finds—”

“You didn’t respond to my comment, Hannah.”

She pulled away from the curb. “Maybe because there isn’t a response.” She looked at him. “When we were together we were either working, arguing or…making love. There wasn’t much time for anything else.” She turned her head away from him to gauge the traffic.

The silence in the car was strained until Hannah pulled up to the Ugly Duckling rental agency that owned the rust bucket they sat in. Which was just as well because it took Hannah as long to regain control over her emotions. In the back corner of the lot, the red Alfa’s waxed hood shone under a security light.

“She looks good,” Chad murmured.

She led the way up to the small shack where she traded keys with Frank, a skinny punk rocker wearing untied combat boots and a chain connected from nose to ear. Within moments she and Chad stood on either side of the gleaming Alfa Romeo. He stared at the For Sale signs in the back windows.

“You’re selling her?”

“Uh…yes.” Hannah felt as if she had betrayed him in some way with her answer. Despite the car’s role in their breakup—she’d wanted a ring, he’d bought her a car—she had grown attached to the Alfa. In an odd way it served as a concrete reminder that Chad had cared about her in his own way, even if it wasn’t the way she needed him to care about her. She avoided his probing gaze. He didn’t have to know that with the money she would get from Elliott for this trace, she’d be able to afford to keep it and pay the sky-high insurance premiums.

She disarmed the alarm and slid into the driver’s seat, not objecting when Chad tossed his duffel into the back and entered the other side. She pressed a button and the canvas top folded back. She stared up at the ribbon of star-filled sky visible between the towering buildings.

“I used to pass this car every day on the way to Blackstone’s before I…” His voice drifted off. “It had your name written all over it, Hannah. It still does.”

Hannah sensed his gaze on her profile and slowly looked at his finely etched face, features she had once memorized with her hands and mouth. She wondered at the changes there. They were harder somehow. More skeptical. Her gaze flicked over his thick brows and his eyes. Gray eyes that hinted at a smoldering fire, rimmed by thick, dark lashes. Her attention focused on his mouth. That enticing, teasing, infuriating mouth that had once brought her more happiness than a hundred star-filled nights. And had made her hurt more than she would ever tell him.

“You never said that.”

Chad’s lips played at a crooked grin, turning the right side of his mouth up just enough to make his emotions known. “There was something about the—” he stretched his arms, his right one going out over the side of the car, his left finding the back of her seat “—about the freedom of it that reminded me of you.”

His strong fingers sought and found the back of her neck. Hannah tensed.

“I saw you in it. Hood down…red hair flying around your face.” Chad’s voice lowered to a provocative hum, his fingers doing interesting things to the sensitive nerve endings at the base of her neck.

Hannah laid her palm against his chest. She might be having trouble with her heart, but she was grateful her head was still screwed on tight enough to stop herself from making the same mistake twice.

“Please, don’t, Chad. We’re not teenagers at a drive-in movie. Things have changed. Everything has changed.”

He stared at her. “That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

“Yes, well, that’s because it’s true. And you’ll find out why soon enough.” Oh, yes, he’d soon find out. And the instant he saw sweet little Bonny’s face, she had no doubt he’d beat a retreat faster than his last one.

“These changes…they wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the phone call you made back there, would they?” he asked.

She dragged her gaze down his face, then back up to his eyes again. “Yes, Chad. Yes, they do.”




Chapter Three


Hannah pulled up outside Eric Persky’s Forest Hills house on Juno Street and shut off the engine. She took in the large, Tudor-style structure.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked.

Chad checked the file Elliott had given her with the one Schindler provided. “This is it.”

“For some reason I have a feeling this case isn’t going to be as easy as I thought,” she said.

“Sure it is.” He stepped out and stared through the open window. “You planning to wait here?”

“No.” Hannah let herself out of the car. The day’s events seemed to have happened months ago instead of hours. Not only had Chad sauntered back into her life—something she had yet to fully deal with—but vivid, tender memories of her father had flooded back with disturbing clarity. Hannah longed to sit on the couch with eight-month-old Bonny, three dozen Oreos with the double stuffing, a couple of boxes of animal crackers, the remote control, enough formula to fill the pantry and a gallon of chocolate milk and forget the world existed until she felt ready to deal with it. Which might be never. The only problem was the world wouldn’t allow it. Not when the four-day time constraint on apprehending Eric Persky and Lisa Furgeson was quickly ticking by. And not when Chad stood watching her, his gaze making her want to concentrate on everything but the case.

She halted directly in front of the house, staring up at the handsome structure. Chad stepped beside her. Hannah tried to ignore how striking he looked with the night’s shadows shading the solid planes of his face. The interior of the house was dark, but to make sure no possible visiting relatives or other live-ins were home, Hannah pressed the lighted doorbell and listened to the chime echo inside. She didn’t worry that it was ten o’clock and the neighbors might be watching. As far as anyone was concerned, she and Chad were just friends paying a visit. Besides, Hannah didn’t plan to be there long enough to raise much suspicion. She rang the doorbell a second time.

“Do your thing, Chad.” She moved aside and held open the outer storm door so he could bend over the lock on the heavy wooden door. He quickly manipulated the small metal tools he slid from his back jeans pocket until the door opened inward. Hannah waited for an alarm, but none sounded. She didn’t find it unusual. The police had probably been tramping through the house all day and had switched it off.

“All yours.” Chad pushed the door open.

Hannah passed him. “Haven’t lost your touch.”

He gently caught her arm. “Haven’t I?”

Tiny little butterflies fluttered in her stomach, both at the feel of his hand against her skin and the sober look on his face. Why did she get the impression he wasn’t talking about the case anymore? And why did she want to forget Persky and Furgeson even existed and start making some sort of sense out of what was and wasn’t happening between her and Chad Hogan?

He briefly closed his eyes, then used his grip to steer her into the large foyer.

A shadow moved to Hannah’s right. Chad must have seen the same thing because he reached around her and closed the solid front door, shearing off the outdoor security light that silhouetted them like targets.

“What’s going on—Oh!” Chad propelled her off to the side of the foyer. She slowly backed away, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. Where did Chad go? She couldn’t see a thing.

Something moved. Hannah slipped The Equalizer’s charger on and held the stun gun tightly in her hands. There were two shadows. She gained her night vision and made out the shapes of two men near the door, apparently looking for her and Chad. Speaking of Chad…

“Where’d they go?” one of the guys whispered.

“How the hell should I know? Why don’t you turn on your flashlight?”

There was a rattling sound. “The batteries must be dead.”

Hannah crouched lower. The two men spread out. Hannah backed up farther until she bumped into something hard and warm. She gasped.

“Quiet,” Chad whispered, gripping her hips.

Hannah’s stomach contracted, the most intimate part of him pressing against her bottom. She tried to wriggle from his grasp.

“I don’t like this,” one of the other men said. “What if they’re cops?”

The second guy hurried past, then doubled back.

“Would you just stay still.” Chad’s warm breath filled her ear.

“Yeah, you’re right,” the other guy said. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t think what we’re looking for is here anyway.”

Chad finally pulled away from her. Relief swept over Hannah, strong and complete, leaving a sense of exposure in its wake. “Stay here.”

“Where are you going?” Hannah whispered, clutching the stun gun with shaky hands.

Chad rounded her and rushed full steam toward the two men as they opened the front door. He hit one in the back of the knees, sending him hurtling onto the front steps.

“Chad!” Hannah rushed forward. Chad jerked to look at her. The free man hit him in the back of the head with his flashlight. Chad stumbled slightly, then leaned against the wall for support.

The first man grabbed the second and they disappeared through the door.

Stuffing her stun gun back into her belt, Hannah rushed to Chad.

He shrugged her hand from his arm. “What were you doing, Hannah? I thought something had happened to you when you yelled out like that.”

She tried to gather her wits around her. Her fear for his safety had distracted him and given the other guy an open opportunity for attack. She had meant to spare him pain, instead she had caused it. A stupid mistake.

But his name was out before she’d had time to consider the consequences.

Chad hurried to the door. Hannah followed. She barely made out the two shadows running through a shrub-darkened lawn two houses away.

“Great, just great.” Chad closed and locked the door then flipped a switch to his right. A car-size chandelier filled the foyer with its bright, blinding light. He softly muttered a curse.

Hannah reached out, then stopped, unsure if it was a good idea to touch him. If ever touching him again would be a good idea. Still, it was her fault he’d been clobbered with a flashlight. She reached out again, ignoring his curious stare, half expecting him to push her away.

She carefully probed the back of his head with her fingers, ignoring the clean softness of his sandy brown hair, and the memories that rushed back at seeing her fingers entangled in the thick mass. Her breath snagged in her throat.

“I thought so.” She located the marble-size bump at the base of his skull and found the blow hadn’t broken the skin. “You’ll live.” She tugged her hands away from him and refused to meet his gaze.

His first question echoed through her mind. What were you doing, Hannah? And what had she done? Never in her years as a cop, then as a skip-tracer, had she put someone else in danger.

She tried to shrug off her uneasiness, but it wasn’t easily dismissed. Instead, she turned from him and examined an overturned vase. If she couldn’t explain to herself what had happened, how was she supposed to explain it to him?

“At least they didn’t find whatever it is they were looking for,” she said.

“Yeah, them and about three other search teams.”

Hannah glanced around the ransacked foyer and the many rooms that snaked off it. “Well, since you’re probably not up to that staircase, why don’t you take the first floor?”

“You’re a real hoot, McGee.” Chad massaged the back of his head, his gaze still questioning.

Hannah quickly scaled the stairs to the second floor. Maybe it wasn’t too late to back out of this case. Just hand the information over to Chad, and wave at him as he drove off into the night.

Coward.

She glanced around the second floor hall. Only that morning she hadn’t had any problem taking on Eddie the Snake and Jack Stokes. So what was it about being with Chad again that made her act like somebody’s…mother.

“Oh God,” she muttered, the impact of her thoughts hitting home.

She hurried down the hall, thrusting aside the unwelcome insight and trying to focus on the case.

Who were the two men they’d run into and what exactly had they been looking for? She’d have to take a look at the data Schindler had given her. See what Persky and Furgeson were accused of stealing and whether or not the police recovered it. She didn’t think the information would help her find either of them, but it might give her an idea how deep a hole they had dug for themselves.

She turned on the overhead light and sifted through a bureau in the master bedroom. The bottom drawers held nothing of use, unless you were a six foot two, two hundred and fifty pound man. Hannah rummaged through socks, T-shirts and long johns. She pulled a pair of the latter out. If this was any indication of how big the man was, she and Chad had their work cut out for them.

She closed the drawer in exchange for one of the top ones.

“Gambling chips.”

Hannah stared at the array of blue and red discs. Closer inspection told her they were from Atlantic City. Not unusual for a New Yorker, except Persky seemed to be a regular visitor. Faded matchbooks were also scattered among the drawer’s contents. Hannah picked them up one by one, only to toss them back. There were a few from different casinos, but the majority were from one in particular. She picked up the older-looking of the matchbooks. She was searching for any sign of a phone number, a name, anything that would give her an idea where Eric might be. Granted, she could be jogging down the wrong avenue, but it was worth a try. Clichés were clichés because they happened so often.

She was getting nowhere quick when she opened one with faded blue ink on the inside cover.

Hannah leaned against the bureau, holding the book up to the light.

“Find something?” Chad stepped through the doorway.

Hannah glanced at him. “You’re not done down there already?”

“Gone through every drawer, every cupboard, and looked under every seat cushion.” He displayed envelope-size pieces of paper. “The only articles worth anything were in his desk. Our friend likes to keep old bills for comparison.”

Hannah looked up from where she stared at the matchbook, catching the thoughtful, unguarded expression on Chad’s rugged face. A sense of the familiar wound through her. For a moment she was reminded how well she and he had worked together brainstorming ideas for Seekers. She absently rubbed at the stain on her vest and tugged her gaze from his.

“Are there any phone bills?” she asked.

Chad sifted through the pile in his hands. “Visa, MasterCard, gas company…here we go.” He held a bill out to her. “A love note from old Ma Bell, herself.”

Accepting the itemized bill, Hannah continued to manipulate the matchbook. “Can you make this out?”

Chad looked over her shoulder. Every muscle in her body tingled in alert. With barely a hesitation, he said, “It’s a girl named Rita Minelli’s phone number.”

Hannah dropped her hand to her side. “I’ve been trying to read this thing for five minutes and you take one look and tell me exactly what it says?”

Chad grinned at her. “I’ve copied a few numbers on matchbooks in my time.” He took the number from her.

Hannah didn’t need the reminder of how uncommitted his lifestyle was. “Very funny.”

He examined the matchbook. “There’s no area code.” He flipped it over and stared at the cover. “Atlantic City.” Chad tossed the matchbook on top of the bureau, pulling the next drawer open. It yielded a handful of photographs. He silently thumbed through the photos. There was one of Eric Persky standing with Lisa Furgeson and another colleague inside what Hannah guessed to be PlayCo’s factory.

The next picture was of the house they were in. Placing that one under the others, Chad stared down at another.

“Do you think that’s the woman in the match-book?” Hannah asked.

The photo was of Persky and a woman. A pretty brunette in her early- to mid-thirties.

“If it is, the number isn’t local.” Chad pointed to the smock the woman wore. “I know that outfit. It’s one cocktail waitresses wear.”

“It’s almost too simple.”

Chad slipped the photo of the woman and the one of Eric and his colleagues into his front pocket. “What makes you say that? Chances are the woman in the picture was a one-nighter. Or they broke up months ago and she hasn’t seen him since.”

“My instincts tell me the name on this matchbook and the woman in the picture are one in the same. If we find her, maybe we’ll find Persky,” Hannah said. “Crooks are rarely as clever as they make them out in movies.”

“And if we find Persky, hopefully he’ll lead us to Furgeson.”

“That’s right. If Persky is with some woman in Atlantic City, then chances Lisa Furgeson is with him are slim.”

Chad eyed the cracked concrete sidewalk that separated him and the car from a four-story walk-up in Brooklyn Heights. After leaving Persky’s, he’d suggested they hit PlayCo next to see what the company’s personnel records held on the two bail-jumpers. But Hannah had driven them here instead, saying she had something to do first. Chad tapped the face of his watch for the third time, remembering the call she’d made at the police station. Could she be in there explaining things to the man who had replaced him?

A possessiveness he hadn’t known he was capable of burned through him. Certainly he hadn’t expected Hannah to wait around for him…. Or had he? Is that the real reason he didn’t hesitate when Blackstone gave him the perfect excuse to come back? He stared at the back-lighted screen door. If subconsciously he had entertained ideas of rekindling his relationship with Hannah, he suspected they were about to be squashed.

“Come on, Hannah,” he muttered, resisting the urge to lean on the horn.

He had half a mind to barge in there and drag her out caveman-style. The impulse stunned him. He shifted on the leather bucket seat. He and Hannah had happened a long time ago. She had every right to go on with her life…didn’t she? But no matter how logically his mind argued the point, his gut told him he wanted her, boyfriend or no boyfriend.

He reached for his duffel bag in the back. His hand bumped hard plastic and he twisted to stare at a large, gaily colored object fastened to the back seat. He didn’t know how he’d missed it before. Maybe because he’d been focused on other things when he’d first put his duffel on the floor. Perhaps because he’d sat in the passenger’s seat up until then, narrowing his line of vision when he got in and out of the car.

What was Hannah doing with a child’s car seat fastened in the back? Just how far had this new relationship of hers progressed? He hadn’t noticed a wedding ring. Then again, he knew better than anyone that appearances were deceiving. She’d been driving a sputtering old rust bucket when they met up outside of Blackstone’s. He knew she didn’t have any siblings, so a young niece or a nephew was out. Even if she’d had one, he doubted she’d keep a seat in her car—

Door springs squeaked, interrupting his rapid-fire suppositions. Breaking his gaze away from the object that posed so many questions, he turned his head to find Hannah coming out of the house—and his head filled with even more. He stared at the bundle she held in her arms. His throat tightened painfully, his breath froze in his lungs, and every curse he sought scrambled beyond his grasp. Hannah awkwardly opened the passenger door and released the seat so she could push it forward.

Chad sat staring at her from where he’d moved behind the steering wheel.

“Come on, sweetie, stop wiggling so Mommy can get you into your seat,” Hannah said.

It dawned on Chad that she had a baby seat in the car because she had a baby.

She patiently maneuvered the baby, wearing a pink, baggy jumpsuit into the back despite the fidgeting of chubby arms and legs and nonstop gibberish. “There you go. Now take this.” She handed the baby a donut-shaped, rubber thingy. Chad counted all of four, widely spaced teeth as the baby opened her mouth and chomped down on the item.

Chad’s gaze slid from mother to daughter, trying to get a handle on things and failing miserably.

Finally Hannah looked at him. Her soft blue eyes held a mixture of expectancy and…He couldn’t quite read the other emotion. The only sounds he could hear were the gurgling of the baby in the back seat, and the slamming of his own heart against his rib cage.

It didn’t take an MIT grad to do the math. There wasn’t a single, solitary doubt that the baby who even now regarded him with happy curiosity was his daughter.

His daughter.

Sweet Lord in heaven…. He cleared his throat. “Who—I mean, is that your…”

Finally he latched onto a curse and let it rip. Hope. He realized too late the other emotion in Hannah’s eyes was hope. He knew this, even as he watched it crushed by gray disappointment. But what in the hell had she been hoping for? Hannah climbed into the passenger’s seat, her stony silence more effective than any words could ever be. Chad blinked just to make sure he still could, and tried to shove his mind into working order. For a guy who prided himself on being quick on the uptake, who needed to think fast on his feet, he was lapsing at least two steps behind right now. And he had the sinking feeling he’d never completely catch up.

Like an echo from a lifetime ago, he remembered Hannah’s words earlier, her explanation why they shouldn’t work together, why they couldn’t get intimately involved again. Things have changed, Chad. Everything has changed.

He absently started the car, with no idea where he was going, or a clue what he was going to do.

“Chad, meet my daughter, Bonny.”

He stared again at the squirming baby in the back seat. The sparse-haired, drool-covered little imp stared back, chattering as if saying something directly to him, then holding out the toy she chomped on in his direction. He swallowed hard, his heart expanding, surging against the bands he’d wrapped around it so long ago. Her large eyes were open, so very trusting, her cheeks flushed, her entire face animated. She grunted. Chad blinked, then awkwardly moved to accept the offering, only it appeared she hadn’t meant for him to take it, merely to feel it. When he released the slobbery rubber, she gave a peal of laughter, then stuck it back into her mouth.

A grin edged its way across his face and he swore he could feel one of the intangible bands in his chest snap and begin to unravel. A car passed on the street. With every ounce of concentration he still had left, he watched it, trying hard to pull himself together. His grin waned and he looked at Hannah, too wrapped up in his own thoughts to respond to her wary expression.

Things have changed….

The bottomless feeling in Hannah’s stomach refused to budge, no matter how hard she tried to make it. She repeatedly clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap, not quite knowing what to do with them, and unable to do nothing at all.

Chad idled the Alfa Romeo across from PlayCo and she took in a shallow, uneven breath. He’d been conspicuously silent ever since they picked up Bonny, alternately staring at her, and her noisy eight-month-old daughter in the back seat, appearing so thoroughly dumbfounded Hannah felt the incredible urge to reach out and touch him. At one point she thought he’d murmured something like “things have changed,” but she couldn’t be sure, and couldn’t bring herself to ask him what he’d said. In fact, she could focus on little more than the weightless, expectant sensation in her stomach.

She cleared her emotion-clogged throat. Often in the past eight months, usually after Bonny had finally fallen asleep against her chest and her own eyes were heavy, she indulged in images of Chad learning about his daughter. Saw him knocking softly on the door, stepping directly to the eight-month-old and sweeping her up in his arms. The fantasies had been harmless, she’d assured herself, because there was no reason Chad would be showing up on their doorstep any time soon.

Now that he had come back…

She bit down hard on the flesh of her bottom lip. Dreams were one thing. Reality something completely different.

What had she expected him to do? Hold out his hands to lovingly take a child he should have instinctively known was his?

No, she realized. In reality, she had expected him to leap from the car and bid her a final farewell. At least she thought that was what he would do—until she picked Bonny up and hope had blossomed in her stronger than she would have imagined. Who could deny this little girl? Surely her father would take one look at her and…

And what? Push aside the past? Declare his undying love for her and Bonny? Offer her happily-ever-after?

Stupid.

She chanced a glance at Chad, trying to read his thoughts as he watched Bonny. In the light from the street lamp she could see his face. His eyes were wide, as if someone had done a Three Stooges eye-poking number on him. He met her gaze and she quickly turned away.

“Um, you’re going to have to go into PlayCo by yourself, for obvious reasons,” she said quietly.

They sat parked in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A discreet white sign with blue lettering marked the ten-floor, foursquare building across the street as PlayCo Industries. Hannah eyed the watchman sitting in a lighted air-conditioned, multiwindowed guard shack next to the parking garage entrance.

“How old is she?”

Chad’s question caught her unaware. Hannah forgot about not looking at him. For a brief moment, he appeared so incredibly…victimized in the stiff white shirt and conservative striped tie he had fished from his duffel and put on, she nearly reached out to smooth the confused creases from his forehead. She blamed the instinctive impulse on her new role as mother and locked her fingers together in her lap.

“She’ll be eight months next week,” she said to the windshield.

She waited for his next question, but it never came. Instead he followed her gaze to the watchful guard in the shack and lapsed back into silence.

“So,” she began, injecting a businesslike tone into her wavering voice, “how are you going to get in there?”

He blindly moved his hand to reach into the front pocket of his shirt, missed by an inch, then looked down and took out a black leather bifold wallet. He absently held it in her direction and flipped it open. Hannah stared at an FBI identification that bore an appealing snapshot of Chad, and identified him as a Special Agent. The plastic was cloudy, the leather holder old and cracked.

“What did you learn in Florida?” she whispered. “You never impersonated a fed before. Or if you did, I never knew about it.” He closed the ID then stuffed it back into his pocket. “Do you know you’re committing a crime? This is fraud against the federal government. Do you have any idea what kind of penalty that carries?”

“Two to ten,” he said, clearly distracted by a burst of mimicking sounds from Bonny in the back seat. “But it doesn’t matter because I don’t intend to get caught.” Chad stared at his watch, then shifted to fuss with his tie. Hannah noticed his movements were jerky, anxious, not the usual smooth, easy Chad moves. A couple of cars approached, apparently night-shift workers gaining access to the underground parking area.

“I thought you earned facts and clues the honest way,” she said.

“For what it’s worth, this is the first time I’ve impersonated a fed.”

Why didn’t that make her feel any better? “Trust me. Nothing’s going to happen,” he said in a preoccupied monotone. “I’m going to take a look at Persky’s and Furgeson’s personnel files. The feds…” he trailed off.

“The feds,” Hannah prompted. He glanced at her, apparently trying to recover his train of thought. “The feds will never know.”

Hannah wasn’t sure if her agitation sprang from his lack of work ethics, or from his obvious ignorance of his connection to Bonny, who rhythmically kicked her car seat with the back of her shoes.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Chad asked and rubbed the back of his neck. “Because if you do, I’m all ears.”

“Does it still hurt?” she asked quietly.

He stared at her. “Huh?”

“The bump you took at Persky’s house.”

He dropped his hand back to his lap.

She resisted the urge to check the wound herself. Touching Chad again would not be a smart move, no matter what the reason. “Anyway, I do have another idea. I say we get a move on to Atlantic City and see if that woman in the matchbook we found at Persky’s exists.”

“And what if she doesn’t? What if it’s like I said and she was a one-nighter, a nooner, a quickie whom Persky never saw again?”

Hannah decided she’d liked him better speechless. She grimaced and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I love your vocabulary, Hogan. Do you care to share any more of your colorful language with me and Bonny?”

“Forget my word choices for a minute here, Hannah, and give this some thought. Let’s say we go to Atlantic City and turn up a big, fat zero? What then? Do we turn back to N.Y. and start from scratch?” His gaze lingered on Bonny and he slowly shook his head. “We don’t have the time. I’m going in here, getting what I need, then we’ll go to Atlantic City….”

His words trailed off. Hannah practically heard his unspoken question. Would the baby be going with them?

“I don’t have anywhere to leave her,” she blurted, disappointing herself. The last thing she wanted was to appear desperate. But desperate was exactly what she was, wasn’t it? Her regular baby-sitter couldn’t keep Bonny because she had plans for the weekend that couldn’t be broken. And with no family to speak of, unless you counted Victor Marconi, and a distant aunt in Montana, she was in a jam.

“I didn’t exactly expect to take this case, Chad. Don’t worry, Bonny won’t cause any trouble. And I certainly don’t intend to put her in any danger. This is a routine case with an unusual time constraint, that’s all. We’re tracking white-collar criminals, not violent armed robbers.”

He touched her hand where it lay against her leg. An instant rush of awareness startled her at the feel of his warm fingers on her cold ones.

“Hannah, I didn’t say anything about Bonny causing problems,” he said softly.

She tugged her hand away from his and worried it in her lap with her other. “No, you didn’t. But I could always read your thoughts, Chad.”

His gaze was probing. “Did you ever stop to think you couldn’t read me as well as you thought you could?”

She stared at him wordlessly. Could he be right? Was she misjudging him? Had she misread him in the past?

She watched the guard wave another car into PlayCo’s parking area.

“She’s beautiful,” he said so quietly she nearly didn’t hear him.

The statement took her breath away. She searched for a response, but couldn’t seem to match words to the emotions coursing through her. She almost said “She looks like you,” but caught herself.

She swallowed hard, relieved when he shifted the car into First. He pulled it around, heading straight for the guard still sitting in his shack next to the entrance to PlayCo Industries.




Chapter Four


Shell-shocked. That was the closest Chad could come to describing how he felt. No. That’s exactly how he would describe it. Having served with the Marines in Kuwait, he knew what it was like to hear sniper fire and not know where it had come from. The strange thing was that in this situation no one else had noticed the shot. Around him life went on as normal.

In the personnel office of PlayCo Industries, the nondescript, white-collar-to-the-bone comptroller Robert Morgan hung up the telephone then began fingering through a filing cabinet to retrieve Persky’s and Furgeson’s employment records. Outside in the hall a couple of second shift workers laughed, presumably on their way back from break. In another room across the way, a telephone rang on, with no one around to pick it up.

Even as he registered every sound, placed every person, he remained apart from them. The shot he’d taken hadn’t come from an unknown sniper’s gun; it had come from Hannah. Hannah and that precious baby girl whose veins carried his blood.

Thrusting his fingers through his hair, he glanced toward the open door, anxious to get out of there. To get back to the car and start seeking some answers that might help him make sense out of all this.

He’d never thought he’d be a father again. He’d sworn another child wouldn’t be born with the stigma of his name attached. It seemed like another lifetime since he’d even been around a baby. So long, he was unprepared for the instinctive surge of parental protection, of unconditional love that overtook him the instant he understood Bonny was his.

Still, it was all so hard to believe….

Just last month marked the fourth anniversary since the last moment he’d held his infant son, Joshua. Right before Joshua had been taken from him.

Scenes twisted through his mind. Images of misshapen metal, of an empty car seat lying in the middle of the road. Of his wife’s purse still sitting on the floor of the front seat.

His family.

A highway patrolman had tried to pry him from the scene when, at some point in the long nightmare, law officials had been contacted. And Chad had hauled off and slugged him, desperately needing to hold on to his family, though they were already gone. Their faces were burned forever into his memory, haunting him in the dark hours of the morning, taunting him whenever he experienced anything close to happiness…serving as a constant, caustic reminder that he didn’t deserve to be happy.

A torrent of emotion ripped through Chad’s gut. He focused on the back of Robert Morgan as he began copying the files he’d taken from the cabinet, but Chad really didn’t see him.

They’d argued that day, him and Linda. He winced from the memory of her packed suitcases, Joshua’s stuffed blue elephant hanging half out of a blue diaper bag, his son’s lashes bearing remnants of tears. Linda had accused him of putting his career above his family, an argument she’d made often. But that night she’d had enough. She was leaving him. Going home to her parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And there was nothing he could do to stop her.

Chad eyed the door, needing to escape. It was an accident, a voice in his head shouted. He resolutely refused to listen. It was no accident. He was to blame. He had killed his family as surely as if he’d driven them off that mountain road.

The experience had been more than Chad Hogan, Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, had been able to handle. He’d quit the Bureau, and never told anyone about his work there, not even Hannah. Too many bad memories. It was better to let her think that ID he flashed was bought somewhere in Florida. After he quit, he’d taken odd jobs as a skip-tracer to cover the basic necessities, and resolved to serve out a life sentence in which he wasn’t allowed to move past the guilt, the grief.

Then came Hannah.

The instant he met her, the shadows that dogged him began to recede. With all that curly red hair, those lively freckles and infectious laugh, she had loved life and lived to love. He’d been drawn to her like an addict was drawn to drugs. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t deserved her. He’d known that, too. But he’d been helpless to stop himself.

She had my baby and I didn’t even know it.

“I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

Chad blinked away the images crowding his head and stared at Robert Morgan who held out two blue file folders in his direction. He took them and cleared his throat. “I understand. This is fine.”

Morgan smiled and pushed up dark-rimmed glasses. “I have to admit, I still don’t know what all this is about. Your associates told me it didn’t concern PlayCo so I shouldn’t worry, but I can’t help it.”

“They were right. You shouldn’t worry, Mr. Morgan.” He tucked the files under his arm and shook the other man’s hand. “Thank you for your help, sir.”

“My, but you’re the independent one lately, aren’t you? Want to test your boundaries, is that it?” Hannah gave in to Bonny’s earnest attempts to escape her hold. She put her down in the driver’s seat, disappointment niggling at her that Bonny didn’t want to be held in the way Hannah needed to hold her after what had just happened—and didn’t happen—between her and Chad. She glanced around the interior of the underground parking garage. Chad had gotten them this far with a flash of his fake ID and a capable disposition, but her apprehension wouldn’t ease until they were out of the artificially bright parking area and well away from PlayCo Industries. And until he made it clear how he felt about having a daughter.

Bonny curled her stubby fingers around the door handle. Hannah realized her little girl wanted to follow Chad.

She reached into her purse and took out a bag of cheese crackers. Gaining her daughter’s attention, she tried to feed her a cracker only to have Bonny balk and take the fish-shaped snack away so she could feed herself.

Hannah laid her cheek against the leather headrest. It wasn’t too long ago when she had wanted to follow Chad, too. Everywhere. Anywhere. She smoothed back Bonny’s tufts of red hair, reveling in the feel of the baby-soft strands against her skin.

“This whole situation is surreal somehow,” she said quietly. “It’s so outside the norm, isn’t it, Munchkin?” Bonny just smiled and took another cracker. “Right about now Mommy would be feeding you dinner, wouldn’t she? In our cozy little yellow kitchen with the sunflowers on the wallpaper.” Right now their apartment in Little Italy couldn’t have seemed farther away. Hannah vaguely noticed the mess her daughter was making and reached for a wet towel also stashed in her purse.




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