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One Night Standoff
Delores Fossen
There was no way she could hide the bump…Lenora Whitaker never thought spending one night with U.S. marshal Clayton Caldwell would put them in the crosshairs of a killer. Connected to a protective custody case gone awry, they are both attacked, leaving Clayton with a damaging case of amnesia and forcing Lenora to go on the run.After taking a bullet to save her life, Clayton is unable to remember Lenora or that he's the father of her baby. But the moment he tracks her down, it's clear the attraction is still there. Hiding out together on his Texas ranch, Clayton admires the way Lenora will do anything to protect her unborn baby. Connecting with the pregnant beauty also triggers the first hints of his past. A past that could mend their broken lives–or unearth secrets he'd be better off forgetting.


THERE WAS NO WAY SHE COULD HIDE THE BUMP…
Lenora Whitaker never thought spending one night with U.S. marshal Clayton Caldwell would put them in the crosshairs of a killer. Connected to a protective custody case gone awry, they are both attacked, leaving Clayton with a damaging case of amnesia and forcing Lenora to go on the run.
After taking a bullet to save her life, Clayton is unable to remember Lenora or that he’s the father of her baby. But the moment he tracks her down, it’s clear the attraction is still there. Hiding out together on his Texas ranch, Clayton admires the way Lenora will do anything to protect her unborn baby. Connecting with the pregnant beauty also triggers the first hints of his past. A past that could mend their broken lives—or unearth secrets he’d be better off forgetting.
“This might help me remember.” His warm breath hit against her lips when he spoke.
And suddenly more than anything, Lenora wanted him to remember. Oh, and she wanted him to kiss her, too. Clayton might not have any memories of their one-night stand, but Lenora was well aware that he could set fires with his mouth.
He moved in closer. Closer. And she was just a breath away from kissing him again. Too bad she could already feel it and also too bad her body seemed to think this was foreplay, that Clayton would haul her off to bed again.
That wouldn’t happen.
Even if she desperately wanted it.
Her eyelids were already fluttering down, getting ready for that kiss, when Clayton stopped. It took her a moment to realize why. The baby was kicking, and with her body pressed against Clayton’s, he could feel it.
One Night
Standoff
USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Delores Fossen


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why USA TODAY bestselling author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Marshal Clayton Caldwell—He must rely on broken memories and a mysterious woman, Lenora, to stay alive and outsmart a hired gun. Even though he’ll protect her with his life, he’s not sure he can trust her with his heart.
Lenora Whitaker—After a one-night stand with Clayton, Lenora realizes she’s pregnant. However, her secret past is catching up with her, and it puts Clayton, their baby and her in the crosshairs of a killer.
Kirby Granger—Clayton’s foster father who’s under investigation for an old murder.
Adam Riggs—He’s in jail awaiting trial for killing Lenora’s friend, but he could have hired assassins to take out Clayton and Lenora so they can’t testify against him.
James Britt—A Justice Department agent investigating the attempts to kill Lenora and Clayton, but he could have his own agenda.
Quentin Hewitt—Lenora’s former boss and a man she once thought she loved. He could have strong objections to Lenora’s involvement with Clayton.
Melvin Larson—Clayton’s biological father. He abandoned Clayton years ago but now he’s back.
Contents
Chapter One (#u391f81ec-8892-5d93-b6c7-09b6faae0235)
Chapter Two (#u77931d62-c150-5b27-84d1-eb750fa59116)
Chapter Three (#ue8a4a4e8-2906-55cc-84af-cef02c4bfa6d)
Chapter Four (#u9fc30ef8-d757-5ad1-be98-a18cbf8a652e)
Chapter Five (#ufbb0e803-5372-54c1-903c-07f48185785e)
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)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Marshal Clayton Caldwell figured this could be bad.
He waited at the window and watched the woman exit the dark blue car that she’d just parked next to the Marshals Service building where he worked. She glanced around, but because of the other vehicles, there was no way she could have seen the black truck that eased to a stop about a half block up the street.
Clayton saw it, all right.
And he didn’t like the looks of this.
Had the driver of the truck followed her?
And if so, why?
Since Clayton had been at the second-floor window finishing his morning coffee and watching for his visitor to arrive, he’d been able to see the car and truck. Both unfamiliar. Not that he knew every vehicle in Maverick Springs, but the truck’s front license plate was obscured with mud or something. That, and the fact that the driver didn’t get out, made Clayton very uneasy.
Or maybe that was just a reaction to Lenora Whitaker’s visit.
Until the night before, he hadn’t heard from her since—well, just since. After nearly two months, Clayton had figured it’d stay that way.
“Everything okay?” Harlan McKinney asked. His fellow marshal and foster brother was seated in the corner of the desk-clogged room. Harlan’s attention was on some reports, but judging from his concerned look, he’d given Clayton a glance or two.
That’s when Clayton realized he’d slipped his hand over the Glock in his leather waist holster.
Old habits.
Sometimes he wished he could turn off this blasted LEO—law enforcement officer—alarm in his head, but he’d been a marshal for nearly a decade now. Too long to turn off alarms. Or to get a decent night’s sleep, for that matter.
“I’m not sure if everything’s okay,” Clayton answered. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
And that sent Harlan from his desk and to the window, where he looked out, as well.
Clayton waited, watching the wipers on the truck slash away the rain from the windshield. Not a gentle April shower. More like a downpour. But it wasn’t long before he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Not just ordinary footsteps, though.
Heels.
They really stood out in the building where all six of the marshals were male. There were female employees in the other parts of the building, but this time of day they rarely came to the second floor.
The woman stepped into the doorway of the squad room, her attention zooming right to Clayton.
Lenora.
Yeah, it was her, all right. She stood there, her damp shoulder-length brown hair clinging to the sides of her face. The water dripped from her raincoat and the umbrella she had clutched in her hand and splattered onto the floor.
“Clayton,” she said on a rise of breath.
Her gaze darted to Harlan, and she cleared her throat. Maybe because Harlan was just plain intimidating, with his linebacker-size body and hard lawman’s eyes. Thankfully, Clayton’s foster brother went back to his desk in the corner and pretended not to notice they were in the room.
“Marshal Caldwell,” Lenora corrected herself.
That surprised him. Women he’d had sex with didn’t usually get so formal after the fact. Of course, Lenora and he had only been together for that one night—and at one of the worst times in her life, to boot—but still she had to remember it.
He certainly did.
Despite being all mussed and wet, Lenora was a darn attractive woman. And judging from her dark green eyes, a troubled one.
“There’ve been no updates on the investigation,” Clayton volunteered to test her reaction. Was that why she’d asked to see him?
Clayton glanced at Harlan, who was glancing at them and no doubt wondering what the heck was going on.
So was Clayton.
Lenora had been cryptic when she’d called the day before, saying only that she needed to catch up with him.
“No updates,” she repeated. “Yes.” And that was all she said for several seconds, before she cleared her throat again. “Marshal Walker called a few weeks ago to say there’d been no progress.”
Marshal Walker, as in Dallas Walker, another of Clayton’s foster brothers. Dallas was indeed in charge of the investigation into the murder of Lenora’s best friend. A murder that’d happened nearly two months ago.
The last time Clayton had seen Lenora.
And they hadn’t exactly parted under good circumstances. In fact, Lenora had sneaked out of the hotel room while Clayton was in the shower, and she’d left him a note saying it’d been a big mistake for them to have sex.
Since that wasn’t exactly a good memory, Clayton pushed it aside and hitched his thumb toward the window. “Did someone in a black pickup follow you here?”
Lenora’s eyes widened, and she practically ran across the room to look out.
No truck.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “It was there a few seconds ago. Guess I was wrong about it.” Funny, though, his LEO alarm was usually a hundred percent.
Lenora was breathing through her mouth now, and her eyes were still wide. Her gaze darted around the parking lot and street. “You thought I was being followed?”
“Were you?”
“Maybe.” Her bottom lip trembled. “I’d hoped it was my imagination. I’m not sleeping well, and the nightmares are getting worse.”
Yeah. He knew all about those nightmares. A woman, Jill Lang, was dead. Gunned down right in front of both of them. She’d been Lenora’s best friend. And a witness in Clayton’s protective custody.
He didn’t expect the nightmares to end anytime soon.
Clayton could practically feel Lenora’s worry, and even though she’d given him the brush-off two months ago, he reached out and touched her arm. Well, the sleeve of her wet raincoat, anyway. He hoped it was a sympathetic gesture without getting too close.
“Jill’s killer was caught,” Clayton reminded her. And even though the man had yet to go to trial, he would be convicted of murder. No doubt about that, since there was a mountain of evidence against him, including Clayton’s and Lenora’s own eyewitness accounts.
But maybe this wasn’t about Jill’s killer.
“I know about the break-ins at your house in Eagle Pass,” Clayton told her.
Lenora pulled her shoulders back, and she shook her head. “How? Why?”
Both good questions. He didn’t exactly have good answers, though, and it sounded a little creepy to admit that he’d kept tabs on her. But he had. Too bad Clayton didn’t know exactly why he’d done it. He’d had short-term relationships before that he’d dismissed without a second thought.
So why hadn’t he been able to do that with Lenora?
Because there was something that wasn’t quite right about this. Something he couldn’t put his finger on.
She pushed her hair from her face and glanced at Harlan again. “Could we go somewhere private and talk?” she asked Clayton.
Maybe Harlan was making her nervous. He had that effect on people. But from Clayton’s assessment, Lenora had been nervous before she even came into the room.
Clayton set his coffee on his desk and grabbed his jacket. “There’s a diner across the street,” he said, already walking toward the door. “Call me if something comes up,” he added to Harlan.
“Tell me about these break-ins,” Clayton insisted as soon as they were out of the office.
Lenora gave a weary sigh. “The first one happened last week—as I’m sure you read in the report. I wasn’t there, but the person destroyed an antique panel that I’d been restoring.”
Property damage. Much better than damaging her body, but he could tell from her tone that it still hurt. Clayton didn’t know a lot about Lenora’s job in stained-glass restoration, but he remembered her saying that she often worked with expensive antiques.
“What about the second break-in?” He stopped just outside the building and looked around. Lenora did, too. There was no sign of that black truck, so he took her by arm and led her across the street.
“You already know.” She sounded upset, or something, that he’d read the police reports, but Clayton didn’t intend to apologize for that.
“I still consider you my business,” he clarified.
She blinked. “Why? Because my friend was killed on your watch? If so, that wasn’t your fault.”
The question threw him. Yeah, that was part of it—that a woman in his protective custody had died. In fact, that should have been all of it. But there were feelings buried beneath this, and maybe Lenora’s blink meant it wasn’t all business for her, either.
She looked away, mumbled something he didn’t catch. “Back to the break-ins. Again, I wasn’t there for the second one. In fact, I’ve been living at one of those extended-stay hotels since the first break-in.” Lenora paused. “The intruder left threatening messages scrawled on my bedroom wall.”
Clayton cursed. That hadn’t been in the initial report he’d read from the Eagle Pass P.D., but Clayton knew this was an escalation. If Lenora had been there—
But he cut off that bad thought.
Maybe their one-night stand had made her want to keep some distance between them. But she was here now, and though she hadn’t said it specifically, she appeared to be asking for his help.
Which she would get.
And Clayton assured himself that it had nothing to do with the night he’d spent with her. Or this cool heat still simmering between them. He would have helped anyone who needed it.
They took a booth by the window so he could keep watch for the truck, and he asked the waitress to bring them two cups of coffee.
“Do the cops have a suspect in the break-ins?” he asked.
Lenora shook her head. “They don’t have any prints, any type of trace evidence, and none of my neighbors saw anyone suspicious.”
That meshed with the reports he’d read, but witnesses often came forward later. Maybe that would happen in this case.
“Tell me who you think was in that truck,” Clayton said.
Another head shake. “I don’t know.”
“A boyfriend, maybe?”
“No. I’m not seeing anyone. And I don’t think I’ve been followed before.” Lenora blew out another breath, and she had a death grip on the coffee cup. “There’s more.” She said it so softly that Clayton didn’t actually hear her. He saw the words form on her lips.
“What?” he pushed when she didn’t explain.
This was beyond a bad feeling, and he instantly went back to the night they’d spent together. He wasn’t sure he was ready to deal with what she was about to say, but he also knew he had to hear it.
“You’re pregnant?” he came out and asked.
No blink this time. She nodded.
And that nod sent his heartbeat racing out of control.
Oh, man.
It felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. All the air left his lungs. All. But he fought to get enough breath so he could speak.
However, Lenora beat him to it. “I wrestled with whether to tell you at all. I mean, we hardly know each other. But I decided if our situations were reversed, I’d want to know. By the way, I don’t expect anything from you,” she added.
That gave him a jolt of breath he needed. “Well, you damn well should expect something.”
Lenora eased back, her attention fixed to him. “Obviously, you’re not pleased about this—”
“Only because I didn’t see it coming.”
“Yes.” And she repeated that. “It caught me off guard, too. We used protection, but something must have gone wrong.”
Obviously.
He pulled in a couple of quick breaths and hoped it’d clear his head. He needed to think. To say the right thing.
Whatever that was.
A baby!
He’d never planned on being a father. Never. And this was a shock that made him speechless.
She looked up. Their gazes connected. But then Lenora looked away again. Not at the coffee this time, but rather out the window.
“Is that the black truck you saw?” Her attention was on something over his shoulder.
Clayton turned in that direction and saw the truck. Yeah. It was the same one. It was creeping along Main Street, going past the diner.
Unlike before, the window on the passenger’s side was halfway down. There didn’t appear to be anyone seated there, only the person behind the steering wheel. Clayton couldn’t see the guy’s face.
But he saw the gun.
“Get down!” Clayton shouted to Lenora and everyone else in the diner.
He reached beneath his jacket to draw his Glock, but it was already too late. The bullet blasted through the window.
Clayton felt the sharp pain in the side of his head, and even over the blast, he heard Lenora yell. He tried to move. Tried to return fire and protect her, but he felt himself falling.
And everything around him turned cold and gray.
Chapter Two
Lenora’s heart slammed against her chest, and she snatched up the Glock that dropped from Clayton’s hand and onto the table. She saw the blood, no way to miss that.
No way to avoid that punch of adrenaline, either.
That fear.
Oh, God.
Clayton had been shot.
That was her first thought, quickly followed by the realization that this could all be her fault. But she shoved those things aside because every second counted now.
“Call an ambulance!” Lenora yelled out to no one in particular.
She couldn’t let this guy get off another shot. She had to stop him, or he could kill Clayton, her and anyone who was unlucky enough to be near them.
Lenora took aim at the truck.
And she fired.
The shot blistered through the air, but it was practically drowned out by the screams and shouts from the other diners. Lenora couldn’t be sure, but she thought she managed to shoot the guy in the arm. She took aim again, but the driver hit the accelerator, and with the tires squealing against the wet asphalt, he fishtailed away.
She scrambled across the table, catching Clayton as he slumped to the side. There was even more blood now. And it wasn’t in a good place, either.
He’d been shot in the head.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
With her heartbeat pounding in her ears and her hands shaking, Lenora kept watch to make sure the shooter didn’t return for a second round. She couldn’t risk that.
She jerked the scarf from around her neck and lightly pressed it to Clayton’s wound. She couldn’t add too much pressure, because it might embed the bullet even deeper. It might even kill him.
If he wasn’t dead already.
“Clayton?” She choked back a sob and tilted back his head a little. No response, so she pressed her fingers to his neck.
He was alive.
Thank God.
But he needed a doctor immediately.
“Get that ambulance here,” she shouted, though she figured it was already on the way. Still, it couldn’t arrive soon enough, because every second counted now.
A dozen thoughts went through her mind. None of them good. It had only been two months since her friend Jill had been gunned down just like this. Right in front of her. In front of Clayton, too. This had to have a different ending than that shooting.
Somehow, someway, Clayton had to survive this.
“Clayton?” she repeated. “Can you hear me?”
He turned his head toward her, and his lips moved, too. He mumbled something that Lenora couldn’t understand, so she put her ear closer to his mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
That seemed to get his attention, and he tried to open his eyes. “The baby.” The two words didn’t have any sound, but she was pretty sure that’s what he was trying to say.
The baby.
The reason for this visit. Lenora had dreaded coming here. Telling him. And had braced herself for his reaction. But now she had a different reason to dread why she’d decided to tell him.
If she hadn’t come here, this might not have happened.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the movement of the man approaching and nearly lifted the gun again before she realized it was Marshal Harlan McKinney. With his own gun drawn and holding his cell to his ear, he raced across the street toward the diner and had to dodge a car that nearly plowed right into him.
“Get here now!” Harlan shouted into his phone.
“The driver of that black truck,” Lenora managed to say. “He shot Clayton.”
“I saw it from the window,” Harlan mumbled, and he practically pushed her aside so he could take hold of his foster brother. The fear was right there, in his eyes and in every part of his body.
“Hold on, Clayton,” Harlan said. “The ambulance should be here any minute.” His gaze flashed to her. “Why’d this happen?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then guess!” Harlan insisted. “Because I want to know why my brother was shot.”
But Lenora didn’t even get a chance to speculate.
Or lie.
She heard a welcome sound. The ambulance sirens wailed from up the street, and it didn’t take long for the vehicle to screech to a stop directly in front of the diner. Two medics got out and came rushing toward them.
Harlan and she stepped back out of the way, and Lenora watched. Prayed. And tried to keep it together. In addition to the flashbacks and the fear crawling through her, she thought she might throw up.
Bad timing.
She’d had few symptoms of the pregnancy, and she didn’t want to be queasy now when so much was at stake.
“Marshal Caldwell?” one of the medics said to Clayton.
Still no response.
“Clayton?” Harlan tried.
And this time Lenora saw his eyelids flutter and open just slightly. Clayton’s coffee-colored eyes were unfocused, glazed, but he turned them in his brother’s direction.
“You’ll be okay,” Harlan assured him.
Lenora prayed that was true.
Clayton mumbled something. Or rather he tried, but like before Lenora couldn’t hear what he said. The medics moved in front of her, easing Clayton onto the gurney, and they hurried to the ambulance with him.
Lenora moved, too. She didn’t want to lose sight of him, and apparently neither did Harlan, because he latched on to her arm and dragged her into the back of the ambulance with him. He didn’t ask them for permission to ride.
The ambulance sped away from the diner, and Harlan and she watched as the medics took Clayton’s vitals.
“You returned fire,” Harlan said and held out his hand. “I’ll need Clayton’s gun.”
For a moment Lenora had forgotten that she was still clutching it. She had to force her hand to open, and she gave the Glock to him.
“Not a smart thing to do,” Harlan snarled. “Discharging a firearm in a crowd.”
“There weren’t any bystanders in my line of sight,” she blurted out, wishing that she hadn’t, because it brought Harlan’s attention directly to her.
“Why did you come to see Clayton?” he demanded.
The truth would only lead to more questions, and she didn’t want to be interrogated by this particular marshal. “Two months ago, my friend was murdered. I wanted to know if there’d been any new developments. I wanted to make sure her killer would stay in jail.”
Harlan no doubt knew all about Jill and the investigation. He stared at her, suspicion in his eyes, and Lenora had enough instincts to know that if Harlan’s foster brother hadn’t been just a few feet away and bleeding from a head wound, he would have called her a liar.
She was.
And Harlan would have pushed for a better answer than the one she’d just told him.
But there was no reason for her to tell this man about the pregnancy. When Clayton was better, he could break the news to his family. And he could also decide if he wanted to be part of this baby’s life.
If Clayton survived, that was.
She stared at the father of her unborn child. The man she’d slept with because she’d been too distraught to make a logical decision.
Sex wasn’t always logical, though.
Neither was the attraction she’d felt for this lawman. The attraction had been instant. Probably because he had rock-star looks to go along with that cowboy attitude. Or maybe it was because she’d felt this, well, connection with him. Connection aside, it’d been beyond stupid to sleep with him. She should have just walked away. Should have written Clayton and this attraction right out of her life.
That would have been the safe thing to do.
But she hadn’t. And now he was lying on a gurney, maybe dying.
Harlan’s phone buzzed, and while he took the call, Lenora moved slightly closer so she could get a better look at Clayton. There was blood on his dark brown hair, on the side of his face as well, but the flow was barely a trickle now. She had no idea if that was good or bad. The only experience she had with head wounds was they were usually fatal.
“That was Dallas,” Harlan said when he finished the call. “Marshal Walker,” he added, but Lenora already knew who Harlan meant. Another of Clayton’s foster brothers. Another federal marshal.
In fact, Clayton had five foster brothers, all of whom were U.S. marshals. That would mean five sets of questions, and each of them would deserve answers as to why one of their own had been shot while having a cup of coffee with her.
“They found the shooter,” Harlan added. “He wrecked his truck only about four blocks from the diner.”
Lenora certainly hadn’t expected that and would have thought the guy would manage to get out of the area. “Who is he?”
“According to the ID in his wallet, his name is Corey Dayton. Ring any bells?”
“No.” And that wasn’t a lie. Of course, the ID could be fake, and she might recognize his real name. “Does your brother have him in custody?”
Harlan shook his head. “He’s dead.”
Lenora pulled in her breath. “From the bullet I put in him?”
“Maybe. But he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and he crashed into a parked garbage truck.”
Part of her was relieved that the man who’d shot Clayton was out of the picture, but a dead man couldn’t give them answers, and Lenora very much wanted to know why this guy had fired into the diner.
“Tell me,” Harlan said, “is this connected to your friend’s murder?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered honestly. “When you can, you’ll want to question the man who murdered Jill. Adam Riggs,” she supplied, though Harlan no doubt knew the name of the man behind bars. And he would absolutely question him.
When his brother was out of the woods.
It was possible that Riggs had hired the shooter, maybe because Riggs was riled that Clayton had arrested him for Jill’s murder. If so, Harlan and the other marshals would soon find that connection.
So would Lenora.
She’d find it, and if Riggs was responsible, then he was going to pay, and pay hard.
Of course, Riggs could have hired someone to aim that shot at her, too, because he might believe that as Jill’s friend she’d helped catch him. She hadn’t. But there was a lot of twisted stuff in a killer’s mind. Especially this killer’s.
“Are there any loose ends with Jill’s murder?” Harlan asked.
Lenora knew where this was leading—the marshal was looking for quick answers. But she didn’t have them.
“Maybe I’m the loose end.” Lenora had to pause, take a breath and choose her words carefully. “Jill worked for Adam Riggs and discovered he was into big-time money laundering. She was about to testify against him when he shot and killed her.”
Lenora saw those images as clearly as she saw Clayton in front of her. God, when was this going to end?
“Clayton put you in protective custody along with Jill,” Harlan supplied. “Because he thought Riggs might use you to get Jill to back off her testimony.”
“He would have,” Lenora confirmed. “But killing Clayton and me now accomplishes nothing.” At least nothing that she was aware of.
Still, something wasn’t right about this.
But what?
What was she missing?
Maybe it didn’t even matter. What mattered was that Clayton had been safe until she’d arrived to tell him about the baby.
She saw Clayton’s hand move, and Lenora leaned in. Clayton’s eyes were open now. Still a little dazed looking. But he looked directly at his brother, who’d moved to her side.
“What happened?” Clayton asked Harlan.
It such a simple question, but it caused relief to flood through Lenora. Clayton wasn’t just conscious, he was talking.
“You were shot,” Harlan answered. The words didn’t come easily. His voice was clogged with emotion. “We’ll be at the hospital soon. You’ll be okay.”
Clayton stayed quiet a few seconds, shook his head and then tried to get off the gurney. The medics quickly stopped him from doing that.
“I have to go,” Clayton insisted. Definitely no slurred words now. He seemed like the determined, focused lawman that she knew. “I have a witness to protect.”
Well, focused except for that last part. Maybe he didn’t realize he’d been shot.
“Jill Lang,” Clayton added and tried to get up again. “I have to protect her.”
Lenora froze. Why would Clayton mention Jill’s name? Obviously he wasn’t as coherent as she’d thought, because Jill had been dead for two months.
“I have to protect her friend, too,” Clayton insisted while the medics held him down. “I have to protect Lenora Whitaker.”
Clayton certainly didn’t say her name as he had earlier. It sounded foreign on his lips.
As if he’d spoken the name of a stranger.
“Lenora’s here,” Harlan said, inching her closer so that Clayton could see her face. “She’s okay. She wasn’t hurt in the shooting.”
Clayton stared at her, and even though his eyes were indeed clear, something was missing. He shook his head, his stare aimed right at her.
“You,” Clayton said. He winced, took a deep breath.
“Yes,” Lenora answered. “It’s me.”
But he only shook his head again. “Who are you?” Clayton asked.
Lenora froze.
Oh, mercy. He hadn’t just said her name as if they’d never met—the look he was giving her certainly wasn’t a familiar one, either.
It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger.
“Who are you?” Clayton repeated with his attention fastened to Lenora. “And why are you here?”
Chapter Three
Three Months Later
Clayton spotted the woman on the stepladder perched in front of the stained-glass window inside the country church. She was about five-six. Dark brown hair. Average build. Well, average build from what he could tell. She wore a drab green lab-style coat over her jeans.
He stayed back behind the last row of pews so that she wouldn’t see him, but he could see her.
The light in the church was dim, thank goodness, so Clayton was able to remove his sunglasses, but he was careful to dodge the lines of sunlight piercing through the beveled glass around the window panels. The last thing he needed was a migraine. Even the mild ones were a bear, and something he’d had to deal with since the shooting. Today he didn’t want to deal with the pain.
He wanted to deal with this woman who might have answers.
Clayton waited, watched until she finally put her soldering iron aside and pulled off the mask that’d covered her nose and mouth.
It was Lenora Whitaker, all right.
Keeping a firm grip on the sides of the ladder, she stepped down to the floor, propped her hands on her hips and looked up at the glass angel’s wing that she’d just repaired. She must have been pleased with the results, because she nodded, smiled. Turned.
The color drained from her face. The smile, too. Almost as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Clayton,” she said in a rough whisper.
Well, at least she remembered him. Clayton wished he could say the same about her. Yeah, he knew those features because of the surveillance footage he’d studied, but he didn’t recognize her.
Still, there was something familiar about her that went beyond recorded images. Maybe because she’d once been in his protective custody.
Something else he couldn’t remember.
She didn’t come closer, but pulled a rag from her coat pocket and wiped her hands. She also dodged his gaze. “How are you?”
“Better than the last time you saw me.”
That brought her gaze back to his. “You got your memory back?”
He lifted his shoulder. “Some of it.” Including all of his childhood, even the rotten parts. Most of adulthood, too. “Not about you, though.”
Clayton paused, studied her expression. Her forehead was bunched up, and while there was concern in her eyes, there was also discomfort.
Probably because he’d found her.
“According to Harlan’s account,” Clayton said, “you didn’t hang around long after I was shot.”
She nodded, swallowed hard. “But I called, to find out that you’d made it out of surgery.”
Yeah. Harlan had told him that, too. But what was missing were the details.
“How’d you find me?” She turned away from him and started to gather her supplies, which she stuffed into a metal toolbox.
“It wasn’t easy.” In fact, it’d been downright hard. Clayton tipped his head to the stained-glass panel. “Not many people do the kind of work you do, so I kept calling churches and other places that have this sort of thing.”
And he’d finally located her through a supplier who was billing a minister in the small town of Sadler’s Falls for repairs to an antique stained-glass window. Lenora’s area of expertise.
“I called the minister,” Clayton explained. “And I posed as someone interested in a getting a referral for some stained-glass repairs needed on a house I’m restoring. He told me about this woman he’d just hired, but I didn’t know it was you until I saw you just now.” He paused. “You’re using a fake name.”
“Yes. After what happened, I thought it was the safe thing to do.”
Probably. But Clayton still needed answers that he hadn’t been able to get from anyone else.
She glanced at the scar on his forehead. It had faded considerably since his surgery three months earlier, but it was a reminder of just how close he’d come to dying.
“I’ve been looking for updates about the shooting,” she said, “but the marshals still haven’t found the person that hired the gunman who put a bullet in you.”
“That’s true.” Not from lack of trying, though. The investigation had been a priority for his foster brothers. And now for Clayton. “But I thought you’d be able to help with that.”
Lenora quickly shook her head. “I can’t. I have no idea who’s behind this.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
The pulse in her throat jumped, but before she could repeat her denial, Clayton walked closer, his cowboy boots thudding on the scarred hardwood floors of the old church.
Lenora backed up, and she pulled the sides of the coat closer, hugging it against her body. “You’re accusing me of lying.”
“Yeah,” he readily admitted, and he held out his phone so she could see the video that he’d loaded. “The diner where I was shot doesn’t have a security camera, but there were plenty of them on the Marshals building across the street.”
And thanks to one of those cameras, he could show her the footage of them sitting down in the booth directly in front of the window.
“I understand we sat in that particular spot so I could watch for the black truck that I thought had been following you,” he explained.
She nodded but didn’t say anything. Lenora just watched. There was no audio, but it was clear that Lenora and he were talking in the diner. Clayton waited until the feed got to the first stopping point, then paused the video. He zoomed into his expression.
“I don’t need a body-language expert to tell me that I’m surprised there. Shocked, actually.” He dipped his head down slightly, forcing eye contact. “What did you say to me to put that look on my face?”
She didn’t glance away this time. He was watching her closely. It seemed as if she was having a serious debate with herself—a debate that didn’t turn out well for Clayton, because he saw the exact moment when she decided to lie.
“I can’t remember specifically what I said, but we were talking about the break-ins at the place where I used to live.”
He didn’t doubt that had come up in conversation—Clayton had read the reports of both break-ins—but since he’d already known about them before Lenora showed up at his office that morning, there probably wasn’t much she could have told him that would have shocked him.
So why was she lying?
This was one area where Harlan hadn’t been able to help. His brother had been in the office the morning of the visit, but he hadn’t been privy to what Lenora and he had discussed. Too bad. Because Clayton had the feeling that it was more than important, and he wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he had answers.
Clayton hit Play on the video, and they watched in silence. Well, verbal silence anyway. Lenora was glancing at him from the corner of her eye. He was doing the same, trying to remember anything and everything about her. She certainly didn’t feel like a stranger. And her scent...
That was familiar, too.
Maybe it was his imagination, but that scent seemed to trigger other things. Like the memory of her taste. But that couldn’t have happened. According to every report he’d read, the first time he met Lenora and her friend Jill was when they’d been placed in his protective custody. He wouldn’t have kissed a woman on the job.
Maybe afterward.
After Jill had been murdered. After her shooter had been arrested and put behind bars. Yeah, he could maybe see it happening then, if Lenora had landed in his arms so he could comfort her.
But had they done that?
And if so, why hadn’t Lenora admitted it?
He heard the slight shiver of her breath and looked down at the screen. Their recorded conversation was over, and both had noticed the approaching black truck. Though it was damn hard to watch, Clayton did. And he saw the impact of the bullet as it slammed into his head.
Lenora turned away, or rather started to do that, but Clayton caught her arm, keeping her in place. “Watch,” he insisted.
She did, but from the corner of her eye, and it seemed as if she was genuinely horrified by what she was seeing. Him, slumped against the table, and her, grabbing his gun to return fire.
Clayton hit Pause again the second she pulled the trigger.
It was a clear image of not just the truck but of Lenora. The way she was holding the gun. The expression on her face. The precision with which she returned fire.
“There are only two types of people who react that way in a life-or-death situation,” he said. “Law enforcement and criminals.”
She didn’t ask which he thought she was and didn’t deny his conclusion. Lenora mumbled something, shook her head and walked away from him.
“I need some air,” she said. Before he could stop her, she went to the side door just a few feet away and threw it open.
The hot July sunlight speared through the tiny church.
Clayton couldn’t quite choke back a groan, and he shoved on his glasses. Too late, though. The pain came.
“What’s wrong?” Lenora immediately asked.
He turned away, fought back the throbbing in his head. Maybe it wouldn’t turn into a full-blown migraine.
“The sunlight,” he managed to say. “I get headaches.”
She jerked the door closed and hurried back to him. “From the gunshot?”
He nodded and forced out some hard breaths. Sometimes it helped.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. That wasn’t in any of the reports I read about you.”
Even through the blinding pain that got his attention, and he stared at her.
“Yes, I read reports about you,” she verified. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You could have just asked. Or stayed at the hospital until I came out of surgery. Instead, Harlan said you bolted from the ambulance the second it stopped.”
“I did.” She looked away, repeated it. Lenora turned again, as if looking for a way out, and the movement caused her coat to shift to the side.
Despite the pain, Clayton pulled off his glasses so he could make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. They weren’t. He saw her belly.
Or rather, the baby bump.
It wasn’t huge, but it was there. And even more, Lenora followed his stunned gaze and pulled the coat back over her. The little gasping sound she made didn’t help steady his nerves, either.
“You’re pregnant,” Clayton said.
She nodded.
“How far along are you?” he asked when she didn’t volunteer anything else.
Lenora didn’t jump to answer that, either. “Second trimester.”
He stared at her. “That’s what—four or five months?”
Another hesitation. “Nearly five.”
The brain injury might have robbed him of some of his memories, but he could still do basic math. Nearly five months ago put it just about the time she’d been in his protective custody.
The time frame that was a blank spot in his mind.
“How much do you remember about me?” she asked before he could say anything.
“Not much. Nothing,” he amended. “Everything I know about you I learned from the reports and surveillance videos. And from Adam Riggs.”
Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting that last part, because she sucked in a quick breath. “What did Riggs tell you about me?”
Not as much as Clayton had wanted. And while Clayton would answer her questions about Riggs, he wasn’t forgetting about that baby bump. He would get answers about that before this conversation was over.
“I went to visit Riggs in jail,” Clayton explained, “to try to figure out if he was responsible for shooting me. Of course, he said he wasn’t.”
“Of course.” She huffed. “Anything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, because he’s a cold-blooded killer.”
Clayton couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t remember Riggs gunning down Jill Lang, but he’d seen the crime-scene photos and read the reports. The man was indeed a murderer.
One behind bars.
And one that shouldn’t have had the access to hire a gun to come after Lenora and him.
“Riggs said you ‘had secrets,’ and that’s a direct quote,” Clayton finished. “Any idea what he meant by that?”
He purposely dropped his gaze to her stomach. He doubted that bump had anything to do with Riggs’s cryptic comment, but Clayton figured Lenora definitely had some secrets that needed to be spilled.
She opened her mouth, closed it and then groaned. “I did you a favor by leaving Maverick Springs. My advice—let me keep doing you that favor.”
Clayton stepped in front of her when she tried to leave. Yeah, he could restrain her, but if she opened a door, the sunlight was going to cause the pain to spike again and maybe send him to his knees. After that, he wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. Ironic that a bullet hadn’t stopped him, but now sunlight could.
“Did we have sex?” he came right out and asked. “And is that my baby you’re carrying?”
The questions came easily enough, but there was nothing easy about the emotions whipping through him. He’d come here for answers about the attack and why she’d disappeared, but Clayton hadn’t been prepared for this.
Except there was something familiar about this, too.
A sense of déjà vu, and since he’d never fathered a child, he had to think that maybe the reason Lenora had visited him three months ago was to tell him she was pregnant. That would certainly explain the stunned look on his face in the surveillance video.
“You don’t have to do this,” Lenora said, her voice like a plea. “Just go home and heal. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”
Well, the woman knew how to keep him on his toes. He really wanted to know what she meant by that last remark, but first things first.
“Is that my baby?” he demanded.
Her mouth tightened. “We had a one-night stand after Jill was murdered.”
The emotions whipped harder through him. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He cursed, and it was more than several moments before he could regain enough control to speak.
“You should have told me—again,” he added. “After I came out of surgery.”
“You had enough to deal with.”
That answer didn’t help. “What were you going to do? Have the baby and not let me know?”
“I would have told you eventually. When you were better.”
He leaned in and yanked off his glasses so he could meet her eye to eye. “I’m better, and I’ve been better for a while now.”
She nodded, but there was no agreement in any part of her body language. “Knowing the truth doesn’t make this situation better or easier. But it does make it more dangerous.”
Clayton made a circling motion with his fingers for her to continue.
She did, eventually. “I can’t prove it, but Riggs might have hired the shooter to kill me, and he might have shot you by mistake. And if that’s true, then it’s not safe for you to be around me.”
“That’s a big maybe. Riggs has just as much reason to want me dead as he does you. After all, we both saw him gun down Jill. We’ll both testify against him.”
“You remember the shooting?” she asked.
Unfortunately. “Yes.” However, there were gaps both before and after the murder. Big gaps that Riggs probably didn’t know he had. Hopefully, his lawyers wouldn’t, either, because Clayton didn’t want his testimony called into question.
She groaned softly. “But why didn’t Riggs come after you before that day at the diner? Why did he wait until we were together?”
“I don’t know. But that’s something we could have worked out if you’d stayed—”
“No, it’s not,” Lenora interrupted. She waited until his gaze came back to hers. “Riggs was right. I do have secrets. I’m not who you think I am.”
Oh, man. He didn’t like that tone or the look in her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s all lies. Not the baby. That’s the only truth in all of this.” She tipped her head to his phone, where the video of her returning fire was frozen on the screen. “You said only a criminal or someone in law enforcement would have reacted that way.”
Clayton nodded. Waited. “And which one are you?”
Lenora’s bottom lip trembled. “Both.”
Chapter Four
“Both?” Clayton repeated.
Lenora saw the instant concern in his eyes. Not ordinary concern, either. The kind of concern a marshal would have when facing down someone on the other side of the law.
“Explain that,” he demanded. His gaze dropped to her stomach. “And then we’ll discuss the baby.”
Lenora didn’t know which part of the intended discussion she dreaded most, but her dread was a drop in the bucket compared to her fear that Clayton’s mere presence here could get him killed.
“Are you sure no one followed you?” Lenora didn’t wait for his answer. She went to the sliver of a side window by the front door and peered out. The beveled glass distorted the view, but she saw her own car. No one else’s, and definitely no sign of a gunman. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
“I parked on the other side of the cemetery,” Clayton explained. “I didn’t see anyone following me, and I was careful.” He paused. “But there’s always the possibility that someone used the same steps I did to find you.”
True. That didn’t do much to steady her already racing heart and frazzled nerves. Lenora made a mental note to call the minister, Reverend Donaldson, to say she couldn’t finish the job. Then she could leave town and make sure Clayton didn’t find her again. However, that leaving part wasn’t going to happen unless she gave him the answers he was demanding, because there was no way he’d just let her walk out.
But where to start?
It was a tangled mess. One that Clayton definitely wasn’t going to like.
She took a deep breath, walked back toward him and sank down into a pew. “Jill and I both worked for the justice department.” There. Plain and simple. She gave him a moment to let that sink in.
It obviously didn’t sink in well. Clayton’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the first I’m hearing of this, and that’s funny since I work for the justice department, too, and I was assigned to protect you two.”
Yes, she was painfully aware of that. “You weren’t told the whole truth, and I was sworn to secrecy. Jill and I were agents on a special task force put together to bring down Adam Riggs and his cronies—”
“Any reason I wasn’t let in on this?”
“A good one.” Well, it was good in some people’s minds. It’d never felt right to her. “There were other agents planted in companies that Riggs was doing business with. The task-force supervisor didn’t want anyone knowing that Jill and I were deep cover, because it might have leaked—”
“I wouldn’t have leaked it,” he snapped, interrupting her again. He slipped his sunglasses back on and went to the front windows to look out.
The sunglasses were an odd mix with the rest of his clothes: the jeans, boots and silver rodeo belt. He used the brim of his black Stetson to help shield his eyes. It made her wonder just how bad his headaches actually were and if he was duty ready. Apparently he’d been ready enough to find her, and she’d thought she had covered her tracks well with the assumed name and the cash-only lifestyle.
“You could have trusted me,” Clayton added.
“I know that now, but we didn’t know it at the time. The task-force supervisor also wanted to make it look as if Jill and I were truly just workers who might be in danger because of a federal investigation. That’s why he asked the Marshals Service to provide protection for us. He took the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach.”
Clayton shook his head, glanced back at her, and even though she couldn’t actually see his eyes behind those shades, she was certain he was glaring. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”
No, it hadn’t. Somehow Lenora would have to learn to live with that, but she hadn’t had much luck doing it so far. The nightmares were still there. Every night. Unrelenting.
“So, you’re an agent,” Clayton said almost like a challenge.
“Former agent. I resigned shortly after Jill was murdered. But before the justice department, I worked in Dallas for a man who was a world-class money launderer. And I helped him.”
Lenora nearly choked on the confession, but it was true. She had indeed helped him, unknowingly, but she darn well should have known what he was up to. She’d played with fire and had gotten burned.
Now Lenora was trying to make sure that didn’t happen again.
Yes, Clayton was fire, all right.
Fiery trouble in a black Stetson.
All of her experience and training told her that he was off-limits. As if on cue, the baby kicked, reminding her that the hands-off rule had been broken months ago. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do something to stop more bad things from happening. She didn’t include her baby in that “bad things” department. She desperately loved and wanted this child. But the baby’s father was a different matter entirely.
She couldn’t live with another death on her hands. Especially his death.
“And you were a criminal?” he mumbled. He shook his head, put his back to the sidelight window and shucked off his glasses so his gaze could meet hers.
Yes, it was a glare, all right.
Lenora nodded. “When the feds started investigating the money-laundering scheme I was involved in, I was taken into custody and cut a deal to help them with an investigation to collar my boss.”
“Sounds dangerous,” he pointed out.
She settled for a shrug. “My boss and his business partners were bigger fish that they wanted. So, because the situation could have turned, well, more than dangerous, they trained me like a regular agent. But I was technically just a criminal informant assigned to the deep-cover task force. Then, after my boss was arrested and convicted, they asked me to stay on in the department and work on the Riggs case.”
Clayton made a sound of displeasure. “And as a dupe, my own people assigned me to two women that I was told needed protection.”
“Obviously, we did need it, because one of us was murdered,” she reminded him, then paused. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”
“Not as sorry as I am. I hate being lied to, especially by people that I’m supposed to trust.” However, he immediately added a sound of dismissal. “Old baggage rearing its head. But it still comes into play here.”
She knew a little about his old childhood baggage, from the notorious Rocky Creek Children’s Facility, which was now closed. Had been for sixteen years. She also knew his mother had died giving birth to him and that his father, Melvin Larson, had literally abandoned him at the facility when he was eleven. All of that had come out when they’d talked in bed after their fast and furious bout of sex.
Too bad her memories of that were crystal clear.
She could remember every last detail of that night. The raw pain from losing a friend and fellow agent. The comfort she’d found in Clayton’s arms. The pleasure, too. Pleasure should have been the last thing on her mind that night, but she’d felt plenty of it anyway. Thanks to Clayton.
“Lies like that are usually unnecessary,” he tossed out to her.
“You lied to the minister to find me,” Lenora tossed right back at him.
He gave her that riled look again, like the one he’d given her in the diner. “I didn’t lie to deceive. I lied to find you so I could help. Maybe now’s a good time to ask if you were planning on telling me any of this?”
No, it wasn’t a good time to ask, but Lenora would answer it anyway. “I was waiting for you to heal and for the danger to die down.”
He lifted his shoulder. “How the hell was the danger going to die down? You know who was responsible for putting that bullet in my head?”
She couldn’t deny it fast enough. “No. I assumed that Riggs hired someone to do it, but I don’t have any proof.” Lenora stopped, met his gaze. “Do you?”
Clayton didn’t answer her for several moments, but his stare continued to stab at her. At least it did until the baby kicked her and she winced a little. It wasn’t a hard kick, but she’d only been feeling movement for a few weeks and wasn’t used to it.
“You okay?” Clayton asked.
“Fine. The baby moved, that’s all.”
His mouth tightened. Then relaxed. He mumbled some profanity. “I’m having a hard time dealing with this.”
“Of course.” She didn’t dare repeat the offer she’d made to him at the diner, that she expected nothing from him. No, best not to say it aloud, but the truth was, she couldn’t expect anything from him. Because she needed him out of her life. Maybe just temporarily.
Maybe forever.
And that meant she needed to get on with her explanation. Besides, it was possible Clayton could actually help. She’d been hesitant to trust anyone, and maybe she was a fool for trusting him, but without this explanation, he clearly wasn’t leaving.
“After your shooting, I wasn’t sure whom I could trust.” She slid her hand over her stomach.
Clayton huffed. “Any of my five foster brothers would have been a good start. They’re all marshals and all capable of protecting you.”
“But I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone in law enforcement.”
That eased Clayton’s glare, and he cocked his eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because after you were shot, I tried to call my handler. My task-force leader,” Lenora corrected. She’d always hated the term handler. It made her feel like a circus animal that needed to be controlled. “His name is James Britt, and he didn’t return my call for two days.”
Clayton stayed quiet a moment. “That’s unusual?”
“Very, especially considering I left him a frantic message to call me immediately.” She pushed her hair from her face. “But the truth is, I was concerned about James prior to that. He’d started to question me about what I really saw the night Jill was murdered. He seemed to try to make me doubt that Riggs was the one to pull the trigger.”
“It was Riggs,” Clayton verified. “I saw him, too.”
Lenora nodded. “James knows that, but he kept pushing, as if he was looking for some kind of discrepancies in my report. I dismissed it, thinking he was just trying to prepare me for my testimony at the trial.”
“That’s possible,” Clayton admitted.
Possible, yes, but Lenora hadn’t been able to shake the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“When James finally called me back after your shooting, he asked me if I’d gone back to my old ways. If I was running laundered money again. He wanted to know if I’d done something to get you shot. I didn’t,” she quickly added.
Clayton made a sound to indicate he was giving that some thought. “A few days before I was shot, someone broke into your place and vandalized it. I’ve been looking into any connection between that and the shooting, but I can’t find it. Did you?”
She had to shake her head. “And I looked. The Eagle Pass police weren’t able to get any prints or trace from the break-ins, so there was no arrest.”
He continued to stare at her. “So your solution was to go into hiding.”
“I had the baby to think about.” And Lenora wasn’t going to apologize for that. “I didn’t want to take any more risks than I’d already taken.”
“And I wasn’t around to help you.” He blew out a long breath, stood and stared down at her. “Well, I’m around now, and I want you to go back to Maverick Springs with me, to my family’s ranch.”
Lenora got to her feet, too. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s too dangerous for me to come out of hiding and go with you. Obviously this person is after me, not you, because you’ve been out of the hospital for weeks now and no one has tried to kill you.”
“Not yet. But I think we should get to the bottom of what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Maybe Riggs hasn’t sent anyone else after me because he knows it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. After all, the last person who tried to kill me is dead. Thanks to you,” he added.
Yeah. Thanks to her.
Too little, too late.
By the time she’d put a bullet in their attacker, Clayton had already been shot.
“I shouldn’t have come there that day to tell you about the baby.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “But you’re not the only one dealing with old baggage here. It played into my decision to tell you.”
“Old baggage or not, you should have told me,” he confirmed.
“But you don’t even remember me, do you? You don’t remember sleeping with me.”
His gaze slid down her face to her body. Something different went through his eyes this time. Something she had no trouble recognizing.
Attraction.
Yes, she’d felt it, too, the first time she’d ever looked at him. And every time since.
She huffed, stood and would have gone to the window if it wouldn’t have put them so close. “It hardly seemed fair to go waltzing into your hospital room to tell you that your one-night stand had led to an unexpected pregnancy. I wanted you to focus on your recovery.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been fair, but it would have been the right thing to do for the baby.” The sunglasses went back on so he could have another look outside.
The right thing. In other words, turn over her safety—and the baby’s—to him. Under normal circumstances she might have considered it, but it was crystal clear that Clayton was in no shape to be offering her protection.
Not yet anyway.
Her best bet was to regroup, go back into hiding under a different name. And a different job. One that couldn’t be traced to anything in her past. Then, once things had settled down and his shooter was in custody, she could go to him and have him be part of their baby’s life.
It seemed like a logical plan. But one look at Clayton’s firm expression and she knew this would be a hard sell, if she could convince him at all. However, before she got a chance to sell anything, she saw Clayton shift his position. He leaned in closer to the glass.
“A dark blue SUV just parked at the end of the road,” he relayed to her as he locked the front door. “Anyone you know?”
No one that immediately came to mind. These days she had no friends and only a very few acquaintances. Lenora hurried to the window and spotted the SUV.
“The minister, maybe?” Clayton asked.
“No. He’s out of town all this week and gave me the keys to the church so I could let myself in.”
Clayton glanced at her. Again, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she figured there was displeasure lurking behind those dark shades. “Not wise. You’re out here alone all by yourself.”
That scolding put some starch in her posture. “I prefer working in solitude. Plus, I have a gun with me, and you know I can shoot.” Then there was the whole part about her not trusting anyone. She figured trust would get her killed faster than going it alone.
“Good,” Clayton mumbled, as if he hadn’t actually heard what she said. Probably because his attention was fastened to the SUV.
No one got out of the vehicle. It just sat there with the front of it aimed right at them. It seemed menacing, but Lenora tried to assure herself that it could all be nothing. She’d gone three months without any contact with someone who wanted to hurt her. Of course, that was before Clayton had found her.
Had someone else found her, too?
Someone who’d hired another triggerman to finish the job that been started at the diner in Maverick Springs? Or maybe it’d even started before that, with Jill’s murder.
Mercy, she needed answers.
“There’s a back exit.” She let him know in case they needed another way out.
“Yeah. It’s locked from the inside. We might have to use it.”
It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew about the locked exit. Clayton had no doubt scoped out the church before he’d come inside and surprised the heck out of her. So much for all her training. She hadn’t even heard him skulking around the place.
“Neither lock will hold if someone wants to get inside,” Clayton added. “Hand me the keys.”
She riffled through her pocket and came up with them, and he jammed the key inside the internal deadbolt so the door was now double-locked. It was a good precaution to take, but the door was made of wood. Old wood at that. She doubted it would stand up to some hard kicks. There hadn’t been a lot of need for security in this little country church.
Well, not before now, anyway.
The driver’s side door of the SUV eased open, and in the same motion, Clayton drew his Glock. That put her heart right in her throat, and Lenora took out the small Smith & Wesson from the slide holster at the back waist of her jeans. It wasn’t a comfortable fit anymore with her growing belly, but she was thankful that she’d decided to wear it anyway.
Clayton’s mouth tightened. “If things go wrong here, I don’t want you using that. I want you as far away from bullets as possible.”
Lenora wanted that, too, along with wanting Clayton to be safe, but she had to be ready, too. She also had to keep hoping that this was just a false alarm, because the alternative was for her to accept that there was some kind of grand-scale conspiracy to murder her.
She held her breath and saw the man step from the driver’s side of the SUV. Tall and lanky, he wore jeans and a dark shirt, common clothes for this part of the country, but it was the brown leather jacket that snagged her attention. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, hardly jacket weather, which meant he was probably wearing it to conceal a weapon.
“I don’t recognize him,” she said before Clayton could ask. “Do you?”
“No.”
That revved up her heart even more. She’d held out hope that their visitor was a lawman, maybe even the local sheriff. He sure had the lawman’s look down pat—he glanced around, studying the entire grounds before his attention settled on the front of the church. However, Lenora saw no signs of a badge, but the guy was holding something.
A newspaper.
The man looked at the paper, then the church, as if comparing something. After a few moments, he tossed the newspaper back into the SUV.
Clayton took her by her left wrist and gently moved her behind him. No doubt trying to protect her. But he didn’t move from the window.
Lenora stood there, watching the SUV driver from over Clayton’s shoulder. Very close to him. So close that it stirred memories of him, and this was not a good time to be remembering anything about that night they’d slept together.
Some more movement got her mind back on the right track. The passenger’s side door opened. A second man stepped out, and like the driver, he was also wearing a jacket.
Oh, mercy. Two of them and both likely armed. There was no way she could explain away this.
“Come on,” Clayton said.
His grip on her wrist tightened, and with her in tow, he hurried through the rows of pews, past the pulpit and into the back entry. He didn’t stop until they made it to the door.
There were no side windows next to the door, only one on the west side of the building, facing the cemetery. Lenora did a quick look out, but didn’t see Clayton’s vehicle or anyone else on the grounds.
“Stay close and stay quiet,” Clayton warned her.
Lenora would, as well as keep watch. But she also prayed that all of this was overkill.
He unlocked the door and stepped out ahead of her. Lenora didn’t miss the grunt that he tried to muffle. Pained from the sun, no doubt. Still, he didn’t let the pain or the sun slow him down. He eased her out behind him, shut the door, and they hurried toward the cemetery.
Clayton kept watch, too, his gaze firing all around them. There was a chain-link fence that surrounded the quarter acre or so of graves, and it was obviously meant to keep out deer rather than people, because there were no locks on the gate. He opened it and immediately pushed her behind a large angel headstone.
It wasn’t her first choice of hiding place. In fact, the whole cemetery gave her the creeps. It reminded her of her father’s grave, which she’d visited once—and only once—on the day she’d found out that he was dead. Lenora hoped they didn’t have to stay crouched here for long.
She peered out and saw the men make their way toward the front of the church. They stopped by her car first, looked inside the windows and then continued to the front door. Because of the angle of the building, they disappeared from view. Maybe they would just knock and when no one answered, they’d leave.
But the thought had no sooner crossed her mind than Lenora heard something she didn’t want to hear.
No knock.
There was a loud bashing sound, quickly followed by a shot. Not in their direction, but the bullet made an unusual metallic sound.
Lenora knew exactly what it meant.
The men had shot through the lock on the front door and were no doubt already inside the church. It wouldn’t take them but a minute or two to realize she wasn’t there.
And they’d come looking for her.
“Let’s move,” Clayton ordered in a rough whisper. “Now!”
Chapter Five
Clayton waited a split second, until he was sure the two men were actually inside the church, and with his hand still gripping Lenora’s wrist, he hurried across the cemetery.
“Stay low,” he warned her.
She did, and he kept ducking them behind the larger tombstones, hoping that they’d become good cover if necessary. Most were marble, which should stop a bullet or two, but he didn’t want to take the risk of a shot ricocheting and hitting Lenora.
Or him.
Because if he was out of the picture, it would leave her a sitting duck for whoever was inside the church. Yeah, she had a gun, and Clayton knew from the surveillance tapes of his own shooting that she was a good shot. However, those guys could be better.
Clayton took out his phone, and he made a whispered 9-1-1 call and gave the dispatcher their location. Maybe it wouldn’t take long for the local authorities to respond, and even if it did, he had plans to get Lenora out of there anyway.
He cursed, not just over the fact that there were probably assassins mere yards away from them, but also that Lenora and his baby were right in the middle of the danger.
Again.
And worse, there was the possibility that he’d brought the danger right to Lenora. He hadn’t been followed, he was sure of that, but obviously these men had found her, maybe the same way he had. He should have anticipated that would happen and gotten her away from the church the minute he showed up.
Of course, Lenora hadn’t exactly cooperated with his demand that she leave with him. But Clayton was betting she’d cooperate now.
If they got out of this alive, that was.
He dragged her behind another tombstone that was closer to the far side fence and gate, and he listened and watched for any signs of the men. He also drew in some hard breaths, trying to fight off the pain that was stabbing through his head. The sunglasses helped, but nothing would help if he had to stay out in this blaring light too long. Not good. Because there was no way he could focus if the pain closed in on him.
Ironic, that a migraine could get them killed.
The pain and his plans to get her out of there did a short mental stutter, however, when he felt the movement against his back. He glanced over his shoulder at her to see what was going on.
“The baby” was all she said.
Oh.
He hadn’t forgotten that she was pregnant, no way, but it was a jolt to feel his child moving around inside her. Once they were out of here, he really had to take some time to deal with everything he’d just learned.
“Where’d you park?” Her voice was shaky. She was shaking, too, and her breathing was so fast that she might hyperventilate.
Clayton tipped his head to the other side of the cemetery, where the trees were thick. She wouldn’t be able to see his truck, but it was there on an old ranch road about a fourth of a mile away.
He heard some bashing around in the church and figured the guys were tearing apart the place, looking for Lenora, but as long as they did that, they’d be inside. And they wouldn’t be able to see Lenora and him. That was the cue he’d been waiting for. He hadn’t wanted to run with her in the open, in case the men had plans to make a hasty exit from the church.
“Let’s go,” Clayton told Lenora.
They got moving again toward the gate, and even though his heartbeat was roaring in his ears, he heard something he didn’t want to hear.
“There she is!” one of the men shouted.
Hell. Lenora and he had been spotted. Obviously it hadn’t taken as long as Clayton had hoped for the men to search the church.
Clayton didn’t look back, but he did position himself behind Lenora as he threw open the latch on the creaky metal gate and shoved her through it. He hated forcing her to run, but he didn’t have a choice. And besides, there was a good chance they wouldn’t even make it to his truck before these guys caught up with them.
With his left hand on her back, Clayton moved her through the small grassy clearing just outside the cemetery fence. They were just inches from the trees when he heard the shot blast through the air.
The sound blasted through him, too. It darn sure didn’t help with the pain in his head. Didn’t help Lenora, either, because her trembling got a heck of a lot worse.
Clayton resisted the urge to turn and fire. Instead he kept running, kept pushing Lenora until he could shove her behind one of the trees. It wasn’t a second too soon, because another shot came their way.
He reminded her to stay low again, but he didn’t stop except for just a brief moment. Too risky, even though the running could be a risk to the baby. They ran deeper into the clusters of trees, trying to put as much distance as possible between the men and them.
The next bullet tore through his shirtsleeve, grazing his arm. The knife-slice of pain was instant, but it didn’t cause him to slow down. That’s because the bullet had come way too close to Lenora.
He pushed her to the side, behind one of the larger trees, turned and saw the two men already in the cemetery. They were coming straight for Lenora and him.
Clayton took aim.
And fired.
The shot smacked into the taller man’s shoulder, and even though Clayton was sure it wasn’t a fatal strike, the man dropped to the ground.
Another shot sounded—a loud, thick blast. Not fired by one of the men, but rather by Lenora. From the corner of his eye, Clayton saw that she was leaning out from the opposite side the tree, and she still had her gun aimed.
The second man fell to the ground, too, but Clayton didn’t think Lenora’s bullet had actually hit him. The gunman just seemed to be getting out of the way. Maybe neither of the men had thought that Lenora would actually return fire. Clayton had thought that, too, because he’d made it pretty clear he didn’t want her to take any unnecessary chances.
He didn’t waste time warning her to stay down and quit taking chances, because they only had a few seconds before those men got back on their feet. Clayton took hold of her wrist and got her moving toward his truck.
It wasn’t long before he heard a welcome sound. Sirens. A much faster response than Clayton had estimated, and maybe it would send the men running back to their SUV. He wanted to arrest them. Question them, too. But maybe the locals would do that while he got Lenora out of there.
“They’re not following us,” Lenora said, looking over her shoulder.
Good. Just a few more yards and they’d be one step closer to safety.
Clayton shoved aside a low-hanging tree branch and they threaded their way through some underbrush to the trail. The truck was still there, thank God, and he threw open the door and practically pushed Lenora into the passenger’s seat. He crawled around her so he could start the engine and he slammed on the accelerator.
“Put on your seat belt,” he told her, doing the same while trying to keep watch all around them.
The trail was just that—a trail—filled with bumps and holes. That made for a bumpy ride, but it wasn’t their discomfort that concerned him most. There were plenty of trees between the cemetery and the trail, and if the gunmen decided to outrun the law, they could come through those trees and start shooting.
Clayton wanted to figure out what they were after. And why.
There she is.
That was what the man had shouted when he’d spotted them in the cemetery.
She.
Did that mean they were looking only for Lenora and not him? It was something he needed to consider. Especially after everything Lenora had told him about her life as a criminal informant.
That was the last thing he’d expected from her.
Here he’d had her in his protective custody, and it’d all been a ruse for a deep-cover operation. Once he got Lenora to safety, he was going to make some calls to let his own boss and Lenora’s task-force leader know that he wasn’t happy about playing the dupe, since his life had been on the line, too.
He hated lies.
They were something his worthless father, Melvin Larson, had manipulated him with countless times. But Clayton pushed that old wound aside and kept maneuvering the truck through the trail.
The trees were so close in spots that the branches scraped against the sides of his truck and the rocks battered against the undercarriage. The sound was practically deafening, but Clayton tried to pick through it so he could figure out what was going on.
He could still make out the sirens. That was good. And he figured they were headed for the church. However, he wasn’t sure from which direction the locals would arrive. It was possible he would pass them when he made it to the road.
“I need you to make a call,” Clayton said, handing his phone to Lenora. “Call my brother Dallas. It’s the first number in my contacts. And ask him to run the plates of that SUV.” He gave her the license-plate number and hoped knowing who owned the vehicle would also help them identify who’d just taken shots at them.
Lenora made the call and was still in the process of trying to explain to Dallas what was going on when Clayton spotted the road just ahead. He slowed, bringing his truck almost to a stop, and he saw the other vehicle flying up the road toward them.
Not a police cruiser.
But the SUV that their attackers had driven.
Since those men would definitely see his truck and maybe attempt to block their escape, Clayton had to do something fast. He damn sure didn’t want to have to drive in Reverse on the trail. Not with a pair of assassins bearing down on them. Besides, even if he could manage to outrun them, eventually the trail would end and Lenora and he would be trapped.
Clayton slammed on the accelerator and bolted out onto the road. The SUV hit its brakes. Not for long, though. It only took a few moments before the driver readjusted and came right after them.
“Get down,” Clayton told Lenora, but he didn’t wait for her to do that. He pushed her down onto the seat. “Tell Dallas we’re traveling east on the farm road outside of Sadler’s Falls. We have two men in pursuit, and I need the locals out here now. These men are armed and dangerous.”
He hadn’t thought it possible, but her voice was even shakier now. She managed to tell Dallas what he needed to know and then pressed the end button.
“Dallas says he’s on it,” she relayed to Clayton.
Clayton didn’t doubt it. Dallas would immediately call the locals and send them in this direction. He only hoped it’d be soon and that their attackers wouldn’t start shooting again. It was hard to be accurate shooting from a moving vehicle, but he didn’t want one of these SOBs getting off a lucky shot.
“Hang on,” Clayton warned her, a split second before he went into a sharp curve.
He had to fight to keep control of the truck, and the right tires dug into the dirt and gravel shoulder. Another round of rocks battered against his truck, and it sounded like gunfire.
“Oh, God,” Lenora said, and she started to lift her head.
“Stay down,” he warned her. “They’re not shooting.”
That obviously didn’t steady her nerves, and while still repeating oh, God, she put her hands over her belly. Protecting the baby. From what Lenora had told him she was a trained agent, but there wasn’t enough training in the world to stay unrattled while your unborn baby was in danger. Even though he’d only learned about his fatherhood just minutes earlier, he was feeling the same thing.
Clayton went into another sharp turn just as the SUV accelerated, and it slammed into the back of his truck. The jolt caused a whiplash effect, with his body jolting forward, then back, and Clayton tossed his gun on the seat so he could use both hands on the steering wheel.
“I’ll keep watch,” Lenora insisted.
And even though he didn’t want her to do it, she levered herself up a little and fastened her attention on the side window. She also lifted her gun, getting it ready. There was no way Clayton would let her lean out the window and return fire, and that meant he had to do something now to defuse this mess of a situation.
He saw the sign for Sadler’s Falls ahead, and without slowing as much as he should have, he took the turn on what had to be two tires at most. The truck wobbled, but he immediately corrected and got control.
Behind them, the SUV squealed to a stop.
Clayton didn’t take the time to figure out why the driver had done that. He put the pedal to the metal and got Lenora out of there.

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