always called or texted or emailed him to see how he was doing. But not this time.
Not after what he’d done...
No. She hadn’t come to visit him.
Logan shrugged. “We didn’t see it. She and Nikki had stepped outside...” He pushed his hand through his black hair. “But I knew she was in danger.”
“How?” Nick asked.
“She looked scared,” Logan said.
What the hell did Annalise have to fear? Then Nick remembered that house—his mother’s house—and how badly it had been ransacked, like his place kept getting ransacked. He shook his head. It couldn’t be related. His mother’s house had sat vacant for months. That was why someone had broken into it.
“Thanks for calling me,” Nick said.
“I was going to call Gage,” Logan admitted. “But Cooper told me to call you instead.”
Nick spared Cooper a glance of gratitude. Even though Gage hadn’t spoken of it yet, Cooper, as a Marine himself, must have sensed what Gage had been through and understood that he hadn’t been ready to see his sister. And how would he handle her being hurt? Even Nick couldn’t handle it.
“I’m glad I’m the one you called,” Nick said.
“Annalise won’t be,” Nikki said as she walked into the waiting room through a door marked No Admittance. She had come from inside the hospital, maybe inside the ER.
“Where is she?” he anxiously asked. He had to see her—had to make certain she was all right.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” his half sister said. Even though she couldn’t stand him, she probably wasn’t lying.
Because of what had happened—and his silence for the past six months—he could understand if she never wanted to see him again.
But she was Annalise, always so warm and affectionate. Surely she would forgive him...even if he would never be able to forgive himself.
* * *
Annalise’s head pounded as images flashed through her mind. It had all happened so quickly. She had walked outside with Nikki, only to find two men breaking into her car.
Not again...
Frustrated and angry, she had reacted without thinking. She’d run across the street to stop them. The moment she’d crossed the road, she had realized her mistake. She had gotten too close. One of them had reached out, wrapped a huge hand around her arm and jerked her toward the open back door of her car.
She’d screamed then. And shots had rung out—fired from close range and also from across the street. She had struggled harder, fighting for herself and her baby. She had to get away. If she left with them...
The car started away from the curb, but she was half in and half out, her feet touching the road. She reached up and clawed at the face of the man holding her. He howled and released her, and she tumbled to the asphalt.
She pressed trembling hands over the mound of her belly. What had she done? She had been so stupid to run toward the car—so careless. What if her baby had been harmed?
Her belly shifted beneath her palms as her baby moved. At her last regular OB appointment, she’d had an ultrasound, but the doctor hadn’t been able to determine the sex. Annalise didn’t care what she was having—just that the baby was healthy. He or she had to be okay.
Annalise had been scared when she’d found out she was pregnant—scared that she wouldn’t be able to handle raising a child alone. But she had never been as scared as she was now—not even when that man had grabbed her. Her heart pounded frantically, making the machine next to her bed beep faster. The curtain partitioning her bed off from the rest of the ER rustled. The doctor must have returned with the ultrasound results.
“Is my baby okay?” she asked.
“Baby?” a deep voice, gruff with emotion, repeated the word.
Her heart rate sped faster as she glanced up into Nick’s handsome face. While he looked like every one of the male Paynes—with his chiseled features, thick black hair and startlingly blue eyes, she had no doubt that this man was Nick—for so many reasons.
First, that quickening of her pulse—that tingling of her skin. She reacted to Nick as she had no one else. Second, he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. His eyes were bluer than his brothers’, his features sharper, his jaw squarer. Finally, the other men had all seen her and knew she was pregnant. It was clear that Nick had had no idea. Those bluer blue eyes were wide with shock as he stared down at her belly.
“You’re pregnant?”
She splayed her hands across her belly, but she couldn’t hide it from him. So she nodded.
“Is it mine?”
A gasp slipped through her lips—that he would ask, that he wouldn’t just know. She didn’t sleep around. She wouldn’t have slept with him six months ago if she had been involved with anyone else at the time.
Or would she have?
She had wanted Nick for so long—even before she’d known what desire was. When he had finally returned that desire, she hadn’t been able to resist and probably wouldn’t have even if she’d been in a relationship at the time. But thanks to Nick—and always wanting him—she’d had few relationships. No ordinary man or high school boyfriend or college crush had been able to measure up to the hero she had made Nicholas Rus out to be in her girlish fantasies.
Nick was no hero, though. He was just a man—a man who’d always made it clear he didn’t like anyone getting too close to him. And until that night six months ago, he had never let Annalise too close.
Before she could answer him, the curtain rustled again, and another man joined them. His light green scrubs hung on his tall, thin frame. The young ER doctor glanced at her and then at Nick as if trying to gauge the relationship.
“Is she all right?” Nick asked. And his gaze skimmed over more than her belly now. He looked at her face, and his breath audibly caught at the scrape on her cheek. He reached out, but his fingers fell just short of touching her.
“Is the baby all right?” she asked. The baby was all she cared about. She didn’t care about her car. It wasn’t the first one she’d had stolen.
She’d been so stupid to risk her pregnancy over a damn car...
The doctor glanced at Nick again—as if wondering if he could speak freely in front of him. Damn HIPAA laws. She didn’t care about her privacy right now.
“Please,” she implored him. “Tell me!”
The baby shifted again. He or she had to be okay, or he wouldn’t move like he was. Right?
“Your baby is fine, Ms. Huxton,” the doctor assured her. “It appears that when you fell out of the vehicle, you fell on your side.”
Nick flinched as if he’d taken a blow.
“Your
