hadn’t been with Gilly when she’d died from a blood clot less than twenty-four hours after giving birth. He’d still been on the road trying to get to her in Dallas. Lauren had been there, though. Maybe had even spoken to her since Lauren and his sister had remained friends. Not only that, they’d lived in the same city.
“Did Gilly tell you something before she died?” It was the same tone he used to interrogate a suspect. Not an especially friendly one, but he wanted answers, and Lauren was going to give them to him now.
Lauren’s mouth opened a little to let him know the question had surprised her. Well, welcome to the club. He’d been surprised by a lot of what Lauren had said.
“No,” she answered after several long moments. “This isn’t about Gilly. This is about her son. Does he look like her or like his father?”
Now it was Cameron’s turn to take a moment before he responded. “I never met his father, Trace Waters. Never wanted to meet him.”
She made a sound of agreement, which meant Lauren knew that Trace had been abusive. Something that Gilly hadn’t told Cameron until it was too late for him to go to Dallas and beat the living daylights out of the moron for laying a hand on his kid sister. By the time Cameron had heard, Trace had disappeared. Then, several weeks after Gilly had died, someone else had taken it beyond the beating stage and had killed Trace in a drug deal gone wrong.
“Trace’s mother, Evelyn, came to the ranch once,” Cameron explained. “She pulled a gun on me and demanded her son’s baby.” He felt his mouth tighten. “I don’t like it when people pull guns on me so I had her arrested. The moment she made bail I slapped her with a restraining order.”
“And that worked? Evelyn stayed away?”
He shook his head. “She tried to get on the grounds a couple of times, but the hands spotted her and stopped her. After the third time, she ended up in jail, where she’s spent the last four months.”
Cameron hoped the woman would do something behind bars that would keep her there. He wasn’t concerned about losing custody to her. Gilly had made it clear to the hospital staff that she’d wanted Cameron to raise her son. But he didn’t want Evelyn to be a free woman so she could try something else stupid.
“Does Isaac look like Gilly?” Lauren pressed. “Or anyone else in your family?”
Cameron nearly said no, but Lauren wasn’t getting answers until he had some from her. “Let’s get your baby and the nanny into the house, and we can talk.”
“He doesn’t look like Gilly,” she said like gospel. “Or Trace.”
Cameron lifted his shoulder. “Lots of kids don’t look like their parents. Plus, he’s a baby. Only thirteen months old.” He huffed, scrubbing his hand over his forehead. “Look, I don’t know where this is going, but I can have Gabriel come out—”
Only because he wasn’t expecting it, Cameron didn’t see Lauren pull that gun from the back of her jeans.
And she pointed it at him.
His heart slammed against his ribs. Damn. He should have been able to stop this before it’d even started, but Cameron fought the instinct to lunge at her and snatch that gun from her hand. He sure as hell wasn’t pleased about this, though.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded once he got his teeth unclenched.
“I’m saving my son.” Lauren used the barrel of the weapon to motion toward the house. “And you’ll take me to him. I want to see Isaac now.”
Lauren saw exactly what she’d expected to see in Cameron’s eyes.
Anger.
There was plenty of it, too, along with the shock of having her pull a gun on him. This certainly wasn’t the way Lauren had wanted all of this to play out, but she hadn’t exactly had a lot of options. The seconds were ticking away.
“Move,” she ordered Cameron in the strongest voice she could manage. Which wasn’t much. She didn’t feel strong at all. Just terrified.
This couldn’t be happening.
Over the past decade, she’d accepted that she could be in danger from the lunatic who kept sending those threatening letters, but she couldn’t accept that two innocent babies could now be in harm’s way.
“Put down the gun,” Cameron warned her. And it was indeed a warning. Unlike her, he had managed the strong tone, and it had a dark edge to it. An edge that reminded her that she was holding a cop—an experienced one—at gunpoint.
“I can’t.” She tried to make that sound like an apology and failed at it, too. “I need to see Isaac.”
Of course, Cameron would want to know why, and Lauren would tell him. First, though, she had to see the baby.
“Can’t?” he repeated, that edge in his voice going up a notch. It went up in his smoke-gray eyes, too.
When she’d been a teenager, the girls had called them bedroom eyes because he was so hot. Still was. With that dark blond hair and natural tan, he’d always had rock-star looks. Those looks were still there in spades, but there wasn’t a trace of his bedroom smile.
“Please,” Lauren tried. “Just let me see him, and I might be able to clear all of this up.”
“You’ll clear it up now.” Again, it was a warning. “And if you don’t, you won’t get anywhere near my nephew. However, you will get to see the inside of a jail cell.”
She had no idea if that was a threat or not. He certainly had grounds to arrest her, and the fact that they’d once been lovers might not be enough leverage to stop this situation from snowballing.
Cameron still had hold of his gun, but he used his left hand to reach for his pocket. For his phone, she realized. He was going to call one or both of her brothers, and she didn’t want them involved in this yet. Not until she could at least try to make things safe.
“No!” she said.
It was the only thing she managed to get out of her mouth, though, because Cameron didn’t take out his phone. He lunged at her. Fast. Before Lauren could even react and get out of his way, he rammed into her and sent them both to the ground. While they were still falling, he knocked her gun from her hand.
“Start talking right now,” Cameron growled, and he pinned her hands to the ground so she couldn’t reach for her gun. He pinned her, too, with his body since he was on top of her.
Lauren’s heart was racing. Along with that, she got a new hit of adrenaline. Something she definitely didn’t need since her nerves were already firing in every inch of her.
She looked at Cameron, their gazes colliding, and for a moment she remembered what had once been between them. The intimacy.
The love.
Yes, once she’d loved him, and she thought maybe he’d felt the
