and long, lanky legs had made him look like a model in a pinup calendar.
From the moment he’d walked into that bar that night and their eyes had met, she’d known. She’d known that before the night was over they would be in bed together. It had been wonderfully exciting and more than a little bit frightening at the same time.
She moved away from the window and consciously forced herself to focus on a bookcase and an array of framed photographs on one of the shelves.
They were apparently photos of the Ramsey family. In one picture, a smiling older couple stood just behind three young boys. It was obvious the child in the center was Kyle. Even then, at the age of about ten or twelve, he’d been handsome. His features were clean-cut and well defined, and there was already a confident gleam in his eyes.
She assumed the older couple were his parents, and it was obvious by the expressions on their faces that they were proud of their boys.
A wistful yearning echoed in an empty chamber of her heart. How wonderful it must be to have a family, to always know you had a place where you belonged, where you were loved.
“I see you found the family photos.”
She whirled around to face him. “Yes. These are your brothers?” She pointed to the photo that had captured her attention.
“Yeah.” Kyle walked over and stood next to her…far too close. “This is Jake. He’s twenty-nine, two years younger than I am. He just became CEO of Ramsey Enterprises.” He pointed to the other young boy in the picture. “And that’s Tyler. He’s twenty-eight and works for the company, also.”
“So, you’re the only rebel who didn’t go to work for Ramsey Enterprises?” she asked, half-teasingly.
His eyes darkened and he turned away from the pictures. “Something like that.”
She looked at one of the other pictures. It was an older photograph of a young man in uniform. “Your father was in the Air Force?”
“Yeah. He’s a decorated Vietnam War hero.” Pride was evident in his low voice. For a moment his gaze remained on the picture of his father, then he frowned. “But he quit the military to join corporate America and fill his coffers with money.” He turned to look at her, his gray eyes turbulent. “Let’s get going.”
“Okay.” She’d obviously touched a nerve.
As they left the apartment and got into her car, Joanna thought of everything she knew about Ramsey Enterprises. She knew that the company was owned by Edward Ramsey and headquartered in the United States. The plant on Montebello was one of three that worked to produce plane parts.
She hadn’t imagined the tension in Kyle’s voice when he’d spoken of his father. Apparently there was strain between Edward Ramsey and his firstborn son.
“So, what about your family? You have brothers or sisters?” he asked when they were in her car and headed toward the nearby military base.
The yearning that never seemed to be completely still echoed once again inside her. “No brothers, no sisters. No immediate family since my father died three years ago.”
“What about your mother?” he asked.
“She died when I was born.”
“That’s tough.”
Joanna said nothing, although she wanted to tell him that the loss of her mother hadn’t been half as tough as life with her military father.
She’d spent her childhood being pulled from base to base and raised by hired help, some good, some not so good, and none of them family.
The end result was that she had no place to call home…no connection to anyone else in the world. The night she had met Kyle and slept with him, she had been driven by an overwhelming need to connect, and “connecting” with him had been frighteningly wonderful—until she’d realized he was military, just like her father.
“That night I first met you, I just assumed you were a local woman. Your coloring—your features—are of the locals.”
She felt his gaze warming her face and wondered why, despite knowing he was absolutely wrong for her and there would never, ever be any future relationship between them, she remained so acutely aware of him, so intimately drawn to him.
“My mother was a native of Montebello. My father met her while he was based here.”
“Your father was in the military?”
“Army.” She offered nothing else and searched her mind for a way to change the topic. “I understand there are ten pilots comprising your team for this mission.”
He nodded and directed his gaze forward out the window, where the military base had come into view. “Two of the men will aid you in ground support, the rest of us will take eight-hour shifts in the air, with time on the ground only for refueling. We’ll refuel in shifts as well, so there is always at least one plane flying.”
They stopped speaking as she pulled up to the guard shack in front of the military base. Fifteen minutes later, she sat in the back of a small room that had been transformed into an operation center for their “unofficial” mission. State-of-the-art equipment lined one wall, complete with radar screens and high-tech computers.
She watched and listened as Kyle addressed the men seated before him, explaining what their jobs would be and the shifts that would be taken.
It was impossible not to notice the authority and respect Kyle commanded from the men. He wore his casual clothes as elegantly as he wore his uniform, and an appealing self-confidence oozed from his very pores.
He’s the father of my baby. The realization struck her like a startling blow to the chest. Until this moment, the baby inside her had been something of a dream, not quite real to her. But now the reality exploded inside her.
She was pregnant, and in approximately six months time she would have a baby—Kyle’s baby. Her hand moved to her abdomen, as if to stroke the life that grew within.
The child she carried would get half of its DNA from the man before her. And Kyle had no idea that on the night they had shared, he’d given her a piece of himself that could never be retrieved, a piece that would be a part of her life for the rest of her days.
What would he do if he knew? There was no way she could guess what his reaction would be if he discovered that he was the father of the baby.
She knew how he kissed, how his skin felt beneath her fingertips. She knew how his heart felt racing against her own, how his breathing quickened with each stroke of her skin. But all of that intimate knowledge told her nothing about how he might react to the news of his pending fatherhood.
Not that she intended to tell him. No way! Again her hand touched her stomach and a maelstrom of love cascaded through her. This was her baby, and the child would be the family she never had.
She knew all she needed to know about Kyle Ramsey. He was first and foremost a military man, a rootless bachelor who thrived on adventure, a man who probably had a woman in every port.
Kyle was a man just like her father, who had pulled her from post to post, never staying
