it is.” Kate thrust it at him. “When she cries for her bankie,” she finished on a whisper, “this is what she wants.”
He took it and met her gaze. She saw only cold determination there. “Pack the rest of her things. Anything she might want.”
She’d never met a man as cold and unfeeling. He looked so foreign and invasive in the cozy nursery—huge, hard and forbidding. She sensed a hair-trigger readiness about him, and knew that if she made one wrong move, he’d grab her.
She had to come up with a plan. She couldn’t let this hateful stranger carry her niece off to an unknown future. Yet what could she do? She had no idea where he’d sent Arianne. She had no idea where he lived.
If he disappeared now, she might never find Arianne again.
Should she tell him she wasn’t Camryn—that her twin had died? Perhaps his attitude would soften, and he’d handle the matter with compassion and reason. Then again, he might simply leave, glad to be rid of Camryn once and for all.
She couldn’t let him go until she knew more.
“I’ll have to get a suitcase to pack her things,” Kate told him, stalling for time. She couldn’t very well ask his name or where he lived without alerting him to the fact that she wasn’t Camryn.
“Where do you keep your suitcases?” he asked.
“The hall closet.”
“Lead the way.” He trailed her to the closet and watched as she pulled out a sturdy gray suitcase. “Pack one with Arianne’s things, and another for yourself.”
She glanced at him in surprise as hope surged through her. Had she convinced him that Arianne needed her, at least temporarily? “You’re letting me come?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. In fact, I insist you do. You see, we have a date with a certain judge, you and I.”
“A judge?” She frowned, perplexed. “In court? About…custody?”
He gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Custody will damn sure be on the agenda, along with other issues. Like divorce.”
“Divorce?”
“You left before ours was final. And guess what? Turns out the attorney you hired hadn’t even passed the bar yet. He had no authority to act on your behalf. Nothing he handled was valid.”
Kate stared at him in sick dismay. Camryn hadn’t been divorced. Which meant…oh, God…this man was her husband. And he now believed her to be his wife!
The nightmare just grew worse and worse.
Camryn must have been in a terrible panic to get away from him if she hadn’t even waited for the divorce to be finalized. Foreboding coursed through Kate. Was she placing herself in danger by going with him?
Maybe she’d be wiser to tell him her true identity, and that Camryn was dead. But if she did, he might simply leave, and she’d have a hell of a time finding Arianne. He could easily disappear without ever telling her where he lived, or how to contact him. She might never see her niece again.
She couldn’t allow that! Her sister had run away from this cold, heartless husband of hers. Kate would not willingly relinquish Arianne to him. If that meant impersonating her sister until she came up with a better plan, she’d do it. God help her!
She drew two suitcases from the hall closet.
He nodded curtly toward the nursery. “Go pack.”
In seething silence, Kate carried the suitcases to the nursery and packed one of them full of Arianne’s clothes and toys. He watched her every move. When she’d finished, she moved on to her own bedroom, with her captor following closely. She set the empty suitcase on the bed and opened it, eyeing the telephone on the bedside table.
Even if she could get to the phone, who could she call? If she notified the police, Mitch would probably vanish rather than face possible complications. She had to stay with him at least until she discovered his last name, where he lived and where he’d sent Arianne. A telephone would do her no good now.
“Don’t reach for that phone, Camryn,” he warned, his perceptive gaze on her as he eased his tall form into an armchair near the door.
The threat was only implied, but she didn’t doubt that he’d physically overpower her again. Remembering the awesome strength she’d felt coiled in his muscled body when he’d trapped her against his chest, she knew he’d have no problem brutalizing men much bigger than him—possibly several of them at a time—let alone one weaponless woman.
His stare alone frightened her. It seemed to have a disarming power of its own….
She looked away, pierced with a sudden, uncomfortable awareness of him as a man and the suggestive intimacy of the setting. Her bedroom. He believed her to be his wife—a woman he had once loved. At the very least, in the physical sense.
Flustered, she turned to the dresser drawer she had opened, anxious to finish her packing. Hurriedly she tossed jeans, shorts and tops into her suitcase. She then pulled open another drawer, and paused. Self-conscious warmth seeped beneath her skin. Calling herself a fool, she tried to ignore his infernal presence as she packed her panties and bras.
“Are those yours?”
The surprise in his question drew her glance back to him, then down to the cotton, pastel-hued underwear she’d just placed in the suitcase. The warmth in her face intensified. “Who else’s would they be?”
He lifted one brow. “No black satin or red lace? Your taste in lingerie has, uh, changed.”
“That’s none of your business.”
He almost smiled. “Amen.”
Pursing her mouth, she shoved her underwear beneath the other clothing in her suitcase. She’d never bought the sexy kind of underwear Camryn had favored. Kate preferred the comfort of cotton to lace. Besides, who ever saw her in her underwear, anyway? Her work and her studies—and then Arianne—had dominated her time. She hadn’t had a steady man in her life since her undergrad days.
Though she didn’t care at all what this big rude lug thought of her, his comment had made her feel frumpy. In self-defense—and maybe to extinguish the mild amusement she seemed to have afforded him—she coolly remarked, “I try to please whatever man I’m currently involved with.”
“Since when?”
She raised her brow at the chiding retort. He apparently didn’t believe that Camryn had tried to please him. Kate was glad her sister hadn’t wasted her time. She doubted there would have been much reward in the venture—other than, perhaps, in a strictly physical sense. That thought, however, brought to mind the possible physical rewards a man as blatantly virile as Mitch might confer upon a women…a subject she certainly didn’t want to think about.
Abruptly she averted her gaze from him and continued packing.
“I hope whatever fool you’re dating is the patient type, for his sake,” Mitch said in a pleasant tone. “You’re going to be gone for a while.”
Kate
