and her work at the burn clinic. She also loved organizing fund-raisers. But what she really enjoyed was the time she spent at the day-care center.
She loved kids. Short ones, shy ones, snotty-nosed ones, even the ones that bit. And she wanted kids of her own—with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Or at least with a man who was willing to spend his life with her.
And then, of course, there was that other little thing. That virgin thing. She was so tired of celibacy. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. If Nathan Beldon ended up being the one to show her, maybe he could also be the one she could potentially start a life and raise her babies with.
And to hell with what Trav or Ryan said.
“I thought we had this settled, bud.” Trav Whelan clasped a hand on Ry’s shoulder the next afternoon as they cozied up to the bar in the Cattleman’s Club. His expression was filled with stymied disappointment. “Don’t back out on me now.”
Ry grimaced and scratched his ear. And came up blank. This conversation was not going the way he’d planned it. He’d had his arguments lined up like spit-and-polished soldiers. Put one of the other guys—any of the other guys involved with the situation—in charge of looking out for Carrie until this mystery surrounding Natalie Perez and her baby was solved. Ry was a lover, not a fighter, right? Yeah…he’d been in on some of the covert missions the Cattleman’s Club members sometimes found themselves diving into feet first for the greater good, but there were much better men for this particular job.
Trav, however, didn’t see it that way and didn’t plan on taking no for an answer. And he was doing a damn fine job of guilting Ry into forgetting all the valid reasons why it was a bad idea for him to be the one to ride herd on Carrie.
“You are my man,” Trav continued with a come-on, step-up-to-the-plate smile. “You have always been my man. Hell, Ry, you’ve been around long enough to know I can’t take a chance on some opportunistic SOB who might try to take advantage of her. You’re the only one I can turn to…and I can’t keep an eye on her. Not until this is over.”
Torn between the need to wrangle a way out of certain disaster and his loyalty to Trav, Ry let out a long sigh while Trav settled in to draw a little more blood.
“I’m a daddy. A daddy,” Trav repeated as if he still couldn’t believe his good fortune, “and the lady in my life… Ry, you know both Natalie and the baby are still at risk.”
Yeah, Ryan knew. So, evidently, did Carrie. He was still chewing on that little bit of news. He was still a little staggered by her conjectures. She’d been dead-on right. About a lot of things. The Texas Cattleman’s Club did get involved in covert missions. It was part of their code of honor and their mission. Justice, peace, leadership…what they did was always for the greater good.
Most recently, several Club members—Trav and himself along with David Sorenson, Clint Andover, Alex Kent and Sheik Darin ibn Shakir—had been trying to unravel the mystery that started one chilly night in November and just kept getting more bizarre. Yes, they knew a lot more now than they had that night when the then-unidentified woman had stumbled into the Royal Diner with a newborn baby girl and a cool half a million dollars stuffed in a diaper bag, but there were still questions.
That woman, who had promptly collapsed, fallen into a coma and only recently recovered and regained her memory, was Natalie Perez, now Travis’s fianceé. The baby was Trav’s baby, the unexpected but wonderful result of an affair they had both decided it was best to walk away from almost a year ago.
The two men became very quiet. Ry pondered the label on the long-neck he cupped loosely in his hands on the bar in front of him. “How is Natalie?” he asked finally. “And little Autumn?”
Trav contemplated his own beer, as sober as Ry had ever seen him. “They’re doing okay. Man… I can’t believe I ever walked away from her. I can’t believe I almost lost them. That bastard Birkenfeld…he could have killed Natalie, sold our baby.”
Ry let out a deep breath, the enormity of the situation weighing heavily on his shoulders as he recalled the details. He hadn’t been at the diner that November night when Natalie showed up with a Texas Cattleman’s Club business card clutched in her hand. Neither had Travis or Darin, who had both been out of the country on assignment until the end of the December.
Maybe if Trav had been in town when Natalie had first appeared on the scene, they’d be further ahead of the game. But he hadn’t, and it was only when she’d spotted Travis at the New Year’s Eve party after he’d returned to Royal from Europe and a TCC mission, that Natalie had started to remember.
She’d finally recalled Travis and their brief but intense affair that had resulted in little Autumn. It wasn’t until weeks later that she’d remembered why she’d ended up in Royal carrying all that money in a diaper bag. The story was so bizarre that even now Ry had trouble digesting the magnitude and the far-reaching effects.
Natalie had been worked at a birthing clinic run by Dr. Roman Birkenfeld. Over several months she’d noticed that an alarming number of single women had lost their babies at birth. She’d been so alarmed she’d decided to secretly search the computer files. When she did, she discovered that the babies hadn’t really died but had been sold. Before she could confront Dr. Birkenfeld or go to the police with this damning information, she’d gone into labor.
And that’s when her trouble had begun. The good doctor, it seemed, had had the same plans for Natalie’s baby as he’d had for the others. He’d drugged her, and the next morning, after she’d given birth, she’d realized he intended to tell her, as he had the other women, that her baby had died. Somehow Natalie had escaped the clinic undetected, and followed Dr. Birkenfeld and his nurse accomplice to the airport where Natalie was positive they intended to fly with the baby to the prospective buyers.
When the nurse took the baby into a rest room to change her diaper, Natalie had made her move. She shoved the woman to the floor, grabbed the baby and the diaper bag—which, it turned out, was full of money that the TCC men now held in the club’s safe. She’d fled to the bus station, but Birkenfeld and his nurse had caught up with her in Amarillo.
And from that point on, Natalie’s memory was still a blank slate, which was why Trav and the rest of the guys were still on guard.
Ry angled Trav a look. “Has she remembered anything else?” he asked, knowing they needed something more to help them resolve this nasty business.
Travis shook his head. “No. Everything after Amarillo is pretty fuzzy. All she remembers of Birkenfeld catching up with her is that there was a struggle and she hit her head.” He stopped, and Ry could see a hundred emotions cloud his friend’s face. Everything from rage to helplessness to relief that his woman and his child were safe to frustration that Birkenfeld had dropped out of sight but was still a threat. They wanted to put this entire episode to bed.
“She doesn’t know how she got away from them,” Trav continued. “Last night she told me that the only thing that kept her going was knowing she had to stay conscious long enough to find me.”
He swallowed hard. “And then I wasn’t there for her.”
“Hey.” Ry’s hand on Trav’s shoulder pulled him out of his anguish to meet Ry’s eyes. “You’re here for her now. You’re here for both of them.”
All the TCC guys were, until they caught Birkenfeld and his nurse, who were still on the loose and evidently desperate, if the threats
