reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed through a set of heavy doors. The corridor was dimly lit. The cement walls were painted a muted green and the floor was white laminate, like much of the rest of the building. But down in the basement, the color scheme didn’t seem soothing. It felt swampy. Ominous.
Tension vibrating through every fiber of his being, Ethan shouted, “Nicole? Are you down here?”
When there was no answer, he strode down the corridor, checking doors as the doctor hurried in his wake. The first two rooms were dark and silent. The window of the third was blurred with condensation, and when he felt the door handle, it was cold to the touch.
Robert and a handful of security officers appeared at the far end of the corridor. Ethan shouted, “In here!” He worked the door handle and shoved through, gut tight with apprehension. “Nicole?”
His heart stopped, simply stopped when he saw the motionless figure strapped to a gurney. Dark curls fanned out from a too-pale face, and her lips were the same blue as the thin blanket that covered her body.
“Nicole!” He skidded to her side and yanked at the straps holding her down. When she was free, he felt for her carotid pulse and nearly shuddered at the feel of her corpse-cold flesh. Then, miraculously, he felt a faint flutter beneath his fingertips. Another.
“Move!” Dr. Eballa hustled him aside. “We’ve got to get her upstairs, stat!”
She turned the gurney toward the door. As she did so, Nicole’s eyelids flickered open. She looked around wildly for a moment, then her eyes fixed on Ethan. Her lips formed the words, Thank you.
Then she was gone, whisked away by the doctor, who snapped orders about heating blankets, warm-water lavages and an ultrasound. Ethan followed, but Dr. Eballa barred him from cramming into the car with the gurney and the security officers. “Meet us up there, you’ll just be in the way.” Then she paused, and said, “I’ll put a guard on the door, and she’ll get the best medical team in the state. God willing, she and the baby will both be fine.”
Then the elevator doors slid shut, leaving Ethan behind. He wasn’t alone, though. He could hear Robert in the cold room, ordering the security officers to seal the scene and call in the PD, and Evangeline stood in the hallway nearby. He saw the knowledge in her eyes when she said, “Let’s head upstairs. You’ll want to be there when they’ve got her stabilized.”
It’s not what you think, Ethan wanted to say. I can’t be a father.
Instead, he turned and headed for the stairs, rubbing absently at his chest where an ache had gathered.
Robert emerged and fell into step at his side. “They’ll secure the room and I’ll make sure the pothead sits down with a sketch artist. I’ll put some men on Miss Benedict’s room. Once she’s conscious, we’ll want the artist in with her, too.” A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for, our chance to nail these bastards.”
Instantly furious, Ethan grabbed his boss and slammed him up against the green-painted wall. He crowded close, levered an arm across Robert’s throat and got in his face, growling, “Stay the hell away from Nicole. She’s not a break in your case, she’s not bait, and she’s not a pawn in one of your spy games.”
The big man didn’t give him the satisfaction of struggling. He merely narrowed his eyes. “Then what is she?”
Ethan didn’t hesitate, knowing the lie was a necessary evil. “She’s mine.”
Chapter Four
Evangeline arrived in time to see Ethan release her husband and stalk off, climbing the stairs two at a time.
Robert muttered a curse and smoothed his shirt cuffs even though the garment was hopelessly wrinkled and stained. The small, fastidious detail reminded her of the man she’d fallen in love with seven years earlier, back when she’d been with the FBI and Robert had been trying to get PPS off the ground. He’d helped her find the truth about her parents’ deaths, and he’d changed her life by bringing her into his business and his world—or so she’d thought. These days, it was all too clear that he’d let her in only so far, keeping other pieces of himself hidden away.
Now he turned to her, his expression dark and complicated. “Were you coming to rescue me from Ethan or have him hold me down while you took a few swings?”
“I hadn’t decided.” She crossed the distance separating them, but kept her attention on the stairs, where Ethan had disappeared. “He’s never mentioned Nicole.”
“Is that a problem?”
His clipped tone had her glaring. “You think I have something going with Ethan?”
He looked away, a muscle bunching at the corner of his square jaw. “Two years is a long time.”
For a split second she thought he might be trying to confess an indiscretion of his own, but there was none of that in his expression when he finally looked back at her. There was only sad resignation, as though he’d already decided the answer for himself.
Anger flared quickly, at him, at the situation, and she snapped, “I know exactly how long you were gone, Robert. Worse, thanks to exactly one stinking phone call, I knew you were alive and hiding out. Do you have any idea—” She broke off and gritted her teeth. “Never mind. We’ve been around this barn a few times already. I hate that you shut me out rather than trusting me to help, and you figure I should be grateful because everything you did was for my own good, to keep me safe. We’re at an impasse.”
They’d been at loggerheads for weeks now, ever since the first blush of their reunion had worn off. Worse, she wasn’t sure there was any way for them to get past this issue. He was a stubborn Brit and she wasn’t big on second chances in the absence of a damn good apology, which she had yet to hear.
“I thought you were dead when I first saw your office. I thought—” He broke off and looked away. “I wanted to kill the murdering sod who’d pulled the trigger, followed by the bloody bastard behind it all, and then myself, because I don’t want to live another day without you.”
Her heart turned over in her chest at the banked violence in his voice, at the raw grief that pressed up into her own throat, the desire to throw herself into his arms, forget the past and only look forward. But early in her life, when she’d lost her childhood to the foster system in the wake of her parents’ murders, she’d learned that wanting something wasn’t enough, especially in the absence of honesty and trust, so she hardened her heart and said, “Now you know how it feels not to know whether the person you love is alive or dead.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, lowering his voice to a growl when a trio of uniformed police officers emerged from the nearby elevator and headed for the crime scene.
“I know.” Evangeline took a step back, away from her husband. “You want things to be like they were before you left, but it doesn’t work that way. We’ve both changed. Hell, I ran your company.”
“Is that what this is about? Take the damn company. It’s yours, I don’t care, just so long as we can get past this and I can have my wife back. So I can have my life back.”
He cursed and dragged a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, leaving it spiky. His torn, soiled clothes and disheveled hair made him look
