life had gone differently.
At least he had a life, he reminded himself.
Which was more than Mona had.
Mona, his kid sister, had been bright, beautiful and blessed with the ability to light up a room the moment she entered it. Her family and friends were all certain that she could have had the world at her feet just by wishing it.
Instead, she opted to keep it at bay, losing herself in the dark, forbidding haze of heroin and meth until no one who loved her could even recognize her. Despite his alternating between pleading with her and railing at her, his sister had continued using even as she made him promise after promise to stop.
When she finally did stop, it hadn’t been voluntarily. He’d found her lying facedown on the floor of the apartment he’d been paying for, a victim of a drug overdose. No frantic attempts at CPR on his part could revive her. His sister was gone, another statistic in the increasingly unsuccessful war on drugs. His crusade against drugs began that morning.
And the way he viewed it, it hadn’t cost him anything. Until he’d met Eve.
“Where do you keep the vacuum cleaner?” he repeated, his voice a little gruffer.
“I said I’d take care of it,” Eve insisted, holding her ground.
He let her win. Maybe she needed that. With a shrug, Adam bent down to pick up the spilled candy. Cradling the small bags, bars and boxes against his chest, he rose to his feet again.
“Where do you want me to put these?”
The answer flashed through her head, but it wasn’t her way to say things like that, no matter how tempted she was or how warranted her flippant remark might have actually been. Adam might not have any honor left, but she still did.
Was that why she was carrying the drug dealer’s baby? a taunting voice in her head mocked.
“Over there will be fine,” she told him, nodding toward the coffee table.
Adam crossed over to it and let the candy rain down from his arms onto the table.
His back was to her. An image flashed through her brain. The way his back had looked as he moved to leave his bed after they’d made love. She felt her stomach tightening.
She had to stop that, stop torturing herself. He wasn’t the answer to a prayer, he was the personification of a nightmare.
A nightmare in pleasing form.
Eve passed her tongue along her lips, trying to moisten them. They were so dry, they were almost sticking together.
“Why did you come?” she forced herself to ask, making it sound like an accusation.
He turned from the table and looked at her. Had she always looked so delicate? he wondered. “I heard you were pregnant—”
Eve widened her eyes. They had no friends in common and their worlds certainly didn’t overlap.
“How did you hear?” she demanded. He just looked at her. “Who told you?” she pressed.
He waved her question away. “Doesn’t matter. But I came to see for myself.”
She drew herself up to her full five-foot-four height, then spread her arms, giving him an unobstructed view. After a minute, she dropped her arms again. “All right, you saw. Now please leave.”
Adam remained where he stood, making no move to do anything of the kind. Tessa was nuzzling his leg and he stroked her head as he took a breath, fortifying himself.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
“No.” The denial automatically rose to her lips and shot like a bullet through the air, primed by a she-bear’s instincts to protect her unborn cub.
He didn’t believe her even though part of him would have really wanted to. It would have made everything so much simpler. It would have taken away not just his sense of guilt, but of responsibility, too. Not to mention that he wouldn’t need to feel obligated to protect the baby or her if she wasn’t bearing his child.
The hell you wouldn’t.
The other part of him fiercely rejected even the suggestion that the seed growing in her belly had come from anyone but him. Even if he never saw Eve again—and until that anonymous e-mail had turned up on his computer he never planned to—Eve was his soul mate in every sense of the word. He knew that no matter how many women he came across, how many he took to his bed, this one would stand out. This one would always mean more to him than all the others combined.
And he knew her well enough to know that the child was his no matter what she said to the contrary.
“I don’t believe you,” he told her quietly.
Panic began to form within her. Why had he shown up? Why couldn’t he just let her go? And more importantly, why did the sight of him make her yearn like this? She weighed a ton, for God’s sake. Women who weighed a ton weren’t supposed to suddenly want to have their bones jumped, especially not by someone they knew dwelled with the dregs of society.
Eve did her best to sound distant. “I don’t care what you believe,” she told him coldly. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she ordered, “Now go, get out of here. I never want to see you again.”
This was where he should retreat. She’d given him the perfect out. He’d come, he’d seen for himself that Eve was pregnant, now it was time to go. He was still undercover and the stakes were now larger than ever. The person he was after was the main player, the head of the drug cartel. The center of the drug trafficking that was filling the local colleges with heroin.
He couldn’t jeopardize that. Eve had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him around. And she’d heatedly denied that he was the father. That meant that he could walk away with a clear conscience.
But he couldn’t leave.
It didn’t matter what he wished, the fact remained that Eve had been with him a little less than nine months ago. With him in every sense of the word. He knew in his gut the baby was his. If he could do the math, someone else in the organization would do the same. The time to back away, to pretend she’d never been part of his life, was over. Eve and her unborn child were at risk. They needed his protection. He was not about to have them on his conscience.
He frowned, then calmly told her, “The calendar doesn’t back up what you just said.”
“Then get a new calendar,” she retorted. “This is not your baby.” Her voice rose in anger. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything from you. You’re free to walk away. So walk,” she ordered.
Instead of leaving, he pushed the door closed. The click echoed in her head. Nerves rose to the surface even as she struggled to at least look calm.
“Is this why you left?” he asked, his eyes indicating her swollen abdomen. “Because you found out you were pregnant?”
She took offense, although she didn’t even know why. Her hormones raged, playing tug-of-war with her emotions.
“No,”
