as he fell for her, that would be when the rug got yanked out from under him.
“How’re you feeling today?” she asked eagerly, almost impatiently.
“Fine. You look about ready to burst. Do you have a surprise for me?” His gut clenched. He hated surprises. He was still waiting for the big, nasty one where his captors swept him out of this paradise and whisked him back to Hell Central.
“I do have a surprise for you, Nick. A good one, I hope. Are you strong enough for a bit of a shock?”
Every cell in his being froze. This was it. Sick heat and then icy cold washed through him, leaving him so nauseous he could hardly breathe. His heart pounded and his breathing accelerated so hard that, in seconds, he was light-headed.
His gaze darted about, seeking escape. Seeking a weapon. Anything to defend himself from the attack to come. His gaze lighted on the window. He could make a dash for it. Fling himself through the glass. It was three stories to the ground. If he went head first, the fall ought to kill him. If nothing else, maybe he’d be hurt so bad they couldn’t throw him back in his box. Maybe they’d have to hospitalize him for a few more months.
“I’m pregnant, Nick. We’re going to have a baby.”
His mind went blank. Ever so slowly, his brain managed to form a thought. Not a particularly coherent one, but a thought. What new game was this?
“Did you hear me?” Laura asked excitedly. “You’re going to be a father again.”
His brain simply refused to absorb the information. He couldn’t find a context to put the words in. Couldn’t comprehend the purpose of this new torture.
Laura was laughing. “… too fertile for our own good … first time we made love we got Adam, and now, after that first night you were free, we’re going to have another baby … should really be more careful about birth control in the future …”
She was making words and sentences and probably was even stringing them together in some sort of logical order. But he didn’t understand a thing she was saying.
He did understand, though, that the hallway door was not bursting open. No thugs had come for him yet. The next few minutes passed with him murmuring inane nothings at proper intervals in response to Laura’s babbling joy. And still no one had come.
Could it be? Was this real? Was Laura really pregnant and expecting his child?
Something cracked in his chest. It hurt, but it was a good kind of pain. Was he truly free? Was a life, a future with Laura and his children a possibility? Did he dare hope?
Hope. Now there was a concept.
A baby, huh? His and Laura’s. A little brother or sister for Adam. How he’d love to experience all of it—the morning sickness and messy delivery and midnight feedings. Another child to crawl inside his heart and hold it in his or her tiny, precious hands. Lord knew, Adam had already completely wrapped him around his little finger in the short time he’d spent with the boy. Nick said a fervent prayer every night that, even if all the rest of this was a horrible, cruel lie, God would please let Adam be real. He loved the little boy with all his heart.
And now there might be another child for him to love?
Something exploded in his gut with all the bright fury of a fireworks display, burning away everything that had gone before, cauterizing old wounds, and leaving him empty. New. Reborn.
And then he gave that something a name. Joy.
He was free. Really, truly free. The nightmare was over. He surged up out of the chair and wrapped Laura in a crushing embrace. And then, for the first time, he cried for the right reasons.
Laura didn’t know what clicked for Nick, but after she told him she was pregnant, he changed. He took new interest in food and exercise and spending time with Adam and generally engaged in life more. He got stronger, and gradually, as her belly grew, the haunted look faded from his eyes. He quit eyeing closed doors suspiciously, and the nightmares seemed to fade.
For a while there, she’d wondered if he was too far gone, if she’d be able to pull him out of the emotional abyss into which he’d fallen. But this baby seemed to have done the trick. She rubbed her rounded tummy affectionately. Things were working out better than she could ever have dreamed. Life was darned near perfect.
Nick stared at the laptop on his desk for the hundredth time. He’d been avoiding the thing for months, ever since Laura had told him she was pregnant, afraid to rock the boat of this new life. Everything was so good for him—for all of them—that he had no desire to do anything to threaten the perfection of it all.
But his curiosity had been building. Maybe it was a sign of his recovery that he was starting to feel the tug of waiting answers. What had happened during those lost years? Why the lies about his identity? Who’d had him kidnapped and thrown into a box? And why hadn’t that person or persons just killed him outright?
Certainty that he did not want to know the answers, no matter how tantalizing they might be, still raged in his gut. Whatever his former life had been, he had no pressing need to resume it. Laura was wealthy enough for them and their children to live in the lap of luxury for several lifetimes. Whoever else he’d left behind in his old life had no doubt made peace long ago with his disappearance and gotten on with their own lives. His return now could only cause disruption and chaos.
But what if his old life, his old identity, came looking for him?
Nah. Surely that had been the whole point of his kidnapping. To turn him into a ghost. Make him disappear for good. As long as he stayed a ghost, made no effort to resume his former life, there was no reason for his past to come looking for him. Right?
The key was to keep a low profile. He closed the laptop with a solid thunk. Nope. Curiosity or no curiosity, he was not going anywhere near his old life.
Chapter 2
Laura sighed. Her perfectly orchestrated schedule for the day had been blown to heck by her obstetrician running nearly two hours late. Not that she begrudged some other patient an emergency C-section. But today, of all days, she’d really needed her doctor to be on time. Because of the delay, she hadn’t had time to swing by home and drop off the baby with the nanny before this important meeting with Nick’s lawyers.
She winced at the sliding noise of her minivan’s side door. Baby Ellie, six weeks old today, was asleep inside, and Laura desperately needed her to stay that way for the next hour. She detached the baby carrier from the car seat base, threw the baby bag over her shoulder and hurried across the parking lot toward the glass and chrome high-rise housing Tatum and Associates, the law firm that would be representing Nick in the upcoming AbaCo trial.
Nick was the star witness for the prosecution. As such, Carter Tatum expected him to come under withering cross-examination by the defense lawyers representing the company’s chief of security, Hans Kurtis Schroder. He’d been accused of masterminding a kidnapping and human-trafficking ring using AbaCo ships without the company’s knowledge. Personally, Laura doubted Schroder was the top dog in the scheme. He was the sacrificial lamb to protect his bosses.
Today was a coaching session for Nick in how to act on the witness stand. It was guaranteed to be stressful. A part of her that she was trying darned hard to ignore worried that Nick wouldn’t be able to handle it.
