a private investigator.” He met her worried gaze once more. “You don’t need me.”
“No.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “I need your help. There is no one else I can depend on.”
Anger flared, burning away the tender emotions he had foolishly experienced. If she needed someone, she should turn to Grant Bridges. After all, she had been ready to marry him before she’d disappeared. He was assuredly the child’s father. Why didn’t she go to him now?
“Go to Bridges.” The words ground from between clenched teeth. Nicholas hated that jealously was reflected in each word, but some part of him was obviously still human. Grant Bridges had once been his best friend. As much as Nicholas wanted to hate him for almost marrying Camille, he had no right. Camille deserved a good man, and Bridges was a good man.
“I can’t.”
Patience thinning, Nicholas gestured to the door once more. “I’m certain he will be glad to help you in any way you need. He was supposed to be your husband as I recall. He faithfully visited you in the hospital.” Nicholas stared out the open door and into the dark night as he said the rest. “Bridges would never shirk his responsibilities. Go to him.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t go to him.” She still made no move toward the door. “You’re the only person who can help me.”
A muscle in his jaw jerking with tension, Nicholas moved in close to her, a blatant act of intimidation. The sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, almost defeated his determination. “It’s only right that the father of the child have a hand in the search. Go to Bridges, Camille. He’s the one you should be talking to right now.”
“But he’s not the father.”
Nicholas’s tense jaw fell slack. Confusion obliterated any possibility of rational thought. “I don’t understand.”
“You have to help me, Nicholas.” She searched his eyes, her own filled with fear and a tangle of other pained emotions. “You’re the only one who can. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the baby.”
He shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”
“The baby isn’t Grant’s.” She stared straight into Nicholas’s eyes, took a deep breath. “It’s yours. You’re the father.”
Chapter Two
Camille Wells shivered uncontrollably as she waited for Nicholas’s answer. She didn’t care that she had just blurted out the fact that he was a father. Or that he looked completely stunned.
Right now, she didn’t care about anything but finding her baby.
He didn’t look directly at her, kept his face turned slightly to the left in an effort to shield that damaged side from view. “You should sit down.” The words were scarcely a whisper, wholly uncharacteristic for the gruff man he had become.
The beast. That was what the villagers called the scarred recluse who had purchased the cottage on the outskirts of town. And like the new owner, the cottage was damaged very nearly beyond repair.
With all that she knew, how could she still feel anything for him?
“I don’t need to sit down,” she argued. “I need to find our baby.” Evidently the reality of what she had told him hadn’t gotten through the first time. She had to make him understand.
He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
Exactly the response she had expected. “We had sex, Nicholas.” She drew in a deep breath, summoned her patience. Time was wasting. They needed a plan. They needed to start looking. Now! “That’s how babies are made, or have you forgotten?” She trembled inside at the memory. What was wrong with her? Her baby was missing!
Another shake of his dark head. “But that was—”
“Nine months, four weeks, two days ago.” Just after dark…at the same place they’d last made love. Only this time she had been the one on the verge of getting married. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. But the pain in her chest, the ache in her very soul left no room for amusement. Her baby was missing. A baby she couldn’t remember giving birth to.
A baby whose first kick she couldn’t recall. A baby she had carried for nine months and she had absolutely no recollection of that time save for the first four weeks. Those precious days between making love with Nicholas and walking arm in arm with her father toward her fiancé, Grant Bridges.
How could she look back on any part of that time as precious when she had cheated on the man she was to marry? They had agreed to abstain from sex the final month before their marriage to make their wedding night even more special. And what had she done?
Grant. God, he had been so good to her. He had been perfectly willing to marry her and raise the child as his own. Marrying him without telling him the truth had been out of the question. Camille had told him everything. And he’d forgiven her. Even more incredible he’d still wanted to marry her. Camille had recognized the second chance and pulled herself back together. She would be Mrs. Grant Bridges. Her child would be raised by two parents and no one would ever know the truth.
Then, in one unexpected gust of gale force wind, everything had changed.
She had lost months of her life…her baby…the future she had planned.
Everything.
“But you were going to marry Bridges,” Nicholas argued as if that was a logical reason the child couldn’t be his. “Did you know…?”
She nodded, shuddered at the chill that had bored deep into her bones. “I found out a few days before the wedding.”
Suspicion reared its ugly head in his startlingly blue eyes. “But you were going to marry Bridges anyway.”
Not a question. An accusation. She squared her shoulders. “Yes. I told him about the baby. He was willing to marry me anyway.” She glared into those piercing eyes. “In fact, he insisted that it was the only right thing to do.”
Her words hit the mark. She saw the sting in Nicholas’s eyes. Good. He deserved it.
“When I wouldn’t have,” he suggested, fierce indifference pumped into his tone.
“Have you ever?” She hugged the blanket closer against the quivering she couldn’t quite conquer. “Think about it, Nicholas—you never were exactly reliable. You didn’t have the courage to stand up to your parents when it came to us. And then, when your grandfather died in the lighthouse fire, you deserted all of us.”
Fury tightened his jaw, sent a muscle there jumping rhythmically. “I had my reasons.”
That was the part that frosted her the most. “Oh, yes.” She angled her head and glowered at him. “It was for my own good. For the good of all of Raven’s Cliff. How could I forget?” Yet another logical excuse spawned by selfish, illogical reasoning.
“You don’t understand,” he snarled, that beastly side showing in his voice and in his eyes as he stared straight at her.
Camille didn’t flinch. It wasn’t easy. The left side
