eyebrows shot up. “I did. I’m fine. We’re fine,” she said, casting a gaze at her son. “I had to get my act together, with or without you, and I had to find peace for Henry’s sake. So I stopped calling you, and I let us go.”
He fixed a heated gaze on her, his face wrought with emotion. Hurt, frustration, regret. “What would’ve happened if Sara hadn’t been taken today?” he asked. “I would’ve just gone on with my life having no idea I was a father?”
Emma glared back, wind sucked from her chest. She wanted to shove him hard and knock him onto his backside, but there wasn’t time for that. “We can fight about this later. Right now I need to figure out what happened to Sara,” she said. “I found a notebook full of numbers hidden in her room. Will you look at it for me and see if it makes any sense to you?”
“How old is he?” Sawyer asked, unmoved by her change of subject. His gaze was locked on Henry. “When was he born? What did he weigh?”
Emma steadied her nerves and wet her lips. Those were fair enough questions. “His name is Henry Sawyer Hart. He’s four months old, born June 8 at 8:17 a.m. He weighed eight pounds, eleven ounces. He was twenty-one inches long.”
“You gave him my name.”
“Middle name. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Sawyer pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and dug them in.
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked again, needing to know once and for all what had happened between their last passionate night of love declarations and the dead silence that began afterward and never ended.
Sawyer dropped his hands from his eyes. He stretched onto his feet and braced broad hands over narrow hips. Warning flared in his eyes. There was a debate going on in that head of his, but his lips were sealed tight.
Maybe he didn’t have a reason. Maybe he didn’t want to admit their time together had been nothing more than a fling. Not real to him like it had been to her. It was easy to see he wasn’t the same guy she’d fallen in love with. The man before her was hard and distant. Not the man who’d swept her into his arms and twirled her until she was breathless with laughter.
Maybe that guy had never been real.
Emma’s throat tightened as the look on his face grew pained. “Never mind. You don’t owe me an explanation.” She lifted Sara’s notebook from the end table beside her and extended it to Sawyer. “Here. Let’s just move on. Maybe there’s something in there that will help the police figure out who took her and why. She’s been gone twenty-four hours already, and our odds of finding her diminish significantly after seventy-two.”
Sawyer caught the narrow book in his fingertips and held her gaze. “My team and I were captured. They were killed.”
Emma’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“They died. I didn’t. I’ve only been home a few weeks. My cell service plan wasn’t renewed on time because I wasn’t home, so it was canceled. I didn’t change the number or disconnect the phone. I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was trying to survive, and I don’t want to talk about what happened.”
She worked her mouth shut. Her own harsh words crashed back to mind like a ton of bricks. She’d blamed him for not returning her calls without bothering to ask why he hadn’t. She’d assumed the worst, that he’d avoided her intentionally, played her for a fool, never realizing that him avoiding her was hardly the worst thing that could have happened. Her gaze snapped back to the scars. Thick, raised marks across his skin that weren’t there a year ago. On his neck and arms. What looked like the results of a serious burn above his left eye. “Sawyer.”
He lifted a palm. “Don’t.”
Emma cradled Henry tighter, comforting the one piece of Sawyer that would allow it. She’d heard stories, saw movies and read books about men who’d been through similar things, losing their teams, being held against their wills. There was a common thread to every man’s story. Their experiences had wrecked them.
“I know what your sister is going through,” Sawyer said, “not the physical details, but emotionally. Mentally.” His serious blue eyes rose to meet her gaze. “I’ll help find her,” he said. “And I will keep you and Henry safe while I do.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you.”
He carried the notebook to the couch where Sara had fought with her attacker, and collapsed onto the cushions. He spread the notebook open across his palms, but his gaze continually moved to Emma’s before sliding back to Henry.
“What?” Emma finally asked, her heart warming and softening toward the man she’d thought had tossed her away.
His eyes flashed dark and protective, but he didn’t look away from his son. “You should’ve left that message.”
Sawyer didn’t sleep. Emma had taken the barely manageable wreckage of his life and flipped it on its head. She might as well have flipped him on his head. He was a father.
The words had circled endlessly in his mind as he pored over the contents of Sara’s notebook and made multiple trips down the hallway to check on Emma and Henry. His son.
A son he hadn’t even known existed until a few hours ago. He might’ve never known about Henry at all if something horrible hadn’t happened to Sara, forcing Emma to reach out for help. And Henry could’ve grown up thinking his father was the kind of man who would run out on a woman and his son.
It made him madder every time he thought about it.
He’d nearly missed the most important part of his life because pride had stopped him from returning Emma’s call. And it sure wouldn’t have killed her to add the life-changing detail to her message.
The glow of a pending sunrise hovered on the horizon when he finally put Sara’s notebook on the kitchen table and went to make coffee. Down the hall, he heard the stirring sounds of Emma and his baby. Sawyer set the coffee to brew, then opened the refrigerator. By the time Emma and Henry emerged from their shared room, Sawyer had a simple breakfast prepared for two. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Restless hands.”
Emma stopped at the kitchen’s edge, Henry on one hip. She’d dressed in nice-fitting blue jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt that hugged all her new curves in the nicest of ways. Her straight brown hair hung over her shoulders and feathered across her forehead.
Sawyer longed to run his fingers through the strands and pull her against him. He wanted to comfort her. To make promises for Sara’s safety that he couldn’t keep. He’d promised to find her, but if he didn’t do that fast... His mind wandered to images of his fallen team.
“You didn’t sleep,” Emma said, fastening Henry into a high chair.
“Rarely do.” He lifted a pan full of eggs from the stove and flicked the burner off, forcing his thoughts back to the present. “Hungry?”
“I don’t know.” She went to the counter to make a bottle for Henry. A moment later she took the
