me nurse Tanner.”
Something went through his eyes. “Violent things?” He looked genuinely insulted.
Mia wanted to curse. Now, he obviously knew that she was aware of who he was. She just kept getting deeper and deeper into this hole she was digging.
“I own a private security company,” he corrected.
Since there was no going back, Mia just charged forward. “You lend your services and your guns in war zones,” she challenged.
“Occasionally.” He lifted his shoulder. “When it’s necessary to rescue people and protect American interests abroad.”
Mia huffed. “That’s semantics. You’re an international hired gun.”
“I’m the good guy.” He hitched his thumb to his chest.
“That’s debatable.”
“Says who?” he fired right back at her.
Now, she put her thumb to her chest. “Me.”
There was slight change in his breathing pattern. It became heavier, as if he were annoyed.
“We obviously have strong opinions about each other,” he concluded. “Care to hear my opinion about you?”
“No.” And Mia didn’t even have to think about that.
“Tough. You’re going to hear it. A little less than a year ago, right around your twenty-eighth birthday, you decided that you wanted to have a baby. There was no man in your life, no immediate prospects of marriage, so you went to Brighton Birthing Center just outside San Antonio. They have a fertility clinic there, and you made arrangements to be artificially inseminated. It was successful. You got pregnant on your first try.”
He knew.
Mercy, he knew.
“How did you learn that?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“Careful investigative work over the past six weeks.”
“It’s not illegal to use artificial insemination to become pregnant. It’s a private matter. And it’s none of your business.”
Even though she knew it was his business.
Hopefully, he didn’t know that.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and waited a moment. During that moment, he looked even more annoyed. “I don’t know why you did what you did, but obviously something started to go wrong. You got suspicious of the Brighton Birthing Center. So, days before the center was closed because of illegal activity, you made an appointment with your fertility counselor, and when the counselor left the room to get you a glass of water that you requested, you took some files from the counselor’s desk drawer.”
Mia hadn’t thought it possible, but her heart beat even faster. “If I did or didn’t do that, it’s still none of your concern.”
“But it’s true. I managed to get my hands on some surveillance tapes. You took two files.”
That was correct. Unfortunately, it’d also been a mistake. Mia had intended to take only her own file that day. She’d taken the other one accidentally because it had been tucked inside hers.
She wished to God that she’d never seen that file.
“The police have already questioned me about this,” she admitted. “They agreed that I was right to have had doubts about Brighton. I gave them the files I’d taken and they let me go. End of story.”
“Not even close. What made you suspicious of Brighton?”
She almost refused to answer, but maybe he knew something about this, as well. Maybe the tables would be reversed and he could provide her with some answers.
“Someone was following me,” she explained. “Then once, someone actually tried to kidnap me. After that incident, I went to the police and they found a miniature tracking device taped on the undercarriage of my car. By then, there were rumors that Brighton was being investigated for illegal adoptions and lots of other criminal activity.”
He shrugged. “So why take the files?”
“I thought I was just taking my file. I wanted to make sure there were no…irregularities. Because by then, I’d gone through the insemination and was nearly five months pregnant. I wanted to verify that they hadn’t done anything that would ultimately harm my baby.”
That earned her a flat look.
“And you know the other file that you took was mine,” he tossed out there to her.
Because Mia didn’t think it would do any good to deny it, she nodded. “I don’t know how it got mixed in with mine.”
“Don’t you?”
Surprised with his increasingly icy accusations, she shook her head. “No. I don’t.”
“Did you read the file?” he demanded.
“I glanced at it, because I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought it was part of my records.”
He made a sound to indicate he didn’t believe her. “I’ll bet you did more than glance. But then, you already knew what was in it, didn’t you? You’re the reason that file was at Brighton.”
Stunned, Mia stared at him. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Nor did she know why he’d said it. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course, you do. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’m cured now, but because my treatment could have left me sterile, I decided to stockpile some semen. It was stored in Cryogen Labs, here in San Antonio. That file you took, the one tucked inside yours, was my file from Cryogen.” He paused. “What I want to know is why you did it?”
Tired of the ambiguous questions, Mia threw out her hands. “Did what?”
He huffed as if he thought she were stonewalling him. But she wasn’t. Mia had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
“He’s your nephew,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “That’s what you said right after I told you that you’d had a son. You said that because—”
“I was delirious.” Her voice was so filled with breath that it hardly had sound.
“No. You said it because you thought it was true. You thought I was my brother. Therefore, you thought my brother had a nephew. And since he’s my only sibling, there’s only one conclusion I can draw from that.”
Logan McGrath stared at the carrier seat. “Judging from what I’ve uncovered, the little boy that I delivered is my own son.”
Chapter Two
“My son,” Logan mumbled, in case Mia Crandall hadn’t heard him.
But, of
