JOSIE RESISTED THE urge to press her palm over CJ’s mouth. It was already too late. Why was it now that her usually shy son chose to speak to a stranger? And, moreover, to speak the truth? But her little boy was unfailingly honest, no matter the fact that his mother couldn’t be. Especially now.
“But we got out on the wrong floor,” she said. “This isn’t where your grandfather’s room is.”
CJ shook his head. “No, we watched the numbers lighting up in the el’vator. You said number six. I know my numbers.”
Now she cursed herself for working with the three-year-old so much that he knew all his numbers and letters. “Well, it’s the wrong room.”
“You said number—”
“Shh, sweetheart, you’re tired and must not remember correctly,” she said, hoping that her son picked up the warning and the fear in her voice now. “We need to leave. It’s late. We need to get you to bed.”
But those strong masculine fingers were still wrapped tight around her wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You have no right to keep me,” she said.
With his free hand, he gestured toward CJ. “He gives me the right. I have a lot of rights you’ve apparently denied me.”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why the hell would she have told the man who’d tried to kill her that she was pregnant with his baby? If his attempts had been successful, he would have killed them both.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Josie.”
CJ tugged on her hand and whispered loudly, “Mommy, why does the man keep calling you that?”
Now he supported her lie—too late. “I don’t know, honey,” she said. “He has me mixed up with someone else he must have known.”
“No,” Brendan said. “I never really knew Josie Jessup at all.”
No. He hadn’t. Or he would have realized that she was too smart to have ever really trusted him. If only she’d been too smart to fall for him.
But the man was as charming as he was powerful. And when he’d touched her, when he’d kissed her, she had been unable to resist that charm.
“Then it’s no wonder that you’ve mistaken me for her,” Josie said, “since you didn’t really know her very well.”
She furrowed her brow and acted as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Josie Jessup? Isn’t that the daughter of the media mogul? I thought she died several years ago.”
“That was obviously what she wanted everyone to believe—that she was dead,” he said. “Or was it just me?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” You. Just you. But unfortunately, for him to accept the lie, everyone else had had to believe it, too. “I am not her. She must really be gone.”
And if she’d had any sense, she would have stayed gone. Well away from her father and this man.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Are you visiting someone?”
Or knowing all this time that she wasn’t really dead, had he set a trap for her? Was he the one who had attacked her father? According to the reports from all her father’s media outlets, there was no suspect yet in his assault. But she had one now.
She needed to call Charlotte. But the phone was in her purse, and she had locked her purse in her vehicle so that if anyone was to recognize her, they wouldn’t be able to find her new identity.
“It doesn’t matter why I’m here—just that I am,” he said, dodging her question as he had so many other questions she had asked him during the months they’d been together. “And so are you.”
“Not anymore. We’re leaving,” she said, as much to CJ as to Brendan. As if on cue, the elevator ground to a stop, and the doors slid open. She moved to step into the car, but her wrist was clutched so tightly she couldn’t move.
“That one’s going up,” Brendan pointed out.
“As I said, we got off on the wrong floor.” She tugged hard on her wrist, but his grip didn’t ease. She didn’t want to scream and alarm her already trembling son, so through gritted teeth she said, “Let go of me.”
But he stepped closer. He was so damn big, all broad muscles and tension. There were other bulges beneath the jacket of his dark tailored suit—weapons. He had always carried guns. He’d told her it was because of the dangerous people who resented his inheriting his father’s businesses.
But she’d wondered then if he’d been armed for protection or intimidation. She was intimidated, so intimidated that she cared less about scaring her son than she did about protecting him. So she screamed.
HER SCREAM STARTLED Brendan and pierced the quiet of the hospital corridor. But he didn’t release her until her son—their son—launched himself at Brendan. His tiny feet kicked at Brendan’s shins and his tiny fists flailed, striking Brendan’s thighs and hips.
“Leggo my mommy! Leggo my mommy!”
The boy’s reaction and fear startled Brendan into stepping back. Josie’s wrist slipped from his grasp. She used her freed hand to catch their son’s flailing fists and tug him close to her.
Before Brandon could reach for her again, three men dressed in hospital scrubs rushed up from the room they’d been loitering near down the hall. Brendan had noted their presence but had been too distracted to realize that they were watching him.
Damn! He had been trained to constantly be aware of his surroundings and everyone in them. Only Josie had ever made him forget his training to trust no one.
“What’s going on?” one of the men asked.
“This man accosted me and my son,” Josie replied, spewing more lies. “He tried to grab me.”
Brendan struggled to control his anger. The boy—his boy—was already frightened of him. He couldn’t add to that fear by telling the truth. So he stepped back again in order to appear nonthreatening, when all he wanted to do was threaten.
“We’ll escort you to your car, ma’am,” another of the men offered as he guided her and the child into the waiting elevator.
“Don’t let her leave,” Brendan advised. Because if she left, he had no doubt that he would never see her and his son again. This time she would stay gone. He moved forward, reaching for those elevator doors before they could shut on Josie and their son.
But strong hands closed around his arms, dragging him back, while another man joined Josie inside the elevator. Just as the doors slid shut, Brendan noticed the telltale bulge of a weapon beneath the man’s scrubs. He carried a gun at the small of his back.
Brendan shrugged off the grasp of the man who held him. Then he whirled around to face him. But now he faced down the barrel of his gun. Why were he and at least one of the other men armed? They weren’t hospital
