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  “Warrick?”

  There was something in C.J.’s voice that made the hair on the back of his neck rise up. He swung around to look at her. She was still sitting at her desk, but there was an odd expression on her face.

  “What?”

  “How close would you say we were?”

  “Pretty close, I guess.” Warrick looked at her more intently. “Why?”

  C.J. caught her lower lip between her teeth for a second before answering. “I think we’re about to get a lot closer.”

  Like a man feeling his way along a tightrope, Warrick slowly made his way back into the room, staring at C.J. as he came. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m in labor.”

  Warrick’s eyes widened in disbelief, because C.J. was given to practical jokes. “The hell you’re not.”

  C.J. caught her breath, trying to keep her voice steady. “The hell I am.”

  The Baby Mission

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  Books by Marie Ferrarella in Miniseries

  ChildFinders, Inc.

  A Hero for All Seasons IM #932

  A Forever Kind of Hero IM #943

  Hero in the Nick of Time IM #956

  Hero for Hire IM #1042

  An Uncommon Hero Silhouette Books

  A Hero in Her Eyes IM #1059

  Heart of a Hero IM #1105

  Baby’s Choice

  Caution: Baby Ahead SR #1007

  Mother on the Wing SR #1026

  Baby Times Two SR #1037

  The Baby of the Month Club

  Baby’s First Christmas SE #997

  Happy New Year—Baby! IM #686

  The 7lb., 2oz. Valentine Yours Truly

  Husband: Optional SD #988

  Do You Take This Child? SR #1145

  Detective Dad World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

  The Once and Future Father IM #1017

  In the Family Way Silhouette Books

  Baby Talk Silhouette Books

  An Abundance of Babies SE #1422

  Like Mother, Like Daughter

  One Plus One Makes Marriage SR #1328

  Never Too Late for Love SR #1351

  The Bachelors of Blair Memorial

  In Graywolf’s Hands IM #1155

  M.D. Most Wanted IM #1167

  Mac’s Bedside Manner SE #1492

  Undercover M.D. IM #1191

  Two Halves of a Whole

  The Baby Came C.O.D. SR #1264

  Desperately Seeking Twin Yours Truly

  Those Sinclairs

  Holding Out for a Hero IM #496

  Heroes Great and Small IM #501

  Christmas Every Day IM #538

  Caitlin’s Guardian Angel IM #661

  The Cutlers of the Shady Lady Ranch

  (Yours Truly titles)

  Fiona and the Sexy Stranger

  Cowboys Are for Loving

  Will and the Headstrong Female

  The Law and Ginny Marlow

  A Match for Morgan

  A Triple Threat to Bachelorhood SR #1564

  *The Reeds

  Callaghan’s Way IM #601

  Serena McKee’s Back in Town IM #808

  *McClellans & Marinos

  Man Trouble SR #815

  The Taming of the Teen SR #839

  Babies on His Mind SR #920

  The Baby beneath the Mistletoe SR #1408

  *The Alaskans

  Wife in the Mail SE #1217

  Stand-In Mom SE #1294

  Found: His Perfect Wife SE #1310

  The M.D. Meets His Match SE #1401

  Lily and the Lawman SE #1467

  *The Pendletons

  Baby in the Middle SE #892

  Husband: Some Assembly Required SE #931

  The Mom Squad

  A Billionaire and a Baby SE #1528

  A Bachelor and a Baby SD #1503

  The Baby Mission IM #1220

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

  To Patience Smith and our bonding process

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Prologue

  She was back. He’d seen her. Seen Claire.

  Held her.

  Her eyes were closed now, but she knew it was him. He knew she knew. Because Claire was his.

  Now and forever.

  He’d been away for three long, aching years and when he’d finally been allowed to return, he was afraid that he’d never see her again. That she would be gone.

  But he had found her, found Claire. No one else would ever have her again. Would ever touch her again.

  There were no words to do justice to the emotions that were skittering through him. Elation, joy, empowerment, those were all good words, but not really good enough. Not nearly good enough to begin to describe what it was he was experiencing right at this moment, just looking at her lying here on the grass.

  He sifted a strand of her hair through his fingers. Bending down, he closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply.

  Her hair smelled of something herbal. Something nice.

  Silky blond hair.

  Hair that would continue to grow even though she no longer would. She wouldn’t have the promise of another sunrise, another star-filled night.

  He sat back on his heels and looked at her.

  She looked so beautiful.

  In his other hand, he held a rose. A single, perfect red rose. A rose as perfect as the young woman who lay here before him.

  There were bruises on her throat, which marred that perfection. But he had hidden them. Nobody would ever see.

  Carefully he placed the single red rose in her hand, then arranged the fingers of her other hand around the stem. He sat back and studied his handiwork.

  She looked as if she was sleeping.

  Perfect.

  The pressure in his chest was gone. It felt good to be back.

  To have Claire again.

  Because he loved her.

  Chapter 1

  “Guess who’s back?”

  Special Agent Chris Jones, C.J. to her friends, looked up from her desk, the same desk that had kept her a virtual prisoner in the Southern California office for the past two months. She struggled against a very strong inclination to frown.

  By the tone of her partner’s voice, her completely free-to-work-in-the-field-while-she-withered-on-the-vine-in-the-office partner, Special Agent Byron Warrick was either going to give her more paperwork to cope with, or worse, he had something going on in the field that she was barred from. The powers that be didn’t think a pregnant woman belonged out there.

  Bracing herself, she tossed her long, straight, blond hair over her shoulder and asked, “Who?”

  Warrick perched on the edge of C.J.’s desk and looked down at her. All of her. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a week, and every time he was away from her, he had to admit it was a shock when he first saw her again.

  He wasn’t accustomed to
seeing her this way. When they had first been teamed up, she’d weighed scarcely more than his equipment bag for the peewee softball team he used to coach. The last couple of months had certainly taken their toll on his partner.

  He shook his head. She dressed well, and there was a certain amount of camouflage involved, but there was no way she could hide what was going on.

  Warrick stole a peppermint from her desk and began to remove the cellophane. “You know, C.J., I can’t remember what you looked like when you weren’t pregnant.”

  Why was it that men felt compelled to bury affection in a sea of banter, barbs and teasing? There were times when Warrick acted just like one of her brothers.

  “Very funny.” C.J. sighed, then admitted, “Neither can I.” She pushed the keyboard back on her desk. Something was clearly up. “Okay, what has you so all-fired chipper this morning?”

  “Not chipper, C.J.” Under the circumstances, that was rather a disrespectful word to apply to the situation, but then, she didn’t know yet. “Just energized.”

  He played out the moment, reeling C.J. in. He felt bad for her, knowing how she felt about being stuck behind a desk. But he also felt relieved. Her reflexes had to have slowed down in this condition, and he didn’t want to have to be worried about something happening to her if she tried to go about business as usual. Business was definitely not as usual.

  “Remember our old friend, the Sleeping Beauty Killer?”

  Recall was instant. C.J. stiffened. The Sleeping Beauty Killer was the name she had dubbed the serial killer who had killed twelve women over the space of two years. All his victims were blue-eyed blondes, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. The name had been given him not for any missives the killer had left in his wake, but for the way he had arranged all the bodies postmortem. He strangled his victims, put a costume jewelry choker on them to hide the marks on their necks and then lyrically placed them on the ground with their hands folded around a single long-stemmed, perfect red rose. The women all appeared as if they were just sleeping, waiting for their prince to come and wake them up with a kiss.

  Except that no kiss could undo what he had done to them.

  Ordinarily, since all the murders had taken place in the vicinity of Orange County, the FBI wouldn’t have gotten involved unless requested to do so by the local authorities. But victim number two had been found in the parking lot of the federal court building. That made it a federal case and gave the Bureau primary jurisdiction. She’d been the first to come aboard.

  Capturing the Sleeping Beauty Killer had been C.J.’s own personal crusade, one that had gone unfulfilled. The killings had abruptly stopped three years ago and the trail had gone completely dry.

  The drudgery of the morning with its data inputting was forgotten. C.J.’s eyes brightened as she looked up at Warrick.

  “Are you sure?” She made no attempt to hide the eagerness in her voice. If the serial killer was back, that instantly increased their chances of finally getting him for all the murders. “As far as anyone knows, he’s been out of commission for three years.”

  The unofficial theory was that someone had turned the tables on the Sleeping Beauty Killer and killed him. Serial killers rarely lost the blood lust, so the abrupt termination hadn’t been voluntary. C.J. had spent countless hours scouring the crime databases herself, looking for any murders that had been committed using a similar MO. But none had come to light. Eventually C.J. decided, with no small relief, that although she wasn’t the one to bring him to justice, chances were that the Sleeping Beauty Killer was answering to a higher power for his crimes.

  Obviously, relief had been premature, she thought.

  “Take a look at what just came in.” Separating the photograph from the rest of the folder he was carrying, Warrick tossed it on her desk.

  C.J.’s stomach tightened. She found herself looking down at an angelic face that was all but devoid of makeup. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked them fresh, untouched by anything but death.

  The girl in the photograph couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her whole life ahead of her, and now it was gone. With effort C.J. pushed down the anger that rose up within her.

  She took the photograph in her hands, studying it. The girl was holding a single red rose in her hands. It was too eerily similar. But there were the three years to consider.

  C.J. raised her eyes to Warrick’s face. “Copycat?” Not that that was a cause for celebration. Copycat or original, the girl was still dead.

  “Maybe.” But somehow Warrick doubted it. He tapped the folder. “But he got it right, down to the last detail. Including the polished pink nails.”

  It was the one detail they’d withheld from the public when the story had broken. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked to give the women he strangled a manicure, also postmortem. He used the same shade of nail polish every time, a shade too common to be useful in their search.

  C.J. shivered. “Sick bastard,” she muttered under her breath. In an unguarded moment, her hand slipped down over her belly in the eternal protective movement of expectant mothers everywhere, as if trying to shield her baby from this kind of horror. It’s not the best place I’m bringing you into, baby. She let the photograph drop back on her desk. “I guess he isn’t rotting in hell the way he was supposed to be.”

  Warrick tucked the photograph back into the folder. “Guess not.”

  C.J.’s eyes were drawn back to the photograph. They had to catch this killer before he struck again. She tried not to think about how many other times she’d thought the same thing. “Okay, what have we got on this?”

  There was that word again, Warrick thought. We. They weren’t a “we” at the moment. And they wouldn’t be until after her baby was born. She made things hard on both of them by not remembering that fact.

  “Information’s just coming in, C.J.” Looking at her, he could read her mind the way only some members of her family could. They’d been partners for six years now, covered each other’s backs on the job and offered silent support outside the job’s perimeters when the situation called for it. “Hey, this isn’t a signal to leap out from behind your desk.” His green eyes swept over her considerable bulk as a hint of a smile played on his lips. “Not that leaping appears to be in your repertoire at the moment.”

  “Thanks a bunch.” C.J. shifted in her seat, wishing she could get comfortable, knowing it was a futile effort. These days comfortable was only a word in the dictionary. “I wasn’t about to leap, just walk out with as much dignity as a pregnant elephant can muster.”

  He’d crossed the line and hurt her feelings, Warrick realized. So he backtracked a little. “I wouldn’t say elephant.”

  “Not verbally,” C.J. countered, knowing she had him and skewering him just a little. Because he owed it to her. “But I can see what you’re thinking in your eyes. I always could, you know.”

  He liked being able to read her, but he didn’t like being transparent himself. “What I’m thinking is that any normal woman would have already gone on maternity leave by now.”

  She’d been over this subject ad nauseum, with both Warrick and her family. Four brothers, two parents and a partner, all of whom thought they knew better than she did what was best for her.

  “We both know I don’t fall into that category,” C.J. reminded him. “And we superwomen have an image to maintain.”

  He grinned. It was the kind of grin that raised women’s blood pressures and lowered their resistance. At times, C.J. mused, it was hard to remember that she thought of him as another brother and was thus immune to him. He did have one hell of a smile. Lately she kept finding herself attracted to her partner at very odd moments. For some reason, Warrick had been looking sexier and sexier to her. Had to be the hormones, she decided. They were completely out of kilter. She was usually better at keeping a tight rein on her thoughts.

  “Superwoman, huh?” Warrick nodded at her stomach. “I don’t exactly picture you flying around right about now.”

 
She eyed the folder in his hands. It was like waving a piece of ham in front of a starving dog. “Did you just come in here with this to torture me?”

  Following her eyes, he tucked the folder under his arm. “No, but it was our case. I thought you’d want to be in the loop.”

  Impatient, she shifted in her chair again. It creaked its protest over the change of position. C.J. frowned. “These days I feel like the whole damn loop.”

  One more month, she thought, squelching a note of desperation. One more month like this and then it’d be over. One more month and she’d have this baby so she could try to get her life back on track again. It was going to be a lot better when she could finally hold her baby in her arms instead of carrying it around like a leaden weight.

  She tried not to let her mind drift. There was time enough for maternal feelings after the baby arrived, healthy and strong. Until then, she was determined to keep her emotions under tight wrap.

  That wasn’t going very well right now. C.J. noted where her partner’s eyes were resting. On her abdomen. Annoyance rose up three flights.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got my whole family watching my stomach as if it’s a pot about to boil, and I don’t need my partner doing the same thing.”

  Warrick straightened. “The person you should have watching your stomach is—”

  She shut her eyes, searching for a vein of strength. They’d been down this road before, too. Too often. “Don’t start, War. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Don’t want to hear what?” He meant to make his question sound innocent. It sounded heated instead. But he wasn’t exactly impartial when it came to the FBI special agent who, until seven months ago, had a prominent place in his partner’s life—a partner he was extremely fond of. If he felt anything else toward her, well, that was something that wasn’t going to be explored in the light of day. It couldn’t be. Never mind that, pregnant or not, C.J. was the hottest-looking woman he’d ever come across. “That your insignificant other should at least be around to lend you some emotional support?”