The Agent's Secret Baby Read online

  And the inside of him.

  He supposed there was only so much a heart could be hardened.

  This wasn’t good, he admonished in the next moment. He needed a clear head to do what he was doing. Any distraction could prove fatal, not just to his operation, but to him, as well. He shouldn’t be here.

  Eve didn’t need him. She was in professional hands now. These people were trained for this. They could more than take care of her and anything that she needed. As long as Eve was here, in the middle of a bustling hospital, she’d be out of harm’s way.

  Besides, as far as he actually knew, no one in this region knew about their connection. His connection, the self-centered college student, Sederholm, didn’t know about Eve. This was all a preemptive strike on his part.

  But he lived the life too long to be at ease, to hope that everything went well and that there would be no mishaps, no reason to believe that either Eve or the baby would be in jeopardy. He’d learned that when one of the agents had grown lax during the last undercover operation, he had gotten blown away. Literally. From where he stood, it was far better to be safe than live with a lifetime of regret.

  “I need you to call Vera for me,” she said to him the moment the paramedics mobilized the gurney, snapping the wheels in place. They immediately began to guide the gurney in through the automatic sliding doors.

  Adam hurried to keep pace with the gurney. The name she’d just tossed in his direction meant nothing to him. “Vera?”

  “Dr. Vera Lee. She’s the veterinarian who works with me at the Laguna Animal Hospital. She’s going to have to take over the appointments and have Susannah reschedule the ones that aren’t emergencies until I can get back to work.”

  Which wouldn’t be for a while if he had anything to say about it, he thought. Childbirth might be natural, but it could knock the hell out of a woman and Eve needed to give herself some time to recover.

  “Susannah?” he repeated. Another name that meant nothing to him.

  “Susannah Reyes. She’s my tech and she doubles as a receptionist.” Wanda Peeples had been her father’s technician and receptionist for thirty years, but when he died, the woman, already in her seventies, had retired. Grief-stricken, she’d debated selling the practice for all of five hours, then decided to take over, rebuilding it from the ground up.

  Frustrated, Eve shook her head. “I really thought I was going to have more time.”

  Who was it that said life was what happens while you were busy making plans? “Life’s full of surprises,” Adam told her.

  And he should know that better than anyone, he thought, looking down at the infant cradled in her arms.

  “All right, I’ll call Vera and Susannah. Anything else?”

  “Yes.” She took a breath, then raised her head. Her eyes met his. “Thank you.”

  Adam hadn’t been expecting that. Hearing Eve voice her gratitude brought a smile to his lips. “You’re welcome.”

  The moment was quickly dissipated by the authoritative, stocky nurse who came up to him and hooked her arm through his. “You the husband?” the woman demanded.

  Eve spoke up before he had a chance to. “He’s the father.”

  Picking up on the difference, the nurse declared, “Good enough,” and thrust a clipboard with several sheets clipped to it at him. “I need you to fill out some information.”

  Adam quickly scanned the top sheet. There was no way that he knew even half the information that was being asked. “Look, I can’t—”

  “I’m preregistered,” Eve called out as the paramedics, rattling off pertinent information regarding both mother and child, turned her over to an orderly and another nurse. The duo paused for a moment as the gurney changed hands.

  “Saved you some trouble,” the stocky nurse mumbled to Adam, taking back the clipboard. Then, as Adam turned to continue following Eve’s gurney, the woman placed her hand against his chest, stopping him in his tracks. “You can’t go with her just yet,” she informed him. And then she softened just a little. “They need to settle her in first, then they’ll call for you.”

  Adam was accustomed to making his own rules as he went along, to coming and going as he saw fit without waiting for someone else’s okay.

  But this wasn’t the kind of situation he ordinarily found himself in. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he had no recourse but to go along with procedure. “What floor is maternity on?”

  “Fifth.” She clamped her mouth shut, as if she’d just given away a state secret. “But you can wait here,” she went on, her eyes daring him to contradict the edict.

  “I’ll wait on the fifth floor,” he told the woman. There was no arguing with his tone.

  “All right, suit yourself. Just give the nurse at the desk your name when you get there.”

  He inclined his head, as if she had been the one to win and not him. “Yes, ma’am.”

  As he walked to the bank of elevators located to the side, he heard the nurse mutter under her breath, “If I was just twenty years younger…”

  A small, amused smile curved his mouth.

  “How do you feel?” he asked Eve, walking into her private room.

  It was more than thirty minutes later and he had begun to think that something had gone wrong. But then an intern had found him and gave him the all clear sign, telling him the number of Eve’s room. He lost no time in getting there.

  She’d just begun to doze off. The sound of Adam’s voice temporarily banished any thought of sleep. She’d started to think that he’d taken the opportunity to leave the hospital.

  That he hadn’t coaxed a smile from her.

  “Like I’ve been run over by a truck. Twice.” Eve took a deep breath and pushed herself up into a sitting position. “They said that Brooklyn’s fine.”

  Adam nodded. He’d been to the nursery before coming to her room. “I know. I asked.”

  She should have known he would. The man didn’t believe in leaving stones unturned. “You’re thorough.”

  Crossing to her, he stood at her bedside and struggled against the temptation to brush the hair away from her cheek. Instead, Adam shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Keeps the mistakes at a minimum,” he told her.

  She raised her eyes to his. For a moment, she was silent. And then she said, “At least some of them.”

  Was she telling him that she thought of their having made love as a mistake? That would mean that she considered the baby a mistake, which wasn’t the impression he’d gotten. He’d seen love in her eyes when she looked down at Brooklyn.

  “Some of them,” he echoed.

  She ran her fingers along the top of her hospital gown. There was so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to ask him and somehow resolve. But she was so very tired again. Far too tired to think clearly.

  As she fought off the drugging demands of fatigue, Eve tried to remember what it was that she’d asked him to do. And then it came to her.

  “Did you call Vera? I didn’t give you her number,” she realized out loud.

  “I found it,” he assured her. “And I called her. She wanted to know who I was.”

  She looked at him warily. “And what did you tell her?”

  “The truth,” he said simply. “That I was someone you used to know.”

  “That’s not the truth.” Although she fervently wished that it was. “I didn’t know you.” And still don’t, she added silently. “I thought I did, but I didn’t.”

  “We can talk about that some other time if you want to,” he told her, cutting her off. He glanced at his watch. It was almost two in the morning—as Vera had pointed out none too happily when he’d called her—until he’d explained why he was calling. “Right now, you need your rest.”

  It just wasn’t in her to argue with him. She knew he’d win. “I am tired,” she agreed.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Eve.”

  It was a perfunctory remark. Right now, he really didn’t know if he was coming back,
at least not in such a way where she could see him. And he did have work to attend to, both his actual job and what he did in order to maintain a cover for the outside world. There were times when his double life really got to be confusing. The less she knew, the better for everyone. He couldn’t jeopardize the mission, not even for her.

  Besides, he was fairly sure the woman didn’t completely trust him. She would be better off if he stayed away as much as he could.

  Bending over, he pressed a kiss to Eve’s forehead. “Get some sleep,” he instructed just before he started to walk away.

  He was almost at the door when he heard her call his name.

  “Adam?”

  Turning around, he waited for her to continue. Did she have a lingering craving and want him to bring her back a pound of pistachios or some licorice? “Yes?”

  “Stay with me. Just for a few minutes,” she added, anticipating being turned down. “I don’t want to be alone just yet.”

  Was she having doubts about what she’d just let herself in for, becoming a mother? He heard that a lot of new mothers suddenly worried about that once the euphoria wore away.

  He retraced his steps to her bedside. “Sure.”

  Pulling up a chair next to the bed, he swung it around and straddled it, then waited for Eve to drift off to sleep.

  Chapter 6

  An ache woke her up. It shot through her entire body, from the very roots of her hair down to the tips of her toes. All except for two of her fingernails—one on each hand—and those felt numb because she’d clutched so fiercely at her comforter while pushing out her daughter.

  Her daughter. She had a daughter?

  She had a daughter.

  Her eyes flew open, the very act instantly divorcing her from the dream she’d been having.

  She didn’t need to remember, she knew the dream by heart. It was the same dream that had invaded a third of her nights in the last eight months. A dream that echoed what she’d felt that one glorious night that she and Adam had made love.

  Eve blew out a breath. She hadn’t had that dream for at least a couple of weeks now and had begun to nurse the hope that she was finally over it.

  Finally over him.

  Having Adam pop back into her life had brought the dream back in vivid living color—both the bad and the good.

  Adam.

  Last night’s events came rushing back to her, assaulting her brain and sending her system into high alert. She couldn’t let her guard down. Now that she knew what he was, she had to remain vigilant—at least, until she was sure that he’d changed.

  If only…

  As she remembered the last words that had passed between them, her eyes darted toward the chair where he’d sat down.

  It was empty.

  A sinking feeling set in and she railed against it. How lame could she have been, asking him to stay with her a little while longer? What in heaven’s name had gotten into her? Nothing had changed—and probably he hadn’t, either. She wanted Adam to go, not stay. So why had she suddenly felt so vulnerable? Why had she asked him to stay with her like a child who was afraid of the dark?

  A noise came from the doorway and she glanced over, half hoping—

  Idiot!

  A blonde nurse walked in. She looked as if she was about twenty-two. A young two-twenty at that. The nurse pushed a see-through bassinette before her.

  “Someone here wants to see her mommy,” the nurse all but chirped cheerfully.

  Eve squinted ever so slightly, reading the nurse’s name tag: Kathy.

  As Kathy parked the bassinette at the foot of the bed, she scanned the room. “Your husband stepped out?” she asked.

  It took Eve a second to make the connection. “He’s not my husband,” she corrected.

  “Oh.” The response seemed to squelch the nurse’s enthusiasm, but just for the barest moment. And then the insuppressible cheerfulness returned. “Well, anyway, he seemed very devoted to you.” Picking the baby up, Kathy made a few soothing noises to the infant and then placed the tiny bundle into Eve’s arms.

  Eve hated the fact that she was distracted even the slightest bit, but the nurse’s comment had aroused her curiosity. She patted the baby’s bottom as she asked, “What makes you say that?”

  Kathy moved around the room, drawing back the curtains at the window, tucking the blanket in on one side. She seemed as if she needed to be in perpetual motion.

  “Well, for one thing, he stayed here most of the night. He was sitting by your bed when I came on my shift this morning,” she added.

  Eve saw only one reason for that. “He must’ve fallen asleep.”

  But Kathy shook her head, a wistful smile curving the corners of her mouth. “Looked pretty wide-awake to me. Gail said he’d been there all night, just watching you sleep.”

  “Gail?”

  “The nurse who was on before me.” She smiled down into Brooklyn’s face. Wide-awake, the infant appeared to absorb her surroundings. “The baby looks like him,” Kathy commented. And then she raised her eyes quickly to look at her patient, as if she realized that she’d just tripped over her tongue. “He is the father, right?”

  “Yes,” Eve said quietly, gazing at her daughter’s face. A face that had more in common with Adam than with her. “He’s the father.”

  A shade under six feet with an almost painfully thin body, Danny Sederholm leaned indolently against the side of the cement steps of the renovated campus library. The renovation had been conducted, in part, thanks to his father and his uncle’s generous contributions. Both were former alumni of the prestigious college, as was his mother. It made coasting easier.

  The student’s small, deep-set brown eyes unabashedly looked him over and took renewed assessment as he approached. Adam struggled to keep his contempt and loathing to himself.

  “You look like hell. Something wrong?” Sederholm asked, trying to sound high-handed.

  The marbles-for-brains twenty-two-year-old was leagues away from the kind of kid he’d been at that age, Adam thought. Circumstances had forced him to be a man early. Sederholm, he judged, would never be one no matter how old he was.

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing I can’t handle,” he told the snide senior, his tone firmly closing the door on any further speculation regarding the situation.

  “Do I look worried?” Sederholm challenged. “Hey, as long as it don’t interfere with ‘business,’” he emphasized the word haughtily, “I don’t care if you’re juggling flying monkeys.”

  “‘As long as it “don’t” interfere?’” Adam knew he should let the comment slide, but bad grammar always got under his skin, especially when uttered by someone who gave himself airs. “How much did you say your father was paying for your education? Because whatever it is, it’s way too much.”

  Sederholm’s face darkened. “Like I don’t have better things to do than go sit in a lousy auditorium with a bunch of competitive geeks.” He puffed up his chest. “I’m making more money now than my old man ever did at my age—or when he graduated.”

  Adam knew exactly what tuition was at the school. It was part of his background research. “Then why would you bother registering? The $40K this costs could be better spent.”

  Sederholm shrugged, his large, bony shoulders moving carelessly beneath a sweater that would have set him back two months’ pay. “It’s his money and that’s what he wants to do with it.”

  Adam saw through the blasé remark. “Can’t figure a way to siphon it off, can you?” he guessed, not bothering to hide his amusement.

  “I don’t want to,” the student snapped at him, annoyed. “In case your tiny brain can’t figure it out, an Ivy League college campus is the perfect place to run my enterprise. As an undergraduate student,” he spread his hands out wide, “I fit right in.”

  Adam saw a few obstacles to the senior’s “brilliant” plan. “You have to pass a few tests to stay in the game, don’t you?”

  Sederholm snorted, more than a little pleased with him
self. “I’ve got that covered. There’s this guy who, for the right price, can write an A-plus paper on any subject you throw at him.”

  There were always plenty of those around, Adam thought. Even when he was going to school. “What about tests?”

  The student’s smile was condescendingly smug. “I’ve got that covered, too.” He lifted his chin, a lofty look in his eyes. “Why all the questions?”

  “Just curious.” Because that didn’t seem to satisfy his contact, Adam added, “When I grow up, I want to be just like you,” allowing only a drop of sarcasm to leak through.

  Initially, the senior seemed to take the words as a compliment, but the frown that soon unfurled told Adam that the arrogant drug dealer realized he was being ridiculed.

  “I can have you wiped off the face of the earth with a snap of my fingers,” Sederholm threatened him haughtily, snapping his fingers to illustrate.

  Obviously, the little twerp had probably come close to OD’ing on classic gangster movies, most likely starting with Cagney and Bogart. For two cents, he would have loved to squash the snotty senior like a bug, but he knew bigger things were at stake here than just mollifying his temper—no matter how good it might feel at the time. Like it or not—and he didn’t—he needed this jerk to get hooked up to the head importer whose identity was still unknown to him.

  “Before you snap again,” Adam told him, lightly catching hold of Sederholm’s wrist, “I’d like to place an order for my people.”

  “Business before pleasure,” the cocky student declared with an obliging nod of his head. Adam released his hand, wishing he could be wringing Sederholm’s neck instead. “You know,” Sederholm said, the smile on his lips as genuine as the smile on a cobra, “one of these days, you’re going to push my buttons too hard.”

  I’m counting on it, kid, Adam thought just before he gave the college senior a list of just how much he was looking to score.

  Sederholm seemed properly impressed. “That’s almost twice as much as you bought last time.”