“There’s no way I’ll ever get married for real.”

Although Sam had no intention of ever walking down the aisle again, Bridget’s words surprised him. He wondered how she could make such a certain, sweeping statement.

Well, that was her business, he immediately answered himself. Not his. All he had to know about Special Agent Bridget Logan was that she was as dedicated to playing his wife, to getting the job done and to wrapping up this case as he was. He looked at her again, at the way the soft light filmed her hair in gold and made her skin glow and her eyes luminous. He noted the soft curves of her breasts and hips that even her baggy clothing couldn’t hide. In her sleep-deprived state she looked soft and tempting and vulnerable.

Yeah, he thought. They both needed to dedicate themselves to wrapping up this case.

The sooner the better.

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is a RITA® Award-nominated author of more than sixty works of contemporary romance. Her books regularly appear on the USA TODAY and the Waldenbooks bestseller lists for romance and mass-market paperbacks. Her novel The Thing About Men hit the New York Times extended bestseller list, as well. Her novels have been published in more than two dozen languages and three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She currently lives in a small town in her native Kentucky with her husband and son.

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

The Newlyweds
Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Be a part of

Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.

Two FBI agents pose as newlyweds to expose a black-market baby ring. With the mission under way, this “pretend” couple finds the idea of real marriage—to each other—very tantalizing….

Bridget Logan: While hunting down dangerous criminals, Bridget secretly longed for a family of her own. Being a special agent didn’t offer her much chance of true love until Samuel Jones became her partner…and her husband!

Samuel Jones: When his ex-wife betrayed him, Samuel vowed never to commit again. But then Bridget, hardworking and earnest, stole his heart and made him rethink his philosophy of love. Would following his heart give him the happiness he so deserved?

A wanted man: He was on the loose and no one knew where he would strike next. Would his love for a certain Portland General nurse calm his vengeful soul?

Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.

AVAILABLE JUNE 2010

1.) To Love and Protect by Susan Mallery

2.) Secrets & Seductions by Pamela Toth

3.) Royal Affair by Laurie Paige

4.) For Love and Family by Victoria Pade

AVAILABLE JULY 2010

5.) The Bachelor by Marie Ferrarella

6.) A Precious Gift by Karen Rose Smith

7.) Child of Her Heart by Cheryl St. John

8.) Intimate Surrender by RaeAnne Thayne

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2010

9.) The Secret Heir by Gina Wilkins

10.) The Newlyweds by Elizabeth Bevarly

11.) Right by Her Side by Christie Ridgway

12.) The Homecoming by Anne Marie Winston

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010

13.) The Greatest Risk by Cara Colter

14.) What a Man Needs by Patricia Thayer

15.) Undercover Passion by Raye Morgan

16.) Royal Seduction by Donna Clayton

For all the great folks at Silhouette Books, with many thanks and much affection.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

One

B ridget Logan knew a lot of things about a lot of things. She knew the winner of every World Series since 1986. She knew how to speak Spanish, French and German. She knew pi to the twenty-seventh character. She knew how to make her whites whiter and her colors brighter. She knew the secret to beautiful skin. She knew all the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.” Really. She even knew how to program her VCR.

She also knew how to bug a room so that nobody, but nobody, could tell it was wired. And she knew how to change her entire appearance with a few simple tricks and props that fit nicely into a nondescript handbag. And she knew how to disassemble and reassemble her .38 revolver, and how to hold it steady and shoot so that the bullet went straight through the white paper heart on the black silhouette at target practice.

But she didn’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies.

Nor did she have any desire to learn. Because Bridget Logan was on the fast track in her career, a rising star at the Federal Bureau of Investigations. She had risen so quickly, in fact, that—as of a week ago, anyway—she’d been awarded a field assignment to a counterterrorist task force in Vienna, a plum appointment that even some veteran agents had been vying to win, and which would have boosted her into a very elite investigation group at the tender age of twenty-five.

And that would have put Bridget exactly where she wanted to be. She’d decided in junior high school that she wanted to pursue a career in law enforcement. Smart and driven and ambitious since her first day of school, she’d ultimately skipped two grades and graduated from high school at the age of sixteen. Then she’d left her hometown of Portland, Oregon, to move across the country, earning her bachelor’s in computer science in three years’ time at Georgetown University. Then she’d worked another three years for one of Alexandria, Virginia’s premier private investigation firms. And then, once she’d fulfilled the three years of professional work experience required by the FBI, she’d gone after her dream. She’d entered the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, when she was only twenty-two, and had become one of its youngest graduates. Since then, she’d put in three years for the Bureau, doing the usual grunt work all the newbies had to tolerate, then becoming a full-fledged field agent before she was even twenty-four.

She’d deliberately sought out the toughest cases, then had lied, begged, borrowed or stolen to be assigned to them. And she’d worked hard, with a passion that superseded anything she’d ever felt. She was still one of the youngest field agents working for the Bureau, yet she’d gained experience some of her older colleagues hadn’t come close to achieving. She didn’t have time even to think about a husband or family, because she gave everything she had to her job. The Vienna assignment would have boosted her into an even higher echelon, professionally speaking, and it would have been a hell of a lot of fun living and working in Europe.

Instead, two days after her arrival in Vienna, she’d been told she was being reassigned, effective immediately. And though she’d always had absolutely no interest in becoming a wife or a mother, she was now going to have to learn a lot about being both. Because for her new field assignment, Bridget Logan, G-woman and counterterrorist, was about to become Bridget Logan, trophy wife and mom wanna-be.

It was going to be the hardest role she’d ever had to play.

Especially since she hadn’t met her husband-to-be. She wasn’t even sure yet what the specifics of her assignment were, or why she had been selected for the job. She only knew that, a few days ago, she had been scheduled to be posing as a member of an obscure eastern European terrorist network, looking to score some stinger missiles from an American arms dealer working out of Germany, and today she was back in Portland. She’d gone into the Vienna office on Monday expecting to be briefed about her assignment before heading off to Zagreb, but had instead been told to turn around and pack her bags and head home, because she was needed for a “special assignment” she’d learn more about upon arrival.

Oh, and she’d also been told to spend her hours on the long flight home perusing the latest issues of Vogue, Town and Country and The Robb Report, along with a variety of literature on clinical infertility. And because Bridget Logan knew a lot of things about a lot of things, she’d suspected right off that she’d been pulled from her work in Europe to go home—and to learn about clinical infertility along the way—because of her parents’ involvement in one of Portland’s most famous establishments: the Children’s Connection. That could be the only reason why they’d taken her, specifically, off such an elite overseas assignment, one that would have pushed her even more quickly up the professional ladder, to travel halfway around the world for an assignment that could have gone to anyone.

Because the Logans of Portland, Oregon, were known—even internationally—for the work they did at the foundation that helped infertile couples adopt or conceive. Long before Bridget was born, her parents had suffered a terrible tragedy; their firstborn child had been kidnapped and murdered. Leslie and Terrence Logan had never quite gotten over the loss of their son Robbie, but eventually, they’d managed to heal enough to move on and start their family anew. Through adoption and conception both, the Logan children now numbered five, of whom Bridget was the youngest. That family had come about due in large part to Children’s Connection, and Leslie and Terrence were so grateful to the organization for making it happen that they had virtually become a part of the organization, donating both considerable time and considerable money to help it thrive.

Before the Logans became involved, Children’s Connection had consisted of a small orphanage that had been in operation since the early 1940s, and a fledgling fertility clinic associated with Portland General Hospital. But through generous grants from the Logans, and very effective fund-raising events often orchestrated by Leslie Logan, Children’s Connection had expanded over the years into a state-of-the-art fertility treatment center that included counseling for childless couples and support groups for single parents. Financial support—again, often provided by grants from the Logans—to orphanages in key cities around the world, especially Moscow, had, in recent years, also introduced foreign adoption as an option to prospective parents.

These days, Children’s Connection had satellite orphanages all over the world, and they brought couples who were unable to conceive together with children who desperately needed homes. And their world-renowned fertility clinic had made conception a reality for couples who hadn’t thought they stood a chance having biological children. Hundreds, even thousands of families had been born over the years, thanks to Children’s Connection and the Logans. And thousands more would come about in the future.

Bridget utterly respected and admired her parents’ dedication to the organization. Especially her mother’s, as Leslie Logan was as committed to her volunteer work at Children’s Connection as Terrence Logan was to his job as CEO of the Logan Corporation, the family’s million-dollar computer software business. And Bridget’s sister, Jillian, worked for Children’s Connection, too, as a therapist. Her brothers Eric and Peter had followed in their father’s footsteps, and both worked for the Logan Corporation. Well, she had to concede affectionately, Eric perhaps worked harder at being a playboy than he did at being VP of Marketing and Sales at the Logan Corporation. Or, at least, he had until he’d been auctioned off to his now-fiancée, Jenny. Jenny had had a rather humbling effect on Bridget’s slightly older brother, something all the Logans had welcomed. And her adopted son, Cole, had had rather a wonderful effect on Eric, bringing out a softer, nurturing side of him that none of them had even known he possessed. That was something—and someone—all the Logans had welcomed, too.

Peter had recently married, to—wonder of wonders—Katie Crosby. The Vegas wedding had come as a surprise to all the Logans, because there had never been any love lost between the two families. Leslie and Terrence still blamed Katie’s mother, Sheila Crosby, for the kidnapping and murder of their son Robbie, because Robbie and his friend Danny Crosby had been playing unattended outside when Robbie was abducted. Had Sheila been more alert and less neglectful, Robbie, to the elder Logans’ way of thinking, would still be alive and well today. Still, it was good to see Peter and Katie in love and together, and maybe it was another step toward putting Robbie’s memory to rest. Bridget had flown home briefly for a reception Leslie had hosted for Peter and his new wife, and the two had very obviously been devoted to each other—and to the baby they were expecting.

Bridget’s interests and passions, though, like her brother David’s, had lain somewhere other than the Logan Corporation and Children’s Connection. David worked for the State Department and had until recently been on assignment overseas. In fact, he’d recently gotten engaged, too, to a woman he met while in Moscow. And he, like Eric, would soon be a dad, to Elizabeth Duncan’s adopted infant daughter, Natasha. But that was where the similarities between Bridget and David ended, because she had no desire to find herself married and in the family way. Having cut her teeth on Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, Bridget had known early on what she wanted to do with her life. And she was doing it. Exactly the way she’d envisioned.

Well, except for being pulled off of a dangerous, high-profile foreign case to be assigned to a piddling, boring, domestic one instead. But then, no life, she supposed, was completely without bumps. She had to pay her dues at some point, didn’t she?

After deplaning and collecting her two tailored leather suitcases from the baggage carousel, Bridget did her best to smooth the travel wrinkles from her beige linen trousers and white linen shirt. Knowing it was futile, but being tidy by nature, she tucked a few errant strands of auburn hair back into the no-longer-neat braid that fell to shoulder length. Then she finger-combed her thick bangs, grimacing when she noted how badly in need of a trim they were. She was exhausted from the twenty-plus-hour trip and what had seemed like hundreds of plane changes, and what she really wanted most was to go to her parents’ house to shower and change and catch a quick nap. But she had work to do first. And for Bridget, work always came first.

She’d been told she would be met at the airport by someone from the Portland field office, so she resigned herself to make do for now with the few hours sleep she’d stolen over the last twenty-four, and with the airline peanuts and the bagel and cream cheese she’d consumed while changing planes in Chicago. Her stomach grumbled its discontent at her decision, and she grumbled back that it was the best she could do.

What time was it here, anyway? she wondered. She searched her tired brain, trying to remember what time her flight had been scheduled to land. Three-thirteen, she recalled. But was that a.m. or p.m.? Surely p.m., she told herself. Though, truly, she wasn’t sure. It was the end of April, however, that much she did know, because it had been the end of April in Vienna, too. And springtime in Portland, she recalled, meant rain. Lots of it. Of course, summer, fall and winter meant rain, too, but springtime seemed to be the worst for it. She just wished she’d remembered that before she’d packed her raincoat.

Popping a mint into her mouth, Bridget collected her things and made her way toward the exit, scanning the crowd of people beyond baggage claim before she realized she had no idea whom she was looking for. Unless maybe it was that guy over there who was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said Logan. Being a good agent, and knowing a lot of things about a lot of things, Bridget recognized a clue when she saw one. Even in her sleep-deprived state.

But she woke up a bit when her gaze wandered higher, and she saw the face of the man who was holding the sign. He looked plenty rested and was in no way rumpled, something that made Bridget feel even more disheveled than she already was. His hair was the color of imported milk chocolate, flecked with flashes of gold in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. Lights like that always made her hair look brassy, she couldn’t help thinking. And instead of travel-worn and disarrayed locks like hers, his hair was expertly cut and styled, not a strand out of place. He was dressed in the sort of suit most field agents wore—dark, nondescript, the kind meant to draw no attention—with a white dress shirt and plain blue tie. In spite of that, the man had drawn quite a bit of attention, Bridget noticed, because a trio of women standing nearby were all gazing at him with something akin to longing.

Which wasn’t exactly surprising, Bridget had to concede, since the man was, in a word, gorgeous, his features chiseled and powerful and jagged, as if sculpted by the ferocious hands of an irascible artist. Instead of making him look dull and inconspicuous, the blandness of his clothing only made more appreciable his virile good looks. But his eyes, she decided as she drew nearer, were without question his best feature yet, because they were seductively hooded and breathtakingly blue. But not the kind of blue one normally saw on people. They were a dark, midnight blue, reminiscent of a twilit sky, that silky mix of purple and sapphire that slipped in just before complete darkness overtook everything.

As she drew to a stop in front of the man, she noticed he was tall, too, something that came as no surprise at all. But at five-seven, Bridget didn’t have to tip her head back to meet too many male eyes. For this man, though, she had to tip her head way back, because he easily topped six feet.

She told herself not to be intimidated by him—yeah, right—and did her best to sound efficient when she told him, “I’m Special Agent Bridget Logan.”

He dipped his head forward in acknowledgment and gave her a quick once-over, the kind of appraisal any agent would give anybody, simply because it was in every agent’s nature to do so. But Bridget couldn’t get a handle on what kind of impression he formed about her, which was more than a little disconcerting since she had a real knack for reading people. It was something else that had benefited her in her quick climb up the Bureau ladder. As soon as he finished his silent assessment, he tossed the sign with her name on it into a trash can to his left, making the shot effortlessly without even looking.

“Sam Jones,” he told her by way of a greeting. “Special Agent Samuel Jones,” he then corrected himself, as if he needed to make the distinction. As if he needed her to know he needed to make the distinction. “I’m with the Portland field office. Welcome home, Logan.”

His welcome was as warm as the rest of him—namely not warm at all—but that was just fine by Bridget. She wasn’t all that pleased to be home, truth be told. Yes, she rarely made it back to Portland these days, but she spoke to everyone in her family regularly by phone. And although she missed them, she’d been too busy to feel homesick. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Portland. On the contrary, she loved being able to call the city her hometown. But she had things to do, places to go, people to see. She had a career to build. And returning here had been a giant step backward in that regard.

“Special Agent Logan,” Bridget corrected his identification of her. She needed to make that clear to him, too. “So just what am I doing home, anyway?”

“You’re needed for a job,” he told her.

“That much I gathered,” she replied, biting back the duh with which she’d almost punctuated the statement. Exhaustion, she told herself. She always got cranky when she didn’t get enough sleep. “What I want to know is why me?” she elaborated patiently.

Instead of answering her, Sam Jones—or, rather, Special Agent Samuel Jones—bent to pick up the larger of her two bags, leaving the small one for Bridget. An equal opportunist, she thought. She liked that in a man. Not that she liked this man, mind you, she hastily backpedaled. But he clearly wasn’t a coddler, and she respected that. She wasn’t a coddler, either.

He tipped his head toward the exit doors. “Car’s just outside. You’ll be briefed on the assignment when we get to the field office. You’re expected ASAP. I’m expected to be the one to get you there.”

He was obviously no-nonsense, too, something else Bridget admired. Still, a little information up front would have been nice.

Without awaiting a response from her, Samuel Jones began to make his way to the exit, so she hastily retrieved her other suitcase and followed. Involuntarily, her gaze fell to the elegant expanse of his broad shoulders as he cut a swath easily through the crowd, and she noticed how much taller he was than everyone else. He turned his head once, to glance at something that must have caught his eye, and even his profile made her want to sigh wistfully. And seeing as how Bridget Logan didn’t have a wistful bone in her body, that wasn’t exactly a reaction she welcomed.

Fatigue, she told herself again. She was only acting like a boy-crazy preteen because she was tired and crabby and hungry. She hadn’t been boy-crazy even when she was a preteen. She’d been way too focused on school, and way more interested in changing the world than in thumbtacking pictures of River Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio to her bedroom wall. Once Agent Jones dropped her at headquarters and took off again—and once she got some decent sleep and a decent meal—she wouldn’t give him a second thought.

They walked in silence until Jones halted behind a black, commonplace, four-door sedan—government issue, natch—and thumbed the key bob to open the trunk. He hefted her suitcase inside, reached for the one she held out to him and repeated the action, then thumbed the key bob again to unlock the car doors. He didn’t stride to the passenger side to open the door for Bridget. And again, she grudgingly saluted him for it. He was obviously the kind of man who assumed a woman in her job could take care of herself. And she could.

So it made absolutely no sense that Bridget should feel slighted by his gesture. Or lack thereof. For some strange reason, though, she did. Boy, she really did need to catch up on her sleep.

After folding herself into the passenger seat and strapping on her seat belt, she turned to face Agent Jones again. “So how much do you know about this case I’m being assigned to?” she asked.

He looked over at her, his stony facade cracking just enough that she could see he thought she was nuts for asking such a question. “I know everything about it,” he told her in a tone of voice that likewise suggested he thought she was nuts.

Or maybe he thought she was stupid. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time she’d received such a reaction from a male agent. Not that that made it any easier to tolerate now. She arched her brows in surprise and resentment at his tone, but before she could speak, he continued, this time sounding mildly disgusted.

“You think I’m just the errand boy they sent to pick you up, don’t you?” he asked curtly.

“Well, aren’t you?” she asked.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “How old are you, Logan?”

“Twenty-five,” she told him crisply. Actually, she was mere months from her twenty-sixth birthday. Then, just as abruptly as he had, she asked, “How old are you, Jones?”

He clearly hadn’t expected the rapid-fire retort. Nevertheless, he told her readily enough, “Thirty-two. I have ten years in at the Bureau. Seniority, one might say.” And before she had a chance to remind him that seniority was earned by more than just years, he continued coolly, “Look, Logan, I know all about you, all right? Hell, it’s been hammered home to every agent here in Portland how fast and furious the homegrown Girl Wonder rose through the ranks at Quantico. But I, for one, suspect a lot of that was due to Daddy Logan’s influence, both in Portland and elsewhere. Must be nice having an old man worth millions pulling strings for you. Me, I wouldn’t know. I earned my position the old-fashioned way—by working hard and fighting tooth and nail for it.”

Now Bridget’s eyebrows really shot up. The animosity she had sensed simmering just beneath his surface had boiled right up from under the lid, burning her with hisses and steam. This time she didn’t battle anything except Jones when she replied. “My father had nothing to do with my progress,” she snapped. “I earned my position, too, Agent Jones. By working my ass off, fighting a hell of a lot harder than you, and by making sacrifices you couldn’t begin to understand. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise. If anybody gets handed anything in this business, it’s those of you who have a Y chromosome. We women get handed jack. We have to work twice as hard as any of you guys to get half as much.”

He set his jaw tightly at her outburst, but he said nothing more in response. Which was just as well. Bridget’s animosity wasn’t exactly cooling at the moment, and she hated losing control almost as much as she hated not being taken seriously. Jones cranked the key in the ignition then, turning his gaze forward. He said not another word for the rest of the ride, and that was just fine with Bridget. She wanted to be rid of the SOB as soon as possible. And until then, she wanted to forget he existed at all.

The Portland field office of the FBI was located in the Crown Plaza Building, a boxy white building downtown that housed a number of other organizations and businesses. The city itself was just as Bridget had seen it the last time she had spent more than a couple of days at home about seventeen months ago. When she’d come home for Peter and Katie’s reception, she’d barely seen anything outside the Logan home. The only difference now was that when she’d been home two Christmases ago, for all of five days, a delicate whisper of snow had been falling—a fairly rare occurrence for the city. Now, a fine gauze of rain misted over the entire downtown, the product of fat slate clouds overhead. In spite of that, a strange warmth spread through her. Even though, under other circumstances, she might have been in Vienna at the moment, it really did feel kind of nice to be home.

Until she remembered her dour driver. Once she got rid of Agent Jones, she amended, then it would feel kind of nice to be home.

He parked the car on a lower level of the parking garage and, again without a word, unfolded his big frame from behind the wheel and began walking toward the elevators before Bridget’s feet even touched the ground. Somehow she refrained from rolling her eyes heavenward.

Jerk, she thought.

But she hastened her stride to catch up with him. After all, she’d never been inside the Portland office. And since 9/11, a lot of new security checks had been put into place. She’d have to follow Jones’s lead if she wanted to make this as simple and as fast as she could. So she doubled her pace, taking two steps for every one of his, so large was his stride with those long, long legs. And she did her best to keep breathing at her regular rate as she hustled along, because the last thing she needed to be doing was panting after this man, even if it was only because she was winded.

They rode in silence up to the fourth floor, then he led her down a hall to the field office and entered ahead of her. But he held the door open for her once he passed through it, something that frankly surprised her. Okay, so he had some latent sense of courtesy, she conceded grudgingly. That didn’t make up for the way he had verbally assailed her in the car.

A secretary dressed in efficient gray snapped to attention at their appearance, and she greeted Agent Jones informally before saying, “He’s expecting you. Go on in.”

Bridget was surprised when Jones did exactly as the receptionist instructed. Okay, so he could take orders from women and not be put off by his inferiors, she further conceded, though still grudgingly. Clearly, it was just something about Bridget herself who put the guy off.

Her father’s money and influence, she recalled, neither of which had she ever taken advantage as an adult. She’d earned academic scholarships to put herself through college, and had worked both on- and off-campus to pay for her living expenses. And although her new role would have her posing as a trophy wife, a lifestyle with which she should have been familiar enough, Bridget had never really been into the physical trappings of the Logan wealth. Yes, she’d grown up in a big, beautiful home in one of Portland’s most desirable neighborhoods. Yes, she’d benefited from private schools and extracurricular activities a lot of families couldn’t afford. But not once had she taken any of them for granted. And as soon as she’d been old enough to start making her own way in the world, she had.

Not that she’d bother to tell any of that to Jones. Within minutes, the guy would be out of her life for good. And good riddance to him, too.

For now, though, she followed him into the next room and found one that looked a lot like the offices of other Bureau heads she’d seen, painted an institutional off-white and furnished with institutional gray Berber carpeting, fake wood shelves, a fake wood desk and fake leather chairs. The man who stood behind that desk was very real, however, looking as much like a federal agent as Jones didn’t. Average height, average weight, middle age, medium-brown hair and eyes. Average, middle and medium everything else, too.

“Agent Logan,” the man said as he stood. “Welcome back to Portland. I’m Steve Pennington. Special Agent in Charge.”

“Agent Pennington,” Bridget said as she extended her hand.

He shook it once, confidently, professionally, then silently motioned that she should seat herself in one of the two chairs opposite his desk. She did, and was surprised that Agent Jones took the other one. That didn’t bode well for his leaving, which was the one activity she would very much have liked to see him indulge in.

“I’m sure you’re wondering,” Agent Pennington continued, “why you were pulled out of Vienna to return home.”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Bridget told him. “I’m assuming, because of the other information I was given about clinical infertility, that it’s because of my family’s involvement with Children’s Connection.”

“It is,” Pennington said. “You probably already know about some of the problems that have been plaguing the organization for the past several months.”

She nodded. “When I’ve spoken with my family, they’ve mentioned from time to time some of the, uh, setbacks the organization has experienced over the past year, yes,” she said. “I know there was an attempted kidnapping of an infant adopted by one of their clients—mostly because my brother David was involved and will soon be that child’s father,” she added with a smile, still feeling strangely warm and fuzzy about the prospect of becoming an aunt so many times over so quickly. “And I know about a successful kidnapping of another infant that’s still under investigation.”

“Yes, it is,” Pennington said. “What’s not been made public, though, is that we have reason to believe both the attempted and successful kidnappings may be linked to some other kidnappings that have occurred in the city over the past year.”

“I didn’t know about the possible connection,” she told Pennington. But she said nothing more, because she could tell by his expression that he wasn’t finished yet.

“And what’s also not been made public,” he continued, “is that there was a mix-up not long ago at the Children’s Connection clinic with some, uh, sperm,” he concluded in a matter-of-fact voice, even though that last wasn’t a word Bridget normally heard spoken in her profession. “And we have reason to believe it was done deliberately. Currently we aren’t sure why, or if it’s the same person or persons responsible for the kidnappings. But we suspect the actions are all connected.”

She nodded again, professional enough to pretend she hadn’t noticed Pennington’s stumble over the word sperm. Or even his use of the word sperm, which was even more admirable on her part, if she did say so herself.

Pennington went on. “As a result of all these incidents—and this is something else you may not know, the FBI has become involved in a criminal investigation, the focus of which is Children’s Connection.”

“No, sir, I didn’t know that,” Bridget said, surprised by the revelation. “No one has mentioned it to me. Are my parents and Jillian aware of it? Are they part of it?” Surely neither of them could be suspected of any wrongdoing, she thought.

“They’re aware of it now. We tried to keep a lid on it for as long as we could. And, no, although we’ve questioned both of them, it was only routine. None of them has ever been suspected of being a part of this. But a nurse who works for the hospital affiliated with Children’s Connection—a Nancy Allen—went to the police back in January with her suspicions that a black-market baby ring might be operating somewhere within the organization,” Pennington said.

“A black-market baby ring?” Bridget echoed dubiously. “Sounds like a bad movie of the week.”

“I wish it was,” Pennington told her, smiling a little uncomfortably.

Poor guy, Bridget thought. First, he’d had to say the word sperm in the line of duty, and now the words black-market baby ring. Not the best day, she suspected, for Agent Pennington.

“At first,” he continued on valiantly, “the local authorities were less than convinced of the woman’s story.”

They were probably even less convinced of the woman’s sanity, Bridget thought.

“But the woman was insistent, so they pursued the charge, if for no other reason than to be able to prove to her that nothing was amiss. Unfortunately, their investigation led them to conclude that there could indeed be criminal activity occurring at Children’s Connection. The police notified the FBI when they realized there were potential interstate and even international violations.”

“The attempted kidnapping in Russia,” Bridget guessed.

Pennington nodded. “We think there may actually be a Russian pipeline of sorts. Perhaps pipelines from several countries. Someone who’s providing infants to a contact at Children’s Connection. That person then offers the children up for sale to couples who are on the Connection’s waiting list. Or perhaps to people who were turned down as prospective parents. And we fear those foreign infants may be being acquired illegally. At this point, we still don’t know a lot. But there have been more developments since that first report that have convinced us there is indeed criminal activity going on within the organization. There’s even evidence that someone stole some fertilized eggs and has been selling them illegally on the Internet.”

Bridget marveled at the deeds some people would commit, all for money, no doubt, she guessed.

“We suspect that all of these crimes are related,” Pennington continued, “and we’re reasonably certain that there’s more than one person involved. We just don’t know who the people are, or what division of the organization they work in. Realistically, they could be anywhere.”

“And that’s why I’m here,” Bridget guessed. “A combination of my FBI training and my connection to Children’s Connection, however superficial.”

“That connection is about to become less superficial,” Pennington told her. “We need you to go undercover with another agent, posing as a married couple who are looking to adopt a child. But because you’re not exactly a stranger to anyone at Children’s Connection—or, at least, your family isn’t—you’ll essentially be posing as yourself. Bridget Logan. Daughter of Terrence and Leslie Logan. But you won’t be an agent for the FBI. Your parents have assured us that no one at the organization knows you work for the Bureau.”

“That’s true, as far as I know,” Bridget said. “I’ve never been active in my parents’ avocation, and I don’t really know anyone who works there, except my sister. I don’t think I’ve even visited the place for more than a decade, probably. Still, I don’t know for certain that no one in my family has ever mentioned my job to anyone there.”

“They all assure us they’ve never discussed you with anyone. Which means you’ll be completely credible as someone seeking to adopt through the organization. Up to this point, the investigation hasn’t been a secret, and the agent assigned to it has questioned a number of people who work at Children’s Connection in one capacity or another. So far, we don’t have any suspects, in spite of our evidence to suggest criminal activity.”

It really did sound like a bad movie of the week, Bridget couldn’t help thinking. She couldn’t believe anyone involved in her parents’ pet project would be involved in things like black-market babies and sperm-swapping and stolen eggs. But the FBI didn’t go around investigating crimes because it was fun and they had nothing better to do with their time, and they sure as hell didn’t make up stuff like this. If they were looking into the matter, it was because they had solid evidence to suggest wrongdoing.

“At any rate,” Pennington continued, “whoever it is working illegally at Children’s Connection almost certainly knows about the investigation. In spite of that, we’ve already got two of our Portland agents undercover there, posing as prospective adoptive parents in the hope that our baby seller might approach them with an infant for sale.”

Bridget nodded. That made sense. Even with the investigation no secret, there was a good chance two agents might still be credible as an anxious couple looking to adopt, and they might still lure the bad guy. That didn’t explain her own presence back in town, though.

“So why am I here?” she asked Pennington.

“As I said, Logan, you’re going to be posing with an agent, too, in the same capacity—as prospective adoptive parents. But we’re hoping that you and he will simply be able to move about Children’s Connection and uncover more information about what’s going on. Since you’re a Logan, we’re hoping people might speak more freely around you, and that you won’t look suspicious in areas of Children’s Connection that our other agents might not be able to infiltrate. You’ll be working in concert with them, alongside them, but you won’t have contact with them. And you’ll be working for a different reason. Where they’re trying to draw out our suspect, you and your ‘husband’ will be trying to learn more about who that suspect might be.”

Now Bridget understood. Four heads were better than two. Especially if one of those heads—hers—had a familial tie to the organization under investigation. While the first bogus parents-to-be tried to make themselves a temptation to the bad guy, Bridget and her phony husband would infiltrate Children’s Connection more deeply as the daughter and son-in-law of its most illustrious patron.

“We’re betting Bridget Logan won’t look suspicious hanging around Children’s Connection,” Pennington continued, “since her family is such a big part of the organization. You’ll be able to move about freely, ask questions and even linger in places our other couple won’t have credible access to. With luck no one will suspect you of being anything other than Leslie and Terrence Logan’s daughter, who’s recently returned to town with her new husband and wants to adopt a baby.”

It was worth a shot, Bridget thought. Before she could ask more about her duties and cover, though, Pennington began to talk again.

“Your ‘husband’ is familiar with all the particulars of the case,” he said, “but hasn’t been active in the investigation so far, so he won’t be known to anyone at Children’s Connection. We’ve created a cover for him as wealthy businessman who’s just moved to town with his new wife—local girl Bridget Logan, with whom he recently eloped. Since you’ve been living in D.C. for so long, we’ve made him a wealthy corporate type from Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. The two of you met while you were working as the manager of an art gallery in Capitol Hill, but you’ve been homesick for Portland for some time, so his wedding gift to his new wife is to relocate closer to her family, where he’ll be opening new corporate offices. We’ve secured a house for you in your parents’ neighborhood, and you and your new husband can move in immediately.”

“Sounds like you’ve covered the big things,” Bridget said. “Just one question.”

“Only one?” Pennington asked, smiling.

“Okay, one big question,” Bridget amended. The smaller ones could come later. She smiled, too. “Who’s the lucky groom?”

Pennington’s expression did change then, turning confused. He looked at Agent Jones, then back at Bridget, and she hated to think why. “I thought you already knew,” Pennington said.

Bridget shook her head, and in doing so, caught a glimpse of Agent Jones from the corner of her eye. He was squirming. And she really hated to think why.

“Special Agent Bridget Logan,” Pennington said, “meet your new husband. Special Agent Samuel Jones.” He tugged open the top drawer of his desk and reached into it, then pulled out a box, which he also opened and reached into, extracting two gold wedding bands. “By the authority vested in me by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” He reached across his desk to drop one ring into Bridget’s hand, the other into Sam’s. “I hope you two will be very happy together,” he added as he leaned back in his chair. “Go forth now, and multiply.”

Two

A s Sam Jones surveyed what was to be his new home—at least, for a little while—one word, and one word alone, spiraled through his mind: unbefreakinlievable. When it came to living in the Logans’ neighborhood, he thought, a man’s home really was his castle. Because that was what the exuberant, three-story Tudor reminded him of—a palace. With its perfectly manicured grounds outside and what to even his untrained eye looked to be pretty primo antiques inside, it was fit for only the most discriminating potentate. Four thousand square feet of polished hardwood floors, jewel-toned walls, mahogany trim, intricate wainscoting, plush Oriental rugs and English country manor furnishings. Having grown up in a two-bedroom brick bungalow on the other side of town—the side of town where people got their hands dirty to earn an honest living—Sam felt about as comfortable in the place as he would feel wearing a pink lacy garter belt and push-up bra.

But it was the kind of place where Bridget Logan would feel right at home, because her family lived in this very neighborhood. In fact, the Logan home was even larger than this one, Sam knew, because she’d pointed it out to him as they’d driven past. So she must feel as comfortable here as she would—

Well. He tried not to think about the pink lacy garter belt and push-up bra comparison again. Unfortunately, he had a whole lotta trouble never-minding that, because the minute the image of her wearing such a getup exploded in his brain, he just couldn’t quite get it to dislodge itself again.

Great. This was just what he needed. On top of being assigned to a case he had absolutely no desire to be assigned to—black-market babies and mixed-up sperm, what the hell was up with that?—he was going to have to battle a physical attraction to a woman he couldn’t stand. Because the minute he’d seen Bridget Logan standing at the baggage carousel at the airport, before he’d realized who she was, his gaze had been drawn to her and stayed there. Well, what else was he supposed to do? She was a damned beautiful woman, and he always noticed damned beautiful women. And even though she’d been tired-looking and travel-worn, she’d carried herself like someone who simply would not be messed with. There’d been a combination about her of fierceness and vulnerability that Sam had found very intriguing. And then, when she’d looked up and started to approach him, when her gaze had connected with his…

He wanted to kick himself in the ass when he remembered. For one brief, delirious moment, he’d actually thought the beautiful woman he’d been ogling was approaching him because she’d been ogling him, too, and wanted to get to know him better. And in that brief, delirious moment, Sam had planned out their entire day—and night—together. And boy, had it been good. Then, when she’d identified herself as Special Agent Bridget Logan…

He bit back a growl of frustration. Man, sometimes life just really smacked the hell out of you when you weren’t looking. Then it kicked you over and over again in the ribs while you were down.

He told himself his dislike of Bridget Logan was totally irrational, reminded himself that, until two hours ago, he’d never even met the woman before. Normally he was as fair-minded as they came, and always reserved judgment on an individual until that individual had shown, through actions and words, what kind of human being he or she was. For some reason, though, he’d had a real knee-jerk reaction to Princess Bridget. She stood for everything he held profane: too much money, too much privilege, too much power, too much beauty, too much…

Well, she was just too much, that was all. She was a member of the wealthy elite, that five percent of the nation’s population that controlled ninety-five percent of its resources. She’d grown up sheltered from everything that was ugly and harsh and unjust, she’d had everything handed to her before she even had to ask for it, and she couldn’t possibly appreciate what the real world—hell, what real life—was like. Yeah, she claimed to have fought for what she’d earned, but Sam knew better. People like her never had to fight much for anything, because others were always willing, even eager, to bend over backward for them. What she considered a fight, most folks would consider a favor. He just couldn’t believe she’d ever had to work hard for anything. Not the way he had.

Sam glanced around at his surroundings again, his gaze halting when it fell on Bridget Logan. Too much beauty, he thought again. He would have thought such a thing wasn’t possible. But with that thick mane of dark-red hair that even her braid couldn’t contain, and with those huge green eyes and that lush mouth and a body so full of curves… Well, suffice it to say she was just so damned dazzling, it almost hurt to look at her. Looking at her made him remember all the dreams and hopes and desires he’d embraced as a younger man, things he knew now that he’d never have.

And the hell of it was, she wasn’t even at her best. Even travel-rumpled and exhausted, she’d managed to take his breath away when she’d walked up to him in the airport. So much so, that he’d forgotten himself for a moment, had introduced himself simply as Sam Jones, instead of Special Agent Samuel Jones.

And there was a big difference between the two men. Sam Jones was the guy who spent his weekends in blue jeans and sweatshirts, hiking in the Cascades and kayaking on the Willamette, and coaching Little League for the Boys and Girls Club downtown. Sam Jones liked reading Raymond Chandler and watching sports on TV and tipping a few with his friends at Foley’s Bar and Grill in the blue-collar neighborhood where he’d grown up and still lived.

Special Agent Samuel Jones, on the other hand, was the man who put on nondescript suits Monday through Friday and investigated interstate crimes and helped put scumbags in cages, where they belonged. Agent Jones was focused, driven, no-nonsense and effective. He always concentrated on the job, and he got the job done right.

It was important that he keep Sam Jones and Special Agent Samuel Jones separate. And it was essential that he be the former when he was relaxing and the latter when he was working. That was the only way he could keep himself sane in the face of the viciousness and violence of some of the crimes he investigated.

And even if this case wasn’t especially violent, he still had to keep those two men separate. Because Samuel was suddenly feeling a lot like Sam, looking at the woman with him not as a special agent who also had a job to do, but as a beautiful, desirable woman he might want to get to know better. And he couldn’t allow himself to think about Agent Logan in any terms other than the professional. Not just because he didn’t care for her personally—and he was having a hell of a problem warming up to her professionally, too, truth be told—but because that just wasn’t the way he operated. Not as an agent. And not as a man. He and Logan had a job to do. Period. And they would do it. Period. And they would be cool and focused when they did it. Period. And then they’d go their separate ways and never see each other again.

Period.

“Wow, this place is unbelievable,” she said now as she turned to look at him, surprising him both because she’d just echoed his own initial thoughts about the place and because she was impressed by what he would have thought was an unremarkable environment to her.

She stood in the middle of the big living room, bathed in the warm golden glow of a lamp that had already been on when they’d entered. Pennington had told them that someone from the Bureau had been in earlier to prepare the house for their residence, supplying some basic groceries and turning on the heat and such. They’d obviously remembered lights, too, knowing it would be dark—or nearly so—by the time they arrived. The soft light brought out flecks of amber amid the red in Logan’s hair, and made her complexion seem almost radiant. He wondered if her eyes would be as luminous and was tempted to draw closer to her to find out.

And just what the hell was he doing, thinking words like warm and amber and radiant and luminous in relation to her? he berated himself. He and Logan were working, for God’s sake. That was the only word he needed to be thinking about right now.

“You think so?” he asked, feigning blandness. But he did allow himself to stride farther into the room, halting when only a couple of feet of space lay between them. Wow. In this light, her eyes really were kind of lumi—“I would have thought it was a lot like the place where you grew up,” he hurried to add. “I mean, the house you showed me as being your parents’ looked even bigger than this one.”

She seemed to give his comment some thought before replying, but then she nodded. “Yeah, our house was a little bigger, maybe, but my parents were more minimalist when it came to furnishings. I mean, our house didn’t have nearly this much color or this much…” She threw her arms open wide, and he tried not to notice how the gesture caused her breasts to strain against her white shirt enough that he could see the outline of her bra beneath, and how it looked sort of pink and lacy. “…stuff,” she concluded. “Everything in this house is just so…so extravagant. How did the Bureau find this place, anyway?”

Sam wondered that himself. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It might be a house the federal government owns that they keep for visiting dignitaries. Or they might have made arrangements with a homeowner who isn’t using it right now because they’re working overseas or taking an extended vacation. It might have even been confiscated for tax evasion. Ours is not to question why,” he told her.

“Yeah, and we never do, do we?” she asked.

And Sam wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected just a hint of sarcasm in the question. Well, my, my, my. Maybe Golden Girl Logan wasn’t such a perfect little agent, after all.

“Can we go over this thing one more time?” she asked. “I’m sorry. Usually once is enough for me, but I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours, and my brain is just having some trouble processing everything Pennington told me. We’re a just-married couple, right?” she began without even waiting for his okay.

“Right,” Sam told her. “We’re newlyweds. We met in the fall, then eloped to Vegas a month ago because we were so wildly in love. We just recently surprised your family with the news, and that’s why there was no talk of our marriage around town before now. At the time we married, we were living in the Washington, D.C., area, but I put my house up for sale and you listed your condo right after the wedding because we knew we’d be moving to Portland after we married. I’m bringing my business headquarters out here so we can be closer to your family—that’s my wedding present to you.”

“Well, aren’t you the generous spouse, relocating your entire business on your trophy wife’s behalf?” Logan asked with a smile. Strangely, she seemed to be teasing him when she did. Sam told himself he was just imagining it. It was not wishful thinking.

“Well, I am a wealthy steel baron, after all,” he told her. “I can afford to be generous. Besides, from what I hear, I just dote on my trophy wife and would do anything to indulge her.” And where the prospect of playing that role had made him feel like a complete sucker a few days ago, suddenly, for some reason, it didn’t seem nearly as distasteful now.

“So that’s how you made your reeking piles of filthy lucre,” she said, still smiling. Still seeming to be teasing him. And Sam still told himself he was only imagining it and not thinking wishfully. “You’re a steel baron.” She tilted her head to the side and studied him. “That’s going to make this role even more interesting to play, not to mention more challenging, since I’ve never really been a woman who went for the big-business-mogul type.”

No, what was interesting, never mind challenging, Sam thought, was how badly he wanted to ask her just what type she did go for. Especially since she came from a family full of big-business-mogul types and seemed to be the kind of woman who had been groomed to marry just such a man. Then again, maybe that was precisely why she didn’t go for them. Tamping down his curiosity, he kept his question to himself. That was none of his business. And it wouldn’t be in any way helpful for working the case.

In spite of his self-admonition, however—and much to his own horror—he heard himself ask her, “Are you saying you don’t think anyone will buy the idea of your being attracted to me, Logan?”

Her eyes widened at that, and her smile fell. She didn’t seem to be teasing at all now, when she said, “Of course not. My God, any woman would be—” But she cut herself off before finishing whatever she had intended to say, her cheeks burning bright pink at whatever had inspired her to say it.

And damned if Sam didn’t find himself wanting to move closer to her and demand to know exactly what she was thinking at that moment. Though it wasn’t necessarily his desire to know what she was thinking that made him want to move closer to her. No, unfortunately he was pretty sure it was his desire to do something else entirely that inspired that. Realizing it only made him feel even more rancorous. The last thing he wanted or needed was to get any closer to Logan than he already had. And why he understood that on one level but not another made him feel like a fool.

“What?” he heard himself asking her in response to her stumble, not even sure when he’d made the decision to speak and knowing it was a mistake to do so. “Any woman would what?”

Her eyes went wide again, in clear panic, and she opened her mouth, as if she were about to finish whatever she had been about to say automatically. But then she quickly closed her mouth again, clearly reconsidering and thinking better of it. Eventually, though, she did continue. “And we met in D.C., right? Which is totally credible since that’s where I went to college.”

Although there was a part of him—a-none-too-small part, dammit—that didn’t want to change the subject, Sam reluctantly let it be. “Right,” he said. “You were living in the city, in Dupont Circle, and I was in the Virginia suburbs.”

“But I was managing an art gallery at the time,” she recalled correctly, “which is going to be a little tough to fake, because, quite frankly, I couldn’t tell you the difference between Jackson Pollack and Jackson, Mississippi.”

“Hey, at least you know Jackson Pollack’s name and that he was an artist,” Sam said helpfully.

“Only because I saw the movie,” she said by way of an explanation. “And that’s about the full extent of my art history education.”

“Ah.”

She shook her head ruefully and crossed her arms over her chest, and Sam tried not to be too heartbroken about that. He also tried to tell himself it wasn’t a defensive gesture. But it did seem defensive. What she said next, though, told him the gesture wasn’t meant for him.

“Boy, my parents would be so thrilled if this were all really true,” she said, her voice tinged not with teasing now but with a hint of melancholy.

“They didn’t want you to go into law enforcement?” he asked.

“Well, they always told me they wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be, and to pursue a career that would make me happy, because that was all that was important,” she hedged.

“But?” Sam asked, because he heard the word coming.

She expelled a soft sound of resignation. “But I think they always hoped that what would make me happy would be to marry a wealthy local businessman, preferably the son of one of my father’s colleagues, then buy a house up the street from them like this one and be a full-time mom to a houseful of kids, preferably with names like Ashley and Emily and Brandon and Biff.”

Sam couldn’t quite help but smile himself at that. “And instead, you go for names like Destiny and Zenith and Aurora, is that it?”

Now Logan smiled, too, and where she had been merely dazzling before, suddenly she was downright beatific. And those, too, were words Sam knew he shouldn’t be using in relation to her. So what if they were totally appropriate?

“Actually, it’s not so much the names I object to as the actual children. Don’t get me wrong,” she hurried on to say before he could comment one way or another, “I think raising kids is probably the most important job out there, for a woman or a man. But it’s not for me. I wouldn’t be good at it. Which is another reason why this assignment is going to be so difficult.”

It was going to be difficult for Sam, too, but for different reasons. Because there had been a time when he did want a houseful of kids, and they could have been named John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt and Pippi Longstocking for all he cared. But just when he’d thought that family would become a reality, it had been stripped away from him, brutally and treacherously, and it had left him wary of ever wanting one again.

“It’s funny, actually,” Logan went on, bringing Sam’s thoughts back to the present, “because I always told my family I wanted to be a cop or investigator of some kind. My Christmas list was always filled with things like chemistry sets and Trixie Belden books and weapons of destruction and handcuffs. But what I always found under the tree was Barbies and stuffed cats and Little House books and an Easy-Bake Oven. All the stuff I wanted ended up on David’s side of the living room instead.” She smiled. “So I just ignored my stuff and played with his.”

Sam found himself wishing she would talk more about herself, about her past, about her dreams and hopes, about her… Well, just about her, but he stopped himself. None of that was any of his business, he told himself again. None of it was germane to the case at all. Besides, once you got a woman like Logan talking about herself, she probably wouldn’t shut up. He had other things to think about right now. And any minute, he’d remember what they were, too, by God.

Thankfully, Logan also seemed to remember the case, because she suddenly stopped smiling and looking all dreamy-eyed, and clipped herself into a sturdier posture. “Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand, our first order of business as newlyweds moving closer to my family is to consult my family’s pet project, Children’s Connection. Because we’re anxious to start a family right away and can’t. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Sam said.

“And the reason we already know we can’t have kids the old-fashioned way is because…?”

She didn’t know the answer to that question, Sam knew, because they hadn’t gone over it at the field office. And the reason they hadn’t gone over it at the field office was because Sam had hustled Logan out of there before Pennington had had a chance to give her the rest of the particulars. Sam didn’t much care for the rest of the particulars, even if they were part of a bogus history designed to snare a crook. Still, he knew she was going to have to be filled in on them. They did have to keep their stories straight if they were going to pull this thing off. Nevertheless, he wished someone had consulted him before working up their phony backgrounds.

“We can’t have kids because…” He sighed, resigned himself to it, and just plunged in. “Our cover story goes that you’re actually my second wife, and I tried to have kids with my first, but couldn’t. When wife number one and I looked into the matter, it was discovered that I’m…infertile,” he said, trying not to stumble over that last word. Then, when he realized what he had said, he hurried on to clarify, “Because the guy I’m pretending to be is infertile. Me, personally, I have absolutely no problem in that regard. None whatsoever. That’s a negatory on that. Nada. Nil. Zilch. Zero. No worries at all on that score.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought Logan smiled at that. And okay, maybe, just maybe, he’d gone a little overboard on the reassurances. But a guy really couldn’t be too adamant about making something like that totally, completely, profoundly clear.

“Really,” she said. “You’ve fathered a number of little Joneses, have you?”

He hooked his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rocked back on his heels. “Well, none that I’m aware of,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too smug.

“Ah…yeah,” she replied, not sounding too impressed.

He dropped his hands back to his sides. “It was just a joke, Logan,” he told her.

“A small one, huh?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to tell her that no, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a small one at all, and that he had absolutely no problem in that regard, either—none whatsoever, that’s a negatory on that, nada, nil, zilch, zero, no worries at all on that score—then realized she was talking about the joke, and not his— Well, that she was talking about the joke. In fact, she was the one joking now. At least, Sam thought she was joking. He hoped so. Because he really didn’t have any problem in that regard. None whatsoever. That was a negatory on that. Honest.

“According to our cover story,” he said, returning to the case and wondering why they kept veering off it, “the fact that I—the guy I’m pretending to be, I mean—was diagnosed as infertile was part of what led to the dissolution of my first marriage. My first wife decided to find a guy who could provide her with the children she so badly wanted,” he added, trying not to choke on the words because they were so laughable when compared to the developments in his own marriage. His own former marriage, he hastily corrected himself. And the words were only laughable to a casual observer, he further amended. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been casually observing when his then-wife told him she was pregnant by another man. No, laughter had been about the last reaction Sam had had to that particular news.

“So I have no trouble getting pregnant,” Logan deduced from his explanation. “Or, at least, the woman I’m pretending to be has no trouble getting pregnant,” she clarified. And then her smile returned. “Not that I, myself, have any problem in that regard, mind you,” she said. “None whatsoever. That’s a negatory on that. Nada. Nil. Zilch. Zero. No worries at all on that score.”

“Mothered a number of little Logans, have you?” Sam quipped, smiling in spite of himself.

This time Logan was the one to tuck her hands into her pockets and rock back on her heels smugly. “Well, none that I’m aware of,” she said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Look, Logan,” Sam began.

“You’re going to have to stop calling me that,” she interjected before he could go any further.

“What?” he asked, not sure what she meant.

“You can’t keep calling me Logan,” she told him. “You’re supposed to be my husband.”

Oh, yeah, he thought. “So then…I should call you, what? Babe?”

She cringed noticeably. “Okay, granted, that’s what a lot of older husbands might call their trophy wives—”

“I’m not that much older than you, Logan,” Sam interjected this time. Because he wasn’t that much older than she was. Dammit.

Her response was another one of those teasing little smiles that he was beginning to kind of like. Until he remembered that he shouldn’t like them, because he was Special Agent Samuel Jones working a case. Period.

Then she ignored his interjection by finishing, “I just don’t think I could respond to being called Babe in any way other than by throwing my drink into your face. So we’ll just have to settle for Bridget.”

Fine, Sam thought. He could call Logan that.

“And I’ll call you…?” she asked.

Hmm, he thought. Lord and Master had a certain ring to it. Or maybe Master and Commander. Or The Good Master. Or—

“Sam,” he finally said. “Sam is fine.”

“Sam it is, then.”

Until she said it aloud like that. Then he remembered he’d needed to be Special Agent Samuel Jones for this job. He should have asked her to call him Samuel. Because when she called him Sam, it made him feel like Sam. In fact, it made him feel better than Sam. It made him feel…

No, he probably shouldn’t think about how it made him feel. So instead, he thought about the case. The case where he had to be an indulgent, infertile millionaire who wanted to impregnate his beautiful, bodacious wife but couldn’t, so they’d be trying to adopt through her family’s pet project, the Children’s Connection.

Oh, man, he really wished they’d assigned someone else to this case.

“I need to call my parents,” Logan—or rather, Bridget—said, interrupting his thoughts, for which he was extremely grateful. “I’m going to get an earful from my mom for not calling or stopping by the house before now.”

“Tell her we’ll see her tomorrow,” Sam said.

“We?” Logan—he meant, Bridget—echoed.

“Yeah, we,” he said emphatically. “You and me both. Your mother is the one who set up our meeting with the adoption counselor at Children’s Connection. Pennington thought it would give us that much more credibility. I thought you knew.”

Logan—or, rather Bridget—sighed heavily and lifted a hand to her forehead, pushing her hair back from her face in what was clearly a gesture of exasperation. “I don’t know anything,” she said, sounding more tired than ever. “I haven’t spoken to my mom for a week. This whole thing just came about so quickly and out of nowhere. A few days ago, I thought I was going to be working in Vienna on a matter of national security. Now, suddenly, I’m back in Portland pretending to be a stay-at-home wife whose greatest desire is to become a mother. And my mom and dad are going to want to see me tonight. And, really, I want to see them, too.” She lifted her other hand, too, cupped it over her forehead and sighed again. “Even if I do feel like my brain is about to explode.”

For one brief, fleeting moment, Sam actually felt sorry for her. She looked so exhausted, so confused, so…human. Delicate, even. Like someone who had been carrying around a heavy load for way too long and was desperate to put it down someplace safe for a while so she could rest. And he found himself wanting to offer to take it off her hands for a while, so that she could get the rest she needed, preferably by lying down next to him. What was really odd was that, in that moment, that was all Sam wanted to do. Just lie beside her. Just be close to her. For as long as she needed him to be there.

Then she dropped her hands back to her sides, squared her shoulders and lifted her head. And he remembered that she was a federal agent, just like him, and she knew she couldn’t afford delicacy any more than he could. She didn’t need him, he thought. She didn’t need anyone. Just like Sam didn’t need anyone, either.

“Keep it brief at your parents’ house,” he gently advised her. “Tell them you’ll see more of them tomorrow. Then come back here and get some sleep. You’ll need to be at your best tomorrow if we’re going to pull this thing off. We need to be convincing as newlyweds and prospective parents. We’ll have to go over this with your mother before our appointment, anyway. She’s going to go with us to Children’s Connection and introduce us to the woman who’ll be handling our case. Laurel Reiss is her name. She’s actually currently on leave because of a family situation, but she’s doing your mother a favor, being our case worker. Your mother thought she would be best for the job.”

“Does Laurel Reiss know about the investigation?” Bridget asked.

“I’d wager she knows there’s an investigation ongoing,” Sam said. “Considering how workplace grapevines operate, there probably isn’t anyone at Children’s Connection who doesn’t know about the investigation, and we’ve questioned quite a few people there. Laurel Reiss may very well be someone the agent assigned to the case has talked to, but she doesn’t know that you and I specifically are a part of it.

“As far as everyone at Children’s Connection is concerned, nobody, and I mean nobody, knows you or I work for the FBI, except for your mother and sister—everyone’s being given our history according to our cover story. And your mother, father and sister are under strict orders not to reveal our true identity to anyone, orders they’ll follow, because they know it could endanger you if the information got out. So when we go to Children’s Connection tomorrow, it’s as Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jones, wealthy, upscale newlyweds who have recently relocated to Portland and who are anxious to start a family, but can’t, so they want to adopt.”

Bridget nodded. “Mrs. Samuel Jones,” she repeated. She lifted her left hand and surveyed the heavy golden ring on the third finger. It matched the larger one Sam wore, both of them, Pennington had joked, a wedding present from the Bureau. “I never, ever, thought I’d give up my name for anyone,” she said.

And Sam had never, ever, planned on asking anyone else to take his name again. But he had asked someone to do that once upon a time. And the woman he’d asked had agreed to do it. Then she’d made a mockery of his name. And him. He wasn’t likely to let something like that happen again.

“It’s only for show,” he reminded her. “I doubt it’s even real gold.” He lifted his own left hand and wiggled his fingers against the strange weight. It had been a while since he’d worn one of these. And the one he’d owned before had only been a cheap bit of gold-plated metal that had turned his finger green. Appropriate, really, all things considered.

“Oh, it’s real gold,” Bridget said, turning the ring first one way, then another. Even in the dim illumination from the lamp, it caught the light and threw it back in a bright twinkle.

And, of course, she’d know real gold, Sam thought. She was, after all, a Logan. Well, for now, she was a Jones. Somehow, the realization made a funny knot form in his belly.

“But I know the marriage is only for show,” she replied quite pointedly, dropping her hand back down to her side. “There’s no way I’ll ever get married for real,” she hastened to add.

Not that Sam disagreed—he didn’t plan on marrying again, either. But he knew his reasons for that, and he’d made his decision based on personal experience. Bridget Logan, he knew for a fact, had never been married. From what he’d heard, she’d never even been that seriously involved with anyone. And she was still young. For all her insistence that she was a seasoned agent and a mature adult, she was only twenty-five, an age when many people were still trying to figure out exactly who they were and what the hell they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. Not that Sam was an ancient sage, by any stretch of the imagination. But he wondered how she could make such a certain, sweeping statement at her age.

That was her business, he immediately answered himself. Not his. All he had to know about Special Agent Bridget Logan was that she was as dedicated to wrapping up this case as he was. He looked at her again, at the way the soft light filmed her hair in amber and made her skin glow and her eyes luminous. He noted the soft curves of her breasts and hips that even her baggy clothing couldn’t hide. In her sleep-deprived state—and hell, probably out of it, too, Sam thought—she looked soft and tempting and vulnerable.

Yeah, he thought. They both needed to dedicate themselves to wrapping up this case.

The sooner the better.

Three

T he meeting with Laurel Reiss, the social worker at Children’s Connection with whom Bridget’s mother had made their appointments, went as well as could be expected, all things considered. Those things being that Bridget and Sam barely knew each other, never mind even liked each other, so playing the part of loving newlyweds whose fondest wish was to start a family together hadn’t exactly been easy. All Bridget could hope at this point was that it had been convincing. Unfortunately, though, she couldn’t even be certain of that.

It was strange, because she had never felt uncomfortable or unconvincing playing a role in the field before. She’d worked undercover as everything from a call girl to a drug dealer to a Mafia princess, and she had always been able to play the parts persuasively, often in situations where her very life depended on her performance. Yet today, she had been performing in an environment that was completely safe, and had been trying to pass herself off as something that required very little effort on her part. Yet she’d felt as nervous and jittery as a preteen at a dance.

It didn’t bode well for the rest of the assignment.

The social worker had been friendly and outgoing, and had walked Bridget and Sam through the adoption process. It sounded like a long and arduous procedure to Bridget, one for which there seemed a million opportunities for disappointment. But Children’s Connection, Laurel had assured them, was by far the best organization for them to use, something Bridget didn’t doubt for a moment, having witnessed for herself the success of her parents’ pet project. Still, she was glad she wasn’t going through this for real. Between the ninety-day waiting period, and the notices to—and appearances in—the court, and the home study, not to mention the sheer cost of adoption, a person would have to want a family awfully badly to be so patient, so understanding and so generous.

But then, Bridget thought, that was probably what parenting was all about anyway. Still, she was happy she’d made the decision long ago to remain single. She didn’t ever want to be responsible for anyone but herself.

In the end, Laurel had told them that their names would be added to a waiting list that included other couples waiting to adopt. That, alas, just because Bridget was a Logan, Children’s Connection couldn’t make any special allowances for her, but that she was hopeful it wouldn’t be more than a year or two before an infant became available for her and Sam to adopt. Bridget had assured the social worker that she didn’t expect any preferential treatment because of her family ties, and that that was one of the reasons she and Sam had sought to start the adoption procedure so soon after marrying, because they had realized it might be a while before they actually brought their new baby home.

And, indeed, being put on the waiting list was in keeping with what Bridget and Sam wanted for this investigation. It would give them both time and opportunity to snoop around and fish for information. Though Bridget would doubtless be doing most of that herself, using the excuse of her mother’s and sister’s presence at Children’s Connection to drop in for impromptu visits…and impromptu snooping.

Still, Bridget was beginning to understand that there was going to be a lot more to this case than she had originally anticipated. If she and Sam were going to play the part of wanna-be parents convincingly, they were going to have to go through all the proper steps, and that realistically the investigation could span months.

They might have to fool a lot more people than just the bad guy. And she might just be here in Portland for a lot longer than the few weeks she’d originally anticipated. After the nervousness and discomfort she had felt simply speaking with the social worker today—nervousness and discomfort she’d sensed from Sam, too—she just hoped they’d be able to pull it off.

And she hoped it wouldn’t take months to do it.

After the meeting concluded, Sam cited a need to go into the Portland field office to catch up on some work, so Bridget sought out her mother, whom she knew would be spending much of the day at Children’s Connection, and offered to treat her to a late lunch. Leslie suggested inviting Jillian along, too. So, feeling celebratory in the face of Bridget’s return home, the three Logan women bypassed the hospital cafeteria and headed off to a nearby bistro instead.

As always, Leslie Logan looked wonderful. Bridget was close to her mother and secretly delighted that she resembled her so much. She’d gotten her auburn hair from her mother, whose own reddish-gold tresses were swept back today with a gray velvet headband, in contrast to Bridget’s loosely plaited locks. She’d also inherited her mother’s mouth and the shape of her eyes, but Leslie Logan’s were brown instead of green, like Bridget’s. Their clothing preferences, too, were similar—both stuck to understated, classic styles and forsook fashion trends. Today, Leslie had opted for gray wool pants and a shell-pink sweater set, where Bridget had dressed in brown tweed trousers and a cream-colored turtleneck.

At sixty years of age, Leslie could easily have been mistaken for someone much younger. A native mid-westerner, she had always been plainspoken and down-to-earth. She’d met Terrence Logan in college, and, as family lore held, it had been love at first sight for both of them. Leslie had earned her degree in social work and had worked in the field for some time before giving birth to Robbie. His kidnapping had been understandably difficult on both elder Logans—it had even put their marriage in jeopardy for a while—but Leslie, Bridget knew, had been hit hardest. Although it had all happened before Bridget was born, she knew her mother still grieved for her stolen and murdered child and always would.

And although Leslie had ultimately found happiness in her other children, Bridget felt confident that much of her mother’s work at Children’s Connection stemmed from her still-unresolved feelings about Robbie’s death. Leslie herself had been aided by Children’s Connection in adopting Bridget’s brothers Peter and David and David’s twin sister, Jillian. And those successful adoptions, too, had contributed to Leslie’s desire to volunteer so much of her time for the organization. But it was Robbie’s death that had started it all, and that, Bridget felt certain, still colored much of what her mother felt and did today.

At thirty, Jillian was five years older than Bridget. And although she and David had been adopted after Bridget was born, it had been when Bridget was only a year old, so she couldn’t remember a time when Jillian hadn’t been her sister. Still, Bridget knew, as everyone else in the family did, that Jillian and David had come from a situation that was as far removed from the Logans’ lifestyle as it could possibly be. The children of a drug-addicted mother, they’d spent the first six years of their lives with an infirm grandmother who’d had difficulty caring for them. As a result, they’d required a lot of tender loving care during those early years following the old woman’s death, when the Logans had taken them in. Eventually, though, through love and attention and therapy, they’d blossomed. To this day, the twins enjoyed a unique closeness and intimacy precisely because of those early experiences. And Bridget had often wondered if it was Jillian’s loving treatment during that time that had led her to become a therapist herself. She did wonderful work at Children’s Connection.

But where the rest of the Logans were outgoing, Jillian was something of an introvert. She was shy and quiet, and embraced only a small circle of friends. Girlfriends, anyway, since Jillian dated only very sporadically, and never one man for very long. Her clothing today was in keeping with her quiet nature, a full skirt patterned in pale blue flowers and an even paler blue sweater that hung loose on her curvy frame.

They had no trouble getting a table at the bistro, since it was well past the lunch hour by the time they arrived. Although a few brave souls had thumbed their noses at the chilly afternoon by opting to dine alfresco, the Logan women compromised by taking a booth inside near a window. That way, they could watch the bustling activity of downtown Portland but still stay warm and dry. After giving the waiter their orders and getting drinks, Leslie looked at Bridget and smiled.

“So, how’s married life treating you?” she asked, her eyes fairly twinkling with mischief.

Bridget smiled back. “I’m afraid the honeymoon’s over,” she said with a sigh of feigned melancholy.

“So soon?” Jillian asked, playing along. “Gee, and here I’ve been working under the impression that marriage was supposed to be bliss. You and Sam just seem so perfect for each other.”

Oh, sure, Bridget thought. Sam Jones was everything she was looking for in a life mate: arrogant, surly, uncommunicative and coarse. What wasn’t there to love?

She sipped her coffee and tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “Yeah, well, marriage probably is bliss under other circumstances. Circumstances like…oh, I don’t know. Like, say, when you’re in love with your husband. Or when you even know him, for that matter.”

Leslie’s smile grew broader as she said, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t kick Agent Jones out of bed for eating crackers.”

Bridget and Jillian both gaped at the comment. But it was Bridget who offered the exclamation, “Mother!”

“Well, he’s very good-looking,” Leslie said.

Oh, sure, Bridget thought, recalling Sam’s thick brown hair that just begged a woman to run her fingers through it, and those blue, blue eyes that made a woman want to wade so deeply into them that she never found her way out again, and that sexy mouth that she was sure could wreak havoc on a woman’s body, and those sturdy, broad shoulders that seemed capable of holding the entire world at bay, and those strong arms that promised limitless shelter and infinite embraces, and—

Well, she just agreed with her mother, that was all. But just because Sam was easy on the eye didn’t make him husband material, phony or real.

“Oh, I’m teasing you, sweetie,” Leslie said as she lifted her own cup to her mouth for an idle sip, scattering Bridget’s errant thoughts. “Honestly, are you so wrapped up in your work these days that you don’t even recognize a joke when you hear one?”

“Not when it’s a sexual innuendo coming from my mother, no,” Bridget said.

Leslie laughed. “Then you’ve been away from home for too long.”

Bridget opened her mouth to deny it, then remembered that since leaving Portland to go to college, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d been home to visit for any length of time. How could it be that she spent so little time here? she wondered. She was just too busy to manage any more visits home than the occasional Christmas trip. Her life was so full. Full of work, she thought. Full of work and…and more work. And also…work. But she took time off from work, she reminded herself. And when she did, it was always to…work. Because even when she managed to get away for a weekend here or there, she always took her laptop with her and checked into HQ regularly.

But that was because she was so dedicated, she reminded herself. She liked her work. And she was good at it. She didn’t work so hard because she didn’t have anything else to occupy her life. Work was her life. And she liked it that way.

“I’m sorry,” she told her mother in spite of her little pep talk with herself. “You’re right—I should come home more often. But you guys all get to D.C. fairly regularly, especially David and Dad.”

“Mm,” her mother replied noncommittally.

“And there’s always the phone,” Bridget added.

“Mm,” her mother said.

“And e-mail.”

“Mm.”

Bridget narrowed her eyes at her mother. “Why do I feel a lecture coming on?” she asked.

“No lecture,” her mother told her. “Just…concern.”

“About what?” Bridget asked.

Leslie expelled a soft sigh as she settled her cup back into its saucer, then she braced both forearms on the table. It was a posture that belied her words, because it was her lecture posture. Bridget recognized it well. After all, she’d probably received more of Leslie’s lectures over the years than any of the other Logan offspring had, thanks to her having traveled an alternate route than the rest of them when it came to things like, oh…life in general.

“About the fact that you’re only twenty-five years old,” Leslie said, “and if it hadn’t been for this case, you’d be someplace in Europe right now completely out of touch with the family and mingling with terrorists. How could I not be concerned about that? A part of me is almost grateful for the problems that have been plaguing Children’s Connection. At least they’ve brought my daughter home to me and kept her out of danger.”

Yep. It was going to be a lecture, all right. And Bridget really should have seen it coming. Last night, when she had visited briefly with her family, the focus of the conversation had simply been getting caught up with what everyone had been doing in their individual lives. Now that they’d finished with that, the next order of business was, as it always was, Bridget’s needing to explain why she had strayed so far from home and the loving bosom of her family. She just wished she could explain that to her mother. But she scarcely understood it herself. She’d just never felt complete in Portland, had always felt as if she was missing out on something. Felt as if there was something missing from herself. There was a big, wide world out there, brimming with all sorts of sights and experiences, and she wanted to be a part of it. There were just so many things to do out there. And she wouldn’t feel satisfied until she’d done every last one of them. Then, maybe, she wouldn’t feel that strange emptiness inside herself that she’d felt for most of her life.

“Mom, that’s my job,” she said gently. “And I’m perfectly well trained for what I was supposed to be doing. They wouldn’t have assigned me to the counterterrorist task force if they hadn’t thought I could handle it. More importantly, I know I can handle things like that. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’m your mother,” Leslie said unnecessarily. “It’s my job to worry about you. I worry about all of you. It’s what mothers do.”

And it was especially what mothers did when they’d lost a child, Bridget thought. She shouldn’t be so hard on her mom, she told herself. Leslie, more than most mothers, knew how endangered a child could become, even in the most benign circumstances. Robbie had been snatched from the front yard of his best friend Danny Crosby’s house, while Danny’s mother Sheila was inside. And Leslie had never forgiven Sheila for allowing her son to be stolen.

Of course, even before Robbie’s kidnapping, there had been little love lost between Leslie and Sheila. Leslie had never made it a secret that she’d considered the other woman to be a shallow, greedy, materialistic social climber, everything Leslie was not. Her midwestern upbringing had given her solid values, and she’d never aspired to an affluent lifestyle or marriage to a dynamic corporate leader. Ultimately, she’d welcomed the opportunity, though, because being the wife of a wealthy businessman had enabled Leslie to stay home with her son, to whom she became utterly devoted the second he was born. Sheila, however, had been neglectful when it came to her own children, had often left them in the care of others when she could have been spending time with them herself. She’d preferred spending her husband’s money and lunching with her girlfriends instead. Her mother, Bridget knew, had never been able to understand that.

And, truth be told, her mother had felt sorry for Sheila, at least back then—that had never been a secret, either. Leslie had always said she thought Sheila’s behavior must have stemmed from her unhappiness, trapped in a life that held no purpose for her, no direction. Jack Crosby, rumor had held, hadn’t been an easy man to live with, and Bridget knew for a fact that the man had enjoyed numerous affairs quite openly before he and Sheila divorced. That had to have taken a toll on her.

But Sheila had been unfaithful to Jack, too, something else Bridget knew for a fact, and that behavior had dropped her in Leslie’s estimation even more. Bridget even recalled her mother saying that, on the day Robbie was taken from the Crosbys’ front yard, Sheila had been talking to one of her lovers on the phone, too distracted to keep an eye on the boys playing in the yard. Robbie had been easy pickings for the kidnapper, thanks to Sheila’s neglect. And Leslie had never forgiven her for that.

So all in all, Bridget knew she shouldn’t come down hard on her mother for being overly protective and overly concerned about her. Being worried for Bridget’s welfare and safety was, after all, just another way her mother showed how much she loved her.

So instead of feeling irritated, Bridget smiled and covered one of her mother’s hands with her own. “You don’t need to worry about me,” she said. “I promise I’ll be fine.” Translation, she thought, I promise I won’t be snatched away from you the way Robbie was.

Leslie smiled back sadly, something that told Bridget her mother had picked up on her unspoken assurances. Nevertheless, she turned her own hand to weave her fingers with Bridget’s. “You might be fine,” she said, “but I’ll still be worried about you.”

The waiter returned with their appetizer then, relieving the tension that had threatened to descend on the trio. Bridget used the opportunity to change the subject, turning it to one of her mother’s favorite topics. “So what else can you tell me about everything that’s been going on at Children’s Connection?” she asked.

Leslie sighed heavily as she reached for a cracker to scoop up some of the hot artichoke dip. “You’re probably privy to more information than I have been,” she said. “The FBI won’t tell us much of anything that they’ve learned from the investigation so far. I should probably be asking you the same question.”

“I wish I could tell you more, Mom,” Bridget said, “but there are certain things the Bureau wants to keep quiet for now, for reasons of security. And although I’ve been informed of the particulars about the illegal activities and such, I don’t know what kind of toll it’s taking on the people involved, since I haven’t actually interviewed anyone and won’t, thanks to being undercover. So how’s the mood at Children’s Connection right now?”

Leslie’s expression grew melancholy. “Not good, I’m afraid,” she said. “It’s been hard on everyone, from the housekeeping staff to the board of directors. Whoever’s doing this could be working in any department, in any capacity. No one wants to believe that. It’s terrible to think that someone we’ve all come to trust and like could be doing something so heinous as stealing and selling babies, and deliberately sabotaging people’s desires to create a family. But the FBI tells us they’re convinced the ringleader must be someone who works inside, and that all the things that have happened are related.”

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