“Is it mine?” Adam asked.

“No.” The denial shot like a bullet through the air.

He knew Eve well enough to know that the child was his no matter what she said to the contrary. The time to back away, to pretend she’d never been part of his life, was over. Eve and their unborn child were at risk. They needed his protection.

“Is this why you left?” he asked, his eyes indicating her swollen abdomen. “Because you found out you were pregnant?”

“No,” she retorted hotly. “I left because I found out that you were a drug dealer.”

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written over two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

The Agent’sSecret Baby

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To

David McCallum

who, as Illya Kuryakin

in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., is responsible for my falling in love with secret agents and black turtleneck sweaters

Chapter 1

It took her a second to realize that the sigh she heard echoing in the small, converted bedroom that served as her office was her own.

Lost in thoughts of the past and preoccupied, Dr. Eve Walters had thought that the deep sigh had come from Tessa, the German shepherd she’d rescued from a sadistic owner a little more than two years ago. On occasion Tessa, currently curled up under her desk, was given to sighing just like a human being. Considering the life she’d led both B.R.—before rescue—and A.R.—after rescue—the sighs were more than merited. Before, Eve was certain, the dog’s sighs had been of the fearful, hopeless variety while now, with Tessa’s weight a third more than what it had been when she’d first been rescued, the German shepherd’s sighs sounded as if she was exceedingly content with her new life and just couldn’t believe her good fortune.

Lately, Eve had become aware of sighing a great deal herself, as if she couldn’t catch her breath. And couldn’t believe the twists and turns that had brought her to this point.

She supposed she could just shrug her shoulders and attribute her deeps sighs to the fact that she wasn’t accustomed to carrying around this much weight, but if she were being honest, the cause for her sighs went a great deal deeper. Never in her wildest dreams did Eve think she would find herself in this position: approaching thirty in a few months, single, alone and very, very pregnant.

Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes and she held them back by sheer will. God, but she was emotional lately. Well, she was not going to cry. She wasn’t.

Another sigh escaped.

How in heaven’s name had she come to this state?

Okay, she was gregarious and fun-loving, but never, ever would anyone have called her reckless. She was always known as the stable one, the one everyone else turned to in times of crisis.

When her mother, Evelyn, had died suddenly on Eve’s second day of middle school, Eve was the one who was there for her veterinarian father, Warren, and her older sister, Angela—not the other way around. This while she secretly yearned for someone to comfort her. But she couldn’t indulge herself, couldn’t sink into self-pity no matter how much she wanted to. Others depended on her. And she always came through.

Beneath her genial, warm smile she was the living embodiment of the old adage, “Look before you leap.” Not only did she look, she would take out a surveyor’s level and plot every single step from there to here each and every time. It wasn’t that she didn’t like surprises; she just didn’t like being caught unaware. And it certainly wasn’t like her to give in to impulse and allow herself to be so completely swept away, especially by a man she’d hardly known.

A man she didn’t know at all, Eve thought bitterly.

Eve blew out a breath and dragged a hand through the flowing mane of wayward dark blond hair. She stared at the computer screen on her laptop, silently seeking answers she knew weren’t about to materialize. Barring that, she needed a distraction.

My kingdom for a distraction, she thought whimsically.

After shutting down the animal hospital for the night, the animal hospital that had once borne only her father’s nameplate across the front door and where she had grown up, surrounded by animals in need of care and a kind, gentle father, Eve had gone home and retreated to her inner office. She’d turned on her computer to do a little research into the condition of the near-blinded dachshund that had been brought in today, searching for a possible way to reverse, or at least halt the condition. Searching, she supposed, for a miracle.

How she’d gotten to a chat room for expectant single moms was almost as mysterious to her as how she’d gotten in this condition in the first place.

Actually more so, she mused.

Of course she knew all about the mechanics of becoming pregnant, but it was how and why she’d gotten to that point that utterly mystified her. In hindsight, it just didn’t seem possible.

She knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, had known ever since she could remember. At least she’d known professionally. She was exactly what she wanted to be: a veterinarian, caring for a host of dogs and cats just the way her father had.

What she wanted for her private life was another matter. Oh, she knew that she wanted to go the traditional route. Wanted a husband and a family. Eventually.

She would have sworn that she hadn’t wanted to reverse that order, but apparently she had no choice in the matter now.

Unless, as her sister in Sacramento had urged, she give up the baby.

There was no way Eve wanted to do that. Not because she viewed the little passenger she was carrying around as a love child, the living testimony of the passion that had existed between her and Adam. No, that didn’t enter into it at all. The baby, whose due date Eve’s ob-gyn had calculated was still a long two weeks away, was an extension of her, a little person whom for reasons that were beyond her, God had seen fit to entrust to her.

She was even looking forward to holding the baby in her arms. But she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with being alone at a time when the baby’s father’s emotional support would have meant so much.

The latter was her own fault, she supposed.

No one had told her to pick up in the middle of the night and flee from Santa Barbara, secretly running back home to Laguna Beach.

“But how couldn’t I?” she said aloud.

Tessa, dead to the world only a heartbeat ago, raised her head and looked at Eve with deep brown eyes. The next second, seeing that there was no emergency, Tessa went back to sleep.

Leaning over, Eve ran her hand over the dog’s head, struggled to bank down her agitation. Petting her dog usually helped calm her.

But not tonight.

Tonight, the agitation refused to leave, refused to budge.

Maybe it was because tonight was Halloween, she thought. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

She sighed again.

Adam Smythe had been almost stereotypically handsome, not to mention the last word in “sexy.” Added to that he was charming and he had taken her breath away from the very first moment she’d walked into his rare, first-editions bookstore. The moment he had looked her way, she’d felt as if an arrow had been shot straight into her heart.

At the time she’d been looking for a special birthday present for her father. Warren Walters loved everything that had ever come from Mark Twain’s pen. What she’d wound up getting, along with a fairly well-preserved first edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, was a prepackaged heartache.

Oh, Adam hadn’t looked like a heartache at first or even at tenth glance. He looked like a drop-dead gorgeous specimen of manhood who, given that this was California, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed man had said he was just running the bookstore until that big acting break came that would propel him into being the country’s next great heartthrob.

To add to this image, Adam was soft-spoken, slightly reserved, and he exuded such a powerful aura of authority that he’d instantly made her feel safe.

Eve laughed now, shaking her head at her incredible naiveté.

Talk about getting the wrong signal.

There had been nothing safe about Adam. He made her lose control in a heartbeat. Some of the boys in high school, and then college, she recalled, had referred to her as the Ice Princess.

“I certainly melted fast enough with him,” she told her faithful, sleeping companion. Tessa didn’t even stir this time.

One dinner.

One dinner had been all it had taken and she was ready to completely surrender her self-imposed code of ethics and abandon the way she’d behaved for her entire adult life without so much as a backward glance. When Adam had leaned over to brush back a loose strand of hair from her cheek, she turned into a furnace. Raging heat flashed through her limbs. Through her entire body.

And then he’d kissed her.

God, when Adam kissed her, she’d felt as if she were literally having an out-of-body experience.

And suddenly, without warning, Adam had drawn away and she came crashing down to earth like a speeding meteorite. A very confused meteorite.

She was accustomed to men being the aggressors, to having to somehow diplomatically hold them at bay without hurting their feelings or their egos. But this had been the other way around. Adam had been the one who had pulled back. And she had been the one who ultimately pushed.

Very simply, there’d been something about Adam that had turned her inside out. Their night together was the stuff of fantasies.

And then, just like that, all her thoughts centered around him. She couldn’t wait until the next time they were together, couldn’t wait to hear the sound of his voice, to catch a whiff of the scent that was the combination of his shaving cream mixing with his aftershave.

Adam had become her sun and anytime she wasn’t around him, she felt as if she’d been plunged into soul-consuming darkness.

What a crock.

How could she, a heretofore intelligent woman, have been so blind, so dumb?

Smitten teenage girls—very young smitten teenage girls—felt this way, not a woman who practiced veterinarian medicine, who was a responsible, levelheaded and dedicated person.

Except that she had.

Into every paradise, a snake must slither and her paradise was no different. It occurred shortly after the first time—the only time—that they made love.

Made love.

The phrase lingered now in her brain like a haunting refrain.

Even today, knowing what she knew, it was still hard not to feel the excitement pulsing through her body at the mere memory of those precious, exquisite moments she’d spent lost in Adam’s arms, in his embrace. Even though it seemed impossible, he was simultaneously the most gentle, caring, yet passionate lover ever created. And he had been hers.

Looking back, she could honestly say, if only to herself, that they hadn’t made love. They had made poetry.

Remembering the moment, Eve felt her body aching for him.

“Stop it,” she upbraided herself.

Tessa raised her head, this time quickly, as if she was ready to dart away, afraid that she’d caused her mistress some displeasure. Displeasure that brought punishment with it.

Eve instantly felt guilty. “No, not you, girl,” she said in a soothing voice, running her hand over the dog’s head and stroking it. “I’m just talking to myself.” She looked at the dog and smiled sadly. “Too bad you can’t talk, then maybe my thoughts wouldn’t keep getting carried away like this.”

Calmed, Tessa lowered her head again, resting it on her paws. She was asleep in less than a minute, this time snoring gently.

Eve smiled at her, shaking her head. “I love you the way you are, but I wish you were human.”

She craved companionship, someone to communicate with. But her father was gone. He had died less than a month after she’d come back home. Heartbroken, she’d handled all the funeral arrangements. Angela and her family had come down on the day of the funeral and had left by its end. Angela had left a trail of excuses in her wake. Eve didn’t blame her. Angela and her family had a life to get back to.

It was several days after her father’s funeral, as she wandered around the empty house, looking for a place for herself, that she finally had to admit what she had been trying desperately to ignore. She was pregnant.

At least her father had been spared that, Eve thought, forever trying to look on the bright side of things.

Eve knew he would have been there for her, supporting her—unlike her sister—no matter what her decision regarding the baby’s future. But somewhere deep down inside, Eve was fairly certain her father would have felt disappointed. He’d always thought of her as perfect.

Again, she shook her head, her sad smile barely moving the corners of her mouth. “‘Fraid not, Dad. So far from perfect, it would boggle your mind.”

Just then, she felt a sharp pain. The baby was kicking. Again. It had been restless all day.

Probably tired of its closed quarters, Eve thought. Maybe he or she was claustrophobic, the way she was.

Without thinking, Eve lifted one hand from the keyboard and placed it over the swell of her abdomen, massaging the area that was the origin of the pain this time, even though it did no good.

Was it her imagination, or was she growing bigger and bigger by the hour?

“Won’t be long now, baby,” she murmured to her stomach.

She had a little more than two weeks to go. Part of her couldn’t wait to finally have this all over with, to give birth and meet this little person who had turned her world completely upside down. The other part of her was content to let this state continue. She was terrified of the delivery. Not of what she imagined would be the pain, she’d helped birth enough animals to know exactly what to expect in that respect. No, she was afraid of what lay ahead after the birthing pains had subsided. When the real challenge kicked in.

“You know it’s selfish of you to keep it,” Angela had told her for the umpteenth time when she’d called last week. There was a knowing air of superiority in her sister’s voice. Angela was convinced she always knew what was best. “It needs a mother and a father. Since you decided to have it, you really should give it up for adoption.”

“‘It’ is a baby,” Eve had shot back, one of the few times she’d lost her temper. But she was thoroughly annoyed at the flippant, cavalier way her sister was talking to her. Angela was acting as if she had the inside track on how to live life the right way just because she was married and had the idyllic number of children: two, a boy and a girl. “And what the baby needs is a mother who loves unconditionally.”

“Obviously,” had been Angela’s snide retort. Eve knew that her older sister referred not to her loving the baby, but to the situation that had resulted in the creation of this baby. “Look, why won’t you tell the father that he has a responsibility—”

Eve cut her short. “Because I won’t, that’s all. Subject closed,” she’d said firmly.

She wasn’t about to tell Angela the reason she wouldn’t notify Adam of his paternity. Even under perfect conditions, she wouldn’t have wanted the father of her child to feel obligated to “step up and do the right thing,” as Angela had declared. When she did get married, it would be because the man who had her heart wanted to marry her, not because he felt he had to marry her.

And conditions were far from perfect. She hadn’t even told Angela Adam’s name, much less what it was that had sent her running back home to get away from the potential heartache that Adam Smythe—if that was even his name—represented.

Eve closed her eyes, remembering that night. She might have even still been in Santa Barbara, running the animal clinic there, if she hadn’t overheard Adam on the phone. Closing early for the night, she’d decided to surprise Adam and arrive early for their date. He was on the telephone, his back to her, talking to a potential customer. As she listened, waiting for him to finish, she realized that he wasn’t talking to a customer about one of the books in his shop, but someone calling him about obtaining drugs.

Horror filled her as she realized that the man who had lit up her world, who was her baby’s father, was one of the lowest life-forms on this earth: a drug dealer.

The bookstore was just a cover.

Her soul twisted in disappointment. She couldn’t even bring herself to confront him, to demand to know why he hadn’t told her he was immersed in this dark world before they’d gotten involved with one another.

Before she’d fallen in love with him.

She’d felt so sick, so betrayed and so lost. She’d slipped out of the store quickly and silently. Hurrying to her apartment, she’d called him, struggling to hide her anger and hurt, and told Adam that she wasn’t feeling well. Sympathetic, he’d offered to come over to keep her company, but she’d turned him down, saying she was afraid she might be contagious. Promising to call him the next day with an update, she’d hung up.

It took her less than an hour to pack.

She’d left Adam a note, telling him she knew what he was involved in and begging him to get out before he became just another dead statistic. And then, after calling the clinic and telling her assistant that there was an emergency and she had to leave, Eve did just that.

All water under the bridge, she told herself now wearily. Can’t unring a bell. Adam was what he was—and she was pregnant. She was just going to have to make the best of it.

Right now, that actually involved doing something else she’d never thought she would do: pouring out her heart to a perfect stranger.

But then, that was exactly what made it so safe and cathartic. She was never going to see the stranger she’d found online, never going to meet MysteryMom, the woman who ran the support Web site she’d discovered several weeks ago. At the time, she hadn’t thought she would write more than once, but venting, getting it all out, proved to be almost euphoric. And it really did make her feel better to unburden herself like this, cloaked in anonymity. Though she wanted to be, she just couldn’t remain tight-lipped right now.

Besides, confession was supposed to be good for the soul, right?

God knew, she hadn’t intended on going back to the Web site when she’d sat down tonight, but it had been a long, trying day and after hunting for answers regarding her nearly blind patient, answers that had turned out not to be very optimistic. She’d found herself drawn back to MysteryMom and the woman’s easygoing, low-keyed common sense. It was like having a friend, and right now, she could stand to have a friend. A female friend who seemed to know exactly what she was going through.

Once she logged on, all it had taken were a few well-intentioned questions from MysteryMom and suddenly the floodgates had been tapped and Eve found herself typing so fast, there was almost smoke coming from her fingers.

Maybe tomorrow, she’d regret all this, Eve thought philosophically. But then, how could she possibly be in any worse shape than she already was? Wildly in love nine months ago, then wildly disappointed—and now, wildly pregnant.

Hell of a journey, she thought, typing words to that effect to the sympathetic MysteryMom.

And then Eve stopped, leaning back in her chair. She glanced toward her sleeping shadow. “I just hope that ‘MysteryMom’ isn’t some cigar chomping, hairy-knuckled oaf getting his jollies by pretending to be a sympathetic single mom,” she said to Tessa.

Tessa merely yawned and went back to sleeping.

Eve was about to type another thought when she heard the doorbell ring.

More trick or treaters.

With a sigh, Eve gripped the arms on her chair and pushed herself up.

She missed being able to spring to her feet, but she supposed it could be worse. At least she could still see her feet. When Angela had been pregnant with her first child, Renee, she couldn’t see her feet after entering her seventh month.

Tessa was on all four of hers, padding quietly behind her, a four-legged, furry shadow determined to remain close.

Eve passed a mirror on her way to the front door. “At least I don’t look like a blimp,” she consoled herself.

A goblin, a fairy princess and what looked like a robot, none of whom could have been over ten, shouted “Trick or treat!” at her the moment she opened the door. Delighted, Eve grabbed a handful of candy from the bowl she had placed by the front door and divided the candy between them.

The goblin paused, relishing his booty, and obviously staring at her. “What are you supposed to be?”

Eve didn’t even hesitate. “A pumpkin.” It sounded better to her than “beached whale.”

“But you’re not orange,” the robot protested.

Eve snapped her fingers. “Knew I forgot something. Thanks for letting me know.”

Only the fairy princess said nothing beyond, “Thank you,” looking at her knowingly, as if, even at that age, there was an unconscious bond that existed within the female gender.

And then her little visitors ran off, laughing, all beneath the distant, watchful scrutiny of one of their parents.

As she slowly closed her front door, Eve realized that the feeling was back. The one that whispered there was someone out there, watching her. Hoping to either catch him or her, or render a death knell to the unnerving feeling, she swung open her door again and looked around.

Nothing. Again.

She frowned, closing the door all the way this time. The excitement over, Tessa turned away from the door. “If there is someone out there, promise you’ll rip them limb from limb if they try to break in, Tessa.”

The dog gave no indication that she heard any of the request. Instead, she trotted back to the office and reclaimed her position beneath the desk.

“I feel so safe now,” Eve murmured to the dog as she lowered herself into the office chair again and once more immersed herself in the comforting words of MysteryMom. It wasn’t that she was a believer in the old saying that misery loved company. It was just that knowing someone else had gone through what she was going through and survived made her feel more heartened.

It was something to cling to.

Chapter 2

After more than two years undercover, disappearing into the shadows had become second nature to Adam Serrano.

Usually the object of his surveillance was an unsavory character involved in the ever-mushrooming, lethal drug trade, not a female veterinarian with killer legs, liquid blue eyes and a soul Snow White would have been in awe of.

The anonymous tip that had appeared without warning on his computer yesterday morning had been right. Eve Walters was right here in Laguna Beach, practically right under his nose.

Who would have thought it? The irony of the situation was still very fresh in his mind. She had disappeared on him eight months ago, doing what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do: leaving. Reading her letter, a letter he still had in his possession, had cut small, jagged holes in his soul. His first instinct had been to go after her, to find her and bring her back.

But he’d forced himself to refrain.

It hadn’t been easy. Eventually, his common sense had prevailed. This was for the best.

Though he missed Eve more than he would have ever thought possible, Adam had every intention of allowing her to stay out of his life. Being part of his life would have been far too dangerous for her.

The nature of his “business,” searching for the source of the latest flood of heroin, had brought him here, down to southern California. These days, the hard reality of it was that, despite his agency’s efforts, the drug culture was alive and thriving absolutely everywhere. The drugs on the street apparently knew no caste system, bringing down the rich, as well as the poor. The only difference was that the rich didn’t need to knock over a liquor store, or rob an elderly couple or kill some unsuspecting innocent to feed their habit. That’s what Mommy and Daddy were for, blindly throwing money at the problem instead of helping their spoiled, pampered offspring morph into respectable people.

Life didn’t work that way. But it was obviously still full of surprises.

Not the least of which was that his work had brought him down here, almost at Eve’s door, as it were.

But moving the base of his “operation” to Laguna still wouldn’t have had him skulking around, camping out in unmarked cars and hiding in doorways to catch a glimpse of her or acting like some wayward guardian angel if that anonymous message on his computer hadn’t knocked him for a loop.

“Eve is pregnant with your baby.” The terse sentence was followed by an address. Nothing more.

He’d presumed the address belonged to Eve. Minimal effort via his computer had proven him right. He recalled her mentioning that she had grown up somewhere in this area and that her dad had had an animal hospital here.

When he looked up the animal hospitals in and around Laguna, he found an “E. Walters” listed. He remembered her telling him that her father’s name was Warren. That meant that she was now running the Animal Hospital of Laguna Beach.

And she was pregnant, supposedly with his baby.

Even so, Adam had debated ignoring the message, telling himself it was some kind of trick to have him come forward. And even if it wasn’t a trick, he could do nothing about the situation. It was her body, not his. Whether or not she kept this baby was up to her, not him.

That argument had lasted all of ten minutes, if that long. Even as he posed it, Adam knew he had to see for himself whether or not it was true.

He fervently hoped that it wasn’t.

But it was. Or, at least, she was carrying someone’s child.

In his gut, he knew it was his.

Juggling things so that he could put everything else temporarily on hold for the evening, Adam stationed himself in a nondescript vehicle on the through street that ran by Eve’s house. He was careful to park on the opposite side, waiting to catch another glimpse of the only woman who had managed to break through his carefully constructed barriers.

It was Halloween and he knew the way Eve felt about kids. The same way she felt about helpless animals. No way was she going to be one of those people who either left their home for the evening every Halloween or pretended not to hear the doorbell or the noise generated by approaching bands of costumed children.

Personally, he never liked the holiday. Dealing with the scum of the earth for the last ten years, he knew what was out there. And what could happen to trusting children.

Hell, if he had a kid …

He did have a kid, Adam realized abruptly. Or would have one. Soon, if his math served him.

Damn, he hadn’t gotten used to that idea yet. A father.

Him.

Maybe the baby wasn’t his, Adam thought. A woman as beautiful as Eve Walters had to have a lot of men after her. A lot of men trying to get her to sleep with them …

Even as he made the excuses, Adam knew they weren’t true. Eve wasn’t the type to sleep around. He’d known that even before they’d made love. And when they had, he’d discovered to his everlasting surprise that she was a virgin. He’d been her first.

How?

How the hell had this happened? he silently demanded.

He’d made sure he used protection. Pausing in the middle of heated passion had been damn awkward, but he had done it, mindful of the consequences if he didn’t. Even so, she had made him lose his head and it had been all he could do to hold on to his common sense.

Common sense, now there was a misnomer. Common sense just wasn’t common. If he’d actually had any, he would’ve gotten a grip on himself then and there. Instead of reaching for a condom, he would have reached for his jeans and walked away.

Adam shook his head. Who the hell was he kidding? A saint couldn’t have walked away from Eve, not when things had reached that level. Not with that delicious mouth of hers. Not with that body, slick with sweat and desire, his for the taking. And God knew he wasn’t a saint—far from it. He was just a man. And she had made him vulnerable.

And now, apparently, he had returned the favor and done the same to her.

He had no family, not anymore. And when it was only him, the danger didn’t matter.

But now it mattered.

If she was pregnant, he was going to need to protect her. If these rich lowlifes he dealt with found out she was pregnant with his baby, there was more than a slim chance, if things went awry, that they would do something to her. He put nothing past them, nothing past the middle man he was currently working with, a college senior majoring in heroin distribution. Danny Sederholm might kidnap Eve—or the baby—if it gave the kid the advantage and secured leverage against him. Nobody trusted anybody in this so-called “business.”

Adam shifted in his seat, feeling restless and confined. Where were the hoards of kids, wandering around the neighborhood and ringing doorbells in their quest for cavities? Had they all suddenly come to their senses and abandoned the trick-or-treating ritual?

Get a grip, Serrano.

He wasn’t usually this impatient. But this was different. This wasn’t just about him.

Hell, he would have felt a lot better just knowing who the message had come from.

The fact that it could all be a trap was not lost on him. No computer novice, he’d spent a good part of yesterday trying to trace where the message had originated. A good part of yesterday was spent in frustration.

Striking out, he’d gotten in contact with his handler, Hugh Patterson, who in turn had turned Spenser onto the task. Spenser was a wunderkind when it came to the computer. When Spenser failed to find where the e-mail had come from, he knew that they were dealing with a five-star pro.

Good pro or bad pro?

Adam hadn’t the slightest idea, but for now, his anonymous tipster didn’t seem to have an agenda, other than passing on this tidbit of information. Why he or she had done that, Adam hadn’t a clue. Was it to taunt him, to show him he was vulnerable, or to get him to stand up and do the right thing? Or was this tipster just out to entertain himself or play deus ex machina behind the scenes?

Adam wished he knew.

But he did know what his next step had to be. And he took it.

Laura Delaney sat down at her desk, getting back to her Web site. Jeremy was finally in bed, asleep, or at least, asleep for the time being. She had no doubt that at least some of the candy he’d collected tonight had found its way into his bottomless tummy despite her strict rules about his only eating two pieces tonight and evenly doling out the rest for the following week. She’d offered those terms, hoping that a compromise would be reached at five. Maybe six.

Bid low, go high, she thought, amused.

She loved this holiday, loved seeing the excitement in her young son’s eyes. Taking after her, Jeremy had started planning his costume right after school began in September. Most of all, she loved seeing life through his deep brown eyes. Everything felt so fresh, so new again seeing it from Jeremy’s perspective. After all the time she’d spent in the CIA, this new outlook was a godsend to her.

Getting pregnant with Jeremy was definitely the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Although it certainly hadn’t felt so at the time.

At the time, making the discovery a week after her intense debriefing in Singapore, the pregnancy had knocked the pins right out from beneath her world. And there was never any question as to who the father was. Jeremy’s father was a dynamic, larger-than-life handsome man who had quite literally saved her life.

The whole thing had been almost like a scene out of the movies. The one where the hero put out his hand to the heroine and growled darkly, “Come with me if you want to live.”

She’d wanted to live all right. Pinned down in a hopeless situation, knowing she’d be dead by dawn if she stayed, she’d had no recourse but to come with the man who had suddenly burst into her life.

In true knight-in-shining-armor style, he’d used his body to shield hers and had hustled her out of what would have been a terminal situation. A hairbreadth away from being captured by the people she, as a CIA operative, had been sent to spy on, Laura had had no illusions about her situation. Had he not suddenly materialized in that embassy room, seemingly out of nowhere, she knew she would not have lived to see another sunrise.

Instead, she’d lived to watch the sunrise in a small fishing hut, sequestered in his arms. Funny how almost dying makes you so anxious to live, to experience and savor everything. The escape, the pursuit and then hiding in a fishing village, posing as fishermen, had all contributed to her heightened desire to live. Her desire to seize all that life had to offer.

What life had offered was a man whose name she never learned.

She had learned that she hadn’t been afraid to seize the moment, and neither had he. They were drawn to one another like the missing two halves of a whole. Their coming together was nothing short of earthshaking. It had been predestined.

Then came the dawn and the rest of life.

He smuggled her out of the village, put her on a transport plane and then, much too quickly, faded out of her life. Faded even though she asked more than one operative who the masked man was. Time and again, she received conflicting answers. The upshot was that no one seemed to know who he was or where he came from. It was almost as if he was a phantom.

Laura went on asking more urgently when she discovered that she was pregnant. But the result remained the same. No one could tell her. The few leads she had all ended in a dead end, taking her to operatives who turned out not to be the man who had saved her life and planted another inside her.

Pregnant, she had another life to think about other than her own. Laura decided she had no choice but to leave her present life behind. Because of her love of animals and having been raised on a ranch, she took up horse training in an effort to create a stable—no pun intended—normal life for her son.

These days, the life she’d once led almost seemed like a dream, or an action novel she’d read a long, long time ago. The only thing left to remind her that she had once actually been a CIA operative was her ability to utilize information—and sources—to allow her to find people. Ironically, despite numerous tries, she couldn’t find Jeremy’s father, but once she’d read Eve Walters’s e-mail and learned the woman’s story, she had used all the information available to her to see if she could track down the so-called “drug dealer” who had impregnated the woman.

As she read Eve’s story, her gut almost immediately told her that the man who had fathered Eve’s baby wasn’t the drug pusher the woman believed him to be. Laura knew the life, knew the deceptions that were so necessary in order to maintain a cover. Something she couldn’t put into words told her that Eve’s “Adam” was part of some kind of government agency.

A little research and calling in several favors from old friends proved her right.

Adam Smythe was actually Adam Serrano, a DEA agent who had been working undercover for the last two years. There was more background on the man, but that was all she was interested in. Laura saw no reason to delve into the man’s history any further than was absolutely necessary. The life she led now made her acutely aware of the need for, and seductive appeal of, privacy. She gave Adam Serrano his.

Armed with this information, it took little for her to find both Adam’s Internet server and with that, his e-mail address. Her stark e-mail message to him went out the moment she secured it.

If Adam was anything like her, she reasoned, his sense of family would leap to the foreground, especially since he had none. She was fairly certain that he would lose no time trying to track down the mother of this unborn child he hadn’t realized was in the offing.

Laura was more than a little tempted to e-mail Eve and let her know that Adam was coming, but that might have made the woman bolt. Bolting was the last thing she needed to do at this late stage in her pregnancy.

Eve needed exactly what she was most likely going to get.

What she, herself, would have loved to get, Laura thought wistfully.

But, except for an occasional daydream, she had given up the fantasy that had her mystery man knocking on her door, the way she envisioned Adam doing now, or definitely in the very near future, on Eve’s door.

Laura smiled as she replayed the thought. It wasn’t every day a girl got the chance to bring Adam and Eve together, she mused, more than a little pleased with herself.

With renewed purpose, Laura went on to read the next e-mail that had been sent to her site from another single mom.

The doorbell was ringing.

Eve pressed her lips together. She had just shut down her computer for the night. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was almost nine o’clock.

Nine o’clock and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

Some party girl she was, Eve mocked herself. She could remember going two days without sleep when she was in college. Three days once, she recalled. There was no way she could do that now. But then, this pregnancy and the tension that had come with it served to drain her and make her overly tired more than she cared to acknowledge.

This was probably nothing compared to how tired she was going to be once the baby learned how to walk and get into things, she thought. She was looking forward to that, she realized. Looking forward to being a parent—

The doorbell rang again.

What kind of a responsible parent allowed their child to still be out, trick-or-treating at this hour? The little ones needed to be home, asleep in their beds, or at least in their beds.

Most likely it was another one of those high school kids, she thought, bracing her hands on the chair’s armrests and pushing herself to her feet. She’d had several of those tonight, costumed kids who towered over her. One looked old enough to shave.

She hated the way they abused Halloween, horning in on a holiday that was intended for little children to enjoy. Oh, well, she still had some candy left over. She might as well give it to them. It was better for her that way.

Eve knew her weakness. If there was candy hanging around in a bowl, no matter what she promised herself about being good, the pieces would eventually find their way into her mouth. The problem was, Eve thought, she had never met a piece of candy, chocolate or otherwise she didn’t like.

“Time to get rid of the temptation,” she told Tessa. Gently snoring, the dog ignored her.

Picking up the bowl, Eve carried it with her as she made her way to the front door.

“Some guard dog you are,” she quipped, tossing the remark over her shoulder. Tessa still didn’t stir.

About to open the door, she had to stop for a second as yet another pain seized her, stealing her breath and causing her to all but double over. This was getting very old. Just as perspiration broke out all along her brow, the pain receded. She let out a long breath and then reached for the front door.

Since she was right-handed, Eve had to shift the bowl over to her left side and then open the door with her right.

But this time, no chorus of “Trick or treat!”—even a baritone chorus—greeted her.

Instead, the uncostumed, tall, dark and still pulseracingly handsome man who was standing on her doorstep said, “Hello, Eve.”

The lights in the living room behind her seemed to dim slightly, even as her head began to spin about. Eve struggled to catch hold of it. Reality and everything that went with it distanced itself from her.

The bowl she was holding slipped out of her hand and onto the light gray tiled floor, shattering the second it made contact.

It was only by sheer luck that she hadn’t gone down with it.

Chapter 3

Adam. Here.

How?

Stunned, the first coherent thought that shot through Eve’s mind was to somehow cover up the rounded expanse of her belly so that Adam wouldn’t notice that she was pregnant.

But it was far too late for that.

Those emerald-green eyes of his that she’d once loved so much slid down, taking in the swell of his child.

Her mouth felt as dry as cotton as she struggled to access her brain. The organ became temporarily paralyzed by the sight of the man whose very touch had once been able to move the earth beneath her feet.

Then, as she watched, to her utter amazement Adam dropped down to his knees right in front of her. For just the tiniest fraction of a second, she thought he was going apologize profusely, swearing by everything he held dear that he’d completely reformed and had been frantically searching for her these last eight months. She knew it was just a hopeless fantasy on her part. Adam would never beg for any reason. It would have been completely out of character for him.

As out of character as a supposed scholar dealing in drugs to provide himself with a lucrative sideline, she thought with no small touch of sarcasm.

As her mind came back into sync, it still took Eve more than a moment to draw in enough air to form any words.

“What—what are you doing here?” she finally managed to ask, addressing the question to the top of his thick, black hair.

“Right now, picking up a bunch of broken glass and several tiny bags of Halloween candy,” Adam answered. The bowl had smashed into almost a dozen pieces, too many for him to hold in his hand at one time. Looking up, he asked her, “Do you have a bag or something that I can put this mess into?”

The question sounded so casual, so natural, as if they had never been apart. As if this was just another evening in their lives, following scores of other evenings exactly like it.

But it wasn’t just another evening, and they had been apart. Moreover, if she’d been successful in her escape from Santa Barbara, they would have remained that way forever.

Despite everything, just looking at him intensified the longing she’d struggled against almost daily. Eve vaguely remembered a lyric she’d once heard, part of a song whose title she’d long since forgotten. Leaving him was a lot easier than staying away.

Truer words were never uttered.

Seeing Adam now, Eve wanted to throw herself into his arms. To hide there, in the shelter of his embrace. In effect, she wanted to hide from the man she’d discovered Adam to be by seeking refuge in the arms of the man she’d thought Adam was.

How crazy was that?

Very.

Her head hurt and her heart ached.

“Or,” Adam went on when she continued to stand there, making no reply, “I could just go get it myself if you tell me where you keep your bags.”

She needed to regroup, to stop feeling as if she was on the verge of hyperventilating and tell him in no uncertain terms that he had to leave.

The words wouldn’t come.

Buying herself some time, struggling against yet another wave of pain emanating from her belly, Eve turned on her heel and went to the kitchen. She braced her hand on the counter and opened the bottom drawer situated just to the right of the sink. It was stuffed with plastic grocery bags waiting to be pressed into service. After taking one out, she made her way back to the front door and prayed she was hallucinating.

She hadn’t imagined it.

Adam was still there, crouching with his hands full of broken glass, watching her. Waiting for her to come back.

Adam’s very presence mocked the notions that had filled her head such a short time ago. Notions that comprised the happily-ever-after scenario she’d once woven for herself, thinking that finally she’d found that one special someone she wanted to face forever with.

Until there was Adam, she’d never been in love before, never even experienced a serious crush. At twenty-nine, she’d begun to think that she was destined to face life alone. But then she’d walked into the secondhand bookstore and lost her heart. Just like that.

She’d even joked with her father when she saw him shortly thereafter, gifting him with the first edition Mark Twain book she’d bought in Adam’s store, that she’d never believed love at first sight was anything but a myth—until she’d fallen victim to it.

Victim.

Now there was a good word. Because she really was the victim here. She and this baby. A victim of her own stupidity and her far-too-trusting nature. Otherwise, maybe she would have noticed some things that were awry, things that she should have scrutinized more closely. Warning signs. They had to have been there if she hadn’t been so blind, so willing to love.

She bit back a sigh. She wasn’t up to this. Wasn’t up to dealing with seeing Adam, especially not now, when she felt as sluggish as an elephant that had been hit with a giant tranquilizer dart.

Eve held out the plastic grocery bag. Adam took it from her, murmuring “Thanks,” and smiling that lopsided, sensual smile of his she discovered she still wasn’t immune to.

She stood there, trying not to think, not to feel, as Adam gathered up the last of the glass and disposed of it in the bag.

Just then, as if suddenly hearing the sound of his voice, Tessa came charging out of the office to investigate. Seeing him, she immediately dashed toward Adam, wagging her tail like a metronome that had been set at triple time.

“Hi, Tessa,” Adam said with a laugh, petting the excited dog and trying not to let her knock him over. “How’ve you been, girl?”

In response, Tessa licked his face.

So much for allies, Eve thought.

Still petting the dog, Adam looked at her. “I think I got it all,” he told Eve. “But to be on the safe side, I’d suggest you vacuum the area.” Standing up, taking care not to let the excited dog overwhelm him, he decided to augment his statement. “Better yet, tell me where you keep your vacuum cleaner and I’ll vacuum the area for you.” Anticipating an argument, Adam added, “It’s the least I can do—seeing as how the sight of me made you drop the bowl in the first place.”

Eve squared her shoulders. Don’t let him get to you, damn it. Don’t!

“I can do my own vacuuming,” she told him in a voice that had a slight tremor in it.

He eyed her dubiously, his smile fading and becoming a thing of the past. “You sure? Pushing something heavy around like that might cause you to go into labor prematurely.”

She wanted him out of here—before she wound up caving. “Did you get a medical degree since I last saw you?”

His eyes remained on hers. It took everything she had not to let them get to her. Not to just give up and hold on to him the way she couldn’t seem to hold on to her anger.

“A lot of things happened since I last saw you,” he told her, his voice low, “but my getting a medical degree wasn’t among them.”

It was the same tone that used to ripple along her skin, exciting her. Well, it didn’t excite her anymore. It didn’t, she fiercely insisted.

“I’m just passing on some common sense,” Adam concluded.

She did her best to make him leave. “Always a first time,” she answered sarcastically.

Adam waited for her to continue venting. When she didn’t, he raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it?” he asked. “Nothing more? No more slings and arrows and hot words?” He knew it was baiting her, but the way he saw it, she deserved to be able to yell at him, to put her anger into words. God knew she had the right.

But she just looked at him, the light leaving her eyes. That hurt him more than anything she could have said, because he knew that he’d done that to her.

“What’s the point?” she countered sadly, half lifting her shoulders in a careless shrug.

“The point is that it might make you feel better,” Adam told her. “It might help restore some equilibrium in your world.”

She was a long way from having that happen, she thought. A long way. “The only thing that would do either would be if I’d never met you.”

He had that coming and he knew it. He regretted their time together only because it had placed her in jeopardy and it ultimately had hurt her. That had never been his intention.

In an absolute, personal sense, he’d never, not even for a moment, regretted having her in his life, no matter how short the time they had together had been. But, even though she didn’t know it, she’d had her revenge. Eve had upended his world, showing him everything he’d given up to do what he did, to be what he was. She’d showed him everything he could have had if his life had gone differently.

At least he had a life, he reminded himself.

Which was more than Mona had.

Mona, his kid sister, had been bright, beautiful and blessed with the ability to light up a room the moment she entered it. Her family and friends were all certain that she could have had the world at her feet just by wishing it.

Instead, she opted to keep it at bay, losing herself in the dark, forbidding haze of heroin and meth until no one who loved her could even recognize her. Despite his alternating between pleading with her and railing at her, his sister had continued using even as she made him promise after promise to stop.

When she finally did stop, it hadn’t been voluntarily. He’d found her lying facedown on the floor of the apartment he’d been paying for, a victim of a drug overdose. No frantic attempts at CPR on his part could revive her. His sister was gone, another statistic in the increasingly unsuccessful war on drugs. His crusade against drugs began that morning.

And the way he viewed it, it hadn’t cost him anything. Until he’d met Eve.

“Where do you keep the vacuum cleaner?” he repeated, his voice a little gruffer.

“I said I’d take care of it,” Eve insisted, holding her ground.

He let her win. Maybe she needed that. With a shrug, Adam bent down to pick up the spilled candy. Cradling the small bags, bars and boxes against his chest, he rose to his feet again.

“Where do you want me to put these?”

The answer flashed through her head, but it wasn’t her way to say things like that, no matter how tempted she was or how warranted her flippant remark might have actually been. Adam might not have any honor left, but she still did.

Was that why she was carrying the drug dealer’s baby? a taunting voice in her head mocked.

“Over there will be fine,” she told him, nodding toward the coffee table.

Adam crossed over to it and let the candy rain down from his arms onto the table.

His back was to her. An image flashed through her brain. The way his back had looked as he moved to leave his bed after they’d made love. She felt her stomach tightening.

She had to stop that, stop torturing herself. He wasn’t the answer to a prayer, he was the personification of a nightmare.

A nightmare in pleasing form.

Eve passed her tongue along her lips, trying to moisten them. They were so dry, they were almost sticking together.

“Why did you come?” she forced herself to ask, making it sound like an accusation.

He turned from the table and looked at her. Had she always looked so delicate? he wondered. “I heard you were pregnant—”

Eve widened her eyes. They had no friends in common and their worlds certainly didn’t overlap.

“How did you hear?” she demanded. He just looked at her. “Who told you?” she pressed.

He waved her question away. “Doesn’t matter. But I came to see for myself.”

She drew herself up to her full five-foot-four height, then spread her arms, giving him an unobstructed view. After a minute, she dropped her arms again. “All right, you saw. Now please leave.”

Adam remained where he stood, making no move to do anything of the kind. Tessa was nuzzling his leg and he stroked her head as he took a breath, fortifying himself.

“Is it mine?” he asked.

“No.” The denial automatically rose to her lips and shot like a bullet through the air, primed by a she-bear’s instincts to protect her unborn cub.

He didn’t believe her even though part of him would have really wanted to. It would have made everything so much simpler. It would have taken away not just his sense of guilt, but of responsibility, too. Not to mention that he wouldn’t need to feel obligated to protect the baby or her if she wasn’t bearing his child.

The hell you wouldn’t.

The other part of him fiercely rejected even the suggestion that the seed growing in her belly had come from anyone but him. Even if he never saw Eve again—and until that anonymous e-mail had turned up on his computer he never planned to—Eve was his soul mate in every sense of the word. He knew that no matter how many women he came across, how many he took to his bed, this one would stand out. This one would always mean more to him than all the others combined.

And he knew her well enough to know that the child was his no matter what she said to the contrary.

“I don’t believe you,” he told her quietly.

Panic began to form within her. Why had he shown up? Why couldn’t he just let her go? And more importantly, why did the sight of him make her yearn like this? She weighed a ton, for God’s sake. Women who weighed a ton weren’t supposed to suddenly want to have their bones jumped, especially not by someone they knew dwelled with the dregs of society.

Eve did her best to sound distant. “I don’t care what you believe,” she told him coldly. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she ordered, “Now go, get out of here. I never want to see you again.”

This was where he should retreat. She’d given him the perfect out. He’d come, he’d seen for himself that Eve was pregnant, now it was time to go. He was still undercover and the stakes were now larger than ever. The person he was after was the main player, the head of the drug cartel. The center of the drug trafficking that was filling the local colleges with heroin.

He couldn’t jeopardize that. Eve had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him around. And she’d heatedly denied that he was the father. That meant that he could walk away with a clear conscience.

But he couldn’t leave.

It didn’t matter what he wished, the fact remained that Eve had been with him a little less than nine months ago. With him in every sense of the word. He knew in his gut the baby was his. If he could do the math, someone else in the organization would do the same. The time to back away, to pretend she’d never been part of his life, was over. Eve and her unborn child were at risk. They needed his protection. He was not about to have them on his conscience.

He frowned, then calmly told her, “The calendar doesn’t back up what you just said.”

“Then get a new calendar,” she retorted. “This is not your baby.” Her voice rose in anger. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything from you. You’re free to walk away. So walk,” she ordered.

Instead of leaving, he pushed the door closed. The click echoed in her head. Nerves rose to the surface even as she struggled to at least look calm.

“Is this why you left?” he asked, his eyes indicating her swollen abdomen. “Because you found out you were pregnant?”

She took offense, although she didn’t even know why. Her hormones raged, playing tug-of-war with her emotions.

“No,” she retorted hotly, “I left because I found out that you were a drug dealer.”

He needed for her to be safe. Needed to watch over her. He knew that he couldn’t just post himself on her block indefinitely. This was the kind of neighborhood where an unknown car would attract attention if it was seen lingering for more than a few minutes—and that would inevitably result in a call to the police.

The last thing he wanted was to get involved with the local law enforcement agency, at least not until he could bring down the leader of this little high-class operation. Otherwise, he and a lot of other people would find themselves throwing away two years on a failed mission. And another drug lord would find himself with a free pass.

He owed it to Mona not to let that happen.

In order to do what he needed to do, he knew he needed to lie.

To Eve.

Again.

“Then you’ll be happy to know,” he told her, “that I’m not part of that world any longer.” His eyes held hers and he hated himself for what he was doing, but at the same time, he knew he had to. “I’m just a simple used book dealer.”

For just a moment, Eve’s heart leaped up in celebration. She was ready to seize the information and clutch it to her chest like an eternal promise. But he had lied to her before—who knows how many times—and once that sort of thing happened, trust was badly splintered if not shattered. Rebuilding the fragile emotion was not the easiest thing in the world.

“How do I know you’re not just lying?” she challenged, praying he had an answer that would somehow satisfy her.

“You don’t,” he admitted simply, surprising her. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

And that, Eve thought, was the problem in a nutshell. More than anything in the world, she wanted to believe him. But at the same time, she knew that she just couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he proved himself to her and gave her a concrete reason to believe him.

Just then, she thought she felt the baby begin to kick her again. Kick her harder than it had ever kicked before.

Caught off guard, immersed in this new drama, Eve gasped as tears welled up in her eyes.

Sensing both her mistress’s anxiety and her pain, Tessa began to pace nervously about before her as Eve clutched at her belly.

Adam reacted immediately. His arms closed around Eve as if he was afraid that she was about to sink down to the floor.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, concern weaving itself through his voice. His eyes searched her face. “What can I do to help?”

Just hold me, Adam, the little voice in her soul whispered to him. Just hold me and make everything all better again.

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