was going to take her? “No offense, but I’m not sure I want you anywhere near my babies.” She thought of the gunfight at the restaurant. The way he’d left his date there, lying in a pool of blood. Okay, she was sure she didn’t want him anywhere near Zak and Nate. And she kind of wished she’d never told him about the twins. She’d been still too shaken up. Hadn’t been in her right mind. Hadn’t been able to think.
He closed the panel. “I’m one of the good guys.”
She kind of figured that from the phone conversation, and would have been lying if she said that wasn’t a great relief. But… “Good guy and dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive,” she pointed out. “Whatever you’re involved in, I want no part of it.”
“Too late.”
Was that regret in his voice?
He took the few steps necessary to reach her, and she had to look up at him. He was a good couple of inches taller and almost twice as wide in the shoulders—and she wasn’t a small woman.
He hesitated for a second, then huffed some air out through narrowed lips. “I was working undercover tonight.”
A couple of things clicked into place. Her mind raced. “And back in Hopeville when we met?”
He tossed her a coat, then once she’d put it on, grabbed her by the wrist, heading out to the garage. “Yes.”
Of course. He’d been new to town. But then again, she’d been new, too. They had bonded over being outsiders who were trying to get their small side-by-side shops going, trying to fit in.
“Is Reid Graham your real name?”
“Yes. I was hoping to find a way into the cell through an old army acquaintance who knew me back then. He’d gone the wrong way after he quit the army. He has a cousin on the fringes of the cell. My record was doctored to make it look like I quit, too, shortly after him. I ran into him ‘accidentally’ and was trying to get into his confidence. Anyway, I had to use my real name.”
“Who was the blonde at the restaurant?”
“An asset. She had information I needed.”
A disposable asset, apparently. Obviously, his business involved using people and casting them aside if necessary. Then she thought of something else, and her throat constricted.
“Was seducing me part of your cover?”
“You came to me.” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “But regardless—” He paused while he let his car quietly roll out of the garage. He was scanning their surroundings. “What I allowed to happen…plain bad judgment on my part.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes as they reached the street and he stepped on the gas. She looked away from him, blinking rapidly, staring out the side window at the houses that zoomed by.
“I have a situation here.” He was talking on his phone again. “Personal. I need a safe house somewhere near Hopeville, P.A.” He listened. “Not much. I have the tag numbers of the SUV the shooters drove.” He rattled that off, then looked at her. “What’s your husband’s name?”
Husband? Oh, Allen. “Allen Birmingham.”
“Anybody by the name of Allen Birmingham at the restaurant?” His face darkened as he listened to the response. “I figured,” he said before ending the call.
She gripped the seat belt. “What? What happened to Allen?”
“The cops talked to him when they showed up. They asked him to wait in the manager’s office because they needed to talk to him again about your kidnapping, after they secured the scene and got what they could from the rest of the witnesses.” He looked at her, regret in his cinnamon eyes. “By the time they came back to him, he’d disappeared. Hey.” He took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “I’m sorry.”
“You think those men took him?” She was beginning to feel light-headed. “They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”
He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, the car flying over the road. It was getting late, so that traffic was beginning to thin, not much standing in their way.
She pulled away to wrap her arms around herself. “He isn’t my husband,” she said at last, dazed.
“Boyfriend? I guess he’s the father of your boys?”
She held Reid’s somber gaze when he glanced over. Bit her lip. Sooner or later… It wasn’t as if he wanted anything to do with them anyway. God, she’d been dreaming about this moment, wishing for this miracle for so long. And now that her most impossible dream had come true, nothing was as it should have been. It broke her heart.
She ignored the pain and filled her lungs. “No. You are,” she told him.
Chapter Three
He almost drove into oncoming traffic. Reid eased off the gas and straightened the steering wheel, trying to get his racing mind under control. “This would not be the best time to mess with me.”
She said nothing.
“How is that possible?” Don’t be an idiot, he thought as soon as the words were out of his mouth, just as she said the exact same thing out loud.
He swallowed back a snappy response. Okay, so, yes, they’d done the necessary deed. But still, a pregnancy wasn’t possible. But if he wasn’t the father, then who was? Why wasn’t he told that she was pregnant? He had asked for an update on her after he’d been evacuated from Hopeville. Someone had gone out, checked on her and reported back that she was fine.
Of course, her pregnancy might not have been showing at the time. The report had focused on the fact that her butcher shop had burned, too, but she’d received enough insurance money to rebuild. Not that he hadn’t felt guilty anyway.
He stole a look at her from the corner of his eye and decided to play along, figure out what her game was. “Which one?” She’d said Zak and Nate.
“Both. They’re twins.”
He gave a strangled cough as saliva went down the wrong way. He had to give it to her, when she did some thing, she really went to town with it. He loosened his hands on the steering wheel, which he’d been gripping so hard, his knuckles were beginning to ache.
“How did the fire start?” she asked.
And his muscles tightened again. “I can’t talk about that.”
Her voice deepened with anger. “I think you owe me an explanation.”
Words she stole right out of his mouth. He waited a couple of seconds while he arranged his thoughts. He could give her the generalities. She did deserve something. “I was watching someone I suspected was a member of a group we had an interest in.”
“We?”
He didn’t respond.
“Law enforcement? Some government agency?”
“Something along those lines. Anyway, there was a leak somewhere. They figured out who I was. They came after me.”
She was watching him, wide-eyed. “But then whose body was that in the ashes?”
Right. The body she had buried. An image rose in his mind—her standing by a headstone carved with his name. No reason he should feel bad about that—he’d just been doing his job—but he felt like a jerk anyway. “I took one of them out before they got to me.”
That revelation silenced her for only a second. “How did you get out?”
“I wasn’t as dead as they thought when they set the place on fire. I crawled off, called for help. The decision was made that it’d be best if I wasn’t officially resurrected.”
“You could have told me.” Her