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.
He didn’t like the way she’d suddenly stiffened against him or the fact that her breathing began to sound labored. Why wasn’t she answering him?
As he held Eve at arm’s length to get a look at her face, he found nothing to reassure him. She was in physical pain.
“Talk to me, Eve. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she managed to get out, fervently hoping that if she said it with enough conviction, it would be true. But it wasn’t. The pain just got more intense. Why wouldn’t it stop? “The baby kicked. He’s been doing a lot of that today.”
“He?” Adam echoed. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that something akin to pride stirred within him. “It’s a boy?”
Trying to get behind the pain, or beyond it, Eve hardly heard him. “Yes.” Belatedly, she realized what he’d asked her. “Unless it’s a girl.”
The only reason he felt a tinge of disappointment was because he liked knowing about things ahead of time. It always helped to be prepared. As for the possibility that he might have a daughter instead of a son, he found himself rather liking the idea. If she took after her mother, she’d be a force to be reckoned with.
“Then you don’t know?” he concluded.
“No.” He was still holding on to her shoulders and she shrugged his hands away. She’d decided to have her baby the old-fashioned way—that included not knowing its sex. “But then, I don’t know a lot of things.” She eyed him pointedly. “And contrary to the popular belief, ignorance is not bliss. It’s setting yourself up for a fall.”
She hit her intended target with that one. “I never meant to hurt you, Eve,” he told her sincerely. “I swear I didn’t.”
She could almost believe him. But then, Eve thought ruefully, struggling to hold the hot pain burning in her belly at bay, she’d believed him before and look how that had turned out for her.
“You know what they say about the path to hell,” she said in a pseudocheerful voice. “It’s paved with good intentions.”
Adam knew he could just walk away, that it might be better all around if he did, but the look in her eyes—a look he was fairly sure she wasn’t even aware of—just wouldn’t let him do it. She needed him. “Look, I know you probably hate me—” She shook her head, stopping him before he went on. “I don’t hate you, Adam. Hate’s a very powerful emotion. I don’t feel anything at all for you.”
Her eyes were steely as she tried to convince him nothing remained between them but this child waiting to be born. She sincerely doubted if she’d succeeded because she hadn’t even been able to convince herself.
She was lying. He knew she was lying. One look into her eyes told him that.
Or was he seeing things he wanted to see?
He wasn’t the kind of man she deserved, the kind of man she had a right to expect. A nine-to-five kind of guy who left his work behind once he walked out of the office. His “job” was with him 24/7, even when he wasn’t undercover and so much more so when he was. Eve deserved infinitely more than just half a man.
But that didn’t change the fact that right now, when she was at her most vulnerable, he needed to look out for her. Needed to be her hidden guardian angel.
Damn, he should have never gotten involved with her, never given in to that overwhelming yearning that had stirred so urgently inside of him every time she walked into his store, into his carefully crafted make-believe life.
Up until that time, it had been easy. He’d been so focused on his job, on the target that Hugh, his handler, had turned him on to that he’d been able to successfully resist the women who crossed his path. Even the ones who had been very determined to extend their acquaintance beyond customer and seller.
But then she had walked into his store and everything changed.
It’d been raining that morning, an unexpected, quick shower that had ushered her into the store along with a sheet of rain. Even soaking wet, her hair plastered to her head, Eve had been possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He’d found himself talking to her for the better part of an hour, showing her rare edition after rare edition. Giving her a little capsulated history behind each book. He made it a point never to enter a situation without studying it seven ways from sundown and, in this case, he was supposed to be the scholarly owner of a small shop that dealt only with rare books. Consequently, he had a lot of miscellaneous information crammed into his head.
She’d appeared to hang on every word.
It had been the best time of his life and he wished he could recapture it. But he couldn’t.
“All right,” Adam said evenly, “you don’t feel anything at all for me. I’m not asking you to, but I want you to know that I’m going to be here for you if you need me.”
“Won’t that be a killer commute for you?” she asked cynically. “Driving from here to Santa Barbara and back every day?”
“I won’t be commuting that far.”
She didn’t understand, but was in too much pain to get the whole story. She blinked hard, clenching her fists at her sides as if that could somehow chase it away. “What about your bookstore?”
“I relocated it,” he told her simply, then added an expedient lie. “I lost my lease and Laguna Beach seemed like a nice setting for the shop.”
Before she’d discovered his dual life, she would have been thrilled with the idea that Adam had relocated to be close to her, that he had gone searching for her when she’d disappeared and once he’d found where she had gone, he’d rearranged his life just to be nearby.
But those kind of thoughts belonged to a naive, innocent young woman. She was no longer that, no longer naive. Or innocent. And the fault for that partially lay with him.
She needed to discourage him, to make him leave her alone—before she became too weak to follow through. “I don’t need you to be ‘here’ for me, Adam. I’ve moved on. I’m seeing someone,” she informed him tersely.
A sharp pain flared in his gut. He’d lost her. Before he’d ever really had her.
Schooled in not showing emotion, his expression remained unchanged. “Is it serious?”
The lies didn’t get easier, but she had no choice. She needed to protect her baby at all costs, and that meant protecting the child from its father.
“Yes. Very. Josiah wants to adopt the baby.” Silently, she apologized to Josiah Turner, but the seventy-year-old man’s name was the first one to pop into her head. The man was like an uncle to her. She’d known him all her life, from the time she would frequent her father’s animal clinic. Whenever he wasn’t away on business, Josiah would bring his dogs to her father for routine care. And when he was away, he would board them at the clinic.
When her father died shortly after her return, the retired widower had arbitrarily appointed himself her guardian angel, determined to protect her, especially when it became apparent that she was pregnant.
“Good for you,” Adam said, doing his best to infuse an upbeat note into his voice. He still intended to watch over her, but at least she wasn’t going to be alone. This meant that he could maintain