The Agent's Secret Baby. Marie Ferrarella

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 vigil from a distance. And if knowing that someone else would be holding her, making love with her, stuck a hot knife into his gut, well, that was his problem, not hers. “Then I’ll be going.”

      But even as he told her, his feet didn’t seem to want to move. Stalling for time until he could get himself to go, Adam took out one of the business cards he’d had printed just last week and held it out to her.

      “In case you ever want to find another first edition,” he explained.

      When she made no effort to take it from him, he took her hand in his and placed the card with the new bookstore’s address and phone number into her palm, closing her fingers over it.

      The next moment, as he began to withdraw his hand, she suddenly grabbed his wrist and squeezed it. Hard.

      She looked as startled as he was. Adam searched her face. “Eve?”

      This time, she made no answer. Instead, Adam watched the color completely drain out of her face and heard her catch her breath the way someone did when they didn’t want to scream.

      It didn’t take much for him to put two and two together. “It’s time, isn’t it?”

      Her eyes were wide as she slanted them toward his. “No, no, it’s not. It’s not time,” she insisted heatedly. “I’m not supposed to be due for another three weeks. Maybe four.” Even as she said it, another wave of pain engulfed her. “Oh, God.”

      Still clutching his wrist, she almost buckled right in front of him. Adam quickly put his arm around her shoulders. Drawing her to him, he held her up.