mentally cursed. “Michaels still hasn’t been found?” He shouldn’t have left—not with a man missing. But if he hadn’t come back when he had … he shuddered to think what would have happened to Natalie and Gray that night.
“He’s been found,” Agent Anya Smith replied.
His gut tightened with dread. “Not alive?”
“No. And before he died, he’d been tortured. We have no idea what he might have revealed to his captors before his death.” That was what she considered the problem.
Thad considered the problem the senseless murder of a good man. “Len Michaels wouldn’t have given them any information.”
“He had a wife and kids he wanted to get home to,” Anya warned. “He would have revealed anything if he thought it might get him back with his family.”
Grief and regret tore a ragged sigh from Thad. “His wife lost her husband, his children their father,” he reminded his boss.
“He should have gotten out before now,” Anya said. “Being a family man made him a liability … to the rest of us.”
“I don’t really believe—”
She obviously didn’t care what he thought, as she interrupted him to warn, “He might have given you up, Kendall.”
He hadn’t worked with Michaels that often. The agent had acted as a translator, and Thad’s fluency with languages was too well-known for him to warrant a translator. But their last assignment had taken him to an unfamiliar territory, and so he and Michaels had worked together.
Then Anya had passed on Devin’s message to Thad that he was needed back home, and he’d had to leave. Michaels had disappeared shortly after. Guilt twisted Thad’s guts. If he hadn’t left, maybe Michaels would have made it home to his wife and kids.
“If he did give me up, I’m not sure that I’d blame him,” he murmured.
“Kendall, don’t beat yourself up about this,” his supervisor advised. “I authorized your leaving. I sent in another operative.…” Her voice cracked with regret, but then she cleared her throat.
“That operative obviously wasn’t as good as I am,” he said without conceit. It was simple fact that he’d never lost another operative or a contact.
“You’re one of the best,” she agreed. “You need to wrap up whatever’s going on in St. Louis and get back in the field.”
“Soon,” he vowed.
His parents’ killer had gone free for too long; justice could wait no longer.
“I need you back out there. I don’t have to worry about you,” she said. “You’re not a liability.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me,” he agreed. He had no wife. No kids.
But he might have … had he not left Caroline. She was the marrying kind; he never should have called her after that first disastrous double date with her friends. But she was so damn beautiful. And it wasn’t because of her summer-sky-blue eyes or her silky dark blond hair; it was the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out. And he’d wanted to see her again and again.
And now, nearly four years after he had left her, he’d wanted to see her again. He clicked off with his boss and then looked up at her house. He didn’t need to check the address—he instinctively knew it was hers.
The brick Cape Cod had a giant wreath on its oak front door. The house sat behind a white picket fence, garlands strung from each snow-topped picket. At night, lights would probably twinkle against the evergreen branches. Lights were also wrapped around the pine tree in the yard and hung like icicles from the eaves.
All the decorations had his stomach churning with his revulsion for Christmas. Caroline loved it, which was just another thing they hadn’t had in common, another reason they could have never made a long-term relationship work.
He had often wondered, over the years, if he should have left her. He had fantasized over what they could have had if he’d stayed instead.…
A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had not had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.
And Caroline was all about home and hearth. Smoke puffed out of the top of the brick chimney—her house even had a fireplace. She probably had two-point-two children by now and a loving, devoted husband who worked a boring nine-to-five job so that he could be home every night to help her with dinner and the kids’ baths.
Thad respected that she had her own life now, and that was why he hadn’t given in to his temptation to mine his St. Louis sources for information about her. He’d hoped she had the life she had always wanted and deserved. He needed to just drive away and leave her alone. But instead he shut off his car and stepped out onto the snow-dusted street. Since getting Devin’s message, he’d been in hell. How could his parents’ killer be free?
But there’d been more, so much more that had happened to his family. His brother Ash had nearly lost his fiancée and their unborn child. Uncle Craig had nearly been framed for his own brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. And Natalie, sweet Natalie, had been stalked and terrorized. His family had been through hell.
So Thad needed an angel. As much as he needed to leave her alone, he needed even more to see her face.
She wasn’t the one who opened the door at his knock, though. At first it looked as though it had swung open of its own volition, until Thad adjusted his line of vision way down to the little boy who stood in the doorway. With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
Chapter Two
“Good luck,” Tammy whispered through the open driver’s window after Caroline had buckled Mark into his booster seat in the back.
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. For the good-luck wishes and for picking up her son, so that the little boy wouldn’t overhear the explosion that was certain to come from Thad Kendall.
Despite the cold wind that drove icy snowflakes into her face and chin-length hair, Caroline stood outside, watching Tammy’s minivan drive away. And avoiding Thad.
But he deserved an explanation, which he’d already agreed to wait for until Tammy picked up Mark, so they could talk in private. She drew in a deep breath, the cold air burning her lungs, and turned back to the house. Through the big picture window, she could see Thad pacing the length of her living room—giving a wide berth around the Christmas tree as if it were a vicious dog that might attack if he got too close.
She pulled open the front door and stepped into the room with him. Warmth from the crackling fire immediately melted the snowflakes from her hair and skin so that they ran down her face like tears. Her fingers trembled as she brushed away the moisture. Despite the warmth of the room, she kept her coat on, wrapped tight around her as if she still needed the protection.
Thad didn’t stop pacing. She remembered how he had never stopped moving. How had he ever managed to hold still long enough to take the poignant photos of war and tragedy that had earned him such accolades in his nearly decadelong career?
“So are you going to try to lie to me?” he asked. His voice, colder even than the winter wind, chilled her to the bone.
“Lie to you?” she repeated, the question echoing hollowly off the coffered ceiling.
“Play me for a fool, deny that that little boy is my son,” he said, heat in his voice now as his blue eyes burned with anger.
Still, she shivered. “Mark is definitely your son.”
“Then why did you keep that from me?” he demanded to know with an intensity that might