The Firefighter's Secret Baby

“No.”

“Give you any idea where she was from? If she was married? Why she would be passing through Atlanta with South Georgia plates that trace back to a dead end?”

“I don’t know!” Randy shook off Emma’s hold. “We just…It never got that far. All I remember is that there was a northern accent. Not much of one, but it stuck out in a place like Savannah.”

And it had been sexy as hell.

“What kind of northern accent?” Rick asked. “Like New York?”

“Maybe.” Randy waited for his brother-in-law to say something else, but Rick hesitated. “Just say it. What do you think all this means?”

“With federal marshals involved? I’d guess she’s hiding from something or someone that’s coming at her from wherever she’s originally from. And the feds are interested enough in whatever she knows to keep her hidden.”

“You’re saying this woman’s been on the run since March?” Chris sputtered.

“Maybe longer.” Rick rolled his shoulders beneath his Atlanta Braves T-shirt. “Not that we’re ever going to know.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“Depending on what she’s offering in return for protection,” Rick said. “She might be—”

“Running for the rest of her life,” Randy finished.

The possibility of federal relocation made Sam’s disappearance from his arms that morning go down a little easier. But it also made everything he didn’t know about her situation harder to stomach. Not to mention that he might be responsible for the innocent, newborn life she’d have with her from now on.

“Excuse me, folks.” Seth Washington stepped into the lounge.

Atlanta Memorial’s chief of staff was another family friend—by way of having bonded with Emma’s husband when they’d both gotten sucked into helping an FBI deep cover agent who’d landed in Emergency. Rick crossed the room to shake the man’s hand.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.” Seth shifted his attention to Randy. “But I knew you were waiting for news about the patient you rode in with, and I didn’t want Kate to have to deliver it. We had her stabilized, but there were complications with the delivery, and—”

“The baby?” The strain in Randy’s voice made it unrecognizable to his own ears.

“A girl. She’s a week or two premature, and there were some breathing issues at first. But she’s responding well now and shouldn’t even need to stay the night in neonatal ICU. I imagine she’ll be moved to the general nursery in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, the mother’s hemorrhaging was beyond our ability to—”

“Sam…” Randy’s relief at the news about the baby choked in his throat. “She’s…”

“I’m sorry, Randy,” Seth said while Emma, Chris and Charlie stepped closer. “I’m afraid she’s gone.”

RANDY STOOD at the nursery window of Atlanta General’s pediatric wing, staring blindly at the tiny lives being nurtured inside. He didn’t even know if Sam’s baby was in there. And he had absolutely no right to ask. But the invisible pull that had lured him here had been stronger than logic.

What the hell was he doing?

“I haven’t seen you this shut down,” Emma said beside him, “since…”

“Since we lost Mom,” he finished for her. The last thing he’d felt this strongly had been grief over their mother’s death, which had come less than a year after she’d killed their father—to keep the bastard from ever threatening her kids again. “Mom gave up her freedom and then her life to protect us.”

“It sounds like your Sam was fighting just as hard to protect her baby.”

His Sam.

“You can’t save everyone,” Emma insisted gently.

No one had tried to persuade him to leave the hospital. His brothers had let him be, walking away with parting slaps of support on Randy’s shoulder. Emma had wanted to talk with Seth a little more. And Randy had somehow ended up at the nursery.

Of course Emma had found him there. When she’d been barely more than a teenager herself, she’d fought to get Randy and his brothers back from the different foster homes they’d been scattered to. No way was his big sister leaving Randy alone to face this, even if no one could tell them exactly what this was.

“She wasn’t just another victim,” he said, finally verbalizing the ache that had been gnawing at him since Seth’s news. “She…”

“Was someone you knew for less than a day! Stop torturing yourself over something that isn’t your responsibility.”

If only it were that simple.

He wished to God it was that simple.

“She begged me to protect her daughter.” Kate had relayed the message that Sam had still been terrified in the delivery room. Asking for Randy by name and insisting he had to save their baby from some unseen evil that was closing in. “She said they were in danger.”

“She was in shock. Look around you.” Emma gestured at the early-morning calm of the hallway. “Does it look like anyone thinks a baby’s in danger? Where is that marshal you said was on scene? Why hasn’t Seth heard anything about any of this? He runs this place. If there was really a problem—”

“Sam said her little girl is mine.” It was the only reality that mattered right now. “I don’t know which I want to be less true—that a baby might be alone and in danger because I couldn’t save her mother, or that I might be the father of an infant who has no one else in the world to look after her but me.”

“You don’t know that her baby is alone now.”

“No. But I know that Sam didn’t want someone named Luca to get anywhere near the child.”

“Then what are you doing just standing here, staring off into space?” Emma’s smack on his shoulder wasn’t nearly as encouraging as their brothers’ had been. “You’ve harassed Kate and me to get people to pull strings for you and find out who this woman is. That didn’t pan out, but you’re clearly not ready to move on. If you think you should have a say in what happens to her baby, if you feel obligated to step in, then do what you have to do to make that happen.”

Randy closed his eyes, hating the growing impulse to walk away before he grew even more attached.

“And if a paternity test turns out to be positive?” he asked.

Protect her, Randy.

Don’t let him destroy our child, too…

“Then you and I will be taking your beautiful daughter home as soon as her doctors will let us.” Emma’s features turned somber, as if she could sense how much he was mourning Sam, on top of his confusion about his responsibility to her child.

Emma more than anyone else understood Randy’s inability to process that kind of connection to another person. She’d almost lost Rick over her own battle with the same fear. Then her expression grew determined.

“Man up, Montgomery,” she said. “It’s time to crack that hero’s heart of yours open and join the rest of us in the emotional uncertainty we like to call reality.”

“LUCA’S GOING TO FIND ME!” Sam struggled to sit up in her hospital bed, shrugging off the confusion that had clouded her mind since she woke.

Every move she made hurt. The pain meds weren’t making a dent. Not that it mattered. If she didn’t fight, she’d die. She hadn’t remembered much yet, but one thing was certain—she’d never felt in more danger. And that was saying something.

She looked wildly around the tiny room where they’d hidden her on Atlanta Memorial’s psychiatric lockdown ward. Her IV line pulled as she crossed her arms. The needle feeding the vein in the back of her hand pinched.

What was she doing in Atlanta? She was supposed to be hiding in a tiny house on the rural outskirts of Macon. She’d been in a car accident, that much she knew. But she could only remember the sounds of crashing vehicles, an oppressing sense of panic, then nothing until she’d woken in this bare room.