Desert Ice Daddy

He inhaled the scent of yellow roses that bloomed near the back of the house and caught sight of a silhouette behind the screen door as he headed up the stairs. He would have recognized her a mile away.

His heartbeat sped.

Crazy. He wasn’t a penniless, tongue-tied twenty-year-old with a crush on his best friend’s little sister anymore. He was a grown man, successful in his own right, more than able to provide for a family of his own. He drew a slow breath on that thought. One of these days, he was going to seduce Taylor McKade so thoroughly that she’d agree to marry him, and then he was going to spend the rest of his life making her and her son happy.

But not yet. He said the words in his mind so every part of him would be clear on that. First he needed to exonerate his company from any suspected involvement in the sabotage at Flint’s ranch. Then he had to get around the fact that she was his best friend’s little sister. In the off-limits category. Firmly.

Not that knowing that made him think about her any less.

But he wanted only the very best for her, to make her life easier, not more difficult. So for now, as they had been for the past couple of years, whatever feelings he nursed were his problem. Taylor’s life, with the divorce and all, was enough of a mess. He didn’t need to add to it.

He expected a polite encounter of “How are you?” and “Fine,” the way it went between old friends who had come to feel awkward around each other.

So he was caught off guard when the screen door banged open and Taylor flew barefooted down the stairs. Her eyelashes were wet, her eyelids swollen. His protective instincts rose as quickly as a sandstorm. And just like that, the business troubles that had brought him to the ranch were forgotten.

“Akeem!” She launched herself into his arms like old times and hung on for dear life.

“What is it?” He locked his arms around her in a protective position, barely daring to breathe for fear of scaring her off. His gaze cut back to the cop cars again. If someone had hurt her, so help him God…

“We can’t find Christopher.” Her voice was a sea of pain. “They—” She pressed her full lips together and pulled away to wipe the underside of her eyes with her fingertips. “The police say he might have been taken.”

He could tell what it cost her to say the words, to even consider the possibility that her son was in the hands of a kidnapper. Cold anger filled his body until his muscles became rigid. “By whom?” His thoughts went to her ex, one scrawny neck he would be only too happy to have an excuse to wring. If that bastard—

“They don’t know.” Her huge, cornflower-blue eyes swam in desperation. She’d pulled back a few inches, but stayed in the circle of his arms. She was just as impossibly beautiful as the first time he’d seen her, her mouth just as tempting, her curves just as perfect—or more so. Motherhood had given a subtle change to her shape, a change he loved. Even in the throes of distress, she was a stunning woman. But at the moment, she needed more than his admiration.

He filled his lungs. “What can I do?” She had to know that he would do anything for her.

“I’m sorry.” She winced and pulled back a little more as the first thoughts of self-consciousness seemed to appear. “I’m falling apart, aren’t I? I can’t fall apart. Christopher needs me.” She closed her eyes for a moment, but let him keep her hands.

There was a pause, then up came her gaze. She blinked away the moisture that had gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I’m a total mess.”

Yes, she was, but she still stole his breath. He did his best not to show how hard he’d been sucker punched by the sight of her, by the feel of her hands in his. “Where is Flint?”

“Out looking. Everyone is, even Lora Leigh and Lucinda. I’m the only one here, with two officers.”

That explained the conspicuous lack of ranch hands around the animals. “Kat?” he inquired, referring to the friend Flint had hired as a favor to him. It sure had to be hot out there.

She nodded. “Kat Edwards, too. They’re out in the far pastures and combing the brush and the woods at the west corner of the ranch. Flint wouldn’t let me come.” Frustration stole into her voice.

“The boy might have wandered off. He could be sleeping in a hayloft. He could come waltzing back in,” he said as he led her toward the door, getting her out of the merciless noon sun. Hell of a time of the year for anyone to get lost out there, especially a child.

“They already checked the central buildings,” she said, but he could see a glint of hope in her eyes. “They started here as soon as I couldn’t find him.”

“When?”

“Three hours ago.” Tears welled but didn’t spill to her cheeks, as if suspended by sheer will. The moisture had her eyes shining like a pair of rare blue diamonds.

He opened the door for her and ushered her in. Three hours and Flint hadn’t called him. He couldn’t help thinking of the damn information that tied the sabotage of Flint’s business to his. The thought came as a sharp jab. He shook it off as his gaze fell on his Aggie ring. He might have often felt like an outsider with others, but he never had to feel that way with Flint, with his friends. Flint had his hands full. “What can I do to help?”

She pressed her lips together for a second, desperation clouding her eyes. “Bring him back to me.” The small, sour smile borne on pain that twitched up the corner of her lips for a second said she knew she was asking the impossible.

“I will,” he promised without thought. Because there wasn’t anything on this earth he wouldn’t do for Taylor. In this, he didn’t know impossible. He was already on the phone, calling Mike back. “I need you over here at Diamondback. Drop everything else. Bring every man you can.”

He hung up as he walked down the hall into the state-of-the-art kitchen that was the heart of the ranch.

“And you are?” The graying, slightly overweight police officer at the table set down his radio and looked Akeem over with open suspicion in his squinty eyes.

Being Arab-American, he was pretty much used to that of late, even if he had been born and raised in Texas.

The other cop stopped hooking some machine up to the phone line and checked him out, too. This one was half the other’s age and size, with live-wire black eyes.

Akeem focused on the beige plastic unit: a recorder. Getting ready for the ransom call.

Taylor didn’t miss that, either. She went a shade paler.

“Akeem Abdul. Friend of the family,” Akeem said and kept her close.

The first cop’s eyes went wide. “The Texas Sheik? No kiddin’.” Then he snapped to. “Yes, sir. Officer Peterson.”

“Officer Mills.” The other one went back to his work after a thorough look that seemed half amused, half disappointed.

Even those who didn’t know his face knew the Abdul name from Texas Double A—Akeem Abdul—Auctions. He ignored “Texas Sheik,” the nickname given by his competitors who resented his rapid rise in the ranks and had trouble digesting his Middle Eastern background, that his parents had been Beharrainian.

He pulled a chair for Taylor. The cops were only a minor annoyance. He’d long ago learned to rise above things like that. “Let me get you a drink.”

There had to be a hundred men out there already, combing the ranch. He could afford to wait with her until his security force got here and they rode out to meet Flint and join in the search. Christopher would be found. He would see to it.

Why would anyone take the kid? Who? If he could figure that out, they might have a better idea where to look. Which brought him to his next question. “Got a map of this place?”

“Right on the Web site.” She sat on a bar stool next to the kitchen counter, her troubled gaze settling on the fridge that was covered with crayon drawings of horses, and got up almost immediately again to pace the floor along the windows that looked toward the back.

She accepted the glass of water he brought her, but didn’t drink. The cops minded their own business. Seemed their orders were to stick to the house and wait, which they did with the efficiency of furniture.

Akeem strode to the PC on the kitchen isle—Lucinda, Flint’s housekeeper, was addicted to online recipe swaps—and shot straight to the Diamondback home page.

Taylor paused in her pacing. “Flint called you?”

He nodded instead of going into his investigation on murder and the sabotage and bomb parts at Diamondback and how they might be related to his auction house, which he’d come to talk over with Flint. He didn’t want to discuss that subject in front of the cops.

He set the form to print fifty copies then pushed the OK button. He wanted to have the maps ready to be handed out when his men arrived.

She was pacing again. Tension grew in the air with every second. He needed something to do. And so did she. “Want to walk through the outbuildings with me?”

She shot him a blank look as if her thoughts were a million miles away. “We already looked there.”

Her pain was a tangible presence in the room, like the thick, wet mist of winter mornings that settled into the lungs and made it hard to breathe. He wanted to take her into his arms again, wasn’t sure how she would react. Looked like movement was what she needed now to burn off all that nervous energy.

He strode toward her. “We’ll look again.”