Motive: Secret Baby

“Go to Bridges.” The words ground from between clenched teeth. Nicholas hated that jealously was reflected in each word, but some part of him was obviously still human. Grant Bridges had once been his best friend. As much as Nicholas wanted to hate him for almost marrying Camille, he had no right. Camille deserved a good man, and Bridges was a good man.

“I can’t.”

Patience thinning, Nicholas gestured to the door once more. “I’m certain he will be glad to help you in any way you need. He was supposed to be your husband as I recall. He faithfully visited you in the hospital.” Nicholas stared out the open door and into the dark night as he said the rest. “Bridges would never shirk his responsibilities. Go to him.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t go to him.” She still made no move toward the door. “You’re the only person who can help me.”

A muscle in his jaw jerking with tension, Nicholas moved in close to her, a blatant act of intimidation. The sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, almost defeated his determination. “It’s only right that the father of the child have a hand in the search. Go to Bridges, Camille. He’s the one you should be talking to right now.”

“But he’s not the father.”

Nicholas’s tense jaw fell slack. Confusion obliterated any possibility of rational thought. “I don’t understand.”

“You have to help me, Nicholas.” She searched his eyes, her own filled with fear and a tangle of other pained emotions. “You’re the only one who can. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the baby.”

He shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”

“The baby isn’t Grant’s.” She stared straight into Nicholas’s eyes, took a deep breath. “It’s yours. You’re the father.”

Chapter Two

Camille Wells shivered uncontrollably as she waited for Nicholas’s answer. She didn’t care that she had just blurted out the fact that he was a father. Or that he looked completely stunned.

Right now, she didn’t care about anything but finding her baby.

He didn’t look directly at her, kept his face turned slightly to the left in an effort to shield that damaged side from view. “You should sit down.” The words were scarcely a whisper, wholly uncharacteristic for the gruff man he had become.

The beast. That was what the villagers called the scarred recluse who had purchased the cottage on the outskirts of town. And like the new owner, the cottage was damaged very nearly beyond repair.

With all that she knew, how could she still feel anything for him?

“I don’t need to sit down,” she argued. “I need to find our baby.” Evidently the reality of what she had told him hadn’t gotten through the first time. She had to make him understand.

He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

Exactly the response she had expected. “We had sex, Nicholas.” She drew in a deep breath, summoned her patience. Time was wasting. They needed a plan. They needed to start looking. Now! “That’s how babies are made, or have you forgotten?” She trembled inside at the memory. What was wrong with her? Her baby was missing!

Another shake of his dark head. “But that was—”

“Nine months, four weeks, two days ago.” Just after dark…at the same place they’d last made love. Only this time she had been the one on the verge of getting married. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. But the pain in her chest, the ache in her very soul left no room for amusement. Her baby was missing. A baby she couldn’t remember giving birth to.

A baby whose first kick she couldn’t recall. A baby she had carried for nine months and she had absolutely no recollection of that time save for the first four weeks. Those precious days between making love with Nicholas and walking arm in arm with her father toward her fiancé, Grant Bridges.

How could she look back on any part of that time as precious when she had cheated on the man she was to marry? They had agreed to abstain from sex the final month before their marriage to make their wedding night even more special. And what had she done?

Grant. God, he had been so good to her. He had been perfectly willing to marry her and raise the child as his own. Marrying him without telling him the truth had been out of the question. Camille had told him everything. And he’d forgiven her. Even more incredible he’d still wanted to marry her. Camille had recognized the second chance and pulled herself back together. She would be Mrs. Grant Bridges. Her child would be raised by two parents and no one would ever know the truth.

Then, in one unexpected gust of gale force wind, everything had changed.

She had lost months of her life…her baby…the future she had planned.

Everything.

“But you were going to marry Bridges,” Nicholas argued as if that was a logical reason the child couldn’t be his. “Did you know…?”

She nodded, shuddered at the chill that had bored deep into her bones. “I found out a few days before the wedding.”

Suspicion reared its ugly head in his startlingly blue eyes. “But you were going to marry Bridges anyway.”

Not a question. An accusation. She squared her shoulders. “Yes. I told him about the baby. He was willing to marry me anyway.” She glared into those piercing eyes. “In fact, he insisted that it was the only right thing to do.”

Her words hit the mark. She saw the sting in Nicholas’s eyes. Good. He deserved it.

“When I wouldn’t have,” he suggested, fierce indifference pumped into his tone.

“Have you ever?” She hugged the blanket closer against the quivering she couldn’t quite conquer. “Think about it, Nicholas—you never were exactly reliable. You didn’t have the courage to stand up to your parents when it came to us. And then, when your grandfather died in the lighthouse fire, you deserted all of us.”

Fury tightened his jaw, sent a muscle there jumping rhythmically. “I had my reasons.”

That was the part that frosted her the most. “Oh, yes.” She angled her head and glowered at him. “It was for my own good. For the good of all of Raven’s Cliff. How could I forget?” Yet another logical excuse spawned by selfish, illogical reasoning.

“You don’t understand,” he snarled, that beastly side showing in his voice and in his eyes as he stared straight at her.

Camille didn’t flinch. It wasn’t easy. The left side of his face was disfigured from the lighthouse fire. The damage extended down his throat, along his left arm and the upper portion of that side of his torso. Camille had felt the raised, calloused skin that night they’d made love. But it hadn’t been until the clouds had cleared from the moon that she’d gotten a good look at his face. The sight had stunned her, sent anguish searing through her. Her reaction had hurt him. She’d tried to explain, to apologize, but he refused to listen. He’d pushed her away, deserted her, as surely as he had four years prior.

He hadn’t given her a chance to tell him that what she really saw was the lines and angles of the handsome face he’d always had. The broad shoulders and powerful arms. The lean waist and the masculine contours of his chest.

As sorry as she was for all that he had lost, for the suffering he had endured from the burns, she would not feel sympathy for him. That soft feeling had vanished the night he made love to her and then walked away.

For a second time.

“I understand perfectly.” She reeled in her emotions. They were still wasting time. What happened between them made no difference. All that mattered was finding her child. “And frankly, I don’t care. I need to find my baby. Nothing else matters.”

He turned his profile to her once more, concealing the left side from view. The rigid set of his shoulders and the fists his fingers had balled into told her he was considering how to handle this situation.

No matter that she had never once been able to depend on Nicholas, no matter that until his sudden so-called death he had been viewed by all of Raven’s Cliff as a self-centered rich boy, Camille knew she could depend on him to help her.

Nicholas had learned something about responsibility in the past five years. At first she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, but during the better part of the past two weeks as she had lain in that hospital room under guard, she had come to terms with many things.

She had suspected that the recluse living in the cottage was responsible for a number of anonymous gifts to the village. Everyone had talked about how some philanthropic soul had heard of Raven’s Cliff’s tribulations and had decided to help. But Camille had recognized a pattern. As the then mayor’s daughter, she spent a lot of her time doing charitable work with her mother. On the few occasions when she had heard of the recluse’s presence in town, she had begun to mentally chart what she heard about his visits along with the unexpected donations that oddly coincided with those rare appearances. Like how badly Miss Louise Patterson had needed a new playground for her day-care center. There were numerous other instances she could think of, but now wasn’t the time to bring up her suspicions.

Still, those instances were solid evidence, in her opinion, that Nicholas had changed. He needed to assuage his guilt with good deeds. If playing upon that guilt was wrong, so be it.

She had to find her baby.

Anguish tore through her. “Are you going to help me?” She didn’t add the “or not” that filtered through her head. He couldn’t refuse her. She wouldn’t let him. He could help her. She was certain. A man who had been to such dark places could no doubt reason out the thinking of someone evil enough to steal a newborn baby.

As if she’d said the last aloud, Nicholas’s gaze drifted to the rough plank floors. Her heart thumped harder in her chest. Please, please say yes.