The Bodyguard's Baby

“If that crazy girl sets foot back on my property I’m calling the police!” Mrs. Leeton shouted behind them.

Nick didn’t respond to her threat. He had no intention of returning to the woman’s house. If Laura had a son, he wasn’t here, that much was clear.

Laura clung helplessly to Nick as he strode back to the rental car, her violent sobs rattling him like nothing else in the past two years had. He automatically tuned out the intensifying pain radiating from his knee upward. He didn’t have time for that now. He glanced down at the woman at his side. Whether she had a child and where that child might be was not his concern. He ignored the instant protest that tightened his chest. Taking her back to James Ed was all he came to do, Nick reminded himself. Laura had a brother, an influential brother, who could help her with whatever personal problems—real or imagined—she might have.

Nick opened the car door, intent on ushering Laura inside. Hell, it was too damned cold to stand outside and debate anything. He could calm Laura down once they were in the car. As if suddenly realizing that they were actually leaving, she twisted around to face him.

“I have to find Robby,” she said, her voice breaking on a harsh sob. “You have to believe me, Nick. I left him with Mrs. Leeton not more than an hour ago.” Another shudder wracked her body.

Nick pulled her close again, his own body automatically seeking to comfort hers. He forced himself to think rationally, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to take her sweet face in his hands and promise her anything. “Show me some proof that you have a son, Laura. Convince me.”

For the space of two foolish heartbeats Laura stared into his eyes, the blue of hers growing almost translucent with some emotion Nick couldn’t quite identify. Her upturned face too close for comfort.

“He’s real,” she whispered, her breath feathering across his lips, making him yearn to taste her, to hold her tighter.

“Prove it,” he demanded instead. “Show me pictures, a birth certificate, a favorite toy, clothing, any evidence that you have a child.”

She shifted, her body brushing against his and sending a jolt of desire through him. “My purse…” Laura frowned, then looked toward Mrs. Leeton’s house. “I left my purse and what few clothes we brought with us in there.”

Nick followed her gaze and studied the small white frame house for a moment. “We definitely aren’t going back,” he said flatly, then returned his attention to the woman putting his defenses through an emotional wringer. “I don’t want the local police involved.”

Instantly, Laura recoiled from him. Anger and bitterness etched themselves across the tender landscape of her face. Her eyes were still red-rimmed from her tears, but sparks of rage flew from their watery blue depths. “Of course not,” she spat the words with heated contempt. “We wouldn’t want to do anything that would bring the wrong kind of attention to the almighty Governor of Mississippi, now would we?”

“Get in the car, Laura.” Irritation stiffened Nick’s spine. He had no intention of making the Proctors’ domestic difficulties personal this go-around. “Now,” he added when she didn’t immediately move.

Her eyes still shooting daggers at him, Laura turned to obey, but suddenly whipped back around. “Doc,” she said. “Doc will back me up. He’ll tell you about Robby.”

Tired of beating a dead horse, Nick blew out a loud, impatient breath. “Who’s Doc?”

“My doctor,” Laura explained. “Robby was really sick. Doc’s the reason I came back here, I knew I could trust him,” she added quickly as she slid behind the wheel, then scooted to the passenger side of the car. “Let’s go!”

Nick braced his forearm on the roof of the car and leaned down to look her in the eye. He held her gaze for a long moment, some warped inner compulsion urging him to believe her. He straightened, taking a moment to scan the quiet neighborhood, then Mrs. Leeton’s house once more. Something about this whole situation just didn’t feel right. Maybe there was some truth to Laura’s story. Nick had always trusted his instincts. And they had never let him down…except once.

“Hurry, Nick, we’re wasting time!”

Still warring with himself, Nick dropped behind the wheel and started the engine. He turned to his passenger and leveled his most intimidating gaze on hers. “If you’re yanking me around, Laura, you’re going to regret it.”

LAURA STARED at the scrawled writing on the crudely crafted sign hanging in the window of Doc’s clinic. The breath rushed past her lips, leaving a cloud of white in the cold air as she read the words that obliterated the last of her hope. “Gone out of town, be back as soon as possible.” This couldn’t be. She shook her head as denial surged through her.

It just could not be.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest. Laura squeezed her burning eyes shut. Robby, where are you? Please, God, she prayed, don’t let them hurt my baby. Please, don’t let them hurt my baby.

“That’s rather convenient,” Nick remarked dryly from somewhere behind her.

Laura clamped one hand over her mouth to hold back the agonizing scream that burgeoned in her throat. How could she make Nick believe her now? Mrs. Leeton was lying or crazy, or maybe both. Doc had disappeared. Doc’s new nurse would be where? Laura wondered. The woman worked part-time with another doctor in some nearby small town. Where? Laura wracked her brain, mentally ticking off the closest ones. She couldn’t remember what Doc had told her. His longtime secretary had retired and moved to Florida months ago. He hadn’t hired anyone else, preferring to do the paperwork himself now. Who could Laura call? She couldn’t think. She closed her eyes again and stifled a sob that threatened to break loose. She had to keep her head on straight. She had to think clearly.

Who could have taken Robby?

Why?

Realization struck like lightning on a sultry summer night, acknowledging pain hot on its heels like answering thunder.

James Ed.

It had to be him, or one of his henchmen. They had found out about Robby and taken him to get to Laura. That would be the one surefire way to bring her home. She had realized that day two years ago at the cabin that her dear brother intended to kill her. She just hadn’t known why. But that epiphany had come to her eventually. The money. He wanted Laura’s trust fund. He was willing to kill her to get it. And now Robby was caught in the middle.

What about Doc? Could he be in on it? Was his sudden disappearance planned? Laura shook her head emphatically. No way. Doc loved her. And she trusted him. He wouldn’t do that. Laura read the sign in the window again. But where could he be? He had asked her to come to the clinic. He’d told Mrs. Leeton it was urgent. Had he somehow heard that someone was in town looking for her? Maybe he wanted to warn her. Could he have taken Robby somewhere to safety?

Laura prayed that was the case. But how could she be sure? Could she leave town without knowing that her son was safe? She swallowed tightly.

No. She had to find him.

“I know Doc’s here,” she said aloud, as if that would make it so. “He has to be.”

“Let’s go, Laura. I’m tired of playing games with you.”

Laura turned around slowly and faced the man who seemed to have set all this in motion. The man she still loved deep in her heart. The man who had given her the child that she could not bear to lose. But she could never tell him the truth.

Never.

Nick’s green eyes were accusing, and full of bitterness. Defeat weighed heavily on Laura’s shoulders as she met that unsympathetic gaze. Pain riddled her insides. She had lost her son and no one on earth cared or wanted to help her. She was alone, just as she had been alone since the day her parents had died when she was ten years old. Nothing but a burden to her much older brother, Laura had known from day one that he couldn’t wait to be rid of her. As soon as she had come home from college, James Ed had tried to push her into marrying the son of one of his business associates, but Laura had refused. Then the attempts on her life had begun.

She supposed that it was poetic justice of sorts. James Ed had considered her a nuisance her entire life, but being the responsible, upstanding man he wanted everyone to believe he was, he had offered Laura an out—marry Rafe Manning. Rafe was young, reasonably handsome, and rich. What more should she want? Why couldn’t she be the good, obedient sister James Ed wanted her to be?

If only James Ed had known. Rafe’s wild stunts had made Laura’s little exploits look like adolescent mishaps. Between the alcohol and the cocaine, Rafe was anything but marriage material. Not to mention the apparently insignificant fact that Laura had no desire to marry Rafe or anyone else at the time. She had been too mixed up herself, too young.

So Laura had thumbed her nose at her big brother’s offer, and he had chosen an alternative method of ridding himself of his apparently troublesome sister. Maybe Rafe had been in on it, as well. How much would James Ed have paid him to see that his new bride had a fatal accident? James Ed always preferred the easy way out. Hiring someone to do his dirty work for him was a way of life.

Perversely, Laura wondered if her showing up now would be an inconvenience considering James Ed had no doubt already taken control of her trust fund. Only weeks from her twenty-fifth birthday, Laura would be entitled to the money herself. Then again, that might be the whole point to this little reunion. James Ed would make sure that she didn’t show up to claim her trust fund. What would a man, brother or not, do to maintain control of that much money?

Nick stepped closer and Laura jerked back to the here and now. Robby was gone. Doc was gone. What did anything else matter? Panic skittering up her spine once more, she backed away when Nick reached for her. She had to find Robby and Doc. Laura rushed to the door of the house that served as both clinic and home to Doc Holland. She banged on the old oak-and-glass door and called out his name. He had to be here. He simply would not just disappear. She twisted the knob and shook the door. It was locked up tight.

Doc never locked the door to his clinic.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered. Laura moved to the parlor window. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the ancient, slightly wavy, translucent glass. Everything looked to be in order. But it couldn’t be.

“He wouldn’t just leave like this,” she reminded herself aloud. Bounding off the porch, Laura rushed to the next window at the side of the house. The kitchen appeared neat and tidy, the way Doc always kept it.

But something was wrong. Laura could feel it all the way to her bones. Something very bad had happened to Doc. Her heart thudded painfully. She knew Doc too well. He would never just disappear with Robby without leaving her some sort of word. “They’ve gotten to him, too,” she whispered, the words lost to the biting wind. Forcing herself to act rather than react, Laura ran to the next window, then the next one after that.

That same sense of emptiness she had felt at Mrs. Leeton’s echoed inside her.

“No one’s here, Laura.”

She struggled against the fresh onslaught of tears, then turned on Nick. “He has to be here,” she snapped. Her heart couldn’t bear the possibility that her child was in the hands of strangers who might want to harm him. Or that something bad had happened to Doc. “Don’t you understand? Without him…” Anguish constricted her throat, she couldn’t say the rest out loud.

Nick lifted one brow and glared at her unsympathetically. “We’re leaving now. No more chasing our tails.” He snagged her right arm before she could retreat. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is,” he warned.