Lucas

“I was never in a vegetative state, just a deep coma, so the monitor already showed plenty of brain activity for me. The activity increased when I woke up, but I tampered with the machine so that it looked as if it malfunctioned. I kept doing that, and the staff thought they had faulty readings.”

A nurse had indeed told him about the readings, and the hospital had called in someone to repair the machine. The Silver Creek Hospital wasn’t big or modern by anyone’s standards so they hadn’t had another monitor to use on Hailey. That’s why the nurses had been keeping a closer watch on her. Obviously, they hadn’t watched nearly close enough.

“How’d you know how to tamper with the monitor?” he pressed.

She glanced away. “I’m good with computers and such.”

This was the first Lucas was hearing about that, but it didn’t matter. Not when there were so many other things they needed to talk about.

“When I was trying to regain my strength, I made sure no one else saw me,” she added.

Obviously. Just as she’d made sure he hadn’t noticed her before he’d gotten in his vehicle.

Her gaze dropped to her stomach for just a second. “I listened to try to find out if I’d had a boy or a girl, but no one mentioned it. Not even you when you visited me on Monday.”

Clearly she’d known he was there. Lucas had indeed visited her, something he did a couple of times a week. Why, he didn’t know, because he couldn’t get answers from a woman in a coma. It riled him to the core, though, that she’d been awake during that visit and hadn’t said anything.

But what had he said?

Lucas wasn’t even sure—maybe nothing—but he’d almost certainly glared at her. He still was glaring now.

“So, you faked being in a coma for the last week, built up your strength, and just walked out of the hospital?” he asked, going through the probability of that as he said it.

He was skeptical.

Hailey nodded. “I ducked into a supply room, and when I heard the doctor call you, I knew you’d be arriving soon. I made my way to the parking lot and hid behind some shrubs.”

“And then you broke into my SUV,” Lucas snarled.

“The back door was unlocked,” she answered as if that was something she did all the time. To the best of his knowledge, she didn’t, but then, he really didn’t know much about this woman.

The mother of his child.

“Why didn’t you let me know you’d come out of the coma?” Lucas demanded.

Hailey stared at him a long time. “I’ll tell you that if you’ll tell me what I had—a boy or a girl?”

He debated bargaining with her. Even with that gun aimed at him. But it was probably best to give her the information so they could move on to something else. Something that involved his ripping that gun out of her hand.

“You had a boy,” he finally said. “He was born three months ago.”

“Three months?” she repeated. It sounded as if she had to choke back a sob. “That long.”

Yeah, that long. “The doctors had to deliver him by C-section because you weren’t conscious when you went into labor.”

She shook her head, her breath shuddering. “I don’t remember.”

“Comas are like that,” he said, and he didn’t bother to sound even marginally sympathetic. “I named him Camden David. But I have sole custody of him,” Lucas added.

Not a lie, exactly. He did have custody of him and had tried to make it permanent, but the judge had refused on the grounds that Hailey might come out of the coma and her parental rights could be reinstated.

Could be.

Lucas would make sure that didn’t happen.

Something went through her pale green eyes, and Hailey made a sound, part groan, part gasp. At first he thought maybe the reaction was due to his custody comment, but the tears proved otherwise. It was the reaction of a woman who’d just learned she had a son.

But she was a mother in name only.

“And he...Camden’s all right?” Hailey asked, still blinking back those tears. “There were no problems with the delivery?”

“Yeah. No thanks to you.”

“Is he safe?” she asked before Lucas could finish what he was about to say.

“Of course he is.” Lucas couldn’t stop himself from cursing. “What the hell were you thinking when you went on the run like that? And what happened to you? Were you driving too fast? Is that what caused the accident—and that?”

He pointed to her scar, but Lucas didn’t pull back his hand. He knocked the gun away from her, and it fell on the front passenger’s seat. Hailey immediately scrambled to retrieve it, but Lucas was a whole lot faster. He dropped it on the floor, well out of her reach.

“Don’t make me draw my gun,” he warned her and took hold of her wrist in case she was about to try to get out the door.

But she didn’t try to escape.

A hoarse sob tore from her mouth, and Hailey eased away from him. Just in case she had another weapon back there, Lucas leaned over the seat and did a quick check around her. He frisked her, too. Since she was wearing a pair of loose green scrubs, a thin sweater and flip-flops, there weren’t many places she could conceal a weapon.

Still, after what’d happened three months ago, Lucas looked.

His hand brushed against the side of her breast, and she made a soft sound. Not the groan she’d made earlier. This one caused him to feel that tug deep within his body. But Lucas told that tug to take a hike.

Their gazes connected. Not for long. Lucas finished the search and found nothing.

“Now, keep talking,” he insisted. “Tell me what happened to you. Why did you go on the run, and why didn’t you tell anyone before now that you were out of the coma?”

She opened her mouth and got that deer-in-the-headlights look. What she didn’t do was answer him.

“Enough of this,” he mumbled.

He took out his phone to call Mason and then the sheriff, but as he’d done with her earlier, Hailey took hold of his hand. “Please don’t tell your cousins. Not yet.”

Since most of his Ryland cousins were cops, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Did you break the law? Is that why you were on the run?”

“No.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. Her head wasn’t the only thing shaking, though. She started to shiver, the cold and maybe the fear finally getting to her. “But I’m in trouble. God, Lucas, I’m in so much trouble.”

He was about to curse at her for stating the obvious, but something else went through her eyes.

Fear.

“It won’t take long for word to get out that I’m awake,” Hailey said, speaking barely louder than a whisper. “And he’ll find out.”