The Cradle Files

“Oh, man,” he mumbled. And because he didn’t know what else to say or do, he just stood there and kept mumbling it.

A baby.

Specifically, a three-and-a-half-week-old daughter.

A child he’d conceived with Lexie during the “adrenaline sex” they’d had after she testified against her boss.

Well, maybe.

And maybe all of this was some bizarre encounter with a woman who was no longer sane.

Except Lexie seemed sane. Well, she did if he disregarded half of what she’d said. Oh, and if he didn’t count the fact that she’d broken into his house and held him at gunpoint.

Not exactly the actions of a sane woman.

But if what she’d told him was true, then what she had been through would have tested anyone’s sanity.

Lexie got up from the bed. Not slowly, either. And she immediately started toward him.

“Don’t you even think about trying to get this gun back,” Garrett warned through clenched teeth. “And forget any thoughts about trying to pound me into the floor by using your martial arts training. And definitely don’t do anything else that’ll rile me.”

She blinked. “I have martial arts training?”

He was certain he scowled—because under the circumstances it seemed a semi-trivial question and because he probably shouldn’t have informed her of that particular talent. “Yeah. You do.”

Lexie touched her fingertips to her right temple. “I wish I’d known that sooner.”

“Lucky for me you didn’t, because I obviously have enough to deal with.” And he needed to start dealing. “Honesty time,” he insisted, turning toward her. Unfortunately, because she was already so close, that move put their faces only a couple of inches apart. Breath met breath. “Is all of what you told me true?”

“Yes.” She paused. Nodded. Paused again. “There are some blank spots in my memory, but giving birth isn’t one of them. I swear I had a baby.”

And he was the father.

Okay. He didn’t doubt that last part. If Lexie had indeed had a child, then the timing was perfect for it to be his. Unfortunately, the pregnancy timing was the only thing that was perfect or that made sense.

She pressed her lips together for a moment and gave him a considering stare. “I don’t think I would have left your bed and gone to another man.”

“You wouldn’t have.” In fact, in those days leading up to Billy Avery’s trial, while Lexie had still been in his protective custody, they’d talked about a lot of things, including their sex lives.

Or lack thereof.

Lexie wasn’t a person who slept around. Neither was he, despite the player reputation he had among his fellow officers.

Even though he tried to tamp down all the wild scenarios that started to fly through his head, he wasn’t completely successful. But Garrett forced himself to focus.

First things first.

He ejected the ammunition from her weapon. The unfired bullets landed on the floor. Using his bare foot, he kicked them several feet away from her.

She watched the cartridges scatter, and her gaze flew to his again. “You still think I’m here to shoot you?”

“I don’t want you to have the opportunity to even consider it. Confiscating and disarming a weapon are standard police procedures.”

“If I were a suspect.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you are. Or what’s going on. You broke into the home of a cop, which only makes things worse for you. And for me. I just want to follow some kind of rules and regs so I know I’ll be doing something right.”

Which was a joke that would have earned him some serious ribbing from his brother, sister and parents—all four of whom were cops or former cops. He’d never really thought of himself as a rule follower. However, in this case, he hoped the rules would ground him, because he needed something to do that.

“Who stole the baby?” he asked.

Just like that, the fight in her expression and posture faded. No more hiked up chin. No more adamant if-I-were-a-suspect retorts. “I don’t know. As I said, I have gaps in my memory, and unfortunately that’s one of them.”

“All right.” Those gaps wouldn’t make this easier, but it wasn’t impossible. “Start with what you do know.”

She waited a moment, apparently considering his suggestion. “I know who I am. More or less. I remember my childhood, growing up on a ranch in east Texas with my father. I remember the day I left to go to college. It’s my adulthood that’s a little fuzzy. I can’t recall working as a bodyguard for William Avery, and I didn’t have any idea about his arrest or the trial.”

Those weren’t just gaps in her memory. They were huge craters that encompassed months of time. “And you didn’t remember me?”

She drew in her breath, released it slowly. “No.”

Garrett worked his way through the implications of what she was saying. For all practical purposes, he was a gap. “Then why did you come here to my house? How did you guess that we’d even had sex?”

“In one of the articles there was a photo of us leaving the courthouse. You had your arm curved around my waist and were obviously trying to get me out of the path of the photographers and the press.”

He remembered the picture. In fact, he’d stared at it for hours after Lexie had left. “From that, you decided I’d fathered your baby?”

“There was something about the way you were holding me.” She shrugged. “It was…intimate.”

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

And it was still intimate.

Even now.

Hell. He could feel the attraction. Evidently that was something even gaps in memory couldn’t cool down. Well, he sure as heck would put an end to it. He was not going to lose his badge by giving in to emotions that he should have never felt in the first place.

“Yeah. Intimate,” he repeated. His boss had thought the same thing—so much so that the single photo had spurred some hard questions from Internal Affairs. Questions about Garrett’s professionalism. About his dedication to the badge and his assignment.

Questions that had cut to the core simply because they’d been asked.

No.

He wasn’t going back there.

“After you testified that day, you were upset. Rightfully so,” Garrett explained, trying to make it sound clinical. “Billy Avery’s lawyers had asked some tough questions and tried to rattle you while you were on the stand. They also tried to discredit you and your testimony about the illegal activity that you’d witnessed. But you held your ground. You were able to give details that the defense couldn’t refute.”