Heart of a Hero

“It’s a kidnapping,” he told her gently, “the police and the FBI have the manpower to blanket the area.”

Oh, God, calling in the FBI would be even worse. Vinny would disappear forever. She couldn’t do any of that. And this guy, whoever he thought he was, certainly couldn’t be allowed to do that, Dakota thought frantically.

“Stop talking to me as if I were an idiot. I know exactly what’ll happen if I call in the police, you don’t. No police. No FBI. Nobody on public payroll,” she insisted adamantly. “I need someone I can buy, someone who’ll work just for me. If you don’t know anyone like that—”

Dakota moved to the open front door again, her meaning clear.

He hadn’t said anything to her earlier because it would have sounded too opportunistic, as if he were trying to take advantage of the situation and her pain. But since she was insisting on this path, so be it.

Rusty placed his hand on the side of the door and to her annoyed surprise, pushed it closed. “I think it’s time I explained to you what I do for a living.”

Chapter 2

Her heart stopped beating in her chest.

She stared at the man who had pushed his way into her apartment, into her dilemma. Any second now Dakota was sure her head would spin off if she relinquished the slightest iota of control she was exercising over it. Even now, the room felt as if it had tilted beneath her feet.

What he did for a living?

Dakota’s mouth was desert-dry as she whispered, “You’re not a cop, are you?”

Until this moment the thought hadn’t occurred to her. It should have. The times Andreini had tried to start up a conversation, he’d struck her as being too exuberant, too innocent-looking to be a policeman. But why not? Nothing came in stereotype these days. She of all people should know that by now.

Look at Vincent. She would never have taken him to be who he ultimately turned out to be. Not with that blond hair and that Nordic complexion.

For that matter, look at her. She wasn’t what she tried to pretend to be, either. But that was different. That was for survival purposes.

Rusty looked at her more closely. Was it his imagination, or did she look afraid there for a second? “Not exactly—”

“Then what, exactly?” she cut in before he had a chance to explain anything further.

“I’m a private investigator—”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him with contempt. A private investigator. She’d just said she needed one. How convenient.

“Yeah, right.”

He couldn’t decide whether her contempt was aimed at him or his profession.

“No, I am.” To prove it, Rusty dug into his back pocket for his wallet.

Did he have some kind of fake I.D. on him? Something he used to pick up women who thought that kind of a career was cool? Dakota laughed shortly, wondering just how far this man would go with this charade and what kind of a ghoul hit on a woman whose baby had just been stolen.

Her contempt was barely contained. “Pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?”

Undeterred, Rusty pulled out his wallet. “Maybe you can think of it as luck.”

Enough was enough. She wanted him out of here so she could think. The fear that she was never going to see her son again kept washing over her.

“And maybe I can think of it as a scam.” Her eyes narrowed to condemning slits. “Like someone trying to take advantage of a rotten situation.”

He’d been taken with her the second he’d first seen her walking across the parking lot, her fingers firmly wrapped around her son’s hand. The sway of her hips, the long, slender legs that seemed to go on forever, urging a man to follow, and the long mane of blond hair that begged to be touched, all of it coming together to form the quintessential fantasy. Rusty couldn’t remember ever being mesmerized like that. There was no disputing the fact that the woman was not merely attractive, but stunningly gorgeous by anyone’s standards.

And he had a feeling that her looks had not come without some heavy price tag. The woman had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide and obviously didn’t trust people easily.

But then, he’d always been the patient one in his family.

Without saying another word in his defense, Rusty opened his wallet, flipping past the photographs he had of his older brother and sister, of his mother and the father they all rarely spoke of—the one who had inadvertently been instrumental in getting all three of them involved in the agency that tried to undo horrible wrongs done to children and their families. As far as Rusty knew, he was the only member of the family who actually had a picture of their late father, although he knew that Chad had eventually made his peace with the man who had all but ruined his life.

He held the wallet open to show the woman the private investigator’s license that had been issued to him a week after he’d graduated from the University of Bedford with his degree in criminology.

As he watched, a layer of the disbelief on her face melted away.

Score one for the home team, he thought.

Taking one of the business cards that Cade Townsend, the founder of the agency, had presented to him as a graduation gift, Rusty handed it to the woman. “This is where I work.”

“‘ChildFinders Inc.,’” she read out loud. “‘Russell Andreini.’” Looking up, she held the card out to him. “You don’t look like a Russell.”

Rusty smiled. “Everyone says that.”

For a while, when he’d been younger and taken himself more seriously, he’d tried to convince people to address him by his given name, but it just never took. Everyone kept forgetting. Eventually he stopped reminding them that his name was now Russell and resigned himself to being Rusty, the person people always opened up to. As time went on, he’d come to the conclusion that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

He moved to close her hand over it, but she jerked it away. “Keep it.”

She pursed her lips as she looked at the card again. The address was a street she wasn’t familiar with, but then, she was new to the area. As she had been to the seven other areas she’d lived in these past two years.

Everyone, she thought, was always looking out for number one. “You’re looking for a job.”

What had happened to make her this cynical? he wondered. His sister Megan had always had a tart tongue, but there had never been this edge to it, this me-against-the-world attitude that he sensed within the woman he was talking to.

“I’m looking to help,” he told her quietly.

Dakota looked down at the fancy writing on the card and ran her thumb over the raised letters. Expensive. She blew out a breath.

“Well, if this is on the level, I probably can’t afford you,” she said cynically.

Money was the last thing he was thinking of. “We’re flexible. Something can be worked out.”

She’d had men trying to find a way into her life and her bed since she was fourteen years old. That was when she’d reached her full height and had ripened. Her beauty had been more curse than blessing, until she had learned to make it work for her.

Her eyes hardened. “I’ll bet.”

He wasn’t going to waste time arguing with her about his own motives. Instead, he gave her a little background information.

“Cade Townsend founded the agency when his own son was kidnapped. My sister was the FBI agent who worked the case. She joined him a couple of months after he opened his doors.”

Dakota had a tendency to not believe what was told to her, or to at least take it with a huge grain of salt. But there was something in Rusty’s eyes…something that seemed sincere.