A Baby For Mommy

“I want my bottle,” Angelica cried.

“Shh, love. One last bottle and then we’ll just have bananas and water now,” Raffaela said, meeting Micah Drake’s gaze again. He swung his pack off his back and knelt beside it. The fatigue trousers pulled tautly over his long legs as he rummaged in the pack and pulled out packets of food. He snapped covers off and held them out. “I imagine this will look good right now.”

“Angelica, Sophie, look.” Her hands shook as she reached for the packets, finding a treasure of dried beef, crackers, cheese and dried apples.

Micah put water purifier tablets into a canteen, filled it with water from the stream and passed it around. “This is a feast,” she said with relief.

While they ate, Micah watched Raffaela out of the corner of his eye. She was nervous, which could be her nature or the circumstances, but for someone who had been rescued, she wasn’t swamped with relief. And where was the bodyguard? Something wasn’t right, and he had sensed it before her strange answer to him that they would talk later. Something had happened that she didn’t want to discuss in front of her children.

“Mama, I want to go home,” Angelica cried and rubbed her eyes with her fists.

“We’re trying to go home,” Raffaela said patiently. “Mr. Drake is going to get us back.” She poured the last can of formula and handed the bottle to Angelica.

“There’s a stream nearby. We’ll go wash and then come back here to sleep,” Micah said.

“Why don’t we sleep by the stream?” Raffaela asked.

“It’ll be a watering hole at night. This is safer.”

She nodded, picked up Angelica and took Sophie’s hand to follow him. Only yards away she spotted water trickling over a narrow streambed. With relief she washed her face and washed the girls’ faces and hands. Micah Drake left them alone for nearly an hour and finally returned. His dark hair was wet, pulled sleekly back and tied behind his head. His shirt was open to the waist and Raffaela looked at the narrow expanse of muscled chest. Realizing she was staring, she glanced up to find him watching her.

She straightened and turned, stumbling when her foot caught in a tree root. Instantly strong hands steadied her, and Micah was at her side. Only inches from him, she looked into his dark eyes.

“Thanks,” she whispered, her pulse skittering. He looked tough, unapproachable, yet her skin tingled with a strange awareness of him.

When they returned to their campsite, he pulled a bedroll from his backpack, spreading it for the girls, covering them with mosquito netting. Within minutes they were asleep, Angelica with her thumb in her mouth and Sophie curled into a ball. He handed the square of canvas to Raffaela and she spread it, sitting and leaning against a palm.

He placed the rifle where he could reach it and sat on the damp ground, crossing his legs while he settled a few feet from Raffaela. She met his gaze with wide green eyes. Briefly Micah wondered about her husband. The Bolivian industrialist was a fortunate man. Micah knew if his family had crashed in a Central American jungle, he would have flown home from a business engagement. The father and brother had come forth, ready to do whatever they could, but the husband was strangely absent from the arrangements Luke Webster had made with Micah. Were relations less than good between Raffaela and her husband?

“Now we talk. I have some questions,” Micah said. “What happened to Burr Brogan? And why aren’t you wearing your wedding rings?”

“I regained consciousness with the plane burning and the girls clinging to me and crying,” she said quietly, looking more worried by the minute, and he wondered what had happened back there at the site of the crash. “I don’t know a Burr Brogan and there was no one around but the three of us.”

“I have a passenger list,” he said impatiently. “Burr Brogan, the Granillo bodyguard, and Jose Escajedo, the Granillo pilot, were on that plane. I found Jose Escajedo’s remains.”

She flinched slightly and bit her lip, looking at her hands and touching her fingers as if realizing she should be wearing rings. When she looked up, he felt his stomach tighten, and a gut feeling swamped him that something was terribly wrong.

“You called me Raffaela Granillo,” she said.

“Aren’t you? Was that Rachel or Raffaela who died in the crash? Which one are you?”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Two

Stunned, Micah looked at her and swore softly under his breath. “You still have a bump on the back of your head from a blow you must have received in the crash. Have you had headaches since the crash?”

“Yes. They were blinding at first.”

“I assumed you’re Raffaela Granillo, the married twin.”

“The woman who died was my twin sister?” she asked in a tight voice. “Do I look like her?”

“Exactly.”

She closed her eyes, and Micah reached out to grasp her shoulder, wondering if she was going to faint. The moment his hand closed over her, her eyes flew open. As she gazed up at him, he leaned closer. Her lips parted. There was still daylight, and he gazed into the cool depths of frightened green eyes. He saw the moment she became aware of him as a man. Her eyes widened and pink suffused her cheeks. He felt a stirring of want, looking again at her mouth. Her lips were full and curved, and he wondered if they were as soft as they appeared.

Annoyed with himself and struggling for control of his impulses, he met her gaze. “Are you all right?” His voice was husky, and his fingers closed a little tighter on her shoulder. Her bones felt delicate beneath his hand, a contact that he didn’t want to end.

“Yes, I’m okay. I was just surprised by what you told me,” she said in a small, breathless voice that revealed she was having as much reaction as he.

He told himself to move away from her, yet he sat there staring at her while she gazed back with a strange searching look in her eyes. As if drawn by an unseen force, he leaned closer. Then he realized what he had just done and scooted away from her.

“When you’re with your husband and family, it will come back to you,” he said gruffly, swearing silently at himself. He remembered Luke saying she cheated on her husband, and he felt a stir of contempt. He might be old-fashioned in her circle, but he thought wedding vows were forever. She was a beautiful woman who drew men like bees to pollen, and his reaction was normal. He told himself that, but he didn’t believe it. He had been around beautiful women since Shawna died and he hadn’t had the reaction he was having to Raffaela Granillo.

“I can’t recall anything that’s happened. I remember the girls. I couldn’t remember their names until they told me. Angelica calls me Mama and Sophie calls me Mama or Aunt, but as time goes by, she’s addressing me as Aunt Rachel less often.”

He frowned, studying her. The three-year-old would be more likely to know her own mother, yet in the chaos of the crash, and with mother and aunt being twins, the child could be confused. He had heard Sophie call her Mama more than once since he had been with them. Was he rescuing Hector Granillo’s wife or Hector’s unmarried sister-in-law?

Micah slammed shut that line of questioning. He knew he had damned well better assume he had the wife and mother with him. Certainly there had been a flare of lust or attraction pass between them, but he didn’t want any complications with a married woman who was the mother of two little girls. If she was Rachel, the single nanny, he could deal with that when he was back in Texas. But for now, out here in the wild, he was going to assume he had Raffaela Granillo, the married one.

He glanced at the bag she carried. It was resting on the ground near his backpack. “Don’t you have identification and pictures in your purse?”

She shook her head. “That’s the bag with the girls’ things. After I regained consciousness, I gathered what I could find that I thought we might need, but I didn’t find any identification for anyone.”

He curbed the impulse to swear. She looked worried and uncertain enough without him adding to the problem. “Do you know why neither you nor your twin is wearing any jewelry besides the necklace you had on?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember jewelry. I can’t remember my name or my home or my family.” She looked stricken, and he heard the thread of fear in her voice. “If I’m the mother of the girls, I don’t remember their father. I don’t remember a husband.”

He wanted to groan as he stared at her. Her skin was flawless, her throat slender. Tendrils of auburn hair had escaped her braid, and he battled the urge to tuck one behind her ear. “Usually amnesia doesn’t last long,” he said, realizing hers had already lasted longer than usual. “I think we should assume you’re Raffaela Webster Granillo, mother of Angelica and Sophie.”

“Raffaela Webster Granillo,” she said frowning.

“Your father is Atlee Webster. He has an oil company in Houston, Texas. I’m a friend of your brother, Luke.”

“Why am I in this jungle? Where were we going?”

“If you’re Raffaela, you’re married to Hector Granillo. He has tin mines and one of the largest textile plants in Bolivia. Your sister Rachel was not married and she was nanny for your two girls, so she was traveling back to La Paz, Bolivia, with you.”

“How long have I been married?”

He shrugged. “I don’t have details of your marriage. Your brother hired me to try to rescue any survivors. He didn’t give me your past history.”

“If you’re good friends with my brother, you should have been a guest at my wedding,” she said, giving him a wary look.

He shook his head. “We were army buddies. After we got out of the military, we occasionally ran into each other because we both settled in Houston. That’s all. He came to me for this job because he knew what kind of business I’m in.”

Feeling a mounting sense of panic, Raffaela could not dredge up any memories of family or husband. The only reason she knew the girls was because they were there with her, but she couldn’t recall their births or babyhood. The woman she had covered with branches and leaves had been her twin sister. It disturbed her to be unable to feel the loss.