The bounty hunters baby.., p.23
The Bounty Hunter's Baby Search,
p.23
He wanted to know how Haley’s first feeding went with Jason. If she was going to change the baby’s name to Colton when a birth certificate was made for him. If he’d have the last name Carmichael.
He wanted to tell Haley he loved her. That he’d never felt anything like it for any other woman, and that if he left her again, he’d never feel that way again.
He wanted to tell Haley that he didn’t want to die without having known where they could go in life if they were together.
He wanted to tell her that he was fine to take bullets for her, but he was scared to death to make a mockery of their love a second time.
But by the time he made it back to Pahrump, to the police station, she’d already left.
* * *
Haley was just coming out of the courthouse across the street from the police station, holding her new son close to her chest, while an aide carried a donated car seat out to the vehicle she’d rented to take them to Vegas, when she saw Paul standing on the sidewalk. His shoulders hunched, his head down, he just stood in front of the police station, as though lost.
His shoulder. The bullet. Something was wrong.
With Jason held close, she asked the aide to wait and hurried over. “Paul?”
He jerked upright. Wiped a hand over his face. But not before she’d seen the moisture there.
“Paul?”
“I thought I was too late.”
“Too late for what?” Heart pounding, she didn’t dare hope. She’d had her miracle of a lifetime. Was holding him close to her heart.
“Thing is, I’m going to argue with you,” he told her. “And you’re going to argue with me, too.”
She opened her mouth to argue his point, but closed it again.
“I want to find out why Kels changed her name. And whether or not she was associated with Sister’s Ranch.”
The words were stilted. Almost rehearsed sounding.
“I know the answers to both,” she told him. “I had a message on my cell from Noah’s partner. I called him just before I went into the judge’s chambers. He’s going to meet me for dinner tonight, at a little place Kelsey loved not far from the Calypso house. It turns out that Noah had a key to the place, which his partner, Liam, now has, and is going to give to me. She changed her name because of Gladstone. She didn’t want him to be able to find her. And she never even went to Pahrump. She met Charles at a function she was attending with Noah. Charles was planning to leave Sandra, by the way. He was just waiting until she was a bit healthier to file for divorce. And Kelsey fully supported the decision. They also chose the name Jason together. Which is why it was in his will. There was also a codicil which has now been found, leaving half of everything to Kelsey.
“And...” she continued, “Gladstone was actually behind grabbing me on the street. He’d hired a guy to warn me off so I didn’t drag up things that got his dad all riled up again. So, the creep’s been arrested, after all. And they were able to trace a phone call to a second hit man, a more expensive professional, and to follow both of their GPS’ to the same drop off point for the cash. Sandra tried to make a deal by confessing to hiring the guy, but said she’d only hired him to warn off Charles and Maya and Noah, not kill them. The guy she’d hired, though, had saved a recording of the actual conversation where she was hiring him to kill them so Sandra’s likely going away for good, too.”
Instead of being glad to have it all done, to have a clean slate, Paul seemed a little crestfallen. And...then he didn’t.
Chin raised, shoulders firm, he stood before her, with the aide holding the car seat just off to their left, and said, “Thing is, Hale, there are shadow sides to everything. The theory of opposites.”
She wanted to hope. Didn’t dare. “Okay.” Could Jason feel her trembling? Would he wake up in time for Paul to see how incredibly blue his eyes were? Paul’s eyes were blue. Haley, Kelsey and Gloria all had brown eyes.
“When you have intense good feeling, for example, the shadow side is intense not so good parts.”
If he was going where she prayed he was, she hoped he got there soon. There was only so much a woman could take, even one as strong as her, without falling apart a little bit.
“Emotions are messy.”
“Yeah.”
“Life is messy.”
“I won’t argue that one with you.”
People passed by. Didn’t seem to notice that the world was spinning in circles. That the sun and moon were shining brilliantly together in the cloudy sky. They just kept walking.
“Messy isn’t to be feared.”
She wasn’t as sure about that, but she was listening...
“What’s to be feared is a stale life. And that’s what you have without emotion. A stale life.”
Her dreams were coming true. It hit her with a flash of light so bright she couldn’t see.
And then she could.
“Are you going to ask me to marry you again, Paul? Because if you are, I wish you’d just do it rather than taking me on this roller-coaster ride of...”
He bent and kissed her. Fully. Deeply. On the lips. In the lips. With a baby in her arms, an aide watching and people who were walking stopping to watch, too.
When he lifted his mouth, she whispered, “The answer is yes.”
She’d wanted to keep their business to themselves, but delighted applause broke out. She had to get the car seat and let the aide get back to work.
“Will you take him, please?” she asked, very aware of what she was forcing upon Paul as she gently held out the baby to him. “Jason, meet your new daddy,” she said, waiting for Paul to blanch.
To step back.
Instead, he stepped forward. Took the baby as though he’d been holding infants all his life.
“I’ve got so much to teach you,” he said, looking down at the still sleeping bundle. Looked up at Haley and said, “And so much to learn.”
“Well learn this,” she told him, looping her free arm through his as they smiled at the people around them, and she took the car seat from the aide with her free hand. “And never doubt it again. Family, in all of its guises, and imperfections, with all of its headaches, is the most valuable thing on earth. And for keeps.”
Just like she’d kept Kelsey. And Gloria. Like they’d keep Edward, too. Like she’d kept Paul in her heart for eight lonely years. And he’d kept her. There were definitely going to be challenges ahead.
But they’d met the biggest one of all.
And conquered it together.
* * *
Don’t miss the previous books in the
Sierra’s Web miniseries:
His Lost and Found Family
Reluctant Roommates
Tracking His Secret Child
Her Best Friend’s Baby
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Trusting Her Betrayer
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Keep reading for an excerpt from Hunted on the Bay by Amber Leigh Williams.
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Hunted on the Bay
by Amber Leigh Williams
Chapter 1
Desiree Gardet didn’t give a damn if the neon sign flashing over the entrance to Tavern of the Graces was off. She’d waited to see its light burn out. She’d waited for the last customers to straggle out into the night and for the proprietor to flip the placard to Closed.
She’d waited a week. She’d wanted a slow night to commit this, her first crime: theft.
It’s not theft, she consoled herself, eyeing the single car in the graveled lot. Not really.
She’d chosen a Tuesday. Because the pace of life seemed slow and subdued here on Alabama’s Mobile Bay on Tuesdays. Or slower. Nightlife wasn’t exactly hopping on the Eastern Shore outside tourist season.
Desiree flipped the collar of her black vest so the high points obscured what little of her face the trapper-style hat did not. She kept her head low and ventured into the dim parking lot. Her feet felt heavy, leaden inside her boots. That could’ve been the long wait in the shadows. Or it could be that her feet knew the same thing her head did—that this plan was flat-out stupid.
Her hands weren’t shaking, she assured herself. And her breath puffing in a cloudy haze didn’t hitch as she approached the car.
There were cameras. She’d pinpointed them the first night she’d cased the place. She kept to the shadows, tilting her face out of the light. From the corner of her eye, she sized up the double entry doors.
She’d watched the man who owned the place. It would’ve been too risky, venturing inside. Bars had never been her scene. Nevertheless, she’d watched him—the tall, lean stranger with messy blond hair and wondered, How’d you wind up with my mother’s car?
Her breath came faster as she closed the distance to the Pontiac Trans Am. In the streetlight’s beam, through the pluming of her breath, she could see it. The license plate was custom. They hadn’t replaced it. It bore the letters she’d chosen: Mercy.
Her heart stumbled hard on the downbeat. She felt relief in droves.
She couldn’t back down. No matter what Mercedes Gardet would’ve thought of her pride and joy busting into the old family vehicle and double-timing it for I-65 north, Desiree had come too far to stop.
She’d ventured here for a reason, to this quiet place, the impossibly charming small town of Fairhope. Too small for her to remain secure in her anonymity. She’d come to take back what was hers.
The car hadn’t been at Bracken Mechanics like she’d thought. It’d taken her days to trace it to one William Leighton—the owner of Tavern of the Graces, one of the more high-profile bars in the area.
She’d toyed with the idea of confronting him face-to-face. She’d failed there before with James Bracken, the owner of Bracken Mechanics. The car had been in Bracken’s name, after all, and had been since Desiree’s mother passed on. Right around the time the car mysteriously vanished.
There was a connection there—between Desiree’s mother and James Bracken. One Desiree had contemplated exploring while she was here on this wild, impulsive, completely uncharacteristic Southern venture. In the end, she’d chickened out. Sometimes things were best left as they were.
Usually for her, connections led to misery.
Though Desiree was one step away from the part of her mother’s legacy that she’d lost. One step closer to unlocking memories, mislaid or buried—bitter and sweet. One step closer, she felt, to Mercedes in general.
She touched her hand to the flat of the beat-up cab. “Hi, baby,” she whispered. Doubling over, she shined her penlight through the back window, then the driver’s. Clean. Somebody had cleaned her up. New upholstery. Fresh paint, too, Desiree noticed, taking a closer look at the exterior.
Fumbling in the front pocket of her vest, she felt for metal. Using the light to guide her hand, she put the key in place. Please don’t have changed the locks.
She pushed the key home. Desiree sighed tumultuously. “Mary Mother, full of grace...” she chanted as tumblers ground and the mechanism gave way. Dancing on frozen toes, Desiree yanked the door open.
Behind the wheel, she shut the door and hit the locks. “Start,” she willed, fitting the key into the ignition. “Start, please.”
The alternator skipped before turning over. Desiree didn’t know whether to feel more relieved or wary. She glanced over her shoulder at the tavern doors, then scanned the parking lot.
She swallowed. Her throat was incredibly dry. Still, she yanked her seat belt into place. Then she shifted gears and, placing her hands at ten and two on the wheel, she began to back out slowly. Gravel crunched under the tires.
She was so close.
Who’d miss this old clunker, really? Sure, somebody’d put some work into her...
Don’t feel guilty. The car was all that was left of the real-life Mercy. No matter what the will had stated, it belonged to Desiree.
I’ll send this Leighton fella a thank-you card. Without the nom de plume, of course.
“Bye-bye, sleepy town,” she muttered as she put the car in Drive. Her foot eased off the brake.
It mashed down, bringing the car to a jerky stop, when she saw the man standing in the headlights. Lean enough to be a lamppost. Messy head of fair hair. Arms crossed over a gray sweater worn under the collar of a checkered shirt. The undershirt’s tails stuck out the bottom of the sweater. Up close, she saw a straight-line jaw, strong and critical at the base of a narrow face. He stared. She stared back.
I’m dead, she thought fleetingly as he moved, gradually, from the front of the car to the driver’s door.
When his knuckles rapped on the window, she cursed. Obediently, she rolled it down and fought the urge to collapse in on herself like a burned-out star on the edge of stability.
William Leighton bent down to peer at her, one hand braced on top of the driver’s door. He studied her until she began to sweat even more underneath her vest and turtleneck.
Finally, the corner of his thin mouth moved ever so slightly and his voice came to her, moving past the pulse against her eardrums. “Well,” he drawled. She saw movement under his top lip that was the slow, considering sweep of his tongue over his top teeth. “You don’t look like a miscreant.”
His casual tone caught her off guard. She couldn’t look away from him any more than she could take her hands off the wheel.
His shook his head slightly and straightened. “You best get out of the car, Miss...”
She could lie. In fact, she should lie. But her true name came to her more naturally than air. “Gardet,” she mumbled.
“Miss Gardet,” he said formally.
Strange. It didn’t sound like an accusation. When he popped the handle and swung the door open, he offered a long, finely tapered hand.
Desiree considered her options. She could attempt to flee. He wasn’t being forceful. The chivalry struck her as odd. She had no doubt that whatever his manner, whatever she decided, he’d alert the authorities. He would turn her in, and—just like that—she’d be ruined.
Images tumbled fast through her mind, as if the fissured glass she habitually sieved the past into had upended completely. A ruin—all over again.
She couldn’t run. Even with her heart banging, nerves crawling, she knew she wouldn’t try to evade him. His patience didn’t help matters, nor the offered hand. Like a refined date at the end of a pleasant evening.
A voice came to her, whistling on the chill breeze through the open window. Leave the car and take the man’s hand, chère.
It had been some time since Desiree had heard Mercedes’s voice in her head. So long that Desiree had thought, in all the twisted byways and techniques she’d used to cope with life, she’d funneled it out by mistake. The novelty of it was enough to propel her into action even if the soft command made no sense.
Take the man’s hand? Nuh-uh, Mama.
Still, she turned off the car. Leaving the key, she took a moment to rub her hands across the wheel, the leather cracked and cold under her palms. Leaning forward, she pressed her brow to its hard surface. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, rife with regret.
Copyright © 2023 by Amber Leigh Williams
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ISBN-13: 9780369728401
The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Search
Copyright © 2023 by TTQ Books LLC
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Tara Taylor Quinn, The Bounty Hunter's Baby Search
