She’d never felt so emotionally or physically needy before and it bothered her in a vague theoretic sense, but this seemed like a time out of ordinary life, a place where the usual rules and her usual behavior just didn’t apply. Chloe didn’t know if it was the raging hormones of her pregnancy or something about Dev Gallagher, but she just wanted to roll up into his arms, lay her head on his chest, and not think of anything but how it felt to be held by him.
“Hey, sweet cakes.” Dev stuck his head out the window. He had showered and changed into an old t-shirt and cammo pants. “You gonna come inside and eat?”
“What are you serving?” As if she cared. As always, she was starving.
“Steak. Potatoes. And salad. And if you don’t like that, I’ll fix you a PBJ.”
He wasn’t kidding. Dev had waited on her hand and foot. He’d let her help with some of the meals, but mainly he’d shoo her out onto the porch, and more often than not, she’d doze off until it was time to eat.
They’d spent time sharing their interests. He liked to read as much as her, but he liked mysteries and thrillers and she liked fantasies and love stories. He liked to hike. They both liked to garden, although he admitted that it had been years since he had turned soil. Otherwise, they’d been busy eating and sleeping and loving. She knew nothing about his work.
When they were sitting at the table, and when most of her hunger had been satisfied, she delved into untested waters. “My brother said you do some kind of security work in the army.” Chloe stroked her finger down the beads of sweat on her glass of cold tea.
“Yeah. Nothing too exciting. I’d like to hear more about your kindergarten class.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I won’t be bored by the details of your job.”
Dev sighed, then looked over toward an old roll-topped desk against the wall. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m in a special unit in the army.”
“And?” That really came as no surprise considering his competent, fit body.
He twisted his lips, and she could practically see him calculating how much to tell her. “I just do a lot of small detail jobs. Communications. Computers. Some security work.” When she just stared at him, his lips tightened. “Projects here and there. Around the world.”
“You’re gone a lot?”
“Well. Yeah. Sometimes.” He tapped his knee. “Except I screwed up my knee awhile back, so I’m having to figure out if I can still do that kind of work, or ...."
“Not?”
“Right. Or not.” He sipped more tea and started to shred his napkin into small pieces.
“And you’re on leave or something?”
“Yeah. Convalescent leave. For my knee.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe a few weeks. Until I decide—actually, until the Army decides what to do with a less than perfect physical specimen.”
“And if it was up to you, what would you do?”
He continued to tear the napkin into smaller and smaller pieces. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to stay with the unit. Part of me wonders if it isn’t time to move on. I could get into training. Or maybe be some kind of overseas liaison.”
“Either way, it won’t be Atlanta.”
His green eyes met hers and they revealed exactly nothing. “No.”
“Well. That’s all very,” she struggled for a response, “interesting.”
“Chloe. I’ll be with you as much as I can until the baby’s born.” He dropped the napkin from his fingers and reached for her hand. “After the divorce, I’ll visit every time I’m in the states.”
“Okay. That won’t be so different from my original plan, after all.” Except that everything was different now. She was going to be very lonely for those big arms and wide chest and sexy grin.
He went to the desk and picked up a few opened envelopes. “I’ve put you as my beneficiary on my life insurance. And my will.”
Her heart dropped. “Is this stuff that you do more dangerous than usual?”
The muscle at his jaw started to twitch. “There are no guarantees in life for anybody.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Have you been to Iraq?”
“A few times.” He shrugged. “The army’s so short these days, there aren’t too many guys that have missed out on that scenic part of the world.”
“Is your injured knee from there?”
“No.” He walked over to the bed, slipped off his sandals and began to put on his boots.
“But you didn’t twist it playing racquetball? Or badminton?”
“No.” He blew out a breath and stood, his body humming with visible impatience.
“Did somebody
shoot
at you?” She was beginning to get scared for him.
He snorted. “You have a vivid imagination, sweetheart.” He stepped away from her and applied a small amount of insect repellent to his arms. “I’m going to go out and pick up some firewood. It’s been dry for a couple of days, so it’s a good time to stock up.”
“Sure. You do that. You never know when we might need it.”
In July.
“There’s a couple of books on the shelf over there I’ve been wanting to read, anyway.”
When Dev left, Chloe continued to sit at the table, staring out the window at the approaching sundown. The envelopes on the table made her sick, knowing that each would come into play only if something happened to him. The fact that he had them so readily available was not reassuring.
She opened the first one. It was a simple will, dated on the day she had met him. The gist of it was that he had left her all of his assets. The only thing she wanted from the man currently hiding from her in the woods, though, was for him to share his six foot body and keen mind with her for a very long time. Of course, if he also threw his heart into the deal, she’d scoop him up and keep him forever.
Wha
t was she thinking? If she got in any deeper with him, it would kill her when he left. But maybe, just maybe, argued her heart, he would stay. Wasn’t that worth the risk?
Shuddering, she picked up the next envelope, which was a six month premium statement for a life insurance policy for $500,000. Indeed, she was the only beneficiary. Looking more carefully, though, Chloe realized that this premium was for continuation of a policy that had been set up in January. The ‘current information’ section listed her as beneficiary.
Chloe had been listed as the beneficiary last January?
It took her brain a few moments to assimilate the facts, but she began to seethe as she put it together. He had to have known of her existence six months ago, weeks before the clinic had finally sent her the sample for insemination.
And knowing him as she did, there was really only one conclusion. It was more than a simple mix-up that she ended up with Dev’s sperm instead of the artist she had selected. She didn’t know how or why he had done it, but he had overridden her selection of a donor.
He
was the one who had chosen
her
to be a surrogate mother for his child.
Chapter Four
Of all the things Dev expected when he returned with his armload of firewood, an empty cabin was not on the list. Neither were the emptied duffels scattered all over the floor nor the open desk drawers. Someone had searched his cabin.
He thought he’d been scared six months ago on his mission in Indonesia. Now he knew what real fear was. If someone had harmed Chloe and the baby, he’d take them out without a second thought. He quickly pulled open the false floor of the foot locker near the bed, grabbed his Glock, night vision goggles, car keys, and phone, and ran out the front door.
When he looked at the tracks, though, the fear vanished. Now he was just pissed off. There was only one set of tracks. They weren’t made in any kind of hurry or panic. And they belonged to a stubborn, black-haired witch who had no regard for her own or the baby’s safety. What and the hell had made her leave the cabin and put herself in danger?
After no more than a mile at a slow trot, he saw her, scrambling down the road ahead of him, still in that thin dress of all things. “Chloe,” he called.
To his surprise, she started to run -- further away from him. He didn’t know what was going on, but he sure as hell was not going to let her wander down this dirt road in the dark.
He tucked his goggles away in his side pocket, picked up his pace and quickly caught up to her. He ran in front of her and grabbed her shoulders.
“Get away from me,” she whispered. Her face was pale, eyes wide and pupils dilated.
“What in the hell is going on? Did something scare you?”
“Yes. You.” He jerked back as if she’d kicked him. She closed her eyes, breathing rapidly, and clutched her hands in front of her womb. “I want to call my brother.”
“Okaaaaay.” Maybe this was some weird pregnancy mood swing. He glanced up at the sky, but there was no full moon to explain her behavior. “Okay. Relax. No problem. Can we do this back at the cabin?”
“No!” She hugged her arms and shivered.
Dev’s neck was getting chewed up by mosquitoes and he hated that her bare arms were exposed in her dress, but he pulled the phone from his pocket and dialed her brother, grateful as all hell that he answered on the third ring. “Jay? Gallagher here. Chloe wants to talk to you.”
He handed the phone to her, and she quickly stepped away from him. While she was talking, he pulled off his t-shirt and ripped the back up the middle.
When he approached her to tie it around her bare arms, she glared at him, but he didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t much protection, but encephalitis from West Nile Virus he could do without.
“You knew and you didn’t tell me?” she said hotly into the phone.
Dev was glad she had deflected her anger elsewhere, but he had a very bad feeling about the part of the conversation he could hear.
“There is nothing, do you hear me, nothing that could justify this.” She listened to her brother for a moment and sighed. “No. It’s been all right until now.”
Dev’s eyebrows rose. The most incredible couple of days of his life had been just all right for her? Man, he needed to back off big time if that was all he meant to her.
She glared at Dev again, then her eyes narrowed. Before he knew it, she slapped him with a hell of a hit on his bare chest. She looked at her hand and he was relieved to see a very dead mosquito, which she promptly wiped on his pants. Maybe she cared after all.
She grasped the t-shirt closer around her bare arms and blew out her breath. “Okay, okay. Yes. I’ll listen. That’s all I promise. But why you’re sticking up for him is beyond me.”
Way to go, Jay.
Thankfully she started to walk back toward the cabin, and he walked next to her, hands in his pockets, making sure to keep his distance.
“All right. I’ll call you back. But I still say I’m coming home tonight.” She snorted. “Un huh. Right. Well when I get back, I’m going to seriously consider letting my neighbors convince me to swing their way. All right. Bye.” She handed the phone to him and continued to walk in silence.
After a minute or two, he just had to know. “Who are these neighbors you want to swing with?”
A smirk crossed her face. “Card carrying lesbians.”
Fucking great. He’d had the best sex of his life with her, and he’d only succeeded in turning her off of men altogether. “Why are you so pissed at me?”
“Because you lied to me.”
He cleared his throat. “About what?” There were so many to choose from.
She stopped and glared at him, hands on her hips. “About the fact that you manipulated the clinic into sending your sperm to me.”
“Oh. That.”
“
I merely banked my sperm here, Miss Simon,”
she mimicked
. “I never gave permission for its use as an anonymous donation
.”
She slapped his upper arm, hard enough to kill a bat, much less a mosquito. Call him empathic, but he intuitively decided she wasn’t going to get over being pissed anytime soon. She charged ahead, not waiting to hear his response, and he followed behind her, trying to think how he was going to get out of this. Saying he was sorry would just be another lie because he knew he’d do it again. He’d chosen fucking well.
* * * *
Mad as she was, Chloe was pretty horrified at the massive welts on Dev’s chest where his t-shirt had been. His arms were spared from the killer mosquitoes by the bug repellent he’d used earlier. She insisted on smearing the same cream over them that he had just put on her few bites, making sure that there was nothing delicate or sensual about her touch. Then she sat down in the kitchen chair, looked at her watch, and folded her arms. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to explain why you did this to me.”
Dev walked to the window and stared out at the stars. Turning around, he leaned his hips and hands on the windowsill and looked at her. She ignored the hair on his chest and the way it tapered to his lean hips. That golden path had already distracted her plenty when she should have been more suspicious of his appearance in her life.
“A lot of the stuff I’ve done in the Army has been dangerous. And for years, it didn’t bother me.” He folded his arms across his chest. “A year ago, suddenly I started having nightmares. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, shaking like a pathetic puppy.” His lips thinned and he looked away. “The dreams were always violent and bloody. I couldn’t always remember the details, but the way they made me feel was always the same.” Dev returned his burning gaze to hers. “Heart pounding, nauseating, fear.” Her shook his head with obvious disgust. “I was convinced I was going to die the next time I went out.”
She couldn’t begin to relate to what he had been through. But she wanted to know how this had led to his deception, so she folded her arms and nodded. “Go on.”
He shrugged. “So I banked some sperm and left instructions in my will that it could be used as a donor sample if anything happened to me.” Pushing away from the window, he put his hands in his pockets and began to pace. “It made me feel better that I could leave something behind. Something good.” He stopped and propped his hands on the back of the kitchen chair, and hung his head. “But after the next mission, the nightmares got worse, and I knew I had to do something more definite.”