The Spy’s Secret Family Read online

  “But Adam needs Super Mommy.”

  Laura’s voice cracked, sending a glass shard of pain through him. How was she ever going to move past the fact that he’d done this to their child? Even assuming Adam returned home safe and sound—and he refused to consider any other possibility—how were they going to move forward as a couple?

  He asked slowly, “Do you think you’ll ever forgive me for all of this?”

  She stared across the dark interior of the car at him a long time before she answered. “I don’t know. After you lied to me in Paris and then spent the past year knowing you were living under an assumed identity and never told me, I don’t know how I’m going to trust you again.”

  If only he could remember why he’d deceived her in Paris! For the first time, he regretted not really trying to work with the doctors who’d attempted to help him regain his memory.

  “Now what?” Laura asked.

  What indeed.

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  Dear Reader,

  I cannot tell you how much fun it is to get to revisit a few of my favorite characters of all time, and to get to write about babies and children again, all in one book! I was absolutely thrilled when I was asked to write another book in the Top Secret Deliveries series. Thanks so much to you for supporting these books and giving me and my fellow authors an opportunity to play in this universe again.

  There’s nothing quite as powerful as the love of a parent for their child, and it was a challenge to combine this with a grown-up love story and a tale of suspense and danger. Thankfully, Nick and Laura knew exactly how they planned to proceed. It seemed like every day when I sat down to write, certain I knew what was going to happen in that day’s work, those two up and took me in some completely different direction altogether.

  So, I take no credit for this book. This is truly Nick and Laura’s story. I was just the typist along for the ride. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

  Happy reading!

  Cindy Dees

  CINDY DEES

  The Spy’s Secret Family

  Books by Cindy Dees

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  Behind Enemy Lines #1176

  *Line of Fire #1253

  *A Gentleman and a Soldier #1307

  *Her Secret Agent Man #1353

  *Her Enemy Protector #1417

  The Lost Prince #1441

  **The Medusa Affair #1477

  **The Medusa Seduction #1494

  †The Dark Side of Night #1509

  Killer Affair #1524

  †Night Rescuer #1561

  The 9-Month Bodyguard #1564

  †Medusa’s Master #1570

  The Soldier’s Secret Daughter #1588

  **The Medusa Proposition #1608

  †The Longest Night #1617

  Dr. Colton’s High-Stakes Fiancée #1628

  **Medusa’s Sheik #1633

  †Soldier’s Night Mission #1649

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  †Soldier’s Last Stand #1665

  The Spy’s Secret Family #1673

  Nocturne

  Time Raiders: The Slayer #71

  CINDY DEES

  started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan, where she grew up, to attend the University of Michigan. After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.

  Her hobbies include medieval reenacting, professional Middle Eastern dancing and Japanese gardening.

  This RITA® Award-winning author’s first book was published in 2002 and since then she has published more than twenty-five bestselling and award-winning novels. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.

  This book is for Shana Smith because it absolutely,

  positively couldn’t have happened without her.

  Truly. You’re the best!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Why wasn’t he dead?

  Nick stared up at the featureless white ceiling of his hospital room as the beeping of a heart monitor punctuated the panic flowing through his veins. Why hadn’t they killed him? Why five years of captivity instead—in a shipping container, on a cargo ship, floating around in international waters?

  And why couldn’t he remember what came just before his kidnapping? The doctors told him he’d sustained a serious head injury at some point during his incarceration. Whether a captor had hit him during an interrogation or he’d fallen during one of the massive open-sea storms that had tossed him like a cork inside his steel prison, he had no recollection.

  He coughed thickly. Supposedly, his pneumonia was mostly under control now. It had been touch and go there for a while. But the worry lurking in his nurses’ eyes had eased in the past day or so. He gathered he was out of the woods, which was good news.

  They were still working on clearing his body of various other infections and trying to restore normal function to his digestive tract. The only way he was putting on weight was via the massive calorie infusions running through his IV.

  They’d cut his dark hair and shaved off his matted beard, revealing the unnatural paleness of his usually olive complexion. The psychiatrists said he might never remember the lost time, a memory gap spanning approximately two years prior to his capture and the first three years or so of his imprisonment. Funny how the shrinks were trying so hard to retrieve those memories and he was trying equally hard not to retrieve them. Absolute certainty vibrated ominously in his gut, warning him that whatever lurked in that black hole of lost time was best left there.

  Was whatever he’d forgotten the reason he was still alive? Had his captors been waiting for him to remember something? Or was there some other, more sinister reason that someone had been hell-bent on imprisoning him?

  Maybe he was just being paranoid. Although it wasn’t paranoia if someone was really after him. Even now, he expected his keepers to burst into his hospital room and haul him back to his box. The idea actually made a certain sick sense. If his captors had orders to keep him alive and he’d gotten too sick to treat on the ship, they could’ve cooked up this whole rescue ruse to fatten him up and get him healthy enough to toss back in Hell.

  Laura Delaney—the woman who’d rescued him from his metal prison and one of the only faces he remembered from the lost years—claimed the two of them had been lovers before he’d disappeared. She’d introduced him to a little boy who looked so much like him it was hard to discount her story that he was the child’s father. He desperately hoped it was true.

  She was an extremely attractive woman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine dating someone like her. But was she for real? Or was she part of his captors’ evil head games? Was she here to trick him into revealing whatever secrets hi
s subconscious was guarding so fiercely?

  If only there was someone he could trust, really trust, to tell him what was real and what was not.

  And then there was the troubling fact that he knew for certain his name wasn’t Nick Cass. Nor had he grown up entirely in Rhode Island. But Laura apparently believed both to be true. He must’ve told the lies himself. But why? If he and Laura were lovers like she claimed, why hadn’t he told her his real name or the most basic facts about his past? Why the deception?

  Everywhere he turned, there were only questions and more questions. Frustration sang through his blood as sharply as his secret hope that his freedom, at least, was real. But he dared not share that hope with anyone. Not until he knew if anyone at all was telling him the truth.

  Laura paused outside the hospital room, steeling herself not to react to Nick’s emaciated state. It wasn’t his fault he looked fresh out of a Nazi concentration camp, and he didn’t deserve to see her cringe at the sight of his skeletal frame, hollow face or his shadowed blue eyes. God, his eyes. The haunted look in them was terrifying. Would he carry it with him forever?

  The shrinks doubted he would recover the years stripped from his memory. But they felt he should recover enough to be a functional member of society once more with time and counseling. He should recover. Not he would.

  At this point, she didn’t care if his memory ever came back. She just wanted him back. The man who’d swept her off her feet in a whirlwind romance in Paris. The man who’d captured her heart and taught her what true love could be. If even part of that amazing man came back to her, it would be better than the hollow shell of a man on the other side of the door. She vowed to be grateful for whatever piece of him survived his ordeal. It was surely better than having no part of him at all. The past five years of waiting and wondering had been pure hell.

  She knew he wasn’t convinced yet that his rescue was real in spite of that first night of freedom they’d shared. They’d gone to her estate, where he’d bathed and eaten. Then she’d made love to him with all the pent-up passion and relief in her soul.

  They’d both cried that night. She’d interpreted his tears as a cathartic release, but she’d been wrong. The shrinks told her he believed that night to have been some sort of elaborate torture by his captors to taunt him with what freedom would be like. Apparently, he’d been crying because the idea of going back into his box after what the two of them had shared had finally broken him. She’d broken him.

  The man hadn’t even known who she was, and she’d been so caught up in her euphoria at finding him that she’d never slowed down enough to realize how lost he’d been. Guilt at her thoughtlessness rolled through her. She’d always been a take-charge, full-speed-ahead kind of person. But that tendency had hurt the man she loved. Part of his paranoid state now was her fault. When would she learn to rein herself in? Had her impulsiveness cost her his trust forever?

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. “Hey, handsome. How are you feeling today?”

  “You’re back.” The abject relief in his voice broke her heart a little. What he clearly meant was, “So I get to live another day in this beautiful illusion? Thank God.”

  “The doctors say you can go home soon. You’ll still need around-the-clock medical care, but I can hire nurses to look after you.”

  Terror flashed in his eyes at the mention of leaving the hospital.

  She pretended not to see it and asked lightly, “Do you think when you actually come home to live with me and Adam you’ll believe all of this is real? That you’re free and you have a family?”

  He answered slowly, “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  Hey, progress! He’d spoken of his feelings. Maybe he’d finally accepted that he was not living in a dream or a terrible trick. She picked up his bony hand and cradled it in hers. It had been so strong once, so capable of giving her pleasure, so confident in its gestures. She murmured, “I love you, Nick. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.”

  “Even if you’re lying, the notion makes me happy.”

  She smiled down at him. “Give it some time. Give me some time to prove this is real.”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t like I have any choice. I’m along for the ride, here. So far, it’s a great dream.”

  She smiled bravely while the knife twisted in her gut. “You’ll be on your feet and kicking up your heels in no time. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

  And please God, let that include staying with her and Adam. Their son desperately needed a father, and she desperately needed the man she loved. Yes, she hadn’t seen him in five years. And yes, he might be an entirely different person than the one she fell in love with way back then. But surely, at least part of the intelligent, passionate, confident man who’d swept her off her feet was still in there, somewhere.

  “How can you possibly be real?” he asked reflectively. “You’re too perfect.”

  She laughed lightly, praying her panic at his declaration wasn’t audible. “I’m far from perfect. Trust me.”

  “Trust. That is the thing, isn’t it? Who will trust whom first in this little chess game?”

  “This isn’t a game, Nick. You’re free, you’re going home soon and I love you. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

  He made a noncommittal sound, and his cobalt gaze slid away from hers.

  He really did have to give his captors credit for playing out this farce to the hilt. Six weeks since his “rescue” and still no hint of tossing him back in his box. He gazed around the plush bedroom suite, decorated in dark woods and deep, comforting colors. It was a far cry from his former prison. Hard to believe he actually caught himself missing the container’s bare metal walls now and then. After a while, its confines had felt safe. Comforting. A steel embrace that kept out worse horrors.

  He supposed if he had to trade one cage for another, this one wasn’t bad. It was warmer and softer, and definitely had better food. The hallway door opened and Laura slipped into the room, wearing a slim wool skirt and a silk blouse that clung to her elegant curves in all the right places. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright. He added better-looking captors to his list.

  In all fairness to her, she’d been nothing but kind and loving to him since she’d opened his box and let him out. She really was a delightful woman, witty and warm, with a quick smile that made her impossible to resist. And she was a devoted mother.

  She moved to his side, and he closed his laptop. Yet again, his unreasoning fear at what lurked in his past had prevented him from typing in his real name to an internet search engine. Just a few simple keystrokes, and he’d finally know what monsters lurked in the recesses of his mind. But his terror was just too great. He’d sat there for an hour with the damned computer in his lap and never managed to type a single letter.

  Leaning over the chair, Laura kissed him warmly. He didn’t find it hard to believe that he’d loved her once. The only thing keeping him from giving in to serious attraction to the woman was the prospect of losing her. He figured as soon as he fell for her, that would be when the rug got yanked out from under him.

  “How’re you feeling today?” she asked eagerly, almost impatiently.

  “Fine. You look about ready to burst. Do you have a surprise for me?” His gut clenched. He hated surprises. He was still waiting for the big, nasty one where his captors swept him out of this paradise and whisked him back to Hell Central.

  “I do have a surprise for you, Nick. A good one, I hope. Are you strong enough for a bit of a shock?”

  Every cell in his being froze. This was it. Sick heat and then icy cold washed through him, leaving him so nauseous he could hardly breathe. His heart pounded and his breathing accelerated so hard that, in seconds, he was light-headed.

  His gaze darted about, seeking escape. Seeking a weapon. Anything to defend himself from the attack to come. His gaze lighted on the window. He could make a dash for it. Fling himself through the glass. It was three stories to
the ground. If he went head first, the fall ought to kill him. If nothing else, maybe he’d be hurt so bad they couldn’t throw him back in his box. Maybe they’d have to hospitalize him for a few more months.

  “I’m pregnant, Nick. We’re going to have a baby.”

  His mind went blank. Ever so slowly, his brain managed to form a thought. Not a particularly coherent one, but a thought. What new game was this?

  “Did you hear me?” Laura asked excitedly. “You’re going to be a father again.”

  His brain simply refused to absorb the information. He couldn’t find a context to put the words in. Couldn’t comprehend the purpose of this new torture.

  Laura was laughing. “…too fertile for our own good…first time we made love we got Adam, and now, after that first night you were free, we’re going to have another baby…should really be more careful about birth control in the future…”

  She was making words and sentences and probably was even stringing them together in some sort of logical order. But he didn’t understand a thing she was saying.

  He did understand, though, that the hallway door was not bursting open. No thugs had come for him yet. The next few minutes passed with him murmuring inane nothings at proper intervals in response to Laura’s babbling joy. And still no one had come.