Striking Distance

From somewhere out in her bedroom, her cell phone rang.

“Who is calling this late? Did you talk to your folks?”

“Yes.” Her mother and grandmother had been asleep, so they’d gotten the news from her. They’d been very upset, of course, and had asked her again to come back to Sweden. “It’s probably Gary calling to apologize—or make excuses for himself. I should have known he wouldn’t keep his promise. I’ve seen him do that before. I just didn’t think he’d do it to me.”

“That bastard is lucky he was in D.C. and not in the station tonight.” Javier peeled the tabs off an oversized adhesive bandage and stuck it carefully over the wound. “He and I would have had a serious confrontation.”

Somehow Laura doubted the confrontation would have been verbal. It touched her that Javier cared that much about her. He cared so much that he’d put his life on the line for her today. But she didn’t want that.

If anything happened to him . . .

She said the words she’d been meaning to say since they got home, words she’d thought about in the shower. “It’s probably best for you to go back to the ranch tomorrow. You came here to visit Nate and so far —”

“Whoa! What did you just say?” Javier’s gaze shot to hers. He sat back on his heels, his dark brows bent in a frown. “You want me to leave?”

She nodded, struggling to keep her tears at bay. “I-I don’t want you to get hurt, Javi. I couldn’t live with myself if you were hurt or killed.”

“Looks like we’ve got a problem.” He reached out, ran a gloved thumb down her cheek. “I couldn’t live with myself if you were hurt or killed when I was here and had the power to do something about it. I’ve seen that footage of your abduction at least a dozen times. Every time, I wished I’d been there to stop them. When I heard you’d been killed . . . Shit.” He shook his head. “Nah, I’m not leaving you, Laura. I can’t.”

She closed her eyes, turned her face away, the guilt she felt for putting him in danger at odds with an overwhelming sense of relief to know he was staying.

He pulled off his gloves, twined his fingers with hers. “Hey, is my sweet bella worried about a big, bad operator?”

She nodded. “You’re not bulletproof, you know. I feel so selfish keeping you here. This is not why you came to Colorado.”

“I think maybe it is, even if I didn’t realize it. I . . . care about you.”

Something in the way he said it made her look at him, the concern in his eyes putting an ache in her chest. That ache grew sharper when she realized that she and Javier might have had a real chance if things had gone differently after Dubai.

He took her hand, turned it over, ran his finger over the deep scratches on her palm. “I wish you’d gone to the hospital. I’ve had training as a medic, but the doctors and nurses would have done a better job of this.”

“I hate hospitals.” They were desolate, lonely places. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not really hurt. I’m not sick. I’m just . . . pathetic.”

She’d heard gunshots, and she’d fallen apart.

Javier came eye to eye with her. “Don’t say that about yourself. You’ve already lived through more shit than most people face in a lifetime, and you’ve overcome it. You’re one of the strongest women I know.”

She shook her head, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. “No. No, I’m not. I’m not nearly as strong as you think.”

As tonight had proven, she hadn’t overcome anything. She’d merely gathered the shards of herself together, plastered a facade over the ruins, and pretended to the world that she was whole again. Beneath the surface, she was shattered. Her weakness had cost a helpless little child her freedom.

Javier needed to know the truth. If he was going to be risking his life for her, he needed to know the truth.

Her pulse began to race at the thought of what she was about to do. She’d worked hard to keep this secret, but she wouldn’t keep it from Javier any longer.

She drew her hand away from him and stood. Trembling, she opened her bathrobe and exposed her naked body to his gaze—stretch marks and all.

* * *

JAVIER WAS HIT by two things at once—the sight of Laura’s beautiful body and the distress and fear on her pretty face. One sent a jolt of heat to his groin. The other set off alarm bells in his brain. The result was a short in his wiring.

“Uh . . .” he said.

He couldn’t keep his gaze from raking over her, taking in the sight of her full breasts with their light pink tips, the satiny curves of her hips, the soft golden curls between her thighs. The sight of her awakened memories of touching her, tasting her, losing himself inside her. He remembered her scent, the silky texture of her skin, the little mole on her right breast.

But she wasn’t trying to seduce him. Something was wrong.

He looked up to see tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why are you doing this?”

She took his hand, pressed it against her lower belly, drawing his gaze.

There on her skin he saw faint silver lines.

Not scars.

Stretch marks.

It took Javier a good long moment to understand, but when he did, it hit him like a body blow. His heart gave a hard knock, pain knotting his gut, one emotion colliding with the next—astonishment, rage, sadness. “Oh, God, Laura. No.”

Laura had been pregnant. She’d had a baby.

Al-Nassar’s baby.

Jesus!

A thousand questions chased through Javier’s mind, but now wasn’t the time. Laura was shaking uncontrollably, her arms now crossed over her breasts, her face turned away from him. He got to his feet, pulled her robe around her trembling body, and tied it in place, then drew her into his arms.

She stiffened as if she didn’t want to be touched. “I-I’m cold.”

He stepped back, his mind and emotions still reeling. “Want to sit by the fire? I can make some tea.”

“Okay.” She followed him out to the living room and sat on the sofa, her gaze far away, her eyes haunted.

He turned on the fire, grabbed a throw from her sofa, and wrapped it around her, then went to the kitchen, his gaze never wandering far from her while he heated water and steeped tea bags. She’d been in shock earlier, and she’d refused treatment. What she needed was rest, not more emotional turmoil. Why she’d chosen tonight to tell him about this he couldn’t say, but he wasn’t sure it was best for her.

God, Laura!

She’d had a baby in captivity.

The force of it hit him again.

When she’d been rescued, there’d been a few articles in the tabloids and some online chatter asking why she hadn’t gotten pregnant during the eighteen months she’d been Al-Nassar’s prisoner. The idea hadn’t even occurred to Javier, maybe because he knew from their time together in Dubai that she was using some kind of long-term contraceptive—or maybe because the possibility was too terrible for him to imagine.

She’d suffered enough, damn it. But to get pregnant by that bastard?

He carried two mugs into the living room and set his down on the coffee table, placing hers in her hands. “It’s hot.”

She sipped, the tea seeming to bring her back to the moment. “Thanks.”

He sat down beside her, deliberately giving her space, doing his best to lock down his own emotions. “You should just take it easy, bella. We can talk in the morning.”

But she didn’t seem to want to wait. “That’s why I stopped you in the sauna, you know. If you’d seen me naked, if we’d had sex, you would have seen my stretch marks, and you would’ve known.”

“I wouldn’t have rejected you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” In fact, Javier doubted he would have noticed