What had Jaycee done with the baby?
BORDER PATROL AGENT NASH DILLON logged off his computer and stretched his arms to the ceiling. It had been a rough few weeks after he’d come back from the rodeo in Wyoming. That headless body at the border before he’d left had ushered in a floodgate of information about a cartel’s tunnels between the US and Mexico, and Border Patrol had been dealing with the fallout ever since.
As Nash locked his desk drawer, Valdez, a new agent, called out to him, “Hey, Dillon, do you have women tracking you down at work now?”
“I hope not.” Nash grabbed his hat from the corner of his desk. “Someone looking for me?”
“A woman called earlier and asked if you were working today and what time you’d be off.” Valdez winked. “Maybe you got a surprise waiting for you.”
“God, I hope not.” Nash clapped his hat onto his head. “You didn’t give her any information, did you?”
Valdez’s baby face sported two red spots on his cheeks. “I—I told her you were off at five.”
“Valdez.” Nash shook his head. “Someone needs to teach you some basics.”
“Sorry. She sounded...sweet.”
“They all sound sweet, Valdez—until they’re not.” He leveled a finger at the green agent. “Do not ever give out information like that about anyone in this office. Got it?”
“Got it, Chief.” Valdez touched his fingers to his forehead. “Let me know if she is sweet.”
Nash fired a crumpled napkin at Valdez’s grinning mug and stepped into the early summer heat of the Sonoran Desert. He shook out his sunglasses and perched them on his nose before sliding into his truck.
He hoped one of those women who followed the rodeo circuit in the Southwest hadn’t tracked him down. His day hadn’t put him in any mood to hang out with a woman tonight—even a sweet one.
He snorted. Not too many sweet ones around as far as he could tell.
He drove through town, grumbling under his breath about the traffic. Even Tucson drivers would scoff at his idea of traffic, but Paradiso had been growing thanks in large part to his family’s groves of pecan trees. His family used to ship the pecans to be processed and packed, but some savvy business people decided to bring the processing to the pecans. The new processing plant had brought jobs, people and...traffic.
He turned onto the road that led to those pecans and his house, rolling his shoulders and blowing out a long breath. Peace, quiet and a cold beer waited for him beyond those gates.
He stopped at the front entrance to his property and picked up the mail. His tires crunched over the gravel as he made his way up the circular drive.
He threw his truck into Park and snatched his hat from the seat next to him. He exited the truck, hoisting his bag over his shoulder. He took two steps toward his porch and jerked to a halt.
A misshapen object draped with a blanket greeted him on the second step. His hand hovered over the gun in his belt.
The last delivery to a Border Patrol agent’s porch had turned out to be a severed head in a box.
Nash twisted around and scanned the entrance to his driveway through narrowed eyes. Then he glanced at the camera at the corner of his house recording everything. Whoever had dropped off this present would’ve been captured on video.
His nerve endings alight, he stalked to the porch. Standing on the first step, he reached out and swept the powder blue blanket from the object beneath.
The object blinked and yawned, and Nash stared down into the face of a baby.
Chapter Two
Nash frantically scrolled through the contacts in his cell phone until he found Jaycee Lemoin. He stabbed at the name with his forefinger. The phone rang and rang on the other end without even a voice mail pickup.
“Damn it.” He threw the phone at the couch and then eyed the baby, still strapped into his car seat on the floor by the door.
He’d been afraid to even pick him up. Why in the hell would Jaycee choose him as the caretaker of her baby while she went off doing God knows what?
At the kitchen table, he smoothed out the note Jaycee had left with the baby. She promised she’d be back in a day or two and just needed him to watch little Wyatt—keep him safe.
Little Wyatt gurgled from his corner, and Nash crumpled Jaycee’s note in his hand and peered over his shoulder at the baby. He couldn’t even turn to his friend April for help. She and his fellow agent Clay had run off to Vegas to get married and then on to Hawaii for a honeymoon. He didn’t begrudge those two their happiness, but, man, he could use April right about now.
He approached the baby, who watched him coming with wide eyes. He crouched before the car seat and niggled his finger against the bottom of Wyatt’s foot. He jerked back as Wyatt kicked out his legs and waved one arm.
“At least you didn’t turn out to be a severed head.” Nash clapped a hand over his mouth and swore. He probably shouldn’t be talking to babies about severed heads...or swearing in front of them.
And that was his problem. He had no idea how to talk to babies and no idea how to care for them. He understood why Jaycee had dropped Wyatt off with him—he’d come to that girl’s rescue more times than he cared to count.
Jaycee and his younger sister had been “BFFs” in high school. Who else would Jaycee turn to in Paradiso? His sister lived in New York now, and his parents had retired to Florida, leaving the care and feeding of the pecan business in his hands. But the care and feeding of a pecan was a lot easier than the care and feeding of a baby.
“You can do this, Nash. It’s just a few days.” He crawled to the diaper bag Jaycee had left
