As her breathing slowed, Win imagined taking Angus somewhere private and telling him about the baby. Imagined the way he’d kiss her. The way he’d slowly undress her. The way he’d make love to her tenderly, careful because of her pregnancy, until she urged him to take her the way she liked. Angus’s passion—his pure enjoyment of the sexual act—was one of the things she loved about him. Soon they would start their lives together. Move into the tiny home that was almost completed. Build this community they’d both committed themselves to and raise their family here.
It would all be okay—
A crash of dishes from the restaurant made her shriek and claw at the stall door before she recognized the sound and nearly laughed in relief. She peered through the crack around the door again. She was still alone. Still safe. No one had come for her.
Yet.
Win looked at the test stick again.
Was she going to be able to do this?
One, two, three…
Win started counting, another calming technique. She closed her eyes, placed a hand on her belly and tried to send her consciousness inside. “I will protect you,” she whispered. “I will do anything and everything to keep you safe.”
She meant it. That’s what her parents had taught her when they’d saved her life all those years ago. You did anything it took.
Spent any sum necessary to save your own.
And because she was a Lisle, daughter of Vienna and Julian Lisle, she had any sum necessary at her disposal if push came to shove.
Win lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. That’s what would get her through in the end. The family fortune. She might live simply here in Montana at Base Camp, but she held a secret weapon in reserve against all the evil in the world.
Money.
It might be weapons and muscle that saved you, but it was money that paid for them. Paid for everything that protected you from the things that went bump in the night.
And she had money to spare. Would always have it.
Which meant she could have this baby—and Angus—and Base Camp.
And stop worrying once and for all.
When her phone shrilled, Win nearly dropped the test stick into the toilet, but she caught it, hurried to collect her purse, exited the stall, rushed to wash her hands—and the stick—at the sink, quickly dried them, wrapped the stick in paper towel, tucked it away and answered just before the call went to voice mail.
“Hello?” She hadn’t even checked to see who it was.
“Win? It’s Dad.”
“Dad?” Her stomach tightened, and she turned to the mirror over the sink automatically, checking to make sure she was upholding the Lisle family image. Her reflection stared back at her. Dark hair. A patrician nose. Full lips. Her Regency-style gown was a little jarring, but she was used to it by now. All the women of Base Camp dressed this way.
“You need to come home. Now.”
His voice was strained. Not the well-modulated, hearty baritone he usually cultivated.
Something had happened.
Win’s grip on the phone tightened. “What’s wrong?” She half expected him to take her to task again for ditching Leif. Julian Lisle meant to go far in life, and Leif’s father was one of his oldest friends and biggest financial backers, which meant her father had been trying to get her to change her mind ever since she’d broken off her engagement. “If this is about Leif, I’m not going to marry him.”
She didn’t love Leif. Never had. They’d been good friends once upon a time and had slipped into dating for lack of any better choices, but she realized they were both sleepwalking through life back then. Now she was awake.
“This isn’t about Leif; it’s about your mother.”
Her breath left her lungs in a whoosh of air. “What’s wrong with Mom?” Something had been off with Vienna for weeks. There’d been talk of doctor’s appointments. Vienna never went to doctors.
“You know she’s been getting tests. Well, we got the results.”
“What results?” Win’s panic was back. Her mother was the backbone of the family. A pillar of strength—
“She has cancer. It’s serious, princess. You need to come home right now.”
“Cancer?”
“She’ll need a course of chemotherapy, and a lot of rest, and…” He hesitated, a very unusual thing for her father to do. Win swallowed in a dry throat, fear reaching up from some primal place to overwhelm all rational thought until she thought she’d pass out. Her vision was blurring at the edges. She grabbed on to the counter to steady herself.
“Is she going to die?” Win had no idea how she’d made herself ask the words. It was her mother who had saved her all those years ago. Her mother who had wielded the family’s fortune like a saber, cutting through all the rules and red tape that prevented the police from finding her.
Her father hesitated again.
“We’re taking it very seriously. It’s… well, it’s hit your mother hard. You know how she is.”
Win knew. Her mother would hate being sick. She didn’t brook obstacles. When she made a plan, nothing and no one could prevent her from reaching her goal. It was as if Vienna rode through life on a giant snowplow, simply pushing everything aside that stood in her way. She was single-minded. Obstinate. Direct. Those were good qualities when you needed to fight a serious illness, weren’t they?
“You will come home, won’t you? You’ll come home to stay?”
Win blinked. Stay?
“I’m part of Base Camp,” she breathed. “I can’t leave for good. If Angus doesn’t marry when it’s his turn, they’ll lose everything.”
Her father’s silence stretched out, and Win quailed at all the things he wasn’t saying. She knew how ungrateful that sounded. Her parents had done everything for her. Had spent—
“Dad, I love him,” she whispered.
He expelled a breath, and she waited, steeling herself against the anger she expected him to unleash.
“What you love is a daydream,” he said softly instead. “You love an idea, Win, not a man.”
“That’s not
