A Father For Her Baby

She swallowed, unable to force down the fear that threatened to choke her. And the revulsion. He was acting as if nothing had happened. “I told Sanders I didn’t want to see you,” she said.

“I know. Kit, you’re confused. I don’t want to argue about it. I want to see my son.”

She closed her eyes. “No, Derrick.” Her voice came out hoarse. “I saw you kill that man.”

Silence. “You’re wrong. You just made a mistake. But we can fix it. As soon as I see you.”

“I want you to leave me alone,” she demanded, glancing at the driver’s outline through the privacy window. He had his back to her, his head facing forward, and seemed unaware of the drama being played out in the back seat. He must have the intercom turned off.

“Leave you alone?” Derrick repeated, sounding calm. Only someone who knew him the way Kit did could hear the rage behind his words. “For months you’ve denied me my son. You’ve made me look like a fool, marrying a woman who’d run off like you did.” He took a breath. “And yet, I’m willing to forget and forgive, for my son’s sake.”

“He’s not your son,” she snapped, tired of the charade.

“Like hell.” All pretense of calm was instantly gone from his voice. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but my father’s a judge. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince him that my wife’s unstable and an unfit mother—a woman who takes off nine months’ pregnant, then starts spreading some insane story about her husband being a murderer.”

She could barely hear her own voice above the thunder of her heart. Hadn’t this been her worst fear—that Derrick would somehow get Andy? “Running away from you wasn’t insane and you know it.”

He laughed; the sound had a bite to it. “It was insane for you not to take the limo Sanders hired for you. We could have worked this out.”

She closed her eyes. What game was he playing now? “You know I took the car he sent.”

“You stupid woman. You got into the wrong limo.” He sounded confident that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. “Now who knows where you are or where you’re going or what’s going to happen to you. But I promise you this, Kit. I’ll end up with my son.”

Her gaze flew up. She stared at the back of the driver. He tugged at the collar of his white shirt with his index finger. Alarm knifed through her as she remembered the way his uniform looked on his powerful-looking athletic build, the jacket too snug in the shoulders, the pants too short. But it wasn’t just the ill-fitting uniform, she thought, remembering the cowboy boots, the way he moved, the hidden power beneath his clothing and the wariness she’d sensed in him.

She noticed now that his dark blond hair needed trimming. It fell beneath the back of his cap to plaster damply against the tanned nape of his neck. And his hands—large, sun-browned, weathered and worn, like a pair of used leather gloves. Not the hands of a chauffeur.

She felt panic race through her veins. Hadn’t she thought he looked like a bodyguard—or a thug? Only she’d believed Sanders had hired the man to protect her and Andy. Her heart pounded in her ears. “Who hired this limo?” she asked, her voice breaking.

Derrick made a pitying sound. “You were so busy trying to save yourself from me, you’ve gotten yourself into even worse trouble.”

She turned her face to the side window and looked out at the miles of sand spit, feeling hot tears scald her eyelids. The line of clouds she’d noticed earlier now hung on the horizon above the darkening waters of the gulf. The driver had been following the coastline, not heading north, not going to Huntsville.

“Are you ready now to put all this foolishness behind us?” Derrick demanded as the telephone connection grew more faint. “Otherwise, what do I care what happens to you?”

He was just trying to scare her. He’d hired this limo and driver to confuse her, to bully and berate her—to frighten her into coming back to him, into forgetting she’d seen him murder a man.

She glanced over at her son. His eyes sparkled as he smiled up at her and waved his dimpled arms in the air. Anger, and her inborn need to protect her child at all costs, overpowered her fear and gave her a false confidence.

“You’d better hope nothing happens to me,” she snapped. “I can prove that you murdered Jason St. John.” The lie passed her lips before she could stop it. “I have evidence. And if anything happens to me or Andy—”

She didn’t hear the privacy window slide down, didn’t even realize the driver had seen her on the phone, not until he reached back and ripped it from her fingers. With a curse, he turned it off and tossed it onto the seat beside him as the window closed again.

She sat in stunned silence for a full minute, her anger spent, fear making her tremble.

“Who are you?” she demanded, pressing the intercom button. “What do you want with me and my baby?”

He pushed back his cap and met her gaze in the rearview mirror. A pair of startling steel gray eyes glared at her from a ruggedly handsome male face. His good looks surprised her. But the fury she saw in his expression left her stunned.

Her terror escalated. She was trapped in the back of a limo, racing along the two-lane at sixty-five miles an hour, with this man, who was no hired bodyguard, headed where? “Where are we?” she pleaded. “Where are you taking us?”

“We’re almost there, Mrs. Killhorn.”

She felt a fresh wave of panic. “That isn’t what I asked you. Stop this car right now and let me out. Do you hear me?”

He didn’t look back. Nor did he answer. She saw him reach for a car phone and begin speaking into it. She couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She pushed the intercom again. But when she spoke into it, pleading with him to, please, not hurt her baby, she realized he’d turned it off.

“Damn you!” she cried, beating her fists against the window between them. “Damn you, stop this car! Let me and my baby out! Now!”

Andy began to scream, a high thin wail. Kit quit screaming, realizing she was only frightening the infant. She leaned over him, stroking his face, cooing softly as she soothed his cries. She had to try to quell her own panic. If she hoped to get them out of this, she had to keep her head.

Raindrops splattered the windshield as the storm moved inland. Through a break in the clouds, she could see the gulf, its surface a gunpowder gray. The driver had hung up the car phone.

Having calmed Andy, she gained a little control herself. She tried the intercom again. “Can you just tell me this—” she asked. “Did Sanders Killhorn hire you?”

She thought for a moment that he wouldn’t answer, that he still couldn’t hear her. But then he looked back in the mirror, his eyes almost silver in the darkness of the storm.

“No one hired me,” he said.

Music suddenly filled the back of the limo. Soft but at the same time deafening to her. Christmas music.

Kit felt sick inside. Somehow, she knew, Derrick had outwitted his brother. Her mind refused to accept the possibility that Sanders had been in on this kidnapping all along.

Derrick had said she’d made a terrible mistake. And now he had her right where he wanted her.

* * *

DERRICK SLAMMED the pay phone receiver against the wall until the plastic flew in all directions. Slowly, he hung up what was left of the phone.

“Call her back,” he commanded. “I have to talk to her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sanders said, noticing that people were watching. “Come on, let’s get your luggage and get out of here before someone tells security about the phone you just destroyed.”

Derrick handed his brother another receiver. “Call. If I can just talk to her, I know I can make her understand. She’s just got it all wrong.”

Sanders started to argue, decided it wouldn’t do any good, and dialed.

He hung up when he got a recording saying that she was unavailable. She’d turned off the phone. “I still can’t believe she rented a limo and driver.”

Derrick swore. “She didn’t, you moron.”

Sanders stared at his brother. He had to admit he’d never seen Derrick this crazy over a woman. Not even Belinda could put him in this kind of a frenzy, and if there was one thing Belinda loved to do, it was set Derrick off. “She didn’t rent the limo?”

“Someone’s kidnapped her and the baby and she said that if anything happened to her—” He slammed a fist against the wall, once again drawing attention to them.

“Who would kidnap her?”