Bodyguard Daddy by LISA CHILDS Read Free Book Online

warmth of her breath, he shivered slightly. It was cold outside—where they’d gone onto the hotel balcony to talk. Through the partially open sliding door, they could see their son—sleeping in one of the twin beds in the hotel. He’d seen her suspicion of the FBI agent. If Rus hadn’t left the room, she probably wouldn’t have left their son’s side. Milek hadn’t wanted to leave it, either. And they’d left the door open, so they could hear if he cried out or if someone tried to come through the door to the hall.
    “He didn’t need to tell anyone else.”
    “But he must’ve,” she insisted. “For the whole past year, nobody bothered Michael and me...until those photos showed up today.”
    She looked at him then—with that same narrow-eyed stare she’d given Rus—as though she was interrogating him on a witness stand. She must have missed that—the cross-examination; she wouldn’t have had much chance of doing it over the past year.
    “I have no reason to want you dead,” he said. And every reason to want her alive.
    She kept that stare on him, unblinking. She looked so different—with the dark hair and contacts. But yet she was so familiar, too. “You haven’t asked me why...”
    “Rus told me,” he said, “about the shooting.” About her and their son nearly being killed in their own home.
    “You haven’t asked me why I didn’t go to you after the shooting happened.”
    He shook his head. “I didn’t need to ask you why. I knew...” He had already let her down.
    But she told him anyway. “I didn’t think you’d care...”
    He flinched. But she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was only stating what he’d made her believe. That he didn’t care about her or their son.
    “So why did you come here with Agent Rus?” she asked.
    They were just on the outskirts of the little town where Nick Rus had helped her hide. Rus had gone back into town to talk to the authorities, who were no doubt trying to figure out just what the hell had happened on her block. A traffic accident or a drive-by shooting.
    Both.
    Things like that happened all the time in River City. He suspected that wasn’t the case in this scenic little town. Why had it happened here? Why did someone want Amber dead?
    “He told me you and Michael were alive.”
    “So?” she asked. “You didn’t want to see me all the years before I died . Why did you want to see me now?”
    He wanted to tell her how her death had affected him—how it had devastated him. How he’d realized when he’d lost her and their son that he had lost his reason for living. But after how he’d treated her, how he’d rejected her and Michael, he had no right to those feelings.
    He peered through the slider, making certain their son slept soundly, so he wouldn’t overhear their conversation—even with the door only partially open. He didn’t want to traumatize him any more than that afternoon probably had. “Someone dug up your graves.”
    She shuddered.
    “He opened the caskets,” he said.
    She expelled a shaky breath. “He knows they’re empty, then.”
    “I suspect he already knew,” he said. “He just had to confirm.” And once the hired killer had confirmed it, he’d come after her—after them.
    She uttered a very unladylike curse.
    Milek drew out his cell phone and held up the screen showing the call log. “He’s not the only one who knows.” He hadn’t had to play his messages to confirm that. He knew his family well.
    Ever since Amber’s accident a year ago, they’d been watching him closely. They had noticed the difference in him after Rus had shared the truth with him. Garek had made his suspicions clear that he thought Milek was working for the FBI agent. With his new wife’s help, he would have kept digging. But it wasn’t just Garek and Candace who’d been calling him. The entire Payne family had called.
    “They all know...”
    She let out a soft gasp. “Stacy?”
    He glanced at the call log again and nodded.