Don't Let Go (19 page)

Her lashes fluttered. “Wake up, beautiful,” he whispered, tucking the escaped tendril of hair behind her ear.

The jowly nurse who’d originally greeted him now beamed with accomplishment. “There’s a little girl who wants to see you,” she crooned, depositing the swaddled baby in Rafe’s arms. “You hold her, Dad. Mom’s still a little shaky.”

He took the baby, terrified by how small she was. “
Dio mio,
” he breathed. Gray-blue eyes peered out of an itty-bitty round face. Downy, golden hair topped her head. “She’s an angel,” he murmured in utter amazement. None of his brood had ever been so tiny.

“An angel,” Jillian repeated. “Maybe that’s her name.” They met each other’s eyes and smiled in mutual agreement.

Rafe’s eyes watered with tears of joy. “Yes,” he whispered. Perhaps God had shown him favor, after all.

“Angel Grace Sanders,” Jordan marveled, gazing down at the baby in her left arm, “you are one lucky baby.” Having heard her story of survival, it seemed a miracle to find Jillian and her baby both doing so well.

“Well, enough about us, Jordan. Tell me all about your trip and the adoption process. Is everything official?”

“Almost,” said Jordan, glancing at Miguel, who sat on her right knee, staring at the baby. “I couldn’t get Miguel’s dossier signed by Immigration in Venezuela, but my lawyer’s working on a waiver.”

“Has he spoken yet?” Jillian asked, fixing Miguel with a look of concern.

“No, not yet,” Jordan admitted. She watched with amazement as he bent forward and placed a gentle kiss on the baby’s cheek. “Good boy! Did you see that, Jillie? That’s the first voluntary act he’s made since our return!”

“Maybe he likes babies,” her sister suggested.

“Agatha has been trying to get him to play with her baby dolls,” Jordan admitted.

“I’m so glad you came home,” Jillian exclaimed with feeling. “I had nightmares—” She waved a hand, signifying they were too horrific to put into words. “And I can tell just by looking at you that it was every bit as bad as I thought it was.”

Emotion clogged Jordan’s throat.

“What happened?” Jillian pressed.

With her gaze on Miguel’s profile, Jordan recapped her harrowing adventure, finishing it off with Solomon’s heroic rescue of Miguel.

Jillian gaped in disbelief. “He’s in love with you,” she decided. “Either that or he’s crazy.”

Jordan’s stomach clenched. “Not in love,” she replied, recalling Solomon’s fervent assertion that love was an illusion. True, he was generous with his endearments. He’d called her sweetheart more than once, but she was certain he’d assume the worst if he learned that she was pregnant. “He’s just a man with a powerful conscience and a good heart,” she added, forcing those words through an aching throat.

“But you love
him,
” Jillian guessed, pushing herself higher on her pillows, her gaze astute.

Jordan drew a painful breath and kept her gaze averted.

“Oh, my God, you do. Jordan, I’m so happy for you! Is he back yet?” Jillian persisted. “Have you talked to him?”

“No and no,” Jordan answered on a dampening note.

But he’d called her, every day for the past week, from locations he couldn’t disclose, demanding to know why she’d jumped ship. Was she okay? Why wasn’t she answering her cell phone? The worry in his voice was giving her a guilt complex.

Jillian’s pleasure dimmed as she contemplated her. “Honey, what’s wrong? Please tell me you’re not running from this guy because you think you’ll get hurt again. I’ve told you, not all men are like Doug.”

Jordan sighed. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about my love life. I came to visit you and the baby and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m doing great, considering. It’s you I’m worried about,” Jillian insisted.

“Don’t,” said Jordan, managing a smile. “I’ll be fine.” Once she figured out what to tell Solomon, how to keep him from thinking she’d intended to trap him all along. Then there was preparing her heart for the inevitable heartbreak of losing the tiny life in her womb.

“Well,” Jillian conceded, “I’m glad you’re home, little sister. And thank you for watching Graham and Agatha while I’m stuck in the hospital. It didn’t feel right to put that off on Rafe.”

“My pleasure,” Jordan reassured her. The fact was she had nowhere else to go with her condo rented out. Nor could she return to Solomon’s houseboat the way things stood between them. “I’m going to take Miguel to see Silas while Graham and Agatha are still at grief camp,” she announced, glancing at the clock on the wall. “I’d better get going,” she added, putting Miguel on his feet to hand back the baby. “She’s just precious,” she added, placing the tiny bundle in Jillian’s arms. What were the odds that the fetus in her womb would also defy the odds?

Jillian regarded her closely. “Jordan, you know you can talk to me anytime,” she offered perceptively.

“I know.” It was all Jordan could do not to spill her secret, but she’d put Jillian through enough worry as it was. “Come on, Miguelito,” she called, holding her hand out. “Let’s go play with Silas.”

Play
was perhaps too strong a word. Miguel’s virtual unresponsiveness had Jordan scrambling to find him the best children’s psychologist, one who specialized in trauma. Seeing him kiss the baby was the most promising sign yet.

As they crossed the baking-hot parking lot, Jordan turned her cell phone back on, hoping that the psychologist—the one she really wanted for Miguel—had called back to say there was a cancellation. The phone chimed to indicate that she had voice mail. With it tucked under one ear, she unlocked the door and let the hot air out.

“Jordan,” said Solomon on a peremptory note. “I’m pulling into port today. Stop avoiding my calls and call me back. I want to talk to you.” Impatience had clearly gotten the better of him.

With a firming of her mouth, Jordan deleted the message and dropped the phone in her purse. “You’re forgetting your manners, Solomon,” she muttered.

If she called him back, he would demand to know why she was avoiding him. He would hound her until she blurted the truth. And then what? She’d either have to listen to him accuse her of lying to him, or he would do the noble thing and ask her to marry him. Either outcome would bring its share of heartache. She wanted him to marry her because he loved her, not out of some obligation to their unborn child, a child that—most likely—would never survive.

Leaning into the car, she buckled Miguel into his booster seat. “At least I’ve got you,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. She just wished she could have
everything
her heart desired and needed to be truly happy.

Chapter Nineteen

Solomon hurled his duffel bag into Sean Harlan’s truck bed, got in the passenger side, and slammed the door.

“What the hell put a burr up your ass?” Sean demanded from behind the wheel.

Solomon cranked the window down, but it was almost as hot outside as it was in the cab. He was also steaming mad. “The woman won’t return my calls,” he growled. He’d left dozens of call back numbers, and she hadn’t bothered dialing a single one of them. “Something’s going on with her, and I don’t know what the hell it is.”

“Have you told her you love her yet?” Sean drawled, flicking him a wry look as he turned the key. The engine gave a throaty roar.

Solomon glowered at him. “She knows I love her,” he retorted. “I took on a battalion of the Elite Guard to get the kid back, didn’t I?”

With a shake of his bald head, Sean drove them away from the terminal at NAS Oceana. They were finally home, after a week at sea, training with regular Navy personnel aboard the carrier
Teddy Roosevelt
. “You don’t know much about women, do you?” he lamented.

Solomon opened his mouth to deliver a caustic retort. But his assertion that women were all grasping, ambitious creatures like Candace didn’t apply at all to Jordan, who was loyal, passionate, and generous to a fault. She was also ridiculously stubborn for holding out on him. “Oh, and you do?” was the only comeback he could summon.

Sean’s response was a low, satisfied chuckle. “Yes, I do.”

“So, that’s the answer, is it, Romeo?” Solomon mocked sarcastically. “I just tell her that I love her.”

“It’s that simple,” Sean said with a nod. “You do that, and the dominos will all fall into place.”

Solomon sent him a suddenly suspicious frown. “You’d better not play that game with Ellie Stuart,” he warned.

“Her?” Sean looked incredulous. “Hell no. You know I don’t date women with kids.”

“She’s been through hell as it is,” Solomon added, recalling Ellie’s spare trailer home with a shudder.

“Enough said,” Sean retorted with a stern look that made Solomon close his mouth abruptly.

He turned his head to glower out the window. How would Jordan respond to a declaration of love? he wondered. And was that really all she needed to hear? His heart tripped over itself in its haste to find out. “Can’t you drive this piece of shit any faster?” he snapped at Harley. “I haven’t seen Silas in over a week,” he added, disguising his real reason for wanting to get home.

Sean gunned the accelerator, flinging his passenger against the seat. “Be honest with yourself, Mako,” he shouted over the wind rushing through the window, “you haven’t been laid in over a week.”

Graham’s job was to muck the barn in advance of his mother’s homecoming. He finished well before noon, left his boots in the mudroom and went to gauge the progress in the nursery. Aunt Jordan was painting the trim white, to offset the peach-colored walls. Rafe was putting together the crib for the baby. He looked up as Graham sidled into the doorway.

“I’m done,” Graham announced.

Rafe glanced at his watch. “Would you like to come to the hospital with me to pick them up?”

“Is there something else I can do?” Graham asked, unwilling to afflict his ears with opera music.

Aunt Jordan looked up from the baseboard. “You can babysit Agatha and Miguel,” she suggested with an innocent smile. He could hear Agatha in her bedroom, dressing Miguel up in her play clothes.

Graham grimaced. “I’ll go with you,” he said to Rafe, braced for aural torture.

“Pick a station,” Rafe offered, as they cruised down the driveway en route to the hospital several minutes later.

“You mean, like, my kind of music?”

“Show me what you like,” confirmed the agent with a nod.

Graham tuned into a light rock station, avoiding the heavy metal that he sometimes listened to. He settled back into his seat, aware of a certain tension in the car as the Lexus flew along the country road.

“Do you think she’ll notice the front porch?” Rafe inquired. He struck Graham as nervous.

“Maybe not right away,” Graham decided. They’d fixed the listing porch together yesterday, jacking it up with cinder blocks and trimming the foundation with latticework. “But she will eventually.”

The tension was barely alleviated by the thrum of a guitar and the hum of tires.

Rafe spoke up again. “I wanted to show you something,” he said, drawing his wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open, revealing photographs inside, and handed the wallet to Graham.

“That’s my oldest son, Tito,” he said, in a voice that roughened perceptibly. “He was your age when he died.”

Graham looked into the dark, intelligent eyes in the photograph and felt pressure on his chest. His mother had mentioned that Rafe’s children were all killed by the goons of the notorious mob boss, Tarantello. Graham hadn’t quite believed her.

“The next picture is Serena, my daughter. She was eight.”

Serena’s mischievous smile reminded Graham of Agatha.

“And that’s Emanuel.”

The curly-haired tot looked like one of those babies that made you smile. “Mom said that they were all shot,” he ventured, with a quick glance.

“They were,” Rafe confirmed, gravely. “By men who worked for the mafia.”

Graham didn’t know what to say to that. It was too awful to conceive.

“I thought that God had turned his back on me,” Rafe finally added, his voice more gravelly than ever.

Graham stared down at the pictures and drew a hidden breath. That was how he felt sometimes.

“I know what it’s like to lose the ones you love, like someone punched a hole in your heart. I wished, so many times, that I had died with them.”

Tears stung Graham’s eyes, blurring the photographs.

“I could never take your father’s place, Graham,” the agent added, gently. “I wouldn’t even want to try. But you and I have something in common. We both love your mother very much.”

Graham looked up, blinking furiously. Suddenly he knew where this was going, and he wasn’t ready for it.

“You’ve been part of your mother’s life for fourteen years,” Rafe added. “That’s much longer than I have known her. That’s why I want this to be your decision. If you don’t think you can share her right now, then I will wait until you’re eighteen. But if there’s room for the two of us, I’d like to marry her now, to help her with the ranch, to help her with Agatha and the baby. And to be a friend to you, if you would allow me to.”

Graham closed the wallet and handed it back. Turning his head, he gazed out the window at the dark green trees filtering the August sun. As a fellow cop, his father would have thought that Rafe was a hero for what he’d done. He wasn’t such a bad guy, really. They’d shared a couple laughs jacking up the front porch yesterday.

But all he had to do was picture his mother’s face lighting up when Rafe stepped into her hospital room, and he knew, with dwindling resentment, that they—her children—weren’t enough. She deserved the love and support of a husband, a partner in life. Agatha and Angel needed a father. And Graham supposed he could always use a friend.

He sent Rafe a sidelong, considering look.

“It’s up to you,” Rafe repeated.

“Would you teach me some Italian cursewords?” Graham asked, looking for personal profit.

Rafe pursed his lips, considering. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “Just don’t say them around your mother.”

“Okay, then,” said Graham. “You can marry her.”

A smile of relief transformed the agent’s face, making him look ten years younger. “Thank you.” He stuck out a hand for Graham to shake.

“It’s like this,” Graham said, showing him how the cool kids shook hands.

“Ah,” said Rafe, practicing. “Do you want to see the ring?” he asked, confirming Graham’s guess that he was nervous. He opened a compartment on his dashboard and handed him a velvet box.

“Whoa,” breathed Graham, cracking it open. “What are the green stones on the sides?”

“Peridots, the baby’s birthstone.”

“That’s cool.” It struck him that Rafe would be the only father baby Angel ever knew. And yet, his father had planted the seed. So he was still part of the whole. How weird was that?

He supposed he’d get used to it. Like they’d assured him at grief camp, it took time for changes to feel familiar. At least he didn’t feel like God had abandoned them completely. There was hope for healing.

Silas sat on his knees on Ellie’s couch, gazing out the window as Caleb played beside him with a Matchbox car. He drove it up Silas’s elbow, over his shoulders, and down his other arm, stepping over Silas in the process. “You’re in the way,” he pointed out.

Silas wasn’t moving till his daddy got home. Aunt Ellie said she thought he’d be back today.

Sure was taking him a long time to get here. This morning they’d been to the beach. They’d had ravioli for lunch, and Silas had eaten so much that his stomach bulged, but he still felt empty inside from waiting so long. It was fun playing with his cousins, but he was ready to go home now.

Home,
he thought, musing over the word.
I live on a houseboat with my daddy. He can hold his breath under the water forever. I’m gonna do that, too, when I’m bigger.

He couldn’t wait to go home. He hoped Jordan would be there. Aunt Ellie said she didn’t know if Jordan would be. Who would watch him if she wasn’t? He liked Jordan. Her hair smelled like strawberries. He even liked it when she hugged him close and said,
Great job!
though he pretended not to.

A car swung into the driveway, and Silas jerked his chin off of the windowsill. But it wasn’t Daddy.

The glare on the windshield kept the driver hidden till the car door opened and Jordan got out. Silas’s heart jumped up, and he sprang off the couch and ran for the door. “Aun’ Ellie!” he shouted. “Jordan’s here.”

He struggled with the lock on the door till Ellie got there and helped him. “Easy, Silas,” she warned.

He dove out the door and ran into Jordan, throwing his arms around her waist. A shoe bumped him in the head, and he looked up, realizing she had a little boy in her arms.

“You found Miguel,” Ellie exclaimed, sounding surprised and pleased.

“Sure did. Hi, Silas.” Jordan smiled down at him, her pretty eyes crinkling at the corners. She pulled him against her and squeezed him hard. “I’ve missed you, big guy! How’s it going?”

“Okay.” Silas was assessing Miguel. He didn’t look at all like he’d pictured. “He’s sure small,” he volunteered.

“Come on in,” urged Ellie. “It’s hot as blazes out there.”

Jordan steered Silas back inside. In the living room, she went down on her knees, putting Miguel on his feet. The boy hung on tightly to her neck and wouldn’t let go.

“Everyone, this is Miguel,” Jordan announced, letting him cling.

Christopher wandered up, and Caleb stopped driving his car long enough to stare hard at the stranger. Colton started belly-crawling toward them.

Silas looked into Miguel’s dark eyes and wondered why he looked so afraid. He dropped to the floor to see his face better. “You’re sure small,” he said again.

“He’s only four,” said Jordan.

Silas looked him over. Small and skinny. “Can he talk?” he asked.

“He’ll talk when he’s ready,” Jordan reassured him, reaching out to stroke the top of his head like she sometimes did, her eyes growing wet.

“Don’t cry,” Silas said in alarm.

“I’m just happy,” she replied, with a smile that warmed his insides.

Colton had dragged himself across the room on his elbows, drawing Miguel’s interest as he groped for the little boy’s shoelaces and tugged them toward his mouth.

“Silly baby,” Jordan said.

Miguel reached over and softly touched Colton’s yellow hair.

“He likes babies, huh?” Silas deduced.

“And big kids, too,” Jordan reassured him.

“How ’bout cars,” said Silas, pulling a shiny red hot rod out of his shorts pocket. Miguel regarded it with interest but didn’t try to take it.

“I hope he likes books,” said Silas, remembering that he had news to share. “Hey, I can read now!”

Jordan gasped her amazement. “You can?”

“Yep. Wanna see?”

“Of course, I do. Let’s sit down, Miguel. Silas is going to read to us.”

Happy as he’d ever been, Silas bounded to the attached playroom and pulled his favorite book from the bookshelf.

With Silas seated snugly against her, stammering his way through
Where the Wild Things Are,
and Miguel in her lap watching him covertly, Jordan experienced contentment and relief, at last.

Silas was happy, and Miguel was going to be okay, she told herself. Recovery was a process, made possible with the help of the best child’s psychologist in the area.

As for her pregnancy and her relationship with Solomon, she’d just take life one day at a time and see what happened. But she wasn’t holding out for a miracle.

The rumble of an engine caused Caleb to leap onto the couch to look out the window. “Mr. Sean’s here!” he announced, excitedly.

“Oh, Lord,” Jordan heard Ellie exclaim from the bathroom she was painting. She appeared at the door pulling a paint-speckled bandana off her head. “I swear, that man has got the worst timing.” She opened the door and flicked Jordan a look of concern. “Silas, your papa’s here, too,” she announced.

“Daddy!” Silas exclaimed, dropping the book to race for the door.

Jordan’s mouth went dry. Her heart started to gallop, her palms turned moist.
Here goes,
she thought, braced for anything.

She came to her feet, drawing Miguel up with her. Something told her that Solomon wasn’t going to wait to settle this quietly, later. The sound of his voice as he greeted his son, giving Silas all the love that he deserved, made her insides jitter.

Sean Harlan was the first to step inside. “Caught you workin’ again,” he observed, giving Ellie a quick once-over as he wiped his feet on the doormat.

“Just paintin’ the bathroom,” she muttered, edging behind the door.

“Ma’am, how are you?” Sean added, sending Jordan what was clearly a sympathetic grimace as he headed toward the boys. “Hey, fellas,” he exclaimed, as they jumped up and down and shouted his name. With a bearlike growl, he tackled both Christopher and Caleb and bore them to the rug.