Harper Allen - Protector With A Past

Gently Cord shifted the tiny figure in his arms.

“Whose—whose child is she?” Julia forced the question out from between lips that felt as if they’d been frozen.

“She’s mine.”

Above her, his low voice delivered the information she hadn’t wanted to hear. Julia felt as if the ground beneath her was slipping away, letting her slide back into the void she’d so recently escaped.

She raised her head and looked at Cord. “Where’s her mother?”

One corner of Cord’s mouth hitched up in that wry half smile she’d never quite forgotten, but his obsidian eyes held no hint of humor. “I said she was my child, Julia.” He tightened his grip on the girl clasped to his chest. “I should have said she’s ours.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another month of hot—in every sense of the word—reading, books just made to match the weather. I hardly even have to mention Suzanne Brockmann and her TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS miniseries, because you all know that this author and these books are utterly irresistible. Taylor’s Temptation features the latest of her to-die-for Navy SEALs, so rush right down to your bookstore and pick up your own copy, because this book is going to be flying off shelves everywhere.

To add to the excitement this month, we’re introducing a new six-book continuity called FIRSTBORN SONS. Award-winning writer Paula Detmer Riggs kicks things off with Born a Hero. Learn how these six heroes share a legacy of protecting the weak and standing up for what’s right—and watch as all six find women who belong in their arms and their lives.

Don’t miss the rest of our wonderful books, either: The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes, by award-winning Kathleen Creighton; Out of Nowhere, by one of our launch authors, Beverly Bird; Protector with a Past, by Harper Allen; and Twice Upon a Time, by Jennifer Wagner.

Finally, check out the back pages for information on our “Silhouette Makes You A Star” contest. Someone’s going to win—why not you?

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

To David Brennan, the big brother I never really got to know.

lives in the country in the middle of a hundred acres of maple trees with her husband, Wayne, six cats, four dogs—and a very nervous cockatiel at the bottom of the food chain. For excitement she and Wayne drive to the nearest village and buy jumbo bags of pet food. She believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Julia’s scream echoed in her ears as she jerked bolt upright in the dark, her eyes wide open, her heart crashing painfully against her ribs and the last shreds of the nightmare still fogging her mind.

Dear God—the child! Save the child!

She snapped the small bedside lamp on with an automatic gesture and her frozen gaze rested uncomprehendingly on the familiar room around her. Then she felt a cold nose nudging worriedly against her tightly clenched fist and she came back to reality with shuddering abruptness. King whined and nudged her again, his eyes fixed on her.

“Same old, same old, boy,” she said shakily. Her voice sounded raspy and hoarse and she realized that she was speaking too loudly. She lowered her tone, feeling foolish. “Both of us should be used to this by now.”

Reassured by the sound of her words, the German shepherd beat his tail briefly against the wide pine planks of the floor and stood up expectantly. She smiled tiredly at him. “Yeah, you know the routine—hot milk for me, a dog biscuit for you. Let me get my slippers on.”

The sheets, wet with sweat and tangled around her legs like a hasty shroud, bore mute witness to her recent terror but Julia resolutely shut her mind to it. Like she’d said, she should be used to it by now, she thought grimly, peeling the sheets from her legs with distaste and reaching for the old chenille robe draped over a nearby chair. She shoved her feet impatiently into a pair of scuffs that, like the robe, had seen better days. She’d been having the nightmare for almost two years now, ever since—

She stood up and yanked the belt of the robe tightly around her waist. Pushing the damp tendrils of hair from her forehead with a trembling hand, she took a deep breath and deliberately let her gaze dwell on the comforting and homely objects around her. The dog stood beside her quietly, recognizing this as part of the ritual they always went through.

The desk where she’d written her most private girlhood diary entries stood against the wall. A single round stone sat on one corner of the varnished maple surface, and almost unconsciously she reached over and picked it up, holding it tightly in her hand. It felt as silky and cool as lake water against her palm as she looked around the rest of the room, her breathing slowing to a steadier rate.

Earlier in the day she’d crammed a handful of yellow and purple pansies into a jelly glass, and now the warm pool of light from the lamp cast a velvety glow on them. On the wall just above the bedside table was an antique framed lithograph of two children walking hand in hand across a rickety bridge over a chasm; behind them an angel with flowing golden hair watched out for their safety. It had hung there for as long as she could remember. The photograph beside it had been there for years, too. It showed a skinny little boy in swimming trunks, standing on a dock and proudly holding up a trout as big as his arm.

She swayed slightly. King leaned his body solidly against her leg, his attention focused on her.

The overstuffed chair by the bed was covered in a faded maroon fabric, and there was a lump in the back where a spring had worked its way loose, but she’d read Gone With the Wind for the first time sitting in that chair. Besides, if she replaced it she’d have to throw out the small, drum-shaped maroon leather hassock that went with it so well, and she knew she’d never be able to do that.

She’d taken that hassock out of Davey’s room soon after it had happened, tugging it down the hallway with all her five-year-old might, just to have something of him close by in that frightening and confusing time. It still had the tiny rip in it from when one of his fishhooks had torn through the leather and he’d made her promise not to tell on him.

The stone was pressing into the bones of her hand, and she relaxed her grip on it slightly. The small bookcase by the easy chair, the dark green braided rug by the bed that King slept on, the leaf-patterned curtains at the window—everything was comfortingly familiar. They hadn’t changed since she was a child, and their very shabbiness was part of what she’d come back here for, two years ago.

Time stood still in this forgotten corner of upstate New York. If she got in her Jeep and drove down the rutted dirt road to town, if she took the turning just past Mason’s Corners that led to the highway, she knew that she’d find the rest of the world was spinning as erratically and as violently as she remembered. But she wasn’t going to take that drive, Julia thought with bleak determination. The outside world had come close to crushing her once, and only this sanctuary had kept her from self-destructing completely.

She was safe here. She wouldn’t allow anything to upset the fragile equilibrium she’d finally achieved. And if the nightmares were the price she had to pay, then she’d just have to deal with them one night at a time.

She slipped the stone into her robe pocket and dropped her hand onto King’s head. “No television, no newspapers, no phone. Just you and me and the lake and the woods, buddy. And that’s the way we’re going to keep it.” She absently ruffled the spot at the back of his ear that he never could quite reach himself, and he heaved a sigh of pure contentment. As she left the room he padded like a silent bodyguard behind her.

The electric clock on the kitchen wall showed almost three-thirty. In another hour she could walk down to the dock and wait for the sun to rise. Instead of reaching for a saucepan to heat milk in, Julia filled the battered tin percolator with cold water from the kitchen tap and spooned coffee grounds into the metal basket that sat inside. She switched on the stove burner and almost fell over King as she turned to sit down at the kitchen table. The brown eyes looking up at her held a hint of reproach.

“Oh—right.” She no longer worried that she sounded crazy, talking to him as if he could understand every word she said—if anything, having him as a companion had probably helped her stay sane. Besides, she wasn’t absolutely sure he didn’t understand English. “One late-night snack, coming up.” She opened the cupboard over the counter and pulled down the bag of Milk-Bones, and as she did her glance fell on the tall, square-sided bottle pushed to the back, half-hidden behind the bags of rice and macaroni. For a moment its contents caught the light and shone liquidly gold.

“Like a gentleman,” she said, holding out the biscuit. King obliged, taking the treat from her with almost ludicrous daintiness and then settling down in the corner by the door to the screened-in back porch to crunch it enthusiastically with his strong white teeth. She folded the bag closed again, put it back on the shelf and started to shut the cupboard door. Then she stopped.

She kept it there to prove to herself that she could leave it alone. Being afraid to even look at it gave it the very power over her that she was trying to deny. She raised herself on her tiptoes, reached past the bag of rice and grasped the bottle by its neck.

It was full. She’d bought it two winters ago, on one of her infrequent trips to town, and the owner of the liquor store had rung her purchase up quizzically, obviously expecting her to be back later in the week. At the time Julia was half-convinced that his cynical guess would turn out to be right. She’d unpacked her groceries when she’d gotten home, and after she’d put everything else away she’d sat down and pulled the bottle out of its brown paper bag. She’d set it in the middle of the kitchen table—for some reason, she remembered, it had been vitally important that it sat in the exact right spot—and she’d stared at it.

Later that afternoon it had begun to snow, and the wind had whistled off the frozen lake in steadily increasing gusts. King had dozed fitfully at her feet, whining uneasily in his sleep, and she had continued to sit there, staring at the bottle and knowing that all she had to do was reach out her hand, unscrew the cap and pour herself that first drink to blunt the razor-like memories that were crowding in.

Outside, the sun had put on a brief, bloody display before sinking below the horizon, and then the shadows had deepened and strengthened into night. With total darkness had come the ghosts, as they always did, but this time she had been facing them alone. She’d been aware of them, just at the corner of her vision, grouped around her silently.