Midwife Cover - Cassie Miles (16 page)

Another pause.

“I know you’re just doing your job,” Francine said, “a job I pay you very well to do. May I remind you that there are plenty of other lawyers I could hire?”

Petra squeezed Brady’s arm and whispered the name of the lawyer in Durango. “Stan Mancuso.”

“Fine,” Francine said. “You can stop by tomorrow at ten. If the midwife and her husband prove to be a problem, we can always arrange for an accident.”

Chapter Fourteen

Francine’s threat echoed through Brady’s mind. From the start, he’d known that their undercover operation had an element of danger, but actually hearing the threat brought the message home to him. They could be hurt. He wanted Petra out of there.

“An accident?” She scoffed. “As if I’d stand back and let that happen.”

“We have to take Francine seriously.”

“You bet we do. She was talking to that lawyer as if she was his boss. Tomorrow, when we listen in on her chat with Mancuso, we’re going to find out a lot.”

In her clear blue eyes, he saw anger and determination. Not a trace of fear. “It might be time to pull the plug.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“This isn’t your job, Petra. You’re not an agent. I have no right to put you in harm’s way.”

“It’s my decision, and I’m not ready to back down.”

“Your safety is my number one responsibility.” It had taken some fast talking on his part to get approval to use a civilian on this undercover operation. “If this assignment goes haywire, it’s my judgment that will be called into question.”

“Are you telling me that you want to end this project because of your reputation?”

“My career is…important to me.”

“More important than Dee’s baby?”

As he looked down at the surveillance electronics he’d hidden in the drafting table, he exhaled a weary sigh. His life had been easier before he met this woman. Before Petra, his objective had been clear—promotion to the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Each step he took was designed to lead him closer to that goal.

Knowing her had changed his focus. He couldn’t lie to himself, couldn’t pretend that he was concerned about her for purely professional reasons. Francine’s threat scared the hell out of him. He couldn’t allow Petra to leap into danger without considering the consequences. He cared about her, cared more deeply than he wanted to acknowledge.

“I can’t put you in danger,” he said.

“Don’t treat me like I’m helpless.” She turned her back on him, paced to the door and came back at him. “You saw my scores from the training at Quantico. I’m expert at hand-to-hand combat.”

“That was a long time ago,” he reminded her.

“I’m also a very good markswoman.”

He liked her spirit but hated that she was so stubborn. “When was the last time you fired a gun?”

“A couple of months ago,” she said. “I did some target practice and I was—”

“Wait.” He needed to put an end to this discussion. “When was the last time you fired a gun at a human being?”

She swallowed hard. “Never.”

“Your job is to bring life into the world. Not the opposite.” He reached toward her, but she backed away. His hand fell loosely to his side. “I can’t take the risk that something bad might happen to you.”

She pivoted on her heel and left his studio. He was glad that she’d accepted his decision, even though it meant they wouldn’t be spending any more time together. Her safety came first.

He pulled down the lid on his drafting table. Logically, he knew there was evidence to be found using the GPS tracking on Smith’s vehicle and listening on the bug to Francine’s conversations. But it would have to be handled in another way. This undercover assignment was over.

There had been those on the task force who had told him this wouldn’t work. They’d advised against using a private citizen who wasn’t an agent, and they’d been correct. He’d made a mistake, not that his career mattered as much as the possible danger to Petra. There had been special moments between them, laughing together and teasing. When they’d kissed almost by accident, he had hoped there might be something more.

A false hope
. He should have known that he’d never have a chance with a spontaneous woman like her. She was a free spirit, a butterfly that was meant to be admired and never caged by the rules and cautions he lived by.

She called to him, “I need to show you something.”

He left the studio and went into her bedroom. Standing beside her neatly made bed, she held up a framed photograph. “I want you to take a good, hard look at this picture,” she said. “It’s my family. That’s my dad in his fire inspector uniform, my brother the cop and my sister in her Army fatigues. Me and Mom are wearing our SFPD T-shirts.”

They were a good-looking family—the type of people he wished he’d grown up with. “Your brother has red hair like you.”

“It’s really more of a blond, but that’s not the point,” she said. “I was brought up understanding what it meant to serve and protect. In my family, those aren’t just lofty ideals. It’s how we live. We take care of people who need help. I wanted to be an FBI agent so I could make a difference.”

“But you quit.”

“For personal reasons,” she said, “but I never stopped wanting to help people or to fight for those who can’t take care of themselves. That’s in my blood. I can’t imagine a worse crime than human trafficking. I don’t want to be scared off.”

He could see the passion crackling through her, lighting her eyes and turning her cheeks rosy. She was on fire. When she dragged her fingers through her hair, pushing wisps back into her ponytail, he expected to see sparks flying around her.

“This isn’t about being scared,” he said. “It’s about caution.”

“Let me ask you a question, Brady. Why did you ask me to do this in the first place?”

“As a midwife, you’d have a natural way to get inside Lost Lamb.”

“That, my friend, was a good bit of strategy. Look how well it worked.”

He was still thinking of Francine’s casual mention of an “accident” that might befall those who got in her way. “A death threat? You consider that a step in the right direction?”

“Francine also said that she wants to put me on retainer. She likes my grabby money-comes-first attitude. Even Dr. Smith approves of me.”

“True.”

“In a matter of hours, Patty and Brady Gilliam have gotten closer to these people than anybody else could. We need to play this out.” She tossed the photograph on the bed and took a step closer to him. “Trust me. When we close down this human trafficking ring, your career will be golden.”

She stood so close that he could smell the wildflower fragrance that radiated from her. No human being should smell so good. She amazed him on so many levels. Her nearness eclipsed his logic. All he wanted was to gather her into his arms, hold her and kiss her sweet, soft lips. “I don’t care about my promotion.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said.” He reached toward her and lightly stroked her upper arm. “During the time we’ve been together, I haven’t thought about my career. I hadn’t realized it until just now, but I haven’t been visualizing that name plate on my desk at the BAU in Quantico.”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t room in my head to think of anything but you.”

Surprise registered in her gaze, but she didn’t back away from him. “Are you feeding me a line?”

“Like trying to pick you up by asking you to come home with me and see my sketches?”

“Exactly like that.” The hint of a smile softened her determined expression.

His hand molded her shoulder. He exerted a subtle pressure, drawing her closer. “Showing you my sketches isn’t a line because I really am an artist. Wanting to be with you isn’t a line, either.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a man.”

Only a few inches separated them, and she closed the gap. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest. Her arms reached around his neck. When she went up on tiptoe and kissed him, a rush of pure sensation chased through his blood. He couldn’t think. There was no logic.

He closed his arms around her, holding her tightly, melding their bodies together. He wanted to be one with her, to make love to this incredible, beautiful, sensual woman. He could feel her breath join with his. As she adjusted her embrace, her body rubbed against him, setting off a chain reaction that was more arousing than he could have ever anticipated.

Unable to hold back, he deepened their kiss. His tongue penetrated her mouth, claiming her. She responded with searing passion. They were generating enough fire to melt steel, but there wasn’t anything hard about her. Her slender curves were firm and toned and one-hundred-percent perfect.

He caressed her, memorizing the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips. When he felt her pulling away, he didn’t want to let her go. This kiss should last for an eternity.

She leaned away from him, gasping. “Wow,” she whispered.

“Been thinking,” he said. “If we’re going to pull off our undercover identities as a married couple, we should be sleeping in the same bed.”

He swept her off her feet and carried her into his bedroom. Gently, he stretched her out on his bedspread. As she lay back, she unfastened her ponytail. Her thick, auburn hair fanned out on the pillow. She was flushed. Her eyes dilated. She was ready to make love.

When he leaned down to kiss her, she raised her hand. “Wait.”

Confused, he studied her. He hadn’t read the signals wrong. She wanted to make love as much as he did. “Why?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to make love to you because I do. I really do.” Her voice was husky. “But I know you’re a serious guy—not the kind of man who has casual flings.”

She didn’t understand men as well as she thought. Most guys—himself included—had indulged in an occasional one-night stand. He wasn’t about to start listing the women he’d slept with. Not that it was a long roll call. But he sure as hell wasn’t a saint. “You’re right about one thing. I want more than a fling with you.”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Unless she was about to confess to being an ax murderer, he couldn’t imagine anything that would dampen his desire for her. “Go ahead.”

She wriggled across the bedspread until she was sitting with her back to the headboard and her knees pulled up. To him, it looked like a defensive position, as though she wanted to protect herself from him or from the way she was feeling. Whatever was holding her back was important; he had to take her seriously.

“I know,” she said, “that I come across as a free spirit, but I’m really kind of traditional. I’ve had only two other relationships in my life that were important to me. They both ended badly.”

Although his heart was beating so hard that it felt like it was going to crash through his rib cage, he reined in his desire. “You told me about the cop who was shot, the guy you left your training at Quantico for.”

“Who then dumped me,” she said.

“Tell me about the other one.”

“I was in college. We were going to get married.”

Petra lowered her head and closed her eyes.

In her mind, she flashed back to that painful time. She’d finished up her degree at Berkeley and had moved in with her long-time lover. Marriage had been somewhere on their horizon, but neither of them were in a rush.

Looking back, she could see that she’d been in a rebellious phase, even though she’d never intended to thwart her family’s values. She’d wanted to make her own way, to blaze her own trails. And then, she’d gotten pregnant.

The timing hadn’t been stellar, but it wasn’t as though she’d planned for this to happen. She still remembered when she took the early pregnancy test and confirmed that she was going to have a baby. An unexpected joy had surged through her. She’d felt alive, really alive.

Her boyfriend hadn’t been equally thrilled. He’d wanted adventure and excitement which he hadn’t been able to imagine with children. A rift had separated them. She’d been torn between her love for him and her love for the unborn child growing within her. Three weeks later, she’d made a decision. She’d chosen the baby, no matter what the consequence for the relationship.

He’d walked out. Two days later, she’d started bleeding. Her doctor had diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy with the fetus growing in the fallopian tube. Her baby hadn’t been viable. Her miscarriage had led to laparoscopic surgery, scarring and a strong probability that she would never be able to have children. It wasn’t impossible for her to conceive, but she knew that the odds weighed heavily against her.

“Petra, are you all right?”

She looked into Brady’s concerned eyes. He was a good man. Before he got too deeply involved with her, he deserved to know that she couldn’t provide him with children.

“I was just remembering,” she said.

“Your college lover?”

“The relationship ended over a difference in lifestyles. He wanted to be a selfish pig, and I didn’t.”

“It changed you.”

“Oh, yeah.” The scars were more than physical. The miscarriage caused her to rethink her somewhat aimless drifting through life. “That’s when I decided to become an FBI agent.”

“As opposed to a selfish pig?”

“I told you before, I want to help people. Law enforcement seemed to be the family business, except for Mom.”

“And your Greek grandmother,” he said.

She remembered the story she’d told him about her yaya. “You psychology types are really sneaky. I’ve never talked so much about myself.”

“I’m still listening.”

She couldn’t believe she was in bed with this sexy, gorgeous man and not making love to him. He kissed the way he did everything else—with incredible skill. When he’d lifted her off her feet and carried her to his bed, she felt like she was literally being swept away. “I don’t want you to be my therapist.”

“And I didn’t apply for the job.”

His gaze was warm, even hot. If she reached for him, she knew they’d be ripping off their clothes and making love. And she wanted to have sex with him.

Now wasn’t the time. Not yet. “I think it’s better if we concentrate on something else. Weren’t we going to follow the GPS tracking on Dr. Smith?”