Lucky 7 Bad Boys Contemporary Romance Boxed Set (74 page)

"Here you are, handsome." Janey returned and handed him a steaming mug of coffee. "You here to pick up those papers on the Chisko case?"

He nodded. "Yep."

She indicated a solid wooden door on the opposite side of the room. "Looks like Henderson is done."

Bringing his coffee to his lips, Cole glanced over at the door, which was opening. He froze in midswallow.

Hair the color of cornsilk cascaded over a woman's slender shoulders. Lips as full as a harvest moon were turned down in a sad smile under eyes that blazed like the wildest desert opals.

It was her
.

Shock nearly sent him sliding off the desk. He couldn't believe it. Right there, shaking hands with Bob Henderson, was the woman he had tried like hell for six and a half months to forget.

"I'm sure you'll come to the right decision, Rini," he overheard Henderson say to her.

Rini.
So, that was her name. Cole swallowed the mouthful of scalding coffee, barely noticing the searing pain in his tongue and throat as it went down.
Rini Fire Eyes.

You'll meet me at the dance circle, won't you?

Try and keep me away.

At first when Fire Eyes had disappeared from the powwow, he'd been upset and depressed. He really had thought she was different from all the others. Weeks passed in anger, then he'd gradually come to accept that she wasn't going to turn up on his doorstep. How could she? They didn't even know each other's names. Whose brilliant idea had
that
been?

But even so, the woman was always there with him, in him, haunting his subconscious. She was there on the streets, in elevators, driving by in Mustangs. Once he'd actually run up and grabbed a young woman in a grocery store, only to spin her around and find a terrified girl who couldn't have been out of college yet. That was when he'd taken a month's leave and gone back to his family on Rincon Reservation to put himself back together.

It wasn't Fire Eyes herself who had sent him into such a tailspin, he'd eventually decided, but the fact that she had so blatantly exposed his life for the hollow, solitary existence it was. The truth was, he was now thirty-two and he felt the need for something more meaningful in life than work and an endless series of shallow, short-term relationships.

But he'd never expected to see her again, this woman who had so thoroughly captivated him, then turned his life upside down with her abandonment.

Now what?

Paralyzed with shock, not knowing what to do next, Cole watched Bob Henderson and Fire Eyes—Rini—walk toward the reception desk. His muscles screamed to go to her, but his renewed cynicism held him back. Would she recognize him without his war paint? Would she even want to? Or would she be embarrassed to acknowledge her sweet, savage little interlude in a powwow tepee? Should he blow his reputation and risk making a scene...?

Before he could decide, she sidestepped around the desk, her hand at the small of her back as if in pain. Then she turned, and what he saw hit him like a hammer in the gut.

She was
pregnant
!

The mug slipped from his hand and landed with a muffled slosh on the carpet. Fire Eyes glanced up at him briefly, a glazed expression on her face, no sign that she even saw him, let alone recognized him

"Pam, will you make an appointment for Miss Herelius for next week sometime?"

Miss Herelius.
Miss Rini Herelius. What was she doing here at Linder, Adams, and Henderson, alone and pregnant?

Cole's mind moved like lightning.

A nasty taste suddenly came into his mouth. One of Bob Henderson's biggest moneymakers was arranging private adoptions. Bob specialized in Indian children, and Cole often worked with him on cases involving the tribal councils.

Could Rini be thinking of giving up her child for adoption?

Suddenly, his heart was squeezed by a pain so fierce he was forced to clutch at his chest. The smooth silk of his tie crumpled in his fist.

No!

Feverishly, he counted back the months to May. He knew how many it was, even without going through the litany in his head. He looked more closely at her stomach.
It could be.

It was just possible. After they made love, he'd realized they hadn't used protection. He'd soundly reprimanded himself for taking that kind of risk with his health, but it had never once occurred to him that she wasn't protected against pregnancy, since she had never indicated any concern about it.

He gritted his teeth.
His baby!
It was
his
baby she was giving away!

"Cole, are you all right? You don't look so hot." Janey appeared at his side with a towel.

He grabbed the towel and dabbed at his pants. He had to pull himself together. There was information he needed.

Swallowing the bile in his throat, he tried to look as if his world wasn't shattering in a million pieces around him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry about the carpet." He leaned over and sponged up the coffee as best he could, surreptitiously watching Fire Eyes walk slowly out the door.

When he rose, Cole put on his bravest smile to cover his burgeoning fury. For six-and-a-half months, he'd cursed the woman he'd allowed himself to fall so hard and fast for, who had then run away without so much as a backward glance.

And now, here she was in the living, breathing, six-and-a-half-month-pregnant flesh. Carrying his baby.

His baby!

He was going to be a father! Joy surged through him before it was mowed down by anger and outrage. It looked very much like she planned to rid herself of the unwanted burden of his child by giving it up for adoption. Wiping her hands of all responsibility. Abandoning it to strangers.

Just as his own mother had done to him
.

He couldn't let it happen. Not a goddamn chance in hell. Not to
his
child.

He swiped up the Chisko file, tucked it under his arm, and forced a tight smile. "Thanks, Janey. I'll see you next time."

As Cole marched to the cobblestone lot behind the law offices, fury simmered in his blood. Shaking his head to clear it, he stabbed his key at the lock of his new ragtop Camaro Z28. On the third try he finally succeeded and wrenched open the door. Gunning the engine like a demon, he squealed out of the lot and onto Colorado Boulevard.

It was his baby she was giving away
. He was all but certain.

The question was, what was he going to do about it.

* * *

Rini was more than surprised when Bob Henderson summoned her back to his office less than a week later. True, she had been avoiding his phone calls, knowing he'd pressure her to reconsider her decision not to go through with any adoption. But his last message said she must appear because she was being served with some kind of papers. She couldn't imagine what it was all about.

When she arrived at his office, she shook hands with Henderson, who introduced her to another woman. The woman was petite and slim, with long black hair falling to her waist.

"Rini, this is Tanya Proudhomme. She's from the Southern California Native American Center."

Rini felt the first prick of uneasiness. She brushed away the feeling. What could the woman's heritage possibly mean? Nothing, of course. Rini looked at her again, more closely. Had she seen her somewhere before? Her uneasiness settled in a roiling ball in the pit of her stomach as she realized where.

At the powwow.

Henderson brought her back to the present with a jolt. "Have a seat, Rini."

Casting a furtive glance at Ms. Proudhomme, she sat down at the large conference table. Suddenly, Rini noticed a man on the other side of the room, standing with his back toward them, silhouetted against the window.

Her heart nearly came to a screeching halt.
It couldn't be!
No, her imagination was working overtime. The man looked nothing like her warrior.

Besides, what would he possibly want with her, when he had so many other women to amuse himself with?

Moistening the bow of her lip, she forced her attention back to her lawyer. "What is this all about, Mr. Henderson?"

Henderson cleared his throat. "Ms. Proudhomme would like to ask you a couple of questions concerning your baby. I've told her you haven't made up your mind about the adoption yet, and in any case it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Indian Child Welfare Act, but she insisted on asking you herself."

Rini's heartbeat kicked up a notch. "Indian Child Welfare Act?" She looked from Henderson to Ms. Proudhomme. "I don't understand."

Henderson shrugged elaborately, then gave a little laugh. "She's gotten the crazy notion somewhere that your baby might be—

"Miss Herelius." The pretty woman with the serious face stepped forward, cutting him off,
then sat down at the table, across from her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rini could see the black-haired man at the window. His posture was ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind his broad back. She blinked, her gaze lingering on the long, brown fingers. Her heart fluttered.

"Miss Herelius, I really have only one question."

The man at the window took a deep breath. Rini turned and tried to concentrate on the woman, but something about the dark man captured her attention. Something about his hands, and his bearing—straight and proud. Something familiar. She shook herself mentally, and pried her attention away from him.

"Your baby, Miss Herelius, can you tell me...is the father Native American?"

Rini was too stunned to answer. How did the woman know? Could the warrior be trying to contact her? Why?

She scanned the man at the window, her mind frantically comparing him to the warrior. The hair was all wrong, as was his elegantly tailored suit. He didn't seem quite tall enough, either. Still…

It couldn't be him.

She wanted to order him to strip off his coat and shirt, so she could see the man beneath. Test the hard muscles in his arms and run her hands over the smooth, bronze skin of his chest. She gripped the chair's armrests and wrenched her focus back to the two people in front of her.

"—said it was absolutely none of their business—"

"Yes. He is Native American," she said, her heart pounding a tattoo. Hoping it was him.
Praying it wasn't.

Against all odds, she hoped this could be the answer to all the prayers she'd whispered in the dead of night. To all the tears she'd shed, hoping for a miracle so she could provide for her baby.

The man at the window let out his breath at her affirmation, but otherwise didn't move. Ms. Proudhomme seemed surprised, but quickly recovered. She sat up in her seat and clasped her hands on the table. "Thank you, Miss Herelius, for your honesty. It's refreshing these days."

Henderson jumped up from his chair. "Rini, you don't know that for sure." He gave her a used-car-salesman smile. "Did you ask him? Maybe he had black hair and looked like he might be—"

With each second that went by, Rini's nerves pulled tighter and tighter. "He was. Why should I lie? But what does his ancestry have to do with anything? Besides, we're no longer"—she halted and looked at her knees—"together."

How could it be him? The warrior was a rogue of the first order. Why would he want to help her? He must have more interesting projects to pursue than supporting the bothersome consequences of his careless, if masterful, seductions. After all, he hadn't even waited until the blanket was cold from their lovemaking before he went looking for his next conquest.

Ms. Proudhomme shot a smug glance at Henderson before continuing. "Are you acquainted with the Indian Child Welfare Act, Miss Herelius?"

She shook her head. "No."

The lawyer sank down in his chair and closed his eyes, sighing.

"Basically, what it says is that where an enrolled Native American child is concerned, the child's nation, or tribe, may have jurisdiction over custody matters regarding that child, and that its own relatives have first preference when a child needs an adoptive home."

Rini nodded, wondering where this was going. "I understand."

The woman rose from her chair and looked squarely at Rini. "At the Center, our work with Indian children is based on one thing alone. What is best for the child." She took a few steps toward the man, then turned back to Rini and grew serious. "Indian children who are brought up outside their culture often suffer emotionally and experience confusion about their identity later in life. They have the highest rate of suicide among all adopted children."

Rini swallowed. Her blood hammered ominously in her ears. Where was this going? Maybe the tribe just wanted to be a part of the child's life, to teach it about its heritage. She could live with that. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what—"

"I'd like to introduce you to someone." Ms. Proudhomme looked at the man at the window. "Cole?"

As the man turned, Rini sucked in a breath of panic. There wasn't a trace of warmth about him. The expression on his face was hard and cold, filled with resentment. An icy chill blew across the room from his eyes, straight into her soul.