Desert Ice Daddy

She pulled away, unable to think of anything but Christopher.

She was falling apart, wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner and cry until she was dry of tears, to scream her anger and her fear. But Christopher needed her to keep it together, and she would. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. Don’t think what if; don’t think what could go wrong.

She brushed the wetness from her cheeks. “Okay,” she said out loud to break the spell of despair that was drowning her. “I can do this. We’ll get Christopher back.”

“At least we know what happened,” Akeem offered.

And he was right. She could put to rest some of the most disturbing thoughts that had been driving her crazy all morning. Christopher hadn’t fallen into the river or one of the creeks, he hadn’t somehow gotten out to the far pastures and been trampled, he hadn’t been bitten by a diamondback rattler or a copperhead.

He was with people who would take care of him because he was their key to the money.

Money she didn’t have. Two million dollars.

Not that they cared. Her brother had more than enough, and everyone always assumed she had free use of that. Her ex-husband for one. She cut off that train of thought. She didn’t have time to waste on Gary. She regretted that she had to call him in the first place, had to listen to him yell his blame at her. He didn’t care about either her or their son, but he would use this as an excuse—

Please, God, don’t let him get involved.

Forget Gary. At least he wasn’t around to muck everything up. A small mercy. She had to focus on how to get Christopher back.

She had never asked Flint for money. It was a point of pride with her. She had asked him for a job when she had finally left Gary, but the accountant position was a job she was qualified for, one she got fair and square. And she was careful to only earn what the previous employee in that position had gotten.

Flint didn’t understand her need to make it on her own. Flint hadn’t spent five years with Gary Lafferty.

“My divorce was finalized yesterday,” she said to no one in particular.

She’d had one perfect day of happiness.

A strange light came into Akeem’s dark eyes, but he said nothing.

Flint and he had been best friends since their college days, along with Jackson Champion and Viktor Romanov—the Aggie Four, a tight-knit brotherhood that stood back to back against the world and had achieved a lot more than just financial success. But Viktor was now dead. There was something more there than Flint had told her, and she’d been meaning to ask him again, but had been too busy with settling in, too busy with Christopher.

They had stopped in their tracks, she realized after a moment. She’d been frozen by the voice on the other end of the line. No point in going on with the search now, anyhow. “I should call Flint.”

The men should come back in. The heat was brutal, and they had work here. But she couldn’t find the energy to dial her phone.

“Want to go back?” Akeem motioned toward the main house with his head. He wasn’t as tall as Flint, but was tall compared to her—she was only five-five. He was as lean as a Texas wild cougar and as focused as a striking rattler. And he was on her side, which eased the tension in her chest a little.

“To my office.” She moved in that direction. She didn’t want to deal with the police. “They said if I say anything to the cops—” She couldn’t bear finishing the sentence.

But Akeem nodded even as he pulled out his cell phone. He made a quick call to stop his security force from coming to the ranch, putting them on standby instead.

The cool air in the office building was a relief. She glanced toward her desk, the pile of work she was supposed to handle after breakfast. She liked her work. She liked Flint’s ranch. In the three months she’d been here, the place hadn’t had the time yet to turn into a true home, but she had found safety among its walls.

Until now.

Christopher.

“Did you recognize the voice?” Again, Akeem pulled out a chair for her, always a gentleman.

“No.” She watched him look around and wondered what his fancy corporate headquarters in Houston looked like. Unlikely that she would ever see it. She had no business there. She flipped her phone open. “I need to call Flint.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring the cops in on this?” He seemed to be weighing the issue once again.

“Pretty sure. You didn’t hear him. He was—” The voice had been incredibly cold, incredibly hard. The voice of a man who would do anything. Even to an innocent child. Her throat tightened.

“Then you can’t call all the men back. The cops will know something happened if the search is called off all of a sudden.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Her mind was still reeling. Her fingers stopped mid-dial, and she looked up at him, lost in an avalanche of emotions, unable to make a decision in that moment, unable to think beyond her fear.

“We should tell Flint, in any case. Want me to talk to him?”

“Please,” she said as he pulled a BlackBerry from his pocket, the latest model. She recognized it only because Flint recently had gotten the same one. Boys and their gadgets. At another time, she might have found it amusing. In this moment, it was barely a blip in her consciousness as her thoughts moved back to her son.

“How would they have your cell-phone number?” he asked.

“It’s my work cell. A ton of people have it.”

“What else did the man say?” Akeem was dialing already.

“That they would call back.”

“Hey, you okay? We got a call here,” Akeem said into the phone. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been busy. But anyway, I’m here to help.” He listened. “Money,” he said. “Better stay out there for the cops’ sake. Just send a couple of men back. Kat Edwards, too, if you can.” Then, “Not yet.” And explained the whole situation to Flint.

The invisible fist tightened around her heart again. Some menacing stranger had her son. Her breath stuck in her lungs, and she had to rub her sternum to get air moving again. She had to get beyond this pain so she could do whatever it took to get him back. She had to come up with a plan.

As soon as Akeem hung up with Flint, he was dialing again. “Jack,” he told her, then focused on the call when it was picked up. “Does your assistant still have that connection at Nextel?” He paused a beat. “There was a call made to the number I’m going to text message to you in a second. I need to know where it came from. Satellite positioning, whatever. And I need it now. I’m at Diamondback. Christopher was taken.” He listened to Jack on the other end. “You bet.”

“Can he do that?” she asked, feeling the first ray of hope. She rattled off her cell number and he keyed it in.

“Is there anything Jack can’t do?” To his credit, his face showed nothing but confidence.

And he was right. Jackson Champion, shipping tycoon to be reckoned with, a self-made millionaire like Flint and Akeem, wasn’t the type to take no for an answer, not ever.

“Where is he?” Jack was always off somewhere, expanding his business.

“Greece. He’s in the middle of a deal, but he’ll cut the meetings short and come back tomorrow. He wants to be here to help. And he’s sending two choppers with pilots from his warehouse in case we need them for anything.”

Her throat tightened again. The outpouring of help humbled her, just as it had earlier in the day when close to a hundred of her brother’s employees rose as one to drop everything and go find Christopher. She’d been so used to going it alone that the experience left her both grateful and bewildered. That some million-dollar negotiation would be set aside for her was beyond her experience, and yet knowing Akeem’s work, he had to be postponing business, too, to be staying here with her. And he was probably the most driven among them.

Gravel crunched as a car pulled up to the main house. Akeem glanced out the window. “Looks like one of the ranch hands came back.”

Flint must have sent him. He should return at least a handful of men. The horses would need watering in this heat. Everybody had work to do.

“If you need to be somewhere—” She raised her gaze to Akeem. He looked as solid as a rock fortress: calm, self-assured. He was dressed nicely, leather loafers, black suit pants, white shirt with sleeves rolled just below the elbows—had always dressed nicely, even back in college when he had little money.

He always had an inner, emotional strength she envied, and a handsome, noble face. She had developed a serious crush on him the first time they had met.

“I’m right where I need to be.” His voice was quietly reassuring. And his eyes turned a shade darker yet, near black, like she fancied the night sky of the desert might look in the land of his ancestors.

She didn’t know what to say. For the past five years, she’d been utterly alone, marriage or no marriage. Akeem had shown her more consideration in the past hour than Gary had in the whole last year they’d been together.

He was a solid presence next to her. And she knew without a doubt that he meant every word he had said. Trusting herself to him, leaning on him throughout this terrible mess, would have been too easy. A few years back, she would have done just that. But Gary had taught her a couple of hard-learned lessons she could not soon forget. Would never forget, she hoped. Because she had sworn she would never let her life get so far out of her own control again.

Shouting drew her attention and she jumped up to push to the window next to Akeem, aware of his nearness suddenly, but only for a split second. Then cold gathered in her stomach at the sight of the familiar beat-up, green pickup. The man who’d pulled in a few minutes ago wasn’t a returning ranch hand.

She recognized the car, as she recognized the voice. And then as he stumbled out of the main house, lurching down the stairs, she recognized that he was drunk once again. The absolute last person they needed here.

One of the cops followed him out of the house to keep an eye on him.

“Who is that?” Akeem was already going for the door, ready to handle the situation to spare her any upset.

Jaw tight, she held him back. “You stay. I’ll deal with him.”

“I don’t think so.”

But her hand on his arm did make him pause for a moment.

“It’s okay,” she told him, although it wasn’t. Nothing was all right in her world at the moment. But Akeem needed an explanation, and she needed to deal with the man still spewing obscenities in the yard.

“He is Christopher’s father,” she said.

Chapter Two

One look at the thunder on Akeem’s face told Taylor she better head off conflict while she could. “Would you mind checking on the officers to make sure everything’s okay in there?”

“You want me to keep them out of this?”

She watched his handsome face harden as Gary kept calling for her outside. Gary could be difficult to handle when he was like this, and Akeem had never been good at suffering fools. She didn’t need a fight on her hands. “Please,” she said.

“And you want me to keep myself out of it.” Akeem held her gaze, then nodded after another second. “Of course,” he said, already walking out the door.

The tension in her shoulders relaxed a little. He wouldn’t cause any problems for her. When had he ever not done as she’d asked him? She could only think of one extremely embarrassing occasion, when she’d turned nineteen and gone to a clam bake at a friend’s house that morphed into a keg party. She’d come home, wasted, in the middle off the night, snuck into the guest bedroom and practically begged Akeem to take her virginity. He’d been visiting Flint to strategize some deal they were putting together.

Not only had he said no—emphatically—but he ran. He was gone by the time everyone got up in the morning, with some business-emergency excuse to Flint. They were wheeling and dealing even back then, in college.

She always traced the awkwardness that had entered their easy friendship back to that night. And she found now that she could still blush at the memory.

She rubbed her hands over her face before calling out an “In here” and watching through the open door as the two men passed and measured each other up in the yard.

They were nothing alike. Gary was blond, Akeem darker in coloring. Gary was the taller of the two but Akeem much better built. Gary had on a stained, olive-green T-shirt with equally stained blue jeans. Akeem wore suit pants with a crisp, white shirt—had probably come from work. But the main difference was in their faces, in their eyes that reflected the essence of each. Gary’s gaze was hazy, anger deepening the lines of his face, his mouth set in a leer, his chest puffed out. Akeem’s stance conveyed effortless power, his gaze holding concern for her as he glanced back.

She put on her “I’m fine here” smile. One dark eyebrow slid up his forehead, but then he nodded again as if to say “As you wish” and kept going.

She closed the door behind Gary the second he stepped over the threshold. Just in time.

“Who the hell is that? Your new boyfriend? What is he, Mexican? Ain’t there a border patrol looking for him someplace?” He laughed at his own joke, smelling of cigarette smoke and beer.

“One of Flint’s friends. Just trying to help.” She backed into the room, putting a small table between them that held a handful of flyers for the next open day at the ranch, and two coffee mugs that had been left out. When the alarm had been raised about Christopher being missing, everyone had rushed out to help.

“The pigs in the kitchen say Chris is still missin’. Shouldn’t have never let you take ‘im. What in hell was more important than watchin’ my boy? Playing with your Mexican friend?”

She knew better than to respond to his accusation when he was like this. Her gaze landed on the mugs. “I’m making coffee. Would you like some?”

He took a step forward, none too steady on his feet.

When had he changed from the charming, full-of-life rodeo cowboy to the bitter man he was now, one who regularly got drunk by noon? Once upon a time, he’d been her knight in shining armor, or so she’d thought.

He’d dazzled her with his larger-than-life personality, his outrageous courting and endless promises. Having just inherited money from his father, he’d shown her a side of life she had never known. He’d showered her with gifts and attention when Flint was one hundred percent focused on building a business out of nothing, and Akeem, the man she had a major crush on, always kept himself frustratingly out of reach.

Gary had introduced her to the fast life, and they had been happy for a while. By the time she figured out that they weren’t as much in love with each other as they’d thought, Christopher was on his way. Then Gary had run out of his father’s money and had no idea how to make more. The drinking began. When Flint had become more and more successful, the demands for her brother’s money started. And when after a while she refused, hatred and verbal abuse followed. Then more.

“I miss you, you know,” he said with drunk melancholy and walked around the table, put on that rodeo cowboy smile that used to make her heart beat faster, flashed those strong teeth.

She turned to the coffeepot, hoping some caffeine would sober him up.

“If your brother helped us, we could make it together. We should try again, babe.” He pressed against her back and put his hands on her waist. “We could make that little girl you wanted.”

She slipped out of his hold, away from the stench of stale beer on his breath. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you a cup.”

He followed her to the cupboard, looked around. “We can even live here, if you want to be close to your family. Flint would put up a decent house for you if you asked.”

Here we go again. She put the dirty dishes into the sink in the corner and set the two clean cups on the table. If Gary was willing to move to the ranch, that meant he must have run up enough debt to have to worry about losing his house. She felt sorry for him, but she knew now that she couldn’t help him. God knew, she had tried. Truth was, nobody could help him until he was ready to help himself, until he was willing to acknowledge his problems.

Gary didn’t want help to kick his beer habit. All he wanted was money. Flint’s money, to be more specific.

“I know you miss me, babe.” He grabbed her from behind and crushed her to his chest, dipping his mouth to her neck.

His touch was…irritating. She had trouble remembering a time when it had made her feel anything but disappointed that she had fallen for his seduction in the first place. She’d been young and naïve. Time had cured her of both those problems.

She pushed away, had to put effort into working herself loose. She turned to make sure he would see in her eyes how serious she was. “We’re divorced, Gary. I’m not coming back.”

“Why the hell not?” Anger melted the smile off his face. “You screwing someone else?” His voice rose. “That Mexican?”

She tamped down her anger and frustration. She so didn’t need this right now.

“I was generous letting you have the boy.” His blue eyes flashed. “But you ain’t takin’ too good care of him. Maybe when they find him, I’ll take him home with me.”

Her heart clenched, a brand-new wave of fear obliterating all other emotion. She’d been given sole custody, but only because Gary agreed. If he brought it to a fight…

She would smile if it killed her. “Please.” She tried to placate him, the role she’d grown into over the years.

And not for the first time, she considered that maybe she should have been fighting all along. Maybe she should be yelling back that he’d given up Christopher only because he didn’t feel like taking care of him. He didn’t want to be staying home instead of hitting the bars, didn’t feel like giving up his beer money to support his son. But she had, from the beginning, always chosen the path of backing down, of accommodation, because giving Christopher a home with as much peace and normalcy as possible had always been her first priority. So she had compromised, had put on a good face and covered up for Gary as much as she’d been able to.

“Please,” she said again. “We agreed. You don’t have time to watch him. You’re looking for a job. I’ll ask Flint to help.” Preferably out of state. “Please.”

“Please like hell!” he shouted and grabbed the end of the table, sending the two mugs crashing to the floor, tipping the table after them.

The door slammed open the next second, startling her worse than the table had. She had expected that. But she hadn’t expected Akeem, who stood in the doorway with the sun at his back. His gaze went to Gary first, then to her.

“You need any help in here?” He stepped inside, his shoulders held rigid, his jaw tight.

A whole new level of tension filled the air as she looked between the two.

A dangerous glint was coming into Gary’s eyes as he stepped forward. “Yeah. You can help by getting the hell out of my business and staying the hell away from my woman.”

She could smell the fighting hormones in the air and couldn’t fully trust the men to control themselves. “Just bumped into the table. It was an accident.” She stepped between the two.

Akeem said nothing, just straightened the table then squatted for the china shards, placing them in his palm. It appeared that, for her sake, he wasn’t going to push the situation, but he wasn’t going to leave her alone with Gary again, either.

Which meant that Gary shouldn’t stay. She couldn’t count on him not to pick a fight, and she couldn’t handle that now on top of everything else. But she couldn’t in good conscience send him home in his car. He was a jerk, but he was Christopher’s father. And even if he weren’t, nobody should drive in his condition. Him not caring about his own life was one thing, but there were others on the road.

She glanced toward the main house through the open door where the cops were probably all set up for whatever call might come in. God, she couldn’t think about that. She pressed the heel of her palm to her sternum. She wanted to stay here, needed to stay here. She took Gary by the elbow. “I’ll get someone to drive you home.”

He shrugged her off. “Like hell,” he muttered and was about to say more, but her cell phone’s sharp ring cut him off.

Everyone went still, the tension doubling in the room, which was a feat, all considered. Her fingers trembled as she flipped the phone open and lifted it to her ear.

“I want you to bring the cash to Route 109, keep driving until further instruction. We’ll be expecting you on Thursday morning, at seven. Come alone or your son dies. Tell anyone and your son dies. Be late and your son dies. Get the picture here?”

Her throat was so tight she could barely say the single word, “Yes.”

Today was Monday, was all she could think. She couldn’t bear the thought of them having Christopher for three more days. He was just a little kid. Didn’t they realize what they were doing to him? Didn’t they know that he might never fully recover from this ordeal? And even three days…

“I don’t think I can get that much money that fast.” She knew for sure, in fact. Flint had money and would give it to her without question—and this once, she wasn’t too proud to ask—but he didn’t keep his money in cash. She knew—she handled his accounts. He kept some cash for emergencies but nowhere near two million dollars. His money was in horses and land, neither of which could be made liquid in a matter of days.

“You want your kid back, you get the damn money!” The man was shouting now.

Then Akeem was there, taking the phone from her before she realized what he was doing. Alarm snapped through her. This was her son, her business. She didn’t trust anyone with this but herself. She grabbed after the phone, missed as he turned. Oh, God. They couldn’t afford to do anything to upset the man on the other end. She clutched Akeem’s arm, scared breathless.

“No, I’m not a cop. I’m your money man. You can have the money today. You tell me where, and I’ll bring the ransom,” he was saying.

She couldn’t hear what the man responded on the other end.

“If you want the money, I’ll drive her.” Akeem’s voice was hard power.

He listened again.

This was so not going to work. Whoever had her son was the one calling the shots. They shouldn’t have done anything to make them angry. If this hurt Christopher, she could never forgive—

“That’s the deal,” Akeem was saying, then after a moment, “Okay. We’ll be there.”

“What happened?” Her hand shook as she reached for the closed phone. The call was over. And once again she hadn’t gotten to ask to speak to her son. She could have cried with frustration and fear.

“The exchange will be tomorrow morning at seven. It’s the best he would agree to,” Akeem said.

She caught her breath at the sudden ray of hope and felt the anger leak out of her. He had somehow worked it so that her son would be home sooner. Still, every minute stretched like an eternity before her, could bring new dangers to Christopher. But sooner was better.

“I’ll drive you.” Concern for her sat in his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better. They wouldn’t let me go alone. They want you there.”

She wouldn’t let him go alone, either. Christopher was her son. A minefield couldn’t have kept her away from him. But there were other obstacles.

“The money—”

“Don’t worry about the money.” He dismissed that with a shrug, as if two million dollars was nothing to lose sleep over.

“I’m the father. I’ll be driving. He’s my son. I’ll damn well be there.” Gary had apparently figured out what was going on, and for a moment he even managed to look together and almost heroic. Then a sly look came over his face. “How much money?”

Akeem said nothing, wouldn’t even look at him.