The Spy Who Saved Christmas

She strained against him, which didn’t help any. “If anything happens to Zak and Nate, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”

He was aware of the curve of her hips under him, her long legs entwined with his. More memories rose and flooded him. His limbs went paralyzed. For a second, he couldn’t move anything from the neck down. And there wasn’t much activity from the neck up either.

For a heartbeat, nothing existed but searing need.

Dammit. He’d thought he was done with this.

Then his body came alive with a bolt of pain as she kicked him where it hurt the most and shoved him off her. She dove for the door.

He couldn’t breathe. He rose anyway and lunged, caught her by the knees and brought her down harder than he’d intended—he didn’t exactly have full control. “Sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough.” She kicked at him one more time, missing his face by an inch.

He compartmentalized the pain and somehow got her pinned under him again, more carefully this time, taking no chances. “Stop for a second, would you?”

“Get off me.” She did her best to head-butt him. Her eyes burned with hate and desperation as she wriggled, hissing and threatening murder.

Hot memories aside, one thing was becoming crystal clear: this Lara wasn’t the Lara he still dreamed about sometimes, still fantasized about, the Lara who’d so sweetly surrendered to him.

Where the hell was the timidly curious virgin he remembered?

Chapter Two

She had grieved for him.

Lara fought, blind with fear and anger. She’d grieved for him when his bakery had burned, with him inside, hours after she’d left him that night. And she’d grieved again when she’d found out that she was pregnant, grieved for her babies who would have to grow up without a father.

But he hadn’t been dead. He’d been alive; he just hadn’t cared enough to tell her, too busy taking knockout blondes to dinner. He was involved in some nasty stuff, probably organized crime or drug dealing or something.

God, what an idiot she’d been.

“I go to your grave almost every Sunday, you jerk.” She tried to shove him. Might as well shove a brick wall.

Reid looked taken aback. “I have a grave?”

“The town buried you when no relatives came forward. They paid for the lot. There was a collection to pay for the coffin. I paid for the service. From my insurance money.” Even with him standing in front of her, she could still feel the lingering grief. Obviously, her mind was having trouble catching up with reality.

“I’m sorry.”

She tried to heave him off. “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I swear I’ll kill you.”

He managed to restrain her at last, the bloody bastard. “You’re a lot more violent than I remembered.”

She stilled. Mostly because there was little else she could do. And also because he was right. She was acting completely out of character.

She’d threatened murder twice in the last ten minutes. This wasn’t the kind of person she was. It wasn’t the kind of motherly example she would want to set for her boys.

“Must be rubbing off from you,” she shot back, as confusion, pain and humiliation hit her in quick succession. She tried to shift under his familiar weight, looking for a way out. “Please let me go.” For her babies, she would beg. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ll forget I ever saw you again. You can be dead to me again. I want you to be dead to me.”

Some dark emotion passed across his face, but it was gone before she could identify it. He waited a beat, measuring her up, then pushing away. “Okay. Cease fire.”

She nodded because he was stronger than her and she had no other choice. He’d always been tough and rough, had bad boy written all over him, the very thing that had drawn her to him in the first place. He was the hottest-looking guy she’d ever known, opening up shop right next to hers the week after she had. She was a goner the first time she’d laid eyes on him—six feet four inches of muscle and attitude.

She swallowed hard, pushing those memories away as she sat up. “Are you sure those men will track me down?”

“They’ll follow any lead they think might lead to me. Your kids are at your house?”

“Yes.” She buried her face in her hands. Her heart beat out of control. “With a babysitter.” God, she’d known that going on a date as far away as New York City was a huge mistake. But Allen had asked, not for the first time, and everyone she knew was on her case, telling her that she needed to get a life and move on. So she’d said yes.

The guilt was going to kill her. If worry didn’t kill her first. She rose to her feet and glanced at the door, weighing her chances of getting by Reid.

He was dialing his phone. “Hey. I’m fine. I’m heading out. I’ll call you back when I’m on the road. One thing right now. I need protection in Hopeville, P.A.” He gave her address.

Strange that he would remember. He hadn’t bothered coming back to tell her that he was okay. She couldn’t have been that important to him.

“Whoever you have closest. Local cops, fine. Outside surveillance, not to go in unless needed. Anyone approaching but me should be considered armed and dangerous. There are kids inside,” he added, then hung up and walked to a wall panel that opened to reveal a frightening cache of weapons. He tossed boxes of ammunition and guns into his bag, along with hand grenades and other things she didn’t recognize.

And the guns weren’t the scariest by far. The measured way he moved, his cold method as he assessed each weapon before selecting it spoke of a man who wore danger and violence like a second skin. How could he have hidden it so well two years ago when it was obvious now?

She inched toward the door. She really, really needed to leave. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked without looking her way, keeping up with his preparations.

He could have been the hero of some action movie. Or the villain. Two years ago, with his tattoos, the fact that he rode a bike, with those bedroom eyes of his that awakened her body for the first time to the fact that she was a woman, he was the most dangerous man she’d ever met. Just talking to him had always been a thrill. But he was so much more than she’d ever known.

“Please let me leave.” To think that despite her stunned reaction at the sight of him in the restaurant, she’d been so incredibly happy to see him. Sitting there, alive, he was the answer to all her prayers. She used to have dreams like that. His coming back, telling her it was all a big mistake. The two of them making a real family. His promising that he would love her forever, would never leave her again.

And now her fondest dreams were turning into a nightmare in front of her eyes. She pressed her jaw together for a second until the pain passed. “Please let me go home,” she entreated once she could breathe.

He barely looked up. “I can get you there faster than anyone else. Guaranteed.”

He was going to take her? “No offense, but I’m not sure I want you anywhere near my babies.” She thought of the gunfight at the restaurant. The way he’d left his date there, lying in a pool of blood. Okay, she was sure she didn’t want him anywhere near Zak and Nate. And she kind of wished she’d never told him about the twins. She’d been still too shaken up. Hadn’t been in her right mind. Hadn’t been able to think.

He closed the panel. “I’m one of the good guys.”

She kind of figured that from the phone conversation, and would have been lying if she said that wasn’t a great relief. But… “Good guy and dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive,” she pointed out. “Whatever you’re involved in, I want no part of it.”

“Too late.”

Was that regret in his voice?

He took the few steps necessary to reach her, and she had to look up at him. He was a good couple of inches taller and almost twice as wide in the shoulders—and she wasn’t a small woman.

He hesitated for a second, then huffed some air out through narrowed lips. “I was working undercover tonight.”

A couple of things clicked into place. Her mind raced. “And back in Hopeville when we met?”

He tossed her a coat, then once she’d put it on, grabbed her by the wrist, heading out to the garage. “Yes.”

Of course. He’d been new to town. But then again, she’d been new, too. They had bonded over being outsiders who were trying to get their small side-by-side shops going, trying to fit in.

“Is Reid Graham your real name?”

“Yes. I was hoping to find a way into the cell through an old army acquaintance who knew me back then. He’d gone the wrong way after he quit the army. He has a cousin on the fringes of the cell. My record was doctored to make it look like I quit, too, shortly after him. I ran into him ‘accidentally’ and was trying to get into his confidence. Anyway, I had to use my real name.”

“Who was the blonde at the restaurant?”

“An asset. She had information I needed.”

A disposable asset, apparently. Obviously, his business involved using people and casting them aside if necessary. Then she thought of something else, and her throat constricted.

“Was seducing me part of your cover?”

“You came to me.” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “But regardless—” He paused while he let his car quietly roll out of the garage. He was scanning their surroundings. “What I allowed to happen…plain bad judgment on my part.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes as they reached the street and he stepped on the gas. She looked away from him, blinking rapidly, staring out the side window at the houses that zoomed by.

“I have a situation here.” He was talking on his phone again. “Personal. I need a safe house somewhere near Hopeville, P.A.” He listened. “Not much. I have the tag numbers of the SUV the shooters drove.” He rattled that off, then looked at her. “What’s your husband’s name?”

Husband? Oh, Allen. “Allen Birmingham.”

“Anybody by the name of Allen Birmingham at the restaurant?” His face darkened as he listened to the response. “I figured,” he said before ending the call.

She gripped the seat belt. “What? What happened to Allen?”

“The cops talked to him when they showed up. They asked him to wait in the manager’s office because they needed to talk to him again about your kidnapping, after they secured the scene and got what they could from the rest of the witnesses.” He looked at her, regret in his cinnamon eyes. “By the time they came back to him, he’d disappeared. Hey.” He took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “I’m sorry.”

“You think those men took him?” She was beginning to feel light-headed. “They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”

He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, the car flying over the road. It was getting late, so that traffic was beginning to thin, not much standing in their way.

She pulled away to wrap her arms around herself. “He isn’t my husband,” she said at last, dazed.

“Boyfriend? I guess he’s the father of your boys?”

She held Reid’s somber gaze when he glanced over. Bit her lip. Sooner or later… It wasn’t as if he wanted anything to do with them anyway. God, she’d been dreaming about this moment, wishing for this miracle for so long. And now that her most impossible dream had come true, nothing was as it should have been. It broke her heart.

She ignored the pain and filled her lungs. “No. You are,” she told him.

Chapter Three

He almost drove into oncoming traffic. Reid eased off the gas and straightened the steering wheel, trying to get his racing mind under control. “This would not be the best time to mess with me.”

She said nothing.

“How is that possible?” Don’t be an idiot, he thought as soon as the words were out of his mouth, just as she said the exact same thing out loud.

He swallowed back a snappy response. Okay, so, yes, they’d done the necessary deed. But still, a pregnancy wasn’t possible. But if he wasn’t the father, then who was? Why wasn’t he told that she was pregnant? He had asked for an update on her after he’d been evacuated from Hopeville. Someone had gone out, checked on her and reported back that she was fine.

Of course, her pregnancy might not have been showing at the time. The report had focused on the fact that her butcher shop had burned, too, but she’d received enough insurance money to rebuild. Not that he hadn’t felt guilty anyway.

He stole a look at her from the corner of his eye and decided to play along, figure out what her game was. “Which one?” She’d said Zak and Nate.

“Both. They’re twins.”

He gave a strangled cough as saliva went down the wrong way. He had to give it to her, when she did some thing, she really went to town with it. He loosened his hands on the steering wheel, which he’d been gripping so hard, his knuckles were beginning to ache.

“How did the fire start?” she asked.

And his muscles tightened again. “I can’t talk about that.”

Her voice deepened with anger. “I think you owe me an explanation.”

Words she stole right out of his mouth. He waited a couple of seconds while he arranged his thoughts. He could give her the generalities. She did deserve something. “I was watching someone I suspected was a member of a group we had an interest in.”

“We?”

He didn’t respond.

“Law enforcement? Some government agency?”

“Something along those lines. Anyway, there was a leak somewhere. They figured out who I was. They came after me.”

She was watching him, wide-eyed. “But then whose body was that in the ashes?”

Right. The body she had buried. An image rose in his mind—her standing by a headstone carved with his name. No reason he should feel bad about that—he’d just been doing his job—but he felt like a jerk anyway. “I took one of them out before they got to me.”

That revelation silenced her for only a second. “How did you get out?”

“I wasn’t as dead as they thought when they set the place on fire. I crawled off, called for help. The decision was made that it’d be best if I wasn’t officially resurrected.”

“You could have told me.” Her voice was full of accusation.

“I was under orders not to. And the less you knew the safer you were.” The safer I was.

If they’d spent any more time together, if he’d gone back… She would have become a complication. She would have made him vulnerable. He couldn’t afford that. No weaknesses were allowed in his line of work. Soft spots had a way of turning deadly. He’d had to cut her off before she could come to mean too much to him.

She took a few seconds to digest his words. “Who were you watching?” she asked after a while.

He considered how much he could tell her. He was skating dangerously close to lines he should not cross. “Remember the gun shop across the strip mall?”

“Jimmy Sparks? Weird guy with the shaved head and the red goatee?”

He nodded.

“He closed shop and moved to Nevada right after the fire.”

“Not exactly. He realized we were onto him and took off. Location unknown.” Along with his buddies. That whole operation had ended as a total bust, not one of his finest moments. It had taken two years of hard work to get this close again. And not a moment too soon. The cell was getting ready to pull off something major, after having practiced on single victims.

Reid hoped Jimmy would surface before it was all over. The two of them had a score to settle.

“Did he…kill anyone?” she asked, white-faced. “Why were you watching him?”

“He, um, made stuff.” That was as much information as he was willing to divulge for now.

But she was quick on the uptake. “Oh. With his resources…” Her violet eyes went wide. She shook her head, muttering, “The butcher, the baker and the bomb maker,” under her breath.

He couldn’t help a pained grin. “A nursery rhyme for the twenty-first century, huh?”

She shook her head, looking dazed. “In Hopeville? It doesn’t seem real.”

Welcome to my world, he thought, but didn’t say it. Truth was he didn’t want her in his world. He wanted her as far from his world as could be arranged. The second she was bundled up with her kids in a safe house somewhere, he was putting as much distance between them as possible.

Now she knew he was alive. She could stop going to the damn cemetery. She had closure, or whatever she thought she needed. Best thing for her was to forget him.

THE REST OF THE TWO-HOUR drive from New York to Hopeville was spent mostly in silence, questions asked now and then and sparingly answered, both of them just trying to deal.

Reid called in once they were on her street. “I’m here. We’re going in to get the kids. I want an invisible escort back to the highway, then I’m good. What did you find for me?” He memorized the address he was given. “Thanks.”

He pulled into the driveway. “Stay.” He got out, looked around, made two unmarked cop cars down the street. He nodded toward them and walked around to open the door for Lara. “Stick close to me. Everything looks quiet in there,” he added, since she was almost vibrating with nervous energy.

She nodded and started forward, the first step a little shaky.

He cut in front of her, one hand on the gun in the back of his waistband. The door wasn’t even locked. Small-town America. The kind of safe, idyllic life that was quickly disappearing, no matter how hard he and others like him fought to keep it going.

“I’m back,” she called out from behind him, once he’d shoved the door open.

An elderly lady appeared from the kitchen, wearing pink sweatpants with a sweatshirt that had a kitten on the front, not someone he remembered from his brief stint in town. The woman didn’t seem to recognize him either, which was all for the best. She gave him the once-over with a glint of disapproval in her squinty eyes. “I thought you were going with Allen?”

“Long story.” Lara was hustling off toward the back of the house. She called over her shoulder, “Ran into an old friend.”

“Hi,” Reid said politely, cataloging as much of the house as he could see. While he’d known where Lara lived, he’d never been inside her home.

The place was small but tidy, toys neatly stacked in plastic bins. An old-fashioned model airplane hung from the ceiling. The sorriest-looking Christmas tree he’d ever seen stood in the corner, decorated with homemade ornaments, most of them color cutouts of a weird guy in a cape. The sign on his chest said Henry Hero. Probably the kids’ favorite cartoon character.

He noted the furniture that was well worn, the carpet that had seen better days. When he’d heard that she’d gotten the insurance money, he’d figured she would be set. But now, knowing that she had to raise two small children alone, knowing that she’d paid for part of his funeral, he wondered, for the first time, whether things were tight for her. He didn’t like the pang of guilt that came with that thought. In fact, he resented it.

She had come to him. But while that was true, there was also another truth in there somewhere. He could have, should have, sent her away. Strings of guilt twisted together with strings of lust, forming a rope that could bind him if he wasn’t careful. He shook that rope off. He was not supposed to have any feelings, of any sort, where Lara Jordan was concerned.

“Well, I’ll be going then.” The babysitter nodded at him with a world of reservations, then called after Lara, “I’ll take my payment in pork chops for Denis, as usual. I’ll stop by the shop to see you. Allen likes chops, too. Did he tell you that? All alone in that big house of his. The man must be starved for a good, home-cooked meal.”

“Okay,” came from the back in a distracted tone. “Um, I might not be in the shop for a few days. I’m thinking about driving down to Florida to see my uncle.”

“Bring back some sunshine if you go.”

Reid stood by the window and looked after the old woman as she walked home down the street, her golden sneakers glittering. She glanced back from the corner to scowl at his SUV. Other than the waiting cops and the occasional passing car, nobody was out there.

Ten minutes didn’t pass before Lara appeared, a car seat in each hand, two identical bundles inside. Between the blankets and the fuzzy hats, he didn’t see much of the little sleeping faces. “Let me help.”

She’d changed into jeans and a coat of her own, but had left on the Kevlar. She held out a car seat for him.

“I’ll take the bag.”

She set the baby on the couch so he could slide the enormous bag off her shoulder, and he noticed how tightly her full lips were pressed together, the worried shadows in her eyes.

“It’s almost over. Stay behind me on the way out.” He moved toward the door, looked out, stepped out, then signaled for her to follow.

He opened the back door of his car for her, let her secure the baby seats while he stashed her bag in the trunk. She was visibly shaken, but kept it together, efficient with the baby stuff. Then they were all in at last, and he got on the road, watching in the rearview mirror as the unmarked police cars followed them. In ten minutes, he was back on the highway and their escort fell back. In half an hour, he was crossing the state border to New York. The safe house, a small ranch home, wasn’t far from there.

He found the key in the back, taped under the roof of the gazebo, as promised, and entered first, looked around and then motioned for her to follow. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom. Not much, but enough until he figured out what to do with her long term.

He had enough favors owed to him that he could put her into witness protection. And never see her again. A perfect solution for all involved. And yet, the thought didn’t sit as well with him as it should have, especially considering that for some reason she was trying to con him. Because, despite her two little bundles of joy, which she was unwrapping in one of the bedrooms at the moment, the truth was, he couldn’t have children. He’d known that for a fact since he’d been nineteen.

The question was, what did she have to gain by lying to him?

THE BOYS HAD WOKEN UP for a little while, but she’d been able to settle them back to sleep. They were good sleepers, the both of them, thank God. Otherwise, she didn’t know how she could have managed as a single mother. She looked at their sweet baby faces. They were the most important things to her in the world. She would do anything to give them a happy, normal life, to keep them safe.

There was a time when she’d wanted to be wild and free. She’d been that, for a single night. Then the man she’d been infatuated with had died, her business had burned down and she’d become a single mother of twins, struggling to survive. She’d learned her lesson. She was done with adventure. All she wanted was an average, safe life. There was great comfort to be found in mediocrity.

She shored up the edge of the bed with pillows so the babies wouldn’t roll off, then walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Reid was sitting on the couch, legs apart, head back. Only one small light in the corner of the room was on, leaving his face shadowed and mysterious. He wore biker boots and faded jeans with an unbuttoned black shirt over his black T-shirt. She had a sudden flashback to the day she’d first seen him, appearing out of nowhere in the door of her shop, leaning against the frame and watching her, looking at her like no man ever had, before or since.

She’d been so stunned by the sight of him that she’d dropped ground pork into the ground beef bin. She should have turned tail right then and run for the hills. Except, then she wouldn’t have Zak and Nate, and she couldn’t regret them, not ever, not for a second.

“Someone will bring us food.” Reid stayed sprawled on the couch. “If you give me a list of what you need for your boys, I’ll call it in.”

“Our boys,” she corrected.

He looked up at her with his cinnamon eyes narrowed, his thick lashes shading them. He had a chiseled face and lips that could… Lips that said he’d been born to be wild. “I don’t think so.”