His Baby Bonus

Nice? Gracie didn’t have time for nice, so she grabbed for the bag bearing what she prayed were doughnuts, then gunned her engine. She might not get much of a lead, and hot Marshal Beau might still have her stuff, but the way she saw it, desperate times called for desperate measures. She had to get to San Francisco. Winning that contest was her and her baby’s only shot at a decent future.

BEAU PRESSED OFF his cell phone, sick after having to admit to the boss that he’d lost Gracie—again. Only this time, it really wasn’t his fault, but that of fierce tourist traffic. He’d kept up with her no problem for thirty miles, then at Steed Point, he’d been cut off by a gang of parading preschoolers on tricycles celebrating Clean Air Day.

From there on, it was slow going. Checking every dirt crossroad for rising dust, signaling she might’ve gone off the main path. In every town he approached, he checked every gas station, restaurant and motel for her car—as did the other marshals assigned to the case.

It was ten that night when he got the call from Adam that they’d found her in an inland motel. “Want me to cuff her and bring her in?”

Resting his forehead on the steering wheel, Beau sighed.

At this point, he wasn’t sure what to do.

God only knew why, but he had a soft spot for the woman. She’d proven herself to be a major pain in his derriere, but seeing how she was pregnant and all, he at least wanted her treated with kid gloves. She had a goal, which was way more than he could say for himself.

Sure, he had his career, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted a real family. Like the one he’d grown up in only better, because his future wife, the mother of his children, wasn’t going to die like his own mom had.

In marrying Ingrid, he’d thought himself well on his way to making his every dream come true. Funny how that so-called dream had turned nightmare.

“Yeah,” he said to his brother, “I guess if it comes down to it, go ahead and cuff Gracie, but be gentle. I don’t want her or the baby getting hurt.”

“Duh,” Adam said. “When’s the last time I banged up a—” His brother’s sudden silence hit Beau hard. It was tough enough on Beau remembering what’d happened to the last woman Adam had been assigned. Beau couldn’t imagine how his brother must feel. Yeah, he had woman problems, but at least Ingrid was still alive.

“What happened to Angela wasn’t your fault,” he told Adam for the hundredth time. “Could’ve happened to any one of us. Now, with Gracie, just use common sense. She’s an itty-bitty thing. Crafty, but she doesn’t bite.”

“BRO,” Adam said an hour later just as Beau approached the miniscule town of Boynton where Gracie had finally been found. “You’re not gonna believe this, but she got away again.”

“How?” Beau asked.

“I was just about to slap cuffs on her, when she bit me!”

AT FOUR in the morning, while everyone else on the team had long since pulled over for naps, Beau was still out looking. For sure, Vicente’s new crew wasn’t sleeping. If they got to Gracie before him, well…

Beau refused to think about it.

It was four thirty-seven by the digital clock on his dash when he pulled into the rear of a relic of a motel with individual cabins for rooms. On the outskirts of the Mendocino National Forest, the place was surrounded by more of the dark, eerie, dense forest that was starting to be a major pain in his ass when he spotted Gracie’s car behind the last unit.

He killed his lights and engine a few cabins back. Took his time getting out of his car, rolling his shoulders, trying to work out Gracie-induced kinks.

Every cabin save for one was dark, so he headed toward Cabin Eight with its bluish TV glow.

When she’d been little, and sick or upset from a bad day at school, his sister Gillian had liked to fall asleep in front of the living room TV.

Maybe Gracie was the same?

He peered through the inch or so between the curtain and wall. A lone man sat up in bed, sipping a Coors.

Great. Now what?

Beau yawned. Rubbed his eyes. Headed for the motel office.

Of course, at this time of the morning it was closed, but he wailed on the bell regardless.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’.” A wisp of an elderly woman who didn’t at all match her booming, gravelly voice flicked on lights in a shabby reception area. “You want me to open the door,” she shouted through thin glass, “show me you got money for a room.”

“How much?” Beau asked.

“Forty.”

He flashed two twenties.

She unlocked the door.

“I’ll need your license,” she said from behind a counter she could barely see over.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, setting the cash on the counter. “My wife is already here, so I’ll just need the number of her room.”

The clerk raised her eyebrows.

“She forgot to charge her cell, otherwise, I’d just call.”

Tapping a vintage black rotary-dial parked beside his left elbow, she said, “Here you go. Each cabin has its own line. Only one single gal girl staying with us tonight.” She wrote a number on a pad that said Alpine Lodge across the top.

Beau flashed his star, then smiled. “You know, I really hate waking her. How about you please tell me which cabin is hers.”

“How do I know that badge is real? For all I know, you bought it off the Web. You could be some serial killer.”

Beau sighed. “Never mind, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

He turned to leave.

“Take your money. I don’t deal with any of you late-night sickos.”

Tucking the money in his wallet, Beau headed back out into the night.

One by one, he knocked on cabin doors. “Housekeeping!”

“Get a life, bud!”

“Maintenance! I’ve gotta unplug your john!”

“Screw you!”

Five doors later, a cop pulled into the dirt lot, lights and siren blazing.

“Good girl,” Beau said under his breath about the desk clerk he’d apparently correctly pegged as the type to call the law on him.

“Freeze!” the cop said, gun and flashlight aimed at Beau as he emerged from his car. “Okay, now slowly raise those hands.”

Wincing from the blinding light, Beau did as he’d been told.

Glancing off to his left and right, out of the light’s glare, he saw that just as he’d hoped, lamps flicked on and draperies parted in all but cabins Three and Fifteen. The former had been the one Gracie’s tank was parked closest to, so Beau deduced Cabin Three was hers.

The cop asked, “Mind telling me what you’re doing out this hour of the night, knocking on sleeping citizens’ doors?”

Beau said, “I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal down from Portland.”

“Right.” Rolling his eyes, the cop said, “And I’m Santa. Let’s see some ID.”

Beau obliged, and five minutes later, after the officer made a few calls and found his story checked out, Beau was free to go.

“Ho, ho, ho,” the now jovial cop said. “Sorry to rain on your parade.”

“Not a problem,” Beau said.

Once he was again alone, and all those lamps had gone out, Beau trudged to Cabin Three.

He gave Gracie the benefit of a courtesy knock, then worked magic on the lock with equipment he didn’t officially have.

Inside, he quietly shut the door.

Gracie was sitting up in bed, hands curved around her bulging stomach, looking prettier, softer, more fragile than she ever had.

For an instant he looked away, hating to think himself the cause of her grim expression. If only she’d get it through that thick head of hers that he wasn’t the problem, but the solution.

“I’m so tired of this,” she said softly. And she did look tired. Even in the dim light leaking in from the Alpine Lodge’s blue neon sign, he saw circles under her eyes. “Can’t we just be friends?”

“I wasn’t aware we weren’t.”

She sighed. “Come on, Beau. Enough games.”

“We’re now on a first-name basis?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing the room’s one chair up to the head of the bed. “I do.”

“So then this is it? You agree to let me go on to San Francisco? Alone?”

He laughed.

“This isn’t funny, damn you, it’s my life.”

“I’m not disputing that.”

“Then why are you acting this way? Like my wanting to take my hard-earned spot in a prestigious competition is wrong? I mean think about it, this is the Olympics for cooks. People kill for chances like…” As her words trailed off, she tucked her lower lip into her mouth.

“Oh man,” he said with a groan. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

“Maybe.” She looked up, slaying him with her baby blues. Only in this light, he couldn’t even really see them, just a shimmer. It was only in his mind those eyes could hurt him. And because he knew that, because he was savvy to her every trick, he pulled his cuffs from his back pocket and slapped one on her wrist.

This time, she laughed, only it wasn’t at all funny sounding, but laced with raspy tears. “I was trying to be serious. You know, open up. But it’s obvious you couldn’t care less how I feel. All you care about is getting your man.”

“Yeah, but you’re a woman,” he said. All woman. Which was why he had to stay strong.

“I’m not going to run again,” she said.

“I know.”

Her face brightened in a smile so hopeful, so lovely and pure that it clenched his gut with ridiculous desires. Silly stupid things like wanting to hold her and protect her and beat the crap out of anyone who dared ruin her pregnancy’s peace. “Does that mean you finally trust me? That you agree I should do the competition?”

“No.”

“Then what? It has to mean something that you finally believe I’m done running.”

“Oh.” He flashed her a slow grin. “It means something, all right.” He slapped his free cuff on his own wrist. “Means you can run all you want, but wherever you go, this time, I’ll be with you.”

Chapter Three

Beau groaned.

Gracie was crying. Big ’ol messy Southern belle tears just a little too over the top to be convincing.

When she got to the point in her show where she gazed up at him, batting long, tear-fringed eyelashes glinting in the light spilling in from the parking lot, he yanked the hand cuffed to her to his free one, flooding the now-silent room with bawdy applause. “Woo-hoo!”

He threw in an ear-splitting whistle, too.

“You’re a beast,” she spat, trying to roll over, taking him along for the ride.

“Hey—my arm doesn’t bend that way, thank you very much.”

“And I wasn’t crying for your entertainment pleasure, thank you very much!”

“Look, lady, how about we agree to disagree and call it a night?”

“I would, but I’m cold. I can’t sleep without my faux mink throw.”

“So you’re wanting me to uncuff you long enough to go get it?”

“Yes, please.”

He sighed. Ran his palm over the day and night’s stubble on his jaw. “Tell you what, you want that ratty old thing that bad, I’ll be happy to walk outside with you to get it from my trunk.”

“But I’m tired and my ankles are swollen.”

“Me, too—on both counts.” He stood, yanked her arm sideways to allow himself the range of motion needed to jerk the spread off the extra bed, then the blanket. After lying down beside her, then covering them both, he growled, “Night.”

“I’m supposed to just lay here flat like this? I don’t have enough pillows, and when my head isn’t high enough, I always wake with heartburn.”

“Here,” he said, yanking his own pillow out from under his head to awkwardly ram it under hers.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

After a few moments’ blessed silence, Beau was finally nodding off when she sighed.

Instantly, he was awake. “What?”

“I’ll never be able to sleep like this. If only I could—”

“Roll over.”

“What?”

“If I have to tell you again, I’ll roll you myself.”

She rolled, his arm flailed up at an awkward as hell angle, and because above all he was a gentlemen, not about to have this very pregnant woman accuse him of not having gotten adequate rest on his watch, he somehow managed to fall asleep.

Staying asleep was a whole other matter.

“Quit,” he mumbled when something kept rubbing his wrist.

“Huh?”

“Whatever you’re doing, knock it off.”

“I’m just laying here, trying to—”

“That! That little movement right there suspiciously close to Chinese water torture.”

“That?” She giggled. “That’s the baby, silly. She’s a night owl. Watch…” She flicked on the wall-mounted lamp on her side of the bed, then rolled onto her back and flung off the blanket. “Just keep your eyes on my belly, and—there! Did you see that?”

“Damn, that was pretty cool. Will he do it again?”

“She. And probably. Just keep watching.”

He or she did do it again—and again.

Watching that all-too-familiar show did something to Beau. As did seeing the wisp of a smile curving the corners of Gracie’s lips. She was proud of this baby—and she had a right to be. As he’d thought many times with Ingrid, having something that big moving around in your gut didn’t look all that comfortable.

“Does it hurt?” he asked with the next alienlike rise in her stomach.

“Not at all,” she said. “More like tickles.”

Well, that was good news.

“I hope this turns out right for you,” he said.

“Me, too.”

He made the mistake of meeting her big, blue stare, shimmering with unshed tears. A mysterious something in his own gut told him this time, her emotion was the real deal. And he hated that he was the one making her cry.

In the vast majority of his experiences with women, usually it turned out the other way around. Them making him cry. Not that he’d actually boo hooed—just that he’d felt miserable enough that if he’d been of the crying persuasion, the night Ingrid dumped him for that stodgy partner of hers would’ve been a legitimate tear-worthy occasion.

It turned out the child she’d carried for the past seven months, the child he’d been celebrating as his own for the past seven months, wasn’t really his, but her partner’s.

After that, how many times had he wished life’s tables could be turned? That he could be the one causing angst in a relationship? But now, even though this could hardly be called a romantic circumstance, he didn’t like the thought of Gracie for real crying one little bit.

A duo of tears slid down her left cheek. Purely on reflex, he brushed them away.

“You’re not going to let me go, are you?”

Lips pressed tight, he shook his head.

“That sucks,” she said. “But I guess you’re just doing your job.”

“Trying,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, I’m not enjoying this any more than you.” In fact, being forced up against her like this, her lush curves spread before him like a veritable smorgasbord of womanhood, his assignment was growing harder by the second—quite literally. As best he could, he shifted his fly, trying his damnedest to ignore the canyon of heat scorching his legs, chest and shoulder where their bodies touched.

“Good,” she said, casting him a sarcastic smile much more indicative of the woman who’d locked him in a storage closet. Thank God. If she’d maintained her softer side, he’d have been in real trouble.

“Ready for some sleep?” she asked.

Yeah. Oh, hell yeah.

She turned off the light, pulled the blanket back up over her. He braced himself for her roll, and sure enough, there it was. With his arm back up at an awkward angle, his other elbow digging into his ribs, Beau closed his eyes and sighed, telling himself he’d slept in worse places at far worse angles.

Finally, finally, he’d drifted off to dreamland when—

“Marshal Beau?”

“Yes?”

The light switched on. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’M NOT LEAVING MY CAR,” Gracie said. Around ten the next morning the two of them stood in a chilly drizzle just outside her cabin.

She breathed deeply of fresh-washed, conifer-scented air, vowing today would be a great day. A normal day. Marshal Beau couldn’t keep her cuffed forever. All she had to do was sit tight and plan another escape and she’d soon be back on her way.

Marshal Beau pulled the cabin’s door shut. Gave her that look she was beginning to know and love. The one that said he was counting to ten in his head in a futile attempt to keep from strangling her. She knew the look because for the vast majority of the time they’d been together, she’d been doing the same with him.

“Ms. Sherwood, I’ve called a tow truck, and your car will be safely garaged back in Portland. Your belongings are in the back of my vehicle. I’m doing everything I can to be reasonable. Hell, I spent the whole night with my elbow up my ass trying to make you comfortable, but—”

“You don’t have to be crude. I’m used to being around more refined men.”

He snorted. “Oh, so let me see, all of the sudden, your convicted murderer, drug-dealing, scum of a husband is a great guy because he—”

Pa-ching!

“Shit!” he hollered, roughly grabbing her upper arm. “Get down.”

“Why? What was that?”

“A bullet. Attached to a gun with a silencer. Come on.” Crouching behind shrubs, he pushed her in front of him, then pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and started firing.

Pow! Pow! Pow!

“Oh my God, oh my God…” Gracie chanted the phrase over and over. “I didn’t think any of this was real. That you were somehow just making it all up to get your way, but—”

“Please,” he said, lacing the fingers of their cuffed hands, then giving her a squeeze. “Keep it together for me a little while longer.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I—”

He kissed her. Hard. Fast. “You have to. Come on.”

Pa-ching! Pa-ching!

“See that black SUV?” He pointed five cabins down.

“You kissed me,” she said, fingertips to her lips.

He shook his head.

“Y-yes, yes, you did.”

Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching!

“For cryin’ out loud, woman, it was just a kiss. It was the only way I could think to get your attention.”

“You could’ve just slapped me,” she hissed, still reeling from the shocking pleasure of him pressing his lips to hers.

“You’d have rather I—”

Pa-ching!

“W-what about the SUV?” she asked.

He fished for something from his front jeans pocket, then pulled out a tiny key. “If I let you loose, promise to do the smart thing and run for that car?”

Pa-ching! Pa-ching!

She swallowed hard and nodded.

He unlocked the cuffs, and even though their hands were free, he squeezed her fingers again. “On three,” he said.

She nodded.

“One…Two…Go!”

Gracie ran for all she was worth, her marshal close on her heels, firing back.

Pow! Pow! Pow!

Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching!

In the car, heart pounding, Gracie hunched down in her seat.

Seconds later, Beau hopped in beside her, slamming his door and starting the engine simultaneously.

“You okay?” he asked, revving the engine, throwing a rooster tail of gravel up behind them as he sped from the lot.

Afraid she couldn’t speak past the wall of terrified tears blocking her throat, she nodded.

Pa-ching! Pa-ching!

“Beau! They’re following! Hurry!”

“I’m doin’ the best I can, darlin’. Put on your seat belt. I’d do it for you, but…”

Yeah, she could see he was kind of busy.

He careened onto a side street.

Seconds later, made a sharp right.

“Dammit,” he mumbled. “They’re still back there.”

“At least they’re not shooting.”

Pa-ching!

“You were saying?”

“ON THE BRIGHT SIDE,” Gracie said with a weak chuckle thirty minutes later, her breathing just now slow enough that she could speak without hyperventilating. “At least we lost my ex-husband’s associates.”

Stopped on the shoulder of a dirt road winding through forest so thick they might as well have been in a tunnel, her marshal thumped his forehead against the steering wheel. “Unfortunately with my cell not having a signal, we’ve also lost ourselves.”

“Hey—you were the one driving. All I did was sit here screaming.”

He’d had his eyes closed, but opened one long enough to glare at her. “Thanks.”

Making the mistake of gazing out her window, Gracie found the woods looking tall, dark and spooky—like one of those Bigfoot documentaries on The Travel Channel. Primeval ferns lined the road, and the only sound aside from a faint whoosh high in the Douglas fir, western red hemlock and Sitka spruce was the occasional rapid-fire hammer of a woodpecker somewhere in the gloom.

Far off thunder rumbled.

Gracie shivered.

Goose bumps covered her forearms, which then made her have to pee. Bad.

Not a good thing considering there wasn’t a rest area, gas station or McDonald’s anywhere in sight.

“I really have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

This time, Marshal Beau didn’t even open one eye. He just sat there. Stone silent. Like the moss-covered boulders on the side of the road.

A sprinkle of fat raindrops hit the windshield, only worsening her need to pee.

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “I’ve reeaally got to go. I’m sure this is too much information, but the baby’s sitting on my bladder. I can only hold it for like twenty more seconds—tops.”

Still nothing.

“Are you even listening to me?” She gave his shoulder a nudge. After which, he grunted before reaching for his side, revealing a dark, sticky substance all over the back of his navy marshal’s jacket. It was on the seat, too. Smudging the black leather.

Hands to her mouth, she shook her head.

Had he been shot?

But when?

How could she not have noticed? He hadn’t been bawling with pain or anything. He’d just driven her to safety, all the while he’d been sitting there bleeding to…No.

No bleeding to death in such an already creepy location. Especially when it was her fault he’d been shot. The whole time she’d been running from him, convinced he was only lying to get her back to Portland to testify, he’d been telling the truth—that she, and her baby—were in danger.

The thought all at once made her hot, queasy and a little light-headed. But then she looked at the brave man beside her who’d saved her life, and asked, “What’s wrong with you? How can you just calmly be sitting there when you’ve been shot? Help me get your jacket off so I can see how badly you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine,” he said, wincing while she slipped off his windbreaker. It had been chilly that morning outside the motel, but she’d suspected he’d put it on more to hide his shoulder-holstered gun than because he’d been cold. Beneath the jacket was a shamrock-green T-shirt touting the Santa Clara Lucky Clovers, the right side of which was covered in a dark stain.

Getting a woozy Beau out of the driver’s seat and around the front of the car was no easy feat.

Sucking her lower lip, she gingerly raised his shirt over his head to find a bloody mess. But thankfully it looked like the bullet had only grazed him. Nevertheless, his poor, bruised skin resembled a tenderized flank steak.

“How bad is it?” he asked in a scratchy voice.

“If we can manage to prevent it from getting infected long enough to get you to a doctor, odds are you’ll survive. Got any bottled water?”

He nodded. “In the back.”

“Okay. Looks like the bleeding’s long since stopped, so let’s get you washed up and laying down on the passenger side. Guzzle that water, and we’ll find the nearest town and a doctor.”

“W-what about you?”

“What about me? I’m not shot.”

“You going to run again?”

“Give me some credit, Beau. You could’ve been killed protecting me. Yes, more than anything in the world, I want to attend the Culinary Olympics, but not at the cost of someone’s life.” Especially not his. What he’d done for her might all be in a day’s work for him, but…