Full Force Fatherhood

“You can go into my bedroom if you’d like.”

Instantly he realized he’d made the offer sound suggestive. A Freudian slip if he’d ever had one.

Kelli did a half-snort laugh and retreated into the room. It could have been his imagination but it looked as if her cheeks had reddened. Then again, he could have been mistaken.

Mark stretched out his legs and realized just how tired he felt. Resting his head back on the cushions, he crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. When Kelli was finished he’d offer her some coffee and make a very strong one for himself.

His thoughts went from coffee to the woman who had suddenly become a part of his life. Would she still be after they’d somehow found the justice they both wanted and so desperately needed?

And, more important, how would he feel about it?

Full Force Fatherhood

Tyler Anne Snell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TYLER ANNE SNELL genuinely loves all genres of the written word. However, she’s realized that she loves books filled with sexual tension and mysteries a little more than the rest. Her stories have a good dose of both. Tyler lives in Florida with her same-named husband and their mini “lions.” When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s playing video games and working on her blog, Almost There. To follow her shenanigans, visit www.tylerannesnell.com.

This book is for Lillian Grace and Katie.

Lily, thank you for being the coolest kiddo I know. One day you’ll be able to appreciate there’s a book dedicated to you. Until then I’m sure your mom will hide this sucker until you’re older!

Katie, thank you for being a sister, a true friend, and giving me motherhood goals to aspire toward. Not to mention showing me such a strong bond between mother and daughter that it was almost easy to translate it to paper. I’ll always love every bit of you and your family!

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“Something’s not right.”

Kelli Crane looked at her husband and sighed. “Making fun of me isn’t going to win you any points, Victor,” she warned. “Don’t poke the bear.”

“Because she might poke back?”

He walked into the cabin’s bedroom, where she had been lounging with a book, and took a seat at the edge of the bed. In his late thirties, Victor Crane had managed to hold on to his boyish grin with ease. Tall, almost lanky, he had short strawberry blond hair that looked like extensions of the sunlight that fell through the windows, and eyes that mimicked the blue of the sky. She could claim the same kind of brightness about herself, but slightly different—dirty-blond hair, green-gray eyes, a tan that could only be described as sun-kissed—but sometimes when she looked at Victor, her own beauty felt diminished. Staring at her husband of a year and a half, she wondered what their children might look like.

“If you keep mocking me about wanting to keep you safe,” she said, “poking back is the first thing I’ll do.”

Victor held his hands up in defense. “Whatever you say, my love.”

She put down her book and smiled. She knew he had only indulged her paranoia by hiring the bodyguard two rooms away. For the past two weeks, he had tried to put her worries to rest. In his line of work as an investigative journalist, sometimes the crazies came out. That didn’t mean they should run for help after receiving a few deep-breathing phone calls at the house. However, Kelli couldn’t stop her anxiety from mounting as more than just a few calls had come in.

“How’s the story coming along?” she asked, setting the book against her stomach. Her hand hovered there a second before she let it drop. “Please tell me you’re almost done.”

“The news article is nearly finished, yes. I should be done by tomorrow.” He stood and stretched. “Then we can resume our normal lives.”

“You wouldn’t want to stay a few more days?” Kelli looked out the window. Victor’s family cabin was a few skips away from a crystal-blue lake that looked like a painting, with a pier that Victor had probably walked down since he was a child. Her family had never had moments like that. Then again, if her parents had been alive, she was sure they would have tried. They had been good, loving parents before the car crash had happened when she was younger.

“If this was a vacation, then I’d say yes, but...”

“But you’re here to work,” she interrupted.

He nodded. “And when that work is done, I have to move on to the next assignment.”

“One that I hope won’t make me feel we need to hire another bodyguard.”

Victor laughed. “Let’s be honest. The only reason you hired him was for a little eye candy,” he whispered. He raised his eyebrows suggestively, joking with her. Kelli swatted at him.

“Dark hair and muscles galore?” she said. “Who would want that?”

Victor came to her side and bent low. He brushed his lips across hers for a soft kiss.

“Not you,” he replied, laughter behind each word.

Kelli smiled. It had been a while since they had been able to spend more than an hour or two a day together. Since they had been married, Victor’s assignments had taken him away from their home in Dallas.

But that was going to change soon.

It had to.

“Well, back to the grind. Do you need anything?”

Kelli pictured the ice cream in the freezer but decided against it.

“I think I might take a nap. I still don’t feel all that great.”

Victor gave her forehead another quick kiss. “Nap away, my love.”

And then he was gone.

* * *

MARK TRANTON HAD watched the sun set as he finished his routine perimeter check. He might have had a history of traveling internationally and domestically, but this was the first client to bring him to a lakefront property. If he ever took his vacation time, he might consider coming back to a place like this.

In the dwindling light, the isolation felt serene.

He was almost glad that his boss, Nikki Waters, had more or less forced him to take on the weeklong contract with Victor. Even if both Nikki and Victor had said his presence was more for Mrs. Crane’s peace of mind.

Since the Orion Security Group was in the middle of an expansion—thanks to a large contract completed two months before by Mark’s good friend Oliver—the small company’s caseload had tripled. Even though the closest contract start date was two months away. Including one for which Mark would be traveling to Washington for a three-week commitment.

Which was why Nikki had said accompanying the Cranes to a family vacation home in North Carolina was “the closest to a vacation” that Mark would take.

He couldn’t complain.

They were on day three of the contract, and Victor and his wife had been nothing but pleasant.

“Are we in the clear?” Victor asked him.

Mr. Crane was standing in the kitchen, beer in hand, when Mark came back inside and locked the door. There was a lightness to his tone but no disrespect. He might not have shared his wife’s fear for safety, but he didn’t discount Mark’s job. Mark respected him more for that.

“I think we’d hear or see someone coming a mile away,” Mark answered honestly.

“This place is kind of off the beaten path, but that’s why I thought it might do Kelli some good.” Victor pulled out another beer from the fridge and started to offer it to Mark but caught himself. He switched out the bottle for water, which Mark thanked him for. Although he could have gotten away with one drink, he wouldn’t. A bodyguard needed to stay alert at all times. No exceptions. “Kelli’s normally not this anxious. But lately some things have happened that have...well, made her more emotional. I just want to keep her from getting all worked up.”

“That’s nice of you,” Mark said.

“Well, I feel it’s the least I can do. I’ve been working a little more than I should be.”

“I can relate to that,” Mark said with a quick smile, even though he loved his job. When he wasn’t given a new client, he asked for one. He’d been working in the private security business since he was twenty-one. It was as much a part of him as the scars on his back and the muscles he had honed as a job requirement. Pretending that overwork bothered him would be just that.

Pretend.

“You know what I like about you, Mark?”

“Aside from my stoic nature?”

Victor laughed. He seemed always to be laughing.

“Aside from that, I’d have to say I’m surprised you haven’t asked me what I’m working on. If I were you, I would have pestered me the last few days.”

Mark shrugged. “Once Nikki vets a client, that’s pretty much all I need to know. You’re a freelance journalist working on a piece for a national news syndicate. I don’t need to know the topic to make sure no one shoots you.” Victor nodded in assent. “Plus, you said yourself that it wasn’t anything that would ruffle anyone’s feathers.”

“True,” he confirmed. “It’s a piece spotlighting a private charity foundation based in Texas.” It was Victor’s turn to shrug. “Nothing too menacing sounding, am I right?”

“Yeah, I’d have to say that—”

The back of the cabin exploded in a fiery ball of glass and wood. The blast sent both men to the ground hard. Heat instantly filled the air, smoke hot on its tail.

Mark was the first to pick himself up, stumbling to his feet, trying to get his bearings. Looking to his right and down the hallway, he couldn’t tell what the explosion’s origin was. But he knew the outer wall that ran across the office, hallway and master bedroom and bathroom was definitely affected. Flames sprung up everywhere.

Mark went around the counter and hoisted up his client. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear Victor yell out his wife’s name.

The instinct to get the journalist to safety flared within him, but he didn’t try to hustle him through the two doors or six windows they had access to. It wouldn’t do any good. Victor loved his wife and wouldn’t leave her. Mark wouldn’t, either.

“Behind me,” Mark yelled as he righted the man. Victor’s eyes were wide, terrified. He nodded, and they began to move down the hallway as quickly as Mark was comfortable with.

Whatever had blown up had damaged the office opposite the bedroom the most. Through the open door, he could tell the wall was gone. The window in the hallway had blown out, and flames were in the process of devouring the frame. Mark sucked in a breath as he went into the bedroom.

Lying on the floor next to the bed was an unconscious Kelli. Smoke was already hugging the ceiling, billowing out from the bathroom. While Victor bent at his wife’s side, Mark ran to see where the new smoke was coming from. The bedroom’s outer wall wasn’t on fire like the hallway.

He didn’t have to look far. Flames were pulsing up the outside of the house, even stretching around to the right side where the guest bedroom was.

That’s when Mark saw him.

A figure dressed in black ran around the perimeter of the house, right where Mark had walked minutes earlier.

“Someone’s outside,” he yelled. Kelli was in Victor’s arms, limp. Mark wanted to help her, but he also needed to deal with the person responsible for starting the fire. Victor was about to say something when a horrible crack split the air.

With less than a second to react, Victor threw Kelli forward just as the outer wall crumbled. All Mark could do was watch as Victor was thrown to the ground beneath the wall and part of the roof. With the new source of oxygen, the fire expanded in a violent burst.

Mark went down to his knees, using his body to cover Kelli until everything settled. However, nothing did.

“Save her,” yelled Victor. He was trying to move but, in that one horrible moment, both men realized that the weight would be too much for either of them to move. That didn’t stop Mark from trying.

He quickly went to the journalist’s side and tried with everything he had to lift the largest piece of wall and wood from Victor’s back. It didn’t budge. Not one bit.

“Save her,” Victor yelled again. Another wave of heat rolled through the air. Mark looked around. The escape route into the hallway wasn’t going to last much longer.

Mark met the blue eyes of his client, knowing it would be the last time he ever saw them.

“I can save you both,” Mark said, though he knew it was a lie. Flames were licking at his back. If they didn’t get out now, they wouldn’t.

Victor yelled one last plea, making Mark decide the fate of three people all at once.

“She’s pregnant!”

Mark didn’t hesitate after that. He picked up Kelli and gave Victor one last look.

“I’ll come back,” he yelled, but the man didn’t answer.

Mark kept Kelli to his chest and ran into the hallway. The state of the rest of the cabin confirmed his earlier fear. Someone had not only blown up the side of the house but also set the area around the entire structure on fire. Reason told him that the kitchen and its back door would be their best bet. The figure in the dark wouldn’t have had time to get the fire going too strongly there.

Kelli stirred in his arms, coughing violently. He held her tighter and almost yelled in relief when he saw the back door wasn’t crawling in flames. He threw it open and ran straight into the water a few yards away. The lake was low for the season, and the dock was high off the water. He splashed under the wood, giving them the only cover available in the backyard.

No shots had rung through the air and no attack had been initiated as they left the house. But that didn’t mean the perpetrator wouldn’t still try.

“What the—” Kelli started to catch her breath, eyes open and looking wildly at him.

“Are you okay to stand?” he asked quickly, already tilting her feet into the water. Confused, she nodded. “I need you to stay right here, hidden, okay?”

Again she nodded, but Mark knew it was only a matter of time before she realized her husband wasn’t with them. She seemed to still be processing being conscious at the moment. Kelli caught her balance as Mark released her. He pulled his pocketknife from his pants and handed it to her, turning as soon as she grabbed it.

An awful sound filled the air, another in a long line of things that would haunt him about that night.

A fireball erupted from the kitchen and engulfed the rest of the cabin. Glass exploded and the ground shook. The house gave one final wheeze and, together, Mark and Kelli watched as it burned to the ground.

Chapter Two

Kelli slipped off her heels and padded quietly across the floor. Footsteps echoed in the hallway behind her, but she didn’t stop. Sidestepping a few boxes left scattered around the room, she hurried into the open closet.

It wasn’t deep, but it stretched wide. Empty save a few coat hangers, it didn’t allow her much cover. On the other hand she could try to hide behind a stack of boxes in the corner. Though she’d have to really bend to remain hidden. The footsteps came closer, and she had to choose.

The closet would have to do.

Kelli pushed herself to the corner and slid down the wall until she was sitting with her knees pressed up to her chest. The light from the opened bedroom window lit even the mostly dark corner. She would be seen easily by anyone who looked inside the doors.

Silence filled the room.

For a second, Kelli worried. Had she been seen coming into the room? The shuffle of two feet let her know she had. The footsteps came closer, and Kelli held her breath. Her hunter was quick to search around the boxes and move on to the closet. The shuffling stopped a step from the opening. There was a moment of silence that felt almost tangible.

Then a tiny face peeked inside, and Kelli couldn’t help but laugh.

“Boo,” the little girl yelled. Smiling ear to ear, she squealed in delight as Kelli jumped out of her hiding spot.

“You found me!”

Grace Victoria Crane let out another round of giggles before running off. Kelli laughed as she followed the toddler through the house, knowing the little girl’s destination.

Like mother, like daughter, Grace loved the library.

It was her fair-haired beauty’s turn to hide.

Behind the wall-length curtains—one of the few things that hadn’t yet been packed in the room—stood a pair of little blue shoes. They were covered in sequins, and Kelli knew for a fact that finding them in stock had been a miracle in itself.

“Hmm...” Kelli put her finger to her chin and tapped it. Moving slowly around the boxes and plastic tubs pushed to the side of the room, she made a big show of being confused. “I could have sworn I saw a little girl with chocolate on her mouth run in here!” Grace started to giggle. The sound made Kelli’s heart swell. “I wonder who that could be!” She went to the curtains, ready to tickle the culprit, when the little girl jumped out on her own.

“Got you,” she yelled. When Grace was excited like this, Kelli couldn’t deny the resemblance between them. Although Grace’s hair was a shade or two darker, their ever-changing green eyes were almost identical. Her facial features, however, all belonged to her father.

“You’re the best hide-and-seeker I think I’ve ever played with,” Kelli said, scooping up the toddler. She was about to unleash another round of tickles when the doorbell chimed. It echoed through the mostly packed up house.

“Me, me,” Grace yelled, already trying to wiggle out of her arms and race to answer the door.

“Not without me,” Kelli answered. She moved Grace to her hip and took a moment to marvel at how big she was getting. A year and seven months, almost to the day.

The past two years had flown by and yet, in some ways, Kelli seemed painfully stuck. As she moved down the hallway to the front of the house, she tried to commit to memory how the wood floor felt beneath her bare feet. She wondered what the next year would bring after all of the changes Grace and she were about to make.

A familiar face was bobbing in front of the windows in the front door, inciting a new excitement in Grace. Kelli put her down with a laugh and opened the door for the godmother of her child.

“You’re late,” Kelli teased Lynn Bradley. The short woman with black hair wore a pair of worn overalls with a long-sleeved yellow flannel shirt that contrasted with her dark skin. Kelli raised her eyebrow at the choice of wardrobe but didn’t say anything. Lynn had been a bit eclectic ever since they were children.

“Listen, it’s not my fault that you already packed up your TV, forcing me to choose between the end of You’ve Got Mail and the care of your child.” The twenty-nine-year-old gave her best friend a smirk before bending down and enveloping Grace in a hug. “My, how you’ve grown! Look at you! Gosh, how old are you now? Three? Five?”

Grace put her hands on her hips and gave Lynn a critical eye. She held up one finger. “One!”

“That’s my girl,” Lynn approved. She mussed Grace’s hair, and the three of them went inside.

“You were here yesterday, you know,” Kelli said as they went into the living room. Lynn laughed.

“That doesn’t discount the fact that that kid of yours is growing like crazy! She’s going to be taller than me before you know it! She’s not two yet and look at her!”

Grace, suddenly uninterested in their conversation, went to her makeshift play area in the corner. It looked like a graveyard for plastic dinosaurs, stuffed animals and Legos.

“I know,” Kelli agreed with a smile. It didn’t last long. Lynn had come over to help pack up the one room Kelli couldn’t get through on her own.

Attached to the living room by a set of French double doors was Victor’s home office. It was a small room but had managed to collect a lot of things in the six years he had lived in the house. Just looking into the room had sent Kelli into tears for the first six months after the fire. Then, slowly, she had been able to bear the sight of the room Victor had spent the most time in. Kelli supposed Grace had helped her with that. She had to stay strong for their child, who would never know her father.

Lynn’s expression softened, but she didn’t comment. Aside from Grace, Lynn had been the most constant part of her world during the past two years.

“Okay, well, let’s get started.” Kelli motioned to the bookcase. “You empty that and I’ll start with the desk.”

“Got yah, Boss.” Lynn pulled the plastic tub over to the small bookshelf. Although there was a library in the house, the office shelves were filled with research materials collected over Victor’s nine-year career as a journalist. Her husband had covered an array of subjects, freelancing from home, and working for newspapers and magazines around the nation. His next goal had been to work internationally, but then they had found out about the pregnancy. Victor had decided his family was more important than work.

Kelli sat down in the office chair, sadness in her heart.

Her thoughts slid back to the night at the cabin.

Sometimes she could still feel the heat of the fire. Smell the smoke in the air. Feel the cold of the water as they waited for help to arrive. The boy behind the fire had been caught, sure, but that didn’t make the memories of what had happened any more bearable.

She took a breath. She didn’t need to remember that night now.

Ten minutes into packing away the office’s contents, Kelli found something she hadn’t known existed.

“Hey, look at this.”

The middle side drawer of the desk had stuck when she tried to open it. She pulled too hard, and the entire drawer slid out. Along with it came a small notebook that had been taped to the bottom of the drawer above it.

“What is it?” Lynn asked, walking over.

“I don’t know. It was hidden.”

The notebook wasn’t labeled, but it was filled with Victor’s pristine handwriting.

“It looks like work notes,” Kelli observed. She flipped through it, scanning as she went. “I recognize some of these names...but I thought all of his notes were—” She cut herself off and rephrased. “He took them to the cabin with us. I didn’t know he had kept notes here.”

Lynn gave her privacy as she thumbed to the last few pages. Possibly the last notes Victor had ever taken. Kelli shook her head. She didn’t need to travel down that road today.

“Wait.” Her eyes stopped on a passage in neat, tiny writing. “This doesn’t make sense.”

Or maybe it did.

* * *

“WE NEED TO TALK.”

Kelli’s back was ramrod straight against the office chair. It wasn’t made to be comfortable—those who sat across from Dennis Crawford, retired editor of the national online publication known as the Scale, didn’t usually intend to keep his company long. Especially during house calls like this. She suspected that he had let her in only because of Victor. Dennis and he hadn’t been friends, but they’d worked together on more than one occasion.