“Camille.” He swallowed, the taste of her name on his lips taking his breath. Forced away the need to touch her…to do anything she asked of him. “You cannot come here again. No one can know who I am. If someone sees you here, suspicions will be aroused and trouble will follow.” He reached for the door. “Go home. Your family can help you with whatever problem you’re encountering.”
“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
Nicholas closed his eyes and struggled to maintain his composure. He could not be tempted. He could not permit himself to be drawn into her life again.
“Go home, Camille. I can’t help you.” He opened his eyes and leveled an icy glare on her. Whatever it took to push her away. “Go. Now.”
“Someone took my baby.”
Her words shook him. Shocked him. “Baby?” Camille had a child? Then he remembered, she’d gone missing on her wedding day. The day she was supposed to have married Grant Bridges. Misery ached inside him.
She nodded jerkily. “While I was…missing.” Her head moved side to side with the weight of uncertainty. “I don’t remember anything. The man…” She shrugged, clearly unsure of her words. “The man who held me kept me drugged or something. I don’t remember anything after falling from the cliff. All I know is that I was pregnant and now I’m not. The doctor said I’d given birth only a few weeks before I was found.” She drew in a jagged breath. “My baby’s missing and Chief Swanson thinks I…”
Tears welled in those big blue eyes. “Chief Swanson thinks what?” Nicholas heard himself ask, no matter that he knew with every fiber of his being that he should usher her out the door. He should not allow himself to be distracted…not even for Camille.
He’d made that mistake once. And it had cost them both far too much already.
“He thinks I did something—” she moistened her quivering lips “—with my baby. He won’t help me because he thinks I did something unspeakable.”
“Swanson is a reasonable man.” Nicholas steeled his emotions. He could not help her. “You should talk to him again. Insist that he at least consider all avenues, including the possibility that whoever held you took your child.”
The vulnerability disappeared once more. “He won’t help me,” she argued. “He and his men are investigating me. They’re not looking for my baby.” The anguish tormenting her trickled beyond the determination she attempted to exhibit. “I’ll have to do this without the help of the authorities.” Another big breath. “And I can’t do it alone.”
Enough. He had allowed this to go too far already. If he didn’t send her away now he would end up agreeing to her request, and that would be a mistake for her and for him. Trouble would soon descend upon Raven’s Cliff once more if he didn’t complete his quest.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He moved to the door. “Go home, Camille. You have the means to find the help you need. Hire a private investigator.” He met her worried gaze once more. “You don’t need me.”
“No.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “I need your help. There is no one else I can depend on.”
Anger flared, burning away the tender emotions he had foolishly experienced. If she needed someone, she should turn to Grant Bridges. After all, she had been ready to marry him before she’d disappeared. He was assuredly the child’s father. Why didn’t she go to him now?
“Go to Bridges.” The words ground from between clenched teeth. Nicholas hated that jealously was reflected in each word, but some part of him was obviously still human. Grant Bridges had once been his best friend. As much as Nicholas wanted to hate him for almost marrying Camille, he had no right. Camille deserved a good man, and Bridges was a good man.
“I can’t.”
Patience thinning, Nicholas gestured to the door once more. “I’m certain he will be glad to help you in any way you need. He was supposed to be your husband as I recall. He faithfully visited you in the hospital.” Nicholas stared out the open door and into the dark night as he said the rest. “Bridges would never shirk his responsibilities. Go to him.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t go to him.” She still made no move toward the door. “You’re the only person who can help me.”
A muscle in his jaw jerking with tension, Nicholas moved in close to her, a blatant act of intimidation. The sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, almost defeated his determination. “It’s only right that the father of the child have a hand in the search. Go to Bridges, Camille. He’s the one you should be talking to right now.”
“But he’s not the father.”
Nicholas’s tense jaw fell slack. Confusion obliterated any possibility of rational thought. “I don’t understand.”
“You have to help me, Nicholas.” She searched his eyes, her own filled with fear and a tangle of other pained emotions. “You’re the only one who can. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the baby.”
He shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”
“The baby isn’t Grant’s.” She stared straight into Nicholas’s eyes, took a deep breath. “It’s yours. You’re the father.”
Chapter Two
Camille Wells shivered uncontrollably as she waited for Nicholas’s answer. She didn’t care that she had just blurted out the fact that he was a father. Or that he looked completely stunned.
Right now, she didn’t care about anything but finding her baby.
He didn’t look directly at her, kept his face turned slightly to the left in an effort to shield that damaged side from view. “You should sit down.” The words were scarcely a whisper, wholly uncharacteristic for the gruff man he had become.
The beast. That was what the villagers called the scarred recluse who had purchased the cottage on the outskirts of town. And like the new owner, the cottage was damaged very nearly beyond repair.
With all that she knew, how could she still feel anything for him?
“I don’t need to sit down,” she argued. “I need to find our baby.” Evidently the reality of what she had told him hadn’t gotten through the first time. She had to make him understand.
He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
Exactly the response she had expected. “We had sex, Nicholas.” She drew in a deep breath, summoned her patience. Time was wasting. They needed a plan. They needed to start looking. Now! “That’s how babies are made, or have you forgotten?” She trembled inside at the memory. What was wrong with her? Her baby was missing!
Another shake of his dark head. “But that was—”
“Nine months, four weeks, two days ago.” Just after dark…at the same place they’d last made love. Only this time she had been the one on the verge of getting married. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. But the pain in her chest, the ache in her very soul left no room for amusement. Her baby was missing. A baby she couldn’t remember giving birth to.
A baby whose first kick she couldn’t recall. A baby she had carried for nine months and she had absolutely no recollection of that time save for the first four weeks. Those precious days between making love with Nicholas and walking arm in arm with her father toward her fiancé, Grant Bridges.
How could she look back on any part of that time as precious when she had cheated on the man she was to marry? They had agreed to abstain from sex the final month before their marriage to make their wedding night even more special. And what had she done?
Grant.