It felt as if someone had sucked the air right out of his lungs. He didn’t need his memory to understand what that meant.
Rayanne was pregnant.
Rayanne heard the low groan that Blue made, and she whirled around, expecting to see some evidence that the pain had gotten significantly worse.
It wasn’t pain, though, that made him groan.
His mouth was partly open, his attention fastened to her stomach, and she knew the reason for his reaction. He’d clearly noticed that she was pregnant.
Now it was her turn to groan. She hadn’t intended for him to see the bump and had thought it was hidden well enough. Apparently not. It was getting harder and harder to hide it these days.
“Hold on a sec,” she said to her brother Seth, who was waiting on the other end of the line with what no doubt was important info.
Probably not as important as this, though.
“Is that my baby?” Blue came right out and asked.
He’d put one and one together pretty darn fast for a man with supposed memory issues and a concussion.
Rayanne considered lying, only because she didn’t want to deal with the truth right now, but if there was any trace of the real Blue left in his banged-up head, he wouldn’t let go of this.
Plus, she was fed up with this whole lying mess from Blue. It’d be like the pot calling the kettle black if she started telling whoppers, too.
“Yes, the baby’s yours,” she said, holding her hand over the phone so Seth couldn’t hear.
Her brother already knew, of course, but she hadn’t shared the news with a lot of people, only her doctor, mother and siblings. Not the estranged ones, either: Cooper, Colt and Tucker. Nor her father, Roy. Though she was certain that they, too, had noticed her growing belly.
Blue didn’t exactly take the news well. He sucked in a quick breath, nearly choking on it. Rayanne wanted to blast him for his reaction, but the truth was, she’d been stunned, as well, when she’d seen that little plus sign on the home pregnancy test. She’d done her own share of quick breaths and head shakes.
“For the record, this is my baby, and you just happened to be the one who fathered it.” She might have added more of a warning, something along the lines that Blue had zero claim to this child or any other part of her life, but she heard Seth calling out to her from over the phone.
“Can this wait a second?” Rayanne snarled to her brother.
“No,” Seth snarled right back. “I’m sending you a photo of something you need to see. And this isn’t a suggestion—it’s an order. Stay away from McCurdy. His boss is on the way there.”
With that, he hung up before she could tell him that Blue’s boss had already arrived. The quick hang-up also left her to wonder what the heck else had gone wrong now.
“When are you due?” Blue asked.
Rayanne hated to give him any details whatsoever, but it seemed a little petty to withhold something he would figure out, anyway. “In four months.”
Exactly nine months to the day since Blue and she had lost their minds and landed in bed. A big mistake, obviously one he hadn’t been able to handle, because he’d walked out on her—literally. She’d woken up to find him gone. No note on her pillow. No phone calls. No contact of any kind.
Until now, that is.
“Four months,” he repeated, sounding like a man on the verge of losing it.
She ignored him for the time being when there was a little dinging sound from her phone to indicate she had a text. Rayanne looked at it.
And looked again.
Her shoulders tightened even more, and she stared at the liar in the bed.
“What kind of sick game are you playing, huh?” she demanded from Blue.
“No game,” he assured her. “What’s going on? What’s got you so upset now?”
“This has got me upset.” She shoved the phone right in his face, but judging from the way he squinted, his eyes were still too blurry to see the small print.
“Why, Blue?” she practically yelled.
It was loud enough to get the doctor and Caleb running back into the room, but Rayanne didn’t budge even when Caleb tried to push her out of the way.
“He owes me an answer,” Rayanne said through clenched teeth, and she showed the text to Caleb.
“Where’d you find that?” Caleb asked.
She kept her glare on Blue. “It was in his shirt pocket. The one that the medics cut off him when they put him in the ambulance. They gave it to Seth so he could process it for possible evidence.”
“What is it?” Blue demanded.
“It’s a hit order,” Caleb finally said. Rayanne was glad he’d answered the question, because she might have choked on the words.
Blue shook his head. “Who was supposed to die?”
Rayanne’s glare got worse. “Me.”
She let that hang in the air for several long moments. “And the reason you were at the ranch today was because someone hired you to kill me.”
“Not a chance. I wouldn’t have agreed to do a hit on you,” Blue insisted. His intense gaze swung to Caleb. “What do you know about this?”
Caleb lifted his hands, huffed. “Nothing. But then, you’ve been off the radar for five months, remember? I have no idea what you’ve been working on or who you’ve been working with.”
And that said it all.
Maybe this was some kind of unauthorized undercover work, but it didn’t matter. Whatever Blue had gotten involved in, he’d brought the danger to her and the baby. Her family, too, since her sister, brothers and father were all living on the grounds of the ranch.
The doctor checked the clock on the wall. “Those couple of minutes have long been up. Mr. McCurdy just had a bullet dug out of him and lost too much blood. He needs rest.”
“I don’t want to rest.” Blue sat up again. Tried to stand again, too, but this time it was Caleb who stopped him. “I want to find out what’s going on.”
“I’ll do that.” Caleb’s voice didn’t exactly soften, but he helped Blue back onto the bed.
Not lying down.
Blue would have no part of that. Instead he sat on the edge of the mattress. “You really think I’d try to kill you?” Blue asked her.
Rayanne could feel the veins start to pulse in her head. “I don’t know what to think when it comes to you.”
It was impossible to keep the emotion out of that little outburst. The anger. The worry. And yes, the embarrassment. She wasn’t the sort of woman who dropped into bed with a man. Any man. But especially a work partner.
Yet she had.
Once and only once had she broken that rule and slept with Blue.
And look where that’d gotten her.
Nearly killed, pregnant and she had a coat smeared with her ex-lover’s blood. An ex who couldn’t remember diddly-squat, including the little fact that he could have fathered her child.
However, Blue apparently did remember how to be pissed off, because his nostrils flared. “I wouldn’t have killed you,” he repeated.
His voice