The idea of this man wandering around her yard—snooping for evidence so he could rip her daughter from her life infuriated her. Her hands fisted on her hips. “You were in my yard, spying on us?”
He didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “I saw no reason to upset you unnecessarily. Keely was only one of many children we were investigating.”
Stef wanted to claw his iceberg heart out. He was demolishing her world—and her heart—with one crushing sentence after another. “This is insane. You’re not taking my baby from me!” She faltered, blindsided by a memory of the second night she’d spent in the hospital with Keely.
She remembered awakening to the sound of her hospital door closing. Oh, God!
Full-blown panic gripped her heart. What if the person who’d entered her room hadn’t been a nurse? What if the Hollywood Goliath was actually telling the truth?
“I want other tests done at a lab of my choosing,” she snapped, clutching the arm of her chair for support.
“Of course. No one wants to make a mistake with a matter this serious.”
She hadn’t expected him to agree to that demand, which convinced her this was no joke. She lurched to her feet. Her sister Lorraine worked in a law firm as a paralegal. She could help her find a lawyer. “I’m calling a lawyer.”
He stood up, too, towering over her. For a second the serious intensity of his expression shifted to something that bordered on genuine sympathy. She had the distinct impression he was about to touch her, but then he locked his expression up tight and threw away the key.
“I’d rather you not do that,” he said.
“Why? Because I’ll discover this is some scam? I think it’s time you left, Mr. Halloran.”
His jaw flexed into an intractable bulkhead, his mouth a flat line. He removed a paper from his pocket. “Read this. It’s the ransom note from the kidnappers.”
Stef heard time throb in her temples like a hammer striking a stake as she made herself take the note from his strong brown fingers. Fingers that were strong enough to take her baby from her. But he’d have to kill her first!
She read the note, each terrifying word.
Riana Collingwood is alive. She is a bright, pretty child with her father’s eyes and her mother’s smile. Prepare a five million dollar cash ransom and await further instruction.
Five million dollars! Oh, God, that wasn’t good.
Neither was the last line.
Involve the police this time and lose her forever.
Stef started to hyperventilate.
The man who had just destroyed her life took her elbow, his hand hot as the devil’s touch. “Hey, sit back down. Now bend forward and put your head between your knees, okay?
“Just breathe.”
She did what he ordered, even though what she really wanted to do was to smack him.
He sat on the arm of the chair and she felt the tentative stroke of his hand on her back like a zap of electricity. “I wouldn’t advise bringing a third party into this now. It could put your real child’s life in danger.”
She sat bolt upright, still gulping for air.
“I’m assuming that the hair samples the kidnapper sent belong to your real daughter. We’ll have to do tests immediately to confirm that. Regardless, the Foundation will cooperate fully with the kidnapper’s demand and pay the ransom.” He rubbed a slow circle that burned into her skin and made her forget all about breathing. “There’s no kind or gentle way to say this—if the kidnapper realizes he has the wrong child, he could kill your daughter.”
Stef glared at him, his Hollywood-handsome face inches from hers. She’d heard all she could take. Tears welled in her eyes. God, somewhere in Mitch Halloran there had to lurk a touch of humanity. He’d tried to soothe her when she’d started to hyperventilate and he was stroking her back, infusing her with the iron-core strength of his hand.
“Please, can’t you just go away? The Collingwoods are dead. Just say it’s a mistake. No one will know. Mistakes happen all the time in labs, don’t they?”
His cobalt eyes flickered like shadows in the night, indicating he was considering her request. Her heart filled with hope as she prayed he’d relent.
“Is that what you really want me to do, Mrs. Shelton?”
His voice dipped with scorn. “Just go away and forget about your real daughter, who doesn’t have red rubber boots or a real mommy to take her trick or treating?”
Fury gripped her at his callousness. She tried to shove him off the arm of the chair. “You bastard.”
To her shock, he grabbed her in an attempt to gain his balance and landed on top of her in the chair, his chest pressed against hers, his nose inches from her face. She could feel the steely hardness of his muscled body and smell the scents of citrus and sea salt on his skin.
Even his teeth were Hollywood perfect. “You’re not thinking straight,” he said bluntly. “I saw you in the yard with Keely. I know if you thought you had a child out there, you’d move heaven and earth to get her back.”
Stef felt hot tears slip onto her face. Her stomach knotted as she tried to imagine the face of the little girl the kidnapper had described, who’d come from her womb. Yes, in her mother’s heart she desperately wanted her child. But all she could see was Keely’s face—the beloved little girl whom she’d fed and changed, and whose voice was the sound of happiness. She elbowed Mitch in the ribs. “Get off me!”
Oh, God, this wasn’t happening!
“Are you going to take Keely from me?” she demanded as he levered himself off her.
Stef saw the stark truth in his face before he could shutter his expression.
“That’s not my job. My concern is finding out whether the child being held is your daughter and getting her back safely. I’ll need a DNA sample from you. And I’ll need something that might have your husband’s DNA on it.”
“Like what? I have some of Brad’s things stored away that I thought Keely might find comforting to have,” she said, trying to bend her mind to comprehend the sickening thought that her flesh-and-blood child had been in the care of kidnappers for the past thirty months. Her heart jerked. Had her child been neglected? Or abused?
“Did you keep a jacket or a ball cap? Something that may have come in contact with his neck, wrist or forehead is more likely to have his DNA on it.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” She forced herself to stand and brush past his towering frame. On stiff legs, she marched to the alcove to get Keely. She wasn’t leaving Mitch Halloran alone with her daughter.
Her daughter. A sob clawed up her throat. Even if another DNA test proved Keely really was the Collingwood heir, she couldn’t accept for a moment that Keely wouldn’t be in her life forever. As soon as this was over, she’d get a lawyer. Surely no judge in the country would take a baby away from the woman who’d raised it if the biological parents were dead?
But this isn’t any baby, insinuated a doom-and-gloom voice in her mind that sounded remarkably like Mitch Halloran’s blunt-edged baritone. Her sunshiney daughter who loved to dance and sing and bake cookies was the Collingwood heir—the heir to one of the largest family fortunes in the United States.
Who was she kidding?
Stef stopped in the arched doorway to the alcove, overwhelmed by the battle she was up against. Keely, the delightful