What Logan saw when he looked between her legs had him wanting to run for the phone again. Oh, mercy. The baby’s head was already partially out and that meant they didn’t have time for an ambulance to arrive.
“I think you’re supposed to push,” Logan suggested. Heaven knows why he said that. Maybe he’d heard it on TV. Or maybe this was just some crazy dream brought on by prescription pain meds. Man, he hoped that’s all it was.
The woman obviously didn’t doubt his advice, because she pushed. Hard.
Logan positioned his hands under the baby’s head, and he watched. That long push strained the veins on the woman’s neck, and it also eased the baby out farther. He didn’t just see a head but a tiny face.
Realizing he had to do something, Logan pulled off his terry-cloth robe and laid it between her legs so that the baby wouldn’t land on the cold wood. It was barely in time. As the woman pushed again, the baby’s shoulders and back appeared.
“One more push should do it,” Logan told her.
She made a throaty, raspy sound and bore down, shoving her feet against the porch. Seconds later, the tiny baby slid right into Logan’s hands.
Wow, was his first reaction.
Followed quickly by holy frickin’ hell.
Logan had experienced a lot of crazy and amazing things in his life, but he knew this was going to go to the top of his list.
“It’s a boy,” he let her know.
And that baby boy had some strength because he began to cry at the top of his newborn lungs. Obviously, he wasn’t having any trouble breathing on his own and Logan was thankful for that. He wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if there’d been complications.
Going purely on instinct, Logan bundled the bathrobe around the baby, especially around his head, and pulled him to his chest to keep him warm.
“A boy,” she repeated. She sounded both relieved and exhausted.
The woman pushed again to expel the afterbirth and then tried to sit up. She didn’t make it on her first attempt, but she did it on her second. She reached for the baby. Logan eased him into her arms.
It was strange. He immediately felt a…loss. Probably because he was freezing and the tiny baby had been warm.
The mother looked down at her newborn and smiled. It was a moment he’d remember, all right. Her, sitting there with her fiery red hair haloing her face and shoulders, and the tiny baby snuggled and crying in Logan’s own bathrobe.
“My son,” she whispered.
And then she said something that nearly knocked the breath out of Logan.
“He’s your nephew.”
Oh, man. Oh. Man. It was obviously time for him to talk to his brother.
“I’ll go inside and call an ambulance,” he told her. He began the maneuvering it’d take to get him up. “By the way, we should probably do those introductions now. But you obviously already know that I’m Logan McGrath.”
Because he was eye level with her when he introduced himself, he saw her reaction. It was some big reaction, too. She sucked in her breath, and her mouth began to tremble.
“You can’t be,” she said, her voice trembling, too. “This is Finn McGrath’s house.”
“My brother isn’t here,” he told her. “He’s on rounds at the hospital in a nearby town.” In addition to confusing him, she’d also captured his attention with that comment and her reaction. “Who are you? Are you a friend of my brother?”
She frantically shook her head and put her index finger in the baby’s mouth. He began to suck and stopped crying. “I need a doctor.”
He wanted answers, but they would have to wait. “Come inside,” he insisted. “It’s too cold out here.”
“I don’t think I can get up. Please, just call an ambulance.”
Well, he certainly couldn’t help her get to her feet. He could barely get up himself. So, Logan tried to hurry as much as he could. With lots of pain and effort, he made it back into the living room. All thirteen steps. He dialed 911, reported the incident and requested an ambulance. He also requested that they contact his brother and have him accompany that ambulance to his house.
“Get the baby and mother inside ASAP,” the emergency operator insisted. “It’s dangerous for a newborn to be in the cold.”
Logan agreed with her, hung up, then wondered how the heck he was going to accomplish that with his bum leg. He was more likely to fall than to be able to lift them. Still, he’d have to do it somehow.
With his cane clacking on the floor and his mind racing with possible solutions to his lack of mobility, Logan went back to the porch.
He got there just in time to see that it was empty. No mother. No newborn baby.
Just a lot of blood.
And the blue car was speeding away.
Chapter One
San Antonio, Texas Six weeks later
Mia Crandall peered out the double glass doors of the Wilson Pediatric clinic to make sure there wasn’t anyone suspicious lurking in the parking lot. There were a handful of cars, no one on the adjacent sidewalk and no one who seemed to be waiting for her to come out.
Everything was okay.
Well, everything but the niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach, but Mia had been living with that particular feeling for months now. She was beginning to wonder if it would ever go away.
She looked down at her newborn son, Tanner, and smiled. He was still sleeping, tucked in the warm, soft covers of the baby carrier. For his six-week-old checkup, Mia had dressed him in a new blue one-piece baby outfit and a matching knit cap. Still, it was winter, so she draped another blanket over the top of the carrier so he wouldn’t get cold. She retrieved her pepper-spray keychain from her diaper bag and hurried out into the bitter weather.
It was already past five-thirty and the temperature had plunged since she’d first gone inside nearly an hour earlier. She’d had one of the last appointments of the day. Not accidental, but by design. The winter sun was already low in the sky and Mia hoped the duskiness would prevent her from being easily seen.
The wind slammed into her face, cutting her breath, but she kept up the fast pace until she made it to her car. During the past year, she’d learned to hurry, to stay out of plain sight, to go out as little as possible. It was second nature now.
She strapped Tanner’s carrier into the rear-facing brackets mounted in the backseat and then slipped in behind the steering wheel. She started to turn on the engine, but the sound stopped her.
There was a sharp rap on the passenger’s side window.
Mia’s gaze whipped toward the sound and she saw a man staring at her. But this wasn’t just any ordinary man.
Oh, God. He’d found her.
Choking back a gasp, Mia grabbed for the lock, but it was already too late. Logan McGrath pulled open the passenger’s door and calmly got inside her car as if he had every right to do just that.
He was dressed all in black. Black pants, black pullover shirt and black leather coat. His hair was midnight black, as well, and slightly shorter than it’d been when she had seen him six weeks earlier. Maybe it was all that black attire that made his eyes stand out. They were glacier blue. Cold, hard. Demanding.
She remembered that he’d been hurt the night she had given birth to Tanner. He’d used a cane and could barely walk. But he didn’t seem at a disadvantage now. She couldn’t say the same for herself. He outsized her and no doubt had years of martial arts training.