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And once she did?
He sighed at the thought. Once she did, would she still believe she loved him?
He highly doubted it.
TWELVE
Brogan stood next to the water, watching as bass jumped and frolicked playfully in the first mo
rning light. It wasn’t the bass that held his attention, though, any more than it was the beauty of the fog rising from the water and twisting around the trees growing along the bank. It was the unfamiliar emotions twisting and churning in his chest that held his attention.
He was thirty-four years old; there shouldn’t be emotions he hadn’t felt before, but these feelings were completely alien to him.
The possessiveness he knew and he understood. He wasn’t a man who appreciated or practiced casual sex. One-night stands had never been his thing. It had always been his intention to develop a relationship with Eve. It had just been his intention to complete this operation first.
He’d never meant to drag her into whatever the hell was going on in the Lake Cumberland area. And it had never, ever been his intention to risk the creation of a child.
Rubbing at the back of his neck, he paced at the edge of the lake, the sound of the water lapping at the bank joining the soft, early morning symphony as the memory of spilling his release inside Eve tormented his mind.
It had happened only one other time in his life, when he had been much younger. The condom hadn’t ripped with such force, and he hadn’t known the pleasure of finding his release as his bare cock sank inside the heated depths of his lover’s pussy.
Rather, the small tear at the tip of the condom had allowed a small amount of his release free.
Brogan hadn’t been ready to be a parent, but he’d accepted the responsibility of it. The day his fiancée had taken the home pregnancy test four weeks later, his heart had melted at the thought of their child when he’d seen the positive result.
They hadn’t discussed it. She had never mentioned not wanting the child, but neither had she mentioned plans to abort the baby. Until he’d returned home from the law enforcement academy after officially being offered a position in the Department of Homeland Security.
He’d bought a teddy bear for the child, and had made plans to build a house on a piece of property outside his hometown. When he’d stepped in the door of the apartment Candy met him with a happy squeal as she threw herself in his arms. Pulling back, she’d looked at the teddy bear that had fallen at his feet and laughed. She wasn’t ready for a child to blow her figure out of shape, and she definitely wasn’t ready to settle down to the ties of motherhood.
And Brogan had never forgiven her.
The moment the admission of the abortion had slipped past her lips, he was finished with her. He had felt grief wrap around his heart, felt the guilt and shame of it sear his soul. Their child had been innocent of its creation, and she hadn’t been able to give nine months of her life to giving it birth?
He would have taken the child and raised it himself. Hell, he would have paid her to have the baby.
He’d broken their engagement immediately. As she cried, screamed, pretended confusion, and then raged in fury that it was her choice, he had packed.
The child hadn’t just been hers; that baby had been his, too. It should have never been just her choice. He should have had a choice as well. Their child should have had a choice, he had raged at her as he left her life and never looked back.
What would Eve do? he wondered. Would she kill their child or would she shelter it? Could he take the chance that she would at least discuss the options with him?
He was torn, and holding the knowledge of what had happened the night before bothered him more as he thought of it. He’d raged at Candy for not giving him a choice in their child’s birth, yet here he was, holding the truth of a possible conception from Eve, fearing the same result. What he was doing was no better than what Candy had done. He was refusing to give her a choice.
As the internal debate raged inside him, the muffled sound of a boat’s motor moving closer to the cabin reached him. The narrow water lane leading to the hidden cabin wasn’t one that could be accidentally taken. The safeguards set at the entrance of the tributary, the warnings placed farther up it, combined with strategically placed cables stretching across several points, the metal signs attached to them warning boaters back. It normally turned innocent curiosity seekers back.
Whoever his visitors were, they weren’t there by accident. Pulling his weapon from where he’d tucked it at the small of his back, Brogan stepped behind the huge oak growing close to the water. From here, he could identify any threat and make his way back to the cabin before the boat could reach the beach. He would have time to pull Eve out if he had to, and to ensure her protection.
As the boat came into view, clearing the fog, the trolling motor easing it through the water, Brogan grimaced in irritation. This was definitely one of those uncalled-for occurrences in his life.
At the controls was Eli. Riding in the back of the expensive bass boat was Jed, cradling an automatic rifle. Sitting cool and comfortable in the seat next to Elijah was Chatham Bromleah Doogan III, director of operations and all-around fucking bastard.
There were opinions that he and Timothy Cranston were cut from the same cloth.
That wasn’t exactly true. Cranston had a heart. He had compassion. Doogan had neither. Brogan was convinced pure ice water ran through his veins. That or oil. All good robots had to run on something.
As the boat pulled up to the small dock and Jed jumped out to secure it, Brogan stepped from behind the tree and strolled out to the boardwalk that led from the beach to the dock farther out in the water.
What the hell were they doing there cramping his day?
