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Last Monday night he couldn’t have imagined this scenario. With his son missing, his thoughts had gone so dark he’d come close to losing his mind. But Claire wouldn’t let him sink into that black void. She loved Jeremy, too, and was determined they would find him. That woman never gave up. There was no one else like her.
Last year when she’d shown up to be interviewed for the nanny position, Jeremy had felt an immediate connection. Over the past nine months it had grown until the two of them had formed an unbreakable bond. Many times people thought she was his mother, and she had to tell them otherwise.
Vic had felt an immediate connection, too. Claire Ames was intelligent, vibrant and had a natural beauty no man would be immune to. In the beginning it had worried him because his attraction to her had been instantaneous. He’d feared he might not be able to keep his distance. But since she never overstepped her boundaries, they’d managed to live under the same roof and provide the stability Jeremy needed.
“Hey, Dad! Come and play with Daken!”
Jarred from his personal thoughts, he headed toward them and gave Jeremy a hug. “Hey, Nate. How are you?” He tousled his head of blond hair.
“Good. That horse is so cute. I wish I had one.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come over here anytime and play with him.”
The horse had walked over to Claire, who was still sitting. He kept butting his nose against her arm. She laughed and rubbed his head. Vic hunkered down to run a hand over Daken’s back.
To his wonder a pair of crystalline gray eyes swept over Vic and lingered instead of looking away. She seemed to like what she saw. The feeling was mutual. Her wide smile, the lovely curves of her body were so enticing he was in danger of forgetting they weren’t alone. Desire, swift and powerful, rushed through him.
To counteract her spell on him, he rolled over on his stomach. Pretty soon he could feel the horse’s nose nudging him. The boys roared with laughter.
“Dad, Daken thinks you’re playing a game.”
Vic was glad that was what his son thought. He lay still while the horse continued to find ways to make him move. Claire broke into laughter. “You’d better do something soon, Jim, or that horse is going to walk on your back.”
“Who’s Jim?” Jeremy wanted to know.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Claire answered him. “While your dad and I were looking for you, we pretended to be spies and wore sunglasses.”
“You did? What was your name?” Vic’s son was a quick study.
“It was Elaine,” Vic stated and got to his feet. “Whenever we asked people questions, we told them we were Jim and Elaine from an insurance company investigating a case.”
“That’s awesome,” both boys said in unison.
“Elaine was the awesome one. We were trying to find out why the man who kidnapped you had driven to Buda with his two friends. She got this idea to look up his name in an old high school year book at the high school to find out if his family lived there.”
“Did he?” At this point Nate was as fascinated as Jeremy.
“No,” Claire said, getting to her feet. “But we found a picture of one of his friends in the yearbook, and your dad tracked down his girlfriend, who was that lady at the house where they’d taken you. I wish you could have seen your father barge into that trailer and bring you out.”
Nate’s eyes had rounded. “Whoa.”
She smiled. “Whoa is right.”
“Then Elaine
drove us home, and I bet she drove 100 miles an hour to get us there.”
She darted Vic an amused glance. “Not quite that fast.”
“Close,” he countered with a grin.
“You’d make a good Texas Ranger, Claire.” This from Nate.
“No, no. There’s only one Ranger in thi—in the Malone family.”
The near slip caused Vic’s heart to skip a beat. The three of them were a family.
“Claire’s a chemist,” Jeremy muttered, not sounding the least bit happy about it. He looked up at Vic. “Can women be Rangers?”
