The Agent's Secret Baby. Marie Ferrarella

I?” she said aloud.

      Tessa, dead to the world only a heartbeat ago, raised her head and looked at Eve with deep brown eyes. The next second, seeing that there was no emergency, Tessa went back to sleep.

      Leaning over, Eve ran her hand over the dog’s head, struggled to bank down her agitation. Petting her dog usually helped calm her.

      But not tonight.

      Tonight, the agitation refused to leave, refused to budge.

      Maybe it was because tonight was Halloween, she thought. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

      She sighed again.

      Adam Smythe had been almost stereotypically handsome, not to mention the last word in “sexy.” Added to that he was charming and he had taken her breath away from the very first moment she’d walked into his rare, first-editions bookstore. The moment he had looked her way, she’d felt as if an arrow had been shot straight into her heart.

      At the time she’d been looking for a special birthday present for her father. Warren Walters loved everything that had ever come from Mark Twain’s pen. What she’d wound up getting, along with a fairly well-preserved first edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, was a prepackaged heartache.

      Oh, Adam hadn’t looked like a heartache at first or even at tenth glance. He looked like a drop-dead gorgeous specimen of manhood who, given that this was California, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed man had said he was just running the bookstore until that big acting break came that would propel him into being the country’s next great heartthrob.

      To add to this image, Adam was soft-spoken, slightly reserved, and he exuded such a powerful aura of authority that he’d instantly made her feel safe.

      Eve laughed now, shaking her head at her incredible naiveté.

      Talk about getting the wrong signal.

      There had been nothing safe about Adam. He made her lose control in a heartbeat. Some of the boys in high school, and then college, she recalled, had referred to her as the Ice Princess.

      “I certainly melted fast enough with him,” she told her faithful, sleeping companion. Tessa didn’t even stir this time.

      One dinner.

      One dinner had been all it had taken and she was ready to completely surrender her self-imposed code of ethics and abandon the way she’d behaved for her entire adult life without so much as a backward glance. When Adam had leaned over to brush back a loose strand of hair from her cheek, she turned into a furnace. Raging heat flashed through her limbs. Through her entire body.

      And then he’d kissed her.

      God, when Adam kissed her, she’d felt as if she were literally having an out-of-body experience.

      And suddenly, without warning, Adam had drawn away and she came crashing down to earth like a speeding meteorite. A very confused meteorite.

      She was accustomed to men being the aggressors, to having to somehow diplomatically hold them at bay without hurting their feelings or their egos. But this had been the other way around. Adam had been the one who had pulled back. And she had been the one who ultimately pushed.

      Very simply, there’d been something about Adam that had turned her inside out. Their night together was the stuff of fantasies.

      And then, just like that, all her thoughts centered around him. She couldn’t wait until the next time they were together, couldn’t wait to hear the sound of his voice, to catch a whiff of the scent that was the combination of his shaving cream mixing with his aftershave.

      Adam had become her sun and anytime she wasn’t around him, she felt as if she’d been plunged into soul-consuming darkness.

      What a crock.

      How could she, a heretofore intelligent woman, have been so blind, so dumb?

      Smitten teenage girls—very young smitten teenage girls—felt this way, not a woman who practiced veterinarian medicine, who was a responsible, levelheaded and dedicated person.

      Except that she had.

      Into every paradise, a snake must slither and her paradise was no different. It occurred shortly after the first time—the only time—that they made love.

      Made love.

      The phrase lingered now in her brain like a haunting refrain.

      Even today, knowing what she knew, it was still hard not to feel the excitement pulsing through her body at the mere memory of those precious, exquisite moments she’d spent lost in Adam’s arms, in his embrace. Even though it seemed impossible, he was simultaneously the most gentle, caring, yet passionate lover ever created. And he had been hers.

      Looking back, she could honestly say, if only to herself, that they hadn’t made love. They had made poetry.

      Remembering the moment, Eve felt her body aching for him.

      “Stop it,” she upbraided herself.

      Tessa raised her head, this time quickly, as if she was ready to dart away, afraid that she’d caused her mistress some displeasure. Displeasure that brought punishment with it.

      Eve instantly felt guilty. “No, not you, girl,” she said in a soothing voice, running her hand over the dog’s head and stroking it. “I’m just talking to myself.” She looked at the dog and smiled sadly. “Too bad you can’t talk, then maybe my thoughts wouldn’t keep getting carried away like this.”

      Calmed, Tessa lowered her head again, resting it on her paws. She was asleep in less than a minute, this time snoring gently.

      Eve smiled at her, shaking her head. “I love you the way you are, but I wish you were human.”

      She craved companionship, someone to communicate with. But her father was gone. He had died less than a month after she’d come back home. Heartbroken, she’d handled all the funeral arrangements. Angela and her family had come down on the day of the funeral and had left by its end. Angela had left a trail of excuses in her wake. Eve didn’t blame her. Angela and her family had a life to get back to.

      It was several days after her father’s funeral, as she wandered around the empty house, looking for a place for herself, that she finally had to admit what she had been trying desperately to ignore. She was pregnant.

      At least her father had been spared that, Eve thought, forever trying to look on the bright side of things.

      Eve knew he would have been there for her, supporting her—unlike her sister—no matter what her decision regarding the baby’s future. But somewhere deep down inside, Eve was fairly certain her father would have felt disappointed. He’d always thought of her as perfect.

      Again, she shook her head, her sad smile barely moving the corners of her mouth. “‘Fraid not, Dad. So far from perfect, it would boggle your mind.”

      Just then, she felt a sharp pain. The baby was kicking. Again. It had been restless all day.

      Probably tired of its closed quarters, Eve thought. Maybe he or she was claustrophobic, the way she was.

      Without thinking, Eve lifted one hand from the keyboard and placed it over the swell of her abdomen, massaging the area that was the origin of the pain this time, even though it did no good.

      Was it her imagination, or was she growing bigger and bigger by the hour?

      “Won’t be long now, baby,” she murmured to her stomach.

      She had a little more than two weeks to go. Part of her couldn’t wait to finally have this all over with, to give birth and meet this little person who had turned her world completely upside down. The other part of her was content to let this state continue. She was terrified of the delivery. Not of what she imagined would be the pain, she’d helped birth enough animals to know exactly