The Vicar's Daughter. Betty Neels

noticed...unless he was in the mood for the repressed-librarian type. And maybe he was in the mood now because he was tempted to see what she would look like with her hair down...

      “My name is Sharon Wells,” she told him, her soft voice questioning as if she wondered if he remembered it.

      As if he should...

      He moved his head to shake it, but even the slight movement sent pain radiating throughout his skull. He groaned.

      “I should get someone,” she said again with a nervous glance toward the hall. “You need help.”

      “No.” He already had too many people trying to help him, trying to fix a problem he must have somehow created himself. The hit was on him—no one else. Who had he pissed off enough to want him dead?

      Cooper was wrong about the jealous husband. Parker had never messed around with a married woman and never would; there were lines even he refused to cross.

      “I don’t need anyone,” he said.

      Now she glanced down at the baby she bounced gently on her hip. His arms flailed, and his chubby little face flushed with happiness. Even though they looked nothing alike, it was as if the child was a part of her because they were so connected.

      “Sharon Wells...” He repeated her name but it didn’t sound familiar even on his own lips. She wasn’t Doug’s or Terry’s wife; he knew their names, their faces, which he would never be able to look at again without a rush of guilt and shame. If Sharon Wells was a relative of one of them, she must’ve been a distant one, because he’d met most of their families, too.

      He pushed up from the bed and stood on legs that were embarrassingly shaky until he locked his knees. He wasn’t staying overnight in the hospital, not when he had a killer to track down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”

      She sighed. “I hoped you would, that you might...”

      “Why?” he asked.

      “Because it would’ve made this easier if you were expecting me,” she replied.

      Expecting her? He hadn’t been expecting anything else—not the bombs or the shootings to be meant for him. Why would he have expected her?

      “Make what easier?” he asked.

      Was she a hit woman? A hired assassin?

      He glanced around for his holster and weapon, but they, like his clothes, were nowhere in sight. Neither was any of his family.

      He’d thought they weren’t going to leave him alone...

      “What I have to tell you,” she said. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and continued, “That this is your son.”

      He focused on the baby again. The little guy had fuzzy black hair and very bright blue eyes. The kid looked exactly like old baby pictures of him and Logan and Cooper. The baby certainly could have been a Payne. He could have been Parker’s...

      Maybe he did need longer to recover from the concussion because standing was so much of a strain that his head grew light, and his knees gave out. His already banged-up body struck the floor. Hard. The last thing he heard, before oblivion claimed him, was her scream.

       Chapter Two

      She shouldn’t have screamed, but his falling was such a shock that it slipped out. And started a commotion. Ethan screamed, too—his was high-pitched and bloodcurdling as he reacted to her fear. And people rushed into the room.

      These were the people she had passed in the hall, the people posted like guards outside his room. But given the police reports she had seen about the explosion and the previous attempts on his brothers’ lives, she understood the need for security. Yet they had all let her just walk past them. They had asked her no questions; they had only stared...at Ethan, their eyes round with shock.

      They had immediately known what it had taken Parker much longer to realize—that she carried his son.

      “What did you do to him?” one of his brothers angrily asked her as he crouched next to Parker on the floor. He looked so much like him that he could have been a twin. There were two men that good-looking in the world? It wasn’t fair.

      Then a third one rushed forward to help lift Parker back onto the bed. Were they actually triplets? This man’s black hair was shorter—in a military brush cut, but other than that he looked so much like the other two it was uncanny. And Ethan looked like a miniature version of all of them. He must have been the spitting image of what they had looked like as babies.

      Parker shrugged off his brothers’ helping hands and stood up again, steadily, as if his strength had already returned. And given the way his heavily muscled arms stretched the sleeves of his hospital gown, he was strong.

      “I’m all right,” he assured his concerned family. “I just tried to get up too fast.”

      An older woman tore her concerned gaze from Parker to stare at the baby. “Or was it the shock?” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for one of Ethan’s flailing chubby fists. When she touched him, he calmed down, his howls trailing away to soft hiccups. “Of finding out you’re a daddy?”

      Parker shook his head then flinched at the motion. “Mom,” he exclaimed with shock and exasperation. “I am not a daddy.” He glanced at one of his brothers. “Is he yours?”

      Of the group of people who’d rushed back into the room, a tawny-haired woman laughed while a blond-haired man snorted derisively.

      Parker’s brother’s eyes widened in horror, and he glanced from Ethan to her. “I’ve never seen her before.”

      “Neither have I.”

      Sharon flinched. They had met a few times, albeit a while ago. How did he not remember her at all?

      “You took one heck of a hit on the head,” his brother reminded him. “The doctor said you might have some memory loss because of the concussion.”

      “Short-term memory loss,” Parker clarified. “That means I might forget what happened minutes or hours ago, not months ago.”

      Sharon should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t remember a woman like her. She had spent her life trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, so there was no wonder that so few people ever noticed her.

      But then the older woman glanced up at Sharon, her brown eyes full of warmth and wonder. Her hair was auburn, with no traces of gray, so she didn’t look old enough to have three thirtysomething-old sons, let alone a grandson. “How old is he?”

      “Nine months.”

      Ethan turned back to her and reached up his free hand toward her hair. Because he loved to pull it, she always bound it tightly and high on the top of her head. But a tendril must have slipped out of the knot because he found something to yank, the fine hairs tugging on her nape. She flinched again over the jolt of pain.

      Mrs. Payne chuckled. “The boys always pulled my hair, too,” she said. “May I hold him?” She held out her arms as she asked, and the baby boy leaned toward her, almost falling into her embrace.

      Panic flashed through Sharon at how easily he had been taken from her. That was what would happen when these people learned the truth. She would be cut out of Ethan’s life as though she had never been a part of it.

      “Mom.” Parker drew the older woman’s attention briefly from the baby she held with such awe. “Can you bring him out into the hall?” He turned toward the others. “And the rest of you leave with her. I need to talk to Ms. Wells alone.”

      Sharon’s panic increased, making her pulse race. She lifted her arms to reach for Ethan, to take him back, but the woman was already walking out the door with the sweet baby. And Parker grabbed her outstretched arms, holding her back, as all the others left.