The Vicar's Daughter. Betty Neels

      * * *

      SHARON SHOULDN’T HAVE left the baby...because she worried that she might never see him again. But at least she knew that he had a family—a real family. They would protect him and take care of him—not out of obligation but love.

      Mrs. Payne had clearly fallen for her grandson. He wasn’t an inconvenience for her. Or evidence of her son’s mistake.

      That was all Sharon had been to her grandparents—proof of their perfect daughter’s fall from grace. The mistake that had ruined and eventually claimed her life. After Sharon’s young mother had died, they’d taken over responsibility for raising her. Not out of love but out of fear that their friends and colleagues would think less of them if they had given her up for adoption like they had once urged their daughter to do. Even if she hadn’t overheard their heated debate about whether or not to keep her, she would have figured out how they’d felt about her.

      “You should have stayed with Ethan,” Parker said as if he’d read her mind. Or maybe he had seen the fear and doubt on her face.

      But darkness had fallen. And he had shut off the car so not even the dash lights illuminated the interior. He had also parked down the street from the judge’s house but put some distance between the car and the lamps that burned outside the gates.

      Then he admonished himself. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

      “You had to,” she reminded him, “or you wouldn’t have gotten past the security system.” He had tried calling the judge, but she hadn’t answered any of her phones, not the one at the house or her office or her cell. Brenda either wasn’t home or wasn’t in any condition to let them in. Panic pressed on Sharon’s lungs. What if something had happened to Ethan’s mother?

      He had family that would take care of him. But Sharon had taken care of him for the judge; the Paynes wouldn’t need her help like Brenda had. She would no longer have any connection to the child she had come to love as if he was her own.

      Parker groaned. “That damn security system...”

      Payne Protection had installed the high-tech system that didn’t use codes but fingerprint recognition. Sharon was surprised that Parker’s print wasn’t able to deactivate it. But then, Brenda hadn’t wanted him to have access to her house because she hadn’t wanted him to know about his son.

      She had wanted a child but no husband. No family. While Sharon respected the woman, she hadn’t understood her desire for a baby. All Sharon had ever wanted was a career—one as successful as Judge Foster’s. But then she’d met Ethan and had fallen for him.

      “I still shouldn’t have brought you,” Parker said.

      “You would have had to cut off my finger, then.” She shuddered at the repulsive thought.

      Parker chuckled. “I think my brother’s new in-laws might be able to find a less gruesome way to bypass it. I doubt there’s a security system that a Kozminski can’t compromise.”

      “But they would need time to do that, and I haven’t heard from the judge in two weeks,” Sharon reminded him.

      “And that’s out of the ordinary for her?” he asked.

      Not wanting to criticize the judge, she hesitated. “She’s always very busy. But usually she would just have me take Ethan back to my place if she wanted us out of the way. But this time she wanted us out of town for those two weeks,” she reminded him in case he still suffered short-term memory loss, “and she wanted me to use cash for everything—for the hotel and for food.”

      “She didn’t want anyone to be able to track you down,” Parker said. “She was hiding you and Ethan. So she must have known you were in danger.”

      Sharon shook her head. “I wasn’t in danger before those two weeks. I wasn’t the reason that she sent me and Ethan away.”

      “But you work for her and she is always in danger,” Parker said. “You could have gotten caught in the cross fire.”

      “I’m kind of invisible. People don’t usually notice me.” Ignoring the sting to her pride, she admitted, “You obviously didn’t notice me since you keep claiming to have never seen me before.”

      “I claimed to not have slept with you,” he clarified, “which is true.”

      Maybe it was true, but he made it sound impossible. Of course, it probably was. “And that you never saw me before, and that’s not true.”

      “When didn’t I notice you?” he asked.

      “When you were Brenda’s bodyguard,” she said. “I was working in her office then.” Even then she had done little law clerking and more coffee-and lunch-getting. “I saw you a few times.” Those times had admittedly been brief, but his ridiculously handsome image had lingered in her mind.

      His eyes glinted in the darkness as he stared at her. “No, I would have remembered....”

      “Maybe it’s the concussion,” she said. But she knew it was her being unremarkable. She had learned long ago to be unobtrusive and quiet, but she’d still felt like such an inconvenience and disappointment to her grandparents.

      He touched his head. “Maybe the concussion is why I brought you with me when I should have left you with Logan for protection.”

      “And you would get into the estate...how?” she wondered.

      “The Kozminskis...”

      “Won’t be able to deactivate the system that quickly,” she pointed out. “Do you really want to wait any longer to talk to her?”

      Even in the darkness, she noticed the muscle twitch in his cheek. He had to be furious with Brenda for having tricked him into helping her conceive Ethan and then for keeping the little boy from him.

      His voice was gruff when he replied. “No.”

      Then he opened the driver’s door. He had done something to the dome light because it didn’t come on, leaving her in the darkness.

      She fumbled for the handle on her side, but as she did, the door opened. He wrapped his fingers around her arm and helped her from the car.

      “I’m taking you with me,” he said. “But you need to stay close to me.”

      Her breath caught at his words. She had no problem sticking close to his side—for warmth and protection. His tall, muscular body blocked some of the cold wind that whipped at her loose hair and penetrated the thin material of her suit. And his gun, clutched tightly in his free hand, offered some security as fear chilled Sharon even more than the wind.

      Sharon was tall but she had to quicken her pace to match Parker’s long strides down the street. As they stopped at the gate, she drew in a quick breath before reaching for the security panel. But Parker caught her hand, holding her back from touching it.

      “What’s wrong?” she asked. Her skin tingled and warmed from the contact with his. He didn’t let her go, continuing to hold her hand.

      Didn’t he want to go inside? Hadn’t that been the point of coming to Brenda’s estate?

      Parker glanced around the area, his gaze scanning the street before he peered through the wrought-iron gate at the dark mansion on the other side.

      “I wish I had Cujo,” he murmured.

      “Cujo?” Just how badly had he been concussed that he was longing for a fictional dog?

      “My sister-in-law’s former K9 German shepherd,” he explained. “He’s great at sniffing out bombs.”

      “You think there could be one inside?” she asked, turning her attention to that large brick residence. “But nobody could have gotten past security.”

      He studied the panel now, as if trying to determine if it had been tampered with. Still holding her hand, he