And Babies Make Four

  And Babies Make Four is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1996 by Ruth Owen

  Excerpt from Trying to Score by Toni Aleo copyright © 2013 by Toni Aleo.

  Excerpt from Long Simmering Spring by Elisabeth Barrett copyright © 2013 by Elisabeth Barrett.

  Excerpt from Scarlet Lady by Sandra Chastain copyright © 1997 by Sandra Chastain.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  And Babies Make Four was originally published in paperback by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. in 1996.

  Cover Design: Derek Walls

  Cover Photo: OLJ Studio/Shutterstock

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82218-5

  www.ReadLoveSwept.com

  v3.1

  DEDICATION

  To Connie Canright, for her endless energy and unfailing encouragement,

  and to Geralyn Williams, for her sympathetic ear and voodoo prayers.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Toni Aleo’s Trying to Score

  Excerpt from Elisabeth Barrett’s Long Simmering Spring

  Excerpt from Sandra Chastain’s Scarlet Lady

  ONE

  Paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Dr. Noel Revere thought as she shielded her eyes from the high-noon sun and watched the chartered plane climb into the clouds. She saw the flash of its silver wings, signaling its irrevocable departure. She lowered her hand and sighed. There goes finger sandwiches, The Wall Street Journal, little bottles of liquor.…

  She swept her gaze earthward and looked around the strip of cleared ground known optimistically as the St. Michelle International Airport. The entire complex consisted of the “runway,” a tattered wind sock, and a dilapidated hangar that hadn’t seen a repair since World War II. The only soul in sight was an almost immobile man sitting on a three-legged stool near the hangar’s open door, lazily swatting flies. Once again she glanced heavenward, pulling at the high collar of her fashionable, but stiflingly hot, Dior blouse. There goes TV, air-conditioning, indoor plumbing, civilization.…

  “Hell,” she grumbled as the speck of the plane vanished from sight. But, hell or not, she was stuck with the situation. She’d taken on the assignment after Dr. Bob Harvey, Sheffield Industries’ original choice for this project, had sprained his ankle in a Little League softball game. Personally, Noel thought it was highly suspicious that Bob had tripped over the pint-sized first baseman right after he learned just how primitive the island’s accommodations really were.

  The last time Boston-bred Noel had braved the wilderness she’d been eleven—she’d spent two days at a Girl Scout jamboree and the next week in bed recovering from a nasty case of diarrhea and poison oak. Her idea of “roughing it” was a Holiday Inn, but she’d agreed to take Harvey’s place at the request of her boss and best friend, Katrina Sheffield-Fagen. Make that her former best friend. Best friends didn’t talk you into leaving your air-conditioned Miami condominium to spend ten days on a cloyingly humid, practically deserted Caribbean island, researching a theory that had as much chance of panning out as proving the moon was made of green cheese—

  Beep.

  The small, plaintive sound came from a pile of baggage and computer hardware sitting beside her on the sunbaked runway. Guiltily, she realized she wasn’t the only one feeling the heat. Poor babies. Their circuits must be frying. Dammit, where is that guide Sheffield hired? He was supposed to meet the plane.

  She wiped her dark, sweat-damp bangs from her frown-creased forehead, thinking wistfully of her luxury condominium just north of Miami, with its cabanas and Olympic-sized swimming pool. If she hadn’t let herself get talked into this assignment she could be there now, sitting by the pool sipping a frozen strawberry daiquiri with Hayward and her other friends. Now that was paradise. But she couldn’t afford wishful thinking—not with Einstein and PINK baking like Maine lobsters in the West Indies sun. She gave the jumble of equipment a gentle pat, then hurried off toward the hangar and the only living soul at this sorry excuse for an airport.

  She went up to the man sitting beside the hangar’s entrance. “Excuse me, have you seen a guide named Sam Donovan? He was supposed to meet me here.”

  The old man glanced indifferently in her direction. His face was as worn and weathered as a piece of old leather, ugly beyond belief, but his dark eyes sparkled with the keenness of a star-studded night. They wrapped her with a subtle magic, making her think of cool trade winds, lazy mornings that lasted all day, and rosy sunsets that slid gradually into soft indigo nights. The slow pace of paradise unsettled her to the depths of her industrious Puritan soul.

  Apparently it didn’t unsettle the old man one bit. He turned away without a word and went back to swatting flies.

  I guess I can take that as a no. “Well then, could you help me with my computers? I’ve got to get them out of the sun before their circuits are damaged.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet, extracting first a ten, and then a twenty. “I’ll pay you. See? American dollars.”

  She waved the bills under his nose, as if the odor could attract him. She was offering a princely sum, and his threadbare shirt and loose, patched pants showed that he could clearly use the money. But the man didn’t even glance at the bills. Instead he ignored her, continuing his leisurely task of batting flies—apparently finding them only slightly more annoying than he did her.

  Noel’s jaw tightened. Her reserved and socially prominent grandmother had trained her to keep the temper she’d inherited from her Italian father in check, but the sun and sweat had melted away much of that hard-learned restraint. “Look, mister, I’m not asking for the world—just a few minutes of your time. If thirty dollars isn’t enough, I’ll pay more. What the hell do you want?”

  “It’s just a guess,” a deep voice behind her commented, “but I think he’s looking for a ‘please.’ ”

  Noel spun around in alarm, an alarm that increased as her gaze slammed into a pair of the bluest, fiercest eyes she’d ever seen. Hurricanes and tidal waves were in those eyes—the violence that was the flip side of paradise. Instinctively she stepped back, pulling her own eyes away from the overwhelming power of his gaze. She caught a brief impression of hard, unforgiving features, a strong chin covered by several days’ worth of stubble, and shaggy hair streaked gold by the sun. He looked like the kind of man who’d kill her for thirty dollars. He looked like the kind of man who’d kill her for thirty cents.

  And he was naked to the waist.

  He smelled like sweat and sun, untamed and unmastered. She swallowed, feeling helpless in more ways than she could name as she tried to ignore the muscular expanse of his tanned, fur-dusted chest. Her sensible New England soul rang warning bells of alarm. I’m virtually alone in the middle of nowhere with a half-naked criminal and a small fortune in computer equipment.

  “What, in God’
s blue heaven, made you wear that getup?”

  A half-naked, fashion-conscious criminal. “I … it’s my favorite.”

  “Not in this climate,” he stated in a voice as rough as new-made whiskey. “Not for long, anyway.”

  He gave her a thorough once-over, as if he meant to steal her clothing as well as her equipment. The thought brought a searing blush to her cheeks, but not necessarily from embarrassment. It’s the heat. It’s making me crazy—

  Once again she was distracted by a voice behind her, but this time it came from the old man. The words he spoke were low, melodious, and completely unintelligible, but his dark eyes gleamed with laughter. Puzzled, she turned back to the other man. “What did he—hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

  While her attention was focused on the old man, the outlaw had walked over and hoisted up several pieces of her heavy, expensive computer equipment as if they were made of plywood. Without even bothering to look in her direction, he strode off toward the far side of the hangar.

  “Put those down!”

  “Lighten up, sweetheart,” he growled without breaking stride. “My Jeep’s over here. It’s old, but I think it’ll carry most of this junk.”

  Junk? Sweetheart? “Look, if you take that equipment, you’ll be sorry. It belongs to Sheffield Industries, a major international conglomerate. They’ll have Interpol on you in a skinny minute. In fact, they’ve already hired a local man who’s got a background in international security.”

  “Really?” the man drawled.

  “Yes, and he’ll be here anytime.” Noel hurried after him—not an easy task in stiletto heels and a tight skirt. She prayed that the security man’s reputation was as well deserved as Katrina’s husband, Jack, a former troubleshooter himself, said it was. “His name’s Sam Donovan. You’ve probably heard of him.”

  “I’ve done a hell of a lot more than heard of him, Dr. Revere.”

  Noel stopped in her tracks. Oh no. It couldn’t be. Katrina and Jack had promised her a seasoned guide with a security background, not some scruffy, half-dressed, ill-mannered desperado. She swallowed, watching him load the equipment into a dented, battle-scarred army Jeep. “You’re Sam Donovan?”

  “In the flesh,” he replied, not realizing how appropriate the description was. He leaned against the frame, and glanced back at her with his all-too-penetrating blue gaze. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to help with this equipment, even if you are a Ph.D.”

  He made her title sound like a disease.

  “I was going to help.” She wished the words didn’t sound so defensive. She’d always done more than her fair share of the “grunt work” at the main office, but she wasn’t about to waste her breath justifying herself. Instead, she marched over to the pile and grasped the handle of one of the heaviest pieces, starting to lug it toward the Jeep.

  He pulled it out of her hand, shouldering the weight as if it were a Tinkertoy. “I said help, not get a hernia. If anything happens to you, Jack will take it out of my hide. Use your head, sweetheart. For both our sakes.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart,” she said as her ire rose to match the temperature. It was bad enough having to give up modern comforts for the ten days it would take to complete her assignment, but to spend it in the company of an arrogant, muscle-bound cretin … “I don’t appreciate being patronized.”

  “And I don’t appreciate—” he began, but stopped as the old man again interrupted him.

  “Jolly-mon.” He nodded to Donovan. Then he pointed directly at Noel, and said something that he clearly considered a hoot.

  Noel was hot, aggravated, and in no mood to be laughed at in a language she didn’t understand. “What did he say?”

  Donovan shrugged and set the heavy box on the ground. He pulled a faded bandanna out of his back jeans pocket and used it to mop the sweat at the back of his neck. It was an insignificant motion, but it drew Noel’s attention like a magnet. She couldn’t help noticing how the sun glanced off the bronzed planes of his chest, and how his worn jeans molded to his muscular thighs like a second skin. Hayward wouldn’t look like that if he worked out for a decade, she thought, then cringed at the unconscious disloyalty. After all, even though they’d ended their romantic relationship months before, he was still a good friend. Honestly, Noel, you’ve never gone in for that stupid macho stuff.

  At least, not until now.

  She licked her lips, which suddenly felt bone dry despite the oppressive humidity. “What did he say?”

  Donovan gave a dry chuckle. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

  Anger built like a thunderhead inside her. This guy was her employee, and the sooner she made that clear, the better. “Look, Mr. Donovan, for the next week and a half I’m paying the bills, so I’m the boss. You do what I say—period. Now tell me what that old man said.”

  His eyes narrowed and his jaw pulled into a hard, tight line. Once again she sensed the violence within him, straining like a wolf on a chain. A hellishly handsome blue-eyed wolf … But this time she sensed something in herself as well—small, twisting and unfamiliar, with an underlying violence that matched his own. She stood rigidly still, frozen by his gaze and the strange, unexpected currents it created inside her. Adrenaline coursed through her, but not from fear. She wished to God it was from fear.…

  Donovan stuffed his bandanna into his back pocket. “He says you’re scrawny as a chicken, and have the disposition of a warthog, but you’ve got great legs and a tight little ass, and he figures you’d be pretty good in bed.” He flashed her a grin as uncivilized as the rest of him. “So tell me, sweetheart, any truth in that?”

  This is a bad dream, Noel thought as she tightened her grasp on the Jeep’s roll bar. In a minute I’m going to wake up in my own apartment, in my own bed—

  But as the Jeep roared through another pothole, she was forced to admit the truth. She was careening through the depths of a Caribbean jungle in a vehicle that threatened to rattle apart at any moment, driven by a macho maniac who wouldn’t know a safe-driving lesson if it bit him in the a—

  Another bone-jarring jolt cut short her imaginings. She cast a worried glance at the equipment in the back of the Jeep, with special concern for the two small notebook PCs perched on top. The ordinary-looking units contained two of the most extraordinary personalities she’d ever known—Sheffield’s remarkable artificial-intelligence computers PINK and Einstein. With the technicians’ help she’d painstakingly downloaded subsets of their personalities into the PCs, taking duplicates of their programs to help her in her analytical research. Technically the AI computers were still safe and sound in the powerful Sheffield mainframe back in Miami. But for all practical purposes they were being bounced and battered just as badly as she was.

  “Can’t you slow down?” she asked the man behind the wheel.

  Donovan gave a belligerent snort. “This Jeep only goes two speeds—flat out and stop. But relax. I know these roads like the back of my hand.”

  Yeah, but how long since you’ve looked at your hand? Donovan inspired many emotions in her. Confidence wasn’t one of them. Still, as she stole a clandestine look at his profile, she honestly had to admit that his other attributes were pretty impressive.

  Tanned and tough, he was pure muscle from his sinewy arms to his washboard stomach. His rugged profile had none of Hayward’s refined handsomeness, yet it drew her eye like a flame draws a moth. Health clubs could have made a mint using him in their advertisements. The man radiated sheer animal power like the sun radiated heat. There was something almost infernally irresistible about the unrepentant strength of his jaw, and the ruthless directness of his shockingly blue eyes. A man’s man, she thought, trying to box his image with the cliché. She might have succeeded, if she weren’t such a stickler for honesty.

  She didn’t trust the man. She was well on her way to detesting him. Yet her research-trained gaze saw the disturbing shadows that haunted his deep-set eyes, and the sensitive, expressive mouth that was so much
at odds with the rest of his harsh, frowning features. She looked away, feeling jarred in a way that had nothing to do with the pothole-pocked road they traveled.

  Clearing her throat, she steered her thoughts in a safer direction. “How long have you known Jack?”

  He shrugged. “Fagen? We worked together on and off for years, handling security and defense projects for emerging nations.” He gave her a sharp, sideways glance, as if he knew she expected the worst of him. “I’m qualified to handle the AI prototypes, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “That’s not—” she began, shaking her head in frustration. She’d always considered herself a calm, levelheaded person, but Donovan managed to push every one of her hot buttons. Consistently. If he kept this up she wasn’t going to survive a week, much less ten days. “Look, I know we started off on the wrong foot, but we’ve still got to work together. Can we start over and at least try to be civil to each other?”

  Donovan never took his eyes from the road. “Lady, one reason I left the States was to get away from ‘civil.’ ”

  Well, I tried, she thought glumly, looking away. It wasn’t her fault if this cretin didn’t want to be polite, but it was going to be a long ten days. Take it a day at a time, she told herself. In less than two weeks she’d be off this godforsaken island, and back to her regular job, her friends, her climate-controlled condominium.

  And to her climate-controlled life.

  Lord, where had that thought come from? She had a wonderful life—a challenging job, an elegant condo, lots of friends. What more could a woman want?

  More, whispered a contrary inner voice. Much, much more.

  “You’re right,” Donovan said suddenly.

  Noel whirled to face him, her eyes wide with shock. He couldn’t have read her mind. Could he? “Wha-what do you mean?”

  “My bad attitude.” The tension in his hard jaw eased slightly as he gave her a look that was almost contrite. “Look, I’ve got nothing against you personally, but until I got Jack’s letter this morning I was expecting a man. Sending a woman here … well, it complicates things.”