Kidnapping the Billionaire's Baby (A BWWM Romantic Suspense) Read online

  Despite being an overall charming man, Quint sometimes had an awkward side to him that she found infinitely endearing. His enthusiasm was always genuine, as were his smiles. Even going through as much as he had, he still smiled at her from across the table.

  Nothing she’d feared had come to pass — there was no power play, no pressure, no force. He only wanted to see his son, and even to the point of practically proposing a marriage of convenience for exactly that purpose.

  Marrying Quint Forbes. Now there was a thought. A thought that didn’t bear thinking about.

  She shook it from her mind and downed the contents of the glass, savoring the wine’s sweet smoothness. In retrospect, it seemed a waste to have put it all down in one gulp, especially considering how much it probably cost.

  Quint only smiled more widely as he saw the enjoyment on her face, and he raised the bottle and offered a refill.

  She declined with regret, but she was a lightweight drinker and she couldn’t afford to get tipsy.

  The waiter arrived at the table and asked if they were ready to see the dessert menu.

  Quint raised an eyebrow, silently asking what she wanted to do. She shook her head slightly.

  “Not right now,” Quint said to the waiter, who bowed and then rapidly padded away.

  “They have exquisite desserts here,” Quint said. “You hardly ate anything. We can order something for you to take home, if you’d like.” He hadn’t eaten much himself, but she suspected that was due to his recent convalescence.

  “No, thank you. The meal has been wonderful. I’m just not … not hungry. There’s too much hanging out there right now.”

  “I agree,” he said. “Let’s cut to the chase. There’s no reason to delay that I can see. I’d dearly like to see my son. Tonight.”

  Amara took a deep breath. “Like I said, he’s at my mother’s. She still believes that Hampton’s father is out of the picture.”

  “Why not just tell her the truth?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “BECAUSE I’M A COWARD,” AMARA admitted.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true,” she said. “I can’t tell my mother I’ve been lying to her all these months. I didn’t think it would matter because … well, because —”

  “Because I was assumed dead,” Quint said levelly.

  “That sounds terrible. But yes. That. And since you were found I’ve been struggling to come up with a way to tell her the truth, a way where she won’t think I’m a bad person.”

  “Why would she think you’re bad?”

  “Because I traded my baby for funding.”

  “That’s not true,” Quint said. “It wasn’t that cut and dried, or that simple.”

  “It is, though, when you get down to it.”

  “So are all surrogates bad in your opinion?”

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  “Then why are you judging yourself differently?”

  “I’m not, not in that way.” Amara sighed. “The problem comes from how I lied to my mother. I never lie to her, Quint. We’ve always been close, and this lie is between us now.”

  “Your mother loves you. You’ll apologize, and she’ll forgive you. Isn’t that what mothers do?”

  “I suppose. But, she’ll really be disappointed in me.”

  “And you can’t bear her disappointment.”

  Amara’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t. I was going to tell her tonight, before I came here, but I chickened out. God, I’m simply —”

  “A good girl,” Quint finished for her. “Nothing wrong with that. I think it’s admirable that you feel so guilty about lying to your mother. You must be very close to her.”

  “I am. I was. I don’t know if I will be in the future when I tell her the truth about our bargain, about all the lies of omission, and all that stuff about an adoptive couple. You should have heard her tonight, trying to get me to bring Hampton’s father into his life. I didn’t know what to say. She says a boy needs a father, and I can’t argue with that.”

  “Perhaps if you tell her about me she’ll be reassured because her grandson will, indeed, have a father.”

  “True. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t seem to make up my mind or find the best approach.”

  “There’s no hurry,” Quint said. “You can tell her when you’re ready.”

  “But what about you? If you come strolling into her house tonight and see Hampton and hold him like he’s yours, which you will, she’ll catch on. I’m sure of it.”

  Quint lit up as she finished. “I could wait and hide out in the car. She wouldn’t see me.”

  “You wouldn’t mind sneaking around, for a little while anyway?”

  “I don’t want to make things any harder for you than they already are, Amara.”

  Without another word, she reached over to grab her purse. “There’s no reason to wait, then. We can head back to Momma’s place and pick him up. Then you can finally meet the best baby in the whole world.”

  Quint laughed. “The best baby in the whole world?”

  “That’s right. And don’t tell me I’m biased. I won’t hear it.”

  “Oh, I would never. I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Let’s go then,” she said.

  He nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course. After you.” He shifted in his chair before sliding it back, standing somewhat unsteadily.

  Amara moved to his side, offering him her arm for support. “Let me call someone over to help you.”

  He breathed deeply, as if in a considerable amount of pain. “I only need to take a moment. Your arm will be fine, if I’m not too heavy.”

  She assured him he wasn’t, though true to form, his touch made her kind of tingly. Maybe it was just the wine, though.

  Quint winced after a few steps and stopped abruptly, his eyes cast downward.

  Amara looked up to him, unconsciously lifting her hand to take his gently. “Quint, are you sure you should be out right now? You look like you could use some extended care. I know a lot went on, and it’d be insane to think you’d still look the same after all that, but it’s pretty bad.”

  He managed a soft chuckle and shake of his head. “I know I look like shit.”

  “You’re handsome, as always,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  “Quit begging for compliments. Really, though, I bet they didn’t want you checking out of the hospital so soon, did they?”

  He began walking again, taking his time. “It doesn’t matter what they wanted. I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  She understood that, so she let him be.

  “Really, though, I’m fine,” he said. “A few things are still bruised, my shoulder had to be adjusted and put into place properly, and a few ribs had to be reset, but I’m going to be fine. In a few days, I’ll be getting around much easier. I’m surprised you took my arm like that. I didn’t ask you to.”

  It was Amara’s turn to laugh then as they slowly made their way to the ballroom doors. She ignored all the others in the room and the way they rudely stared at Quint. Well, he was a celebrity, of sorts, and she supposed staring went with the fame territory.

  “You obviously needed the help,” she said. “I’m not going to deny you that. I’m happy to see you, Quint. Honestly. I don’t know where things are going from here, but I want you to know how happy I am that you made it home alive. I can’t imagine how hard the experience was for you.”

  “I’m okay. Quit worrying.”

  “Take it easy. Once we get out to the car, you can rest.”

  She slowly escorted him outside, along the way brushing off eager hotel staff who kept approaching and offering assistance.

  She stopped abruptly at the curb. “Oh no. I forgot about the dinner bill. Should I go back in and pay it?”

  He smiled through the pain. “They’ll bill me.”

  “That’s okay. I can leave a tip. How much?”

  “They’ll bill it all to my room. Don’t worry
about it.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, not missing the look he gave her that basically said, “Aren’t you cute?”

  She looked around. “Where’s the valet?”

  The doorman stepped up beside her. “I sent him to fetch Mr. Forbes’ limousine, Miss.”

  “No. That won’t work,” she told him.

  To Quint, she said, “Wait here. The doorman will help you. I’ll go get my car and bring it around.”

  He shook his head. “I have transportation, Amara.”

  She paused for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that won’t work. If we’re going to Momma’s house, we have to be inconspicuous. She’s going to know something is weird if I roll up in a limo. You can’t imagine life without that kind of luxurious thing, can you?”

  His brow came down as he turned to look at her, incredulous. “I can. I’ve come to understand a lot over these last few months, and even in the last few years.”

  “Right. My bad. Of course you have.”

  Quint was standing pretty steadily. He told the doorman to cancel the limo and return to his post.

  Amara walked Quint to one of the columns near the entrance of the hotel. “Lean here for a second, and I’ll bring the car around.”

  With that, she headed off into the brightly lit parking lot, soon returning with her modest, blue sedan.

  Retaining some semblance of dignity, Quint managed to take a mostly normal walk to the passenger side door and slide in on his own.

  Once they were both strapped in, Amara glanced at him, grinned broadly as she shifted into drive and then took off toward Raneesha’s house.

  They were silent for several minutes until Quint said, “I was just thinking. Do you realize we’ve known each other for over two years now?”

  “Has it been that long? Wow. I hadn’t realized the conference was that long ago.”

  “A lot has happened since then.”

  Understatement, Amara thought but didn’t say. She murmured her agreement.

  There was a beat of a pause before Quint spoke with gravity. “I need you to know, Amara, that the man you met at that conference died in the plane crash three months ago. That’s not me anymore. Not entirely, anyway.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I CAN SEE HOW SOMETHING like that could change a man,” Amara said cautiously.

  “It was hard,” he said, a note of pain in his voice. “More than hard. I lost my entire crew, Amara. They stuck me in a safety box I had installed when I bought the jet. It saved my life, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone. When I was making my way out of the wreckage, I saw the section of the plane where the crew had remained was completely ablaze and … they were all there. None of them were as lucky as I was.”

  Amara flashed on an image of the attorney who had handled the contracts for their agreement. He would have been one of the poor people ablaze. She shuddered at the thought.

  “They had no chance,” Quint said, his voice hollow and far away. “I managed to make it out of the side of the broken fuselage, and thankfully the fire was mostly contained near the nose of the plane. Still, I have some scars on my forearms from pushing through and shielding my face.”

  Amara knew she couldn’t see those scars in the dark car, and knew he wore a jacket regardless. But nonetheless, she glanced over at his arms. He had scars. And she was sure he had scars beyond the basic definition of the word. It sounded to her like he had serious survivor guilt.

  “I’ve never had an experience like that, you understand,” Quint continued. “A local shepherd, Marduk, eventually saw me wandering around the mountainside and decided he ought to check on me. He said he thought I was probably just drunk, but he tracked me down anyway. I was lucky, in more ways than one.”

  Amara wove through traffic on the freeway, trying to be smooth in her maneuvers so as not to jerk her injured passenger around too much. “Not luck, though. I mean, you made it so far away from the crash, even being as hurt as you were.”

  Quint had been looking out the side window, but he turned toward her now. “Yes, well, the will to survive has inspired men to greater feats than a long stroll through the mountains, I assure you.”

  She wondered why he was being so modest about the Herculean effort it would have taken to travel on foot in his condition. She admitted to herself that the man she’d met two years ago would never have downplayed such a heroic feat.

  Perhaps he actually had changed as much as he claimed.

  He shuddered and continued. “Marduk took me in his donkey cart to a village that was about ten miles away. It had a field hospital that had been abandoned by some foreign-aid workers several years before. The locals had maintained it as best they could.”

  “That’s amazingly lucky. You were way out in nowhere. If you’d had to get to an actual hospital —”

  “A lengthy trip might have killed me, I was told later.”

  “So they took care of you there, in the field hospital?”

  “There were two nurses who ran the place. No doctors. And I’m not certain of the nurses’ qualifications, either. But I’m alive, and it’s thanks to those two women, so that’s all the qualification I need.”

  “Absolutely,” Amara agreed. A shiver ran down her spine. What if that field hospital hadn’t been there? What if those nurses hadn’t known what to do to save Quint? What if … so many what ifs. So many ways everything could have gone so horribly wrong.

  Quint began speaking more briskly. “I don’t remember much of my stay there. You may think I’m not moving well now, but this is a huge improvement from where I started. They did the best they could. I was in a bad way, too injured to move for a long time.”

  “I’m not sure if they did any sort of surgery,” he continued, “because I picked up more than a few scars on my trek toward the village. I didn’t think to ask the one nurse who spoke a little English. I had more important things to worry about.” A slight flash of his white teeth in the darkness, illuminated by the dash lights. “She’s the only reason I made it back as soon as I did, honestly.”

  “Is she the one you told your name? The news said she recognized your name.”

  “The press actually got that part right. Yes, she was the one who got me rescued.”

  “It’s an amazing story, Quint. You being here, it’s like a miracle.”

  “It is,” he said. “And I’m grateful for it. I’ve never known gratitude like this.”

  Amara nodded, not knowing what else to say. Her heart was warmed to see Quint begin to open up, hints of his shining personality and pride showing through the haze of illness and hardship that must have consumed him.

  Although he was far from out of the woods where his trauma was concerned, he genuinely seemed like he was going to be all right. The more she spoke with him, the more it became apparent that he was telling the truth about being different than he was when she first met him.

  While the attraction was real and raw at the conference two years ago, it was shallow. Physically, they were drawn together almost magnetically, but they weren’t compatible on any other level. She sensed it was different now, and she was drawn to him in more than that one, simple way.

  Whether it was the crash that humbled and focused him or the intervening years between the conference and where they were now, she was overjoyed to get to know the new Quint. As for herself, she wasn’t the same woman she’d been. She had also changed, thanks to Hampton.

  Streetlights flitted across Quint’s handsome face. He breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. “I’m happy to be alive. And I’m about to meet my son. Life, Amara, can be very, very good sometimes.”

  She smiled. A flicker of worry passed over her that they still hadn’t worked out all the details of sharing custody of Hampton. But they would. It would be fine.

  “Yes,” she said. “Life can be very, very good.”

  AMARA PULLED THE CAR TO A stop several houses down from her mother’s home. She stared intently down the street.

/>   “Is there something wrong?” Quint turned to look at her, his head tilted slightly.

  Amara was silent for a long moment before she nodded and spoke, hushed as if she feared she might be heard by the wrong person. “The door’s open.”

  It seemed odd that the door would simply be left ajar as it was, interior light streaming onto the porch and sidewalk. Raneesha was always a careful woman, no doubt a remnant of growing up in a poor neighborhood.

  As her own mother had taught her, Raneesha had imparted to Amara the importance of safety and security, even if a little heavy-handedly at times. This neighborhood wasn’t a particularly rough one, though there had been a few instances of people breaking into homes in the past few years. This had set Raneesha on edge, making the open door all the more bizarre.

  Amara put the car into gear and eased forward slowly. She pulled into the driveway as quietly as she could, braking gently. Amara scanned the area. Raneesha wasn’t outside, though her car was in the driveway.

  She tried her hardest not to assume the worst as she turned the car off and slid from her seat. She stood outside and leaned down to see Quint. “Stay here like we planned. I’m sure everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  He shook his head and quickly unbuckled. “I’m coming with you. If something has gone wrong, I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  Amara didn’t think he could be much help in his condition. “No, please stay. If you come in, our plan will be blown.”

  He studied her closely, and she looked away, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

  “The front door being open is a red flag that something might be wrong,” he said. “Either I go in with you, or neither of us go in, and we call 911.”

  Amara looked at the open door and then back down at Quint. “Something’s not right. She’d never leave the door open like that. Especially not with Hampton inside.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD, QUINT GOT out of the car. His walk at the hotel must have done him some good, because his gait was straighter and less faltering as he rounded the front of the car to join Amara. His expression was fierce and focused on the house.