Hot Zone (Elite Force #2)(21)
Author: Catherine Mann

The door closed softly behind her.

The silence echoed around him, the scent of her, of them, and sex mixing up with the disinfectant in the air. She’d actually walked out on him. She hadn’t even given him a chance to roll out some face-saving words for both of them.

He yanked up his pants, tugged on his T-shirt, and shrugged back into his survival vest, wondering why in the hell everything still felt so off-kilter. She’d said everything he should have wanted. Exactly the sort of words he’d spoken to women over the past five years. Sex. Just sex. No commitment or messy emotions. He’d seen she and the kid were okay. And all crazy sex aside, she’d still given him the free and clear to walk away. Except for the first time in five years, he didn’t want to walk, he didn’t want to forget.

And that scared him shitless.

***

She would never forget him.

How could she?

He’d saved her life—not to mention just given her earth-shattering sex, making her forget she was in a broom closet, for crying out loud. She’d learned one thing for sure. Her ex had been right in dissing their chemistry, because she’d never felt anything like this during her entire marriage.

Her ex was a serious dud in comparison to Hugh.

What if she’d met Hugh Franco during a true Bahamas holiday? Maybe she could have indulged in more than one impulsive encounter in a broom closet. But life wasn’t normal even when it was normal. She had a crummy marriage behind her and a dead father who’d left his kids with a crappy legacy of heavy-duty baggage.

All that aside, she had practical worries and concerns in looking after whatever family she had left. Tears burned to be set free but she held them back. She’d been selfish enough stealing the past twenty minutes for herself.

Time to focus solely on Joshua and finding the rest of her family.

She rounded the corner to the quiet pediatrics hall, weaving past crates and stacked supplies. The corridor was deserted, other than one nurse or doctor walking away with a toddler, the little guy sleeping on her shoulder.

The baby wriggled awake, eyes blinking wide and staring down the long hallway, straight at her. Something stirred inside Amelia. A sense of recognition.

Joshua.

She wasn’t sure how she could be so certain after only spending such a short time with him. But his little face seemed imprinted on the back of her eyelids… even deeper on her heart.

Why was the nurse taking him away? Was he sick after all? Or was it a doctor? The unfamiliar woman wore surgical scrubs like everyone else, her cluster of thin braids gathered into a low ponytail. A two-way radio was clipped to the waist of her pants.

Amelia raced down the hall, her borrowed tennis shoes squeaking against the tiles. “Excuse me.”

The woman didn’t turn, didn’t seem to have heard her at all. But her feet moved faster… Amelia’s heart sped with the first inklings of fear.

“Ma’am? Stop, please or I will find a guard.”

The woman turned slowly, holding Joshua so tightly he began to squirm. “Yes?” she said with a local accent. “What do you need, Doctor?”

This woman thought she was a physician? Amelia looked down at her own surgical scrubs. With medical personnel from different groups working together, it wasn’t unusual not to recognize the staff, and they were all wearing the same clothes stacked up beside the tarp shower stalls outside.

Still, alarms jangled in her head. The woman’s body language seemed off, and anyone could have picked up a set of the surgical clothes. “Is something wrong with him? Where are you taking him?”

“To give him a test. I am a nurse.”

Then why hadn’t she been told? And why was the woman who called herself a nurse wearing leather sandals? “In the middle of the night?”

The woman paused, then said, “There are no set hours during a crisis. Now if you’ll pardon me…”

Amelia walked closer, faster, holding out her arms. “Let me carry him so he won’t be frightened. He’s more familiar with me.”

The woman’s body tensed, her eyes going hard. “I think not, since I am his mother.”

Shock rooted her feet to the floor. That couldn’t possibly be true. Could it? “Your baby?”

“Yes, this is my son. I thought we had lost him in the earthquake, but see now?” She cradled the back of his head possessively. “He is fine. Is he not, Doctor?”

This woman’s timeline just didn’t add up, since Aiden and Lisabeth had already adopted Joshua before the earthquake. Amelia considered calling the woman on the lie right then and there, but the woman was holding Joshua in a fiercely tight grip. Risking a scene, anger, and God knows what else didn’t seem wise.

So, what to do?

She sifted through all the information coming at her when her balance was already seriously compromised from her encounter with Hugh. Guilt swamped her. If she hadn’t indulged herself so selfishly, she would have been with Joshua. None of which she could change right now.

Shoving aside the distracting guilt, she narrowed her focus, calling up her prosecutorial skills to get to the bottom of what was going on with this mystery woman—if she could possibly be Joshua’s real mother. “If you’re his mama, then why did you pretend to be hospital personnel?”

“Because of your paperwork.” She picked at her scrubs nervously.

Instincts shouted that the woman was holding something back—and she had Joshua in her arms, which made confronting her more than a little problematic. Amelia looked around for help in the deserted hallway. Crap.

The case file on Joshua stated his mother had died and his father had taken him to an orphanage. She had no reason to doubt the adoption agency. She had been laboriously thorough in researching them, knowing there were definitely some suspicious operations out there.

But she’d heard horror stories of babies being stolen from their mothers. Or mothers persuaded to give up a child for money or a so-called better life for the baby.

Or the woman could be grief stricken, mistaking Joshua for her own lost baby. In which case, she would be unstable. Volatile.

Joshua whimpered, reaching out a chubby fist. Amelia’s heart twisted with love—and fear. She gauged the distance between them and decided to continue to bluff rather than risk an all-out confrontation.

“Actually, he is not okay. That’s why he had the IV in.” Oh God, the woman must have pulled out the needle. Where were the nurses? Why hadn’t someone stopped her? “You need to give him to me now so I can get him hooked up again.”