The Vicar's Daughter. Betty Neels

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СКАЧАТЬ saw on the news what happened to you—or nearly happened to you. It was your vehicle...”

      “I’m fine,” he said with a twinge of guilt at the unfairness of that. Doug and Terry should be fine, too, but they were gone, leaving family behind just like Parker had been left when his police-officer father died in the line of duty.

      At least if someone was actually successful at carrying out the hit, he wouldn’t leave a child behind to mourn him like he had mourned. His family and friends thought he stayed single because he couldn’t commit, because he was a playboy. But he was practical. Given the dangerous nature of his job, he wasn’t a good risk for a husband or father. And he didn’t want to put anyone through the pain he, his mother and siblings had suffered.

      The woman studied him through narrowed eyes. Even narrowed, her eerie light brown eyes were so huge that they nearly overwhelmed her thin face. If her hair was down, the caramel-colored locks might have softened her face, but it was pulled tautly back and bound in a tight knot on the top of her head. Her voice low and soft, she asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

      He shook off his maudlin thoughts. He wasn’t going to leave anyone behind because he wasn’t going to die—at least not before he found out who was after him and made that person pay for all the pain he’d caused. Parker had rested long enough, so he swung his legs over the bed again and sat up. His vision blurred for a moment, but he blinked to clear it.

      “Should I get someone?” she asked as she backed up toward the door. She jostled the baby on her hip, and the little thing giggled.

      Parker focused on the baby. Dressed in tiny overalls and a blue-and-green-striped shirt, he was apparently a boy. With fuzzy black hair and bright blue eyes, he was also damn cute.

      “You know who I am,” he realized. “But I don’t know who you are. Should I?” He usually never forgot a face—at least not a female one. But she wore no makeup and dressed so frumpy that she wasn’t exactly the kind of woman he usually 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?”

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