Daddy Bombshell. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ the world. He’d only been home a month when they’d been going out. Between assignments, he’d explained. Somehow she hadn’t thought he was talking about just photojournalism jobs.

      The ever-romantic Tammy had believed he would fall in love with Caroline and stay home. And maybe, for a little while, she had let herself believe that, too. Or at least hope. But those hopes had been dashed forever when he’d left.

      As far as Caroline knew, this was the first time he had been home in nearly four years. And in all that time, he hadn’t called, hadn’t sent her a letter or even a text message. He had obviously forgotten all about her.

      BEFORE COMING HERE, Thad had driven all around St. Louis, over the Poplar Street Bridge and under the shadow of the infamous six-hundred-thirty-story-tall Gateway Arch. Sentimentality hadn’t inspired his impromptu tour of the city he hadn’t seen in years, though.

      He had driven all over Greater St. Louis to lose whatever reporters and whoever else might have been following him. So he was certain that his was the only car that turned onto her street.

      Four years ago she’d lived in an apartment building, close to the elementary school where she taught second grade. She still worked at the same school, but she had moved out of the apartment into a subdivision with cul-de-sacs and a mixture of newer ranch homes and well-maintained older brick Cape Cods. Thad glanced down at the paper on which he’d scribbled her house number, but before he could locate her address, his cell rang.

      The distinctive ring belonged to his boss—his real boss—not the executive at the network everyone else believed to be his real boss. He answered with a succinct “Kendall.”

      “We have a problem.”

      He mentally cursed. “Michaels still hasn’t been found?” He shouldn’t have left—not with a man missing. But if he hadn’t come back when he had … he shuddered to think what would have happened to Natalie and Gray that night.

      “He’s been found,” Agent Anya Smith replied.

      His gut tightened with dread. “Not alive?”

      “No. And before he died, he’d been tortured. We have no idea what he might have revealed to his captors before his death.” That was what she considered the problem.

      Thad considered the problem the senseless murder of a good man. “Len Michaels wouldn’t have given them any information.”

      “He had a wife and kids he wanted to get home to,” Anya warned. “He would have revealed anything if he thought it might get him back with his family.”

      Grief and regret tore a ragged sigh from Thad. “His wife lost her husband, his children their father,” he reminded his boss.

      “He should have gotten out before now,” Anya said. “Being a family man made him a liability … to the rest of us.”

      “I don’t really believe—”

      She obviously didn’t care what he thought, as she interrupted him to warn, “He might have given you up, Kendall.”

      He hadn’t worked with Michaels that often. The agent had acted as a translator, and Thad’s fluency with languages was too well-known for him to warrant a translator. But their last assignment had taken him to an unfamiliar territory, and so he and Michaels had worked together.

      Then Anya had passed on Devin’s message to Thad that he was needed back home, and he’d had to leave. Michaels had disappeared shortly after. Guilt twisted Thad’s guts. If he hadn’t left, maybe Michaels would have made it home to his wife and kids.

      “If he did give me up, I’m not sure that I’d blame him,” he murmured.

      “Kendall, don’t beat yourself up about this,” his supervisor advised. “I authorized your leaving. I sent in another operative.…” Her voice cracked with regret, but then she cleared her throat.

      “That operative obviously wasn’t as good as I am,” he said without conceit. It was simple fact that he’d never lost another operative or a contact.

      “You’re one of the best,” she agreed. “You need to wrap up whatever’s going on in St. Louis and get back in the field.”

      “Soon,” he vowed.

      His parents’ killer had gone free for too long; justice could wait no longer.

      “I need you back out there. I don’t have to worry about you,” she said. “You’re not a liability.”

      “No, you don’t have to worry about me,” he agreed. He had no wife. No kids.

      But he might have … had he not left Caroline. She was the marrying kind; he never should have called her after that first disastrous double date with her friends. But she was so damn beautiful. And it wasn’t because of her summer-sky-blue eyes or her silky dark blond hair; it was the kind of beauty that radiated from the inside out. And he’d wanted to see her again and again.

      And now, nearly four years after he had left her, he’d wanted to see her again. He clicked off with his boss and then looked up at her house. He didn’t need to check the address—he instinctively knew it was hers.

      The brick Cape Cod had a giant wreath on its oak front door. The house sat behind a white picket fence, garlands strung from each snow-topped picket. At night, lights would probably twinkle against the evergreen branches. Lights were also wrapped around the pine tree in the yard and hung like icicles from the eaves.

      All the decorations had his stomach churning with his revulsion for Christmas. Caroline loved it, which was just another thing they hadn’t had in common, another reason they could have never made a long-term relationship work.

      He had often wondered, over the years, if he should have left her. He had fantasized over what they could have had if he’d stayed instead.…

      A lopsided snowman in the front yard. No, this would have never been his home. Ever since his parents had been murdered in their beds on Christmas Eve, Thad had not had a home, or at least he’d never let any place feel like one.

      And Caroline was all about home and hearth. Smoke puffed out of the top of the brick chimney—her house even had a fireplace. She probably had two-point-two children by now and a loving, devoted husband who worked a boring nine-to-five job so that he could be home every night to help her with dinner and the kids’ baths.

      Thad respected that she had her own life now, and that was why he hadn’t given in to his temptation to mine his St. Louis sources for information about her. He’d hoped she had the life she had always wanted and deserved. He needed to just drive away and leave her alone. But instead he shut off his car and stepped out onto the snow-dusted street. Since getting Devin’s message, he’d been in hell. How could his parents’ killer be free?

      But there’d been more, so much more that had happened to his family. His brother Ash had nearly lost his fiancée and their unborn child. Uncle Craig had nearly been framed for his own brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. And Natalie, sweet Natalie, had been stalked and terrorized. His family had been through hell.

      So Thad needed an angel. As much as he needed to leave her alone, he needed even more to see her face.

      She СКАЧАТЬ