LITMIR.BIZ

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But then, how could she possibly be in any worse shape than she already was? Wildly in love nine months ago, then wildly disappointed—and now, wildly pregnant.

      Hell of a journey, she thought, typing words to that effect to the sympathetic MysteryMom.

      And then Eve stopped, leaning back in her chair. She glanced toward her sleeping shadow. “I just hope that ‘MysteryMom’ isn’t some cigar chomping, hairy-knuckled oaf getting his jollies by pretending to be a sympathetic single mom,” she said to Tessa.

      Tessa merely yawned and went back to sleeping.

      Eve was about to type another thought when she heard the doorbell ring.

      More trick or treaters.

      With a sigh, Eve gripped the arms on her chair and pushed herself up.

      She missed being able to spring to her feet, but she supposed it could be worse. At least she could still see her feet. When Angela had been pregnant with her first child, Renee, she couldn’t see her feet after entering her seventh month.

      Tessa was on all four of hers, padding quietly behind her, a four-legged, furry shadow determined to remain close.

      Eve passed a mirror on her way to the front door. “At least I don’t look like a blimp,” she consoled herself.

      A goblin, a fairy princess and what looked like a robot, none of whom could have been over ten, shouted “Trick or treat!” at her the moment she opened the door. Delighted, Eve grabbed a handful of candy from the bowl she had placed by the front door and divided the candy between them.

      The goblin paused, relishing his booty, and obviously staring at her. “What are you supposed to be?”

      Eve didn’t even hesitate. “A pumpkin.” It sounded better to her than “beached whale.”

      “But you’re not orange,” the robot protested.

      Eve snapped her fingers. “Knew I forgot something. Thanks for letting me know.”

      Only the fairy princess said nothing beyond, “Thank you,” looking at her knowingly, as if, even at that age, there was an unconscious bond that existed within the female gender.

      And then her little visitors ran off, laughing, all beneath the distant, watchful scrutiny of one of their parents.

      As she slowly closed her front door, Eve realized that the feeling was back. The one that whispered there was someone out there, watching her. Hoping to either catch him or her, or render a death knell to the unnerving feeling, she swung open her door again and looked around.

      Nothing. Again.

      She frowned, closing the door all the way this time. The excitement over, Tessa turned away from the door. “If there is someone out there, promise you’ll rip them limb from limb if they try to break in, Tessa.”

      The dog gave no indication that she heard any of the request. Instead, she trotted back to the office and reclaimed her position beneath the desk.

      “I feel so safe now,” Eve murmured to the dog as she lowered herself into the office chair again and once more immersed herself in the comforting words of MysteryMom. It wasn’t that she was a believer in the old saying that misery loved company. It was just that knowing someone else had gone through what she was going through and survived made her feel more heartened.

      It was something to cling to.

       Chapter 2

      After more than two years undercover, disappearing into the shadows had become second nature to Adam Serrano.

      Usually the object of his surveillance was an unsavory character involved in the ever-mushrooming, lethal drug trade, not a female veterinarian with killer legs, liquid blue eyes and a soul Snow White would have been in awe of.

      The anonymous tip that had appeared without warning on his computer yesterday morning had been right. Eve Walters was right here in Laguna Beach, practically right under his nose.

      Who would have thought it? The irony of the situation was still very fresh in his mind. She had disappeared on him eight months ago, doing what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do: leaving. Reading her letter, a letter he still had in his possession, had cut small, jagged holes in his soul. His first instinct had been to go after her, to find her and bring her back.

      But he’d forced himself to refrain.

      It hadn’t been easy. Eventually, his common sense had prevailed. This was for the best.

      Though he missed Eve more than he would have ever thought possible, Adam had every intention of allowing her to stay out of his life. Being part of his life would have been far too dangerous for her.

      The nature of his “business,” searching for the source of the latest flood of heroin, had brought him here, down to southern California. These days, the hard reality of it was that, despite his agency’s efforts, the drug culture was alive and thriving absolutely everywhere. The drugs on the street apparently knew no caste system, bringing down the rich, as well as the poor. The only difference was that the rich didn’t need to knock over a liquor store, or rob an elderly couple or kill some unsuspecting innocent to feed their habit. That’s what Mommy and Daddy were for, blindly throwing money at the problem instead of helping their spoiled, pampered offspring morph into respectable people.

      Life didn’t work that way. But it was obviously still full of surprises.

      Not the least of which was that his work had brought him down here, almost at Eve’s door, as it were.

      But moving the base of his “operation” to Laguna still wouldn’t have had him skulking around, camping out in unmarked cars and hiding in doorways to catch a glimpse of her or acting like some wayward guardian angel if that anonymous message on his computer hadn’t knocked him for a loop.

      “Eve is pregnant with your baby.” The terse sentence was followed by an address. Nothing more.

      He’d presumed the address belonged to Eve. Minimal effort via his computer had proven him right. He recalled her mentioning that she had grown up somewhere in this area and that her dad had had an animal hospital here.

      When he looked up the animal hospitals in and around Laguna, he found an “E. Walters” listed. He remembered her telling him that her father’s name was Warren. That meant that she was now running the Animal Hospital of Laguna Beach.

      And she was pregnant, supposedly with his baby.

      Even so, Adam had debated ignoring the message, telling himself it was some kind of trick to have him come forward. And even if it wasn’t a trick, he could do nothing about the situation. It was her body, not his. Whether or not she kept this baby was up to her, not him.

      That argument had lasted all of ten minutes, if that long. Even as he posed it, Adam knew he had to see for himself whether or not it was true.

      He fervently hoped that it wasn’t.

      But it was. Or, at least, she was carrying someone’s child.

      In his gut, he knew it was his.

      Juggling things so that he could put everything else temporarily on hold for the evening, Adam stationed himself in a nondescript vehicle on the through street that ran by Eve’s house. He was careful to park on the opposite side, waiting to catch another glimpse of the only woman who had managed to break through his carefully constructed barriers.

      It was Halloween and he knew the way Eve felt about kids. The same way she felt about helpless animals. No way was she going to be one of those people who either left their home for the evening every Halloween or pretended not to hear the doorbell or the noise generated by approaching bands of costumed children.

      Personally, he never liked the holiday. Dealing with the scum of the earth for the last ten years, he knew what was

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