LITMIR.BIZ

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Either way, she had to get away from him.

      She put her hands against his chest and gave him a hard shove. She might as well have been shoving a brick wall, because he didn’t budge. He wasn’t exactly what she would call muscle-bound, but he was solid.

      “Please.” Lyla tried to reason with him. “Let me go. Neither me nor my baby has anything to do with you or the murder investigation.”

      The marshal made a yeah right sound, but he did move off her. Not far, though. He levered himself up but continued to loom over her. Continued to volley glances out the window, too. Did that mean the man with the gun wasn’t working with Marshal McCabe?

      Lyla wasn’t sure.

      She wasn’t sure of anything any longer except that she wanted to get away from both men. Her keys were already in her car, which was parked in the garage. If she could get to it, she might be able to escape.

      Might.

      But she couldn’t risk getting shot. Of course, these men might have something much worse in mind than just hurting her. They might want to kill her.

      But why?

      She shook her head. Marshal McCabe obviously wasn’t the only one with questions.

      “Who’s the gunman?” she asked him again. Maybe now that the facade of the helpful lawman was gone, she’d get some straight answers, because the ones she’d gotten from him so far hadn’t made a lick of sense.

      McCabe lifted his shoulder. “I don’t know. Your bodyguard maybe?”

      “I don’t need a bodyguard.” But she rethought that. “At least, I didn’t until twenty minutes ago. Clearly, I need one now to protect me from you.”

      He studied her as if trying to decide if that was a lie or not. It wasn’t. In fact, everything she’d told the lawman had been the truth, but he obviously didn’t believe her.

      Lyla tried to remember everything she knew about Marshal McCabe, but other than the sketchy details about the Webb murder investigation, she drew a blank.

      “We’ve met before?” she asked, though she was certain they hadn’t. McCabe was the sort of man a woman tended to remember. Tall, good-looking. Dark brown hair and gunmetal-blue eyes.

      Yes, definitely the sort to be remembered.

      “No,” he answered. “But you know me.”

      “I don’t,” she insisted.

      That baby is mine, he’d said, but he had to be wrong about that.

      Well, maybe.

      “I used in vitro fertilization to get pregnant,” she explained, though judging from the flat look he gave her, he already knew.

      “Yeah. At the Hanover Fertility Clinic in San Antonio,” he supplied. “You had the procedure done two and half months ago, on your thirty-first birthday, and it worked on the first try. You got the news two weeks later that you were going to be a mom.”

      A chill went through her. It was downright creepy that this stranger knew such private things about her, but it chilled her even more to know he might have told the truth about the baby being his.

      “The clinic assured me that the donor I used would be anonymous,” Lyla explained. “In fact, I insisted on it, because I intend to raise this baby myself.”

      “Yeah,” the marshal repeated. “Old baggage. I know about that, too.”

      Lyla snapped back her shoulders, ready to blast him for invading her life and privacy this way. It wasn’t any of his business about her failed relationships.

      She had to get her teeth unclenched so she could speak. “I want you to get out of here now. The deputy’s already on the way, and if you don’t leave, I’ll have him arrest you. I don’t care if you’re a marshal or not.”

      “Oh, I’m a marshal, all right, and I believe you manipulated that in vitro procedure so you could force me to cooperate.”

      Lyla tried to throw her hands in the air, but McCabe pinned them to the sofa. “And how could I possibly have manipulated it?”

      He glared at her. “By switching mine and my late wife’s embryo with the one you should have received.”

      Oh, yes. He was crazy.

      “I didn’t switch anything. There was a slim-to-none chance that I’d get pregnant the old-fashioned way, because my body rarely produces eggs, even with fertility treatments. So, I used the donation the clinic gave me.” She paused just long enough to gather her breath. “And what possible proof do you have that it was yours?”

      “All the proof I need.” But McCabe paused, mumbled some really bad profanity. “Four months ago I hired a surrogate to have a baby, using the embryo that my late wife and I’d stored at a clinic. Not Hanover,” he quickly added. “Another one in San Antonio. But then the surrogate changed her mind and decided not to go through with the pregnancy.”

      Lyla mentally went through all that. “And you think I somehow got yours and your wife’s embryo instead of the anonymous one I requested.”

      “I know you did,” he fired back. “Last month, the clinic called me and said the embryo was missing. They said maybe it’d been stolen or accidentally donated, and I followed a very hard-to-follow paper trail that eventually led to you.”

      Oh, mercy. Maybe it was true, then, but Lyla wasn’t just going to take this man’s word for it. “I want to see this paper trail.”

      Marshal McCabe tipped his head toward the barn. “After I hear what your gun-toting friend has to say.”

      “He’s not my friend!” she practically shouted. “And so what if the clinic accidentally gave me your embryo? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you in my life, and I don’t want you part of my baby’s life.”

      Except there was the possibility about this being his late wife’s embryo. No. Did that mean he’d have some kind of legal claim?

      That couldn’t happen.

      “The switch wasn’t an accident,” he insisted. But then he shook his head. “At least I don’t think it was. I think there’s something bad going on here and that you’re a key player in this wrongdoing.”

      Lyla couldn’t argue with the something bad theory. He was there, right in her face. But she’d done nothing wrong and had taken no shortcuts in getting pregnant with this baby.

      “I don’t know where you got your information about me, but there’s no reason whatsoever that I’d want to have your baby.” And she didn’t bother to say it nicely, either. “I want you arrested and out of here. That’ll happen as soon as the deputy arrives.”

      Soon couldn’t be soon enough, though. Lyla prayed that whoever the sheriff had sent out was speeding to her ranch right now.

      “If I explain to the deputy what I’ve learned, maybe he’ll arrest you,” McCabe threatened right back. “Because one way or another, you will tell me what’s going on.”

      “I have no idea,” Lyla insisted, but she was talking to the air, because the marshal’s attention was fastened to the barn now. He practically jumped to his feet and snapped in that direction.

      Alarmed at the concern that she saw in his eyes, Lyla jumped up, as well, and followed his gaze. There wasn’t one man but two out there now. Both wearing camouflage fatigues. Both armed.

      Oh, God.

      Now she had three armed men on her ranch.

      “Either your second bodyguard just showed up, or you’ve done something to piss off someone other than me,” McCabe growled.

      Even though she didn’t trust the marshal, that didn’t mean Lyla could ignore what he’d just said. Maybe she had riled someone. After

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