LITMIR.BIZ

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her eyes.

      Tate shot a glance at Rosa. “Take Jake inside.”

      “Who do you think she is?” Rosa asked, clutching the baby to her chest.

      “Do as I say,” Tate bit out.

      “Sí, Señor Vincent.”

      Rosa had been his buddy since childhood, having grown up on the Vincent Ranch alongside him. Why she insisted on calling him Señor Vincent was beyond him. With a wild woman crossing the field toward them, now wasn’t the time to argue the point.

      Rosa climbed the steps and hurried inside the house, Jake reaching over her shoulders, a wail rising from his little mouth.

      “No! Please! Don’t take him away!” The woman came to a halt at the wooden fence surrounding the yard. She grabbed the top rail and hauled herself up.

      “Stop where you are.” Tate didn’t want her anywhere close to the house and his son. A crazy man who’d gotten past security had ultimately been the cause of his father’s death five months ago. He refused to take any intrusion onto his property lightly. Without waiting for the woman to cross the fence, Tate marched across the manicured lawn.

      Perched precariously on the top rail, the blonde swayed and fell over the fence, landing with a crash, her head hitting the post with a sharp crack.

      When Tate reached her, she lay on the ground, her eyes staring up at the sky, blinking.

      For a moment, Tate forgot to be angry with her.

      Dirty and sweat-soaked, she was still a beautiful woman beneath the layer of smeared dust. When fat tears rolled out of the corners of her pale blue eyes, Tate couldn’t help a sudden swell of protectiveness. He chalked it up to the fact that her eyes were the same pale blue as Jake’s.

      He dropped down beside her, forcing his voice to sound stern and distant when his instincts urged him to pick her up and carry her into his house. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on private property?”

      She raised a hand to her head, and scraped it over her eyes. “Please. I only want to see him.”

      Tate’s brows furrowed. “See who?”

      “My son,” she said, her voice wavering, dropping down to a whisper. Her eyes closed, and the woman had the nerve to pass out.

      “Damned woman.” His gut knotted and Tate swore. What did she mean by “my son”? He reached down and shook her. “Wake up.”

      She didn’t budge.

      He bent low, pressing his head to her chest to listen for breathing.

      Although shallow, her breaths came regularly. Impatience gnawed at him. He couldn’t shake her awake to answer his questions, and he couldn’t really leave her out in the full force of the Texas sun. With his luck, her fall might have given her a concussion.

      “Whatcha got there, boss?” C.W. trotted up beside him. When he got close enough to see the woman on the ground, he whistled. “Another stray?”

      Tate glared at his foreman. “Looks like it.”

      “Want me to call the sheriff?”

      “No.” Why he didn’t do just that, he couldn’t explain. Something about the way she’d looked up at him, her gaze pleading with his, made him want to question her before he turned her over to the sheriff. Maybe she’d been mistaken, gotten the wrong place, hallucinated due to dehydration. She couldn’t mean Jake. Jake couldn’t be her son. He’d met Jake’s mother. She’d signed the papers allowing him to adopt the boy. This woman was a stranger.

      “If you’re not going to call the sheriff, do you want me to call an ambulance?” C.W. rocked back on his boot heels. “Looks like she hit her head, and she’s got a gash in her leg.”

      Tate’s frown deepened. “No.”

      “Can’t just leave her in the sun. She’ll die of heat stroke.”

      He knew that, still he hesitated. “She’s trespassing.”

      “Maybe so, but she is another human being. If you leave her here, you could be up on charges of negligent homicide.”

      If he took her into his house and she threatened his son, he’d be up on charges of murder anyway.

      C.W. bent and reached for the woman.

      “Don’t.” Tate held out his hand, blocking the man’s attempt to lift her. “I’ll get her.” With all the trepidation of a man cornering a poisonous snake, Tate lifted the woman into his arms. Thin, light and limp, she had curves in all the right places and a soft pink mouth much too close to his own for him to think straight. What did she want? And why did he have this feeling that he wouldn’t like what she had to say?

      Morbid curiosity made him carry her into the cool air-conditioned interior of his home. He’d force-feed fluid into her and get her back on her feet, hear what she had to say and then send her packing. If that didn’t work, then he’d call the sheriff and have her forcibly removed.

      Rosa stood in the living room, Jake propped on her hip. “Who is she?”

      “I don’t know.” Tate shot a pointed look at Jake’s caregiver, a woman he’d hired not only for her skills with a child, but also for her skills as a bodyguard. A former Austin police officer, she had a proven track record taking out bad guys. “Take Jake to the nursery.”

      “But it’s dinnertime.”

      “Feed him dinner in his room.”

      “Sí, Señor.”

      He laid the woman on the brown leather sofa in the living room.

      Maria, Rosa’s mother and also the housekeeper, entered through the doorway leading to the kitchen, carrying a damp rag and a glass of ice water.

      Tate took the damp rag and laid it across the woman’s forehead, mopping away a layer of dust and sweat. “Wake up, lady,” he muttered, willing her eyes to open.

      “Get her to drink,” Maria urged.

      Tate lifted the woman in one arm and touched the cool glass to her lips, letting the liquid slide down her throat.

      At first the liquid filled her mouth and trickled out the sides. Then she swallowed and coughed, her eyes blinking open.

      “What…” she said, her voice hoarse, her gaze blurred. “Are you—” she coughed again “—Tate Vincent?”

      He frowned. She knew who he was, which meant she’d found her way to his place on purpose. Was she just another gold digger out to get money from him? “Yes,” he answered, his tone clipped. “Who are you?”

      Her eyes closed for a moment and then opened again. “I think you have my baby.” After delivering that punch in the gut, the woman had the audacity to pass out again.

      Chapter Two

      Something blessedly cool stroked across Sylvia’s forehead as she swam through the murkiness inside her head. A deep baritone hummed in the back of her mind, pulling her closer to the light. When the strokes moved to her cheek, she turned her face into the coolness and surfaced, her mind inching toward clarity. “Ummm, that feels good.”

      “Glad you think so. I’d appreciate it if you’d wake up before the sheriff arrives.”

      Sylvia’s eyes popped open and she stared up into intense, brown eyes, so dark they could be considered black. A man with midnight-black hair and thick dark brows drawn into a frown glared down at her.

      Fear and something else shot through her veins, pushing her to a sitting position. As soon as she sat up, her head swam and her world turned fuzzy around the edges. When she would have toppled over onto the floor, strong arms circled her shoulders and eased her back to cool leather.

      “Who are

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