LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You don’t have any choice. God knows I don’t have much choice, either.” He took a deep breath. Might as well get it said. “You’re carrying my baby. We’ll get married.”

      “That’s not funny.”

      He gave a short bark of laughter. “You think I’m joking? If so, the joke’s on me.” Humor faded, settling into grim determination. “I hope you don’t have your heart set on a big wedding, because we can’t go that route. We’d be issuing an invitation to the hit man along with the guests. He’s been remarkably unlucky so far, but we can’t count on his bad luck continuing.”

      She looked stunned—and not with joy, either. At least she wasn’t trying to leap out of the moving car.

      “No comment? Good. We’ll get the blood tests tomorrow.”

      “You don’t want to marry me!” she burst out. “You don’t want to get married at all.” She rubbed the back of her neck as if her head might be hurting. “If this is some kind of noble gesture, all right, then. You’ve made it. I hereby let you off the hook.”

      “I want my child.”

      She closed her eyes, sighed and leaned her head against the headrest. “I want you to be part of the baby’s life. You don’t have to marry me for that.”

      “I don’t want a weekend now and then. I want my child. I want it all—3:00 a.m. feedings and diaper rash, school dances and college entrance exams.” He shook his head. “Weird, isn’t it? I had no idea I’d feel this way, so I can’t blame you for being surprised. But there it is. I want to be a full-time daddy, so we have to get married.”

      The hand that had been rubbing her neck fell into her lap. “And if I refuse to marry you, what will you do? Will you try to take the baby away from me?”

      He shot her an irritated glance. “You think I’m some kind of monster? The last thing I want is a custody battle. That’s why I’m proposing. Look, you need me.”

      “I don’t need anyone. And you don’t want me. I mean, you don’t want to marry me.”

      His eyebrows lifted. Did she think he didn’t want her now? Wrong, but interesting. Maybe useful. “You’re right about me not wanting to get married. I don’t. But I wasn’t raised to duck my responsibilities.” Of course, his parents hadn’t raised him to have unprotected sex, either. He still didn’t understand how he could have been that careless.

      He realized he was scowling and tried to lighten up. “If you’re worried about the sex part, don’t. We can make things work out there just fine.”

      Her stony expression suggested just the opposite. “I don’t suppose it’s necessary for you to actually like a woman to go to bed with her. I’m a little pickier. I’m not marrying a man who despises me.”

      He hadn’t expected this to be easy. Charlie was nothing if not stubborn. “Whether you like it or not, you do need me right now. You’re running from some pretty big bad guys, and you lack the resources to do it right. If I could find you at that dive, they can, too. It looks as if they already have.”

      She chewed on her lip. It was a small enough sign of nerves, but welcome. He was getting to her. Good.

      Rafe switched tactics slightly. Let her think she’d won a compromise from him. Women were crazy about compromises. “Look, you don’t have to say yes or no about marriage right away. Stay at my place, though. Let me protect you. Don’t endanger my baby out of pride.”

      Silence descended for long moments.

      “All right,” she said abruptly. “I won’t marry you, but I’ll stay in your apartment for now.”

      It was more than he’d expected from her this quickly. He frowned, chewing over her capitulation in his mind. Maybe she was a lot more scared than she’d admitted—but there was no point in asking her. You could put Charlie in a cage of tigers and she’d insist she was fine. Or else she had some plan in mind. Something devious.

      It was probably a sign of depravity that he was looking forward to figuring out her scheme. And stopping her.

      Rafe considered himself a simple man. Computers were the one place he enjoyed knots and puzzles. He worked hard because he liked his work, and, he admitted, because he had his share of Connelly ambition. He played hard, too, when he was in the mood, but he also relaxed just as completely. He got more complexity than he needed from his big, maddening, high-profile family. When it came to his personal life, he kept things simple.

      So how had he ended up in such a messy relationship with such a complicated woman?

      There were her breasts, of course. He stole a sideways glance at her. Truly excellent breasts—not especially large, but beautifully shaped. And Charlie was great fun to tease—she always rose to his bait, but not always in the way he expected. She gave as good as she got, too. But while great breasts and teasing might account for his initial interest, they didn’t explain why he’d taken her to bed the second he’d had the chance. Not when he’d known—dammit, he’d known—that she was a regular porcupine of complications.

      She fascinated him. She was so charmingly tidy yet mysterious, keeping her private self tucked out of sight. He supposed a woman like Charlie needed to keep her externals orderly in order to cope with her complicated interior.

      Yet in spite of her reserve he’d thought he knew her. Not all of her, maybe, but enough to like her. To trust her. Hell, his father had trusted her, and Grant Connelly was rarely wrong about that sort of thing.

      Why had she done it? Why had she betrayed his father’s trust?

      He knew damned little. Last Christmas his oldest brother, Daniel, had surprised everyone, including himself, by becoming the heir to the throne of Altaria, the tiny Mediterranean country their mother hailed from. Almost immediately, someone had tried to kill him. Grant Connelly had hired a pair of private detectives—Lucas Starwind and Tom Reynolds—to look into the matter, but neither they nor the police had made much headway. They knew the attempt had been carried out by a pro, and that it was related to Daniel’s new royal status. And that was about all they knew.

      In May the Connelly Corporation computers had suffered a major crash. No surprise there. Rafe had been urging his father to upgrade his system for the past two years. At the time, Rafe had been involved with a big project in Phoenix. There had been no way he could take on another job. Charlie had suggested a technician who was familiar with the system and programs used at the corporation, and the tech seemed to have fixed things easily.

      He’d fixed things, all right.

      There had been no reason to suspect a link between a computer crash and the assassination attempt on Daniel. Not until last month. A connection had turned up then—a dead man.

      Someone had murdered Tom Reynolds, one of the private detectives investigating the Connelly troubles. His body had been found in the alley behind the office of the computer tech who had restored the Connelly Corporation’s system after the crash. And shortly before he was killed, Reynolds had called Grant to suggest that the corporate computer system needed to be checked out.

      The technician himself had disappeared.

      Charlie was the link between the tech and Connelly Corporation, and the police had picked up her up for questioning. At first she’d refused to talk in spite of the fact that Grant Connelly didn’t want charges pressed against her. Then, as she was leaving police headquarters, someone had nearly managed to put a bullet between her eyes.

      She’d talked after that—and then she’d vanished. Rafe couldn’t find out much about what she’d told the police. They were being disgustingly closemouthed on that subject. All he knew was that Angie Donahue, the mother of his half-brother Seth, had somehow persuaded Charlie to use that particular technician.

      And Angie Donahue was connected to the Kelly crime family.

      Now there was a price on Charlie’s

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