LITMIR.BIZ

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me to talk to him?”

      “Please,” she said as he pulled a BlackBerry from his pocket, the latest model. She recognized it only because Flint recently had gotten the same one. Boys and their gadgets. At another time, she might have found it amusing. In this moment, it was barely a blip in her consciousness as her thoughts moved back to her son.

      “How would they have your cell-phone number?” he asked.

      “It’s my work cell. A ton of people have it.”

      “What else did the man say?” Akeem was dialing already.

      “That they would call back.”

      “Hey, you okay? We got a call here,” Akeem said into the phone. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been busy. But anyway, I’m here to help.” He listened. “Money,” he said. “Better stay out there for the cops’ sake. Just send a couple of men back. Kat Edwards, too, if you can.” Then, “Not yet.” And explained the whole situation to Flint.

      The invisible fist tightened around her heart again. Some menacing stranger had her son. Her breath stuck in her lungs, and she had to rub her sternum to get air moving again. She had to get beyond this pain so she could do whatever it took to get him back. She had to come up with a plan.

      As soon as Akeem hung up with Flint, he was dialing again. “Jack,” he told her, then focused on the call when it was picked up. “Does your assistant still have that connection at Nextel?” He paused a beat. “There was a call made to the number I’m going to text message to you in a second. I need to know where it came from. Satellite positioning, whatever. And I need it now. I’m at Diamondback. Christopher was taken.” He listened to Jack on the other end. “You bet.”

      “Can he do that?” she asked, feeling the first ray of hope. She rattled off her cell number and he keyed it in.

      “Is there anything Jack can’t do?” To his credit, his face showed nothing but confidence.

      And he was right. Jackson Champion, shipping tycoon to be reckoned with, a self-made millionaire like Flint and Akeem, wasn’t the type to take no for an answer, not ever.

      “Where is he?” Jack was always off somewhere, expanding his business.

      “Greece. He’s in the middle of a deal, but he’ll cut the meetings short and come back tomorrow. He wants to be here to help. And he’s sending two choppers with pilots from his warehouse in case we need them for anything.”

      Her throat tightened again. The outpouring of help humbled her, just as it had earlier in the day when close to a hundred of her brother’s employees rose as one to drop everything and go find Christopher. She’d been so used to going it alone that the experience left her both grateful and bewildered. That some million-dollar negotiation would be set aside for her was beyond her experience, and yet knowing Akeem’s work, he had to be postponing business, too, to be staying here with her. And he was probably the most driven among them.

      Gravel crunched as a car pulled up to the main house. Akeem glanced out the window. “Looks like one of the ranch hands came back.”

      Flint must have sent him. He should return at least a handful of men. The horses would need watering in this heat. Everybody had work to do.

      “If you need to be somewhere—” She raised her gaze to Akeem. He looked as solid as a rock fortress: calm, self-assured. He was dressed nicely, leather loafers, black suit pants, white shirt with sleeves rolled just below the elbows—had always dressed nicely, even back in college when he had little money.

      He always had an inner, emotional strength she envied, and a handsome, noble face. She had developed a serious crush on him the first time they had met.

      “I’m right where I need to be.” His voice was quietly reassuring. And his eyes turned a shade darker yet, near black, like she fancied the night sky of the desert might look in the land of his ancestors.

      She didn’t know what to say. For the past five years, she’d been utterly alone, marriage or no marriage. Akeem had shown her more consideration in the past hour than Gary had in the whole last year they’d been together.

      He was a solid presence next to her. And she knew without a doubt that he meant every word he had said. Trusting herself to him, leaning on him throughout this terrible mess, would have been too easy. A few years back, she would have done just that. But Gary had taught her a couple of hard-learned lessons she could not soon forget. Would never forget, she hoped. Because she had sworn she would never let her life get so far out of her own control again.

      Shouting drew her attention and she jumped up to push to the window next to Akeem, aware of his nearness suddenly, but only for a split second. Then cold gathered in her stomach at the sight of the familiar beat-up, green pickup. The man who’d pulled in a few minutes ago wasn’t a returning ranch hand.

      She recognized the car, as she recognized the voice. And then as he stumbled out of the main house, lurching down the stairs, she recognized that he was drunk once again. The absolute last person they needed here.

      One of the cops followed him out of the house to keep an eye on him.

      “Who is that?” Akeem was already going for the door, ready to handle the situation to spare her any upset.

      Jaw tight, she held him back. “You stay. I’ll deal with him.”

      “I don’t think so.”

      But her hand on his arm did make him pause for a moment.

      “It’s okay,” she told him, although it wasn’t. Nothing was all right in her world at the moment. But Akeem needed an explanation, and she needed to deal with the man still spewing obscenities in the yard.

      “He is Christopher’s father,” she said.

       Chapter Two

      One look at the thunder on Akeem’s face told Taylor she better head off conflict while she could. “Would you mind checking on the officers to make sure everything’s okay in there?”

      “You want me to keep them out of this?”

      She watched his handsome face harden as Gary kept calling for her outside. Gary could be difficult to handle when he was like this, and Akeem had never been good at suffering fools. She didn’t need a fight on her hands. “Please,” she said.

      “And you want me to keep myself out of it.” Akeem held her gaze, then nodded after another second. “Of course,” he said, already walking out the door.

      The tension in her shoulders relaxed a little. He wouldn’t cause any problems for her. When had he ever not done as she’d asked him? She could only think of one extremely embarrassing occasion, when she’d turned nineteen and gone to a clam bake at a friend’s house that morphed into a keg party. She’d come home, wasted, in the middle off the night, snuck into the guest bedroom and practically begged Akeem to take her virginity. He’d been visiting Flint to strategize some deal they were putting together.

      Not only had he said no—emphatically—but he ran. He was gone by the time everyone got up in the morning, with some business-emergency excuse to Flint. They were wheeling and dealing even back then, in college.

      She always traced the awkwardness that had entered their easy friendship back to that night. And she found now that she could still blush at the memory.

      She rubbed her hands over her face before calling out an “In here” and watching through the open door as the two men passed and measured each other up in the yard.

      They were nothing alike. Gary was blond, Akeem darker in coloring. Gary was the taller of the two but Akeem much better built. Gary had on a stained, olive-green T-shirt with equally stained blue jeans. Akeem wore suit pants with a crisp, white shirt—had probably come from work. But the main difference was in their faces, in their eyes that reflected the essence of each. Gary’s gaze was hazy, anger

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