Marie Ferrarella - Heart of a Hero

He waited for her to start making sense. “Go on.”

She moistened her lips. This sounded so damn melodramatic, she thought, but it was all true. “I need you to help me steal my son back.”

“Then you do know who has him.” He’d had a feeling all along that she did.

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Look, Ms. Armstrong, if this is some kind of a custody battle, you need a lawyer, not me.”

“No,” Dakota insisted, “I need you. Or more accurately put, what I need is a hero.” She turned on all of her considerable charm. “Will you be my hero, Andreini?”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA Award-winning author has one goal: to entertain, to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over a hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

1/1/2001

To my family,

May this be the beginning of something wonderful.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

The scream filled the area around him.

Eyes he hadn’t realized he’d shut flew open as the sound registered in his brain. Restoring the recliner he’d just dropped into less than ten minutes ago to its original upright position, Russell Andreini cocked his head and listened intently to make sure he hadn’t just dreamed the jarring sound. But even as he strained to hear, Rusty was getting to his feet.

The scream, he was almost certain, had come from the garden apartment just below his own. It hadn’t originated from a television set in the vicinity turned up too loud, or from some ridiculous radio commercial meant to catch your attention. It had come from a woman.

A very terrified woman.

Rusty was beyond bone-weary. He had come home after putting in eighteen hours of surveillance that had led to a gratifying payoff just two hours ago and was more than entitled to feel the way he did. But, like the professional he was, Rusty forgot his exhaustion as adrenaline began to surge through his body.

He was willing to bet a month of his sister Megan’s Sunday steaks that the scream had come from the blonde directly below him.

Not stopping for the shoes he’d carelessly discarded when he’d walked into his apartment, Rusty yanked open his front door.

The echoes of the first scream were just fading from his head when he heard a second one.

Hands braced on the balustrades on either side of him, he sailed down the narrow stone steps that led to the ground level.

He was right, the scream had come from the apartment directly below his. Most likely from the woman who’d never returned his smile the few times their paths had crossed. He had to pass her door each time he either came down or went up the stairs that led to his own apartment.

As near as he remembered, the woman had moved in about a month ago and spoke to no one. He’d once seen her in the laundry room and tried to start up a conversation. After a lengthy pause she’d responded with a monosyllabic sentence, dumped her soiled laundry back into her basket and, taking the hand of the little boy who seemed never to be far out of her reach, made a hasty exit.

Rusty recalled glancing at his watch, noting that the woman had hurried away less than three minutes after he’d entered the laundry room. She’d made him wonder.

She seemed far too young and attractive to appear so solemn-eyed and distant. And though the green eyes she’d turned up to him had been hard, he thought he’d detected fear beneath the wariness. That had made him wonder, too. He never liked seeing anyone in pain.

“Hey, everything all right in there?” Rusty called as he knocked loudly on the woman’s door. The only response was another scream. “Dumb question,” Rusty mumbled under his breath as he tried the doorknob.

The door was locked. He glanced around to see if anyone else had heard the screams and was coming to help, but apparently everyone else in the complex had a life they were attending to. There were very few lights on within the surrounding apartments. It was Friday night and the residents in the complex were predominantly single. In all likelihood, they were all out enjoying themselves.

“Open up. It’s Rusty.” He added as a clarifying afterthought, “From upstairs.”

He’d introduced himself to her during their run-in in the laundry room. Etiquette notwithstanding, she hadn’t felt the need to tell him her name in return. When he’d tried to talk to her son, a boy he judged to be around two, she’d scooped the boy up and quickly retreated from the area. The brunette who’d been quick to take up her space had also tried to fill her place in the conversation, being far more communicative than her predecessor.

Rusty had fallen into the conversation easily, even though he’d been distracted by the woman who’d walked out so quickly with her son. People usually found him incredibly easy to talk to and he had wonderful rapport with kids. The whole incident had taken him somewhat aback.

But he figured his silent neighbor had her reasons and he wasn’t the kind to pry, at least, not in his private life. He did enough of that professionally.

When there was no response to his pounding, Rusty called out again. “Ma’am?”

This time there was no scream, no answer. At least, no answer that fell under the heading of human. It was just a keening sound that sliced through him, going clear down to the bone. Cutting into him far more than even the scream had.

He’d only heard such pain once before. When his mother had realized that someone had kidnapped Chad.

Without pausing to think, Rusty backed up, then rammed his shoulder into the door as hard as he could. The door groaned and then finally gave, slamming against the opposite wall.

In a delayed reaction, pain shot through his shoulder like an exploding grenade.

Somewhere in the back of his mind it occurred to Rusty that breaking down a door, or at least forcing it open always looked a great deal easier when the hero did it in the movies or on TV.

Real life was a whole lot harder. But then, he already knew that.

Rusty scanned the area. The apartment layout was a carbon copy of his own. There was a tiny kitchen with a square table immediately to his left and a small living room directly in front of him. Neither was occupied. He raced to the back of the apartment. There was a room on either end of the abbreviated hall.

He found her in the smaller of the two.

Rusty saw why the screams had momentarily halted. Barefoot, wearing a thigh-length, cotton-candy-pink nightgown, the woman was covering her mouth with both hands. Her eyes were opened so wide with shock and terror that for a second he said nothing, afraid of setting her off.

The empty wooden crib in the corner registered belatedly.

The next moment, as if suddenly becoming aware of the fact that she was no longer alone, the woman grabbed up the small, free-standing lamp and grasped it in both hands, prepared to wield it like some sort of martial arts weapon.