Lisa Childs - The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise

“It’s whose baby?”

Top Secret Deliveries delivers again

When bounty hunter Jake Howard tries to apprehend bail jumper Lillian Davies, he gets a surprise: she’s pregnant! He’s more surprised that she’s accused of embezzlement...and someone wants her dead. Is she being framed? Having betrayed Lillian once, Jake wants to regain her trust and exonerate her. He’ll even risk his life to save her and their little family before it’s too late.

Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel (a Mills & Boon story, of course) at age eleven, all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

Also by Lisa Childs

The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise

His Christmas Assignment

Bodyguard Daddy

Bodyguard’s Baby Surprise

Beauty and the Bodyguard

Nanny Bodyguard

Single Mom’s Bodyguard

In the Bodyguard’s Arms

The Colton Marine

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise

Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07901-3

THE BOUNTY HUNTER’S BABY SURPRISE

© 2018 Lisa Childs

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With great appreciation for Patience Bloom; it is a privilege and a joy to work with you!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

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

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

Pulling the flash drive from the computer with trembling fingers, Lillian Davies ducked under the desk just as the office door creaked open to the corridor. A beam of light flashed across the space, bouncing off the filing cabinets and the back of the chair she’d pulled up against the desk to cover her. She closed her eyes so the beam would not glint in them, and she crouched even lower. Her heart pounded wildly with fear that she would be caught.

If that happened, she would never have a chance to show anyone the evidence that would clear her name. And she would be sent to prison for certain. She held her breath, waiting to be discovered.

If the security guard noticed that the monitor was on...

She could only hope that he would call the police. Because if he called his boss—her former boss—first...

Then she might not make it back to jail. He would undoubtedly kill to cover up his crime—the one for which he’d framed her. Tom Kuipers must have hired her so he would have a scapegoat for the blame. She’d thought he was one of the few people in River City, Michigan, who hadn’t judged her based on her last name and who her family was and had been giving her a chance to prove herself.

But she had been wrong. Again.

Tears stung her eyes. She should have been used to it, used to being used. She blinked back the tears, opened her eyes and lifted her chin.

No. She damn well was not going to get used to it. She was going to fight back this time. Because she wasn’t fighting just for herself anymore.

And if the security guard discovered her, she would fight him, too. Sure, he carried a gun. But he wouldn’t actually shoot her, would he? Maybe if she propelled the chair into his legs and knocked him over she would have a chance to run for it.

She locked the trembling fingers of her free hand around the legs of the chair, ready to use it as a weapon. But the beam shut off, plunging the office into darkness again, except for the faint glow from the parking lot lights outside the windows. Then the door creaked closed and snapped shut.

Lillian finally released the breath she’d been holding. She waited several more moments, though, before she pushed out the chair and crawled out of her hiding space. She opened her purse and dropped the flash drive inside it. The plastic device slid to the bottom where she’d dropped the pregnancy test. She’d enclosed that in a bag, and through the clear plastic she could see the results that she hadn’t waited to read.

She already knew she was pregnant. She’d never missed one month let alone two, going on three. The plus sign staring up at her confirmed it, though. That was why she had risked her life and her freedom to come back here. She needed the evidence to prove her innocence, so that yet another Davies didn’t wind up in prison.

If the flash drive didn’t get the charges dropped against her, she was going to run. She was not going to have her baby behind bars. It was bad enough that was where most of the Davies family wound up later in life; her child was not going to begin his or her life in jail.

Chapter 1

Six months later...

“I should have listened to you,” Seymour Tuttle said. The bail bondsman paced the small confines of his office, nearly tripping over Jake Howard’s feet as the little man made the pass between his desk and the door Jake was leaning his back against, his long legs crossed at the ankles.

Tuttle had called him into his office and told him to shut the door. That was never a good sign for Jake. Every time someone had spoken to him in private before, it had been to give him bad news.

Your mother is dead...

Your father is gone...