Elle James: Bundle of Trouble

He dragged her against him, crushing her chest into his. “I love Jake more than life itself. He’s my reason for living.”

His move left her breathless, the feel of his body against hers more shocking than his accusations. “Okay, so you love him. What next?”

“We find him.”

“Then what are you doing now?”

“Making a mistake,” he said, staring down at her, his smoldering black eyes burning into hers. “But for some damned reason, I can’t help myself.”

“Then don’t.” She leaned up, pressing her lips to his, which started an avalanche of repercussions neither expected.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my wonderful editor, Denise Zaza, for having faith in my writing and helping me to grow as a Harlequin author.

Golden Heart winner for Best Paranormal Romance in 2004, Elle James started writing when her sister issued a Y2K challenge to write a romance novel. She managed a full-time job, raised three wonderful children and she and her husband even tried their hands at ranching exotic birds (ostriches, emus and rheas) in the Texas Hill Country. Ask her and she’ll tell you what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with an angry 350-pound bird! After leaving her successful career in information technology management, Elle is now pursuing her writing full-time. She loves building exciting stories about heroes, heroines, romance and passion. Elle loves to hear from fans. You can contact her at ellejames@earthlink.netor visit her Web site at www.ellejames.com.

Tate Vincent—Texas multimillionaire rancher who adopted a baby boy to satisfy his dying father’s wish for grandchildren.

Sylvia Michaels—A mother who has spent the past six months desperately searching for the baby stolen from her in Mexico.

Kacee Leblanc—Executive assistant with a shady past and shadier relatives who is in love with her boss, Tate Vincent.

Rosa Garcia—Former Austin City Police officer medically retired from the police force after receiving an injury in the line of duty. Tate Vincent hired her to protect his son.

El Corredor—Man in charge of trafficking babies in the San Antonio area and selling them to the highest bidders.

Danny Leblanc—Kacee’s brother with a police record recently released from prison.

CW Middleton—Tate Vincent’s ranch foreman and best friend. He served three tours of duty with the millionaire in the Middle East.

Jake Vincent—Tate Vincent’s adopted son. Could he really be Sylvia’s baby who disappeared six months ago?

Beth “Bunny” Kirksey—Woman claiming to be Jake’s mother who signed over Jake to Tate in the adoption proceedings.

Velvet—Bunny’s friend who may have information regarding the sale of babies in San Antonio.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Sylvia Michaels balanced tenuously on one long strand of barbed wire as she slung her leg over the fence. So far so good. Sweat dripped from her hairline, running down her forehead toward her eyes. No chance of brushing it away, not when she needed both hands to hold on.

Bowing her legs around the jagged barbs, she perched one foot on the wire and swung her other leg over. As she dropped to the ground, her jeans snagged on a sharp barb, ripping open the denim and tearing into her flesh. She screamed and fell the rest of the way, landing facedown on the ground, coughing up dust, bleeding and wishing this nightmare would end.

Overheated, tired and scared, she worried that this was just one more wild-goose chase she’d rack up on her quest to find her child. Adding to her stress, someone had been following her for the past couple days since she’d left the coroner’s office in San Antonio. She choked not only on the fine Texas dirt, but a sob welled in her throat, despair threatening to take control.

Six months. She’d given up six months of her life to find the son stolen from her in Monterrey, Mexico, last March. He’d be ten months old now. She’d missed seeing him sit up for the first time, missed watching him learn to crawl. Possibly even missed his first word.

Damn it! She pushed to her feet, wiping the tears and dust from her eyes with her dirty hand. She hadn’t come this far to fail. She hadn’t risked her life investigating a potential baby-theft ring terrorizing mothers from Mexico to Texas. She’d been the only one to come forward and give a detailed description of the person who’d stolen her child. None of the other witnesses in Monterrey had seen the man’s face or had the guts to identify the perpetrator if they had. She’d gone to the U.S. Embassy in Monterrey when the Mexican police had done nothing.

She should never have brought Jacob to visit her ex-husband. So what if his work made it impossible for him to travel to the States for his scheduled visit? She should have insisted he come to the States. And he’d blamed her when a man had knocked her down and taken Jacob from his stroller in broad daylight in a crowded marketplace.

After six months, a half dozen dead ends and completely draining her savings, she’d reached her limit, her last hope—the Vincent Ranch in Texas hill country. She’d followed every lead imaginable from a frightened Mexican woman who barely spoke English to an adoption agency in San Antonio. A child matching her son’s description was adopted by Texas multimillionaire Tate Vincent two weeks after her son was abducted. When she’d tracked down the woman who’d signed over the child, she’d found she’d died in a hit-and-run the day before.

Sylvia had tried to get an appointment with Tate Vincent, but his personal assistant made excuses every time and flat-out told her to buzz off. It didn’t help that she couldn’t be openly honest with his assistant. What chance did she stand against a millionaire in claiming the son he’d adopted was in fact her son? She didn’t have money left to fight a lengthy court battle to request an opportunity to even get close to the boy. All she had was the cash left in her wallet, beneath her car seat.

After all this time, Sylvia wanted desperately to see Jacob, to hold him in her arms, to hear his baby voice.

Sylvia had hidden her car a mile away behind brush, near a creek along the highway. She moved among the shadows to avoid detection, keeping close to a stand of dwarfed live oaks. A large field stretched in front of her, rising up a hillside with only scattered clumps of cedar and live oak. She hurried from shade patch to shade patch, sweat oozing from every pore.

When she’d left her car, her temperature gauge read ninety-eight. It felt more like well over one hundred. Her gaze darted from side to side, and she listened for sounds of people, horses or motor vehicles. As she topped the rise in the terrain, the Vincent Ranch house came into view, a large, sprawling, white limestone, one-story with a wraparound deck.

Her gaze panned the exterior, searching for movement. Careful to stay out of sight, she made a wide circle around the homestead until she rounded the front of the house. She paused in the shade of a tree, leaning against the gnarly trunk and squinting in the haze of dust and heat. Then she gasped, exhaustion, dehydration and hope bringing her to her knees.