The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise Read online

  “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.

  “You really gave the only proof of your innocence to your younger brother?” Jake asked. And he didn’t bother hiding his skepticism.

  Lillian flinched. “I know you don’t think much of my family.”

  “They break the law,” he reminded her. And despite her claims of innocence, she might have broken the law, as well.

  She flinched again. “Not Donny. He’s a good kid.”

  “He’s still a Davies.”

  “So am I,” she said. Then she rubbed her palms over her belly. “So is this baby...”

  His baby?

  He needed to know. But he wasn’t certain he could believe anything she told him. If that flash drive existed, though, if she was telling the truth about that...

  Maybe he could trust her again, like he had all those months ago when he’d started falling for her.

  * * *

  Be sure to check out the previous books in the exciting Top Secret Deliveries miniseries.

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  Dear Reader,

  I am so excited to have my book, The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise, included in Harlequin Romantic Suspense’s Top Secret Deliveries series! I do adore babies. The only ones I’ve been around recently have belonged to other people, though.

  But I do remember that feeling of being pregnant and I’m not talking about just the surge of hormones that made me weep over coffee commercials. I’m talking about that feeling of protectiveness. I would have done anything for my babies even before they were born. That’s how I can relate to Lillian Davies, the heroine in The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise. She will go to any extremes to protect her baby—even running from trumped-up charges against her and the bounty hunter determined to make her face those charges. But Jake Howard has never not collected a bounty. He has returned every bail jumper he’s ever chased. But he gets more than he bargained for when he tracks down Lillian Davies.

  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Happy reading!

  Lisa Childs

  THE BOUNTY HUNTER’S BABY SURPRISE

  Lisa Childs

  Ever since Lisa Childs read her first romance novel (a Harlequin story, of course) at age eleven, all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Harlequin, 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, lisachilds.com, or her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

  Books by Lisa Childs

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Top Secret Deliveries

  The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise

  Bachelor Bodyguards

  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 Coltons of Shadow Creek

  The Colton Marine

  Visit the Author Profile page at

  Harlequin.com for more titles.

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

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from Hometown Detective by Jennifer Morey

  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 inno
cence, 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...

  But usually Tuttle didn’t give a damn about privacy—his or anyone else’s. But since he’d just admitted he was wrong, Jake understood his not wanting anyone else to overhear his admission. He was surprised the stubborn old guy had admitted it even to himself, let alone Jake. That must have been Tuttle’s version of bad news: being wrong.

  “What should you have listened to me about?” Jake asked, holding back his “I told you so” until he knew the specifics.

  “The Davies family.” Tuttle uttered the last name as if it was a vulgar curse word.

  Jake flinched at just the mention of it, and a twinge of pain clenched his heart, stealing away his breath and his words. He couldn’t speak.

  But Tuttle didn’t stop talking. He rarely did. His wide mouth was nearly as big as his short body. “You told me not to bail out another one of them.” He shook his little bald head in self-disgust. “You warned me that they always run.”

  Jake’s pulse was running now in overtime. He didn’t want to think about the Davies family, didn’t want to think about what he’d done, the extremes he’d gone to the last time that he’d had to apprehend two of them.

  “Why aren’t you saying it?” Tuttle demanded as he stopped in front of him.

  Jake blinked and stared down at the little man. Tuttle was barely five feet tall to Jake’s well over six-foot height. “Saying what?”

  “I told you so,” Tuttle said. “You were right. I paid the bail and now you need to go bring back another damn Davies for me.”

  Jake shook his head and ran a slightly shaking hand through his thick hair. He needed a haircut. But then he always needed a haircut. “Not me. That’s not going to happen.”

  “You’re the expert on the Davies family,” Tuttle persisted. “You know where to find them.”

  “In jail,” Jake said. “That’s where most of them are.” He couldn’t believe Don or Dave would have gotten bail again after jumping it last time. And if a judge had been stupid enough to give it to them, Seymour had been even stupider to pay it. “I told you so” wasn’t enough recrimination for risking his money on one of them again.

  “Not her,” Seymour said.

  And Jake’s blood froze in his veins, sending a chill straight to his soul. “What?”

  Tuttle paced around his desk, pulled out his chair and plopped down onto it. The metal desk was old and scratched up. His leather chair was more duct tape than leather. The bail bondsman liked money, but he didn’t like spending it. Leafing through a sheaf of papers on his desk, he held up a mug shot. “Her. I thought she was different than the rest of them. She has no record. No prior arrests at all. That’s the only reason the judge granted her bail. That’s why I posted it, even though I know you warned me not to.”

  He trailed off as if waiting for Jake to say something—anything—but Jake was too stunned. He couldn’t move as shock gripped him. Seymour couldn’t be talking about...

  Not Lillian.

  But she was the only female Davies now. Her mother had passed away when Lillian was eighteen, leaving her with her degenerate father, three older brothers and one younger one.

  “Her trial was supposed to start Monday,” Seymour said, “but she never showed up for court.”

  Trial. For what? What the hell was going on?

  Jake’s spine stiffened. He shot away from the door to grab the mug shot from Tuttle’s hand. As he stared down at the photo, myriad emotions passed through him.

  Guilt. He’d felt that for the past eight months every time he had thought of her, which had been always. She had never left his mind. He remembered how devastated she had looked that last time he’d seen her, how her beautiful blue eyes had been dark with betrayal and pain. She’d thought he’d used her. And he had. That had been his plan all along, to get close to her to find out where her dad and brother Dave were hiding, but then something else had happened to him.

  Desire. He hadn’t planned on that, hadn’t plotted to get as close to her as he had gotten. But he’d wanted Lillian Davies more than he’d ever wanted any woman. With her shimmery pale blond hair and deep blue eyes, she was stunningly beautiful. And sweet. She had acted and tasted so damn sweet. Her kisses had gone straight to his head and desire had gone to his groin. He hadn’t been able to resist her. And he’d nearly forgotten all about apprehending her dad and eldest brother.

  Maybe that had been her plan, though. Maybe she had known all along who he really was and she’d set out to seduce him into forgetting about the bounties on her brother and father.

  Anger. He felt it now as he stared down at her mug shot. He could barely look at her beautiful face, and she was still beautiful—even with dark circles rimming her eyes. He looked instead at the charge printed on the photo: embezzlement. She must have played him, just like she had everyone else. Her boss, the judge and the bail bondsman. Lily-white Lillian Davies was anything but. She was a con artist just like the rest of her criminal family.

  “I know, I know,” Tuttle said. “You told me that if I bailed one of them out again, that you didn’t want to hear about it, that you wanted nothing to do with any of them again. But...”

  Jake had been adamant about that because he hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to face her again—because he’d felt so damn guilty over hurting her.

  He’d staged their whole cute first meeting, literally bumping into her in the grocery store. She’d apologized when their carts had collided, even though he’d deliberately plowed his into hers. Somehow he had sweet-talked her into dinner and then he’d made it for her.

  All he had been after was information on her dad and brother Dave. But he’d gotten so much more...

  Had he seduced her, though? Or had it been the other way around?

  “I’ll call one of the O’Hanigans to bring her in instead,” Tuttle offered.

  “No!” was Jake’s sharp retort as some emotion even uglier than anger coursed through him. Was it jealousy? He’d never felt such a sick, twisty feeling in his stomach before. He didn’t want Lillian seducing one of the O’Hanigans like she’d seduced him.

  No, if she was going to seduce anyone...

  Images flitted through his mind, like they did every night when he tried to sleep. Images of her lying naked in his bed, her silky skin flushed with desire, her lips parted on a husky moan.

  No. She wasn’t going to seduce him this time. He would not be conned twice. He’d spent the past eight months hating himself for making her hate him. He’d felt guilty and remorseful because he’d hurt her.

  And she’d probably been laughing at him—as she stole money just like her brother and father had. She’d been laughing at him and her hapless trusting employer.

  She wasn’t going to get away with it.

  Not this time.

  She wasn’t going to elude justice.

  This was why he had resigned from the US Marshals and gone into business for himself as a bounty hunter. The US Marshals didn’t have t
he time or the resources to bring back all the fugitives from justice. So Jake had taken it upon himself to do the job.

  “Don’t call the O’Hanigans,” he said with more control. “I will bring back Lillian Davies.” He’d spent the past eight months dreading ever seeing her again, but now he couldn’t wait.

  His pulse tripping away with anticipation, he turned toward the door but not so fast that he missed the little smile that curved Seymour Tuttle’s thin lips. The old bail bondsman had played him—just like Lillian had.

  He would deal with Tuttle later. Right now, he had a fugitive to apprehend. A beautiful fugitive...

  * * *

  Lillian felt sicker than she had during her first trimester when she hadn’t just had morning sickness but all-day sickness. Of course, that might have had less to do with her pregnancy than the charges she faced—charges that could put her behind bars for a very long time.

  But jail was the least of her concerns at the moment.

  Her heart pounded fast and her palms sweated against the steering wheel she clutched. She had no idea where to go now. Since ditching court, she was a fugitive.

  She knew what that meant. She knew who might come looking for her. That was her biggest concern, even bigger than finding out what the hell had happened to the flash drive.

  Her lawyer claimed she’d never received it. But dare Lillian believe her?

  Or had he gotten to her? Her former boss.

  Mr. Kuipers was wealthy, even wealthier since he’d embezzled all that money from his company. He could have easily bribed an underpaid legal aid attorney to lose the evidence that would have proved Lillian’s innocence and his guilt.

  That had to be what happened. She couldn’t consider the alternative. Then it would only prove that Jake Howard had been right about her family.

  And he wasn’t...

  He hadn’t been right about anything. But the man was good at his job—so good that he would use whatever means necessary to get what he wanted. Just like he had used her.

  She hadn’t been complaining at the time, though. Of course, she had been totally unaware that he was using her. She’d been so naive.