The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

Maybe he was heading in the wrong direction—except, this was the way to the nearest subway stop and only his Sage would be pig-headed enough to ride the subway, alone, at this hour of the—

There she was.

The rain and wind made vision difficult but how many other women would be hightailing it along the street in a thin dress and skinny heels on a night like this?

Didn’t she know enough, at least, to take off those shoes? If she slipped on the wet sidewalk and went down …

Caleb was already running at full speed.

Somehow, he ran harder.

Half a block away, he did something amazingly stupid.

He shouted her name.

She glanced back, and went from walking fast to running. Great.

“Sage, goddammit,” he shouted and his heart jumped straight into his throat because she was approaching the corner, not slowing down, another couple of inches and she’d be stepping off the curb …

A big-ass delivery truck was hurtling into the intersection.

“Sage,” Caleb yelled, and on one final burst of speed he wouldn’t have imagined possible, he reached her, closed his arms around her and dragged her back against him.

For a heartbeat, they remained just that way, him holding her, she wrapped safely in his arms.

A wave of water big enough to have swamped the Titanic billowed over them.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Caleb snarled, and then he spun Sage around, saw her face awash with a mix of rain and tears, and he cursed again and kissed her.

Her lips clung to his just long enough to give him hope. Then she jerked back in his arms, slammed her fists against his shoulders and called him a name that might have made him laugh if his heart wasn’t trying to claw its way out of his chest.

So, instead, he grabbed her wrists, pinned her hands between them, and took refuge in anger.

“What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t you see the red light? Didn’t you see that frigging truck? Another couple of seconds and you might have—you might have—” The rush of words stopped; the enormity of what had almost happened shot through him, left him shaken. “I almost lost you,” he whispered.

“As if it matters,” she said, her voice trembling.

“What are you talking about?”

“Or maybe it does. Maybe you really do want your child—”

Her teeth started to chatter. Caleb yanked off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her.

“I don’t want anything from—”

“Taxi,” he yelled, as a cab approached, but it shot by.

“Caleb. Do you hear me? I said, I don’t want—”

“Taxi!”

The second cab shot by, too. It was New-York-in-the-Rain, when taxi drivers suddenly went blind.

Okay.

No taxi. And no cell phone. He’d left it in their suite … but, hallelujah, there was a coffee shop a few feet away.

“Come on,” he said, tightening his arm around her.