The Army Doc's Baby Secret

‘He has been asking about his father, you know,’ she said softly, almost towards the dark edges of the otherwise summer evening.

He waited, but she didn’t seem to want to be any more forthcoming.

‘What have you told him?’ Zeke asked, when he couldn’t bear it any longer.

Did Seth think he was dead? Or an absent father who didn’t care?

He clenched his fists in anger.

‘I told him the truth,’ she murmured. ‘That is, as much of the truth as I could manage. I told him that his father was a dedicated, loyal, heroic soldier who had won medals for his bravery. But who had been injured in an accident whilst in a hostile country.’

‘So he thinks I’m dead.’

A wave of nausea rushed up inside him before Zeke could stop it.

‘I don’t know,’ Tia answered honestly. ‘I never said you were, and neither did he. But I suppose he might think that.’

‘And when do I get to tell him who I am?’

She turned her head to look at him. The tension between them locking them both into place.

‘I don’t know,’ she half whispered. ‘Give me chance to get my head around it all. Everything has happened so quickly these last few days.’

He had meant to lean in closer in some wild attempt to intimidate her, but he really should have known better. Tia—his Tia—had never been the type to back down or cower. So, they sat there, his thigh cleaved to hers. Her head tilted, almost belligerently, up to his. Her arms crossed over her chest hinting at her impatience.

And then he saw the faint pulse on one side of her slender neck. Fast, jerky, certainly not as in control as she’d had him believing.

It sideswiped him, apparently knocking any last vestiges of sanity from his head. Before he even knew what he was doing, he had snaked an arm out to circle her all too familiar waist, and hauled her to him.

‘Zeke...?’

Her hands braced against his chest, her eyes widening, her breath catching.

‘Is this what you came here for?’ he bit out, as much to deflect as anything else.

How he loved the way her cheeks flushed—as though suffused with guilt. And the way she wanted him, just like back at the lifeboat station, soared through his body, lifting his spirits and soothing his earlier temper. Or, at least, transforming it into something else entirely.

Desire.

‘You could have just told me you wanted me to kiss you again,’ he taunted. ‘To make you come apart the way I always make you. The way you did back in that consulting room of your

s.’

‘I never gave that afternoon a second thought.’

It was a valiant attempt, but her voice was too breathy. And he knew her too well. A sensation suspiciously like triumph ripped through him. He bent his head to hers, so close the heat from their breath intertwined, and she shivered deliciously in his arms.

‘Liar,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me I never entered your thoughts.’

For a long moment she didn’t move. He wasn’t even sure if she’d stopped breathing. Her eyes meeting his, darkening, revealing too many things he knew she didn’t want them to.

‘You came here for more than just Seth.’

His gaze raked hers, hot and greedy and wanting. Then he leaned into her even closer.

‘You came to France for the same reason I invited you,’ he ground out. ‘Because, as dangerous and nonsensical as it seems to be, you and I can’t seem to stay away from each other.’

Before she could answer, he bent his head, unable to hold himself back any longer from this burning need that threatened to overpower him, and claimed her mouth with his own.