The Baby's Bodyguard. Alice Sharpe

      This book is dedicated to the memory

      of my mother with eternal gratitude for all the years of her love and support.

Chapter One

       Someone was watching her.

      Hannah turned quickly. The three women and one old man behind her in line at the small market either smiled or looked bored. No shifting feet, no averted glances.

      “Miss Marks?” the young clerk said, jerking Hannah’s attention back to him. He nodded at the debit card in her hand. The groceries were neatly tucked into cloth sacks, ready to go.

      “Oh, sorry, Dennis.” She ran the card quickly through the machine, determined to get herself under control. But the sensation persisted all across the parking lot and more than once, she stopped to look around, each time expecting to spot someone studying her. Why had she parked at the back of the lot? Finally she was close enough to push the button on her key chain and pop the trunk.

      The flat tire taking up two-thirds of the space reminded her she needed to swing by the service station and get it fixed. She’d thought working part-time would be a piece of cake, but there were always errands to run, as well. She fit the bags around the tire and slammed the trunk. That left her looking across the top of the car toward one of Allota’s two accessible beaches, this one a narrow span of gray sand leading to the deep blue Pacific Ocean.

      It was a cold sea this far north of San Francisco, barely fifty degrees even in summer. On a late May day, with the sun barely peeking from behind high clouds and the wind blowing, just a few hardy souls braved the elements.

      A car door slammed nearby and Hannah jumped. She knew she wasn’t the only woman in the community to be nervous—there were two unsolved murders of lone women sitting in their cars, both of them parked in their own garages. But she wasn’t a lone woman and she didn’t park in a garage so there went that excuse.

      “Nerves and lack of sleep,” her friend and coworker had pronounced when Hannah mentioned the sensation at work. No doubt Fran was right.

      Still, it was with a sense of relief that Hannah slipped into the car. What had she done with the keys? Patting pockets proved fruitless. She finally found them stuck in a side pocket of her handbag.

      As she bent forward to put the key in the ignition, the passenger door abruptly opened and a man got in beside her. She gasped as impressions struck like stray bullets. Tan skin, long black hair, angular face, straight eyebrows hovering over brilliant blue eyes.

      Eyes filled with scathing anger.

      She instantly reached for the door handle with one hand and slammed the other down on the horn. He grabbed her hand from the steering wheel and shouted, “Hannah. ¡Parada!“ in the ensuing silence.

      With her name and the sound of his voice came recognition. Her hand went limp in his grasp and he released it. Barely able to keep from rubbing her eyes, she whispered, “Jack?”

      His eyelids flickered.

      “It can’t be you,” she mumbled.

      His shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug and she realized why she hadn’t immediately recognized him. He was so much thinner than the last time she’d seen him, so much more weathered. There were a few scars that hadn’t been there before, too, one by his nose, another along his jaw. His hair, which had been military short, was now shoulder length, wavy and wild.

      Her impulse was to reach for him. “Jack! I thought you were dead—”

      He caught her arms in strong hands, stopping her momentum. She fell back in her own bucket seat and after swallowing her shock, murmured, “What’s going on?”

      “That’s what you’re going to tell me,” he said.

      “I don’t know what you mean.” But of course Aubrielle