In The Arms Of A Stranger. Kristen Robinette
me, to keep me from testifying.” She forced the words out, wrapping her free hand over her arm to still the trembling.
What was happening to her? It was cold, but she still wore her jacket. Besides, this cold seemed to come from within, emanating outward. She drew in a ragged breath. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Her hands began to tremble and her arms felt weak. Dana clamped her chattering teeth together and concentrated on her precarious grip on the baby.
“Are you okay?” Luke’s voice was deep but soft.
She looked up. “I—I don’t know what’s happening.” It was becoming more difficult to breathe with each passing second. “I’m cold and it’s like I can’t…I can’t get enough air.”
“Damn.” Luke dropped to his knees in front of her. “How badly were you hurt?” he asked, leaning over the baby as he examined the cut on her forehead a second time. “Were you injured anywhere else?”
Dana shook her head.
“You might be shocky.” He said the words more to himself than her. “Or it could be a panic attack—a delayed reaction.” He shimmied out of his jacket and draped the leather over her knees, partially covering the baby. He grasped her shoulders firmly. “Either way, you need to calm down. Try and relax.” His palms slid to her neck and upward, finally cradling her face. “Look at me, Dana.”
Her eyes met his.
“You’re safe.”
She felt tears well up in her eyes and hated herself for the weakness. They spilled as she nodded, trailing over Luke’s warm hands.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He placed one hand against the baby’s head, absently caressing the dark peach fuzz that topped it. “Not to either of you.”
Dana tried to answer, but she couldn’t seem to take in enough air to form the words.
“You need to slow your breathing,” Luke stated, his eyes never leaving hers. He pulled her free hand to him, spreading her fingers over his chest. “Breathe with me.”
Dana stared at her hand, pale against the black fabric that covered Luke’s chest, her fingers resting inches from the leather holster that crisscrossed it. Slowly she began to match her breathing to the rhythmic rise and fall of Luke’s chest. Time passed in a haze, and every breath she took with Luke loosened the smothering tightness in her chest. Soon Dana was more aware of the subtle play of muscle beneath fabric than the rise and fall of his chest.
The baby squirmed in her lap and Dana blinked, her gaze rising to Luke’s face. Loose waves of dark-brown hair just brushed the neck of his T-shirt. The fabric expanded to cover broad shoulders. He was a giant of a man, yet there was a gentleness about his face, more specifically his eyes. Set above high cheekbones, his eyes were startlingly blue against his dark complexion. Eyes that watched her intently, missing nothing.
Dana was surprised to find that a surreal warmth had filled her, calmed her when she wasn’t even aware of it. But to her amazement, that wasn’t all. She’d hardly been aware of herself as a woman during the past year and a half. But emotions she’d thought long dead now warmed her body in places she’d learned to ignore. Luke’s gaze flickered to her mouth, and Dana jerked her hand away as though she’d been burned.
“Is anyone expecting you?” Luke’s deep voice cut through the silence that followed.
Was anyone expecting her? She desperately wanted to say yes, but couldn’t think of a soul who’d look for her. Her aunt and uncle had raised her since the age of five, after her parents died in an auto accident. Dana checked in with them once a week. But if she didn’t, would they call her? An old pain threatened to resurface, and she suddenly knew why she phoned them so regularly. The answer was no.
Her chest constricted again, but this time Dana reached for Luke, her hand seeking his chest like a lifeline. He placed his hand over hers, warm and reassuring.
“No, Dana,” he crooned, his deep voice hypnotic. “Don’t let it happen again. Breathe.”
Her eyes were glued to his chest, but her thoughts were frantically searching for a positive answer to his question. The list of people close to her was short and getting shorter. Her ex-husband? She shook her head, forcing down a hysterical sob. No, Robert was busy tending to his new wife and newborn son. His biological son, she mentally added. A child that even the most advanced fertility treatments hadn’t allowed her to bear.
Perhaps that was the reason she was so out of control, she reasoned. She’d continued to try to become pregnant, even after the divorce, for the last year and a half. Her doctor had pumped enough hormones into her system to give her normally laid-back personality a jolt of hysteria. Not that the effort had done any good.
And now that door had permanently closed.
I’m afraid we’ve reached an impasse, Dana. Her doctor had delivered the news as gently as possible. There’s nothing more we can do.
She’d received the call from her doctor just moments before she was to go on-air today. The proverbial straw that had broken the camel’s back.
There hadn’t been time to confide the news to anyone, but she could predict the reaction of friends and family. It’s for the best, they’d say. After all, she was a single woman in the public eye. If viewers reacted negatively to a pregnancy, it could mean the end of her career.
But what did she care?
People looked at her carefully arranged appearance, her high-profile career, and thought she’d achieved her dream. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. What she wanted was to spend sleepless nights holding an infant against her breast, make mud pies with a toddler, and teach a first-grader how to turn a wad of gum into a shiny pink bubble.
At one time the dream had included a loving husband, but not anymore.
“Dana?”
Dana looked up, knowing his watchful eyes had seen the play of emotion on her face. She dropped her hand, forcing her breathing to steady on its on. This was her life, the hand she’d been dealt. She called on the stubborn pride that had seen her through more than one lonely crisis, including her childhood.
Dana lifted her chin slightly. “No. No one is expecting me.”
Chapter 3
Luke nodded, trying not to be distracted by the sudden moisture in her eyes. In his experience in law enforcement, emotion that intense could be traced to one of two things. Either the suspect had just bared their soul or they were desperately lying. The thought struck him as odd. He had no logical reason to think Dana Langston would lie.
He flexed his free hand, wishing for the familiar feel of the radio, for the chance to call for backup. And to check her story, he admitted. He lifted the cell phone from the floor where it lay among the spilled contents of the diaper bag and optimistically pressed the power button. The phone came to life, its face illuminating in the dim lighting of the storage room. Luke cast a questioning glance at Dana.
“I couldn’t get through earlier when I tried. Maybe the mountains, maybe the storm…”
Luke punched in the number for the police station and hit the send button. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then the familiar no-connection tone sounded. “Still nothing,” he announced.
His shoulder muscles tensed beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, reacting to the cold in a painful spasm. There was nothing more bone-chilling than an empty house, no matter what shelter it offered. Luke looked at Dana and the baby. Dana’s jeans were encrusted in mud and melting snow, as his were. And the baby just looked vulnerable as hell. Without a means to call for help, they were stuck for the night. He had no intention of spending it shivering in a supply closet.
“Do you know how to use a gun?”
Dana’s eyes widened in response to his question. “I—I did a segment once on personal protection. The