Bridegroom Bodyguard Read Online Free PDF Page B

really had one.
    “You think this is funny?” he asked, his voice gruff with disapproval.
    “Of course I don’t,” she said. With all the guilt and fear she felt, she was barely holding it together. If she let herself think about those people...
    Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. If she gave in to them, she wouldn’t be able to stop. “I think this is surreal. None of this is my life. None of this has anything to do with me. I am only the messenger delivering your son.”
    He laughed bitterly. “You make yourself sound like FedEx, like you’re just delivering a package.”
    That was what she had been told—how the baby had been referred to—as a package. She cringed now as she remembered Ethan’s mother’s careless words.
    “And that’s bull,” he said, “because you have an undeniable bond with...” His throat moved as if emotion choked him. He visibly swallowed and continued. “...my son.”
    He had already claimed his child. Where did that leave Sharon? If she admitted everything to him, it would leave her alone again as she already had been for so much of her life. But she shrugged off the self-pity and focused on what was important: Ethan would have a parent who would love and protect him.
    And if Parker were to protect his son, he had to find out who was trying to kill him and stop that person. So she had to tell him everything she knew—the little that it was.
    “I have been taking care of him,” she said, “pretty much since he’s been born.”
    “You’re a foster mother?” he asked.
    She shook her head.
    “A nanny?”
    She sighed. That wasn’t the job she had started out with, but it was the one she had wound up doing. “I’m a law student.”
    “So you work as a nanny on the side?”
    “I work as a law clerk for a judge.” And she watched realization dawn on his handsome face. He knew who the mother of his son was.
    He cursed. But then he tensed and glanced toward his son, as if regretful of swearing in front of the child. Ethan slept on, though. “Judge Foster?”
    He had slept with the woman but didn’t address her by her first name?
    She nodded.
    And he shook his head. “She told me that she couldn’t have kids....”
    “She was actually having fertility treatments so that she could,” Sharon said, flinching as she remembered the judge’s mercurial mood changes. She had been so thrilled to get the position clerking for the infamous Judge Brenda Foster...until she’d actually had the job. But the job as clerk had turned into the nanny job when Brenda had been unable to keep any other nannies working for her.
    He cursed again but under his breath. “I need to talk to her.”
    “Good luck,” she murmured. “I haven’t been able to reach her for the past two weeks.”
    “Two weeks?” he echoed in shock. “She hasn’t seen her child in two weeks?”
    With all the hours the judge worked and socialized, two weeks wasn’t the longest she had gone without seeing her son. “She sent me and Ethan away with enough cash to stay in hotels for two weeks. She didn’t want me using credit cards to buy anything.”
    “Because she didn’t want you to get tracked down,” Parker said, his blue eyes narrowing. “She must have known someone was after you.”
    Sharon shook her head. “Nobody was after me.”
    He clutched the paper in his hand so tightly that he crumpled it. “This newspaper article proves otherwise. And so does your car getting blown up in the hospital parking lot today.”
    Sharon shuddered as she faced the reality that someone definitely wanted her dead. Why?
    “What else did the judge tell you?” Parker asked.
    Sharon sighed. “Just that if I hadn’t heard from her before those two weeks were over, I was to bring Ethan to you.” It wasn’t exactly what the judge had said, but he was already so angry with Brenda—and rightfully so—that Sharon didn’t want to make the situation worse.
    But then, she wasn’t certain that it could get