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  Kinley sensed her son was near, could practically imagine him calling out to her.

  She saw a room. It was homey. There was a rocking chair, a sofa. But there was something else in the corner.

  A child’s toy chest.

  “Is that my son’s?” she asked Jordan, pointing to the monitor. “Is he here?”

  But he didn’t answer. There was a series of sharp beeps, and Jordan cursed.

  Kinley frantically looked around at all the monitors, expecting to see some kind of security breach. But they showed no threat. “What’s happening?”

  He went to her, so close they were practically touching. Kinley tried to step back, but he caught her arm, leaned in and put his mouth against her cheek. “Someone’s watching. We have to make it look good.”

  And he kissed her.

  DELORES FOSSEN

  CHRISTMAS GUARDIAN

  To Dakota and Danielle

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.

  Books by Delores Fossen

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  990—UNDERCOVER DADDY*

  1008—STORK ALERT*

  1026—THE CHRISTMAS CLUE*

  1044—NEWBORN CONSPIRACY*

  1050—THE HORSEMAN’S SON*

  1075—QUESTIONING THE HEIRESS

  1091—SECURITY BLANKET**

  1110—BRANDED BY THE SHERIFF†

  1116—EXPECTING TROUBLE†

  1122—SECRET DELIVERY†

  1144—SHE’S POSITIVE

  1163—CHRISTMAS GUARDIAN**

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Jordan Taylor—Fourteen months ago someone left a newborn on the doorstep of this married-to-his-job Texas millionaire, and his life has never been the same. Jordan has spent all these months protecting the child and raising him as his own, and he’s none too happy when the baby’s biological mother, Kinley, appears and brings with her a Texas-size mountain of danger.

  Kinley Ford—While on the run from a killer who wanted the classified results of her research project, she had to leave her newborn son with a friend who was later murdered. Now that she’s found her baby, she plans to regain custody, even if it means fighting a hot attraction for Jordan and a killer who just won’t give up.

  Gus—Kinley’s little boy. He doesn’t remember his mom, and he’s too young to know there’s someone who wants to use him as a pawn to get his mother to cooperate.

  Burke Dennison—A former investor in Kinley’s research project. How far would he go to recoup the millions of dollars that he poured into the project?

  Cody Guillory—This security agent was once Jordan’s right-hand man, but now Cody might have his own agenda.

  Martin Strahan—Another investor in the research project who seems willing to go to any length to make Kinley share her secrets.

  Desmond Parisi—He, too, once worked for Jordan, but this communications specialist could be in a perfect position to profit from Kinley’s research.

  Anderson Walker—A hired gun who goes after Kinley. But who hired Anderson, and who can make him stop before it’s too late?

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Prologue

  San Antonio, Texas

  Jordan Taylor heard the pounding, but it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t part of the nightmare he’d been having. Someone was banging on his door.

  He checked the clock on the nightstand. Three in the morning. He cursed, threw back the covers and grabbed his Sig Sauer, because visits at this time of morning were never good.

  “Jordan, open up!” a woman said. Not a shout, exactly, but close.

  He recognized that voice and cursed again. Shelly Mackey, his ex, both as a business associate and a girlfriend. He wouldn’t need the Sig Sauer. Well, probably not. Since he hadn’t seen or heard from Shelly in months and since her voice sounded a couple of steps beyond frantic, Jordan decided to bring the gun with him anyway.

  “You have to help me!” Shelly insisted. She continued to pound on the door. “Please. Hurry.”

  That got him moving faster. Shelly wasn’t the drama queen type. Jordan didn’t bother to dress. He pulled on only his boxers and raced out of his bedroom.

  Her voice wasn’t coming from the front of the house, he realized, but from the door off his kitchen. Jordan sprinted that way.

  But the pounding stopped.

  He stopped, too, just short of the door. He waited a moment. Listened.

  And heard nothing.

  “Shelly?” he called out.

  Still nothing. That gave him another jolt of adrenaline. Shelly was likely in big trouble.

  Jordan lifted his gun as he reached for the doorknob. Then, he heard it. The sound of a car engine.

  Someone was driving away. Not fast. More like easing away, the tires barely whispering on the brick driveway that encircled his house. Jordan unlocked the door, jerked it open, but he caught only a flash of the bloodred taillights before the car disappeared into the darkness.

  With his gun aimed, he shot glances around his heavily landscaped yard. He didn’t see anyone, but the soft grunt he heard had him aiming his attention lower. To the porch.

  There was a basket with a blanket draped over it.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled.

  Jordan kept his attention on the yard, just in case the someone or something that had caused Shelly to run was still out there. He stooped down and lifted the corner of the blanket.

  A baby stared back at him.

  Jordan had never remembered being speechless before, but he sure was now. He looked beneath the blanket again, certain he was mistaken.

  No mistake.

  The tiny baby was still there. Still staring at him with eyes that seemed to ask who are you and why am I here?

  Jordan wanted to know the same thing.

  He grabbed the basket, brought it inside so he could set it on the floor and shut the door. He also reached for his phone and jabbed in Shelly’s number. Each ring felt like a week-long wait.

  “Jordan,” she finally answered. He didn’t know who sounded more frantic—him or her.

  “Talk to me,” he snarled.

  “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

  Despite the baby-in-the-basket bombshell, he wasn’t immune to the fear he heard in her voice. “Where are you? I’ll send help, and then you can come back for the little delivery you left on my porch.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do things this way, but I had no choice. They’re after me, because of the baby. He’s in danger, Jordan. The worst kind. And I need you to protect him.”

  Him. A boy.

  Then it hit Jordan. He threw back the blanket and had a better look at that little face. Dark brown hair. Dark brown eyes. About two months old at the most. He
quickly did the math. He’d last slept with Shelly nine or ten months ago. Break-up sex. And he hadn’t seen her since.

  Jordan groaned, and because he had no choice, he sank down on the floor next to the basket.

  “I’ve sanitized my office,” Shelly continued, her words rushing together. “Actually, I burned it to the ground. They won’t find anything there, but I don’t want them tracing the baby to you. Don’t let anyone know you have him. Please. There can be no chain of custody when it comes to him, understand?”

  No. He didn’t. But he focused on Shelly and her safety. “Tell me where you are so I can help you.”

  “You can help me by taking care of the baby. There are no records and no paperwork to connect me to that child. It has to stay that way. I’ve created a phony trail for us, too. If anyone digs into our connection, they’ll find proof you fired me because I was embezzling from your company. The documentation will imply that we’re enemies and that you’re the last person on earth that I’d ask for help.”

  This conversation was getting more and more confusing. “Is this baby mine?” Jordan demanded.

  Silence. He knew she was still on the line because he could hear her breathing. “Just protect him, please,” she said moments later. “A person might come looking for him. If she uses the code words, red ruby, then you can trust her.”

  “Red ruby? You gotta be kidding me. A code word? For what? Why?”

  “I have to disappear for a while,” Shelly said, obviously ignoring him. “But when I can, I’ll explain everything.”

  With that, she hung up.

  Jordan didn’t waste a second, not even to curse. He redialed Shelly’s number. But she didn’t answer. The call went straight to voice mail.

  Time for plan B. He phoned one of his agents, Cody Guillory, his right-hand man at Sentron, the private security agency that Jordan owned. Since Cody was pulling duty at headquarters, he answered on the first ring.

  “I’m guessing whatever’s wrong got you out of bed?” Cody greeted.

  “Yeah, it did. I have a situation,” Jordan replied. “Shelly could be in danger. She still has the same cell number and possibly the same phone she used when she worked for Sentron so try to track that. Discreetly. Let me know where she is.”

  “Will do. Give me a couple of minutes. Anything else?”

  Jordan looked at the baby and debated what he should say. Don’t let anyone know you have him, Shelly had warned. She’d even used another rare please. For now, he’d take the plea and warning to heart. “Just find her and send someone in case she needs help,” Jordan said, and he ended the call.

  The only illumination came from the moonlight seeping in through the windows, but it was enough for him to see the basket. Jordan stared at the baby, whose eyes were drifting down to sleep, and because he didn’t know what else to do, he groaned and considered the most obvious scenario. Had Shelly given birth to his child without telling him? And if so, why wouldn’t he have heard rumors that he was a daddy? There’d been no signs, no hints, nothing to indicate that this child was his.

  Except for the dark brown hair, dark brown eyes.

  Like Jordan’s own.

  Still, that didn’t mean he’d fathered this baby.

  He needed to talk with Shelly, and even though it was clear she was in the middle of a personal crisis, he tried her number again. Again, it went straight to voice mail. This time he decided to leave a message.

  “Shelly, we need to talk.” He wanted to say more, much more, but a cell conversation wasn’t secure. His number wouldn’t show up on her caller ID or phone records because all calls from his house and business were routed through a scrambler, but someone could get her phone and listen to any message he might leave.

  Someone’s trying to kill me, she’d said. Even with the shock of finding the baby, Jordan hadn’t forgotten that. Like him, Shelly now owned a security agency. Even though she’d been in business less than a year, her startup agency provided services as bodyguards, personal protection, P.I.s.

  And probably more.

  That more had nearly gotten him killed a few times. Was that what was happening to Shelly now? Had a case gone wrong, and was someone trying to use the baby to get to her? Maybe she’d had no choice but to bring the child to him, but it damn well had been her choice not to tell him before now.

  If the child was his, that is.

  The phone rang, slicing through the silence and waking the baby. He started to fuss. Jordan had no idea how to deal with that, so he lightly rocked the basket. Thankfully, the little guy hushed, and Jordan took the call.

  “It’s Cody. I tracked Shelly’s phone, no problem, but while I was doing that, I heard her name on the police scanner, and I zoomed in on the conversation with our equipment.” He paused. “About five minutes ago, a traffic cop responded to a failed carjacking just about a half mile from your place. It’s Shelly’s car.”

  Oh, God. “How bad?”

  “Bad.” And that was all Cody said for several long moments. “Shelly’s dead.”

  That hit Jordan like a punch to the gut. He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re sure it’s her?”

  “Yes, I’ve tapped into the camera at the traffic light, and I can see her face. It’s Shelly, all right. Looks like a gunshot to the head.”

  Jordan forced away the grief and pain and grabbed the basket so he could take the baby with him to his home office. He turned on his secure laptop. “Send me the feed from that traffic camera. Audio, too. And get one of our agents over there.”

  “I’ve already dispatched Desmond—” Cody paused, and in the background Jordan could hear the chatter from the laser listening device that Cody was using to zoom in on the scene. “An eyewitness is talking to the traffic cop right now.”

  The images popped onto his computer screen. Jordan saw Shelly’s car. The driver’s door was wide open. Her body was sprawled out in the middle of the street, limp and lifeless. Hell. If he’d just gotten to the door sooner, if he could have stopped her from leaving his place, then maybe she’d still be alive.

  Another patrol car arrived, but Jordan zoomed in on the conversation between the traffic cop and a twenty-something woman dressed in a fast-food restaurant uniform. An eyewitness. Her body language and nearly hysterical tone told Jordan she probably hadn’t been involved in this as anything more than a spectator to a horrific crime.

  “The man didn’t want her car,” Jordan heard the woman say, and he cranked up the volume.

  “What do you mean?” the cop asked.

  Tears streamed down the eyewitness’s face. “That man dragged her from her car and tried to force her into his black SUV. He was trying to kidnap her or something.”

  Or something. Jordan was afraid he knew what that something was. This man wanted information about the baby. But why?

  The eyewitness broke down, sobbing while she frantically shook her head. “The woman fought him,” she finally said, her trembling fingers held close to her mouth. “She tried to get away. But he shot her and then drove off.”

  There it was. The brutal end of one nightmare and the start of another.

  This wasn’t a botched carjacking. Shelly had been murdered. And Jordan instinctively knew the man in the SUV wasn’t finished.

  The killer would come after the baby next.

  Chapter One

  Fourteen months later

  December 22nd

  Kinley Ford was after two things: Jordan Taylor and the truth. Tonight, she might finally get both.

  If she didn’t get killed first, that is.

  Because if he did indeed know what was going on, he might take extreme measures to stop anyone from finding out.

  Swallowing hard, she stepped inside the reception area of the Sentron Security Agency to find the Christmas party in full swing. The place sparkled, not just with some of the guests in their glittery dresses. There was also an angel ice sculpture on a center table, and it was flanked on each side with white roses in crystal vases and bo
ttles of champagne angled into gleaming, silver ice buckets.

  Kinley dismissed all of that and looked around. There he was, on the far side of the room next to the massive Christmas tree.

  Jordan Taylor.

  He looked lethal. And was. She’d studied every bit of information she could learn about him. Over the years, he’d killed three people. All in the line of duty, of course. But that still gave him a dangerous edge that she would be a fool to dismiss.

  Kinley hated to think of him as her last resort, but she had exhausted her list of persons of interest. She’d exhausted her bank account. And herself. She wouldn’t give up if she failed tonight—she would never give up—but she literally had no idea where to go next.

  Beside her, her “date,” Cody Guillory, took her coat, then her arm and led her not in Jordan’s direction but toward a tall blond-haired man by the ten-foot-long table filled from corner to corner with party food.

  “Anna,” Cody said using the alias she’d given him, “this is Burke Dennison.” Cody checked his watch. “In about three hours, he’ll be my new boss.”

  Burke flashed a thousand-watt smile. With that sun-blond hair, blue eyes and tan, he looked every bit the golden boy he was. At thirty-one he was a self-made millionaire and about to take the reins of one of the most successful security agencies in the state.

  Burke used his champagne glass to make a sweeping motion around the reception area at Sentron headquarters. “I bought the place,” Burke let her know. “Isn’t that a hoot? I’m a ranch hand’s son from Dime Box, Texas, for Christ’s sake. Who would have thought it?”

  Jordan Taylor obviously had, since he was the present owner and about to relinquish control a mere three days before Christmas.