Daddy Devastating by Delores Fossen Page B

and a diaper, but he had barely gotten started when his phone rang. The sound shot through the room and startled Emily. Julia picked her up again before she could break into a full-fledged cry.
    Russ glanced at the caller ID on his phone. “I have to take this.” And he stepped back into the sitting room.
    While Julia finished up the diaper changing, she tried to hear Russ’s conversation. But she couldn’t tell anything from his monosyllabic answers. It was possibly about the security guard who would be assigned duty outside her door. Or maybe it was about the meeting with Milo.
    The meeting she hoped she wouldn’t regret.
    Of course, she would have regretted not trying to save the stolen baby even more.
    “I understand,” Russ said. He ended the call and came back into the room.
    “Is the security guard here?” she asked.
    “He is.” Russ reached down and ran his fingers over Emily’s toes. “But there’s a problem.”
    Her head whipped up, and she met his gaze. “Not the baby?”
    “No. Not the baby. My partner, Silas, just informed me that Milo has one of his men staked out near the hotel.”
    Her heart dropped. “You don’t think his man will try to get in here?”
    “No reason for him to do that. He’s watching us with an infrared thermal device.”
    “A what?”
    “It means he can see us. Not complete images, but the heat that our bodies are generating.” Russ turned and slipped his arm around her waist. He eased her closer. “It means Milo is trying to figure out if you really are my fiancée.”
    Sweet heaven. Her first instinct was to jump back from Russ, because it made her skin crawl to think that someone was spying on them. But Russ held on to her.
    “What do we do?” she asked.
    “I stay here tonight.” He tipped his head to the bed. “There. With you.”

    Chapter Five
    Russ stared at the laptop and tried not to break the screen.
    Silas had sent him the reports and pictures on Julia’s computer, since Russ didn’t have his own with him. And the FBI hadn’t wanted to risk having one delivered to the hotel, in case it would make Milo even more suspicious. If that was possible.
    Russ wasn’t feeling good about Milo’s meeting. But then, he was feeling even worse about the pictures in front of him.
    They were photos of Julia’s attack.
    Everything had been documented by the San Antonio police and used to convict the SOB who’d done this to her. There it all was—the details of the assault with a deadly weapon, the position of each stab wound, every bruise and scrape.
    She’d been damn lucky to survive, because any one of the stab wounds could have hit a vital organ. Added to that, she’d nearly bled to death in the trunk of her car. A passerby, out walking his dog, had heard her moaning and rescued her. It’d been cold that night, close to freezing, and the low temperatures had slowed her bleeding.
    Julia was alive because of a freak cold spell and a dog who needed a midnight walk.
    In other words, blind luck.
    Russ wasn’t able to hold back his feelings any longer, and he mumbled some profanity. Her attacker had gotten a life sentence, but that didn’t seem nearly harsh enough for what he’d done.
    Beside him, Julia stirred a bit, pulling the cover to her chin, but she went back to sleep. Good thing, too. They’d been up and down most of the night, with Emily feeding every four hours. Julia had taken the midnight shift, and after he watched how she prepared the formula, he did bottle duty at 4:00 a.m. Since it was going on seven, it wouldn’t be long before Emily woke up for the morning round. She might be a little angel, but she ate like a lumberjack.
    He smiled at that thought. It’d be like having daily miracles, just watching her grow up.
    Russ closed down the files on Julia’s stabbing, and then deleted them from her computer. He didn’t want her coming across them accidentally, even though she probably remembered every single detail in those reports. He