The Agent's Redemption (Special Agents At The Altar 4) by LISA CHILDS

pregnant. She would have let him be part of his son’s life.
    “I know you’re busy,” she said. “It was her?”
    He nodded. Then he gestured at the open box. “Looks like you’ve been busy, too.”
    She expelled a shaky little breath that sounded as if she’d been crying. “It’s too late to help Amy now, though. I shouldn’t have tried to get rid of you when you first showed up at my door.”
    He knew now why she had. But he held back the words and his resentment because he could see from her slightly swollen and red eyes that she had been crying.
    “I should have helped you right away,” she said, and her voice cracked with emotion—with regret.
    “Amy was already dead,” he said. “She was probably dead before I even checked myself out of the hospital.” Guilt twisted his stomach into a tight knot. “If I’d checked myself out sooner...”
    But the coroner’s preliminary exam had estimated that time of death had been around the time she’d been abducted. She had probably died in the struggle. Amy had fought for her life and lost.
    Yet if Jared had caught the killer the first time he’d killed, Amy would be alive and so would all the other victims. But Lexi would still be gone.
    Becca shook her head and admonished him. “You shouldn’t have checked yourself out against doctor’s orders.”
    “You would say that,” he said, “because you’re a doctor.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
    “But you were in med school...” When Lexi disappeared.
    “I dropped out,” she said.
    “Because you were pregnant?” Had she given up her dream so she could carry his baby—to have his baby? Alone. She’d had no one to help her—if he was right that her parents had little to do with her because she was a painful reminder of Lexi.
    She shrugged. “It would have taken me too many years of med school and residency and crazy hours to become the surgeon I thought I wanted to be.”
    “So what do you do?” How did she take care of their son? If she’d told him she was pregnant, he would have helped her. At least financially. He wasn’t sure what he could offer her otherwise. He had always been so focused on his career that he’d never considered getting married and having kids. He’d never planned on being a father, so he wasn’t sure he could actually be one.
    “I condensed my crazy hours into a shorter time span by switching to a physician assistant program,” she said. “I’m a PA at the local hospital.”
    “But you wanted to be a surgeon.”
    She shook her head. “Not after...not after seeing all that blood in the trunk of Lexi’s car. I still see blood at the hospital. But I’m not the one cutting them open.”
    Like the Butcher cut open his victims...
    She hadn’t wanted to be anything like him—even if she would have been saving lives, instead of taking them like he did.
    “I’m the one stitching them back up,” she said with obvious pride and satisfaction.
    The pressure in his chest eased slightly. She’d stayed in medicine. She hadn’t completely discarded her dream. “That’s good,” he said.
    She smiled. “I enjoy it. And I didn’t have to go through all the crazy hours of a resident. I had more time for Alex.” Her face flushed and she looked away from him.
    So she probably missed his flinch of pain and regret. He’d had no time with Alex.
    “Why did you come back?” she asked him. “It’s too late to wake Alex up now—if that’s what you wanted to do.”
    He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Or why he had come back. He’d been so angry with her—until he’d seen the fear on her face. Then he’d just wanted to hold her—to protect and comfort her. She still hadn’t told him what had frightened her.
    “It is late,” he agreed as weariness overwhelmed him. Maybe he had checked himself out of the hospital too early, because he wasn’t completely recovered. His head pounded from the concussion, and he didn’t have his usual strength and