Wild Stallion Read Online Free Page A

clean about everything. That could cause him to gather up his soon-to-be adopted son and go deep into hiding, where he could keep the baby away from her.
    Bailey wouldn’t blame him for that.
    But she couldn’t risk Jackson leaving with the baby. She had to know the truth.
    “Four months ago, when those men stormed into the hospital and took everyone hostage, I was in recovery. I’d just had a C-section.” Bailey had to take a deep breath. She didn’t remember much about that afternoon, and what she did remember wasn’t good. Just blips on her mental radar. “I didn’t know at the time, but the gunmen wanted to kill me.”
    “Because they thought you could identify them,” he supplied. “I read about that.”
    She nodded. She’d read all about it, too—after the fact. “Apparently, the two gunmen tried to break into the hospital lab the day before, and they thought I’d seen them without their masks. I might have,” she admitted.
    “You don’t remember?” he questioned.
    “No. I was there for some pre-op tests, and my mind was on the baby I was going to have. But they didn’t know that. They thought I was a threat. So they found out who I was and made a bogus call for me to come to the hospital for a bogus appointment. But I was already at the hospital because my labor started early.”
    He checked the phone monitor again. “Why didn’t the gunmen just go into the recovery room after you?”
    Bailey heard the question, but she had to know what was going on. Jackson kept looking at the phone, but he was giving her no clues as to what was happening. “Where’s the intruder?”
    “Still at the rear of the property. My men are closing in on him. Now, back to the question. Why didn’t the gunmen go into recovery after you?”
    “Because someone hid me, and my baby. I don’t know the person who did that, but I think it might be one of the two women in those photos. Both of them worked at the hospital at the time of the hostage incident.”
    He made an impatient circling motion with his finger when she stopped. “Keep going.”
    “The woman told me she had to take my son because the gunmen might hurt him.” Bailey had to pause again when she relived those last moments with her baby. “She took him and disappeared. I’ve been looking for him ever since, but I think someone doesn’t want me to find him. There have been three attempts on my life.”
    Jackson made a sound of mild interest. “I read the gunmen are dead now, and the person who hired them is in prison.”
    She nodded. “But I’m pretty sure someone has continued to follow me. I don’t know if it has anything to do with my missing son, or if it’s just someone who wants to do a news story. Some of the former hostages have been hounded by reporters.”
    No sound of mild interest this time. He groaned, a deep rumbling in his throat, and cursed. “Still, someone tried to kill you, but you decided to come here anyway?”
    “Those attempts on my life have nothing to do with this visit.” She couldn’t say it fast enough. “It’s been days, weeks even, since anyone has followed me. That’s why it was time for this visit. I thought I should come here today….”
    “Say it,” Jackson demanded when she stopped.
    Bailey wasn’t sure she could. She’d searched for so long, and it was bittersweet to think she might be this close and still be so far away from having the life she’d planned.
    “I thought if I could see the child you’re adopting,” she whispered, “that I would know if he was—well— mine. ”
    There it was. She’d just let him know that Caden James Malone could be the child who had been stolen from her.
    And in Jackson’s mind that meant she was the enemy.
    She’d read all about him. The ruthless business practices, the endless string of properties and businesses he’d acquired, often through hostile takeovers. His failed marriage in his early twenties to a woman who’d turned out to be a gold-digging