Little Boys Blue

  “You’re saying we wouldn’t have a real marriage?”

  “For legal purposes we would.”

  “And what would that do to Flynn and Jason? They’ll get to know you, love you, think of you as their mother. Then you’d up and leave. What would that do to them?”

  What would her leaving do to him? Cameron thought.

  “And if my grandparents win custody, how much will it hurt the boys to lose their father?” Alexa countered.

  “What about your work?”

  “I’ll put it on hold.”

  Cameron didn’t want to ask her to make this sacrifice. But he couldn’t lose his boys.

  Images of Alexa protecting the twins from yesterday’s danger gnawed at him. She was brave and vibrant and full of life and if he tried to keep her here permanently, would she wither and blame him?

  Alexa took his hand between hers. “I couldn’t live with myself if I let you down. So call your father. Tell him we’re having a wedding.”

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  The days are getting cooler, but the romantic suspense is always hot at Harlequin Intrigue! Check out this month’s selections.

  TEXAS CONFIDENTIAL continues with The Specialist (#589) by Dani Sinclair. Rafe Alvarez was the resident playboy agent, until he met his match in Kendra Kincaide. He transformed his new partner into a femme fatale for the sake of a mission, and instantly lost his bachelor’s heart for the sake of love….

  THE SUTTON BABIES have grown in number by two in Little Boys Blue (#590) by Susan Kearney. A custody battle over cowboy M.D. Cameron Sutton’s baby boys was brewing. When East Coast socialite Alexa Whitfield agreed to a marriage of convenience, Cam thought his future was settled. Until he fell for his temporary wife—the same wife someone was determined to kill!

  Hailed by Romantic Times Magazine as an author who writes a “tantalizing read,” Gayle Wilson returns with Midnight Remembered (#591), which marks the conclusion of her MORE MEN OF MYSTERY series. When ex-CIA agent Joshua Stone couldn’t remember his true identity, he became an easy target. But his ex-partner Paige Daniels knew all his secrets, including what was in his heart….

  Reeve Snyder had rescued Polly Black from death and delivered her baby girl one fateful night. Polly’s vulnerable beauty touched him deep inside, but who was she? And what was she running from? And next time, would Reeve be able to save her and her daughter when danger came calling? Find out in Alias Mommy (#592) by Linda O. Johnston.

  Don’t miss a single exciting moment!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Associate Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  LITTLE BOYS BLUE

  SUSAN KEARNEY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Kearney used to set herself on fire four times a day. Now she does something really hot—she writes romantic suspense. While she no longer performs her signature fire dive, she never runs out of ideas for characters and plots. A business graduate from the University of Michigan, Susan has written eleven novels and writes full-time. She resides in a small town outside Tampa, Florida, with her husband and children and a spoiled Boston terrier. She’s currently plotting her way through her next novel.

  Books by Susan Kearney

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  340—TARA’S CHILD

  378—A BABY TO LOVE

  410—LULLABY DECEPTION

  428—SWEET DECEPTION

  456—DECEIVING DADDY

  478—PRIORITY MALE

  552—A NIGHT WITHOUT END

  586—CRADLE WILL ROCK*

  590—LITTLE BOYS BLUE*

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Alexa Whitfield—She has the perfect job, the perfect life. But when tragedy strikes, she has hard choices to make.

  Dr. Cameron Sutton—He kisses like an angel, makes love like the devil. And he’s set on turning Alexa’s perfect world upside down.

  Jason and Flynn Sutton—Twin two-year-olds who make trouble as easily as they do mud pies. They will grow up to inherit one of the richest estates in America. And that potential wealth makes them a target.

  The Barringtons—Alexa’s wealthy grandparents are willing to take Cameron to court to contest custody of their grandsons. But will they resort to murder and kidnapping to get control of the boys’ trust fund?

  Julie Edwards—The college coed and the twins’ baby-sitter has three attractive men ready to court her, but the man she wants is out of reach.

  Cody Barnes—The shy young man is always around when there’s trouble.

  Leo Harvey—Bodybuilder and cook; he wants Julie, but how far will he go to get her?

  Bodine Stone—The head foreman; is he an honest employee or a man with his own agenda?

  For Debbie and Russ, Keith and Craig.

  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

  Prologue

  “Don’t be silly, Alexa,” her cousin Sandra Sutton lectured. “You can watch the twins for the five minutes it’ll take me to fetch us hot dogs and coffee.”

  Seeking to halt a rising sense of unease, Alexa Whitfield risked insulting her cousin by attempting to refuse. “I don’t—”

  “—know anything about babies,” Sandra finished for her, an indication of how many times Alexa had used that particular excuse to avoid holding and feeding Flynn and Jason over the past few days of her visit.

  Determined not to show her trepidation, Alexa neatly folded the Boston News and set the paper beside her on the park bench with a forced smile. “I’ll get coffee.”

  “For Pete’s sake. The twins are sleeping.” Sandra stood, handed her the diaper bag filled with baby paraphernalia, beating Alexa to a clean getaway. Sandra’s fashionable heels clicked along the pavement, but after a few steps, she turned back with a smile of encouragement. “You’ll never learn to enjoy kids if you aren’t willing to try.”

  “By the time you get back, I’ll be an expert.” Despite her inner turmoil, Alexa made her voice sound lighthearted.

  “Just don’t drop them,” Sandra instructed as she fluffed her auburn hair with her hand.

  “As if I didn’t know that,” Alexa grumbled.

  Alexa Whitfield could identify a genuine Picasso from a fake at twenty paces, but if Flynn or Jason so much as burped, she wouldn’t know what to do. Not that she didn’t think the twins were adorable. She did. Not that she didn’t want to scoop them up and bury her nose in their baby-soft skin. She’d love to.

  Fate had decreed, however, that Alexa could never be a mommy. Some women couldn’t stay on a diet, others didn’t have the discipline to exercise regularly, some suffered from insomnia. Alexa couldn’t bear children, but she didn’t dwell on her inability. Not when life had so much else to offer.

  While Sandra had the love of her adoring husband, Dr. Cameron Sutton, and the twins; Alexa had a passion for her work and a life most women would envy. Purchasing museum-quality art sent Alexa to Rio during Carnivale, Paris in the spring and New York City in the fall. She’d been invited to the White House for dinner, attended parties in Milan, London and Rome. European royalty often sought her advice.

  Alexa stared at the Sutton twins asleep in their strollers and wished she had her sketch pad. She’d love to capture the babies’ round cheeks, the dimples, the black hair they’d inherited from their brilliant father and the contrasting fair skin from their mother. Leanin
g down, Alexa tucked in the blanket by Flynn’s feet, smoothed back Jason’s hair, surprised by the satisfaction the tiny gesture gave her.

  A shrill scream brought Alexa’s head snapping up from the stroller.

  Sandra!

  Dear God, the scream had sounded like her cousin. As people ran down the path Sandra had taken, Alexa’s fear shifted into high gear. Since the plane crash that had taken both sets of parents when they were youngsters, the cousins had been raised together by their wealthy Barrington grandparents, and Alexa loved Sandra like a sister.

  Don’t panic. Sandra would come walking around the bend any minute, juggling hot dogs and coffee, tossing her auburn hair back from her eyes, ready to tell Alexa what the excitement was all about.

  Two minutes later a siren wailed and Flynn awakened—at least she thought it was Flynn. Alexa was still having trouble telling the boys apart. With wide, frightened eyes, he looked for his mother, and when he couldn’t find her, he started to cry until huge tears rolled down his chubby cheeks.

  Awkwardly but without hesitation, Alexa picked him up. But not before Jason awoke and also started to howl.

  “Now what? I don’t have four arms.” At her words the babies’ cries subsided and she returned Flynn to the stroller. If she hadn’t been so worried about Sandra, she would have been pleased by how easily she’d comforted the boys.

  “Where’s your mother?” Alexa checked her watch. Sandra had been gone more than ten minutes. Should she stay and wait? If Sandra returned to find Alexa and her babies gone, would she worry?

  Alexa decided to walk the stroller up the block to the corner hot-dog stand and come straight back. Most likely she’d run into Sandra, who’d probably stopped to chat with an acquaintance.

  Shoving the baby stroller into motion, she walked briskly down the sidewalk, determined to give Sandra a piece of her mind for scaring her so. Palms sweaty, Alexa rounded the corner to see yellow police tape cordoning off a crime scene.

  Heart pounding, fear hastening her footsteps, Alexa hurried until her pace behind the baby stroller almost reached a jog. Shoving her way through the crowd, she took one look at the victim’s cap of auburn hair and her knees turned to jelly.

  “Sandra!”

  A cop noticed Alexa and jerked his thumb toward the pavement where her cousin was being loaded onto a stretcher. “You know this woman?”

  “My cousin.” Alexa swallowed hard at the huge amount of blood on the sidewalk.

  “She was mugged with a baseball bat.” The kindly cop took Alexa’s arm. “They’re taking her to Boston Memorial but…”

  At the implication that Sandra might not survive long enough to reach the hospital, tears brimmed in Alexa’s eyes. “Can I see her?”

  A minute later Alexa was leaning over her cousin as the paramedics strapped in her cousin. “Sandra?”

  At the sound of Alexa’s voice, Sandra turned her head, her beautiful clear blue eyes clouded with pain. “Tell Cam I love him.”

  “You can tell him yourself. I’ll call him and he’ll be waiting at the hospital.”

  Sandra convulsed, her entire body shuddering, but she kept talking. “Promise me.”

  “Anything.”

  “My boys. Take care of them.”

  “You’ll get better. You’ll take care of them.”

  Sandra grabbed her hand with waning strength. “Don’t let…the grandparents…raise them.”

  “Hang on, Sandra. Fight. You and Cameron will raise the boys.”

  “No boarding schools. No nannies.”

  “They have their mother,” Alexa insisted.

  Sandra grasped Alexa’s hand, refusing to let the paramedics put her in an ambulance until she had an answer. “Promise me.”

  Tears clogged Alexa’s throat. “I promise.”

  Chapter One

  Highview, Colorado

  One year later

  The telephone rang and Dr. Cameron Sutton hesitated, his hand over the receiver like a wary medical student entering the operating room for the first time. Cam had been notified of his deceased wife’s mugging by telephone. Told of the upcoming custody battle with Sandra’s grandparents over the twins by telephone. And ever since Humanity Today had named him Boston’s most eligible bachelor, it seemed as if every damn reporter in the country felt they had the right to invade his privacy.

  Escaping from Boston to the Sutton ranch in Highview, Colorado, had kept intruders at a physical distance. Caller ID would have helped maintain his privacy, but suppose a patient needed him? Too responsible to ignore the possible need of someone sick or injured, Cam picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “It’s Alexa.”

  Recognizing the cultured voice of his wife’s cousin, Cam relaxed in his padded leather rocker. Propping his feet on his desk, he looked out his window and let the brilliant Colorado sunshine and verdant mountains that surrounded the vast Sutton acreage of his boyhood home calm his apprehension.

  “I’m calling from the airport.”

  Hong Kong? Budapest? Marakesh? Cam didn’t ask or bother to keep up with Alexa’s hectic schedule. While he commended Sandra’s cousin for her monthly calls to check on the twins, he couldn’t keep back a niggle of suspicion about her timing. Only yesterday, his attorney had notified him that Sandra and Alexa’s grandparents had filed for custody of his boys. Despite the Barringtons’ wealth, Cam wasn’t too worried—not with his father, a Colorado senator, in his corner.

  “The twins love it out here,” he told Alexa before she could ask. On the Sutton cattle ranch, his twin prodigies could grow up with more freedom from scrutiny than in the city. “The Senator gave each of them a pony last week.”

  Alexa gasped. “They’re only two years old!”

  Cam chuckled and started to tease her, then recalled how little Alexa knew about children. And how a sharp attorney might use the ponies in court during a custody battle. Cam didn’t want to give even the appearance of recklessness and did his best to keep the defensiveness from his voice. “My nephew, Keith, has been riding almost since he could walk.”

  “Still—”

  “We never let the boys near the horses without supervision. And you know Julie grew up out here and around horses.”

  Alexa sighed. “Julie is a wonderful baby-sitter. You’re lucky to have her.”

  “Yes, we are.” Cam had been grateful when Julie had agreed to move back to Colorado with him and the boys. Julie Edwards had come to work for their family after Judge Stewart, an associate of his father’s, had recommended her. Although she’d grown up in Colorado, she’d agreed to move to Boston after the twins were born. And Cam was grateful she’d agreed to move back out west after Sandra’s death. The adaptable nanny had eased the twins through the loss of their mother with surprising compassion for a college sophomore.

  “Is Julie working today?”

  “She’s leaving any minute for class. Why?”

  “I was hoping she could give me a lift. This airport doesn’t have cab service.” Cam frowned in confusion.

  Alexa laughed. “I suppose I should have phoned ahead, but I wanted to surprise you.”

  She certainly had. Alexa, normally so clear and logical, wasn’t making any sense. “You flew into Highview?”

  “Straight from Rome, via New York and Denver.”

  What the hell? Cam scratched his head and looked around his barely framed-in home, which was still under construction and not the least bit ready for a guest—especially one accustomed to the Ritz-Carlton in Paris, Claridge’s in London and the Plaza in New York City. Plumbers had yet to hook up the final water line from the well. Carpenters hadn’t finished the staircase banister to the second story, and there was still a mammoth-size gap in his office window frame waiting for an oversize pane of glass to arrive. Surprisingly the swimming-pool contractor had almost finished.

  From his silence, Alexa must have sensed his hesitation. “Can we discuss my visit in person? I’m afraid I didn’t change enough lira into quarters.”
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br />   Just as she finished her sentence, the phone went silent, then the dial tone pealed accusingly in his ear. During Alexa’s infrequent but regular phone calls, she’d mentioned she might visit the twins, and he’d issued a blanket invitation, but Cam had never expected her to take him up on the offer. Not without warning. Certainly not while his house was still under construction.

  With swift precision, he stood and checked his watch. When his baby-sitter had agreed to return to Highview with his family, he’d promised her he would schedule around her classes at the local college. She lived at the dorm and took classes in the afternoons and the occasional evening. If he brought the twins with him to the airport, he wouldn’t have to ask Julie to miss her afternoon class.

  And once Alexa saw his sons’ capacity for finding trouble, Cam figured he wouldn’t have to try very hard to convince her to stay at the Highview Hotel.

  A year of handling the precocious twins without Sandra’s help had made Cam nothing if not efficient. Within ten minutes he’d said goodbye to Julie and strapped Flynn and Jason into the toddler seats of his sport-utility vehicle, gathering toys and snacks along the way.

  Flynn hated to sit still for more than ten seconds, especially when there was a yard filled with mud, interesting pipes, ditch-digging equipment and fencing to explore. He kicked his feet and pointed out the window. “Juk.”

  “Junnnk,” Cam automatically corrected his eldest by four minutes, emphasizing the N sound, not in the least surprised the two-year-old remembered Cam calling the rusty equipment junk.

  “Not junk.” Jason disagreed. “Play toys.”

  “You’re an optimist, junior.” Cam shook his head at the younger twin, reminding himself of the need to be ever vigilant. A construction site was no place for curious toddlers. Nor was the Senator’s mansion with its too many breakables. His twins didn’t have the judgment to go with their incomparable intelligence.

  Cam’s respect for the Senator, who had raised five sons out here after their mother died, went up another notch. Although he and his brothers had been hellions, they’d turned into mostly respectable citizens. And he hoped to instill the same values in his kids that his father had in him—a love of the land, a confidence in oneself and a loyalty to family.