Double Impact

When at last he’d finished, Ami did the only thing she could. She slapped him hard. Wanted the sting to go on and on until the quake shook loose some sense of compassion in him.

What he’d done had been wrong.

But it was over now. If what he’d told her was true and he’d brought her baby back to her, she could forgive him most anything.

“Where’s my child?” she demanded, ready to do him bodily harm yet again.

To his credit, he didn’t step back. He took it like a man. “Get in.” He tossed a challenging glare in Michal’s direction. “You, too. I’ll take you both to Nicholas.”

Michal inclined his head toward Fran. “She will take us to my son. The only place you’re going is to hell.” He tightened his grip around his weapon.

“Wait!” Ami pulled back and peered up at Michal. “He only followed orders. Killing him won’t make any of this right.” Her voice grew even more pleading then. “I just want to see my baby.”

“Besides,” Ta

Michal made a sound of disbelief. “And how have you reached that ridiculous conclusion?”

“I can sink your files. As far as the CIA will be concerned, neither of you will ever have existed. Only a handful of people will know and even they won’t be able to prove it.”

Michal didn’t bother to tell him that Ron Doamiass had already taken similar steps within the Mossad. Michal owed him a great deal. A debt he would never be able to repay. As far as the world knew, Michal Arad was dead. Ron had risked his career as well as his life to set up that very scenario. That it was witnessed and survived by two of Michal’s men had been the pivotal strategy.

Yet, on some level, Michal knew that Ta

“Who will ensure that you-” he glanced at the attractive older woman who had allowed him to make his case without interference “-and you keep this secret?”

“What was your name again?” Fran quipped.

“Your son is waiting,” Ta

A single beat passed before Michal lowered his weapon.

Ta

In less than half an hour Ta

When Michal would have protested, Ta

Seeing the reasonableness in his assertion, Michal allowed the woman to emerge from the SUV and go into the rundown shop.

Two minutes later she opened the rear passenger-side door and handed Ami a large bundle of squirming arms and legs.

Michal’s heart seized.

This was his son.

Her smile trembling on her lips, Ami pulled back the soft blanket and revealed the child’s expectant face. Michal’s breath evacuated his lungs in one blast.

This was his son. His every feature was just as Ami had described-a mirror image of his father.

“Michal.” Ami turned toward him and offered the child to him over the console between the seats. “Meet Nicholas, your son.”

Michal took the child in his arms, his heart swelling with equal parts pride and love. The child wiggled and squirmed, but did not pout up and cry. Awe paralyzed Michal’s ability to speak or to even think.

But words were not necessary.

He had all that he had ever wanted within his reach.

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS AFTER holding his son for the first time, Michal had settled his family in a small, quiet village in a country where terrorism was an unfamiliar term rather than an everyday affair. A curiously sheltered environment where time seemed to have stopped at a better place.

Ami pressed a kiss to the top of Nicholas’s head as he scrambled down from her lap to play with his father on the beach.

She laughed and clapped at their antics as they rolled and wrestled on the warm sand, the ocean lapping nearby.

Though months had passed, Michal knew that she still struggled with some aspects of the past she had not been able to fully recall. The steps that had been taken to erase her memory had left some parts irretrievable. But she was coping, one day at a time.

Ta

With new names and a low-profile life, there was no reason to ever suspect anyone would learn the truth.

Their son kept them busy by day and making love filled their nights. Michal could not be happier.

His life was at long last complete.

Ami watched the two men in her life frolic on the beach. She loved both of them more than any words she knew could convey. Still, she tried every day to get the message across in all that she said and did. She had learned firsthand that life was not to be taken for granted.

The past seemed a long ways off now. Though the nightmares still surfaced once in a while, for the most part she had accepted that she would never remember everything.

And as long as she had Michal and Nicholas, nothing else mattered.

Well, except for maybe one other thing.

When Nicholas had tired and his father had tucked him in for an afternoon nap, Ami knew it was time to tell her secret.

Michal hauled her up against him and pressed himself intimately to her. “Shall we get an early start?”

She heaved an exaggerated sigh and wrinkled her brow into a frown. “Really, Michal, you are scandalous.”

He nuzzled her neck. “It is my one downfall,” he whispered against her skin, the vibration of those masterful lips sending pleasure straight to her bones.

“First.” She wriggled away from him. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

He dropped onto the sofa and pulled her down into his lap. “Speak, woman, I have other things on my mind.”

Judging by the fullness of his arousal, she felt certain this was so. Though she’d like nothing better than to crawl between those sheets with him right this moment, they had to get this out of the way first.

“We’re pregnant,” she a

It took a moment for the words to fully assimilate in his brain. Michal stared at her blankly for two beats before realization struck.

His dark eyes gleaming with excitement, he folded his strong arms around her and held her close to his heart. “A girl, I predict,” he said with complete confidence.

She wouldn’t admit it just now for love or money, but she had a feeling he was right. “And just how can you know that,” she teased.

His wide smile was more beautiful than any she had ever known the pleasure of laying eyes on. “Because this is what I have wished for.”

“Do you always get what you wish for?” She felt herself holding her breath as she waited for his answer.

His expression turned somber then. “I wished that you would be returned to me.”

The sweetness in his words tugged sharply at her heart-strings. “Who am I to argue with destiny?” she mused, her gaze drifting down to those perfectly formed lips.

“Enough talk.” He covered her mouth with his own and slowly but surely proceeded to show her that wishes really could come true.