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and everything in it was whirling past him.
    “No one does,” she assured him in the guarded tone developed by people who dealt with victims. It was the same prudent nonengagement with explosive emotions that the social worker had used as she had steered his young self from his father’s body.
    “Take me to her,” he gritted out. A horrible avalanche of fear like he’d never known crushed him. He wanted to run shouting for her until he found her. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
    “I can’t. But—” She seemed to think twice, then gave him a poignant smile. “Maybe they’ll let us into the nursery.”
    He forced one foot in front of the other, walking as if through a wall of thick, suffocating gelatin as he followed Molly to the preemie clinic, ambivalence writhing like a two-headed snake inside him. Was it his fault Sirena hovered on the brink? Or another man’s? He adamantly wanted his child, but the idea that one life could cost another appalled him.
    He came up to the tiny, nearly naked being in the incubator, her bottom covered in an oversized nappy, her hair hidden by a cap. Wires extended from her bare fragile body and her miniature Sirena mouth briefly pursed in a kiss.
    He couldn’t see anything of himself in her, but a startlingly deep need to gather and guard the infant welled in him. Pressing his icy hands to the warm glass, he silently begged the little girl to hang on. If this was all that would be left of Sirena...
    He brutally refused to entertain such a thought, turning his mind to sending a deep imperative through the walls of the hospital to the unknown location of this baby’s mother. Hang on, Sirena. Hang on.
    * * *
    Sirena had the worst hangover of her life. Her whole body hurt, her mouth was dry and nausea roiled in her stomach. In her daze, she moved her hand to her middle, where the solid shape of her baby was gone, replaced with bandages and a soft waistline.
    A whimper of distress escaped her.
    “Lucy is fine, Sirena.” His voice was unsweetened cocoa, warm and comforting despite the bitter taint.
    “Lucy?” she managed, blinking gritty eyes. The stark ceiling above her was white, the day painfully bright. Slowly the steel-gray of Raoul’s gaze came into focus.
    “Isn’t that what you told Molly? That you wanted your daughter named for your mother, Lucille?”
    You don’t mind? she almost said, but wasn’t sure where the paternity test was. When she had signed the consent forms, they’d told her the kind of proof he’d requested, the kind admissible in court, was a more complex test that would take several days. She wondered if waiting on that had been the only thing keeping him from whisking Lucy from this hospital before she woke.
    She didn’t ask. She could barely form words with what felt like a cotton-filled mouth. It took all her concentration to remain impassive. Seeing him gave her such a bizarre sense of relief she wanted to burst into tears. She reminded herself not to read anything into the shadow of stubble on his jaw or the bruises of tiredness under his eyes. The man was a machine when it came to work; he could have been at the office late and dropped by on his way to his penthouse.
    Still, that scruff of light beard gave her a thrill. She’d seen him like this many times and always experienced this same ripple of attraction. The same desire to smooth a hand over his rough cheek. He would be overworked yet energized by whatever had piqued his ambition, his shirt collar open, his sleeves rolled back and soon, a smile of weary satisfaction.
    But not today. Today he was sexily rumpled, but his demeanor was antagonistic, making a shiver of apprehension sidle through her as he spoke in a rough growl. “You should have told me you weren’t well.”
    The harsh accusation in his tone was so sharp she flinched. All she could think about were those harrowing moments when they’d told her the baby had to come out. Not for Lucy’s sake, but her own. The fear in