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and I . . .” How could she possibly convey her immediate and overwhelming attachment for the boy? “I knew back then that I wanted to be his mother.” Her voice wobbled. “So I got all the documents signed and sent off, but it takes so much time for the Venezuelan courts to respond. And with the new government struggling to stay in power . . .” She swallowed the lump filling her throat. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get to adopt him. Or if I’ll even be able to find him again.”
    She had to look out the window to subdue her overwhelming despair. “Still,” she added, huskily, “maybe I should’ve stayed near Jillian this summer. It’s got to be hard without Gary there to help.”
    A long silence followed her lament.
    “What happened to Gary?” Valentino finally inquired, his tone remote.
    She turned and looked at him, realizing at the same instant that he hadn’t known. “Jillie didn’t tell you?”
    “No.” He calmly slipped his magazine into the pocket of his black leather briefcase.
    “He was killed in a drug sting. You knew he was a policeman, right?”
    “Yes. When was this?”
    “It was January, so—seven months ago. She didn’t even know she was pregnant. She sold the house in Fairfax and moved into the house we grew up in. That was something she and Gary’d always planned to do, to have a hippotherapy ranch.”
    A taut silence followed her words. Jordan sensed that she’d caught the agent by surprise, though it was hard to tell by his serene expression.
    “Excuse me,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt. “I need to have a word with the pilot. Can I get you anything? More milk?”
    “No thanks. I still have some.” His polite retreat made her wonder if he had feelings for Jillian. Jillie was a beautiful, capable woman, but what bachelor wanted to take on another man’s family?
    Thoughts of Miguel impaled her again, and she turned her stricken face to the window, grappling with the awful feeling that she’d lost him forever.
    Solomon stared at the patina of moonlight shining on the ceiling. The fact that he couldn’t sleep had nothing to do with the whirring of insects outside the barracks or the occasional volley of gunfire as soldiers of the Moderate government drilled in anticipation of a coup. It was Jordan Bliss. He couldn’t get the damn woman out of his head.
    The memory of her haunted him. Even with her hair matted, her eyes swollen, her nose running, he’d been struck by something ferociously beautiful in her. Physically, she was pleasing, with autumnal coloring, deep violet eyes, and full lips. But beyond the physical, he sensed a wealth of devotion and commitment for a child she hadn’t even given birth to.
    Had Candace ever loved Silas like that?
    He had. With a groan, he realized that the pain of losing a child never really went away. It just got buried under everyday issues and details. But beneath those issues, it remained, a bleeding wound.
    And now he lay here, wondering what his son looked like at six years of age; where he was, that not a single private investigator over the course of five years could find so much as a trace of him. From that fateful night Solomon had returned home to an empty house, Candace and Silas hadn’t once resurfaced.
    Since then, he’d taken life one day at a time, seizing comfort wherever he could find it—in a book, between a woman’s thighs, on the wide expanse of the ocean. He never looked beyond the day’s end for happiness.
    He’d had his orders, and he’d followed them. Yet, orders aside, he had now condemned Jordan Bliss to the same circle of hell he lived in. From now on, the memory of her loss would be the first thing to peg her heart when she stirred each morning. She would dream occasionally that she and her child were reunited, only to have reality snatch that stubborn joy from her breast when she awoke.
    Who was he to separate a mother from her son?
    Never mind that Miguel was not of her blood. He was a part of her