Rocco heard murmuring beside him, behind him. This was turning into a spectacle, but who the hell cared. "I can run."

More clacking on the keyboard. "Baggage?"

"No." Come on, come on, come on. He pulled out his wallet. "How much time do I have?"

"Not much. Passport, ID?"

"Here."

"This computer system is taking forever. Sorry about this." She tapped the side of the screen a few times. "Um, I think it froze. There's another flight... um, give me a minute to find it."

The woman next to him elbowed her hoity-toity husband, who grumbled. "What?"

She raised penciled eye brows at him, tilting her unmoving, styled hairdo his way.

"How much time?" Rocco asked again.

"I'm working as fast as I can. Soon as it reboots, we'll get you paid up. There we go-"

"Oh, fiddle-sticks." The older woman next to him blew out. "Print him a boarding pass." She nudged her husband. "Honey, get his ticket."

"Get his ticket?" Kiosk Lady gaped.

Rocco gaped. "Get my ticket?" Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard Caterina talking about coincidence and everything happening for a reason.

"Yes." She smiled, nudging her very much less than enthusiastic husband. "Get your ticket."

"I can't-" Rocco stuttered, not exactly knowing why she offered or what to say. A last minute international ticket was some serious cash.

"You won't make it through security and the shuttles. This old beau had to chase me down. All the way to Paris. I've waited fifty years to pay it forward. Go."

"I don't need a free ride. This should cover it." Rocco handed her a wad of cash and a business card that simply had Titan's logo and a phone number on it. "If you ever need anything, it's on the house."

The woman nodded. Gold and diamonds sparkled on her. "Go."

From behind the counter, Kiosk Lady picked up the phone. "Hey, I've got a VIP coming your way. Get him through security." She handed him a hand-punched ticket, pointing down the terminal. "Good luck."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.

The tide was pulling out. Cold water lapped up to Rocco's ankles, and his feet made a rhythmic slapping-sucking noise as he walked in the rushing water. He'd arrived in Murcia, Spain that morning with little in the way of a plan. As he walked through the terminal, advertisements for tourist hot spots and transportation flashed at him. The resorts at Dehesa de Campoamor? He picked up a brochure filled with pictures of white, sandy beaches. Her hometown had been the alias she used? His plan immediately clicked into place, and he had a good idea of where to track Caterina down once he found Dehesa de Campoamor.

A sun-bleached fence was ahead at the top of the sand dunes. Behind it stood a one-room church with a steeple that had seen better days. The building was whitewashed, and everything looked as he'd thought it would. His eyes followed along the fence line to the open gate.

It only took a moment to reach the opening, and when he did, he dropped the shoes he'd been carrying and slipped them on. Grass surrounded the church and the small graveyard behind it. Above him, an old church bell began its angsty tolling, one loud clang after another. The hollow noise floated toward the sea and disappeared.

He scanned the grass, the graves, until he spotted her, sitting in front of a nondescript marker. Caterina's hair was down, floating in the breeze. She looked content talking to the gravestones, almost serene, and not at all how he normally felt when walking toward graves. Hands in his pockets, he silently crossed closer and watched her.

Whatever she was saying, it looked important. He remembered that Caterina had made a vow not to go home until vengeance had been exacted. Even now, his actions pained his heart, but he wouldn't have risked a do-over. He never would have risked her life. So here he was to explain that, and she could either take it or kick him back to America.

He held his breath and waited.

"Hi." She didn't turn around.

Her gauzy dress softened her. The white of the fabric stood out against her olive skin and dark hair. He could stare at her all day. Even now, she looked more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, cloaked in white and glowing.

"Kitten." He didn't move forward, letting her stay with her family and do what she needed to do. Then he'd bring her home, and they could start a new life.

Silent minutes later, she looked over her shoulder, pushing the loose hair away. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you think?" His words floated in the wind.

She dropped her chin, but then raised it to look at him again. "How did you know where I was?"

The distant sadness in her voice made his heart ache and arms hurt for wanting to hold her. "Wasn't that hard to find you, Cat."

"I would've come back. Eventually."

"Eventually would've been too long."

"Want to sit?" She patted the ground next to her, gathering the skirt around her knees. "My parents, my brothers."

"I know." He nodded, watching her stare at their graves.

"You would have liked them."

Slowly stepping closer, he dropped next to her on the grass. The graves were white and worn, the lettering of the names and dates weather-beaten. "Bet I would have."

"Rocco, I'm not the same person I was even a few weeks ago."

He inclined his head toward her. "I can say the same thing about me after meeting you."

"No. It's different. It's..." She bit her bottom lip and looked over the graves.

Damn. Something wasn't right. "Cat?"

"I'm pregnant."

"What?" The word just fell out. All shocked and... shocked. That couldn't be right. "But I thought..." He felt funny. Overwhelmed. Overjoyed. Damn, his head swam. "So... I'm going to be-"

"No." Her eyes welled. "I don't know."

"What?"

"I don't know." Pain flooded her words.

She wasn't pregnant? What?

"The same day, we didn't..." She sniffled. "The day I trusted my birth control was the same day I was attacked."

He didn't understand because there was no way she could be possibly saying- "The baby, it might not-" Her voice cracked. She turned back to the graves and let her hair cover her face.

His windpipe squeezed. The baby wasn't his. Or maybe it was. Holy shit. He couldn't breathe. "It's..." He had nothing. "This... You... Are you okay?"

"Yes. No." She rubbed her temples. "This is not the way it was supposed to be."

"And you're going to k-"

"Yes," she hissed at him.

His stomach churned, not sure what he wanted the answer to be. Hell, this wasn't fair. Just-goddamn-wasn't fair. He inhaled and adrenaline rushed his system. "Okay." But that sounded forced. It felt forced.

His insides shook, muscles vibrating, teeth gnashing, shaking to the point of sickness, yet he looked down at his hands, and nothing moved. Nothing, and thank God because enough had come down on the woman he wanted to be his wife, and if he gave her an ounce more burden to carry, he might as well just walk away. It'd be better for them both.

"What are you thinking, Roc?" Her eyes searched his face.

"What am I thinking?" Repeating her question didn't help. For everything rushing through his mind, no words came. His tongue felt thick. "I'm thinking... Fight or flight or figure this out. There's nobody left to fight and..." He scrubbed his face. "And I'm not going anywhere..." Saying that out loud eased some of the pressure in his chest but not all. He was nowhere near being able to be okay, but it might be survivable. "I'm thinking, goddamn, Kitten, I hurt for you, but I want to figure this out."

"I thought you'd hate me."

"No way. Not possible."

She knotted her fingers. "Be repulsed?"

He shook his head. No, and that was the truth. He couldn't hate her. She'd done nothing wrong. "It doesn't work that way, me and you."

"How does this work? Because I don't know."

"What is there to figure out? We're having a baby. We-"

"We?" Her jaw hung open.

"Well, I didn't fly across the world for no reason. I want you to come home."

For the first time in what seemed like years, her lips curled into a smile, slight but there. "I never saw myself as the motherly type."

Yeah, he'd never thought about it either. Chalk that up to having a man-gene, but he was barely thinking past come-home-with-me. "How much had you actually thought about it?"

"Not much... And when I first found out... probably until I was sitting alone in a plane, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, I kept thinking that the baby might have his hair or eyes, or have whatever evil that made him the way he was." She shook her head, then whispered hoarsely, "That I couldn't love-"

Her voice cracked. Tears spilled.

Rocco had nothing to say because those thoughts were running ragged through his head, tearing up his guts. No way would he let her see his apprehensions. Hiding those fears might have been the toughest moment of his life. Nothing-not the challenges of war or his enemy-had ever tested him the way that love was making him work, hurt, and feel through their conversation. Didn't matter though, he'd suffer a million times over just to hold her hand.

Cat bit her bottom lip then straightened her shoulders. "But the more I kept thinking, the more I wondered about... everything else I might see in that baby's face. A smile or innocent happiness. Maybe a little baby girl who would grab my finger when she laughed. Or if I picked her up, my hug would be strong enough to soothe away her tears."

His throat ached. Trying to swallow a lump, he gave up and stayed silent.

"Maybe a little boy would have caramel eyes and a dimple. Maybe he'd run around trying to play superheroes with his dad."

Rocco dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. This was almost too much to handle. No, screw that. Screw. That. There wasn't anything he wasn't willing to do for her- "If the baby's yours... but if the baby's not." She covered her mouth, head shaking. After a sniffle, she steeled herself. "I can do this alone."

No way. All he had to do was find simple words.

"I don't want you to." It was a promise, a proclamation. He thought he'd never want something more than bringing Cat back home, but he was wrong. He wanted to bring them back home. "Make no mistake, Kitten. Regardless of who the biological father of our baby is, this baby is ours."

She didn't say anything. She wasn't agreeing or disagreeing, and silence, when it came to Cat, was bad news. But her jaw was back to hanging open, and the truth was, he didn't blame her. What was happening to her, what he was offering... that was heavy.

He cleared his throat and plowed forward. "Trust me when I tell you I didn't see this coming."

She closed her dark pink lips. "Me either."

"But I'm man enough to say any obstacle life drops on us, I want to figure it out with you."

Her eyes closed. After a minute, she looked at him from underneath thick, teary lashes. "You didn't know I was pregnant?"

"Nope."

Her sad smile upturned. "Mia and Jared knew."

Another bomb dropped on his chest. How did they not tell him?

"I'm not sure what to say to that." He thought back to Jared on the phone before he left for the airport and Mia showing up at the hospital. "You found out after you were shot?"

She nodded.

"I thought you left me because I stole your kill shot, everything you ever wanted in life. It killed me. But I had to."

"Now, I know that's what you had to do. That night, I was destroyed over it, would rather have died trying to kill him. Then finding out that I was pregnant-I couldn't handle it."

"So... You're pregnant. You're in Spain... What were you going to do?" Were you. Not are you. Notice that and agree. Just come back home.

"I was going to find a home, a place I could call mine."

Home was with him. "There's already a place like that."

She didn't answer, and the reminder drifted in the waterfront wind, floating away.

Tugging at a handful of fabric from her skirt, he pushed her to answer. "You're saying no?"

She sighed. "I'm saying I don't think I'm very good mate material. I went from being obsessed with the demise of a man to maybe carrying his baby, and I'm not even sure I could live up to being a good... woman to you."

"That's insane. I've never met anyone more woman than you."