Babyjacked: A Second Chance Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  Bonus Book - Déjà Vu

  Epilogue

  Also by Sosie Frost

  About the Author

  Babyjacked

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Coming Soon!

  Acknowledgments

  Babyjacked

  A Payne Family Romance

  Sosie Frost

  Babyjacked

  Copyright © 2018 by Sosie Frost

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover Design: Pink Ink Designs

  Photographer: Wander Aguiar Photography

  Cover Model: Forest Harrison

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Also by Sosie Frost

  About the Author

  Babyjacked

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon!

  About the Author

  Also by Sosie Frost

  Acknowledgments

  Bonus Book - Déjà Vu

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Also by Sosie Frost

  About the Author

  ALSO BY SOSIE FROST

  Bad Boy’s Series

  Bad Boy’s Baby

  Bad Boy’s Redemption (Previously Bad Boy’s Revenge)

  Bad Boy’s Bridesmaid

  Touchdowns and Tiaras

  Beauty And The Blitz

  Once Upon A Half-Time

  Happily Ever All-Star

  Standalone Romances

  Sweetest Sin - A Forbidden Priest Romance

  Hard - A Step-Brother Romance

  Deja Vu - An Amnesia Romance

  While They Watch - A Sexy BDSM Romance

  About the Author

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  To L.G.

  I’m back, baby!

  Babyjacked

  The classic tale of a lumberjack…

  and his nanny.

  1

  Cassi

  The first time I saw Remington Marshall, he stole my heart.

  The last time I saw Remington Marshall, he’d just burned my family’s barn to the ground.

  Arson usually complicated relationships.

  Especially afterward, when Rem left our sleepy town of Butterpond in the dead of night without so much as a goodbye. He’d stayed gone for five long years.

  Five years with no phone call. No visits. No explanations.

  Even worse—no apology.

  So, when my brother, Tidus, told me Rem was back in town, I had to make a decision.

  Ignore Remington Marshall and forget he’d ever existed…

  Or demand an answer for why he’d broken my heart.

  I chose the latter, encouraged by the perspective I’d gained over the last couple years. As long as we stayed away from any flammable objects that might’ve torched what remained of my potential happiness, a conversation would bring me some much-needed closure. Besides, all that time had allowed me to douse the last few embers left burning in my barn, heart, and loins.

  But that still didn’t make confrontation a good idea, despite my brother’s insistence.

  He came home to take care of his nieces, Tidus said.

  Take him up a box of kids’ toys from storage, he said.

  Pick me up a burger from Lou’s on the way home, he said.

  Yeah, right.

  Rem wasn’t a man who wanted to be found, even in the tiny town of Butterpond—a small cluster of dreams, prayers, and fatty liver disease. Butterpond was where the trees wanted in, the people wanted out, and my family’s farm accidentally lynch-pinned the whole place together.

  To the town, my family was a fixture. The Payne’s farm. The Payne’s charity. The Payne’s pain in the ass boys who rolled over the town’s one streetlight like a plague of locusts. The Payne’s adopted daughter in a family of five boys—bless her heart.

  But Rem? He no longer belonged in the town. Men like him kept to themselves, tucked away inside a cabin in the mountains, hidden from society by gravel roads, the occasional tick, and busted suspensions.

  As much as I’d once loved Rem, risking Lyme disease and a punctured tire seemed a bad idea.

  I did it anyway.

  A box of old toys and children’s clothes was jammed in next to my suitcase.

  This would be quick. In and out. Hand him the box stuffed with goodies from when my family had foster kids runnin
g all over the farm. Wish him well. Make the requisite small talk. And then pretend like my heart wasn’t held together with a roll of scotch tape and a smattering of pride.

  I wasn’t about to let Remington Marshall shatter my barely rejuvenated dignity. Besides, the last I’d heard, he was the one crippled with guilt. Rumor had it—and by rumor, I meant the occasional conversation with his sister, Emma—he’d run away to the deepest forests of Canada to join a logging company.

  If a heart broke in the forest, did it make a sound? The answer was yes, but it wasn’t a thud. More like the noise a sleepy woman yelp in the middle of the night when she stubbed her toe on the way to the bathroom. Less of a timber! More like son of a—

  The box fit snugly against my hip, drawing the hem of my skirt up only an inch. I was fine with that. Showing a little leg would do me good. I’d grown up since the fire. Earned my curves. Managed to fill out my bra without two handfuls of wadded up toilet paper. Things were looking up.

  I wound my way over a weed-choked cobblestone path and picked my steps up the rickety porch. The cabin was lost in the woods, and the forest wasn’t happy with the new occupant. The little space was so overgrown with brush and leaves that the trees would be grateful to be cleaned out of the gutters.

  My knock clattered against the cabin door—almost loud enough to drown out the very irritated cry of a baby.

  Almost.

  The wail might’ve belonged to a child. Could have also been a mountain lion with a toothache. Sometimes it was tough to tell, even with a degree in early education. Money well spent.

  The door flung open. I expected Remington. Instead, a bright-eyed, blonde-haired, puffy-cheeked three-year-old peered up at me, scowled, and belted at the top of her precious little lungs to alert all within a square mile of my arrival.

  “Stranger!”

  I winced. “Hi. I’m Cassi. Is your Uncle—”

  “Stranger!”

  This alerted the baby—the real siren of the household who’d missed her calling as the dive alarm for a German U-Boat.

  The chorus of screams rang in my ears. I shushed the three-year-old with a wave of my hand.

  “I’m not a stranger—I’m a…” Was friend the right word? “I know your Uncle Rem…well, not know know. We grew up together. I mean, he grew up with my brother—I grew up later. But we were…I’d see him a lot—”

  “Stranger!”

  I cringed and went to Plan B. The box dropped to the porch. I debated on running, but the tape had loosened enough for me to rip the flaps. An old baby doll rested on a folded pile of clothes. I offered it as a sacrifice to appease the child.

  “It’s for you!” My frantic words shushed her. “It’s PJ Sparkles. All the little girls loved PJ Sparkles!”

  The child quieted. She bit her lip, scratched her leg with a foot clad in mismatched socks, and reached for the doll. She jumped as a husky voice caught her in the act.

  “What do we have here?”

  His voice was a blend of sticky marshmallow and crumbling graham cracker, and I melted like a chocolate bar squished near the fire.

  I knew better than to get burned by Remington Marshall, but even the wisest girl sometimes took a big bite before blowing on it.

  And, believe me, Rem would go to his grave wishing I had blown him.

  Rem leaned against the door frame. His broad shoulders were clad in a warm, red flannel shirt. He scratched a wild, thick beard, and might have teased a smile. I couldn’t tell. Five years of isolation had obscured his face in dark hair.

  A one-year-old baby wailed in his arms.

  “Never expected to see you here, Cassia Payne.” He grunted as the three-year-old bashed the doll’s plastic head into a part of him that regretted meeting PJ Sparkles. He stepped aside and let her go play, but his stare pinned me in place. “Lost in the woods, little girl?”

  What had happened to my Remington Marshall?

  Gone was the teenage bad boy, strong enough to win his fights but lean enough to make a quick escape once Sherriff Samson flashed his lights. Now, Rem had become a terrifying beast of rugged strength. A lumberjack. A man like him could have punched down a tree. The Canadian forests never stood a chance.

  Muscles packed on muscles. And the beard…oh, the beard. I didn’t know if he belonged in an ice fishing cabin or on a Harley, but this wasn’t the boy who’d left me behind.

  This was a man.

  And he was in trouble.

  Rem struggled to bounce the little bundle of pink in his arms. The baby fussed, red-faced and probably wishing her Uncle hadn’t given her diaper a wedgie while rocking her. The three-year-old dropped the doll and instead raced over, around, and on top of his feet, tugging on his jeans with an urgent need to tinkle. She tripped over one of the four stuffed garbage bags piled in the entryway. One had already blown open, spilling dresses, shoes, socks, and toys into the cabin.

  The three-year-old was wearing two shirts. The baby needed a pair of pants. Rem’s own belongings had tumbled into the hall—duffel bags and mountain boots.

  Tidus wasn’t lying. Rem must have come home only hours before to take care of the kids.

  The older girl somersaulted around his feet, somehow summoning and then spilling a glass of water. The TV blared cartoons from the den. The baby cried just to be louder than the show. Behind him, every chair had been toppled in the dining room. The cushions stripped off the couch. Something slimy dripped from the sink.

  Chaos had descended upon a three-square-foot area of his life…

  And a part of me really enjoyed the struggle.

  “Everyone said you ran away to become a lumberjack,” I said. “But apparently you joined a circus.”

  Rem was a great liar. I’d learned that long ago. He attempted to soothe the baby and accidentally smooshed her face into the wall of muscle that was his shoulder. His wink wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “Brought the circus home too.” He reached down and lifted the little girl to her feet before she somersaulted into the wall. “Got my acrobat tumbling her way into preschool, and the prepubescent bearded lady doing shows before and after naptime.”

  Cute. “And what’s your talent?”

  “World’s sexiest uncle.”

  “Ain’t no one buying tickets for that.”

  “Ringleader then.”

  The three-year-old demanded cookies. The baby, blood. I shook my head. “Guess again.”

  “Toddler-tamer.”

  He wished. I crossed my arms. “Better get a shovel. I think you’re mucking out stalls and diapers.”

  Rem grinned, but that was a charmer’s smile, part of his bag of tricks. He’d always been the type to sweet-talk his way out of handcuffs just to use them in bed. But maybe he had changed. Maybe the wilderness had straightened him out? Perhaps…the hard work taught him responsibility? Was it possible the time apart had made him as miserable as it had me?

  Or maybe that smile meant I should’ve left the box on the porch and ran.

  “Do I have to charge admission, or are you coming inside?” he asked.

  Dangerous question. “Depends. Got an elephant under this big top?”

  “Nah. He’s on break. I’m standing in.”

  “And what are you?”

  “The jackass.”

  Fair enough. I offered him the box. “This is some stuff from the farm—back when we had all the foster kids. Tidus said you could probably use it. Clothes and toys.”

  Rem easily balanced the baby on his shoulder and the box in his arms. He left the door open. Inviting the little ones to escape or beckoning me inside?

  I spoke from the entryway, a promise to myself. “Only for a minute.”

  “Want something to drink?” he asked.

  “That would take longer than a minute.”

  “Good. I don’t have much to offer.”

  The three-year-old circled the sofa with the doll, tripped over the logs that were once stacked neatly by a stone fireplace, and plummeted onto the hardwo
od. She whimpered, rolled, and revealed a scraped knee. The crying began anew.

  Rem brushed his hands through his shaggy, collar length dark hair and sighed.

  “Are you bleeding? Again? Really?” He fumbled through a couple drawers. “All right. Here. No band-aids, but…”

  Oh, this was a disaster.

  Rem ripped a piece of electrical tape between his teeth, juggled the baby from one arm to the other, and slapped the silver strip over the girl’s knee.

  “Good job,” I said. “Now she’s patched up, and she won’t conduct electricity.”

  “She’ll be fine.” He patted the girl’s head. “Mellie, say hi to Cassi. Cas, this is Melanie. And this…” He flipped the baby outwards, finally letting her look around the room. She instantly stopped crying. The chubby cheeks and sniffling nose gave way to an adorable smile with three little white teeth poking out. “This is Tabitha—Tabby. They’re Emma’s kids.”

  They looked like his sister—blonde and perky with the right amount of sass that got her in as much trouble as Rem.

  I hated to ask the question, but a man like Rem wouldn’t volunteer to babysit without a genuine crisis. “What happened to Emma?”