She stared into his eyes, her heart beating fast. Even being a dominating jerk he was horribly handsome. She really detested that she was so drawn to him. If she wasn’t, she could be in complete control of him in two seconds flat, but she didn’t dare go that route with him. She would lose. She knew she could seduce him, that wouldn’t be a problem, but she would lose. “You think I’m setting you up for them, don’t you?”

“It crossed my mind. If you are, know this: I have three brothers and some powerful friends. They’ll hunt you down, and eventually they’ll find you and they’ll kill you if you’re a part of this and something happens to me. It won’ matter how fast you are, or how lethal you can be. They’ll get the job done.”

“A part of what?” Pepper struggled not to cry, forcing back the burning tears. She didn’t so much as whimper. Her lips didn’t even tremble. She struggled to understand what he was conveying to her. She was intelligent. She was quick. But she just wasn’t getting this. “Are you saying those three babies who have been through hell already are being used for some purpose? That they were given termination orders to draw you into this?”

She searched his face, trying to get past the masculine perfection and her attraction to him to see if he really believed what he said.

“Whitney knows our family. He knows we know just about everythin’ happenin’ in the bayou. The moment those men touched Grand-mere, he knew one of us would be comin’ to read those men from the good book. Almost three weeks ago, I was in a firefight and was shot. We were ambushed, called to a location on a rescue mission that wasn’t that at all. It was a setup. They attacked us, and our chopper went down. We had to fight our way out of there.”

“Where were you?” The thought of him in a firefight, his helicopter going down left her weak. Shocked. Frightened.

“That doesn’t matter. The point of this is, I was wounded and had leave comin’. Nonny suddenly contacted me and told me what happened to her.”

“So you think because you were wounded and Nonny happened to call you home that this is some scheme, an elaborate setup. Do you have any idea what it would take to orchestrate something this complicated? To make all the pieces come together?” Pepper said. “Now you’re just being paranoid.”

It would take a brilliant man who loved games. Games like chess where people are being used as pawns.

She heard it. Or she thought it. She didn’t know what came first, but his hand was still burning a brand through her skin straight to her bones, and all of a sudden his stupid conspiracy theory was actually beginning to make sense and that scared her all the more.

“Really?” Wyatt straightened up, taking a step back from the bed to lean against the wall. “Not when you think about it. He used my sperm and I suspect your eggs and enhanced them in vitro. They were planted in surrogates there in France where they had you in their little laboratory. He gave the babies to you to ensure a bond. He knew your maternal instincts would kick in and that, because you’re highly intelligent, you might even figure it out.”

“But I didn’t,” Pepper denied.

“Yes, you did. You know you did. You suspected they were yours, and you let yourself love them because you couldn’ help yourself. You played right into his hands, not that any normal person could have resisted three innocent babies. He waits for the right moment, and believe me, Dr. Peter Whitney is a master at creatin’ right moments.”

“I told you, he was there only a couple of times. It was Dr. Thomas Braden who was in charge of the laboratory there in France.” She didn’t want any of it to be true. If it was true… she was in far more trouble than she could ever handle alone. How could she possibly keep her daughters safe from such a madman?

“It doesn’ matter who was in charge. Whitney can’ possibly be in ten places at the same time. He has to have men who run the various laboratories for him. Others have to conduct the experiments. He has a network now, a large one, but it’s Whitney at the helm, and this is classic Whitney.”

“What is this?” Pepper demanded, feeling like her head might explode. She raised both hands and covered her ears as if that could drown him out. “Because I still don’t understand.”

She didn’t want to understand. If she understood the actual scope of the forces against her, she might give up and she had three little girls depending on her. She felt terrified and exposed. Vulnerable. Never ever show that to the enemy. That had been drilled into her.

“Sugar.” Wyatt caught both her wrists in a gentle but unbreakable grip and pulled her fists to his chest.

Sugar. That was all he said. It was the way he said it. Soft. Whispery. Into her. Sugar. Who would ever want to be called sugar? It was bad enough that her name was Pepper. But Sugar? She couldn’t believe she melted inside when he said it, but she did.

“You always forget to breathe, baby. This is just a fact. Nothin’ huge goin’ on here. Nothin’ we can’ figure out together and beat. A little over four months ago I received orders to go to Afghanistan. It was my third tour, so I didn’t think anythin’ about it. We’re usually sent into the hottest zones because we’re enhanced. We always run the night rescues. The last one resulted in taking heavy fire. No one should have known we were comin’. No one. We knew they had to have been tipped off.”

She was horrified. The thing was, she didn’t know if she was horrified at the thought of Whitney betraying soldiers that way, or by her reaction to the thought of Wyatt in such danger. Her entire body rebelled at the idea, and what did that mean? If he kept holding her hands against his chest, they were both going to be in trouble. Snakebite, IV and gunshot wound aside.