Читать книгу: «Just A Little Bit Pregnant»

One

The woman sitting across from Dr. Nordstrom didn’t fit in his pleasant pastel office.

He’d redecorated after buying the practice last winter. Studies had shown that patients found white cold and clinical, so the decorator had used pale peach for the walls, with muted blues and greens for the carpet and accents—colors intended to soothe anxious patients.

Dr. Nordstrom doubted that Jacinta Caitlin James’s presence had ever soothed anyone. Particularly anyone male.

She was too vivid, for one thing, in her crimson top and her gauzy skirt splashed with tropical flowers. She was too exotic, with her Gypsy’s hair, her tip-tilted eyes and full breasts.

She was also suddenly too pale. Much too pale.

“Ms. James?” he said. “Ms. James, are you all right?”

Jacy’s name echoed hollowly in her ears, as if the doctor were calling her from the other end of a long tunnel. “I’m fine,” she said automatically. In defiance of the darkness lapping at the edges of her vision, she pushed to her feet.

“Please sit down, put your head between—”

“I’m fine,” she repeated as she waited for the dizziness to pass.

Over the years Jacy had been called a lot of things, from persistent to pigheaded. Any number of cops, crooks and politicians had referred to her as “that damned reporter,” but even her detractors agreed she was as compulsively truthful in print as she was passionate about lost causes and underdogs. Her co-workers at the Houston Sentinel had nicknamed her “Outlaw” in honor of her comfortable relationship with chaos, and her boss had once, in a fit of good humor, been heard to call her the best investigative journalist in the state.

The one name Jacy had never expected would apply to her was Mother.

She inhaled raggedly. The darkness receded, leaving her standing in the middle of Dr. Nordstrom’s pleasant office. He sat behind his big desk looking up at her with an expression of professional concern. The way the oval lenses of his glasses reflected the overhead lights made them seem to be winking at her.

He had no wrinkles. That bothered her. How could he know enough to advise her on what was happening with her body when his face was as smooth as a baby’s behind? Jacy didn’t want to look at his too-smooth face. She didn’t want him looking at her. Quickly she glanced around the office as if she might find an escape route.

A picture on the nearest wall caught her attention, and she took four quick steps to it. Her skirt swirled around her legs, and if the rest of the world swirled a bit, too, she was convinced she could ignore it.

The picture was an artist’s rendering of a woman’s torso featuring the poor lady’s insides. Her exposed womb held a baby curled up, head down. Both the baby and the woman had pinkish pale skin.

Jacy didn’t. People often assumed she was part Mexican, and maybe she was. She didn’t know. Her dusky complexion might have been due to a number of possible heritages, from Mediterranean to Bedouin—but her eyes, those Irish green eyes, announced some international mixing and mingling in her genetic past.

“So when am I due?” Her voice was steady, which pleased her. Her question even made sense. Maybe her brain was working, even if her head felt stuffed with ghosts instead of thoughts—haunted, irrational wisps she couldn’t quite grasp.

“Next March.”

“Of course.” Apparently her brain wasn’t working after all. It hadn’t occurred to her to add nine months to the only possible date of conception.

Conception? A hint of wonder slipped past the other emotions. Her hand went to her middle. Her palm felt warm on her midriff through the stretchy knit of the top she’d chosen that morning because the bright red reminded her of courage, and of Sister Mary Elizabeth.

“Ms. James, this has obviously upset you. Please, sit down.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I just...don’t know how to do this.” Now there was the understatement of the decade. How could someone who’d never had parents be one? She shook her head.

More gently, he said, “You must have suspected your condition when you made the appointment to see me.”

But she hadn’t believed it. That was one of the reasons she’d given herself for not mentioning the possibility to Sister Mary Elizabeth on her visit last Saturday. “Look,” she said, turning around, “I’m no more logical than most people. I guess I knew...but it didn’t seem possible. I haven’t been sick in the morning or anything. And...”

And it had been just that one night, she wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair, not fair at all—and if that plaintive thought made her feel closer to sixteen than thirty-one, well, wasn’t an unplanned pregnancy something that happened to careless teenagers? Not to a savvy career woman who respected herself too much for casual sex—who had never even been tempted to have a one-night stand. Never, until that night two months ago.

Not that she’d known it was going to be a one-night stand. Not even when Tom had climbed out of her bed and started pulling his clothes on. Not until he’d paused on his way out the door and looked at her. “This was a mistake,” he’d told her. Then he’d walked out.

Jacy held her head high and firmed her shoulders. “He used protection.”

“Yes, and condoms are quite reliable when used with a spermicide, but I believe you said you didn’t use any cream or foam.” Dr. Nordstrom shook his pale blond head. “The sheath was probably torn or improperly applied. People accustomed to other methods of birth control sometimes find condoms a bit tricky to put on.”

She smiled without humor. Somehow she didn’t think Tom lacked experience in donning protection. But he had been in a hurry, hadn’t he? Oh, yes, he’d been urgent enough. She’d thought him as desperate, as involved, as she was.

Memories pushed at her from where she kept them trapped deep inside—dark, heated memories that she fought back down. She never wanted to feel again what she’d felt that night.

When she shook her head to chase the ghosts away she realized the smooth-faced doctor was speaking.

“...need to know, first, whether you intend to continue with this pregnancy.”

“Continue—oh, God.” Abruptly she did want to sit down. She came back to the pale green chair that faced the doctor, and sat. She hadn’t thought...hadn’t even considered...

As quickly as spring in Houston turned into the baked heat of summer, Jacy turned an inner corner. In that instant what the doctor had told her became true and real. “Yes,” she said. Her hand went to her still-flat stomach. “I want my baby.” A baby. Her baby. However many doubts and fears threatened her, she had no doubts at all about keeping her baby. That certainty steadied her.

“Very well. I’m afraid my predecessor’s records are not complete, so I must ask you a few questions. Your medical history doesn’t identify your ethnic background.”

“Pick one.” She gestured widely. Her old doctor had known about her, and briefly she resented the stranger who’d taken his place when he retired last year. “I was raised in an orphanage. I have no idea who my parents were.”

“I see.” He frowned, tapping the medical record on his desk. “Also, the nurse said you refused to discuss the father’s identity. We are not being nosy, Ms. James. For the sake of your baby’s health as well as your own, I need medical information on the father, particularly since you have Rh-negative blood.”

She was going to have to tell Tom.

For one brief, craven moment Jacy reached for a way, a trick, some justification for keeping this from him—something other than the fact that the idea of contacting him made her sick to her stomach. But Jacy had spent the past several years of her life fighting to uncover and report on the truth. She was no good at avoiding or concealing it.

God help her, she would have to tell him.

“Ms. James?”

“Give me a few days,” she managed. “I’ll get his medical history, or have him come in and fill out some of your forms. Just give me a few days.”

When she left Dr. Nordstrom’s office fifteen minutes later she had a prescription for vitamins, an appointment in another month and a couple of colorful brochures.

It was August, it was Houston, and it was hot. By the time she crossed the parking lot, sweat dampened the nape of her neck beneath the heavy fall of her hair. She slid into the cherry red ’65 Mustang she’d finished having restored last year, leaving the door open to let some of the sunbaked air out. The humidity was high that day, and the car’s interior felt like a sauna. The white leather seat burned the back of her legs through the crinkled cotton of her skirt.

Jacy welcomed the heat. It made her feel more real.

She started the car to get the air-conditioning going, and then she just sat there with her door open, listening to the radio. The sound of the Beach Boys praising California girls rolled over her comfortingly.

Jacy loved old rock music, especially the soppy, sentimental songs of the fifties. Few people were aware that she had an equal weakness for old TV shows like “Lassie,” “My Friend Flicka” and “Leave It to Beaver.”

When Jacy was seven and a half, Sister Mary Elizabeth had moved her to the top bunk in the room she shared with three other girls, right above the newly arrived Seraphina Pfeister. Seraphina’s nightmares had lasted for months, long past the time it took for her arm to come out of the cast, her bruises to heal and her mother to start serving her sentence for child abuse.

Jacy used to lie in that upper bunk and plan her marriage to Beaver’s big brother, Wally. The lavish wedding. A wedding dress so full-skirted no ordinary human could have walked down the aisle in it. The two-story house they would live in afterward and the pets she and Wally would have.... Oh, yes, that had been a favorite daydream. Even after Sera stopped crying at bedtime, Jacy had liked to lie in bed and think up names for the dogs she and Wally would have.

She had known then that her “plans” were fantasy, just like the old sitcoms. It hadn’t mattered. Those fantasies had nourished something in her.

Jacy sat now in her gradually cooling car and tried to remember if she had ever fantasized about having a baby. A puppy, yes. She’d longed quite hopelessly for a puppy to take care of. But another whole, entire human being? Had she ever thought she could be responsible for anything as helpless and endlessly important as a baby?

When she shivered, it wasn’t from any outside chill.

Jacy closed her car door at last and slipped her seat belt into place. She picked up the cellular phone she kept in her car for calling in stories or getting answers while trapped in traffic, and punched in a number she knew by heart.

Tabor answered his own phone for once. She told him she’d be out the rest of the day, doing research.

She would be, too. Jacy only knew one way to approach a problem—head-on. She intended to get a grip on her situation the same way she explored a story on any unfamiliar topic. She’d look up what the experts had written on the subject before she tried to figure her particular angle. There were bound to be plenty of experts on a subject as important as motherhood.

She just regretted the half-truth she’d told her boss. Tabor would have to know about her pregnancy soon, of course. He wasn’t just her boss, after all. He was her friend.

But she wouldn’t tell him quite yet, she thought as she pushed in the clutch and shifted into Reverse. Another man had to hear the news first However much the idea turned her stomach, however little consideration he rated otherwise, Tom would have to know he was going to be a father.

Her baby deserved a father.

But that, too, would have to wait. Jacy felt lost in the suddenly altered landscape of her life. She was too unsteady to face the man who’d walked out on her. Friday, she decided as she shifted gears and pulled out into traffic. She’d tell him on Friday, four days from now.

In the meantime, she had some research to do.

Four days later

The carpet on the fourth-floor office of the Houston police headquarters building was gray. So were the battered metal file cabinets lining one wall of one of the offices in the Special Investigations section. Late-afternoon sunlight streaked through the blinds of the office’s single window to land in hot bars on the gray carpet, the corner of one file cabinet and the left shoulder of the man who sat at the big metal desk.

It was a broad shoulder, covered in white cotton with thin blue stripes. On that Friday afternoon the desk was full but orderly, with a black Stetson hat placed brim-up on one corner and the usual office paraphernalia neatly arranged. An extension to one side held a computer. The credenza behind the man held nine neat piles of papers and miscellany, and four family photos in brass frames.

Another photograph, larger than the rest, sat on the corner of his desk. Those pictures provided the only color in the office.

Tom Rasmussin seldom chained himself to the desk for the entire day, but he’d arrived before the sun this morning and stayed in the office all day, trying to clear away enough paperwork to go to the family beach cottage at San Padre Island with his brother this weekend.

His early arrival that morning was nothing unusual, though. He normally came in early and left late. There was no one to object to the hours he kept. Not anymore.

He was working on the last report when his office door opened. When he glanced that way, one corner of his mouth turned up. “Aren’t they checking IDs downstairs anymore?”

The man who sauntered into Tom’s immaculate office wore torn jeans, a three-day beard and a faded black T-shirt with an obscene suggestion printed in Spanish on the front. A greasy bandanna tied Indian-style across his forehead held shaggy light brown hair out of his eyes. “Hey, you got a problem with how I look, man?” He stopped and glanced up and down his grungy body. “I don’t see anything wrong. I even changed my underwear this morning.”

Tom leaned back in his chair. “I’m surprised you’re wearing any. Maybe you should run by Mom and Dad’s place and get her opinion on your wardrobe.”

“Think she’d give me hell, don’t you?” Tom’s only brother grinned, turned one of the wooden chairs around backward and straddled it. “If there’s any woman who would understand, it’s Mom.”

Raz had a point. After being married to a cop for forty-one years, Lydia Rasmussin understood the necessities of police work, including undercover assignments. “Even the shirt?” Tom said, raising both eyebrows.

“Hey,” Raz said, “you’re conservative enough for both of us. Do you even own any shirts that aren’t white?”

Tom grunted. “Run along and get some coffee, why don’t you, and quit bothering the grown-ups.”

“Are you kidding? That stuff’s bad for you.” Raz shuddered. “Especially the sludge you desk jockeys in S.I. brew. You aren’t ready to go?”

“I’ll be done in fifteen minutes, if you can be quiet that long.” Tom turned back to his computer.

Raz didn’t have a problem with being quiet, but sitting still was another matter. After a moment he stood and moved restlessly around the room. Raz had been known to say that his brother got the family quota of patience while he got all the charm.

Few people took the two men for brothers on first glance, or even on second. Both had their father’s bone structure, the sort of angular face Clint Eastwood had made famous a generation earlier, but in other ways they were opposites. Tom’s hair was nearly black. Raz’s was light brown. Yet it was Tom who had the pale eyes, while Raz’s were cocker spaniel warm. Tom was cool, orderly and reserved; Raz was outgoing, energetic and worried about his brother.

His drifting carried him over to the window. He ran a finger along one of the slats of the blinds. “This office is revoltingly neat, you know.”

“Send a complaint to maintenance,” Tom said without looking up, “so they’ll quit doing such a good job.”

The office wasn’t just clean, Raz thought. It was sterile. Like everything else in Tom’s life since Allison died. He didn’t know what it would take to jolt his brother out of the half-dead existence he’d settled into after the initial grief faded.

Dynamite, maybe? Tom was one stubborn son of a bitch. He wandered over to the wall where Tom’s various certificates and awards were distributed. “Got your gear together?”

“It’s in the Jeep.”

“Want to check out that new exotic dance club while we’re down there?”

Tom grimaced and reached for a small black notebook, checking something in his report against his notes. “Not much point in getting hot and bothered and then going back to the cottage with you, bro.”

Raz shrugged, unsurprised. It wouldn’t occur to Tom that he didn’t necessarily have to go back to the cottage with only his brother for company. Tom had changed a lot in the three years since his wife died, but he was an intensely private man. Raz couldn’t imagine him bringing a one-night stand to the family beach cottage.

A loud bzzz announced an in-house call. Tom reached out one long arm, snagged the receiver, and held it between his chin and shoulder, still typing. “Yeah?”

Raz couldn’t hear what the caller said, but he couldn’t miss his brother’s reaction. Tom dropped the receiver.

He caught it before it hit the floor, but Raz stopped pacing and stared in disbelief at his normally imperturbable brother.

“What?” Tom barked, then, “No! No, don’t send her up. Tell her—uh, tell her I’m about to leave on a trip. I’ll call her when I get back.” He hung up.

Raz felt a smile starting. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.” Tom’s expression would have kept anyone but a brother from pursuing the subject.

“Didn’t sound like ‘nothing’ to me.” Raz felt downright merry as he straddled the chair once more. “Sounded like you’re dodging some woman.”

“Don’t be any more of an ass than you have to.” The phone rang again, and Tom grabbed it. “What?” he barked. In the pause that followed, his expression went from forbidding to deadly. “Send her up,” he snarled, and slammed the phone down.

“Fantastic.” Raz grinned and thought hopefully of dynamite. “I can hardly wait to meet this woman.”

“Get out of here.”

“No way. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

Jacy had been to police headquarters before, of course, for press conferences or general badgering purposes. So she was familiar with the security, from the heavy steel door the desk sergeant unlocked electronically, to the visitor’s badge she clipped on her shirt, to the cameras perched in every corner like metal-and-glass spiders.

The flutter of panic in her stomach wasn’t familiar, but the fury that powered her into the elevator and out again almost drowned out other feelings.

Almost.

She’d never been to Tom’s office. She had never, she reminded herself, even been to his apartment. He’d talked his way into hers.

No, she told herself, her fingers tight and sweaty on the folder she carried. Be honest. Talk hadn’t had much to do with it.

She’d wanted him. From the first time she interviewed him about a case two years ago, she’d been fascinated, drawn. Jacy wasn’t accustomed to feeling shy, but it had taken her months to get up the courage to let him know she was attracted.

He’d been quite killingly polite when he told her he wasn’t interested.

In spite of that, they’d evolved a good working relationship—as good as a cop and a reporter ever had, at least. Tom occasionally fed Jacy information both on and off the record. She sometimes passed him facts or rumors. They met for drinks sometimes to exchange information and argue about who owed whom. Over the past year they had become friends, or very nearly.

If Jacy had taken a little too much care with her clothes and makeup for those meetings, she’d told herself it was wounded feminine vanity that made her care how she looked. Tom had always made it clear he considered their meetings strictly business.

Until the last time they got together—on June tenth, two months and four days ago. He’d called that Friday to ask her to meet him for a drink. She’d gone, expecting business as usual, thinking he wanted a name, maybe, or the down-and-dirty gossip on some public figure. They’d met at the usual place, a bar not far from police headquarters.

From the moment their gazes had tangled that night, she’d known he didn’t have police work in mind this time. And she’d been thrilled.

Infatuation. Jacy’s lip curled in a sneer as she left the elevator and headed down the long hall, following the desk sergeant’s directions. She’d been as blindly, stupidly infatuated as any teenage girl who didn’t know better. She’d not only wanted the man, she’d admired him for his integrity, his strength. Around him she’d felt...different. Softer. More alive.

Well, he’d cured her of that, hadn’t he?

But at least, she thought, when the subject came up someday, she would be able to tell her child that it hadn’t been all physical attraction. Not on her part, at least. Her child...

The clutch of panic, cold and clammy, added to her anger. When the nameplate outside the last office on the left announced that she’d reached her destination, she shoved the door open without knocking—and stopped two feet inside the room.

Tom sat behind his desk, his thick mustache framing a scowl that held all the friendly charm of a half-starved timber wolf. His office was stark, orderly, all-business—pretty much what she’d expected. The only color came from the row of framed photographs behind him, and the one on his desk—a large, professional photo of a pretty young woman in a checked dress.

Another time Jacy might have had to acknowledge what she felt when she saw that prominently displayed picture. Not now.

She and Tom weren’t alone. Another man, a stranger, grinned at Jacy from where he sat on a wooden chair. He was as dirty, disreputable and smiling as Tom was clean, controlled and angry.

It hurt. It shouldn’t have, not anymore. But Tom truly hadn’t wanted to see her or speak with her. Not even for these few moments. She’d had to threaten to tell the sergeant downstairs why she’d come before Tom would agree to see her—and he still hadn’t bothered to grant her privacy.

Well, so be it. She straightened her shoulders and marched up to his desk.

“I don’t care much for your methods,” Tom growled. “I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish, but—”

“Shut up, Rasmussin.” She slapped the folder she’d been clutching on the desk between them. Then, for the first time in two months, she met his eyes.

Oh, God. His eyes...colorless as rain, looking at her...looking right through her. Her stomach jumped, and lower down a knot of feeling tightened and spread electrically. A hateful, detestable feeling. She couldn’t crave this man anymore. She wouldn’t.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Tom?” the dirty stranger asked, still grinning.

“Shut up, Raz.” Tom reached for the folder that held the papers she’d drawn up after some of her research. “What the hell is this?”

Raz? Mr. Law-and-Order had had a brother, she remembered. A brother who worked undercover. She gave the bum in the wooden chair a measuring glance, then turned back to face the neatly groomed bum behind the desk.

Jacy smiled a nasty, satisfied smile. Tom really should have agreed to talk to her privately.

She leaned over his desk and tapped the folder. “This is a summary of my probable medical expenses, with the amount my insurance should cover indicated. I’ll expect you to pay for half the remaining balance. That’s not negotiable. I’ve also made some suggestions about support payments and visitation rights. Do take your time to think this over—just as long as you get back to me by Monday. That way you’ll save us both some legal fees and court costs...Dad.”

His face went as suddenly pale as hers had at the doctor’s. Satisfied, she turned around and marched out.