Just A Little Bit Pregnant

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...