Just A Little Bit Pregnant

Protect and Defend.

Twenty years ago, when he’d graduated from the police academy and pinned on his badge for the first time, he’d known so much. A man did, at that age. He’d been certain of what he wanted from life and how to get it. He’d wanted to be a cop like his father, and he’d wanted to settle down with a good woman and raise children.

It hadn’t occurred to him, at twenty, to wonder whether he deserved either of those sweetest of life’s gifts.

By the time he met the good woman twelve years later, Houston’s streets had knocked most of his certainties out of him. He’d still wanted to marry, but he’d no longer dared to want children.

Allison had, though.

Tom turned away from the window and walked to his desk. Slowly he picked up the photo that had sat on the same corner of that desk for six years—three years before Allison died, and three years, now, after.

It wasn’t Allison he’d dreamed about last night.

Tom knew what love was. He’d loved his wife, so he knew it wasn’t love he felt for Jacinta James. This hot, urgent craving was too selfish, too physical and too nearly desperate to be that tender emotion. But it wasn’t anything as simple and clean as lust, either. Lust by itself wouldn’t burden him with guilt this way. Lust would have been eased by taking her to bed, not doubled.

Obsession, maybe.

The name didn’t matter. Whatever he felt, he was going to have to deal with it, and he hoped, he prayed, he could get a handle on how to do that quickly. She was carrying his baby. His baby. He’d treated her badly and she wanted nothing to do with him, and he couldn’t blame her for that. But he couldn’t let her continue to hold him at arm’s distance, either.

He had to change her mind. Somehow, some way, he had to change her mind about marrying him.

Tom stared at the photo in his hand. He couldn’t ask Jacy again to marry him while Allison’s picture sat on his desk, could he?

The phone rang. Tom set the photo on his desk, facedown, as he picked the receiver up. “Rasmussin here,” he said.

“Tom?” The voice at the other end was so shaky and uncertain that for one jarring second he didn’t recognize it. “Tom, there’s something wrong. Really wrong. I—I’m cramping and I—”

“Jacy? Where are you?”

“I’m in my car near the Rutger. The hotel. There’s a fire and I—I’m bleeding.” Her voice broke, and she was crying. Jacy, whom he would have sworn could take a beating without crying, choked her words out between sobs. “I’m afraid I’m losing the baby. I’m scared, Tom. I’m so scared!”

“Stay there. Stay right there in your car and I’ll get someone to you.” He could do this, he told himself. Hadn’t he done this hundreds of times, talked to a victim or a witness, kept his voice steady, detached, so they would stay calm while he did his job? “Stay there,” he repeated, and his voice broke. “I’ll get you some help, Jacy, I swear it.”

Four

The emergency room at Medical Center Hospital smelled like hospitals everywhere. The medicinal stink of disinfectant overlaid the faint, grim mingling of sweat, blood and less pleasant odors. Jacy lay on the examining table in a small white room with gleaming metal fixtures and a punishingly bright light. She wore a hospital gown and a thin sheet. A clear plastic tube led to the back of her right hand, where tape held the needle in place while the IV machine hummed as it pumped fluids into her.