Classified Baby

But that wasn’t right. She’d never been much of a partyer, and wasn’t drinking at all these days because of—

The connection sparked in her brain and clenched her stomach in an instant. The baby. Ethan. Prescott Personal Securities. Images blinked through her mind in rapid succession—the office building, the helicopter, the rocket launcher—

The explosion.

Her eyes flew open and she found herself facedown on the floor of the glassed-in elevator. She saw the street far below. Then a thin stream of blackish- gray smoke obscured her view for a moment, and the contrast showed her something far worse than the height. There was a crack in the glass beneath her.

As she watched, it grew longer and branched into two cracks that gave birth to two more in a growing spiderweb that weakened the only thing separating her from a fatal fall.

“Help me,” she whispered, half-afraid the small sound might send her crashing through. When it didn’t, she filled her lungs and screamed, “Help me!”

Incredibly, a man’s voice answered from above. “Hang on, Nicole. I’m almost there.”

“Ethan?” She wasn’t sure how she recognized his voice, ten weeks after they’d spent the night together doing everything but talking, but she knew him instantly, and the recognition brought a fierce rush of relief edged with fear.

“Don’t move.” His words sounded clearer than they ought to, and she heard the whistle of wind.

Fearing what she might see, Nic held her breath and tried to keep her body still as she turned her head to the side. She saw more glass, more cracks, and a gaping hole in the side of the elevator car, where the glass was gone. Beyond that was blue sky, a smudge of smoke and a dangling climber’s rope. She heard masculine shouts from higher up, a mixture of suggestions and curses from whoever was anchoring the line.

She remembered him saying something about rock climbing in his free time. Now he was shimmying down to rescue her. God.

As she watched, a pair of sturdy, brown leather hiking boots swung into her limited slice of view, followed by a hint of tube sock and a pair of strong, muscular legs encased in tough-looking cargo pants and a makeshift climber’s harness. The button-down front of a formerly white oxford shirt appeared next, gaping where a couple of buttons had torn away to reveal a lean, muscular torso.

Then he twisted through the broken section of glass, and she got a clear look at the edgy, masculine face she’d imagined all too often since realizing her period was late.

Hell, she thought, let’s be honest here. You’ve thought about him just about every day since that night at Hitchin’s. And she’d remembered him just right. His dark brown hair was lighter at the ends, signaling an outdoor lifestyle. His face was chiseled, his features as sharp and forbidding as she’d remembered. Now, though, the brown eyes she remembered as being coolly logical and almost sardonic, radiated tension as they locked on hers and he said, “Stay calm. We can do this, but you’ve got to trust me, okay?” He waited until she nodded, then said, “I want you to keep yourself flat and distribute your weight as evenly as possible. Then I need you to slide toward me. We’re going to get you out of there.”

Nic’s breath hissed out. She glanced down and saw emergency vehicles gathering far below. “I can’t… I won’t…” She stopped and sucked in a breath. “Can’t you open the doors from inside the building?”

“Not a chance. You’re—” He broke off, looked up as the rescue personnel shouted something she didn’t quite catch, and muttered a curse. “Look, the explosion knocked the elevator off its track, okay? It’s hanging by a single cable right now. It looks stable enough, but—”

A loud crackling noise cut him off, and the floor shifted beneath Nic. She whimpered deep in her throat and tears stung her eyes. “Ethan, please,” she whispered. “The floor’s going to go. I don’t want to die.”

“Slide over,” he repeated, speaking softly. “Go easy, but keep moving, no matter what happens.”

Heart pounding in her ears, Nic closed her eyes, pressed her cheek to the floor and slid an inch, then another. She heard crackling, but didn’t look at the glass beneath her.

“That’s it. You’re almost there.”

He sounded closer, prompting Nic to open her eyes. He’d dropped lower on the rope, so their faces were level through the broken panel.

His voice might be utterly calm, but his eyes held a strange, dark emotion she couldn’t quite define.

An answering surge tugged in her chest, the same feeling she’d had when she’d offered to buy him a drink and he’d turned to refuse, then accepted instead. Now, though, there was an added layer between them, the echoing heat of sex…and a baby he’d never know about if she fell.

“Ethan,” Nic whispered, heart pounding. “I came to tell you I’m pregnant.”

She might’ve imagined the wince, but there was no mistaking his low curse, or the look that flashed through his eyes before he shuttered his expression to one of utter determination and stretched his arm through the broken side of the elevator car. “We need to get you on solid ground. Take my hand.”

She looked from him to the ground and back again. When her weight shifted, the glass beneath her cracked further.

“Come on.” His eyes were steady on hers, his outstretched hand unwavering. “Trust me.”

Heart pounding loud in her ears, she reached out and grabbed his forearm, just as the crackling noise crescendoed—

And the glass gave way beneath her.

Nic screamed as she fell and then jerked to a suspended halt, dangling in Ethan’s grip, held only by their joined hands. Sobbing, terrified, she grabbed for him with her free hand as a roaring, crumbling noise built overhead, counterpointed by pinging metal.

She looked up and shrieked, “Ethan! The cable!”

Overhead, the elevator mechanism was coming apart.

He twisted his head and shouted to the men leaning out of a window two floors up. “Pull us in, damn it!” His expression remained impassive, but his voice was sharp when he said, “You’re going to have to climb up through the hole in the elevator floor before it goes. Watch the broken glass.”

The next two minutes were a blur as Nic scrambled, fighting for purchase as he pulled her up and out, helped by the uniformed rescue personnel two floors up, who were cursing and hauling on the rope as fast as they dared.

Then she was out! She lunged through the open panel and launched herself against Ethan just as the elevator gave way with a horrendous crack and plummeted down, trailing broken cables. Momentum sent them spinning, and Nic hung on tightly as they swung away from the building. She felt Ethan’s strong body against hers, felt his heart drum fast through the fabric of his shirt. Then the arc reversed and they went flying back toward the building.

“Hang on!” Ethan swung them so he’d bear the brunt, but an errant wind gust caught them and diverted the spin, changing their angle of impact.

Nic hit first, and she hit hard. The blow drove the breath from her lungs. Her neck whiplashed and her head slammed into the side of the building.

Starbursts flashed in her head, and then every sensation was abruptly sucked into a black void. Every sensation, that is, except the feel of the man who held her tight.

Chapter Two

Ethan’s muscles worked automatically, stabilizing them against the side of the building and cradling Nicole’s unconscious body as the rescue personnel hauled them up, but his brain was jammed full. One part of him cataloged her injuries—she’d taken a hell of a whack to the head—while another, deeper part of him processed her announcement.

The last thing he’d expected—or wanted—to hear was that she was pregnant.

Then again, he’d never actually figured he’d see her again. The morning after their night together, he’d filed the memory in the tiny Pleasant Interludes section of his brain and walked away. Maybe he’d thought of her once or twice in the months since. And maybe he’d stuck his head into Hitchin’s a couple of times since. But a baby? God, no. They’d been careful. He’d used a condom, damn it.

But there was that whole ninety-nine-point-nine- percent-effective thing. Apparently, he’d stepped straight into that point-oh-one of oh, hell.

“We’ve got her,” a male voice said, breaking into Ethan’s thoughts. He was startled to realize they’d reached the place where a bank of broken windows had allowed him to climb down to the elevator. The rescue personnel almost hadn’t let him go, but he was the one with the rock-climbing equipment and the skills, and there hadn’t been time to wait for the real search-and-rescue team.

It was just dumb luck he’d had his gear in the office, dumb luck that’d he’d been able to save Nicole’s life.

Suited firefighters leaned through, reaching to grab her unconscious form and ease her to relative safety indoors.

“Careful,” Ethan said unnecessarily. “She’s—” Pregnant, he thought, but couldn’t say the word. “She banged her head pretty hard.”

It’d happened so fast he hadn’t been able to protect her from slamming into the building. She was breathing fine, but she was still unconscious. What had it been, two minutes? Five? Too long.

Jaw set, he climbed through, shucked off his harness and stowed his gear, then jogged to catch up with the group of paramedics who were carrying Nicole down the stairs, strapped to a backboard.

As the small group emerged into the early-afternoon sunlight, one of the paramedics glanced up at the smoke that continued to pour from the ruined PPS offices. “Looks like the building will hold, thank the Lord.”