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Besides, she’d already spent too much time thinking about Luke Minteer—and way too much time talking about him to Cassie. It was puzzling, and disturbing, too.
And then there was the most puzzling, disturbing thing of all—that remark she’d made to him upon leaving the courthouse.
Why hadn’t she simply played along with Luke Minteer’s belief that she was married? Why hadn’t she pretended that a “Mr. Morgan” actually existed?
Luke had assumed one did, that she was a married woman—until she’d quashed that notion flat.
Why had she done it? Brenna mused throughout the evening. By morning she still didn’t have the answer.
Two
All twelve jurors arrived on time the next morning for the beginning of the trial. They introduced themselves to each other, and one of the older men, Roger Hollister, was elected foreman. The lawyers for both sides seemed pleased with the jurors’ first group decision; Hollister, whose nickname was Sarge, had served in World War II and knew a thing or two about leadership.
In the jury box before the opening argument, Luke once again sat next to Brenna Morgan. A natural gravitation process had already occurred among the twelve. Sarge Hollister and the other two men in his age group sat together, as did the five elderly women. The two pierced and tattooed young men, both named Jason with different surnames, stuck together, which left Brenna and Luke with nobody but each other.
Or so Luke told himself. Never mind that in his political incarnation, he had prided himself in fitting in with any group, regardless of age or sex. That was then, this was now, and he and Brenna were their own group strictly by default.
He glanced over at her. She’d gone for comfort over formality today, trading in yesterday’s blue maternity dress for black slacks and a long bottle-green top. He had opted for jeans again—after reading the prissy advisory not to wear them to court, of course he would never wear anything else—and an equally casual plaid flannel shirt.
But Brenna had followed the dress code, such as it was. She’d pulled her dark hair high in a ponytail, and the ends of it brushed against the nape of her neck. Luke’s eyes lingered on the soft, creamy-white skin exposed there, and he quickly lowered his gaze.
She looked as if she had a beachball stuffed under her shirt. Her breasts and belly seemed to merge into one big shapeless bulge, but her black tapered pants revealed that despite her advanced pregnancy, her legs were nicely shaped. Her ankles weren’t swollen today. He noticed that, too.
Luke frowned.
“Why aren’t you married?” he blurted out in a low whisper.
Brenna turned to look at him, visibly startled by the question. Luke himself was startled. He was doing it again—blabbing his thoughts aloud. The influence of the courthouse, perhaps? It was an old gothic-style place, vaguely creepy, where strange things might be expected to happen—like him imagining that he was being influenced by the atmosphere!
“Because I’m not,” she replied coolly.
She might as well have come right out and flatly said, It’s none of your business, because her answer, her voice and entire demeanor conveyed just that sentiment.
Still Luke didn’t back off. “Did your boyfriend dump you when he found out you were pregnant?”
“Are you speaking from personal experience? Is that what you would do in a similar situation?” Brenna went on the offense, her chin rising defiantly. “Or maybe you’ve already done it, for all I know.” She didn’t meet his eyes.
“No! I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I’ve never—” Luke paused when the attorney for Brad, the plaintiff, stood and began to present his opening argument.
Brad sat at the table, listening to his side being presented, nodding his head at every point. His former fiancée, Amber, visibly bristled, grimaced and vehemently shook her head in disagreement.
Everybody in the jury box stared at the feuding former lovers—everybody except Luke Minteer, whose eyes remained riveted on Brenna.
He leaned a little closer to her, his voice low in her ear. “Don’t try to turn this around and sling mud at me, lady. This isn’t about me.”
“True. It has nothing to do with you,” she murmured between clenched teeth. “And please stop talking. The judge is giving us a dirty look.”
“And God forbid we get on the wrong side of His Honor,” taunted Luke. “We might get thrown off the jury. Wow, that would be a heavy price to pay.”
“Excuse me.” The judge pounded his gavel, interrupting the attorney. “Jurors nine and ten, conversation will be conducted outside the courtroom, not during the trial. I don’t want to have to mention this again.” He glowered at Brenna and Luke.
Brenna blushed and she stared at the floor. Luke shrugged, scowling, but unintimidated by the reprimand.
“Don’t look so guilty,” he whispered to Brenna a moment later. “It’s not like we’re criminals on trial here. We’re the ones giving up our time to do our civic duty so that Brad and Amber can stick it to each—”
“Will you please shut up!” Brenna said desperately. “We’re going to get jailed for contempt of court or something if you keep—”
“Juror nine!” thundered the judge, glaring at Brenna.
She slumped lower in her chair. “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”
“She isn’t feeling well, Your Honor,” Luke spoke up. “She is very advanced in her pregnancy and needs to take a break right now. If you would be kind enough to excuse her for a few minutes…” He stared at the judge expectantly.
The judge looked nonplussed. “I…see. All right, we’ll all take a ten-minute break. Court resumes in ten minutes.” He strode from the courtroom.
“If we take ten-minute breaks every ten minutes, this trial will never end,” one attorney complained to the other, loud enough to be heard in the jury box.
“You guys are the ones who picked a very pregnant woman to be on your jury,” Luke called back to them. “So live with it, boys.”
“I’m going to the rest room,” Brenna murmured, and quickly left the courtroom.
Luke was in the corridor standing against the wall when she emerged from the bathroom. She would have walked past him, but he approached her.
“I came to your rescue,” he said proudly. “Pretty fast thinking on my part, hmm?”
“Is that how you see yourself? A kind of gallant knight in shining armor?” Brenna headed directly to the courtroom, Luke at her side. “What you seem to forget is that you’re the reason I got in trouble in the first place.”
“Honey, you got in trouble long before I came on the scene.”
“If that’s an attempt at wit,” Brenna ground out, “it failed.”
“Mmm-hmm. So you were dumped by the daddy when you told him you were pregnant?” Luke surmised with a knowing nod. “You wouldn’t be so defensive and angry unless I’d really hit a nerve.”
“I’m not defensive but, yes, I’m angry. Because you’re a…a—”
“Jerk,” Luke supplied amiably. “Weasel. Snake. Rat. I’ve been called all those things and much worse. Deservedly, too, no doubt. But I never knocked up a woman and walked away, leaving her, uh, holding the baby. Literally. I don’t blame you for being furious, and if it helps to direct your rage at me, go ahead. Your boyfriend is lower than fungus slime and—”
“I don’t have any rage to direct at you or anyone else!” Brenna exclaimed, exasperated. “I don’t have a boyfriend who dumped me when he found out about the baby, either. There is no boyfriend and never was. Period.”
Luke said nothing. They walked to their seats and sat down. They were the first two jurors to return to the box.
“Go on, ask me,” Brenna growled, after a few more moments of Luke’s silence. Oddly enough, it disturbed her more than his questions and speculations. “I can almost hear what you’re thinking. So just say it.”
“I’m not one to criticize anyone else for being impulsive.” His lips quirked into a wry smile. “I used to call it being spontaneous back when I was your age.”
“Back when you were my age?” Brenna scoffed. “That wasn’t so long ago, was it? It’s not like you were in World War II with Sarge and company.”
“I’m thirty-five and it’s been a long time since I was—” Luke gazed down at her. “Twenty-one?” he guessed. “And crossing the line from spontaneous to indiscriminate can result in—”
“I’m twenty-six. And having my baby wasn’t an impulsive act, it—” She broke off and stared at him, aghast. “You think that I had multiple spontaneous one-night stands and wasn’t careful?”
“You said you could hear what I was thinking,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t think it was that!” Her voice rose in indignation. “Ick! Sleeping around indiscriminately? You might have, but I would never do that.”
“Don’t get too self-righteous, honey. You’re pregnant, and that means at least one sexual encounter with at least one man. Since you were so adamant about not having a boyfriend, naturally, I assumed you’d, er, scored with more than one guy and didn’t know which one was the father of your baby. Not that I’m condemning you for that,” he added. “I’m very open-minded.”
“How generous of you!”
“I guess I might’ve sounded a bit self-righteous myself there.” Chagrined, Luke took a deep breath. “I apologize.”
“Don’t bother, because it doesn’t apply. Just because you scored with a string of one-night stands doesn’t mean that I did. And I do know who the father of my baby is. I personally selected him. He’s a medical student, tall, blue-eyed and blond, of Swedish-English ancestry, with no inherited diseases in his family. He has a strong bent toward the sciences but also enjoys music and sports, particularly—”
“You sound like you’re reading a description out of a catalog.” Luke’s dark-blue eyes widened suddenly. “Good Lord, that’s what you did, isn’t it? That’s how you picked this guy, from a…a sperm bank catalog?”
She didn’t deny it. She nodded her head, confirming it.
Luke gaped at her, stunned.
“I was anything but impulsive about this.” Her gray eyes were as calm and serious as her tone. “I methodically researched everything very carefully and—”
“That’s…that’s so premeditated, so calculating,” Luke cut in. He almost had to gasp for breath. “No, demented is what it is.”
“You’re the one who’s demented! You wouldn’t condemn me for a series of one-night stands or for not knowing who the father of my child is, but you’re scandalized that I went to a sperm bank to—”
“Shhh!” he hushed her. “Unless you want to broadcast this to our fellow jurors, I suggest you keep quiet.”
Brenna looked up to see the eight older jurors filing into the box. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want to shock anybody else,” she murmured caustically.
“I’m not shocked, I’m just…” Luke’s voice trailed off.
What exactly was he, then? He didn’t know, couldn’t identify the weird feelings roiling within him.
“Shocked,” Brenna insisted. “And you don’t like the sensation because shocking people is your specialty, right? You want to be the one to shock people, not the other way around.”
“All right, guilty as charged. Now, can I ask you a personal question?”
She sighed. “You’re going to ask it anyway, aren’t you?”
“Are you gay? Is that the reason you’ve gone the, er, test-tube route? Because your, uh, significant other is a…a woman?”
“You should hear yourself, stammering like a shocked and disapproving candidate who is trying extra hard not to be politically incorrect.” Brenna grinned. “Were you this tactful when you worked in politics?”
“Of course not—which is why I no longer work in politics. Well, are you?”
“No, I’m not gay. I don’t have a significant other of either sex, and I don’t want one. There’s just me and my baby, and that’s all either of us will ever need.”
The two Jasons came shuffling in and had to climb over everybody to get to their seats at the end of the box. Both wore short-sleeved T-shirts, providing a clear view of the long and colorful identical dragon tattoos on their respective arms.
The sight was enough to break anyone’s train of thought. Brenna and Luke stared in silence at the two dragons, then at each other. Seconds later the lawyers trooped into the courtroom with their clients. A moment after that, the judge reentered.
“Proceed, Counsel,” the judge ordered.
Brad’s attorney continued to explain how his client had been wronged by the duplicitous, avaricious Amber.
Luke gripped the arms of his chair.
Just me and my baby, that’s all either of us will ever need. Brenna’s statement swirled in his head. She sounded so sure, yet he knew she was wrong.
He had three brothers and three sisters, along with a myriad of cousins; all were married with children. He’d seen firsthand that a new mother and a newborn baby needed a lot more than each other. They needed a support system.
At the very least they needed one other committed person involved—first, with the pregnancy, and then with the infant itself. The baby’s father ought to own that role. Every child deserved a good father.
Brad’s attorney sat down, and Amber’s counsel, a young woman who looked to be right out of law school, rose to her feet with an impassioned declaration about women’s rights and jealous-male greed.
Luke wasn’t listening. He was too astounded by his own unexpected thoughts on parenthood. It sounded as if they’d been lifted directly from one of his brother’s family-values speeches.
He knew Matt believed all that stuff, but Luke didn’t. At least, he thought he didn’t. He’d always considered himself to be an anything-goes kind of guy.
But the thought of Brenna Morgan and her baby, alone except for each other, struck something deep within him, summoning beliefs and feelings he hadn’t been aware of harboring.
Luke looked up at the high ceiling, at the old-fashioned windows that looked as though they hadn’t been opened in the past century. This courthouse really was a strange place, where his brother’s speeches played inside his head. Where he couldn’t stop thinking about a pretty, young pregnant woman whom he didn’t even know.
Except it felt as if he knew her well. From the moment they’d started talking yesterday, something had clicked, as if they’d known each other for a long, long time. As if there had never been a time when they hadn’t known each other. They were open and frank and honest with each other; conversation between them came too easily for them to be total strangers.
But they’d never met…not in this lifetime.
Luke was unnerved. Now he seemed to be channeling his youngest sister, who believed in all that past-life nonsense. Luke didn’t. He was a live-for-today kind of guy who tried not to think of next year, let alone a next lifetime. Or a past one…with Brenna Morgan?
A diversion was definitely in order before he lost his mind completely. Luke tried to redirect his thoughts to his new book, which was coming along fantastically well.
His newest serial killer, a charming land developer, was on the trail for fresh victims, and a small town hosting a national pageant for teenage beauty queens had invited him there, in hopes of becoming the site of his next lucrative mall….
Luke shifted in his chair, picturing the calculating killer and the teen beauties, especially the one about to meet her doom….
And his mind abruptly went blank.
If he leaned to the right, he nearly choked on the heavy scent of musk oil emanating from one of the dragon twins. But if he leaned to the left, his shoulders brushed Brenna’s and he inhaled the light, fresh scent of soap and shampoo and powder, a wholesome yet somehow alluring scent.
Luke sat straight up, suddenly, wildly alarmed. It couldn’t be happening. His body was acting as if he was aroused.
He was aroused!
His pulses thundered in his head, drowning out the lawyers’ voices, the whir from the heating vent in the wall, the dried fallen leaves being blown against the glass window-panes by the wind. Brenna Morgan, sitting next to him and oblivious of the effect she was having on him, completely commanded his senses.
He could see her and smell her, but that wasn’t enough. He needed more. He was filled with a faint sense of anger at his involuntary response. This would not do!
But he could barely stop himself from reaching over to touch her, right here in the middle of the courtroom. He desperately wanted to feel if her hair was as silky as it looked, to run his fingers along the lines of her beautifully shaped mouth. To insert his thumb inside.
