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He picked up the pizza box and took it into the kitchen to throw into the trash. He stopped cold. Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, her head on her hands, asleep.
“Rach, what the hell are you doing?”
She started, then lifted her head. There was a red patch on her left cheek where it had rested on her hand. “Wha—?” She blinked. “Oh, Ash. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
Ash found himself caught by her eyes. He wasn’t sure what it was about those gold-green eyes with the reddish-brown ring around the edge of the iris, but he did know they had the power to make him think crazy thoughts—like how great it would be to fall into bed with her again, or how at thirty-three he was getting a little tired of the chase. How his flirtatious lifestyle wasn’t so much exciting these days as exhausting.
He shook his head to dislodge those thoughts that had been creeping into his mind ever since he’d cooled it between them. He had no intentions of changing anything about his lifestyle—which was why he wanted Rachel’s stuff out of here. He never brought women to his house and this was why.
Invariably, once a woman got a toe in the door, she started nesting—leaving things in his bathroom, his bedroom, sometimes even in his bed.
Plus, he didn’t like the silly twinge that squeezed his chest every time he opened his medicine cabinet and saw Rachel’s toothbrush.
“Well, you’re awake now,” he said ungraciously. “Did you get all your stuff?”
She nodded and stood, closing her eyes for a couple of seconds. She was pale as she picked up her purse. “I hope you don’t mind, I got—some water,” she said, sounding slightly out of breath.
Ash frowned. What was wrong with her? Was she upset that he’d told her to come and clear her stuff out of his house? He was the one who had a right to be upset, not her.
She stepped past him into the living room, muttering something that he didn’t catch.
“What?” he asked, following her.
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she muttered. “Nothing.” She hurried toward the door.
“Rach, wait a minute.”
She stopped without turning around.
“We never got to finish our conversation this morning.”
She turned. The red patch on her cheek stood out against her pale skin. “You call that a conversation? I’d call it an interrogation. You were really at the top of your game.”
Ash shrugged. He wasn’t happy with the way he’d acted, although for the most part, he felt like it was justified. Okay, maybe not slapping the table. “Why didn’t you give me the courtesy of letting me know you were running the DNA found on my parents’ bodies?”
“Come on, Ash,” Rachel said, sounding exasperated. “I didn’t know whose sample it was. It was a special request, with a one-day turnaround. Everything that could possibly point to a particular case had been redacted. You know how they do those things.”
“You should have known by the date,” he snapped. “How many twenty-year-old Christmas Eve murder cases do you think there have been in St. Louis?”
She leaned her head back against the front door and closed her eyes. “The date was redacted, too.”
“How about the fact that there were two victims, or—”
“Please, Ash. Even if I should have known, I didn’t,” she said, bringing her gaze to his. “Even if I had realized whose case it was, I couldn’t have told you. You know that. And this case was more sensitive than most. It was specially requested by the commissioner.”
“The commissioner?” Ash was shocked. It was the police commissioner who had granted the petition to reopen the case and have the DNA sampled, not the new D.A.?
Ash felt like he’d taken a blow to the stomach. His own boss hadn’t given him the courtesy of a heads-up. That stung.
Rachel was watching him closely. He shut his eyes for an instant, composing his thoughts and blocking the look on her face. She obviously hadn’t meant to say that much, because her lips were pressed together tightly.
“You’re sure? It wasn’t the D.A.?” he asked, even though he knew he hadn’t misunderstood.
“I can’t talk about this,” she protested. “I’m—I need to go.”
Her voice sounded strained, more strained than it should have, given their conversation. He wasn’t about to let her leave until he had all the answers he needed. “No. Not yet. What did you find? What were the results?”
Rachel turned the knob on the door, but her fingers slipped. “I—can’t—”
He stepped toward her. “Rachel, did the DNA match? This is my parents’ murder we’re talking about. I need to know!” he demanded.
“Ash, stop it. You know I can’t tell you anything.”
“This is me,” he said, thumping his chest. “I was asleep down the hall while that man murdered my mom and dad. My baby sister found them on Christmas morning. She was six years old. Six. Can’t you understand what this means to me—to my family?”
He was so close to her now that he could see sweat beading on her forehead. Her face had lost all its color, and her lips were pinched so tightly together that their corners were bluish-white.
“Rach?”
“I—can’t,” she gasped. “I just can’t—” She turned and tried again to twist the knob and open the door. But her fingers slid off.
“Ash—?” she whispered. “Help—”
And she collapsed.
Chapter Three
By the time they got to the hospital, Rachel was alert and begging the EMTs to let her go home. But to Ash’s relief they didn’t pay the least bit of attention to her.
She’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, but it was long enough to scare the spit out of him. One second she’d been turning the knob on his front door and the next, she’d collapsed directly into his arms. He’d lowered her gently to the floor and made sure she was breathing, then he’d tried to wake her, but she’d been out cold.
He’d called 9–1–1 and identified himself as a detective with the Ninth District of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, and ordered an ambulance.
By the time he’d hung up, Rachel had stirred. But she was nearly incoherent, so he’d made her stay on the floor and cradled her head until the EMTs got there.
Now he was pacing the waiting room floor like an expectant father as he waited for the doctor to finish examining her. They’d probably run a bunch of tests. Hell, they could be here until midnight.
A woman—who’d been sitting in the waiting room knitting ever since the nurse had deposited him in this drab little room that smelled of old coffee—looked up at him. “Your wife?” she asked.
Ash stared at her for a second, uncomprehending. “Uh, no. A coworker.”
“A coworker?” the woman said meaningfully, then she held his gaze until he relented.
“And you?”
“My son,” she said. “He came home tonight with a bloody nose. He got into a fight.”
“It’s broken? How old is he?”
She nodded with a sigh. “He’s thirteen. Old enough to know better, but not old enough to restrain himself.”
Just then a nurse appeared in the doorway. Ash and the woman both turned to her.
“Mr. Kendall?”
He stepped forward.
“Ms. Stevens is ready to go. You can follow me.”
“What happened? Is she okay?”
The nurse gave him an odd, knowing look. “I’ll let her tell you all about it.”
The nurse led him to a cubicle and slid the curtain back. “Here you go, Ms. Stevens. I’ll send the aide with the wheelchair.”
“I don’t need a wheelchair.”
The nurse looked at Ash, who nodded, then turned back to Rachel. “Oh, I think you do. We don’t want to take a chance that you might faint again.”
Ash felt a jolt of relief to see that Rachel had color in her cheeks. She looked a hundred percent better than she had when he’d brought her in.
“You look like a different person,” he said. “What did the doctor say?”
Rachel busied herself with her purse. “My blood sugar was low.”
“That’s all? You passed out because you hadn’t eaten?” Ash’s anger rose again, this time because he knew she was lying. Her answer had been too quick, too flip.
“That’s not exactly how low blood sugar works,” she retorted, “but basically, I guess you could say that.” She wouldn’t look at him, just kept rummaging in her purse until the aide came with the wheelchair.
She was definitely hiding something. A sudden thought sent a pang of fear arrowing into his gut. Was something wrong with her? Something serious? No, that wasn’t it. The nurse hadn’t seemed worried or sad. She’d seemed more—secretive, as if she knew something he didn’t know.
The aide kept up a stream of conversation, or more accurately, prattle, all the way to the emergency entrance. As the wheelchair turned the corner a few steps ahead of Ash, he heard a deep voice call Rachel’s name.
He turned the corner in time to see that the owner of the voice was in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He was shaking Rachel’s hand.
“—and congratulations,” he said with a smile before he hurried away.
Congratulations? Why would any doctor say that to a patient?
He thought back to the nurse’s secretive look.
Oh, hell. Ash could think of only one reason for the medical staff’s reactions, and that reason sent lightning bolts of shock all the way to his toes.
There weren’t many things Ashton Kendall was afraid of. He’d discovered on that fateful Christmas Eve so long ago that life was too short to spend it in fear.
He’d transformed the grief and fear that he’d learned way too young into fierce determination. He’d turned the helplessness and anger into a hunger for justice and a career. And finally, he’d filled the empty place in his heart with a casual, carefree charm that earned him lots of dates and friends without getting him into an emotional tangle.
But he wasn’t sure if he could face what he’d just been hit with.
Was he about to become a father?
RACHEL’S HAND FELT NUMB where the doctor had shaken it, but it was not as numb as her heart. She waited without breathing to see what Ash was going to say. She knew he’d heard the doctor because she could feel his gaze boring into her back. Besides, she didn’t dare look at him. If he hadn’t already figured out what the doctor had meant by his congratulations, he’d see it written all over her face.
About that time, he walked past the wheelchair.
“I’ll get the car,” he said shortly as he stalked toward the elevators without looking back. He sounded just like he had when he’d found her asleep in his house.
Downstairs, he helped her into the car with an offhand gentleness that confused her. And he didn’t say anything on the drive back to his house, where her car was still parked in his driveway. But he kept glancing over at her, a bemused expression on his face.
Once he’d pulled to the curb and parked, he turned toward her. “I guess congratulations are in order,” he said evenly.
Here it came. Rachel bit her bottom lip and stared at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. His words hovered in the air, demanding an explanation.
“So that’s why you fainted?” he went on. “You’re pregnant.” His voice sounded strained. “Why did you think you had to lie to me about the low blood sugar?”
She squeezed her interlaced fingers together. “It wasn’t a lie exactly. I’ve always had problems with low blood sugar.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just looked at her. “So how far along are you?”
Her head snapped up. “Checking the time frame?” she asked bitterly.
He shrugged and dropped his gaze. His jaw quivered with tension.
“I’m eight weeks pregnant. My ob-gyn told me I probably conceived around the last week in July. His guess is July 22.” She threw the date down as a challenge and waited to see what Ash said.
He knew as well as she did the exact date he’d broached the subject of seeing other people. She’d never been a maudlin person, but that date was branded on her brain. It had been Saturday, August 7, two weeks after their honeymoon-like trip to New Orleans. He’d couched the conversation in terms of friends talking about what they had planned for the fall, but Rachel had recognized it for what it was—the casual, charming brush-off. It had been nine days later when she’d realized she was pregnant.
Now she met his gaze. “But in case you’re wondering, I didn’t rush out and find myself a new man the next day. In fact, I haven’t found one at all.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Look, Ash, I have no intention of making demands on you. I’m choosing to have this baby and it’s my decision and mine alone. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Listen to me. If it’s my baby, then I will take responsibility for it.”
Rachel didn’t hear what he said after the word if. She stiffened. “If?” she repeated. “If? You don’t believe me?” There came the tears, clawing their way up from her throat. She swallowed hard. “Well, that makes all of this easier.”
She opened the passenger door and got out. She felt Ash’s hand brush her elbow.
“Rach, wait. Of course I believe—”
But she kept going. Right to her car. She climbed in, started the engine and backed out of the driveway. When she turned the corner, heading toward her own apartment, Ash was still sitting in his car at the curb.
ASH DOUBLED HIS FIST and took a swing at the steering wheel. His hand stung, but luckily, his car was sturdy enough to withstand the blow.
Idiot! How in hell had he let Rachel get pregnant? Of course before the question even formed, he knew the answer. He remembered it as if it were yesterday. Friday, July 22. They’d flown down to New Orleans for the weekend. They’d had a couple of Hurricanes, the deceptively sweet drink so popular on Bourbon Street. They’d gone back to the hotel and made love—a lot.
When Ash had woken up the next morning, he’d vaguely remembered rolling over deep in the night and coaxing Rachel awake. They’d done it two more times. It had been spontaneous and satisfying and—he now knew for sure—without benefit of protection.
