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“Braggart.”
With a laugh, Seth strutted off toward the elevators. The hallway outside the briefing room was awkwardly quiet, now that Coop was alone with Sarah.
“Wow.” Sarah hugged her jacket to her waist and watched her brother all the way until his parting salute from behind the closing elevator doors. “I haven’t seen Seth this happy in months. He’s like the young guy he used to be before…” Her voice trailed away as though she was surprised to discover just how distasteful the end of that sentence was going to be. She leveled her shoulders and turned back to Coop. “Who’d have thought his arch-nemesis Rebecca Page would turn out to be so good for him?”
“Yeah. Who’d’ve thunk?” Coop agreed. Sarah’s gaze danced to the left. He studied the corduroy collar on her jacket. Yeah, this was awkward. “Don’t you have school today?” he asked, needing to hear something besides strained silence.
Green eyes met his. “I took the morning off. I had a doctor’s appointment.”
A flare of genuine concern made him lean in half a step. He understood bad news from the doctor better than most. “Are you sick? Hurt?”
She inhaled and slowly released a deep breath that did nothing to ease his worry. “Is there someplace private we can talk?” she asked.
“This is KCPD headquarters. Someone’s always watchin’ around here.”
His lame attempt at humor earned nothing more than a blink. “I’m serious, Coop.”
Yeah, that was reassuring.
So, had she finally gotten around to analyzing what had happened between them? Maybe this was the clean break he’d been hoping for, yet dreading at the same time. And if there was truly some bad news…
Cooper looked beyond her to the noise and bustle of administrative support staff working at their desks in the floor’s main room. With pairs and groups of blue suits and detectives still standing around and discussing the task force meeting and other business, he and Sarah weren’t going to find any privacy out there. He looked back toward the row of reinforced glass windows that formed the near wall of the briefing room. Even if they went inside and closed the door, anyone could look through the windows and see them together. And too much time spent alone with Sarah—in deep conversation or a possible argument—would surely get back to Seth. And Coop didn’t want to answer to that one.
The sun was shining outside. The air was crisp but not cold. Coop angled his head toward the exit. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Turning, Sarah led the way to the elevator. Coop pulled his hat over his bare head and, hanging back far enough so that he couldn’t reach out and touch her, followed behind.
SARAH WAS AFRAID THE QUEASY sensation in her stomach had nothing to do with the elevator ride or the secret she carried inside her.
Instead, she worried it had a lot to do with the tall, lanky detective leaning against the railing on the far side of the elevator. There was a guarded awareness to his deceptively relaxed stance. A curious introspection to the hooded blue eyes that watched the buttons light up with each floor they passed. Cooper Bellamy’s unnatural silence on the ride down to the main floor was all the proof she needed that she had done him a terrible wrong.
She’d traded a friend for a lover that morning when she’d been so afraid, so confused, so desperate to cling to his sheltering strength. And now she had neither. She’d felt more wanted, more necessary to someone in that first long kiss she’d shared with Cooper Bellamy than she’d felt in the weeks or months she’d spent dating anyone else. But the discovery couldn’t have come at a worse time.
She’d been fooled once by Teddy Wolfe. Fooled more times than she could count by her own father. How could she believe anything a man told her? How could she believe in anything she felt?
Humiliation was a hard thing to admit to, and losing that last shred of trust in her father had been a painful lesson to learn. Sarah’s shameful silence these past weeks had been about curling up in a hole and licking her wounds. It was easier to be alone—to work and sleep and nothing more—than it was to doubt other trusts she had given, to fear the consequences of other choices she had made. At least alone, she could inflict no more damage on her own fragile sense of self, or on anyone else she dared to care about.
But then the naps had become more frequent, had lasted longer. She had caught a feverless flu bug that hit about the same time every morning if she didn’t snack between breakfast and lunch. A blue dot on a little plastic stick had confirmed what she’d already suspected. The report from her Ob/Gyn this morning had made the dreaded news official.
Sarah couldn’t hide anymore.
A woman was dead. Her murderer had skipped the country. Sarah’s deposition was on record, but without a killer to put on trial, her testimony was useless. Teddy Wolfe was dead, by her brother’s hand, so there was no way to confront him for what he had done, no satisfaction to be gained by exposing him for the player he was. And even if she hadn’t severed every connection with her pimp of a father, there was no helping him with his addiction.
Sarah was helpless. Useless. She could do nothing to make things right.
But she could be honest.
As she stole a glance at the man reflected in the elevator’s polished steel doors, she knew she owed Cooper Bellamy that much.
They’d left the elevator and crossed through the security checkpoint on the first floor before Coop said his next word.
“Here.” After shrugging into his own Army-issue camo-print jacket, he pulled her canvas barn coat from her twisting arms and held it so she could switch her purse from hand to hand and slide her arms into the sleeves.
“Thanks.”
He pushed open the door that led to the building’s granite steps down to the sidewalk and street. When a trio of uniformed police officers met them coming up the steps, Coop touched his hand to the small of her back and guided her to the side, out of their path.
His gentlemanly considerations surprised her. The speed with which he did the job and broke contact with her did not. Feeling the chill of his aversion to her as much as the bite of the autumn breeze on her cheeks, Sarah buttoned her jacket and thrust her hands into its deep pockets.
The touch of his fingers at her elbow burned through canvas and cotton, but only long enough to dodge traffic as they crossed the street and headed north toward a clearing dotted with trees and benches and modern sculptures. “The park looks pretty empty. We can walk through it up to the courthouse and back.”
“That’d be fine.” The city block that had been cleared of condemned buildings and reclaimed to offer a spot of beauty in the midst of downtown renovations should have been a balm to her frazzled nerves and traitorous stomach. The oaks and maples were studded with red and orange leaves, while the shrubs surrounding each seating area had turned a rich yellow. But even though a couple shared a bench and a picnic lunch and a pair of women power-walked over its concrete paths, Sarah couldn’t share an appreciation for the safety and beauty of the place. She fisted her hands around the strap of her purse and debated how she was going to start this conversation. None of the words she’d been rehearsing seemed adequate enough.
They were halfway to the courthouse when Coop broke the silence for her. “So, are we just gonna walk and pretend we’ve got nothing to say to each other, or is there a point to this exercise?”
Sarah counted the steps off in her head. One. Two. Three. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
Oh, God. She’d skipped every preamble. Every explanation. Every apology. Was the blood draining from her head? Or was the sidewalk suddenly spinning for some other, more logical reason? “I’m going to have a baby.”
“I know what the word means. Do you want me to say congratulations?” He stopped her with a hand on her arm and the world quickly righted itself. But his grip was as tight as the clip of his words. “Or are you lookin’ for backup before you tell your old-fashioned brother that you’re having a baby without benefit of a husband first?”
“Don’t joke, Coop.” He pulled away and she took that as a cue to keep walking. “I’m three months along. That makes you the father.”
She took four more steps before she realized he’d stopped. When she turned to face him, she saw cold-eyed suspicion filling the laugh lines on his face. “Impossible.”
Sarah curled her arms around herself, around the innocent beginnings of life growing inside her. She’d never seen that kind of hardness in Coop’s expression before. “You and I didn’t use protection that morning. And I wasn’t on the pill because I’m not…I wasn’t…sexually active.”
“It isn’t mine.”
“Why are you…?” Sarah checked her temper. He had every right to be angry, though she hadn’t expected this flat-out denial. “Look, I’m not telling you this because I expect something from you. I’m not looking for a wedding ring or child support or anything.”
“Hell. Those things I can give you.” He turned and headed back toward headquarters, his long legs quickly putting distance between them.
Sarah hurried to catch up. “You’ve always been a good friend and I wanted to be up-front about it. Before my belly starts to show and people start asking questions. I didn’t want you to think I was hiding it from you.”
He whirled around and Sarah backpedaled to keep from running into him. “You slept with someone else.” His statement of fact sounded like an accusation. “Or was I the fling? Old Coop wasn’t good enough? Being together didn’t mean a damn thing to you, did it?”
Old? Try virile. Wonderful. Loving. Sarah tilted her head back to absorb every bit of hurt and accusation he hurled from those dark blue eyes. She tried to bring back the familiar kindness with the truth. “It meant everything. I needed you. I needed…But it was too soon. I wasn’t ready for emotions to kick in. I couldn’t handle anything serious. I may never be able to give you…to give anyone…”
Oh, God. Sarah’s strength faltered. Coop’s face swam out of focus and her stomach churned. She’d missed her morning snack, lunch was late, the growing baby made such demands on her body. Guilt made such demands on her soul.
She had slept with one other man. But they’d used a condom.
Squeezing her lips shut against the roiling protest in her stomach, Sarah opened her purse and fished for the bag of snacks she carried inside. She found the bag but couldn’t see the opening, couldn’t find the zipper, couldn’t get it open. “Damn it.”
She swayed. She was falling. She was going to be lying on the grass, losing her breakfast—and Cooper still wouldn’t understand the obvious truth. The hopeful truth.
“Sarah?” Strong hands grabbed her by the elbows and took her weight. Her cheek hit soft flannel, and a harder warmth underneath. “C’mon.”
Then she was twisting, floating. Sitting on a solid bench with two hands at her waist to steady her, and a firm shoulder in front of her to brace herself against. The spinning in her stomach calmed to a manageable level, and she blinked Cooper’s face into focus. He knelt in front of her, his angular features softened with cautious concern. Sarah pulled her hand from his shoulder and traced the line of his jaw.
“You have a good heart. You’d make a wonderful father.” But the honest observation turned his concern into a scowl. Feeling an imagined frostbite in her fingertips, Sarah quickly retreated and pulled the bag of fruit and pretzels from her purse. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing this on purpose. I need to eat.”
“You should have said something. Here.” He took the bag from her fumbling grasp. His fingers worked more surely than hers to open it and pull out a bag of pretzels and an apple. “Which do you want?”
He opened the pretzels she reached for and zipped the apple back into the bag. The salty snack was tasteless on her tongue and dry going down her throat. But the effect on her stomach was almost instantaneous relief.
Coop waited for her to eat a palmful before speaking again. The bite of sarcasm had left his voice, but an unfamiliar hardness shaded his eyes and aged his expression. “Look, I knew you were upset about sleeping with me. But I thought it was because you preferred to have me in your life as a brother—or you were worried about it messing with Seth’s and my working relationship. I had no idea you regretted it because you were already sleeping with someone else.”
“Stop saying that. I wasn’t seeing anyone. I mean, you weren’t…” Sarah stopped chewing and swallowed. No, no, no, no, no. She and Teddy had done it once. Thankfully, she’d made him use a condom. It had been embarrassingly quick. Awful. A terrible mistake. But accidents happened. She and Coop had thrown caution to the wind. It had been beautiful. Natural. Redeeming. Perfect. She curled her arm around her stomach and looked deep into those blue eyes, willing him to understand. This had to be Coop’s baby. “We spent all morning in bed, making—”
“I can’t father a child.”
Sarah shook her head, desperate to make sense of Cooper’s hurtful words. Tears stung her eyes, but she blamed the hormones and swiped them away before they could fall. “It has to be you.”
“I didn’t use protection because we didn’t need to.” Coop pushed to his feet and sat beside her with a resigned sigh. He pulled off his cap and rubbed his handsome, shiny head. Not a style choice. A consequence. “You know I had cancer, right?”
She nodded. “Sure. Seth talked about it. He said you were in college at the time—before he knew you. But he said you were okay. I mean, look at you. You’re a strong, strapping…” Suddenly stricken with real compassion, Sarah reached out and curled her fingers around his forearm. “Oh, my God. You’re not sick again, are you?”
He shrugged off her touch as if it repulsed him. “No. My cancer’s history. I take care of myself. I go in for regular follow-ups. I’ve been cancer-free for five years now. With surgery and radiation, I beat the damn monster. But not without some collateral damage.”
Sarah tilted her gaze to the top of his head. “So you can’t grow hair.”
“And I can’t make babies.”
Coop was raw inside. He never talked about this. But Sarah’s news hurt so damn much. It was like the army officers at the front door. The no-nonsense doctor in the tiny exam room.
Sarah wasn’t his—never had been. Still, he felt betrayed.
In a perfect world, he’d be the only man in her life. But there was nothing perfect about his dad being killed in action, then finding out the same month he had a tiny tumor growing in his prostate gland.
He’d had to beat the cancer. Not for his sake, but for his mother’s. And for Katharine, James, Grace and Clint, Jr. His family needed him to step up and be the man of the house. He had to be the strength, the financing, the discipline, the love and support in his father’s place. Sure, there were government benefits. Every Bellamy worked, from part-time jobs to paper routes. His dad’s older brother, Walt, now a retired professor from the University of Missouri, had sent money and offered help however he could.
But he had to be the man. He had to be there for the day-to-day stuff. Sacrifices had to be made. And Coop, a young man who hadn’t even reached the prime of his life yet, had done it willingly.
The urologist had warned him there’d be a change in his sex life. Oh, the plumbing all worked now, worked just fine. But there was something like a ninety-nine-percent chance he could never make the miracle of life happen. All his little Coopers had been sacrificed so that he could live.
To take care of his family.
To become a cop.
To love and lose out big-time.
Sarah needed to hear the truth. He needed to hear the reason why he’d kept his distance from a woman who seemed so crazy-right for him that, even now, he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and kiss some color back into her cheeks. But he wouldn’t be that much of a fool. He needed to remind himself why he should have walked away that morning instead of giving in to what he thought they’d both wanted. “I’m sterile.”
“Sterile?” she echoed. If possible, her skin grew even more pale.
“You may be pregnant…” Maybe some bastard had broken her heart. Maybe the father didn’t mean any more to her than Coop did. But the sympathy she wanted, the acceptance she’d expected, wouldn’t come. “But that baby isn’t mine.”
Chapter Three
He brushed aside the first leaves to fall and splayed his fingers over the cold red marble that marked Danielle Ballard’s grave.
Washington Cemetery was a beautiful, tranquil place—except for that nosy groundskeeper who’d asked too many curious questions about his visit so late in the day. It didn’t matter that it was closing time and that that peon had been ready to shut and lock the gates. He’d come a long way to see Dani. To see the woman he loved.
No one would keep him from her.
He picked at the blood that was drying beneath his manicured nails and stood. He could get used to living in Kansas City. The tree-studded hills away from the heart of downtown reminded him of the Lake District back in England. The rustle of wind through the autumn leaves reminded him of his boyhood in Keswick. Of course, he’d become a Londoner by the necessity of his job description—and there were perks to that historic and sophisticated city, which he’d miss.
There was history here, too, albeit the Wild West-cowboy kind. The city had theater and music and art. And though Kansas City had nothing to rival any Manchester United powerhouse, there was even a decent football—or soccer, as they called it in the States—team here.
He could buy box seats at the games, become a patron of one of the museums. He could even put up a stake and reopen the damned casino if Mr. Wolfe thought it could still be a useful front. He would definitely reopen the drug pipeline that had shown such potential for growth had it been managed properly. Some of the players were still in place. Other slots could easily be filled. With his strong hand, the distribution network could be reestablished, deadlines and quotas enforced, and he’d be raking in money in a way that Teddy Wolfe never had.
He’d done the groundwork to create Wolfe International’s presence in the Midwest—on both the legitimate and more profitable business fronts. He’d done the jobs Teddy hadn’t had the stomach to deal with. And despite Teddy’s crash-and-burn over one woman too many and a clever deception by KCPD, the law had never touched him. He was smarter. Stronger. More loyal to Theodore Wolfe than his own son, Teddy, had ever been.
He deserved the opportunity to run the Wolfe empire.
“Shaw? Are you listening to me?”
He bristled at the impatient demand in his employer’s slickly accented voice. One day, Theodore Wolfe, Sr., would be down on his knees, begging him for favors.
“Don’t call me Shaw, sir.” The old governor might slip, without even realizing it, and give him away.
“Not to worry. This call can’t be traced. And I simply can’t get my head around your new name.”
“Then don’t use any name.”
But Theodore Wolfe, builder and boss of the Wolfe International empire, didn’t take criticism well. “I paid for your face and name. I’ll call you anything I damn well like.”
The man once known as Shaw McDonough bit his tongue. “Of course, Mr. Wolfe. I was merely thinking of the assignment you gave me. Avenging your son’s death?”
“His murder,” Wolfe corrected. Good. Let the old man be the one having the emotional reaction. He’d learned the hard way that rational thinking and careful planning for every contingency were the only ways to guarantee survival in this business. “Have you tracked down Seth Cartwright?”
He laughed. The old man didn’t even know he was already in Kansas City. “I haven’t failed you yet. Don’t worry, I’ve set things in motion to get Cartwright’s attention.”
“I want the entire family to pay. He needs to hurt the same way I do.”
It was because of Seth Cartwright, and others like him at KCPD, that he had been brought to this place. He pulled a pink, long-stemmed rose from the bouquet at his feet and kissed the bud. “We’ve all suffered a tremendous loss here, sir. Trust me, they’ll pay.”
“Are you certain you want to do this? I have other men I can call.”
“Oh, I want to do this.” A reporter named Reuben Page and his story about the Wolfe family had forced him into this position. Danielle had worked for the city, coordinating communications between the economic development committee and the gaming commission. She’d fed Page information on bribes Teddy Wolfe had paid council members. He’d had no qualms about silencing Page and his story. Teddy had even been on hand, talking tough like he was the one pulling the trigger. But interest from KCPD and men like Seth Cartwright had forced him to take his job one step further. His sworn loyalty to Theodore Wolfe had left him no choice but to silence the woman he loved. It was only right that he be repaid for his loss. “I’ll take down the Cartwrights for you and put an end to the task force’s investigation.”
What happened after that would remain his own little secret.
“Call if you need anything.” Theodore Wolfe was dismissing him. “I have men and money in place, ready to assist you.”
