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“BUT SHE’S SUCH a sweet girl,” Cammy argued over the phone. “She’s pretty and she knows all the right people!”
“She spent thirty minutes giving me news bulletins on the latest fashions and hairstyles,” Jon muttered.
There was an exasperated sigh. “At least she’s better dressed than that acid-tongued secretary of yours!”
“Administrative assistant,” Jon corrected. “And Joceline at least manages within her budget. She doesn’t have to borrow to buy clothes.”
“It does show,” came the sarcastic reply.
Jon frowned. “Cammy, don’t you remember being poor?” he asked quietly.
“I do remember, and I’m your mother, so stop calling me by my first name.”
“Sorry, force of habit. Mac does it all the time.”
“Call him McKuen, if you please. I hate that nickname.”
“So does he.”
“Your secretary has a child out of wedlock,” Cammy continued, unabated. “I hate having you associated with someone like that.”
He felt himself bristling. “We live in the twenty-first century,” he objected.
“Yes, and morality is all that separates us from savagery,” she shot back. “We have rules of conduct to keep civilization from floundering. Just look around you at the outrageous things people are doing! Women don’t raise children anymore, they run corporations! Do you wonder why the crime rates among juveniles are so high? Who’s teaching them values? Who’s …?”
He cleared his throat. “Cammy, I’m due in court.”
She stopped short, still seething. “You should get another secretary.”
“I’m so glad you called. Have a nice day. I’ll phone you on the weekend.”
“Come to the ranch for the weekend,” she suggested.
Where her candidate would be waiting with glee.
“Afraid I can’t, there’s a stakeout.”
“You’re a senior agent, surely you can delegate!”
“Not on this one. Now I have to go. Really.”
“I don’t like it that you work on that violent crimes squad. You could work white collar crime! Jon …”
“Bye, Cammy!”
“Don’t call me …!”
He put down the receiver and let out a puff of air. That was when he noticed Joceline, outside the door he’d forgotten to close. She was very pale and she didn’t speak. She walked in, forced a smile and laid a document on his desk. While he was trying to find something to say, and worrying about how much of that conversation she’d overheard, she walked out and closed the door.
Joceline sat down at her desk heavily and tried to block out the sound of Jon’s mother’s voice, which had been audible even several feet away from the telephone. Most agents used cell phones, and eavesdropping wasn’t really possible, but Jon used a landline in the office. And Cammy Blackhawk’s voice carried. Joceline felt sick to her stomach as she registered the other woman’s overt hostility toward her.
She knew that people talked about her. Gossip was unavoidable in her situation, even in modern times, in a city. Cammy Blackhawk was a throwback to another generation, one just slightly less tolerant and open-minded than younger people today. It didn’t help that Joceline was hopelessly in love with her attractive boss, or that she had uncomfortable dreams about him.
He enjoyed being single. He rarely dated, and even when he did, it was usually a professional woman, an attorney or a district court judge. Once it had been an attractive public defender. But it was usually only one date. Like the one he’d had with Joceline. She didn’t dare think too much about that.
She was curious about why he didn’t date. She couldn’t ask him, of course. It was far too personal a question. But she’d overheard him talking to his brother once about how aggressive women could be. Knowing that his supposedly chaste reputation was like a red flag to a permissive female, she imagined that he’d been faced with imminent seduction more than once and didn’t like it. As his mother was moral, so was he. They were both conservative to the back teeth, in fact.
Joceline looked at the photo of Markie that she kept in her wallet. He was a mix of his mother and father. He had his father’s elegant straight nose and his black hair. His father was good-looking, and smart. She hoped that Markie would follow his father in that respect.
She sighed over the photograph. Her fascination with her pregnancy had grown by the day while she carried Markie. He was a beautiful child, blue-eyed and slender, with a mischievous expression that was characteristic of him. He loved to play hide-and-seek. He enjoyed video games, especially Super Mario Brothers. He was constantly begging for a puppy or a kitten, but she’d explained gently that it was impossible. He was in day care while she worked, although now he was in preschool part of the day, and day care the rest, and they had no yard for a dog to play in. They had no room, either. It was a one-bedroom apartment, and Markie slept in a small bed near hers. It was wiser that way at night, due to medical problems that she’d never shared with her boss. She worried about her child constantly. There were good medications for his condition, but the ones she used didn’t seem to work, especially in the spring and fall of the year. The leaves were just starting to fall in San Antonio as the weather turned cooler, and Markie was having more trouble than usual. It was no wonder that she had dark circles under her eyes and was late to work. Especially after a night like last night …
“… I said, did Riley Blake call?” Jon repeated.
Joceline jumped and dropped the small plastic photo insert she’d been holding.
Frowning, Jon picked it up. He stared at the child in the photograph with curiosity. “He looks like you,” he said finally as he handed the insert back to her.
She put it away quickly. “Yes,” she stammered. “Sorry, sir.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at her with open curiosity. “We have those bring-your-child-to-work days here, but you never bring your son with you.”
“It would be inconvenient,” she said. “Markie is a bit of a pirate when he’s in company. He’d be making hats out of files and standing on the desk,” she added with a laugh.
His eyebrows arched. Cammy had said that Jon had been singularly mischievous as a young boy.
Joceline glanced at him. “They think he may have attention deficit disorder,” she said. “They wanted to put him on drugs….”
“What? At his age?” he exclaimed.
She shifted. “He’s in preschool,” she said. “He unsettles the other children because he’s hyperactive.”
“Are you going to let them medicate him?” he asked, with real interest.
She looked up, her blue eyes troubled. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “It’s a hard issue to deal with. I thought I’d discuss it with our family doctor and see what he thinks, first.”
“Wise.” He drew in a long breath. “That’s a decision I’d have a hard time with, too.”
She managed a smile. “Times have changed.”
“Yes.”
She searched his black eyes and her body tingled. She looked away quickly. This would never do. She fumbled her purse back under her desk. “I was going to print out that brief for you,” she said, opening a file on the computer. “And you’re having lunch with the deputy sheriff in that potential federal kidnapping case.”
“Yes, we thought we’d discuss the case informally before lawyers become involved.”
She gave him a droll look. “I thought you were a lawyer.”
“I’m a federal agent.”
“With a double major in law and Arabic studies and language.”
He shrugged. His dark brows drew together. “How did you manage college?”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You work endless hours and you have a small child,” he said. He didn’t add that he knew her finances must have been a problem, as well.
She laughed. “I went on the internet. Distance education. I even got a degree that way.”
“Amazing.”
“It really is,” she agreed. “I wanted to know more about a lot of subjects.” Her favorite was sixteenth-century Scotland. One of her other interests was Lakota history, but she wasn’t telling him that. It might sound awkward, since that was his ancestry.
“Sixteenth-century Scottish history,” he mused. He frowned. “You didn’t have a case on my brother, did you? That’s his passion.”
She gave him a glowering look. “Your brother is terrible,” she said flatly. “Winnie Sinclair must have the patience and tolerance of a saint to live with him.”
He glared at her. “My brother is not terrible.”
“Not to you, certainly,” she agreed. “But then, you’ll never have to marry him.”
He chuckled.
“My mother was a MacLeod,” she added. “Her people were highland Scots, some of whom fought for Mary Queen of Scots when she tried to regain the throne of Scotland after being deposed by her half brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray.”
“A loyalist.”
She nodded. “But my father’s family were Stewarts with the Anglicized, not the French, spelling, and they sided with Moray. So you might say they united warring clans.”
“Did your parents fight?”
She nodded. “They married because I was on the way, and then divorced when I was about six.” Her eyes became distant. “My father was career military. He remarried and moved to the West Coast. He died performing maneuvers in a jet with a flying group.”
“Your mother?”
“She remarried, too. She has a daughter … a little younger than me. We … don’t speak.”
He frowned. “Why?” he asked without thinking.
“I had a child out of wedlock,” she said. “When she found out, she disowned me. She’s very religious.”
He made a rough sound. “I thought the purpose of religion was to teach forgiveness and tolerance. Besides all that, didn’t you just say she was pregnant with you when your father and she got married?”
“Well, it doesn’t work out that way sometimes with religion, and the important point to her was that she was married when I was born. We were never really close,” she added. “I loved my father very much.” She cleared her throat and flushed. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to speak of such personal issues on the job.”
“I was encouraging you to,” he replied quietly. He studied her with open curiosity. “You love your son very much.”
She nodded. “I’m glad I decided not to end the pregnancy …” She almost bit her tongue off. She grabbed the phone and pushed in numbers. “I forgot to make your lunch reservations!”
Which she never did, considering it a menial chore. But he didn’t mention that. He’d upset her by asking personal questions. It hadn’t been intentional. He wondered about her private life, about the child.
While she was talking, he went back into his office. He’d meant to apologize to her for Cammy’s rudeness, which he was certain that she’d overheard. Then he’d been distracted by the photo of her child. She had thought of ending her pregnancy. Why? She seemed very maternal and conscientious to him, but perhaps she’d never wanted to be pregnant. Accidents did happen. It was just that his clearheaded administrative assistant didn’t seem the sort to have amorous accidents, of any type. In the past four years, he didn’t recall seeing her date anyone at all.
He sat down behind his desk and recalled her pregnancy. The Bureau didn’t discriminate, although her condition hadn’t gone down well with some people. But she’d been very quiet, very discreet, during the time she carried the child.
She’d almost died having the child, he recalled. It had disturbed him when he got his first look at her afterward. She’d been pale, listless, devastated by the ordeal.
He’d put that reaction down to pain and drugs following the caesarian section, but now he wondered even more about her history, about the shadowy father of her child.
The phone rang. He picked it up.
“It’s Sergeant Marquez,” Joceline said formally and put him through.
“Marquez,” Jon said. “What are you up to?”
“If you’re going to mention my run-in with the computer thief, don’t you dare,” came the dry reply. “I’ve already been the subject of extreme censure from everybody up to and including the mayor.”
“Really? Perhaps they had a glimpse of you running nude down the street and were impressed.”
“Get a life, Blackhawk, you’re just jealous of the attention I got,” Marquez scoffed. “I’ll bet if you ran nude down a street, nobody would even notice you!”
Jon laughed uproariously. “We’ll never know.”
“Anyway, what I called to tell you is that Harold Monroe beat the human trafficking charges with a hotshot public defender and got cut loose after the parents suddenly refused to testify,” he said. “I know the D.A.’s office probably notified you, but sometimes they’re slow. I wanted to make sure you knew.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me. The guy’s a total loon and incompetent at that. He can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“Even people who fumble can perform amazing feats,” Marquez said. “You watch your back.”
“I’ll paint a target on it, so Monroe won’t have so much trouble finding me.” Jon chuckled. “Thanks for the concern, though. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. You still following soccer?”
“Not so much. My video game is taking over my life.”
“I heard.” There was a pause. “You helped a tenth-level warrior get a bag to carry his loot in, over in the Barrens.”
Jon’s eyes popped. “Yes.”
“It was one of my alts,” Marquez chuckled. “See? You never know who you’re playing with.”
“Which reminds me, did you know that my brother’s brother-in-law plays, too? He’s got an 80 death knight.” He gave the name.
“Good grief, he fought the Horde with me in Darkshore a few months ago on the pier, before it was destroyed when the expansion came out!”
“He’s formidable.”
“I’ll say, he saved my butt. You just never know, do you?”
