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He couldn’t doubt her anymore, as much as he wanted to.
She was carrying his baby. Oh, God, she was carrying his baby. Abruptly he turned away, stalking over to the window, where floor-length drapes closed out the night. He stood with his back to her.
There was no doubt in Tom’s mind what he had to do. Twenty years on the force hadn’t destroyed his belief in certain absolutes. He would do what was right.
He didn’t expect it would be easy, though. Or without cost. “You think I could still have that drink?”
The last thing he expected was her low, ragged laugh. “Sure, why not? Wish I could join you. Scotch, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” On the times they’d gotten together for a drink to exchange information, Tom had usually had a single shot of scotch, neat. He wasn’t surprised that she’d noticed. Jacy was damn good at her job—good enough to be a royal pain at times—and reporters of her caliber paid attention to details.
Of course, he knew what she’d had to drink at every one of their meetings, too—everything from orange juice to diet cola to tequila. Jacy liked to have candy bars or greasy hamburgers for lunch and steamed vegetables for supper. She was the least consistent health nut he knew. He’d told her that, too, in the past. Back when they were friends of sorts.
He took his time turning around, waiting until he had himself back under control. When he did, she was nowhere in sight and a brief, absurd spurt of panic stirred in him.
“I can’t find the scotch,” she said. Her voice came from beyond the dining alcove, where an open doorway gave him a glimpse of a tiny kitchen. “Is beer okay?”
What had he thought—that she’d left? Gone to the store? Moved out of town? “Whatever you’ve got is fine.”
He started moving around the room, examining it with his own eye for detail. He wanted—needed—to know more about this woman who would be the mother of his child. He’d lusted after her for nearly two years, but he’d been careful not to learn too much about her.
It was an absence, not a presence, he noticed first. There weren’t any photographs, either framed or in albums. No family photos, because Jacy didn’t have any family.
Emotion welled up inside him like blood from a gut wound, a feeling livid and nameless in its complexity. Guilt was part of it. And fear.
Tom believed in honesty the same way he believed in the rule of law. One was necessary to keep the jackals from taking over; the other was essential to keep a man’s soul clear of the unpayable debt of regrets. Yet in that moment he knew he would do whatever he could to keep Jacy from learning the truth about the night he’d taken her to bed.
The knowledge didn’t comfort him.
Jacy’s tastes in reading were eclectic. She seemed to like everything from Sartre to Garfield the cat. A text on agricultural methods sat on the coffee table next to a ragged Rex Stout paperback and a slim book on aromatherapy... and several volumes on childbirth and parenting.
He took a ragged breath, fighting back the welling emotion.
So. She was bright, and curious about pretty much everything. He’d known that much. She was also messy. In addition to the books and magazines scattered around the living room he saw two pairs of shoes and a shopping bag. The coatrack near the door held an umbrella, a fanny pack, a T-shirt and a towel.
So she didn’t spend a lot of time picking up. That might be a problem, he conceded. He preferred order. But he didn’t see dirt—no unwashed glasses, empty pizza boxes, crumbs or spill marks on the couches or carpet.
Untidy, but clean. He nodded. He could live with that.
The dining table held a computer, printer, printouts, books, newspapers—everything that a reporter might use in a home office. Her mail sat there, as well, in two piles—one opened, one not. He picked up the unopened pile instead of the opened one—his version of respecting her privacy—and was sorting through it when she came out of the kitchen with a glass of pop in one hand, a mug of beer in the other and a scowl on her face.
He wondered if she was going to throw the mug at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
He put her electric bill back in the unopened pile. “The same thing you’d do if you were at my place, I imagine. You and I may not have much in common, but we’re both nosy by nature and by profession.”
She grimaced and held out his mug.
He couldn’t help smiling as he took it. She knew he was right, and as much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t deny it. That was one of the things he’d liked about Jacy from the start, one reason he’d fought to overcome his damnable reaction to her to achieve some sort of working relationship—she was scrupulously fair.
It was a rare quality. It was also why he couldn’t doubt her anymore. If she was certain he was the father, then he was.
He lifted his mug and downed half the beer.
“If you’re that eager for oblivion, I’ll be glad to hit you over the head with something.”
“You already have,” he muttered.
“It’s obvious you aren’t exactly thrilled by my news.” Her chin was up, but he saw something in the depths of those jungle green eyes, something very much like fear.
“Hell.” He set his beer on a clear spot on the table. “I’m not going to duck out on my responsibilities.”
“Are you going to sign the child support agreement I suggested, then?”
“Paying child support won’t turn me into a father.”
She got that look again, the one that had troubled him earlier, when she saw him waiting for her on the steps—a stark, anemic look, as if something vital had drained out. He hated it.
“No, it won’t. And if that’s your attitude, well, I’ll still take you to court for the money because it’s only right. It can go into a college fund. But you can forget about visitation rights.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He ran a hand over his hair. Lord, couldn’t he do any of this right? “You aren’t going to have to take me to court to get me to support my child.”
“You just don’t want to be bothered with spending time with the baby, then?” she said, her upper lip lifting in a definite sneer. The expression looked damnably gorgeous on that exotic face. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll do fine without you.”
“No, dammit, listen. I meant that, however much of a shock your news was, I want to be a father to my child. A real father, not a once-a-month baby-sitter.”
She didn’t give herself away by much...the movement of her throat as she swallowed. The pause that went on a little too long while she collected herself. Another man might not have noticed, or understood that she fought to control emotions swinging in wild, breath-stealing arcs.
Tom noticed.
“Well, good,” she said at last. “I’d thought—hoped—you were the sort of man who would want visitation rights, would want...it’s important, you know. A child should have a father who wants to be a father.”
Tom knew Jacy hadn’t had a father. Or a mother. “What about you?” he asked quietly. “Are you well? You and...the baby?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “The doctor didn’t mention any problems, anyway. I feel fine.”
Yeah, she was just fine. Pregnant and alone and scared—though she would deny it. He had a feeling he could have found her in a dead faint and she would deny feeling anything as vulnerable as fear.
“Look,” she said, “if I give you the name of my doctor, will you go by and fill out his forms?”
“I want to do the right thing, Jacy.”
“Good. That’s good.” She even smiled—not an entirely successful effort, but she was trying. “With both of us wanting what’s best for the baby, we can work things out.”
“You do want to do the right thing, too, don’t you?”
“Of course.” The smile tilted into a frown quickly enough.
“All right, then.” He took a deep breath and got it said. “Will you marry me?”
She just looked at him, as expressionless as if he’d spoken in another language. In spite of every reason he had not to, he couldn’t keep from smiling at her blank expression. “Marriage,” he said. “You have heard of it?”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“That’s not quite the response I’m looking for.”
Jacy stared at Tom. She had trouble believing she’d heard what she’d heard. “It’s all you’re getting.” Nuts, she thought. The man is Obviously nuts.
All at once she needed to move. There was nowhere to go, no place to be except here, dealing with this—with him—but she didn’t have to stand still to do it. “What century are you living in, anyway?” She tossed the words over her shoulder as she paced. “People don’t get married because they have to anymore.”
“We both want what’s best for our baby. Having two parents is best.”
“Not if they can’t stand each other.” Jacy paced as if she were race-walking. When she reached the other end of the room she flung herself into a quick turn.
“I’m not surprised if you can’t stand me, under the circumstances. But I don’t feel the same.”
She scowled at him in disbelief and paused. “So maybe you don’t absolutely detest me. You don’t think much of me, period.”
“I... respect you.”
For some reason that infuriated her. “Don’t choke on it!”
“Jacy, I know you don’t want anything to do with me. But we’re not talking about what you want, or what I want.” There was something deliberate about his smile, something wicked—oh, yes, definitely wicked—a sexy twitch of his mustache, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “Though the fact that you want me almost as much as I want you ought to help us make a marriage work.”
She laughed at him. Put her hands on her hips, and laughed. “Oh, tell me another one. You want me? Sure—you took me out, took me to bed and decided once was enough. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant I’d never have seen or heard from you again unless I was interviewing you for the paper.”
“I can’t believe a woman like you could be so wrong about this sort of thing.” He started toward her.
What did he mean by that—“a woman like you”? A woman who had so many lovers she might not be sure which of them fathered her child? Jacy held herself steady against the fresh hurt. “Look,” she said, “I think this discussion is getting out of hand. I am not marrying you or anyone else.”
“Fine,” he said as he reached her. “We won’t talk for a while.”
Jacy was slow to understand. Later she would try to figure out why she’d been so slow, but now—now all she could do was step back. Only somehow she didn’t move fast enough. Or far enough. Even as she moved away he followed, reaching out.
His big hands cupped her face.
She should have been able to move then. He held her face firmly, his wolf-silver eyes fixed on hers—but she wasn’t hypnotized. She should have been able to move while he bent slowly over her.
Jacy braced herself. She knew what to expect The memory of how much Tom Rasmussin demanded of a woman made her body soften and ache for him even as she closed her mind and heart against him.
But he tricked her, damn him.
His mustache was soft. So was his mouth—soft and hot and riveting, gathering all her attention to her own lips as surely as a magnet draws iron. He passed his mouth slowly, gently, over hers. Once. Again...and again. The sweet persuasions of his lips undid her with every pass, unraveling her thoughts and her pride, leaving her balanced in some windless place where nothing existed except the quiet attention his mouth paid hers.
Her lips burned. Her breasts tingled. Her belly ached with the rich lightning pouring into her veins, while a longing as rich and forbidden as moonshine, as clear and potent as moonglow, banished sanity.
She reached for him.
In an instant the past surged up into the present. When her arms slid around him he circled her tightly, pulling her against him—body to body, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms, trapped together by passion. His tongue entered her mouth. She tasted him then as she had before, and she went a little crazy.
Jacy’s hands insisted on knowing his body again. They raced over him. The ache in her intended to have more than this delirious press of clothed bodies, and her mouth silently told him this was so. In return, Tom kissed her as if he were able to do nothing else, as if his next breath depended on tasting her, knowing her.
Just like he’d kissed her the last time. Before he’d left her without a backward glance.
Jacy didn’t cool down as fast as she’d heated up. But her mind awoke, filled with thoughts as jumbled and unpleasant as the aftermath of a tornado. She wrenched herself away.
Her body was cold, separated from his. In a minute, just a minute, that cold would reach the rest of her, and she’d be able to speak.
“You understand now,” he said, his voice hoarse with strain. “I wanted you. All along, I’ve wanted you.”
“And you hated it.” She knew it was true even as she spoke—saw the truth of it in the sudden flicker of emotion in his startled eyes. “You wanted me and you hated it.” She stepped back another pace, trying to steady herself with distance. And failing. “That’s why you never called, isn’t it? Because you couldn’t stand wanting so much.”
“Yes. In part, at least.”
She ignored the catch in her breath, the sudden stab of pain, to pursue truth the way she always had. “What’s the rest of it, then?”
“Maybe I thought you had feelings for me. Feelings I can’t return. Whatever makes a man capable of love died in me, Jacy, three years ago. When I buried my wife.”
His honesty was as quick and certain as a sword thrust, and for a second or two she couldn’t draw a breath. She answered with equal honesty. “You don’t need to worry about my feelings anymore. I thought I felt something for you, too, but I was wrong.”
Oh, yes, she’d been wrong. Not about what she’d felt—her feelings had been too strong to mistake, too frightening for her to want to claim them if she hadn’t had to. But the man she’d been falling for, the lonely man she’d thought lived inside those pale, watchful eyes, didn’t really exist. That’s what she’d been wrong about. Because that man, the one she’d always dreamed of finding, was someone a woman could count on, no matter what. That man would never have left her the way Tom had.
“I think,” she said, “that you should go now.”
She expected him to argue, or even to refuse to leave until she’d agreed to his stupid proposal. However she might have confused herself about him in some ways, she knew Tom wasn’t a man to be turned aside from a course he’d set himself. But he just looked at her. His gaze drifted down her body, and she realized he was looking at her middle, where the baby rested. It gave her an odd, uncomfortable feeling.
He nodded, and bent to pick up his hat from the coffee table, then turned away. At the door he paused, his hat in his hand, and she was reminded of the other time he’d paused on his way out her door.
This time he didn’t speak of regrets. “We’ll talk more later,” he told her. “Be sure to lock the dead bolt behind me,”
The door closed quietly behind him.
Lock the dead bolt? That’s all he had to say? Jacy started to laugh, but the high-pitched sound that came out scared her into silence. She stood next to her bright red couch in the living room she’d filled with her things and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.
She’d wanted to say yes. When Tom asked her to marry him, she’d wanted to say yes. Knowing he didn’t love her, couldn’t love her, she’d still felt as if she’d come home when he’d put his arms around her. For a few insane minutes she’d wanted to take him on any terms she could have him.
The truth tasted dark and sour, like a bitter candy held too long on the tongue. When she swallowed, it went down like ground glass.
Eventually she moved. Her elbows felt stiff and creaky as she unwrapped her arms from around herself. She walked slowly to the door and slid the dead bolt home just like he’d said, because this world was a very unsafe place indeed, and she had no intention of being taken by surprise again.
Three
Pandemonium was the normal order of things at the Sentinel as deadline approached. Saturdays were especially crazy as the paper geared up for the Sunday edition, and this Saturday was no exception. Phones rang. People yelled or cussed. The smell of microwave popcorn competed with that of stale cigarette smoke, though the newsroom was supposedly smoke-free.
A row of glass-fronted cubicles faced the big room where people rushed, typed, argued or talked on the phone. In one of those cubbyholes, the Rolling Stones moaned about a lack of satisfaction from a radio perched high on a cluttered bookcase. Yellow sticky notes bloomed on printouts, clippings and miscellaneous piles of paper that threatened to bury the empty soda cans on the desk. A small ceramic planter held a dead plant surrounded by crumpled candy wrappers.
The nameplate on the desk read simply Outlaw.
