Eileen Wilks - Just A Little Bit Pregnant

But when she shut her car door behind her, she did her best to shut away both her dread of what she might discover at the fire, and the last remnants of her fatigue. She had a job to do.

It was summer, so it was still light outside when she approached the barricades. And hot. She felt the heat of the fire sharply through the thin gauze of her dress as she hunted up witnesses, and she breathed in air that stank of burning. Smoke billowed out of the windows of the historic old hotel, chased upward by a lurid underskirt of orange flame.

Four fluorescent yellow fire engines hemmed in the blaze. From eighty-five feet off the ground, two men in the basket of the snorkel truck directed a thousand gallons of water a minute on the roof of the nearest building. Below, firefighters in protective gear aimed the powerful umbilical lines of their fire hoses at the monster devouring the building.

It took Jacy fifteen minutes to confirm that all of the hotel guests were believed to have gotten out. Within another half hour she had some names, a possible cause of the blaze and interviews with the battalion chief and one of the evacuees. The fire wasn’t out, but it was under control—and back at the newsroom, Tabor was holding a spot on the front page. Time to leave.

Darkness was slipping over the city when Jacy headed back to her car, where her cellular phone waited. She ran possible lead lines through her head as she walked.

Halfway there, she started to feel dizzy.

Jacy was used to good health. She’d never felt anything like the light-headed, fading sensation that swept over her. She stopped, uncertain. A little scared.

Had she forgotten to eat? Yes, she decided. That was it. That’s all that was wrong with her—low blood sugar. She’d skipped supper. Obviously delaying meals was a mistake in her condition. After a brief pause she felt slightly better and started walking again.

Then the first cramp hit.

Wounded animals make for their lairs. When the walls of Tom’s apartment started closing in on him that afternoon, he headed for headquarters. The window of Tom’s office faced west. He stared out at the dying day as the thickening gray of twilight gave way to the darkness that spread itself over the city, watching as lights winked on in windows. Tom had spent half his lifetime defending the people in the houses behind those winking lights from those who preyed on their fellows.

Protect and Defend.

Twenty years ago, when he’d graduated from the police academy and pinned on his badge for the first time, he’d known so much. A man did, at that age. He’d been certain of what he wanted from life and how to get it. He’d wanted to be a cop like his father, and he’d wanted to settle down with a good woman and raise children.

It hadn’t occurred to him, at twenty, to wonder whether he deserved either of those sweetest of life’s gifts.

By the time he met the good woman twelve years later, Houston’s streets had knocked most of his certainties out of him. He’d still wanted to marry, but he’d no longer dared to want children.

Allison had, though.

Tom turned away from the window and walked to his desk. Slowly he picked up the photo that had sat on the same corner of that desk for six years—three years before Allison died, and three years, now, after.

It wasn’t Allison he’d dreamed about last night.

Tom knew what love was. He’d loved his wife, so he knew it wasn’t love he felt for Jacinta James. This hot, urgent craving was too selfish, too physical and too nearly desperate to be that tender emotion. But it wasn’t anything as simple and clean as lust, either. Lust by itself wouldn’t burden him with guilt this way. Lust would have been eased by taking her to bed, not doubled.

Obsession, maybe.

The name didn’t matter. Whatever he felt, he was going to have to deal with it, and he hoped, he prayed, he could get a handle on how to do that quickly. She was carrying his baby. His baby. He’d treated her badly and she wanted nothing to do with him, and he couldn’t blame her for that. But he couldn’t let her continue to hold him at arm’s distance, either.

He had to change her mind. Somehow, some way, he had to change her mind about marrying him.

Tom stared at the photo in his hand. He couldn’t ask Jacy again to marry him while Allison’s picture sat on his desk, could he?

The phone rang. Tom set the photo on his desk, facedown, as he picked the receiver up. “Rasmussin here,” he said.

“Tom?” The voice at the other end was so shaky and uncertain that for one jarring second he didn’t recognize it. “Tom, there’s something wrong. Really wrong. I—I’m cramping and I—”

“Jacy? Where are you?”

“I’m in my car near the Rutger. The hotel. There’s a fire and I—I’m bleeding.” Her voice broke, and she was crying. Jacy, whom he would have sworn could take a beating without crying, choked her words out between sobs. “I’m afraid I’m losing the baby. I’m scared, Tom. I’m so scared!”

“Stay there. Stay right there in your car and I’ll get someone to you.” He could do this, he told himself. Hadn’t he done this hundreds of times, talked to a victim or a witness, kept his voice steady, detached, so they would stay calm while he did his job? “Stay there,” he repeated, and his voice broke. “I’ll get you some help, Jacy, I swear it.”

Four

The emergency room at Medical Center Hospital smelled like hospitals everywhere. The medicinal stink of disinfectant overlaid the faint, grim mingling of sweat, blood and less pleasant odors. Jacy lay on the examining table in a small white room with gleaming metal fixtures and a punishingly bright light. She wore a hospital gown and a thin sheet. A clear plastic tube led to the back of her right hand, where tape held the needle in place while the IV machine hummed as it pumped fluids into her.

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