LITMIR.BIZ

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met and married a few years ago. Jacy figured she’d know plenty about how to balance parenting with a professional life.

      “She’ll tell you the first thing you need is a supportive husband,” Tabor returned promptly. “And I...good God—”

      “What is it?” she asked suspiciously.

      Tabor grimaced. “Tell me that isn’t the baby’s father coming toward us across the newsroom. Please.”

      Jacy’s whole body jolted. Tom? Here? She turned in her chair—and sighed. The stranger she’d seen in Tom’s office yesterday was winding between desks out in the main room. He was dressed slightly better today. His T-shirt was a truly virulent green, but it lacked yesterday’s slogan. He still sported the bandanna and a couple days’ growth of beard.

      “Not the father,” she said. “The uncle.”

      Jacy spoke the words, then stopped. Her baby was going to have an uncle? Her hand dropped to her stomach. She hadn’t realized, but...through Tom, her baby would have relatives. Like grandparents. An uncle. Maybe some cousins. Everything Jacy had lacked.

      She was anxious, suddenly, to know more about Tom’s family. What were they like? Would they accept the baby?

      “An uncle, eh?” Tabor said thoughtfully.

      Jacy grimaced. She’d slipped. Given that much, Tabor would have Tom’s identity in a day or two. The man was uncanny that way. “All right,” she said, standing. “I’ll tell you now if you promise you aren’t going to call him and tell him to ‘do right’ by me.”

      “You don’t really believe I’d interfere in your life that way, calling some man I’ve never met and—have I ever met him?”

      “No hints,” she said firmly, heading for his door. If she hurried she could intercept Tom’s brother before he got here and Tabor interrogated him. “Do you promise?”

      “All right, all right. I won’t call him.”

      Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t go harass Tom in person, but she was out of bargaining time. “Tom Rasmussin,” she told him, and turned the door handle.

      “The cop?” He sat up straight, astounded. “You’re involved with a cop?”

      “Not anymore,” she said, and escaped.

      Raz saw Jacy emerge from a glass-enclosed office. As she headed toward him he added details to his impression of her yesterday. Physically she was a knockout, of course—not beautiful, but she fairly shimmered with energy. And her body—down, boy, Raz told his own body. He was going to have to learn to think of this woman as a sister.

      She asked him to join her in her office. He followed, aware of the half-dozen people staring at them curiously—aware of the sway of her hips beneath her loose, gauzy dress.

      He smiled. Maybe seeing her as a sister was asking too much of himself. He could still appreciate the view, couldn’t he?

      He followed her to a tiny cubicle where the Supremes were singing about being a “love child.” She grimaced and switched off the radio. Raz settled in the only chair without waiting for an invitation.

      She didn’t look happy to see him when she sat behind her desk. She looked wary and tired...and sinfully hot, like a week’s worth of mind-blowing sex wrapped up in wrinkled cotton. Hot enough, maybe, to break down the milehigh walls of a certain stubborn fool.

      Best of all, she looked nothing at all like Allison. The only other woman who had stirred his brother’s interest in the past three years had looked entirely too much like his dead wife. Fortunately, she’d ended up marrying their cousin Seth. “We haven’t exactly been introduced,” he said with one of his best grins. “I’m Tom’s brother Raz, and I am very pleased to meet you.”

      “Raz?” Her eyebrows rose. “I could have sworn it was Ferdinand,” she murmured.

      He winced. “Apparently my brother’s been giving away family secrets.”

      “Nope. But I’m a reporter. I’ve got my sources.”

      He glanced at the folder on her desk, where Allison’s photo smiled back at him. “So I see.”

      She snatched the picture and stuck it back in the folder. “So what can I do for you?”

      “First, you can accept my apology. I didn’t realize when I insisted on staying in Tom’s office yesterday quite how personal your business with him was. I’m sorry I intruded.” He hesitated. “Well, I’m sorry if my presence was awkward for you, anyway. I’m not really sorry I was there. This way I got to hear the good news right away.”

      She hesitated, then smiled tentatively. “I’m glad you consider it good news. Apology accepted.”

      She was sharp, sexy, successful...and, he realized when he looked at that uncertain smile, vulnerable. Raz recognized that and responded instinctively. He couldn’t lust after a woman with wounds hiding in her eyes, wounds he suspected his brother had a lot to do with. “You shook Tom up pretty thoroughly.”

      “Good.”

      “He’s not really as much of an idiot as he seems, you know. He’s...not good with surprises.” Raz knew both too much and too little to say more—too much about his brother’s side of what had happened between him and this woman, too little about her.

      “I don’t—” A yawn interrupted whatever else she was going to say.

      “Long day?”

      “Saturdays always are.” She eyed him curiously. “That’s the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. You’re undercover with Vice, aren’t you?”

      He laughed. “If you’re trying to excuse my taste—”

      Her phone rang. She picked it up, shrugging an apology for the interruption. She listened, asked a couple questions, then hung up and stood. “That was my boss,” she said, her eyes shiny with excitement in spite of the shadows beneath them. “I’ve got to go. The old Rutger Hotel is burning, the reporter who normally covers that beat is on another story and Tabor’s holding the front page.”

      

      Big fires are noisy. The sounds of this one reached Jacy while she was still in her car a couple blocks away—water roaring and hissing, men shouting and a deep, bass rumbling, as if some huge monster were under assault. Adrenaline ate at her lingering exhaustion as she hunted for a parking place—adrenaline and dread.

      Her years as a reporter had never taught her how to approach human disaster with detachment. Even as she parked her car illegally in an alley, she wondered if anyone burned in the belly of that beast or crouched in one of the yet untouched rooms, waiting for rescue or death.

      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

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