LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want things to change between us. I want you to be able to trust me. I need you to trust me. Nothing like that will ever happen again. I promise.” After she unlocked her car, he opened the door for her and waited while she slid behind the wheel. Man, he wished she’d let him pick out something more reliable than this rattletrap for her. At least she let him change the oil and keep the motor tuned up and running as well as a beater car like this one could. “Go on, I’ll wait to make sure your car starts. I’ll see you next time you work at the Shamrock.”

      She turned the key. Once the engine growled to life, he started to leave. But Josie put out her arm to keep him from shutting the door. “Just for the record? You weren’t a jerk for making love to me. Now you’re being a jerk.”

      Of that he had no doubt.

      He jumped back as she slammed the door, knowing he deserved worse. Once inside his truck, he followed her out of the parking lot but turned in the opposite direction toward his condo. He’d better be keeping a lot more than a few miles of physical distance between them. What the hell was he thinking? That was the problem—he hadn’t been thinking.

      Josie’s skin was cool and pale in the frosty moonlight. Her touch was so gentle, so certain. He’d gotten more drunk on her lips than the beer she’d served him earlier that night. And her body—her tall, lithe, sweet body with those long legs snugged around him…

      “Damn.” He was breaking out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the heater in his truck.

      Josephine Erin Nichols was his friend. His unofficial ward. His penance for letting his friend and mentor die ten years ago.

      She was pretty and kind and sexy and funny, and strictly off-limits. And yet, for several mindless minutes tonight, she’d been everything he needed. Exactly what he needed.

      He’d been a rutting bull who’d taken advantage of her friendship and compassionate nature. Hell, he’d barely gotten a condom on and hadn’t even asked if she was on the pill. In his saner days before this one, he hadn’t wanted to know if his sweet, hardworking buddy was sleeping with anyone. She was either working one of several part-time jobs, studying or going to school, so he knew she didn’t have much time to date. He hadn’t even had the presence of mind to make sure that she’d found the completion he had.

      He was a jerk. A lonesome, selfish, let-friends-and-children-die-on-his-watch jerk. He’d been on his own since high school for a reason. And it wasn’t just because he’d severed all ties with his worthless parents. He’d become obsessed with his job and the sweetheart he’d been engaged to had left him. He was alone because he couldn’t make a relationship with a woman work.

      But he could find solace in her beautiful, willing body.

      Rafe picked up speed and merged into the late-night traffic that was mostly big rigs at this time of night on Interstate 435, and waited for the lightning bolt of her late father’s spirit, or his own troubled conscience, to strike him dead.

       Chapter Two

      The Present

      “You didn’t bring me any cigarettes?”

      Josie Nichols let the accusation in her half brother Patrick’s tone sink in and curdle with the nausea already rolling in her stomach. “By the end of this summer, I’ll be a registered nurse, and I’m not going to support such an unhealthy, expensive habit. Anyway, you promised me you were quitting.”

      “That was last month.” Patrick leaned back from the plastic table in the KCPD detention center where she’d come to visit him between classes at UMKC and her nightly shift at the Shamrock Bar. His blue eyes narrowed as he brushed his dark hair off his forehead. Their black-Irish looks were about the only thing she had in common with what was left of her so-called family. “I’ve got pressures in here that keep me on edge, and a couple of smokes could go a long way toward making me feel better. Besides, they’re like cash in here.”

      Josie slipped her hand below the tabletop, gently rubbing at the small bump on her belly, trying to coax some cooperation from her stomach. “What do you need to buy in jail?”

      “Protection. Weed. Private time in the shower.” He leaned forward again, propping his elbows on the table. She noticed the sinuous lines of a snake circling his forearm. Great. He’d given himself another tattoo. Sanitary considerations aside, their father would be so proud. Not.

      “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

      He paused for a moment, blinked, then sat back, silencing whatever he’d been about to share. “No more than usual. You bring me cigarettes next time you come.”

      Although her regular bouts of morning sickness had passed, long times between snacks and stress like this visit could easily trigger that unsettled feeling. Josie hadn’t told Patrick about the baby. She hadn’t told anyone beyond their Uncle Robbie—who’d found her in the Shamrock’s restroom kneeling over the toilet two afternoons in a row, and said he recognized the signs from his own dear late Maureen—and the nurse practitioner-midwife who was taking care of her. The midwife was paid to be discreet, and no one kept a secret better than Robbie, even though he’d pestered her time and again to give him the father’s name so he could “set the ruddy bastard straight.”

      Her relationship with Rafe had tanked after that night in the parking lot. Oh, he was just as protective as ever—annoyingly so—showing up to escort her to her car after work, coming over to her apartment to fix her car when it wouldn’t run. But he’d turned into such a bear, nit-picking her every decision as if she was a child, arguing over trivial things, refusing to discuss anything deep or meaningful. He put in as many hours with his SWAT team—training, answering calls, volunteering for off-duty assignments—as she worked in a day, leaving them no time to sit down to talk and reconnect. Rafe had once again become the loner she’d first met all those years ago—afraid to attach himself to anyone, afraid to care.

      Josie splayed her fingers, cradling the precious life growing inside her even more carefully. Sooner or later, her secret could no longer be hidden beneath loose clothes. But if Rafe couldn’t deal with her in a healthy, reasonable way, then how would he deal with a child? If nightmares of dying children and his own abuse growing up still haunted his sleep, then why would he want one of his own? While she had no doubt that Rafe would do right by her once she found the courage to tell him, she knew his support would be all about providing money or a name or whatever the kid needed that didn’t involve any emotional commitment.

      If he couldn’t or wouldn’t love her or their child, then how could they ever hope to be a real family?

      So Josie intended to treasure this baby all by herself, delaying the fight and the blame and the guilt Rafe would surely heap upon himself once he found out. She’d never known a man to hurt as deeply as Rafe Delgado did. He’d suffered so much loss in his life that he trusted duty and honor more than his heart. Or hers. So Josie kept her secret.

      Yeah. Aaron Nichols would be real proud of both his children.

      “I brought you the magazines you asked for.” Even the seedy ones she’d swallowed her pride to purchase at the convenience store for him. “Happy Birthday. I’d have baked you a cake and brought that, too, if it wasn’t such a stereotype. You know, hiding a hacksaw inside it.”

      But Patrick didn’t laugh with her, or even smile. Or thank her.

      Instead, he signaled for the guard at the door, indicating the visit was over.

      “I love you, Patrick. Be good. I want you to make your parole and get out of here…” by the time the baby comes. So she wouldn’t be quite so alone. But Patrick didn’t care about her wishes any more than Rafe did. “I want you out of here soon.”

      “Me, too. Bring me those cigarettes.”

      No “I love you.” No “thanks, sis.” No “goodbye.”

      Tears blurred her vision as the guard released him

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