Pride and Pregnancy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Tom blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Caroline was here and his heart gave an excited little leap—but she wasn’t happy. There was something wrong—her eyes were red and watery and her mouth was tight. Instinctively, he moved closer to her. “What’s going on?”

  Something bad had happened—he knew that much. It was physically painful when she turned her gaze to his. The way she was looking at him—it was like someone had killed her puppy. And she didn’t have a puppy.

  No one said anything. Tom went to her and put his arms around her shoulders. She sagged against him a little as she drew in a shuddering breath, and in that moment, Tom knew he would kill for this woman. Whoever had hurt her, they would pay.

  Carlson’s face was drawn and worried. He had arranged his features into a stern look, but Tom could tell he was concerned. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on or not?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Caroline whispered against his chest.

  That didn’t sound good. In fact, that sounded bad. He held her tighter and glared at Carlson. “Well?”

  “As anticipated, someone reached out to Caroline. We have his name and contact number, as well as a description.”

  “Okay...” That was fine. They’d expected that. “I know they didn’t have any bugs in your house and they didn’t have anything on you. What were they trying to use for blackmail?”

  Caroline shuddered again and then inexplicably pushed him away. She sank down into her chair, staring at the floor as if it held all the answers. “They do have something on me,” she said in a voice so torn with anguish that Tom crouched down next to her to catch all of her words.

  “What? I checked you out. You’re completely clean.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not completely.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. Why wouldn’t she look at him? Anger flared. He’d really like to punch something.

  “Caroline has explained the situation,” Carlson began. Tom wanted to ignore him, but he was the only one talking and Tom still didn’t know what was going on, so he had to pay attention. But he didn’t look away from Caroline. Tears dripped down her cheeks, and each one was like a knife in his heart.

  “When she was a first-year prosecutor in Minneapolis, her college mentor approached her. He had a friend of a friend who’d been arrested. It was the usual line—the charges were baseless, the friend was really innocent. He pressed Caroline to drop the charges. She wasn’t able to do that, but she offered a plea agreement, which led to a suspended sentence and no time served. As a result, her student loans were paid off.”

  It all sounded so clinical coming of Carlson’s mouth. There was a dinner, a conversation. A plea agreement. Loans were paid off.

  “How much?”

  Carlson didn’t answer, and after a moment, Caroline replied, “Almost two hundred thousand dollars.” She still wouldn’t look at him.

  He stood so suddenly that she recoiled in the chair. If he’d been a younger man, Tom would’ve put his fist through the wall. Maybe even the glass of the door. But he was older and wiser and he knew that breaking his hand wouldn’t solve any of life’s problems.

  No matter how good it might feel.

  “They’re counting on her doing anything to keep that series of events quiet,” Carlson went on. “The fact that she has come forward to voluntarily share this information before allowing it to compromise yet another case is to be commended. She also detailed how, over the years, she’s donated a comparative amount to various charities—including the Rutherford Foundation—in an attempt to make restitution.”

  Tom glared at his friend. Carlson was trying to make this sound good—but there was no way to put lipstick on this pig. Caroline had lied to him. He had asked her—repeatedly—if there was anything in her history that could be used against her. Okay, maybe most of that conversation had gotten distracted by sex—but he had asked. She had said no.

  Not only had she lied to him, but...

  She could be bought.

  He didn’t just want to punch something. He wanted to shoot something. Repeatedly.

  Because they were supposed to be equals. One of the things that made them good together was the fact that they both took their jobs seriously and upheld the law. They didn’t throw cases, they didn’t accept bribes and they didn’t subvert justice.

  “Tom,” Carlson said, his voice more severe this time, “it was a long time ago. And since that time, Judge Jennings has upheld the law with honor and dignity.”

  He knew what Carlson was trying to do. He knew what Carlson wanted—he wanted Caroline to play along. He wanted her to find out more information not just about the man who had approached her, but about who that man was working for. He wanted to use Caroline.

  Tom’s vision narrowed, growing into a murky red around the edges. “Is there anything else?” His voice sounded wrong even to his own ears.

  Panic clawed at the edge of his awareness, because he knew this feeling. Nothing. He felt nothing.

  It was the same horrifying numbness that had overtaken him as he’d stood next to his wife’s bed in the hospital and watched life slip away from her broken body.

  He couldn’t afford to feel anything right now, because if he did, he would lose his mind, and there would be no coming back from that.

  He’d thought he’d known Caroline. More than that, he’d taken her to his house. He’d introduced her to the Rutherfords. He’d...he’d trusted her. And he’d thought she’d trusted him. But had she, really?

  “Actually, there is.” Carlson came around the desk. Without further explanation, he walked out of the office and closed the door behind him.

  Bad sign. Getting worse.

  “Tom, sit. Please.” Caroline’s voice broke, but it didn’t hurt him. It couldn’t.

  He sat and waited. How much worse could this get?

  “You have to understand—I was so young. I was twenty-four, in my first job. I was drowning under the weight of my student loans. I was having trouble sleeping and was falling behind on my bills and...” She covered her mouth with her hand, but he wasn’t going to be moved by it. “Terrence Curtis was my mentor. He always pushed me to be better, and I trusted him. He wrote me letters of recommendation and helped me get into law school...”

  “Sure. You owed him.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she snapped, sounding a little more like her old self. Good. He wanted her to fight him about this. He didn’t want her to make a pitiful plea. “I should’ve known better. But he asked me out to dinner to talk about how things were going. I was struggling. We talked and then he mentioned the case that I had coming up—Vincent Verango. He said he knew Vincent personally and it was all a big misunderstanding and he would vouch for the man. And I had no reason not to trust him. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

  “There’s a bit of a gap between trusting a mentor and taking that much cash.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “He never said, ‘If you let my friend off easy, I’ll pay off your student loans.’ He was too smart for that. I... I was too smart for that. He twisted everything around, and I didn’t even know that the loans were going to be paid off until suddenly, they were gone. Vincent was gone, too. Out of state. He’s since died, I heard. It was only then that I began to get suspicious. I dug a little deeper and discovered that Vincent had a long list of plea deals and dropped charges—racketeering, money laundering—he was in deep with so much and...and Curtis was in bed with him. Curtis protected him. He used me,” she said, sounding angrier by the second. “He knew I trusted him and he used that, and for what?

  “God, I was such an idiot but I couldn’t see how to undo it without ruining my career. So...” Her anger faded as quickly as it had come on. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “It’s a great story, Caro
line. I’m not sure any of it’s the truth, but it’s a great story. You make a very convincing innocent bystander.” The color drained out of her face, but Tom didn’t care. “Was there something else you needed to tell me? Because if not, I have things to do.”

  She looked terrible. Not that he cared anymore, because he didn’t. But if he had, he would’ve been legitimately worried about her. She looked on the verge of passing out. Maybe he would ask Carlson to track down something for her to drink—he couldn’t leave her like this.

  She didn’t answer, which unfortunately gave Tom time to think.

  He’d spent years coping with the fact that there would be no happy endings for him, not after Stephanie. And then Caroline Jennings had shown up and given him a glimpse of a different life—of the different man he could be with her.

  That was the cruelest thing of all, Tom decided. Just a glimpse at what could’ve been, and now it was being snatched away.

  If she’d never come here and he’d never laid eyes on her, he wouldn’t know what he was missing. But now he would. From here on out, every time he went out to his cabin and lay in his bed, he’d think of her, probably for the rest of his life. His miserable, lonely life.

  He could definitely shoot something. He’d start with her mentor, work his way through this Vincent guy and then finish off with whoever had confronted her today.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered again.

  For some reason, that made him feel like he was the bad guy here when he most definitely wasn’t. He had done nothing wrong. Was he yelling? Was he flipping the desk? Was he threatening bodily harm—at least, was he doing it out loud? No. He was doing none of those things. He was politely listening to her tale of woe.

  Damn it, he wanted to reassure her that it would be all right. He wasn’t going to, but he wanted to. “About the bribe you took, or is this particular apology in regards to something else?”

  She moved then, reaching down and pulling her purse into her lap. Her hands were shaking so violently that it took her a few tries to get it unzipped. Tom watched her curiously.

  Then she held something out to him. It was a white stick, maybe four inches. One end of it was purple and there was a small digital screen on it.

  He blinked. Desperately, he wanted to believe that was a digital thermometer, but he knew better. Jesus, he knew better. Because sometimes, when a girl wanted to get off the streets, it wasn’t for her—but for the baby she was carrying. He kept a supply of pregnancy tests in the safe house.

  “I...” she said, holding the pregnancy test out to him. “We...”

  This wasn’t happening. He was hallucinating. Or having a nightmare. Did it matter at this point? No. What mattered was that he had left reality behind and was stuck in some alternative universe, one where his second chance at happiness betrayed his trust and got pregnant with his child at the same time.

  He was tempted to laugh because this was crazy. Simply insane. The only reason he didn’t was because Caroline was crying and it hurt him. Damn it all to hell.

  “We used protection,” he said out loud, more to himself than to her. He tried to think, but his brain wouldn’t function. Nothing was functioning.

  She nodded, wrapping her arms around her waist and curling into a ball. “That’s what I thought, too. Then I was tired and then I got nauseous. And I thought...the shower? In DC?”

  Jesus, she was pregnant. With his baby, no less. All those dreams of fatherhood that he had put away years ago—they tried to break free and run rampant around his head. He wouldn’t let them. He couldn’t afford to.

  She was right. He’d been so swept up in living out his fantasy of shower sex that he hadn’t taken the most basic of precautions. “That’s...” He swallowed and then swallowed again. “That’s my fault.”

  She nodded. “Mistakes happen.”

  He closed his eyes, but that was when all of those hopes broke free. Caroline, in his bed every night. Caroline, her belly rounded with his child. Caroline, nursing their baby while Tom made her dinner. A thousand visions from an everyday, ordinary life flashed before his eyes—a life that, until twenty minutes ago, he had wanted.

  But now?

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the bribe?”

  “I put it behind me. No one ever connected Curtis to Verango, much less to me and my student loans.” She sighed, looking more like the judge he knew. “I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t go back and undo it. How was I going to unpay the loans? Who would I give the money to, even if I could come up with that much cash?” She shook her head. “It’s not a good excuse, and I know it. But I figured that, since no one had made the connection, no one ever would. I didn’t...” She sniffed and Tom got a glimpse of the younger woman she’d been, trying so hard to be an adult and not quite making it. “I didn’t want to own up to my poor judgment. But more than that, I didn’t want you to think less of me.

  “But now that it’s out in the open, I wanted to tell you, because I knew that if you could just see that I’d been young and stupid, you would do what you always do.”

  “And what do I always do, Caroline?” It came out more gently than he’d intended.

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and trusting. “You protect me, Tom. You keep me safe.”

  He stood and turned away, because he couldn’t be sure what expression was on his face right now. Damn it all. He wasn’t supposed to care about her at all. She was a part of an ongoing investigation. That should have been the extent of it.

  Except now she was pregnant. With his child. Because he hadn’t done his goddamn job and put the case first.

  He’d put her first.

  “I didn’t... I mean...” She made a hiccuping noise that about broke his heart. “I understand if this is a deal breaker, of course. But it was never malicious. And I never meant to hurt you.”

  She was making this worse. “How long ago was this?”

  “Almost thirteen years ago.”

  He dropped his head in his hands. Thirteen years ago, Stephanie had still been alive. He hadn’t yet let her walk out of that party alone. He had desperately been trying to prove that he was good enough for her and wondering if he would ever feel like he belonged.

  He turned to face Caroline. God, even now, meeting her gaze was a punch to the gut. “Anything else I should know?”

  She nodded tearfully. “I had a pregnancy scare in college. With the guy I almost got engaged to. I was... I was terrified. I hadn’t been careful enough. I’d made a serious mistake, and I realized when it happened that I didn’t love the guy. And I was going to have to marry him and it was going to kill my career aspirations and my parents were going to be so disappointed in me. They’d finally see what my stupid brother had been saying for years, that I was a mistake.”

  He was going to shoot her brother if he ever got the chance.

  But more than that, each word was like a knife to his chest. Yeah, he could see how an unplanned pregnancy would have changed the course of her life back then.

  Just like it could do right now.

  “What happened?” he asked in a strangled voice.

  “I was just late. It was the stress of senior year.” She tried to smile, as if she wanted to display how relieved she was. “I didn’t want anyone to know, because it was a serious lapse in judgment and if I couldn’t make the right choices to avoid something entirely preventable, like an unplanned pregnancy, then why should anyone take me seriously as a professional?”

  “Right, right.” He looked down at the little stick. “This isn’t just stress, is it?”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  Yeah, he was sorry, too. It would be easy to blame her for this, but hell—she didn’t get pregnant by herself. “I’m almost afraid to ask—but anything else?”

  “No. I made a serious
error in judgment my first year as prosecutor and I’m pregnant. I think that’s enough for one day.” She paused and looked at him, still nervous. “Tom, this guy—he said you couldn’t protect me forever.”

  Tom moved without being conscious of what he was doing. He hauled Caroline out of her seat and crushed her to his chest.

  He was mad, yeah—but he couldn’t walk away from her. “He doesn’t know me very well, then, does he?”

  She wept against his chest, and he held her tight. He couldn’t help himself.

  His trust in her had been misplaced. And maybe he wouldn’t get that second chance. But he’d be damned to hell and back before he threw her to the wolves. He protected people.

  He was going to protect her.

  He stroked the tears away from her cheeks with his thumbs. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

  She was going to have his baby. She was in real danger. He’d compromised the case. He’d compromised her.

  She hadn’t ruined anything. He, on the other hand, might have destroyed everything he’d dedicated his life to.

  Oh, if only Stephanie could see him now. What would she say? Would she laugh and tell him to relax, like she used to when he got uptight about some fancy shindig in DC? Would she give him that gentle look and tell him he was being an ass?

  Or would she tell him that there was more to life than work? That he, more than anyone else, should know not to let life slip through his fingers, because it could all go away tomorrow?

  He and Stephanie had always wanted a family. Would she tell him he’d be insane to let this second chance with Caroline pass him by?

  A light tap cut off his jumbled thoughts. The door swung open, revealing a very worried Carlson. “Is everything okay in here?”

  Tom glared at the man, but he knew he couldn’t get rid of him. Not only were they in Carlson’s office, they were friends. “Now what?” It came out more of a growl than a question.

  “You aren’t going to like this,” Carlson warned.