Most days Emma was confident. Sure of herself and of her place in the world. Felt good about her personal contribution to the universe. She really believed she knew herself, had a handle on her faults, was accountable to her mistakes, and understood her limitations. She paid attention. She owned her shortcomings.
She’d been through counseling after her last disastrous relationship. And again, when, six months before, her biological clock had been ticking double time, and she had to face the fact that while she didn’t want to marry the type of man she fell for—didn’t want a relationship with that type of man—she did most desperately want a family. She hadn’t doubted herself at all as she’d gone through the testing process to have herself inseminated with anonymous donor sperm, chosen from a catalog at the clinic.
But as she sat in the fertility clinic office an hour after her meeting with Jayden Powell on Wednesday morning, she was quaking. Inside and out.
She could have taken a home pregnancy test. Her insemination doctor had given her time tables and suggestions for doing so. She just wasn’t ready to bring the whole concept home yet.
Her friends thought she should get a cat. If they only knew...
Marta, her law school study partner and more of a soul friend than the others, would get it. Lori and Stef, she wasn’t sure, which was part of the reason she hadn’t yet told them what she was doing. They’d worry about her juggling a career that took as much emotional energy as hers did—one that tended to harden a person due to the dregs of society that she dealt with more often than not—with being a single mother.
Especially Stef, the oldest of the four of them. A grandmother who’d opened a small family law firm and dealt with broken families all day every day. Stef would probably think she was being selfish.
Was she?
Maybe the procedure hadn’t been successful. Dr. Mobin had explained that it often took more than the one try.
She’d been devastated by the way her marriage had ended. Had taken years to get over the damage it had done. Whatever of it she’d ever get over, that was. Her ability to trust would never be what it was.
And she’d been equally destroyed, in a completely different way, by her only other live-in relationship. She’d hurt a dear, sweet man by her inability to fall completely in love with him. Or to feel any passion for him at all, really.
Drake, the duplicitous risk-taker she’d married in law school, had turned her into a wild woman. And John, one of the few men she’d really trusted, hadn’t ignited a single spark. Ms. Shadow Side lived on the wrong track, forcing Emma to shut that train down. Permanently. But she still wanted to be a mother—longed to be a part of a family of her own—and this was the best way for her to do that.
“Ms. Martin?” the dark-haired receptionist called from the door.
She jumped up while her stomach did flip-flops. A baby in there? Upset that she’d moved so quickly?
Oh, God. What if she wasn’t pregnant?
Her mom and dad, who lived near her younger sister in Florida, already had a slew of grandkids. Their grandbaby expectations where she was concerned weren’t high. And Anna, her sister, would definitely prefer that Emma not procreate. She’d always been jealous of Emma, though loving, too. She’d made it no secret to Emma that while their parents were hugely proud of Emma professionally, she liked getting all the grandkid attention.
Emma stepped on the scale. She weighed in one pound heavier! Because she was pregnant! Was she really ready to be a single mom? To have her life change so drastically.
And forever?
Did you want to consider a future with no family of your own? No! came the immediate mental response. She’d always pictured herself as a mother someday. Raising a child. Giving all of the unconditional love that waited down deep inside her. And the past year, she’d felt like every day she was getting older and her whole life was going to be empty if she didn’t start the process. Career success wasn’t enough anymore. If it ever had been. Wanting a family had always been there. She’d just always figured she’d figure it out in the future. That there was time. Until her birthday had come around again and she’d started to panic.
Taking a seat on the chair in the examining room—she was only there for consultation that morning, for results of the blood test she’d submitted to the day before—she looked at the table, remembering how she’d felt during the insemination process.
How hopeful. And excited.
And how scared she’d been that night, home alone. Lying in bed in the dark, knowing that it was too late to change her mind.
When she realized her thoughts were going in circles that only made her dizzy, she tried to focus on work. On the fact that Jayden Powell had agreed to keep a tight watch on Bill Heber. He’d never said whether or not he’d suspected Bill capable of hurting Suzie again, but he’d shown no surprise when she’d told him what she knew. She was looking forward to a relatively quick arrest, as the probation officer found his client breaking the terms of his probation. Not that Bill seeing his ex-wife was one of those terms. Suzie wasn’t getting a restraining order—or even admitting that Bill was hitting her again.
And Emma knew why. The woman didn’t trust the system to protect her. Because the system had screwed up on her—Emma had screwed up—and Bill had walked free the last time.
Suzie hadn’t trusted them enough to let them know if Bill had threatened her again. Hurt her again. The High Risk team hadn’t been fully formed back then. Who knew what hell Bill had put her through before he’d been arrested on a completely different, but probably related charge?
He’d broken into Suzie’s home. She hadn’t known it was him and had called the police. Their investigation had pointed straight to Bill and this time there had been an eye witness...
The door opened. Heart pounding, Emma met the compassionate gaze of the woman standing there, trying to read her results written in those eyes.
Was she pregnant?
Here she was, contemplating her own motherhood, all while thinking about a woman who’d lost a baby to her husband’s cruelty. How could she consider bringing a child into such a world as hers?
And yet...how could she not? There was so much good love in the world—who better than someone like Emma to create some more of it?
The doctor was washing her hands.
Did Emma already have family forming?
Was she irrevocably changed? And alone with the responsibility?
“So?” she asked when the doctor didn’t immediately announce the news.
“Let me look,” she said and walked to the computer screen attached to a rotating arm from the ceiling and started typing.
Oh. My. God. More waiting. Would they haul her to the emergency room if she passed out in the doctor’s office? She couldn’t afford to miss her afternoon appointments.
Click. Click. Click. She got that the lovely woman standing there in the white coat had to type passwords. That her information was protected. But come on...
Was she?
Was she!
“The test is negative...”
She wasn’t.
That was good, right? A relief. No more middle-of-the-night panic attacks about having a child alone. She was glad, really. Had probably been acting prematurely.
So why were there tears pouring down her face?
Emma had herself firmly in hand by the time she walked into the Santa Raquel probation office just before closing that afternoon. She’d put her own personal wants back into the secret place inside her, and was just focused on getting help for Suzie, who had lost her chance to have a family.
Jayden Powell had asked to see her case files pertaining to Bill Heber, as well as the jury poll after she’d lost the case. While she dreaded reliving that horrible time, she would do whatever it took to keep Suzie safe from the fiend Emma’d failed to put away.
Jayden was the way, and the more he knew about Heber, the better able he’d be to recognize tells: those little things a person did that gave them away. Like a gambler who always chewed his lower lip if he had a good hand.
His door was closed. She could hear voices coming from inside, figured his last appointment of the day—one he’d told her about—was running over. With her folders clutched to her chest with both arms, she leaned back against the wall. The hall was sterile. Deserted. Most doors closed with lights out. She’d known that would be the case, too.
What she hadn’t known when she’d agreed to the nearly dinnertime appointment in a day that had been fully booked for both of them, was that she’d be attending the meeting not pregnant.
Sadness engulfed her again, as it had been doing in large waves on and off since she’d seen Dr. Mobin. The second the doctor had said the word “negative,” her heart had grieved.
The door opened and an older woman in a long, colorful skirt, loose, light green flowing top, and flip-flops came out and moved quickly toward the exit. If she saw Emma, she didn’t acknowledge doing so. When Emma glanced back at the doorway, Jayden was standing there. Watching her.
“You ready?” he asked, giving her a smile that was probably professional and warmed her sad heart anyway.
Nodding, she pushed away from the wall and followed him into his office, discarding the absurd thought that she should have gone home and changed at some point she didn’t have in her very busy day. The colorful skirt that had just left had been...nice. Nicer than the black pants and white-and-black jacket he’d already seen her in that day.
“She’s one of your offenders?” she asked, following him into the small, unadorned room with its two metal desks, each fronted by two plastic chairs. File cabinets lined the walls.
“She is,” he said.
He was still in the jeans and shirt he’d had on earlier in the day, too, she noted as he took a seat in the chair with arms and rolling casters behind one of the desks. If she hadn’t seen him brace himself slightly on the chair arms as he’d taken his seat, she’d never have known he’d been shot the day before.
“She looks about seventy.”
“She’s that, too.”
“What was she in for?”
“She was caught with stolen property. I don’t believe that she took it, but she chose to spend three years in prison rather than tell us who really took the stuff. She’s been out a month and having a hard time staying put.”
It wouldn’t be so bad sticking around if I had Jayden looking after me on a regular basis. Hearing her wayward side in the background of her mind, Emma scooted to the edge of her seat and put the files on the edge of Jayden’s desk.
“Were you able to connect with Bill Heber today?” she asked, all business now.
“I was. Goes with the territory of my job,” he said with not quite a grin. “My people might not always like to see me coming, but they all want me to see or hear from them if and when I choose to do so.”
Because evading their PO was usually grounds for more jail time. For some, that could mean ten years or more. She’d been responsible for sending more than a handful of offenders back to serve the remainder of their sentences for parole violations.
She didn’t just want Heber back for the duration of his five years. She wanted him in the cage for the rest of his life.
“And?” she asked the man whose sexiness had no role to play in her current dilemma.
“He was at work, doing exactly what he should have been doing. I told him that I’d be making a random stop-by within the next three days,” he continued.
“So he’ll make sure he’s where he’s supposed to be until you do so,” she concluded, liking his work style almost as much as Ms. Shadow liked the rest of him.
His shrug was a half nod. Lifting his ankle across his knee, he leaned on the right arm of his chair, looking more like an athlete than an officer of the law—if you ignored the weapon hooked to the belt at his hip. He’d been mostly clean shaved that morning, but had a definite growth of dark stubble now. Together with that weapon, it made him look dangerous.
A dangerous athlete.
“You can’t take anything for granted in this business,” he said. “I’ll be checking up on him without him knowing it, you can rest assured of that.”
Thank God. A bit of the tension that she’d been carrying all day started to slowly seep out of her.
“So, what have you got there to show me?” he said next, dropping his foot to the floor as he sat up to the desk and reached for her files. “Let’s start first with what the jury thought of him.”
Even that she applauded. Knowing how Heber appeared to others, in conjunction with the assessments Jayden already would have done on his client, could help him predict what the man might do next. Or not do.
What did Bill Heber show the world—knowingly or not? Where was he convincing? And not so much?
It was the same type of work she did when trying a case. How did you expose the perpetrator side of a man who’d probably done some good, too?
Pulling the jury poll from the file, she handed it to him. Waited while he read. Knowing every word by heart. Feeling the knives in her gut all over again.
When Jayden looked back at her, she was surprised to see no change in his expression. No loss of respect. Or sympathy, either.
“Based on testimony, if you’d gone for the abuse charges, you’d probably have won.”
Yep. She nodded.
“Why didn’t you?”
No one had actually asked the question before. They’d probably thought it. Or answered it for themselves because the answer was obvious.
“He killed his unborn child. He’d have killed her if she hadn’t managed to land enough of a heel to his balls to be able to get away. He needs to be behind bars until he’s old and feeble.”
Jayden’s look was pointed. Assessing. Was he judging her?
And then he nodded.
Approval?
Why should it matter?
“Did you interview Suzie Heber?”
“Of course. Multiple times.”
“Did her testimony ever waver?”
“No.” Not when it came to the beating she’d taken at her husband’s hands. Not the tiniest little bit. It happened. There was evidence to prove so. Just not enough to prove that he’d actually killed the baby. The defense had contended that Suzie would have miscarried anyway: that the loss of the baby hadn’t been due to blunt force trauma, but rather, Susie’s lack of proper nutrition and rest.
That also came back to her husband. The woman had been terrified of the man since he’d first found out she was pregnant. He’d insisted that the baby hadn’t been his. DNA of the aborted fetus had later proved that it was. And there’d been no indication to the jury that Bill Heber had ever intended to kill his wife, so the attempted murder charge had failed, too.
Suzie had never wavered on any of her testimony. The only unanswered question, and the only time Emma had had the least sense that the woman had been prevaricating, was when she’d asked if Bill had ever said who he thought the father of her baby could be.
He’d never said. Neither had she. But at one point Emma’d felt like there’d been something there. Something neither of them was telling her. She’d never been able to find anything to support that theory. And when the fetus’s DNA had come back matching Bill’s, she’d dropped the angle altogether.
“Was there ever evidence to show that she’d been cheating on him?”
Was the man a mind reader? Honing right in on what could have been the only weak point in her case.
“None.” She told him. The defense had looked. Hard. Combing through phone records, asking everyone Suzie knew or worked with. The woman never went out of the house, other than to work, without her husband.
He nodded.
So did she. Relaxing as she sat there in the hunky PO’s office.
They were on the same page. She could trust him to keep Bill away from Suzie until the police, who were working diligently, could find some evidence that he’d been near his wife recently—and had hurt her. There were impression marks from the first time. The doctor didn’t have actual photos this time, but if an expert could take the descriptions in the doctor’s report and somehow match them up...
She was going to get Bill Heber. Finally.
And Ms. Shadow Side? She was going to stay tucked away in her small dark corner. Bad boy on the premises or not, she’d hurt Emma for the last time. She would not get in the way of Emma having a baby, either.