Once a Lawman

by Lisa Childs

  “It’s going to be okay,” she assured him, hoping she spoke the truth. “Don’t worry about that now. What’s your name?”

  The kid shifted, but as he was pinned beneath the wheel, he could barely move. He moaned, and his grip on Tessa’s hand grew weaker.

  “What’s your name?” she repeated, trying to get him to focus on her and not his pain.

  He groaned, his face contorting in an anguished grimace. “Tyler…”

  “My name is Tessa,” she said, looking over her shoulder as the fire rescue crew gathered their equipment from the truck. “Help’s here.”

  “I…I screwed up,” he murmured.

  “Tyler, hang on to me,” she said as his fingers grew limp in her grasp. “Stay with me.”

  One of the girls screamed again hysterically.

  “Shh…it’s going to be okay. You’re all going to be okay…”

  Tessa talked to the teens as she did Audrey when she worried about a bad quiz score or a hurtful remark someone had made. “You need to stay calm. I know that sounds impossible, but you can do it. You’re young and strong.”

  Invincible. That was what they had thought they were, what Tessa used to think she was. Tireless and unable to get hurt. But they were wrong.

  So was she. She had been tired for a long time, nearly nodding off to sleep at work and going to bed early. And she’d been hurt. Chad had hurt her.

  He’d been right to leave her before they got in any deeper. He’d been right about her speeding, too.

  She couldn’t keep up this pace anymore, no matter how big a rush she was in. She couldn’t do it for the very reasons she used to speed. She had too many responsibilities. Not only did she have to help with her younger siblings, but also she had to be a better example for them. She had to take better care of herself—physically and emotionally. She had to stop getting involved with men who couldn’t love her as she deserved to be loved. Men like Chad.

  CHAD HAD LOST HER. Instead of riding with him, she had ridden in one of the ambulances—still holding the hand of the kid she had promised not to leave at the crash site.

  Tessa was not the woman he’d pegged her for when they had first met. She was fearless and amazing. She inspired him to be fearless, too, and stop fighting his feelings for her. He loved her. Completely. Hopelessly.

  As he pulled up to the emergency room doors of Lakewood Memorial, he caught sight of her leaning against the dark brick wall of the hospital. He’d had to stay at the crash site until the tow truck came to remove and clean up the wreckage, clearing the area for traffic.

  He had hated that she’d gone off to the hospital without him, but he hadn’t been able to talk her out of riding along in the ambulance.

  He parked the police car at the curb, and hopped out. “You okay?”

  Her face was pale but for the blood she’d smeared across her cheek, wiping tears from her face no doubt. He shouldn’t have let her get out of the car; he shouldn’t have let her get involved. Obviously someone hadn’t made it.

  “Tessa?”

  She blinked and glanced at him over the hood of the police car, staring at him as if he were a stranger.

  “Honey, are you all right?” he asked as he walked toward her.

  She nodded, but her legs gave way and she slid down the wall into a heap on the sidewalk.

  His heart hit his ribs with fear, and he dropped to his knees beside her. He stroked his fingers across her pale face. “Tessa? Tessa?”

  Treating her as if she were fragile, Chad lifted her in his arms and carried her through the automatic doors of the emergency room. “Help! I need help!” he shouted as images slammed through his head of the last time a woman he loved had lost consciousness.

  Luanne had never come back to him.

  But Tessa had to.

  “TESSA? TESSA? C’mon, honey, come back to me!”

  Chad? She could barely recognize his voice for its tortured quality. Honey? He’d called her honey as if he cared about her. As if he loved her…

  That wasn’t possible. The man was still in love with his dead wife. Exhausted, she slipped back into unconsciousness—or she tried. He kept calling her name.

  “Tessa!”

  She blinked open her eyes to a bright light, then winced and squinted.

  “She’s regained consciousness,” a voice murmured from behind the light before someone turned it off. “Ms. Howard, how do you feel now? Can you sit up?”

  Tessa focused first on the doctor in blood-spattered emergency room scrubs. Then she turned to where Chad stood behind him, his face tight with concern. Had she dreamed what he’d said? Had it only been wishful thinking?

  “Tessa, honey,” Chad murmured. “You scared the hell out of me. Are you all right?”

  So she hadn’t been dreaming. He did care about her. But then he had cared about every injured kid at the crash site, too. She would be a fool to think she was special to him when she had never been special to anyone else.

  “I’m fine,” she assured everyone, just as she’d had to at the CPA session when they’d shown the crime scene video. “I’ve just had this flu bug I can’t shake.”

  Even though she was watching Chad, she caught a look of suspicion on the doctor’s face. Her stomach suddenly pitched with a realization of her own.

  No. She couldn’t be…

  “I think we should run some tests, Ms. Howard,” the doctor suggested, his dark gaze intent as he met her eyes. “To be certain that you’re okay.”

  Oh, God, she could be…

  The doctor apparently thought so, but thankfully he protected her privacy in front of Chad, and refrained from voicing his suspicion.

  “Isn’t it just shock?” Chad asked the doctor. “She was riding along with me tonight, and was at the crash scene with those kids.”

  “How are the kids?” she asked. When Tyler had been wheeled off to surgery, she’d had to get outside. The waiting room had been too warm and stuffy and overwhelming with weeping parents and friends. She’d felt dizzy then and had needed some air. And Chad. She’d needed Chad. She pulled her gaze from his handsome face and turned back to the doctor. “How are the kids?”

  Once again he didn’t answer her. Maybe he couldn’t because of patient privacy issues, but she caught another look on the young man’s face, one of resignation, and tears stung her eyes. “I told them they’d be fine…”

  She should have known better than to make a promise she couldn’t keep. She had personally known the disappointment of too many broken promises.

  “Some of the kids will be fine,” the young doctor assured her. “Sadly some had too many injuries. We did everything we could.”

  How many families had been told that? She glanced at Chad’s tense face. Had he been told the same thing when Luanne died? She imagined the doctor’s words were little consolation for such a devastating loss.

  “The blond kid,” she said, thinking of the boy who’d reminded her so much of Kevin, the one whose hand she’d held at the crash site and in the ambulance. “Tyler, is he…?”

  “He will be fine.”

  “Thank God!” She expelled a shaky sigh. “Just like I told him. I didn’t want to have lied to him.”

  Like she’d been lying to herself for the past several weeks. Even before the doctor came back with her test results, she knew what they would be. She didn’t have the flu. She was pregnant.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “So it was just shock?” Chad asked as he pushed open the door to his condo.

  Legs still shaky, Tessa followed him inside his home. She glanced around the living room, with its masculine leather and dark wood furnishings. “It’s definitely shock.”

  They had made love only one time. Well, twice but they’d been together only that one night. They had used protection both times! But the doctor’s tests had confirmed it, though. She was pregnant.

  “That’s why I brought you here,” he explained. “I wanted to make sure you were all right before you went home.�
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  “You didn’t bring me here for sex?” she asked, surprising herself that she could tease about it.

  Chad’s mouth dropped open in shock. “I—I—uh, of course not.”

  “That’s good,” she assured him, “because I really need to go to work in a little while.” She had thought she would still be able to pull an all-nighter, but she had scheduled the ride-along before she’d become pregnant. Now her eyelids seemed to have gained weight, threatening to close.

  Chad laughed, obviously noticing her state of exhaustion. “You’re not going to be able to work until you get some sleep.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to sleep.”

  “You’re afraid to close your eyes,” he said.

  Yes, she was afraid—afraid to think about what she had learned. Afraid that she didn’t just have her mother’s lousy judgment, but that she was exactly like her mother. Maybe if she told Chad…

  But would he believe her? They had used protection. When the doctor had given her the test results, Chad had been with the kids, taking statements for the accident report, so he’d have only her word for her condition. If he accepted that she was actually pregnant, he would probably doubt he was the father. He would think she was trying to trap him just as her father and her stepfathers had accused her mother.

  “You’re afraid you’re going to see the accident,” he said, guiding her around a coffee table to the chocolate leather couch.

  “What?” she asked, as she sank into the deep, soft cushions.

  “If you close your eyes,” he said, as he settled next to her and draped his arm along the back of the couch, “you’re afraid you’ll see the accident.”

  “Is that how it is for you?” She had wondered how he handled the job when she’d first seen those videos—and that was before she’d known about his past.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted.

  She swallowed hard, bracing herself to ask a question that she realized might open up his old wounds. “Do you see her accident?”

  His jaw grew taut. “Sometimes.”

  “Were you there?” she asked. “At the scene?” As horrible as the evening had been for her, she could imagine how much worse it would have been had the boy actually been Kevin, or if one of those girls screaming in pain had been Audrey.

  Chad leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. She noted the dark circles beneath his eyes, the lines of weariness in his face. She wasn’t the only one who was tired to her core.

  When she’d thought he wasn’t going to answer her, or he had fallen asleep, he finally spoke, “I wasn’t the responding officer, but I got there before the firemen got her out.”

  “How…how did you know?” she asked.

  “She was on the phone with me when it happened.”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “I was the reason she was distracted,” he said, his voice thick with guilt. “I’m the reason she missed the light changing to red.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Chad. You can’t blame yourself.” But she knew he had been—for four years. Now she knew why the sound of the crash from the video footage had affected him so much.

  “I don’t always blame myself,” he said with a sigh, “sometimes I blame her. For speeding. She saw the red light at the last minute. I heard the sound of the brakes over her scream, but she’d been going too fast to stop. She got hit twice, spun around and into a utility pole.”

  “Chad, I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “And you saw the car…”

  He pushed a slightly shaking hand through his dark hair. “Yeah. It was obvious she wouldn’t make it.”

  “She died at the scene?” Tessa asked, picturing some gorgeous dark-haired woman lying in his arms. “But how did the baby…”

  “They were able to take him in the emergency room. But he was too little. He hung on for a while…”

  “But he didn’t make it.”

  “Maybe he would have…if I’d put him through more surgeries. Luanne’s parents—hell, my own parents, thought he would have. They haven’t talked to me since.”

  “Your own parents?”

  He nodded. “They didn’t understand…”

  “That you couldn’t put him through any more pain,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

  “Did I?” He lifted his shoulders in a tense shrug. “I don’t know. If I had it all to do over again…”

  She and her baby couldn’t be a replacement for what he had lost. She couldn’t tell him. “You have to let the past go,” she said. “You have to let the guilt go.”

  “How do you let go of someone you loved?” he asked.

  Biting her lip, she shook her head. “I don’t know.” But she was afraid she was going to have to find out.

  “How do you let go of the pain?” he asked.

  “I’m so sorry…” Unable to resist her feelings for him any longer, she slid her arms around his lean waist and laid her head on his chest.

  “Tonight, for the first time, I didn’t see her,” he said as his hands slid down her back and pressed her tightly against his chest. “I saw you.”

  Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She usually never cried, so it had to be the damn hormones making her so emotional.

  “I know I’ve been so stupid, speeding…like those kids. Tyler told me that he blew through the Stop sign—they were going too fast.” Her breath hitched. “You’ve been right all along. I’ve been reckless.” And falling for him had been her most reckless action of all.

  “I believe that you’ve never gone that much over the limit,” he assured her, even though his hand clenched her back. “I overreacted.”

  “I understand why.”

  “But I was wrong,” he confessed. “You’re nothing like Luanne.”

  Was that a good thing or a bad thing? She didn’t have the guts to ask. She didn’t have the guts to tell him about the pregnancy, either. She was too tired and too emotional. Afraid that she might lose control, she did the only thing she could. “I have to go. I have to get to work.”

  She tried pulling back, but his arms wound more tightly around her.

  “I can’t let you go, Tessa.” He lifted her, carrying her into the bedroom. “You need to rest for a while.”

  When he laid her onto a soft mattress, she tried to close her eyes, but had a sudden realization. Her voice shaking, she barely choked back the tears to ask, “Is this…her bed?”

  Her home? Despite her exhaustion, Tessa had checked out the modern condo and hadn’t noticed any feminine touches, nothing to soften the masculinity of the leather furniture and dark wood.

  “No. I moved here after…”

  She died. Something broke loose in Chad’s chest, as if, after four years, he had just finally accepted that Luanne was really gone. He wasn’t cheating on her; he wasn’t betraying her. Not moving on after her death, not living—that had betrayed her far more than his falling for another woman. For this woman.

  Tessa sprang off the bed, her face still pale. “I can’t lie down…like this,” she murmured, pointing toward her snagged and dirty pants and sweater. “I’m a mess.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he corrected her, running his thumb along her jaw. “So damn beautiful. Since the first moment I saw you, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind…”

  Her lips curved into a slight smile. “I bet you just hated that.”

  “I hated you a little bit,” he admitted, but not anymore.

  “I hated you, too,” she shared.

  “Because I forced you into the class?”

  “Because you’re a bit of a pompous ass,” she said with her usual sassy grin.

  He laughed, unoffended. “How come you sweet-talk everyone but me?”

  “I tried, remember?” She arched a blond brow. “You still gave me the ticket.”

  “Flirt with me now,” he challenged.

  “I’m too tired to flirt.”

  Guilt struck him. The circles rimming her eyes had darkened
even more, providing the only color in her drained face. “You are exhausted. Lie down. Get some rest…”

  “I really can’t,” she said, gesturing again to her clothes. “I need to clean up.”

  He lifted her again, marveling at the lightness of her curvy body.

  “Where are you taking—oh…” She sighed. “Now this is a bathroom.”

  Chad set her on her feet and reached for the nickel-plated faucet of the deep-jetted tub he had never used. “It’s a girly bathroom,” he said, remembering the ribbing some of the guys had given him when they’d seen the place.

  “The rest of the condo is all man,” she assured him with a smile.

  “I just use the shower.” He pointed toward the separate stall. Like the tub, it had several jets, too.

  While the water ran and steam filled the room, he reached for her again, lifting her sweater over her head. He’d taken the bulletproof vest off her when she had collapsed at the hospital. Remembering how she had fainted with shock and probably exhaustion, his guilt grew, and he averted his gaze from her full breasts straining against the cups of a black satin bra.

  “I didn’t think of you at the accident because of your speeding,” he said, needing to explain, to express his feelings.

  “You didn’t?”

  “I thought of you because of how you handled yourself at the crash,” he said, as he unbuttoned the waistband of her pants. His fingers, brushing against the warm, silky skin of her flat stomach, fumbled for the tab of the zipper then finally dragged it down. “How you handled those kids. You were amazing.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said with a glimmer of her usual spunk. “I am amazing.”

  “You are,” he agreed, then he reached for the clasp of her bra. The straps slipped down her arms and it fell atop the pile of her clothes on the bathroom floor.

  She summoned enough strength to slide off her panties until she stood naked before him, swaying slightly on her long, bare legs. Every inch of her soft skin, every curve and dip, was sexy perfection.

  He stifled a groan and helped her step into the tub. She closed her eyes and moaned as water and steam enveloped her naked body. He had to clear his throat before he managed to say, “Enjoy your bath. I’ll be outside.”