Pride and Pregnancy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Tom tensed, because he knew how far Carlson would go to root out this corruption. Carlson would want Caroline to get closer to her contact and get as much information as she could without endangering herself. He’d want her to wear a wire, maybe flirt—anything to get the information the case needed.

  He stared down into Caroline’s eyes. How was he supposed protect her—and their child—if she did any of that?

  “No,” he said, turning his body so that he stood between Caroline and Carlson. “We do this my way or we don’t do it at all.”

  Sixteen

  Suddenly, after a career of waiting, Tom didn’t have patience for a single damn thing.

  This Todd Moffat scum had contacted Caroline and threatened to ruin her career if she didn’t go along with what he wanted.

  Caroline had withheld the truth from Tom.

  She was also carrying his child.

  How was he supposed to do anything but spirit Caroline as far away from the likes of Moffat as possible? Worse, how was he supposed to trust her?

  The wheels of justice turned mighty slowly. Tracing Moffat took time, as did getting the appropriate warrants. Neither Tom nor Carlson wanted to get a case dismissed on a technicality—especially not about something as important as this. They couldn’t rush this just because Tom couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat—couldn’t breathe.

  He’d compromised the case. He’d compromised Caroline.

  God, he hoped like hell he hadn’t ruined everything.

  Yes, it was important, what he was doing. This years-long investigation was connected not only to judicial corruption, but also to environmental rights and tribal sovereignty—all of it was very, very important. Damned important, even. Lives hung in the balance.

  But he couldn’t let what Caroline had said about her so-called mentor go. She’d lied to Tom about her past—but had she lied about what had actually happened? Had she glossed over her real role or had her mentor used her like she’d said he had?

  Tom needed to know. He couldn’t let it go. It took a few days because he moved through nonofficial channels, but eventually he tracked down the telephone number for one Terrence Curtis.

  When Curtis said, “Hello?” in a voice that shook with age, he sounded ancient.

  Tom announced himself. When Curtis spoke again, he sounded more confident. “Agent Yellow Bird, how can I help you today?” He did not sound like a suspect trying to hide his guilt.

  “I need to ask you a few questions about one of your former students—Caroline Jennings? Do you remember her?” Tom kept his voice level, almost bored.

  “Oh, yes—Caroline. One of my best students—and I say that as someone who taught for decades. We’ve fallen out of touch, but I’ve kept up with her career. She’s done great things, and I know she’ll go on to do even better things.”

  He sounded like a proud father, not a man who had hoodwinked his best student into abetting a criminal. But the fact that Curtis remembered her fondly made Tom feel a little more kindly toward him. “So you remember her.”

  “I just said that, Agent Yellow Bird,” Curtis said, sounding exactly like a teacher scolding a student. “Is everything all right with Caroline?”

  “What can you tell me about the Verango case?” Tom said, hoping to catch Curtis off guard.

  “The... I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re not? That’s a shame. Because Caroline, one of your best students, remembers the conversation very clearly. The one where you convinced her to settle for a plea agreement that would let your friend Vincent Verango go free?”

  There was a stunned silence on the line, and for a second, Tom thought the old man had hung up on him. He didn’t want that to happen. Curtis still lived in Minneapolis and it was a hell of a long drive.

  “That’s...” Curtis said flatly. “That’s not how it happened. Verango and I were not friends. I never—”

  “Oh, but you did, didn’t you, Mr. Curtis?” Tom cut him off. “It’s not a point of contention up for debate. I’m just trying to corroborate her story. Because Caroline, your best student, has done great things, and as you say, she could conceivably continue to do great things from the bench—if her entire career isn’t derailed by a corruption scandal. One that traces directly back to you.”

  Curtis made a strangled noise, somewhere between a choke and a gasp. “What—who?”

  “All very good questions. Here’s what I think, Mr. Curtis. You were her mentor. She looked up to you. She trusted you—maybe she was a little naive about that, but you were both working for the good guys, right?” Silence. “She says that, when she was struggling during her first year as a prosecutor, you took her out to dinner to offer her some moral support. A pep talk. And while you were there, you mentioned you had a friend, Vincent, who had been unfairly arrested. You vouched for him, and as a result of your conversation, Caroline did not throw the book at him. She pulled her punches and Vincent walked.” More silence. Man, he really hoped Curtis hadn’t hung up on him. “Shortly thereafter, all her student loans were paid off in full. Am I leaving anything out?”

  “I...” Curtis sounded older—and definitely more scared.

  “And that’s why you fell out of touch, isn’t it? Because when she figured out that you had abused her trust—it was gone, wasn’t it? She kept her distance because it was the only way to protect herself.”

  “I needed the money,” he said, his voice shaking. “I made sure she got a good cut—”

  “I don’t give a shit what your reasons were. I just need to know whether or not Caroline Jennings was your dupe or if she was an active participant in the miscarriage of justice.”

  “Of course she didn’t know!” Curtis erupted. “I didn’t think she’d mind—I was trying to help her out. I should’ve known better. She always was one of the smartest students I’ve ever had.”

  Tom had what he needed—proof that Caroline had not intentionally broken the law. She’d just put her faith in the wrong man.

  That pregnancy scare in college, this thing with the Verango case—each time Caroline had slipped up, it was because she’d trusted the wrong man.

  And now she was pregnant with Tom’s child because she’d believed him. When he’d told her he needed to take her out to his cabin to keep her safe, she’d gone. Same for the trip to Washington. She’d questioned him, sure, but in the end, she’d put her faith in him.

  They’d both trusted that what happened at the cabin and then in DC was somehow separate from their jobs.

  Well, it wasn’t separate anymore.

  Tom looked up to where Carlson was listening on another receiver. “Anything else?” He was asking both Curtis and Carlson. Carlson shook his head.

  “If you talk to her,” Curtis said, sounding tired, “tell her I’m sorry. She was one of my best students, you know.”

  “I’m sure she was.” Tom hung up, feeling almost light-headed. Caroline wasn’t a dirty judge. Yeah, she still should have told him about this, way back when he’d asked if there was anything that could be used against her.

  But damn it all, he understood that impulse to bury a past mistake. Hadn’t he been doing the exact same thing? Ten years of his life focusing on the job so he could justify living while Stephanie had died.

  “Well?”

  “I think I have everything I need,” Carlson said, making some notes. “I wasn’t going to charge her—you know that, right?”

  “She wouldn’t expect any special favors. Neither would I.” Tom knew that about her. Justice was blind.

  Technically speaking, the job wasn’t done. The department was closing in on Moffat, but no arrests had been made yet. There was a part of Tom that wanted to be the one to slap the cuffs on his wrists, to look him in the eye and make sure he knew
that Tom Yellow Bird had been the one to serve justice. Finally, after all this time.

  That was still important to him. But it wasn’t the most important thing. Not anymore.

  Caroline was his second chance.

  He wasn’t going to let the job ruin that for him.

  Tom stood. “Do you need me for anything else?”

  Carlson smiled knowingly. “No. In fact, if I see you in the office in the next five days, I’ll have you arrested. Show your face within the next two days, you’ll be shot on sight.”

  Tom was already heading out the door. He paused only long enough to look back over his shoulder. “Go home to your family. Trust me on this, James—you don’t want to miss a single moment.”

  Because everything could change in a moment.

  No one knew that better than he did.

  Seventeen

  Really, not that much had changed over the last several weeks—at least, not on the surface, Caroline thought as she packed up at the end of yet another ordinary day.

  She got up, she walked—instead of jogging, which was her only concession to being pregnant and even then, it had more to do with the crippling summer heat than her physical state. She went to work, she came home and she did it all over again.

  She did not run away with Tom. In fact, after their confrontation in Carlson’s office, he had all but disappeared off the face of the planet. She couldn’t blame him. After all, she’d screwed up. She’d made a series of unfortunate mistakes that had compounded upon each other. She’d done serious damage to both of their careers, and if she knew one thing about Tom, it was that his career was everything to him.

  She hadn’t talked to her brother, Trent, in years. They’d managed a semi-civil nod across the aisle at Mom’s funeral several years ago, but Caroline chalked that up more to the influence of his wife than any sentimentality on Trent’s part.

  Even though she’d cut him out of her life—and vice versa—his hateful words from when she was just a little girl had never left Caroline. She was a mistake and she ruined everything.

  She’d heard it so often, in so many ways, that she’d completely internalized Trent’s hatred.

  Okay, so—yes. She had screwed up. She’d made mistakes. But that didn’t make her a mistake any more than her parents having her late in life made her a mistake. She might not have been a planned child, but she knew in her heart that she’d made her parents happy.

  Yes, Caroline was now pregnant and it could reasonably be described as a mistake.

  But that’s not what this child was. No, this child was a gift.

  Her brother was a hateful man who had blinded her to the truth—far from being a mistake, Caroline had been a gift to her parents. They’d loved her, even if Trent couldn’t.

  She hadn’t planned for this—not for any of it. She hadn’t planned to make love with FBI Special Agent Thomas Yellow Bird. She hadn’t planned to have her errors in judgment thrown back in her face when she’d least expected it. She had absolutely not planned to get pregnant.

  But, yes—unplanned or not, this child was a gift. That didn’t mean she and Tom were going to raise this baby together. Even though she was wishing for exactly that.

  Because just like it took two to make a baby, it took two to raise one. Oh, sure, Caroline could do the single-mom thing. Women had been successfully raising babies on their own for millennia. But she didn’t want to.

  She wanted long drives into the sunset and long weekends at a cabin in the middle of nowhere. She wanted to meet the people Tom had grown up with, and she wanted her child to know his roots. She wanted to spend time with Celine and Mark Rutherford and do what she could for the Rutherford Foundation.

  She wanted Tom. All of him, not just the parts that looked good in a suit. She wanted the insecure young man carving out a place for himself where none had previously existed and she wanted the overconfident agent who did what he thought was best, come hell or high water. She wanted the fantastic lover and the man who made sure she had the right clothes for events so she wouldn’t be nervous.

  And if she couldn’t have him—all of him—then...

  Then he couldn’t have her. She wasn’t going to settle for anything less than everything. They’d have to share custody or something.

  Frankly, the very idea pissed her off. As did the fact that he still hadn’t called. Was that just it, then? She’d lied by omission and he was done with her? If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black, she didn’t know what was. Getting a straight answer out of that man about anything was only accomplished by magic, apparently. He hadn’t told her he was taking her to his luxury cabin. He hadn’t told her she was going to the Rutherford Foundation gala. He hadn’t told her anything until the information became vital.

  Was that because she wasn’t important enough to trust with the information? Or was it just that the job would always come first?

  Deep down, she was afraid she was on her own, because in all honesty, she wasn’t sure if Tom would ever be able to put her and the baby before his job. She couldn’t replace his late wife, and he lived and breathed being an agent. She might be up against forces beyond her control.

  When she finally did see him again, she didn’t know if she’d kiss him or strangle him, frankly. It depended heavily upon the hormones.

  Caroline was staring at her refrigerator, battling yet another wave of not-morning sickness and trying to decide if there was anything that was going to settle her stomach when someone pounded on her front door.

  “Caroline!”

  Adrenaline dumped into her system as the fight-or-flight response tried to take hold, because who on earth could be banging on her door at six thirty in the evening? Was it a good guy or a bad guy? She couldn’t handle any more bad news.

  “Caroline! Are you in there?”

  Wait, she knew that voice. She sagged—actually sagged—in relief. Tom. He was here. Oh, please, let it be good news. Please let it be that they had arrested all the bad guys in the entire state of South Dakota and—and—

  Please let him have come for her.

  She peeked through the peephole, just to be sure—but it was him. Alone. She threw open the door and said, “Tom! What are you—” but that was as far as she got because then she was in his arms. He was kissing her and kicking the door shut and walking her into the living room and she knew she needed to push back, find out why he was here. But she couldn’t. She had missed him so much.

  But that wasn’t her fault. A flash of anger gave her the strength she needed to shove him back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, gaping at him. He had a wild light in his eyes she could only pray was a good thing. “The case—”

  “Screw the case,” he said, pulling her back into his arms. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How can you say that? Of course it matters. What if someone followed you here? What if someone puts us together?”

  He was grinning at her. Grinning! He was in the middle of her living room, cupping her face in his hands and looking down at her like she was telling a joke instead of having a panic attack about what the future held. “They better put us together,” he said, touching his forehead to hers. “Babe, I am so sorry.”

  “For what?” She pulled completely out of his grasp, because she couldn’t think while he was touching her, couldn’t formulate words when he was holding her so tenderly. She stomped to the other side of the living room and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m the one who screwed up, remember? I’m the one who compromised the case because I lied about my past. I’m the one who threw a case all those years ago. I’m the one who lied to you, Tom. Why are you apologizing to me?”

  She was yelling, but she didn’t care. He was here. She was happy and furious and saddened all at once. Stupid hormones.

  And he was still smiling at he
r, the jerk! “Why are you smiling at me?” she shouted.

  “Have I ever told you that you’re beautiful when you’re furious?”

  That did it. She threw a pillow at him—which, of course, he caught easily. “You’re not making any sense!” Her voice cracked and her throat tightened and she was afraid she would start crying, which would be terrible. She might have ruined her career and she might be unexpectedly pregnant, but that didn’t mean she wanted to break down in front of him.

  “I’m just so glad to see you. But,” he added, before she could launch another throw pillow at him, “I actually came to tell you something.” He held up his hands in the sign of surrender. “Okay, you screwed up. But you’re acting as if no one else has ever made a mistake in the history of the world, and you’re wrong. I’ve screwed up more times than I can count, Caroline. Including with you. I got it into my head if I just kept my distance from you, that would keep you safe. That would also keep me safe. And all it did was make us both miserable. I miss you. I need you.”

  He fished something out of his pocket and held out his palm to her. “I want to be with you. Not just now, not just for the weekend—for the rest of my life. Because I feel it. I’ve felt it since the very first second I saw you.”

  “What—what are you doing?” Was that a ring?

  “I’d given up on a happy ending, Caroline. I’d fallen in love once before and had it ripped away from me, and I figured that was it. No happy endings. No family. Just my job. And then you showed up.” His eyes looked suspiciously bright as he took a few steps across the room. “I saw you and I felt it again—hope. Desire. Love. I hadn’t been with a woman since the night before my wife died and then you came along, and suddenly, I couldn’t keep my hands off you. And that led to my mistake. I had no intention of getting you pregnant, and I had no intention of leaving you alone to deal with it by yourself. I’m sorry that I haven’t been here. But if you’ll have me, if you’ll forgive me, I will always be here for you.”

  Okay, so she was crying. It didn’t mean anything. She wiped the tears out of her eyes and looked down at his hand, which was now before her. It was a ring. Of course it was. A perfect ring with a really big round diamond and a bunch of smaller diamonds on the band. It was the kind people wore when they got engaged. When they meant to spend the rest of their lives together.