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“You’re an idiot. But a sweet one. Thanks, but you’re not really unattached.”

“Oh, I am.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to go with my gut here. You’re not unattached. And even if you were, you won’t be forever. You can’t be dragging a fake baby mama around behind you. It tends to scare the nice women away.”

“I scare those away all by myself.”

“No. Maybe you do have trouble opening up, but you’re just a man, after all.”

“Yeah.”

“But I saw you with her. You were ready.” She reached to give him an awkward hug, and when he hugged her back, his hand accidentally touched her belly. It was surprisingly hard and something shifted beneath the surface.

“Oh, shit!” he yelped, jerking back.

“What’s wrong?”

“It, uh, moved.”

“Feels like an alien, doesn’t it? I swear to God, I have nightmares that it’s going to burst out of my stomach like a monster. But I think it’s pretty harmless.”

He laughed, but kept a suspicious eye on her belly. He could see it moving.

“Don’t look so freaked out. Here…”

She reached for his hand and started to pull it toward her stomach, but Luke jerked back. “Gah!” he cried out.

Simone laughed, then she laughed harder, choking on her own breath as tears ran down her face.

“Sorry,” Luke muttered, holding his hands close to his body so she couldn’t grab him again.

“I thought you’d been reading baby books,” she gasped out.

“Yeah, well, I’ve never actually been around a pregnant woman before. It’s strange.”

“It’s strange for me, too. I didn’t exactly grow up in a nursery. I promise you the idea of having a whole other person inside of me is damn weird. And when my stomach moves like that… Yeah. Alien flashbacks, big-time.”

“Well, just keep that over there.”

She laughed until she cried again, and Luke felt a hell of a lot better when he got out of the car. Still, when he got back to his desk, he spotted Pallin closing up his office, and Luke’s fury returned like a lightning strike.

Sergeant Pallin walked out without looking in Luke’s direction, but Luke followed his every step. The man was going home to his wife. To his kids. To his cozy house in the Boulder foothills. And Simone was going home alone to her small apartment.

Luke believed in justice. Hell, cops knew better than most that justice was a fickle bitch, but he still needed it. He worked toward it every day. How the hell was he supposed to sit here for fifty hours a week and stare at that bastard without punching him in the face?

But Simone was right. If it got out, it would hurt her, too.

Damn it.

He was a man, and a cop, and it was his job to make things better, but lately… Shit, lately he couldn’t seem to help anyone, not even himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

TESSA DIDN’T SLEEP at all. She couldn’t.

At first, she’d lain in bed and chased plots through her scattered brain, trying to find a way to make things right with Eric. She planned a hundred different schemes and discarded them all as the hours marched past.

Then she’d gotten melancholy. Weepy. She’d thought about all that her brothers had done for her. All they’d sacrificed. And of course, she’d thought about her parents. Her big, good-natured dad and his booming laugh. Her soft, smiling mom and the way she’d said “I love you” twenty times a day.

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