In Broad Daylight (20 page)

a lot of credit here."

She took a deep breath, trying to draw herself out of the delicious half-asleep, half-

awake state she was in. She could still feel the warmth of his skin beneath her cheek even

though he'd gotten up. It excited her even as it spread a soothing blanket over her.

"I think you're up to it." And then she grinned, her eyes sparkling as they looked up into his. "No pun intended."

"Oh, I think you intended it." Grasping her shoulders, he bent over Brenda and just lightly brushed his lips over hers. Anything more and he knew he wouldn't be going anywhere. "I

think you intend everything that happens."

She raised herself up on her elbow as he got up, trying not to be distracted by the sight

of his naked body. She needed him to understand that this had just happened between

them, that she hadn't attempted to orchestrate anything.

"Actually, no."

Her tone was so serious, he stopped to look at her over his shoulder. "Then you're as

surprised as I am."

Without realizing it, she ran her tongue along her lips, savoring the taste of him and

succeeding in exciting herself. "Completely."

"Nice." Doubling back, Dax allowed himself one more quick kiss, then got up again.

When he didn't head for the bathroom but the opposite direction, Brenda sat up in

earnest. "Where are you going?"

"To get my clothes," he told her. "I'm going back to work."

It was almost eleven. She was secretly hoping he'd stay the night, the way he had the

first time.

"Did someone call?" She didn't think she had dozed off after they made love, but it might have been possible. And if she had, then she would have missed his phone ringing.

"No," he called out from the living room. His clothes were scattered throughout the small area, along with hers. He slipped them on quickly. "I just want to go over everything from

the beginning, see if there's anything I missed." Dressed, he walked into her kitchen. "But you completely drained me, woman. I need energy. Where do you keep the coffee filters?"

Coffee. It was the first thing she thought of when she needed energy herself. Brenda got

out of bed. It was nice that they had things in common, even small things.

"In the cupboard above the counter," she called back to him. "The one closest to the sink." Brenda pulled on fresh underwear and slipped on a pair of jeans that were slung over

the back of a chair. "If you give me a second, I can make it for you." When he made no

answer, she wondered if he'd heard her. "Dax?"

She began to button her blouse when her initial directions echoed in her head.The

cupboard above the sink.

That was where she kept the prenatal vitamins her doctor had issued her, a prescription

because she needed the extra iron in them. She was in the kitchen before her thoughts

had a chance to form completely.

The set of his shoulders as she saw his back told her it was too late. She could feel a

large hole opening up in the pit of her stomach. Dax turned to face her, holding the bottle

in his hand. His eyes were expressionless as they met hers. "What are these?"

His tone was very, very still.

A chill ran over her heart even as she told herself it was going to be all right, that she

could make him understand.

A small voice inside her head whispered, no, you won't.

Brenda couldn't make her legs move forward. She stood frozen where she was, staring at

him, her breath caught in her lungs. Finally, she managed to say, "They're prenatal

vitamins."

He'd read that. Read the patient's name on the bottle as well. But he couldn't get himself

to believe it. Didn't want to believe it. "Whose are they?"

She could lie, could make up some story about trying to pull a slight of hand over on the

insurance company for a friend or something like that. If ever there was a need for a lie,

this was it. But she'd already committed the sin of omission by not telling him about the

baby; she couldn't compound it now with a lie.

She drew a breath, trying to stabilize her shaky pulse. "Mine."

He looked at the date on the bottle. This wasn't an old prescription, she'd filled it less

than a month ago. "You're pregnant?"

"Yes." The word burned in her throat as tears gathered in her eyes, anticipating what was to come.

The single word slammed into him with the force of a block-long moving van barreling down

the freeway. Pregnant, Brenda was pregnant. With someone else's child. He'd made love to

her and all the while, she had been carrying someone else's baby.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, his anger barely contained.

The fact that she hadn't told him, hadn't said anything at all about the baby, stunned him

even more than the fact that she was pregnant. Because it destroyed the illusion he'd

allowed himself to build up that there was something special, something good and unique

going on between them. How could there be when she'd kept something so important, so

huge, from him? She didn't trust him.

Brenda remained where she was. It was only through extreme determination that she

managed to hold herself together. If she took so much as one step forward, she was going

to dissolve in tears. Her hormones felt as if they were ricocheting wildly all through her.

"I didn't know how."

His expression hardened. "Very simple," he told her coldly. "You could have looked at me and said, 'Dax, there's just one little thing I need to tell you before we knock boots—I'm

pregnant.'"

She stiffened at the harsh, cold image he painted. "I was afraid that if I told you I was

pregnant, you wouldn't make love with me."

Anger filled every part of him, making him rage, making him unreasonable. He threw down

the bottle. It bounced on the counter, then fell into the sink, still closed. "So that's why you didn't tell me? Because you were horny?"

"Don't say that," she snapped angrily. Vainly she tried to construct a wall around herself, a wall so that he couldn't hurt her. But it was too late. "You make it sound so cheap and it wasn't—not for me."

He laughed dryly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her. How could he believe anything

she said to him? "Right, the earth moved."

"Yeah, it did," she shouted at him. Her own anger allowed her to cross to him, to get into his face. How dare he doubt anything she felt? "For me. I've never been with anyone

before my husband, so I'm not by any means experienced, but I thought that what I had

with Wade was all there was." She was fighting tears now. He had to understand, hehadto.

"But you showed me there was more, so much more. I knew this was nothing special to you,

the way it was to me, so it wouldn't matter to you whether I was pregnant or not."

Nothing special to him. Well, he couldn't very well admit that now, could he? Not without

looking like more of a fool than he already felt he was. "Let me get this straight," he said coldly, pretending confusion. "If you thought it wouldn't matter to me that you were

pregnant, why didn't you tell me?"

It was all so twisted, so confused in her head, she couldn't begin to untangle it. Brenda

pressed her lips together. She had no answer for him.

And he had no words for her, none that he could trust himself to say out loud. Picking up

his jacket off the rug in the living room, Dax walked out of her apartment without saying

another word.

The door vibrated in his wake as he slammed it.

Brenda covered her mouth with her hands. Slowly she sank down on the floor and let the

sobs pour out.

Dax didn't realize that he'd driven his car over to his father's house until he pulled up in

the driveway. When he focused on his surroundings, he shook his head. It was as if there

was some kind of a homing device within the car, if not within him.

For a moment, he remained in his car, letting the engine idle. Trying to decide just how

many different kinds of a fool he was.

How could he have gotten so entangled in her in such a short amount of time? This wasn't

him, wasn't the way he operated. Fast and loose, short and sweet, that summed up his love

life heretofore. When something's not broken, you shouldn't mess with it.

But he had. Messed with it bad. Without ever intending to. When had his guard gone

down? Why wasn't he even aware of it happening?

Damn it, he'd gotten broadsided without even realizing that he was operating a vehicle.

That he had ventured out on the road again.

"You going to come in, or just sit there like some mesmerized mannequin, letting the car

idle until it completely runs out of gas? Money burning a hole in your pocket, boy? They

paying you too much these days?"

He looked up and saw his father at the rolled-down passenger window, looking into the

vehicle. Looking at him.

The next moment, Brian Cavanaugh took the decision out of his son's hands. Going round

the hood, he opened the driver's side door.

"Come on in, I just made some fresh coffee and as usual, I made too much." There was a

rueful smile on his lips. Five years since the funeral and he was still making coffee for

Dax's departed mom, expecting her to walk into the kitchen, rummaging for coffee. The

kitchen had turned out to be his domain rather than that of the woman he'd married. "You

know how I hate throwing things away."

A half smile formed on Dax's lips. Coffee had been what had set the ball rolling in the

first place. He still hadn't had any. He nodded and got out of the car.

Talking to someone, keeping his thoughts occupied until he could pull himself together

again, was better than sitting around and brooding. He didn't doubt that was why he'd

subconsciously driven over.

He followed his father into the house where he and his brothers and sister had wreaked

havoc not so long ago. Several coats of paint hid the fingerprints that somehow managed to

liberally cover the walls despite all of his late mother's warnings to the contrary.

How much paint did he need to apply to hide the hurt, the anger, he was feeling right now?

He shut the thought away. Or tried to.

In the kitchen, Brian crossed to the coffeemaker and got down two cups from the

overhead cupboard. He lived alone now that the last of the kids were gone and, like his

brother, didn't like it. Nothing pleased him more than having one or more of his kids drop

by, even though he got to see them almost every day at the precinct.

He eyed his oldest born now. "This about the case?"

A million miles away, or, more to the point, ten, Dax blinked. "What?"

Brian nodded at his son. "That look on your face, you look lost in thought, as if you were

surprised you showed up where you did. This about theTylercase?"

"Yeah." And then, because other than the white lies that pockmarked every kid's

childhood and had dotted his own, he'd never lied to his father, Dax changed his answer.

"No."

Turning with the pot of coffee in his hand, Brian looked at his first born and recognized

the expression on his face. It was the same expression he'd seen staring back at him in

the mirror after he'd had a fight with his late wife.

"Oh, I see."

No one needed to tell him that his father was sharp. He took pride in that. But when it

came to his father being smarter about his private life than he was, that was something

else again. Dax stiffened, instantly on the defensive, as if his mistakes were something to

be jealousy guarded instead of torpedoed out into the ocean. "See what?"

Brian allowed himself a smile. "I'm not chief of detectives because of my looks, boy." He shook his head as he poured an inky cup of coffee for Dax, then repeated the process for

himself. The thicker the better had always been his belief. He didn't trust coffee that let

him see the bottom of his cup, even for a moment.

"Was beginning to think I'd never live to see the day," Brian murmured, half to himself, as he replaced the coffee pot on the burner.

Dax was still on his guard. "Never live to see what day?"

Brian took a seat on the stool beside him at the breakfast-nook counter. "The day my son

finally found someone who mattered."

Raising his cup, Dax put it down again without taking a drink. His father was too close to

the subject. And dead wrong. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The look on your face," Brian replied mildly. "It's the kind of look a man wears when the woman he loves has gotten to him." He tried to seem nonchalant as he asked, "Trouble in paradise, son?"

Dax set his mouth grimly. "No paradise, Dad."

"I know it feels that way now, but whatever it is, it'll blow over." His expression grew slightly more serious. "Just make sure you don't blow it."

Dax gritted his teeth together. Served him right for not paying attention and driving over

here in the first place. He'd meant to go to the precinct; winding up at his father's house

was by pure accident. "There is no woman, Dad."

Brian's face was the picture of innocence. "No?"

"No."

The old man always could see right through him, Dax thought, only partially annoyed. He

wondered if it was a gift he'd been born with, or something that happened when you had

kids. Like a fairy godmother granting you a super power to help you keep up with over-

energized younger people.

Dax relented. A little. "Just someone I met a couple of days ago."

The smile on Brian's face was knowing. "Time isn't a factor, Dax. I knew an hour after I