She shook her head, as if they were commiserating over a tragedy.

And then she touched his hair, brushing it away from his forehead. "Do they really let you get away with wearing it this long? I thought there were rules about these things."

He stepped backward and ran a.s.s-first into the china cabinet.

The contents rattled and the back hit the wall, creating a cacophony he might've been able to pa.s.s off as thunder if half a dozen of Elijah's family members hadn't been in the room at the time.

They all turned to stare at him, and he felt their gazes like the heat of a thousand suns.

His face burnt, and he barely managed to keep his swearing under his breath.

Kelly giggled as he stood there like an idiot, his back up against the china cabinet.

Lorraine finally took mercy on him, sweeping across the room to where he stood, one cabinet corner digging into his right a.s.s cheek.

He hoped like h.e.l.l he hadn't broken any of her china. If he had, he might find out just how far her sweetness stretched.

"Is everything all right, Jackson?" Lorraine's brow furrowed. "You look a little flushed. I hope it wasn't my cooking."

"Your cooking was fantastic, Mrs. Bennett. I'm just feeling a little overheated."

Kelly giggled again, and he knew he'd said the wrong thing. Jesus, he was an idiot.

"I'd better step outside for a little fresh air," he said.

"Okay, honey you feel free to come in and have a rest on the couch if that doesn't do anything for you."

He made his exit in the blink of an eye, his face still burning.

When he stepped out onto the back porch, he found Elijah there with his dad.

"Beers are in the cooler," Mike Bennett said, nodding toward an old beach cooler shoved beneath a patio table.

Jackson accepted the invitation gratefully, digging a Land Shark out of the ice and leaning on the porch railing. As he opened the bottle, he tried not to think about what Kelly might be thinking or saying about him back in the house.

Elijah and his father looked as if they'd been talking about something serious while Jackson had been making an a.s.s of himself, although Mike Bennett always looked serious, so that didn't necessarily mean much.

Sometimes Jackson wondered whether he'd been that way thirty years ago or whether three decades on the police force had made him so sober.

"We're talking about that s.h.i.t bag, Sanders," Elijah said, as if he'd read Jackson's mind.

He nodded, his overly full stomach turning at the reminder.

His mind was on overload, too. Between Belle's pregnancy scare and Sanders' bulls.h.i.t, he hardly thought about anything else. The two very different sets of worries whirled through his mind like two rabid dogs chasing each other's tails.

A small part of him hoped Mike would offer some brilliant perspective on how to deal with Sanders, but he knew better than to put much faith in the idea. He himself had been working the job long enough to know there wasn't much he could do, especially with Harding as his lieutenant.

"Unfortunately, you've gotta play by the rules," Mike said.

The part of Jackson that'd been holding out hope dropped dead.

Elijah made an exasperated sound before tipping back his beer.

Mike shot his son a look. "I know it's hard when you're dealing with someone who isn't playing by the rules. In fact, I know what you're dealing with. We used to have a guy like that in my platoon about twenty-five years ago. Screwed everybody over every chance he got."

"Yeah?" Elijah said. "What happened to him?"

CHAPTER 21.

Mike looked out over his yard, at his neighbor's fenced lot and the palm-lined street beyond. "He stood back and watched while another officer got in an altercation with some crackhead swinging a baseball bat around. The officer ended up with half a dozen broken bones, and Benedict Arnold hung back didn't do anything. He got the s.h.i.t beaten out of him by half the platoon one night shortly after that, and decided law enforcement wasn't for him after all."

"Sounds like a fairy tale," Jackson said. "If anyone deserves a beating, it's Sanders."

Mike shrugged. "That was before body cams, not to mention people with phones on every corner, recording everything. It's hard to ever be off the record nowadays."

Jackson nodded it was true.

"But your problem's a little different," Mike said. "This Sanders guy has it out for you especially because of the arrest. He'll play the other officers in your platoon against you if he gets the chance, like he did with your interim lieutenant. Guys like him don't keep their jobs long unless they're good at covering their tracks."

"So what's your advice?"

"Don't let that happen. These officers know you, and they don't know him. Be better than him. Rise above his bulls.h.i.t and weather the storm until your lieutenant's leave is over. And above all, watch your back."

Jackson nodded, wishing there was something he could do other than grasp at common f.u.c.king sense.

"You know I've got your back, man," Elijah said. "And no one else in the platoon likes Sanders anyway. It's not like you're on your own."

"What about Sanders' wife? His kid?" The thought bubbled to the surface of his mind and burst out. "No one has their backs, and I still feel responsible for that call."

Mike nodded. "There are times when you want to help more than you can, and that's one of the hardest parts of the job. I've been telling Elijah that for years."

The knot in Jackson's gut tightened. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but Mike was right.

Still, the situation was wrong. His mind itched to find a solution, some unseen loophole or brilliant conclusion he could grasp and use to knock Sanders down a thousand pegs or so.

"I know it feels counterintuitive," Mike said. "You took this job because you want to help people. But you've got to learn to focus on controlling what you can. You have people in your life you care about? Protect them. Make efforts every day not to become the kind of person you wish you could protect other people from. Be what you can for who you can. It's all anyone can do."

Thoughts of Belle hit him like lightning, electrifying some protective sector of his brain. He'd protect her with his dying breath, with a pa.s.sion no one else evoked in him not anyone he helped on the job, or elsewhere. And if they ended up having a child, he'd do the same for him or her. But was that really all he could do?

A life protecting Belle would be a life well spent; he wasn't denying it. But he'd signed up to help whoever he could people beyond his personal sphere. People who didn't have anyone else to turn to. He felt like a cog in a useless machine. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced since he'd been a child stuck in a situation similar to Kate's, and he f.u.c.king hated it.

"You're a good cop, Jackson." Mike's baritone sounded a million miles away. "It's harder to be good at this job than it is to be bad, but don't let that break you. The day will come when you'll be able to help someone like Sanders' wife, and you'll be ready to do it."

"Here, Belle." Jackson pulled an oblong box from a plastic drug store bag and pressed it into her open hand. "It was the most expensive one, so I figure it's the best."

She scanned the print on the blue and white box. The name brand test promised to detect a pregnancy up to five days early. She was expecting to get her period any day now, so it should work.

"Thanks." He was still in uniform. Back on night shift now, he'd driven straight from the police station and to the nearest drug store, then to her apartment.

It wasn't even eight in the morning she still wore the cotton shorts and mismatched cami she'd slept in. The thought of him walking into the store after a twelve hour shift, still in uniform, and picking out the test for her made her chest feel small and full of emotion she couldn't quite identify.

The longer she held the test, the more tightly her nerves wound themselves.

"It'll be a relief to know," she said.

"Yeah, it will."

It felt as if the blood in her veins had been replaced by electricity. It crackled through her, making her skin p.r.i.c.kle as sweat gathered at her temples. What if she really was pregnant what if the fears that'd haunted her since their slip nearly two weeks ago were justified?

Everything would change. Her world would turn on a dime. What she and Jackson had would be shot full of urgency, forced to mature into something more serious than either of them had intended so soon. The relationship might not survive.

He took one of her hands, wrapping her fingers in his. "We'll know either way in a few minutes. No more stressing over what-ifs."

She nodded. "I'll be right back."

"I'll be right here."

Heart racing, she turned down the hall, then shut the bathroom door behind herself.

Jackson waited alone in Belle's living room, standing next to the couch. He didn't consider sitting; this felt like something he should wait for with boots on the ground.

The room receded into the distance as he waited, still sweating in his uniform. Sweating, but calmer than he'd imagined calmer than Belle had seemed.

Which made sense. If she was pregnant, she'd be the one carrying a baby. And he'd be ... what, stuck with a woman he was crazy over, with a family on the way? He could easily imagine worse fates.

Not that they'd planned this, or that he wasn't sorry for putting her through the wringer. But part of him would welcome the permanent ties the promise of family would forge between them, and he'd embrace his new role with all of his being.

He hadn't said as much to Belle not the first part, anyway. He didn't want to freak her out or seem indifferent to her suffering. But if she was pregnant if they were that one in eight he'd tell her then that he wasn't upset. That if there was anyone he could imagine having a family with, it was her, and he looked forward to making the best of an unexpected situation.

By the time the bathroom door creaked open, he felt a sense of calm he'd rarely known the likes of. Waiting for her to tell him whether their futures had been irrevocably changed, he was fearless.

One slim, white leg appeared, accompanied by a shoulder draped with a stray lock of her hair. Then she was moving through the doorway, toward him. She wore her pajamas, her hair in a loose knot that was coming undone. Her eyes were dark and unreadable; her mouth was an impa.s.sive line set into a pale, beautiful face.

Her hands cradled a plastic stick, and she raised it for him to see as she approached.

Two little windows were set into the plastic. One was bisected by a clear blue line, and the other was empty.

"Not pregnant," she said.

She held the test up as if she expected him to take it, to look closer in search of any discrepancy, as if he didn't trust her and needed to see up close for himself. Instead, he wrapped one hand around her wrist and one arm around her waist, pulling her close.

She exhaled and tipped her head, letting her temple rest against his chest. "Guess you think I've been making a big deal out of nothing, huh?"

"No. Not at all."

The weight of her head resting on his chest felt good. Beneath it, he felt several things at once: relieved. Free of guilt. And on some illogical level, a little disappointed.

Mostly though, he was glad that they could move forward because they wanted to, not because she felt as if she had to be with him.

"One in eight is almost Russian roulette. It's a pretty big deal."

She exhaled. "That's one way to put it."

"You weren't the only one who was thinking about this these past couple weeks. Now we have the chance to be more careful in the future."

"I want to make a doctor appointment so I can get a prescription for the pill."

"Sounds smart."

"Yeah..." Her fingertips brushed his lower back, just below the edge of his Kevlar vest. "And then we'll be able to stop using condoms altogether."

His breath rushed out in a sigh of longing. "How soon do you think the doctor can get you in?"

She laughed. "We'll see. Meanwhile, I feel so relieved want to celebrate?"

"You wanna go out to celebrate not being pregnant?"

"I want to do something fun with you to celebrate the fact that we're together because we want to be, not because we have to be."

"We could pick up some food and have a picnic on the beach."

"Sounds great." She wrapped her arms around him with sudden fierceness. "I really like being with you, Jackson. I'm glad things aren't going to change anytime soon."

He breathed in the scent of her hair and ran his fingertips along the back of one of her arms, marveling at the softness of her skin. "Me too. What we have going is good."

"That's an understatement." Her hand crept lower and she grabbed his a.s.s, causing him to harden against her.

Maybe someday things would change maybe someday they'd even have a family together. When they were ready. But for now things were good, and he was pretty f.u.c.king serious about her, pregnancy or not.

She was special. Special period, and even more special to him. She always had been, and now that she was back in his life, he couldn't imagine a future where she wasn't always.

CHAPTER 22.