as efficient. And I’m a great secretary. As soon as the baby’s born I’ll be able to work.” She was smiling, reassuring him that she’d be okay, but he was grim. She was trying to make light of it, but…
“Even if you make it into Mexico, she’ll find you,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes. Or you’ll starve. For heaven’s sake, Jenny, you’ll have no health insurance, and as an illegal immigrant you’ll have no status. What if something goes wrong during the birth?”
“It won’t.”
“What if it does?”
“Then I’ll cope,” she said flatly. “Stop scaring me, Michael Lord. I can manage.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Watch me. Or rather, don’t watch me.”
“I’m not letting you go to Mexico on your own,” he told her. His mind was racing, and it didn’t like a single thing it was coming up with.
“There’s no alternative.” She tilted her chin, and a trace of fear shadowed the courage in her eyes. “Unless you’re planning to put me on Gloria’s plane. Hand me over to the authorities.”
She wasn’t quite sure that he wouldn’t, he realized. She didn’t quite trust him.
She must. There was no other way out of this mess.
“I won’t hand you over to the authorities.” He gave a self-mocking smile. “After all, you’re not illegal until Monday.”
“Yeah, heaps of time.”
“Not enough-but there is an alternative,” he said softly, his voice steady. An idea had flashed into his head. It was a crazy, lunatic idea, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the only way out of this mess. “It’s the only one.”
“Which is?”
“You’re sure you won’t go home?”
She swallowed, but the look in her eye was one of iron determination. “No way. I’ll lose my baby.”
“For this to work, you’d have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said flatly. “Not where my baby’s concerned.”
“You need help, Jenny.”
“You’re proposing to hide me in the basement until Gloria goes away? She won’t. Now she knows where I am, she’ll be around forever.”
He smiled. “I don’t think hiding in a basement is a sensible solution.”
“No, but…” She shook her head. “Believe me, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no possibility I can stay here legally, and now the immigration officials are aware of me, I have to move on.”
“There is one thing you can do.”
“Which is?”
“You can marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
AS A conversation stopper it took some beating. Jenny sat with her mouth open for all of two minutes. There was not a single word she could think of to say.
It was Michael who finally broke the silence. Jenny looked as if she’d still be goggling in half an hour. “Aren’t you going to say something?” he asked, half amused.
“I don’t think I can,” she said breathlessly. She sounded as if it took a real effort to make her voice work. “I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face by a wet fish.”
“Gee.” He chuckled again, the second time in one day. Amazing! He smiled at her stunned expression. “As a romantic, maidenly reply to a proposal of marriage, that takes some beating. Slapped in the face by a wet fish. Good grief!”
She smiled, but her face was worried-humoring-a-lunatic worried.
“Michael, this is just plain crazy. You don’t want to marry me.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”
“Well…”
“But that’s just it,” he continued smoothly. “I don’t want to marry anyone. So it might as well be you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He sighed, and his face tightened. He didn’t discuss his private life with anyone, but there was no getting out of this. Not if she was to take his proposal seriously.
“Jenny, let me tell you something. Like you, I’ve done the love thing.”
“I don’t…”
“Just shut up and hear me out.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was no longer seeing her. He was seeing events of two years ago, and he was seeing them as though they’d been yesterday. “You know I’ve been a cop?”
“Yes.” Her frown deepened. What on earth was he talking about?
“And I left the force when my partner was killed?”
“I’ve heard that, too,” she admitted. Gossip among the staff at Maitland Maternity had told her that much about him, though Michael’s private life was very much a closed book. He kept himself to himself-absolutely.
“What people don’t know,” he said heavily, “was that my mind wasn’t on my job the night my partner died.” He hesitated, then went on, but he sounded as if it hurt to say every word. The pain was real and terrible. “I’d gotten myself into a relationship,” he confessed. “My first. I’d never had much time for women. But Barbara… Well, she seemed different-special-and I thought I could get involved.” He shrugged. “Okay, so I got involved, and I was stupid.”
“But what happened?” This wasn’t making any sense.
“Dan and I were on night duty, but we’d just attended a call near Barbara’s place. It was quiet, we were due for a meal break, so Dan went for a hamburger while I dropped in to see Barbara.”
“And?” She didn’t want to ask, but she knew he had to tell. The words were being torn out of him.
“She was with another guy. In bed. Stupid, sordid, the sort of thing that happens every day-but to others, not to me. I was so damned angry, so hurt that I slammed out of the house without a word-and then Dan got killed.”
He still wasn’t making any sense. “Would you mind telling me,” Jenny said carefully, “how you getting two- timed by some woman with no taste in men could get your partner killed? I don’t see it.”
Part of his mind registered the compliment, and a weary smile curved the corners of his mouth, but the story was too black for humor. The smile died.
“It was easy,” he said bleakly. “My mind wasn’t where it should have been, and I needed every scrap of attention that night.” His words were savage, and she could tell the night was still nightmare fresh. “We had a call to say there’d been an armed robbery. What they didn’t say was that the owner had shot one of the intruders. So we got to the store and the owner was out on the pavement yelling about a carload of kids that had got away. As I said, I wasn’t on the ball. I radioed in details of the car, and while I did that, Dan went into the store to check damage.”
“Oh, Michael…”
“The kid was lying on the floor, wounded, out of sight of the doorway, and he shot Dan from almost point-blank range,” Michael said bleakly. “And then he died himself. It was a stupid, stupid waste.” He shook his head. “So when backup arrived, I was blubbering like a baby, and I left the force soon after. To this job.” He compressed his lips and squared his shoulders.
“That was the first time in my life I’ve ever tried having a relationship,” he went on bleakly. “My sisters and brother-they’re the emotional hotheads. I’ve always had a sense that I should stand apart. Be alone. Maybe it’s because our birth mother dumped us-who knows? I only know the feeling’s deep-seated and real. And then, the one time I cracked and let Barbara close, the world exploded around me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So you see, I’m not in
