The Rookie

Or was he the only one whose equilibrium was being tested by forbidden urges? Somewhere along the line, Josh’s protective feelings and aesthetic appreciation for Professor Rachel Livesay had gotten tangled up in a sexual tension that was at once irresistibly intriguing and damnably inconvenient.

His physical response to her had been tempered by the absolute awe of learning the elusive differences between her pregnant body and the body of any other woman he’d known. There was a vulnerability about a woman whose normal state of grace had been altered by the fragile miracle of life growing inside her belly. Everything about her seemed like femininity intensified.

He’d wanted to touch her belly, feel the life within her.

He’d wanted to kiss her.

Oh, boy. Talk about blowing his cover!

The Rookie

Julie Miller

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Miller attributed her passion for writing romance to all those fairy tales she read growing up, and to shyness. Encouragement from her family to write down all those feelings she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where she serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” This award-winning author and teacher has published several paranormal romances. Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Ms. Miller believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, she now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and smiling guard dog, Maxie. Write to Julie at P.O. Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Josh Taylor—His youthful smile and irresistible charm make him a natural for infiltrating a meth ring on campus. Will his assignment put his pretty professor in even more danger?

Dr. Rachel Livesay—Eight months pregnant and on her own—just the way she’s planned it. Until someone threatens to take away her baby. She turns to a younger man for protection. But can she risk turning over her heart, as well?

Dr. Simon Livesay—Rachel’s ex-husband and former business partner. Once he cheated on her. Now he wants to replace her.

David Brown—He didn’t take kindly to being kicked out of the good doctor’s class.

Dr. Curt Norwood—He and Rachel were old friends from college.

Dr. Andrew Washburn—His sperm bank offered only the finest in father candidates and promised the utmost discretion.

Kevin Washburn—What secret was the lonely young man hiding?

Lucy Holcomb—Rachel’s troubled client knew what it was like to lose a baby.

AJ Rodriguez—The wounded cop owed Josh a favor. #93579—The not-so-anonymous father of Rachel’s baby.

For Marilee Mathine.

A good friend and co-worker for many years, and the unofficial goodwill ambassador for St. Paul Public Schools.

Thank you for all your support in both teaching and writing. Thanks for fielding those phone calls. Thanks for easing my stress and sharing my excitement.

May good fortune and good health be your lifelong friend.

With thanks to the Kiss of Death ladies

(the Mystery/Romantic Suspense Chapter of RWA)

for answering my research questions with expertise and enthusiasm.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

Joshua Taylor hunkered down behind the stack of crates in the old warehouse, alternately scanning the shadows for signs of movement, and eavesdropping on the soft yet tense conversation playing into the receiver wedged inside his ear.

His black slacks and fur-collared uniform blended into the night. The only signs that might give away his presence were the shiny brass badge pinned above his heart, and the sleek bulk of the steel pistol he gripped between his leather-gloved hands.

“You told me you could deliver.” That was A. J. Rodriguez, at one time the partner of Josh’s older brother, Cole. He’d been masquerading for the past three weeks as a drug dealer trying to move his business into Fourth Precinct territory. “And now you want to short me twenty bags when I come with my arms—and my briefcase—wide open?”

“It’s risky, putting my faith in new neighbors.” That cranky, drug-damaged voice belonged to Randall Pittmon. He’d been in and out of jail more times than Josh had taken a date to the local amusement park—and that was saying something. That ageless scumbag was going down for the count this time, though. No misdemeanor charges. No plea bargains. This was a major bust.

As soon as Randall put his cards on the table. Cards filled with street-ready methamphetamine. Vacuum-packed crystals ready to smoke or melt down to inject. The same kind of home-brewed high that had taken one of the kids he coached at the local gym last month.

Josh swallowed his impatient huff and shifted his position. The concrete floor was chilling his butt, and this guy wanted to philosophize! Josh turned his chin toward the microphone clipped to his shoulder strap and whispered, “Does anybody else think this guy’s stalling?”

“Maintain silence, Taylor.” That would be Lieutenant Cutler.

Josh nodded in lieu of a yes, sir, and peered into the darkness, trying to pinpoint the location of the other uniformed officers who’d been assigned as backup for A.J. and Cutler’s men. No one. Nothing. He was stuck like a frog at the bottom of a mud-hole, blindly waiting for the predator to strike. Able only to listen and wait for Cutler’s command.

One day soon he’d make detective, and he could take the lead on cases like this one. At age twenty-eight, he was ready for it. He’d passed the test. He had the college degree. He had the experience under his belt.

What he needed was a different last name.

Being the baby of a large brood of law enforcement brothers, he had an almost legendary reputation to live up to. Proud as he was of his family’s accomplishments, he found it hard to measure up. He couldn’t just be a competent patrolman with a decent arrest record. He couldn’t just have good instincts on the street. He had to be better than anybody else up for the new detective slots in the Fourth Precinct.

He had to walk a fine line between taking orders and taking risks, and prove that he was the best.

A.J. tried to urge Randall into a decision. “My offer’s not going to be on the table much longer. If you have the goods, deal. If not, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

Definitely stalling. Josh rolled over onto the balls of his feet and crouched low, maintaining his cover behind the crates. He ventured a whisper, almost touching his lips to his mike. “Lieutenant.”

Josh ignored the lieutenant’s succinct curse and reported what his ears and his gut told him, even if his eyes couldn’t see it. “Pittmon’s waiting for a third party. Does A.J. know that?”

Detective Rodriguez had been thoroughly searched by Pittmon. So there were no wires on him. And no weapon. At least, none that Pittmon knew of. A.J. might be a sitting duck.

Josh’s earpiece crackled as another officer came on the line. “I’ve got a blue pickup coming in the back. Local plates. I’m running ’em now.”

Cutler swore for all of them. “Anybody got a clear view of what’s going on? Pittmon just stepped out of the camera shot.”

Josh tuned out the roll call of reports. He slipped to the end of the stack of crates and pressed his belly flat to the floor. Turning the bill of his KCPD cap to the back of his short, dark-blond hair, he made himself point man to A.J.’s backup. Keeping himself aligned with the shadows, he inched forward just enough to get a bug’s-eye view of unfolding events.

“Pittmon’s headed toward the garage door,” Josh reported, his deep voice barely a whisper. “A.J.’s at the desk. The only package is the briefcase with the money. Wait. Somebody’s coming in.”

The buzz of voices in his ear fell silent. Randall laughed and swatted the third man on the arm as he walked in. The new man was smaller in stature. He wore jeans and sneakers.

And a letter jacket.

“Crap. It’s just a kid.” A slew of other, choicer, more damning curses filled his brain. Josh pushed them out of his mind, along with the image of Billy Matthews’s strong young body lying still on the gym’s hardwood floor. No spasms. No sweats. Nothing. He just dropped like a stone. Josh could suddenly hear his own rapid breathing, his heart pounding as it had that day. “The kid’s about eighteen. I can’t make out what they’re saying.”

Neither could A.J., it seemed. Calm as always, the compact, muscular detective rose to his feet. “Is there a problem?”

“Bingo on the plates.” An officer from the command-post van chimed in. “Tyrone Justiss. He’s on probation from juvie hall.”

Not for long, thought Josh.

“Do you have it or not?” A trace of impatience filtered into A.J.’s voice.

“Yes, sir.” Tyrone received a nod from Randall and carried the nylon sports bag to the table. “Right here.” The teenager unzipped the bag and pulled it open, displaying the shrink-wrapped blocks of pure meth with all the pizzazz of a game-show model.

Oh boy.

Josh chomped down on his anger and started counting off the seconds in his head until A.J. was clear and they could apprehend Pittmon. And the kid.

Didn’t the teen know what he’d gotten himself into?

“Looks good to me.” A.J. had inspected the goods and closed the bag. He slung it over his shoulder. “Next time, don’t keep me waiting.”

“Next time, don’t be so quick to make yourself at home in my backyard.”

When Pittmon reached inside the front of his jacket, Josh’s senses went on full alert. “Gun!”

The next few seconds unfolded with the heart-stopping clarity of a slowed motion picture snapping by, frame by frame.

Randall squeezed the trigger. A.J. twisted his shoulders, grunted with the impact of a bullet and sailed back into a stack of shipping crates. A spray of police bullets cut the old desk in two and chipped up concrete at Randall’s feet.

As Josh charged, the kid pulled a Saturday-night special from his pocket. He pointed the revolver at A.J., then at Josh. Sweat popped out on the kid’s forehead as panic swept across his face.

“Drop it.” Josh approached the youth, their guns facing off like an old-fashioned showdown.

“Drop your weapons!” Lieutenant Cutler joined the swarm of officers surrounding Pittmon.

Seeing the wisdom of surrendering when he was outnumbered, Randall set his gun on the floor and raised his hands. In a matter of seconds, he was facedown on the concrete, wearing a set of handcuffs.

But the kid started to backpedal. “I ain’t goin’ back!”

“Drop the gun before somebody shoots you,” warned Josh.

“You gonna shoot me?” he challenged, his eyes darting like a cornered animal’s, his gun trained on Josh’s chest. “I’ll shoot you first.”

A TAC team officer, dressed in black from his cap to his bullet-proof vest to his boots, circled behind the kid.

Josh took his right hand off his gun and tried to placate the teenager. Using only his eyes, he urged the officer to move aside. The kid was already on the edge. Any sudden move, and he might just make good on his threat to pull the trigger.

Then the rest of hell would break loose and the kid would end up dead instead of in jail.

“Give me the gun,” Josh urged in a quiet, firm voice. “Hand it over and you won’t get hurt.”

Something alerted the kid to the other officer’s presence. “Hey!” He whirled around.

Josh lunged, catching the youth by the wrist and twisting his arm upward. The shot pinged off the exposed steel beams of the warehouse ceiling and landed with a thunk in a crate somewhere.

In a matter of heartbeats, Josh had the kid pinned to the floor. His gun was safely tucked in the back of Josh’s belt. The TAC officer plus two more men had their rifles trained at the boy’s prone figure.

“Back off,” Josh ordered, as if he had the right to give an order to three superior officers.

“Taylor!” Lieutenant Cutler. Josh snapped his cuffs around the boy’s wrists and exhaled a weary breath. He knew what was coming.

“Don’t argue with these men,” Josh whispered in the youth’s ear. “I just saved your life.”

“Don’t do me no favors.”

So much for gratitude. While the TAC team officers carted off the kid, Josh climbed to his feet, holstered his gun and straightened his cap before facing Cutler.

“I told you my men had point on this. Your job was to back up and secure the perimeter.”

“I was protecting the kid.”

The older man planted his hands on his hips and glared up at Josh. “He’s just as guilty as Pittmon. His gun is just as deadly.”

Josh stood a head taller than Cutler. He shook the tension from shoulders that were twice as broad. He felt annoyingly chastised, but the man was right. He had acted on the instinct to protect, rather than the task assigned to him. “Yes, sir.”

“Go easy on him, Lieutenant.” Antonio Josef Rodriguez eased his way into the conversation. He pressed a bloody compress to the wound at his left shoulder. With a nonchalance that betrayed neither pain nor gratitude, he nodded toward Josh. “Taylor here probably saved my life.”

Cutler’s nostrils flared as he considered A.J.’s remark. “I suppose that’s another debt of gratitude we owe the Taylors.”

Josh let his gaze travel from the unemotional support in A.J.’s golden gaze to the flash of sarcasm in Cutler’s baby blues. “Just doing my job, sir.”

It was all he’d ever wanted to do.

Now if the old guard at KCPD, like Lieutenant Cutler, would just back off and let him do it.

Chapter One

Dr. Livesay,

I’m watching.

I want what’s mine.

The baby you’re carrying belongs to me.

Take good care of it.

Daddy

Dr. Rachel Livesay stared at the snow-speckled piece of paper in her hand. Images of each boyfriend she’d dated through high school and college flashed through her brain. Of course, none of them could be the father. She’d married when she was twenty-five, and, unlike her philandering husband, she hadn’t felt the need to betray her vows with a lover. And since the divorce over two years ago, she hadn’t felt the desire to get that close to any man again.

Or maybe it was just her judgment in men she didn’t trust anymore.

At any rate, Daddy’s message was just a cruel joke. There was no father to speak of, no man who could lay claim to the miracle growing inside her.

“Jerk.” Rachel wadded up the typewritten note she’d found stuck under her windshield wiper and stuffed it into her coat pocket. This was probably just a stupid, tasteless prank. Still, she couldn’t help but survey the dull gray grounds and concrete buildings around her to see if anyone actually was watching.

Though the snow had stopped for the time being, the February morning still held the damp chill of a Missouri winter. The students, staff and faculty members hurrying to their ten o’clock classes from the parking lot and public transports huddled with their chins tucked inside their collars, or were bundled up beyond recognition beneath scarves and hats.

No Peeping Tom’s. No unwanted daddies in disguise.

Rachel shook her head at her own foolishness. Someone was just trying to get a rise out of her. A disgruntled student, no doubt. The set of papers she’d returned at her last Community Psychology class had been less than stellar. True, she’d found a few gems, but she’d also given out Ds and Fs. Including one plagiarized paper titled “Psychoses of Inner-City Youth.”

That’s what this was about. Attack the pregnant professor where it hurts the most. Get your jollies at her expense. “That’ll teach me to challenge them to think beyond my lectures.” She inserted her car key into the lock, exhaling a sigh of relief. “What was I thinking? Expecting them to take notes and read the text.” She raised her eyebrows in mock shock and opened the door, addressing the imaginary student. “Ooh, you got me this time.”

With as much grace as a belly-heavy woman could manage, she bent across the seat and retrieved the stack of lecture notes she’d left inside her Buick. She shifted her balance back over her hips and straightened, relocking the car behind her.

She braced her gloved hand on the roof of the car.

I’m watching.

So much for not letting the note get to her.

A sudden shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature cascaded down her spine. She huddled inside her long, cocoa-brown wool maternity coat and turned to look beyond the Holmes Street parking lot toward the heart of downtown Kansas City.

Someone was watching her.

The creepy sensation sparked along her nerve endings and made her spin around an embarrassing 360 degrees.

The bustling energy of a city campus kept everyone moving quickly along the sidewalks and makeshift shortcuts. Sometimes alone. More often in chatty pairs or small groups whose animated conversations created a cloud cover of sorts in the cold air, preventing her from really making eye contact with anyone.

“Get a grip, Rache,” she scolded herself.

She rubbed her distended belly, cradling her hand against the tender muscles where her miracle baby loved to stretch and kick. “Imagine.” Her voice slipped into that breathy pitch reserved for mothers speaking to their unborn child. “Calling you an ‘it.’ That’s probably why Daddy isn’t doing very well in my class.”

Right on cue, the baby kicked against her hand. Rachel smiled, imagining a shared high-five between mother and infant. Her tension eased on a cleansing breath.

There was no daddy in their lives, she reminded herself, slinging her leather tote over her shoulder and heading toward class.

As far as she was concerned, the father of her baby was 93579. A brown-haired Caucasian with an excellent health record, a high I.Q. and interests in classical music and Jayhawk basketball.

The dark hair and intellectual pursuits were to match her own. The clean bill of health was to prevent any future need to contact the donor of the sperm she’d selected from the Washburn Fertility Clinic.

She’d paid good money to ensure anonymity. That stupid note meant nothing. This was her baby. No one else’s.

It wasn’t the way she’d planned to have a family.

But it was the way it had to be.

JOSH TANNER SAT in the second row of his Community Psychology class and watched his professor, Dr. Rachel Livesay, rub the small of her back. It was a subtle movement done with her left hand, hardly noticeable considering the way her right hand flitted through the air with the grace of an exotic dancer, emphasizing each point she made as she lectured.

He liked watching her mouth, too. Her lips were tinted with a frosty neutral shade of lipstick. They were full and sensual, and moved with the same fascinating grace as her hand, in spite of all the technical jargon and graphic examples that flowed between them. Her eyes were green and almond-shaped, a perfect foil for her dark-brown hair. As rich as a sable pelt, it fell thick and straight to her shoulders in a boxy cut that swung back and forth each time she lifted her face to look at the students sitting behind him, near the top of the banked, theater-style lecture hall.

But the best thing about her was her breasts. Ripe. Full. Sensuous treasures that could fill a man’s hands and spill over into his fantasies.

With the cold of winter, she wore smooth-knit tunic sweaters that emphasized the shape and size and beauty of her breasts.

Josh breathed in deeply, slowly, silently. Savoring the gentle course of heat that raised his body temperature by several scintillating degrees.

His psych professor was a hottie.

A very pregnant, and very off-limits, hottie. Despite the fact she wasn’t wearing a ring on her left hand. He wondered about that last observation. He’d heard that pregnancy drew couples closer together. But Rachel Livesay seemed to be conspicuously alone.

His own sister-in-law had given birth just a few months ago, and Mitch Taylor, his cousin and boss—whom Josh considered his eldest brother—had mellowed considerably. Sure, falling in love in the first place had changed Mitch from a hard-ass workaholic into a much more grounded—though no less tough—precinct commander.

But with the baby… Hell, Mitch and his wife, Casey, had been downright frisky at the family’s Christmas get-together. Always touching. Holding hands. Sneaking kisses. Cooing over their newborn and each other.

Where was Dr. Livesay’s attentive mate? Was her pregnancy the accident of a misguided affair? The leftover burden of a messy divorce? The last memory of a deceased husband?

Why was a woman that beautiful and that smart walking around unattached? He couldn’t imagine any sane man not staking a possessive claim on the mother of his child.

Or those luscious breasts. Those eloquent hands. Those beautiful green eyes. Those come-kiss-me lips.

Stupid bastard.

“Mr. Tanner.”

Josh’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of his alias, as if he’d been caught condemning the unknown father out loud. But no, the professor wasn’t telepathic. And he hadn’t been broadcasting his appreciation with an admiring glance.

Had he?

It still took him a split second to assume the Josh Tanner persona and make himself think like a coed, even after a month and a half of campus life. But without allowing more than a smile of acknowledgment to crease his face, he pulled himself from the politically incorrect yet inevitable trail of his thoughts to listen to Dr. Livesay’s question.

“What do you think?”

Though he’d just turned twenty-eight, he knew a moment of juvenile panic. He broadened his smile until it dimpled on either side, buying himself some time to think. Technically, he’d been paying attention. He just hadn’t been listening to what she was saying. But he was getting better at covering his mistakes. He rolled the dice and gambled that he could fake his way through this.

“I agree with you.”

His answer earned a few snickers from his classmates.

Dr. Livesay shushed them with an upraised hand. Oh, great. What had he just agreed to?

She stepped closer, moving her hand from the small of her back to the curve of her belly. “You think training in classical music and the arts is a way to help young, displaced teens stay away from gangs?”

Josh shifted in his chair, straightening from his slouch. Lady Luck was with him today. He could do more than catch up with the discussion. He took the topic and ran with it.