Protecting the Pregnant Witness by Julie Miller Page B

sounds, he heard what could have been a sniffle or a curse coming from her bedroom. There was a shuffle of movement, the squeak of the mattress as she sat on the bed, a telltale beep as she pushed her answering machine to play her messages.
    He had plenty to think about to keep him from eavesdropping on a message about her work schedule at the medical center and an appointment reminder from her OB/GYN. But good intentions and errant hormones and unfamiliar feelings couldn’t distract him from the third message. The cop in him responded to the male voice, the false apology, the inherent threat.
    “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for us at the hospital, Josie. Pity, really—you seem like such a nice young woman. I’ve never gotten that close to someone who was pregnant before. What’s that like, feeling something growing inside you? I wish I had more time to get better acquainted with you and the baby. But I’m afraid business must come first. Don’t worry, though. I promise we’ll be meeting again…when there’s no one around to interrupt us.”
    Rafe was inside Josie’s bedroom before the message ended. He found her half-dressed, hugging the blouse against her chest. Her eyes were huge, her voice a whisper when she turned to him. “Rafe?”
    “Pack your bag.”

Chapter Six

    Josie startled at the tweak on her ponytail, but quickly exhaled a calming breath and smiled at the deep brogue that trilled against her ear.
    “Hey, girlie.” Uncle Robbie hugged her shoulders and reached across her to steal a pretzel from the bowl on the bar and pop it into his mouth. “You’re mighty jumpy this evening. Everything all right?”
    “I’m fine.” Josie dumped the dregs of two beers into the sink behind the bar and set the pilsners into the crate with the glasses she’d been rinsing. “I just have lots on my mind tonight.”
    Like that phone call at her apartment. If she hadn’t already been creeped out by the mystery man at the hospital, the message might have been a casual flirtation. But someone had sabotaged her car. The surgeon in the ball cap had appeared and vanished like magic. And then that unsettling call—on her line, at her home—had mentioned the baby. Somehow, his curiosity about her pregnancy intensified the threat and gave the subtext behind that message a more disturbing meaning.
    Josie felt a dampness against her belly and snapped from her thoughts when she realized her wet, sudsy hand had soaked through her blouse, maternity jeans and panties where she had instinctively protected her child. “Oh, shoot.” She flicked the suds off her hands and reached for a towel.
    “Is everything all right with Junior?” he asked, stepping back to give her room to dab at her clothes.
    “The baby’s fine, too.”
    “Still no help from that no-good father whose name you won’t tell me?”
    More help than she wished, actually.
    “Give it a rest, Robbie.”
    The last thing she wanted was for Rafe’s friendship with her uncle to splinter the way theirs had. She’d grown up in a fractured family and knew how important it was to maintain ties with every person she cared about. And Rafe had no one, really, besides his friends on SWAT Team One. And her. But he’d made it more than plain that he didn’t want her—or rather, that he didn’t want to want her. He certainly didn’t want the baby. And since they were a package deal, she was beginning to lose hope that her longtime fantasy of sharing a life with Rafe Delgado would ever come true.
    Robbie shifted back and forth on his feet beside her, then cleared his throat. Josie turned her head to see what topic this natural-born blarney man was having such a difficult time with.
    “What?” she asked.
    He cleared his throat again. “Well, I was just thinking. If this nonexistent man of yours could help you with some money… I won’t be able to give you the bonus I was hoping to, this month.”
    “It’s all right, Robbie,” she assured him,