Maternal Instinct (29 page)

Voice expressionless, Hugh said, "I'm not so sure it's being pregnant that you're having a hard time dealing with." And then, he walked away.

She should have followed him, insisted that they talk about it, claimed she didn't know what he meant. But she did.

Pregnancy, raising a child alone, those she'd done before, knew she could do again. Marriage, though, with all the sacrifice of independence and autonomy that it entailed, was another matter. What infuriated her was seeing how easy it was for Hugh. Why wasn't he wrestling with these same issues? Why was everything so damn easy for him?

No fair! she wanted to cry.

Hugh and Kim made dinner that evening, with him barbecuing hamburgers while she made pasta salad. Sitting out in the living room, pretending to watch a television show, Nell listened enviously to their laughter and the quiet rumble of Hugh's voice.

Even her daughter made it look easy.

Of course, Kim didn't know how likely it was that Hugh would decide one day that he couldn't stand to play husband and daddy any longer.

Over dinner, Nell tried very hard to participate in the conversation, to laugh when they did, but inside she was a teeming mass of anxiety.

How could she live like this, acting as if this family would last forever when she knew it wouldn't? Knew how desperately Hugh must be chafing at a domestic life she'd condemned him to when she said, "I do"?

But it hurt when at bedtime she paused to talk to Kim, settling down to watch a rented video, and came up to the bedroom no more than five minutes after Hugh only to find he'd already turned out the light on his side and lay with his back to her.

Was he deliberately paying her back, Nell wondered. She wanted to be angry at behavior so petty, but couldn't find a coal warm enough to flare even when she blew on it. The hurt was too all-consuming.

He was mad at her. He didn't like her. He didn't even want her, not really, not the way he'd said he did.

She quietly undressed and put on a nightgown, running a hand over the small mound of her belly. If only she hadn't gotten pregnant…

But she couldn't even
think
that with much force anymore, not now that the baby had come to feel so real to her, so much a part of her and her future. No. She wouldn't undo her pregnancy, even if she could.

After brushing her teeth, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were tinted with color, either from the sun today or from her tumultuous emotions. She looked almost pretty. As pretty as she ever would look.

She couldn't take the pregnancy back. Wouldn't take it back. And probably, if she was honest with herself, not the marriage, either. She and Hugh were trying to do what was right. So why was she making them both miserable only because they weren't in love?

Stricken, Nell stared at herself in the mirror. "Because
he
isn't in love," she whispered, speaking the truth at last. Meeting her own eyes, she couldn't lie.

She
was
in love.

Which was the source of all her unhappiness.

But Hugh was trying. He was kind, funny, easygoing, and even passionate. Unhappy in love did
not
mean she couldn't try as well, Nell scolded herself. He wouldn't guess, just because she acted like a human being, that she craved what he couldn't give.

Taking a deep breath, Nell turned out the bathroom light, marched to the bed and slipped in. Before she could chicken out, Nell stroked his warm, strong back and whispered, "Hugh? I'm sorry."

His muscles went stiff under her hand. "For what?"

"For being such a coward," she said softly. She swallowed. "Don't give up on me, okay?"

Hugh rolled over and gathered her into his arms. Voice low, rough, he said, "I wouldn't think of it," and kissed her with a sort of pent-up, desperate passion that found its echo in her.

Unless he tasted them, he would never know that she wept silent tears even as she kissed him back.

Chapter 13

«
^
»

T
he next couple
of weeks were the most frustrating of Hugh's life. At home, Nell blew hot and cold, while on the job all he could do was interview the same people he'd already talked to twice, and learn no more than he had before. Meantime, he continued to dodge his mother, even though he felt guilty as hell doing so.

He wished he knew what Nell's problem was. He thought they'd gotten off to a pretty damn good start, considering they'd married because of an unwanted pregnancy. He had never enjoyed a woman's company the way he had Nell's during their too brief honeymoon. She was like him in ways that counted. Funny, considering he'd originally hated working with her because she thought like a woman. Truth was, she thought like a cop, too. Like him.

But she was also infuriatingly a woman. He couldn't ask, "What the hell is wrong?" and get a straight answer. Her mood shifted from day to day. He'd catch her in tears and she'd make an excuse. Yesterday, she wasn't talking to him, today she was. Half the time he tiptoed around her, sensing she was so brittle she'd crack if he looked at her wrong.

He never knew when they went to bed whether she'd freeze him out or turn to him with passion that blistered his toes. Hormones, Hugh kept reminding himself with gritted teeth; both his brothers had warned him about pregnant women.

Hugh knew more than that was going on, though. What he couldn't figure out was what had triggered her moodiness. On the honeymoon, she'd seemed okay with the marriage. Nervous, sure, but … willing. She'd responded to him physically with breathtaking openness and passion. He'd never had sex like he did with her. They'd connected.

They'd talked, too. Hugh told her things he hadn't even told John or Connor, and he knew from her rusty voice and slow dredging of memories that the stories of her childhood and the tough first years after Kim was born weren't easy for her to tell, either.

So why the hell had she clammed up now? Had he done something terribly wrong? Would it kill her to tell him what it was?

If things had been going better at work, he might have handled this first month of his marriage better. But his initial triumph at being pulled back onto the task force was crumbling as he failed to learn a single thing he hadn't already known.

You hid under your desk, is that right?
Yes, Officer.
Do you know where anyone else was hiding?
No, all of us standing in the hall just ran. Going to my office was instinctive, I guess. I was too scared to pay attention to where anyone else was going.

St. Clair stuck to his story with the tenacity of a Rottweiler refusing to give up a favorite chew toy. Margaret Bissell's office mate had been out that day, meaning no one had any idea what she was doing between the time they heard the elevator rising to the fifth floor and the arrival of the first police officers ten minutes or more later.

Hugh was meeting some resistance—people were getting irritated at having to answer his questions again. With John's permission, Hugh was blunt about police suspicions regarding Jerome Ryman's murder, but instead of increased cooperation, he met with less. The idea that one of them was a cold-blooded murderer was met with incredulity. Even the couple of women who had originally told him that the second gunshot sounded nearer than the first now tried to recant.

"If you're going on what I said about the two shots, I have to tell you I really don't know." Just today, Carrie
Engen
had squeezed her hands together and gazed at him with anxious eyes. "I mean, I was so scared, and it all happened so fast, I could easily have been confused. In fact, now that I think back I'm not sure anymore. Gann
must
have killed Jerome. Nothing else makes sense!"

If he didn't have a breakthrough soon, he'd be back patrolling the strip, Hugh thought grimly. This failure wouldn't increase his chances of being offered a promotion to detective again, either.

A promotion that he was beginning to regret having turned down. He didn't like being a lackey, Hugh was discovering. What's more, this investigation had been more interesting than he'd anticipated. The puzzle engaged him, kept him thinking. Nell had asked him once whether he wanted to spend the rest of his career breaking up bar brawls and walking into convenience store holdups. The answer, he was discovering, was no.

He felt as if he was letting John down, too. His big brother had risked looking like an idiot by pulling Hugh off the street and trusting him with this investigation, even though it meant a delay in putting out a final report on the Gann shooting. If Hugh came up with zip, people might wonder if John had given him this chance just because of their relationship.

Maybe he had, Hugh thought in one of his lower moments. John had tried his damnedest to discourage him. Maybe he'd figured the only way he would succeed was by letting little brother chase butterflies.

This afternoon, Hugh had pulled out the ballistics and autopsy reports again. Gann had been packing plenty of weapons. Why couldn't ballistics match the bullet in Ryman's body with one of Gann's pieces? But, however carefully he read, Hugh came to the same dead end. Gann couldn't have killed Ryman, unless someone walked off with the gun. Who? How? Why? He'd sat at the conference table in the room turned over to the task force and yanked at his hair.

Nell was the only one Hugh could talk to about Ryman's murder, the only one who had believed in him from the get-go. With her quiet and secretive the past few days, tension was coiling tighter and tighter in Hugh's gut. That night, lying in bed and feeling a burn in his belly, staring at the paler rectangle of the window, he wondered if he was getting an ulcer. Stress was supposed to do that to you, and he sure as hell had that.

Tonight Nell had been sound asleep when he came to bed an hour after her. He'd heard her slow, soft breathing, felt the utter relaxation in her body. Selfishly he'd wanted to wake her. Making love to his wife was the only thing that felt right to him these days. Buried in her, he could forget the questions that filled his mind and tangled with each other until they made no more sense than a screen of computer garbage. But she needed her rest, and he liked lying beside her when she slept, especially when she turned to him as if it were totally natural and burrowed until their limbs were wrapped together and her breath tickled his chest.

Tonight he rubbed his stomach and wished he hadn't had that last cup of coffee. At this rate, he'd be drinking nothing but milk.

Nell let out a long breath and rolled toward him. Hugh tensed, but she didn't cuddle. Instead, after a minute or two had passed, she murmured, "Can't you sleep?"

"I'm sorry. Did I wake you? Maybe I should get up and read for a while." He started to sit up, but she laid a hand on his arm.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing for you to lose sleep over."

"If you are, why shouldn't I?" she asked simply.

Hugh lay still for a moment, slammed by relief. When she said things like that, he guessed maybe she was in this for the long haul. Suddenly hungry to hold her, he reached out and gathered her into his arms.

She came, resting her cheek on his shoulder, her hand stroking his face. "Tell me," she whispered.

"I'm not getting anywhere on this Ryman thing, and I'm letting John down," Hugh said gruffly. He turned his head so he could kiss the palm of her hand.

"Why are you letting him down?" she asked from the darkness.

"You know there is no task force anymore?" He grunted. "I'm it. John is waiting on me."

"He'd look foolish if he didn't," Nell said with acerbity. "How could he explain Ryman?"

"Pick your favorite." He kissed the top of her head, savoring the faint flowery scent of her shampoo. "Some ghoul walked out with the weapon."

"We were there! No one had the chance."

He played the devil's advocate. "If someone had time to murder Ryman, he or she sure as hell had time to pocket a handgun."

"Killing someone you hate is horrible but makes sense," she argued with spirit. "When you can't possibly know for sure that the shooter is dead, risking your life to pop out into the hall for a souvenir is insane. And how would anyone know he'd discarded a gun there?"

"Unless he was watching." Frowning at the dark ceiling, Hugh said, "I'm missing something."