The emergency room at Medical Center Hospital smelled like hospitals everywhere. The medicinal stink of disinfectant overlaid the faint, grim mingling of sweat, blood and less pleasant odors. Min lay on the examining table in a small white room with gleaming metal fixtures and a punishingly bright light. She wore a hospital gown and a thin sheet. A clear plastic tube led to the back of her right hand, where tape held the needle in place while the IV machine hummed as it pumped fluids into her.
The IV made it a little harder to hold Zhao 's hand, but she managed.
She'd been holding on to him ever since he shoved his way into the room fifteen minutes after she arrived at the hospital in siren wailing style, driven there by one of the officers from the fire scene. Zhao had arranged that.
Even during the discomfort and embarrassment of the exam, she'd held on to him. He'd refused to leave, too— but she hadn't really given him much choice. One corner of Min's mind marveled at herself. When she fell apart for the first time in her adult life, she'd called Zhao. It had been the one thought in her mind by the time she reached her car, bent over from a fierce cramp, feeling the thin, terrifying trickle of blood down her leg she would call Zhao and he'd take care of everything. He might not love her or want her, but she'd known on a bone deep level she could count on him for this. And she'd been right.
Strangely, lying on a cold examining table, waiting to see if she would hold on to the life inside her or not, Min didn't think of Zhao as the overwhelming lover who'd planted that life in her. She thought of him as the man she'd come to know over the past two years a hard man, strong, sometimes inflexible. An honorable man.
And now she couldn't let go of him, but she couldn't talk to him, either. She could barely talk at all. Words were her tools, her livelihood, but they were locked up inside her, shut away tight in some frightened pocket of her soul.
She didn't dare open the door to let them out. Who knew what would come out with them?
"You okay?" Zhao asked softly.
She searched for words she could use. Safe words. "I haven't been in the hospital since I broke my ankle in college," she said. "Not as a patient. Why do they keep it so cold in here? Stupid to keep it so cold when it must be eighty degrees outside."
"I'll get you another cover," he said, and let go of her hand. It took a conscious effort on her part to release his hand in turn so he could move away. He didn't bother to summon a nurse, but went to one of the cabinets and started looking for another of the thin sheets.
Later she would probably be embarrassed, maybe humiliated, over the way she'd been clinging to him. Later she might feel a lot of things. "I didn't know it mattered this much," she whispered. "I've only known about the baby for a few days. I never thought about being a mother, never planned on it. Why does it matter so much?"
He was back, laying a doubled up sheet over her. Hands she remembered as big and hard and passionately demanding were careful, gentle, as they tucked the sheet over her.
A feeling like grief twisted inside her.
"When I was thirteen," he said as his hands stilled, resting on either side of her, "my folks gave me a CB radio for Christmas. I hadn't asked for one, and when I first opened the box I wasn't sure what to think. But by that afternoon I was crazy about that radio. It was a great gift, even if I hadn't known I would want it."
His eyes met hers eyes as clear and bleak as rain in December, storm racked eyes. "I guess that's a stupid story, comparing a radio and a baby."
"No." The tape pulled on the back of her hand as she reached for his hand again. His fingers closed around hers quickly. He needs this, too, she realized with a little jolt that reached past the fear and confusion. Zhao needs this contact as much as I do.
He wanted the baby, really wanted it, and he was frightened and hurting, just like her.
The knowledge steadied her. She tightened her grip.
"No, it isn't a stupid story. I guess...we don't always know what we need." She hesitated, then said, to give him hope,
"I haven't had any cramps for a while now."
He looked away. "Well, that's good." He studied the wall as if he were talking to it instead of her, but his hand tightened convulsively. "That's got to be a good sign." She'd practically stopped bleeding, too, since reaching the hospital only a bit of spotting. That was enough to make her hope, but, curiously, hope was almost as hard to endure as waiting. She knew very well that any bleeding at this stage was bad. "They should be back in soon to tell us about the tests."
He didn't answer. His face gave nothing away. If she hadn't been watching closely, she wouldn't t nave noticed the way his throat worked. " Zhao?"
"I's my fault," he said, then burst out, "My God, I don't know why you even want me here. Why you let me be here. I left you alone. You shouldn't have been alone." She blinked, confused. What did he mean? She shouldn't have been alone tonight, at the fire? She shouldn't have been alone the past two months?
Before she could find words or reasons, the door to their little prison opened, and the doctor who had examined her stepped in. She wore pale blue slacks with the inevitable stethoscope snaked into the pocket of her white lab coat, Short hair framed her round face in a halo of white curls.
"Mr. and Mrs. Jing?"
"I'm Lieutenant Yang," Zhao said without moving away from Min's side. "Ms. Jing and I aren't married."
"I see." Quick blue eyes assessed them both. "Are you living together? Normally that would be none of my business, but whether or not I release Ms. Jing will depend on the amount of care available to her at home."
"I'll take care of her," Zhao said.
At the same moment Min exclaimed, "Release me? I can go home, then? I—the baby_" She stopped to blink back tears.
The doctor smiled at her. "As far as I can tell, your baby is just fine."
Min closed her eyes, dizzy with relief and a huge, enveloping joy. Her baby was all right. "I can go home," she said, to make it real. "But..." She opened her eyes and faced the other half of the truth. "I shouldn't have cramped and bled like that. Something is wrong, isn't it?" The doctor came closer. "My diagnosis will need to be confirmed, and you'll want to check with your own gynecologist. But my preliminary exam indicates a thinning of the cervix. Tell me, Ms. Jing, did your mother mention any difficulties in carrying you to term? Something she might have taken medication for?"
"I didn't know my mother."
"I see. Well, it's likely that a drug she took during pregnancy is the cause of your condition. DES was widely prescribed thirty one years ago to help women in danger of certain types of miscarriage carry babies to term. Unfortunately, the drug caused certain abnormalities in some of those babies, including a thinning of the cervix in the females."
"My mother..." The words, so seldom spoken, felt odd in Min's mouth. She glanced from the doctor to Zhao and back, bewildered. "No, I doubt she took anything like that.
My mother left me at the door of an orphanage. In a basket," she added, striving for the usual wry humor with which she told this story. "With a note pinned to the blanket. She gave me a two month test run before deciding she'd gotten the wrong model, or just couldn't afford the upkeep." Min had come to terms with her abandonment years and years ago. This doctor had no business implying her mother had actually wanted her. She knew differently.
"Yet it looks like she went to some trouble to give birth to you," the doctor said. "But the point now is the effect this has on your own pregnancy. If you want to carry your baby to term, you're going to have to make some major adjustments in your life. First, you'll need to take medical leave from your job."
Min couldn't take it in. She tried, but she couldn't make sense of what the doctor said, either about the woman who had borne her, or about her job. She couldn't quit work.
That made no sense. Her job was her home, her identity.
Who would she be if she weren't at the paper every day?
But she couldn't keep her job, either. That became clear as Zhao asked questions and the doctor answered. Gravity had become Min's enemy. She was going to have to stay off her feet almost completely for the next week, and to some extent for the duration of the pregnancy.
She would lose her baby if she kept working.
Everything after that was a little blurry. At one point Zhao left to speak to the people in the waiting room people Min hadn't known were there. Maybe he'd told her and it hadn't penetrated. His brother was there, waiting to hear about the baby. So was Xinou and Yichen and another cop who worked with Zhao.
Min got dressed while Zhao was gone. She was just stepping into her sandals when the doctor stopped in to give her the results of the last blood test.
"Everything looks good. Try not to worry too much," the woman said, patting Min's hand. "Some women with a fragile cervix must resort to surgery, but your condition isn't that extreme. Your body stopped bleeding and cramping on its own, which is an encouraging sign. In fact, I'm surprised you had this much trouble this early in the pregnancy. Perhaps you've been under extra stress lately? Or were on your feet an especially long time today?"
"Yes," Min said, clenching her teeth against the guilt.
"Yes to both. It's my fault, then."
"Your activities helped bring on the bleeding," the doctor agreed bluntly, "but you had no way of knowing that would happen. And it's better to discover this now instead of later." She gave Min's hand a last pat. "Go home with your young man now, and let him pamper you. It will make you both feel better."'
Min looked up. Her "young man' stood just inside the door, waiting with the alert patience that made him a good police officer. She hadn't noticed him come in. But a lot of things were happening that her mind didn't seem to record properly. For example, at some point she must have agreed that Zhao was going home with her tonight. She didn't remember doing that, but it was happening, so she must have.
"Ready?" he asked softly.
She nodded. It occurred to her then that something was missing- Zhao 's hat. He always wore that hat, yet he'd left his apartment without it after she called.
The thought moved her to an absurd degree.
They wouldn't let her walk out. Zhao went to bring his Jeep up to the door when the nurse showed up with the wheelchair. Min gritted her teeth and made herself joke with Xinou about it, because he was still there, limping alongside her as the nurse wheeled her out.
"You'd better go home," she told him, feeling awkward and out of context as she sat in the wheelchair near the door, waiting for Zhao 's Jeep to pull up. "I get to sleep in late tomorrow. You don't."
"Editors don't sleep," he said. "Like vampires, we're at our best at night."
It was an old joke, but she smiled anyway.
"Min, I would never—I shouldn't have sent you to that fire. I wasn't thinking. You'd just told me about being pregnant, and I wasn't thinking. I should have"
"No," she said, "there wasn't a thing you should have done differently. You didn't know it would be a problem."
"Yes, I do believe you are, though you may not realize it yourself yet." Zhao 's Jeep pulled up then, dusty and black, invisible in the night except for the glare of its headlights. Xinou glanced at it and smiled. "I'll stop by tomorrow and we can talk about insurance and such. You've chosen well for yourself, Min."
With those ambiguous words he left. Min waited for Zhao to get out, feeling helpless, a stranger in her own body, dependent on a man who'd left her and for now, just for tonight, she discovered, she was too tired to care.
She was asleep before they were halfway home.
Zhao laid the sleeping woman carefully in the bed he'd turned down before carrying her up the stairs to her apartment. She hardly stirred. Light from the living room spilled in through the open door, just enough light to show the sweet, lush curves of her body, the sleeping serenity of her face.
Zhao sat beside her for a moment, telling himself he was catching his breath. Toting a woman up a flight of stairs wasn't all that easy at forty. Especially at the end of a night like this one.
God, he thought, and it was more prayer than profanity, a mingled plea and thanksgiving. What a night it had been.
His hands shook as he slipped her sandals off. The tremor had nothing to do with muscular fatigue, and everything to do with all he had nearly lost that night. He considered undressing her and decided to settle for unfastening her bra, which he did, then stood. His lower back twist.
Min was no lightweight, that was sure. One corner of his mouth turned up at the thought as he pulled the covers up. She sighed, snuggled into the pillow, and sank more deeply into the sleep her body needed so badly.
No, she was no lightweight. Min was strong inside and out, as stubbornly independent as a cat. And even less likely to forgive.
His slight smile faded into grimness. He left her sleeping there, left the bedroom door open behind him as he took care of putting the rest of the place to bed for what remained of the night. He locked the front door and checked the windows before turning off the lamp and sitting on one of her couches. Heaving a sigh, he pulled off his boots. For a moment he sat there in the darkness and let his shoulders slump beneath the weight of guilt and silence.
She had a great deal to forgive. More than she knew.
More than he intended for her ever to know. But, he thought as he reached for the afghan that, in the darkness, showed none of its multicolored brightness, he'd take things one sin at a time.
He stretched out on the longest of her two couches and closed his eyes. Best to concentrate on the lie he intended to tell her tomorrow, he decided. Eventually she was going to figure that one out, but with any luck, by then it would be too late.
When Min opened her eyes, the sun wasn't peeking through the drapes at her window with its usual early morning hesitation. Instead it poured through the slit to slap the carpet with the bright, hot glare of midday.
She turned her head and stared at the clock on her dresser in disbelief. Noon? It was twelve o'clock noon?
It wasn't until she sat up in a late for work panic that the events of the night before rushed back to her. She clutched her stomach, waiting to feel...something. A cramp, a clue, some evidence of the frightening new fragility of her body. But she felt fine... except that her bra was tangled up beneath her armpits, and she'd slept in her clothes.
Min considered that, flushed, and pulled off the dress she'd slept in. Zhao must have put her to bed. At least, she thought with an unstable mixture of emotions, he'd done no more than unfasten her bra. She ought to be grateful he'd tried to make her comfortable without undressing her.
He'd done a lot for her last night, and he'd left without embarrassing her this morning.
But whatever she was feeling, it wasn't gratitude.
Min threw her bra on the floor and grimaced, remembering the way she'd clung to Zhao. She'd been so damned needy.
Yet she'd had the impression he'd needed to hold on to her, too. She shook her head, confused by what had been clear and obvious the night before. Could she have been right? Could Zhao really have needed her?
She got up and went to the bathroom, where she took her robe from the hook on the back of the door and considered a shower. Later, she decided. From the way her stomach was growling, food needed to be first on her agenda. After all, she thought as she opened the door of her bedroom, she wasn't going anywhere today, was she?
She was several steps into the living area before the smell of coffee and the sizzle of cooking meat penetrated the muddle of emotions hazing her mind. She frowned... and noticed the Stetson hat placed neatly, brim up, on her coffee table. If Zhao 's hat was here, so was he.
But Zhao wasn't supposed to be here now. It was noon.
He should have been long gone, off playing cop.
Then she saw the boxes— two of them, large cardboard boxes like the supermarket throws out every day. The biggest one sat on the floor near the blue couch. It was closed.
The flaps on the one next to it were open. She walked over and looked inside, and saw neatly folded piles of clothing.
Men's clothing.
Zhao came out of her tiny kitchen. He wore a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and carried her big orange coffee mug, the one with the quote from Mae West that read, Between two evils, I always pick the one I've never tried before. "I don't know whether you want breakfast or lunch," he said, "but either way I figure you'll want a cup of coffee first."
She inhaled longingly, lusting after the coffee he was tempting her with. "I'm not supposed to have caffeine."
"It's decaf."
He was being too good to her, too careful of her, too...present. "What are you doing still here?" she burst out.
He raised one dark brow. "Don't you remember? I told you I would take care of you, and you agreed." "I don't need to be taken care of! And even if I did, you wouldn't need those—" she gestured wildly at the packing boxes "—to do it."
"How can I take care of you if I'm not here?" he asked with infuriating patience. "Of course, we have a lot to settle about what I should bring over and how much time I should take off. You were too groggy last night for us to discuss it in any detail, so I just brought some clothes over for now."
"You're crazy," she said flatly.
"We'll talk after you eat." He came farther into the room, and set the mug on the coffee table by the red couch.
"What's it going to be breakfast or lunch? I found hamburger meat in your freezer and tortillas in the refrigerator.
I'm cooking the meat with onions and peppers for burritos, if you want lunch."
She shook her head, not so much at the question as to try to get her brain working. "Why are you here now? You can't just call in and take a day off. You're a detective, not a lawyer or a banker or something."
He smiled. "It's Sunday. Even police detectives get a Sunday off now and again."
Oh. She'd forgotten. Last night had seemed to drag on for several days.
"We need to decide how much time I should take off this next week."
That was easy to figure out. "None."
He didn't seem to be listening. "I won't claim that it's easy for me to take off," he said, "but I'm entitled to personal leave for a family emergency."
A family emergency. He was referring to the baby, of course but it felt strange, very strange, to be so nearly part of someone's family. Kind of scary. She licked her lips nervously. "I didn't agree to you moving in."
"You really don't remember, do you? Here, you'd better sit down if we're going to talk about it now." "I didn't"
"You're supposed to stay off your feet, remember?" Reluctantly she sat within grabbing distance of the coffee steaming gently in its mug. Her afghan, she noticed, had been folded neatly and laid across the back of the couch instead of being tossed over it every which way. "You slept out here last night." She didn't realize until she spoke that she'd been worried he might have slept next to her, But he'd never wanted that, had he? To take her to bed, yes he'd wanted her passion and her body, but he hadn't slept with her. He hadn't stayed long enough.
"My presence was the condition the doctor set for releasing you from the hospital. You do remember that, don't you?"
"Yes, but that's all I agreed to." If she'd actually agreed to that. It had just sort of happened.
"You don't remember us talking about it on the way home? Min, there's no way you can take care of yourself properly this next week if you stay off your feet as much as you're supposed to."
Min frowned at him suspiciously. She didn't remember talking with him on the way home. She didn't remember anything after leaving the hospital. Could she, muddled from exhaustion and trauma, have actually agreed to let this man move in with her?
Zhao met her gaze steadily, his eyes a cool, opaque gray this morning. He looked stark, crisp and orderly in the chaotic color of her living room—a black and white lawman in pressed jeans and a clean white shirt with grizzled, timber wolf hair.
And she wanted him.
Min pulled her eyes away, shaken. He made her ache.
In spite of everything, he made her ache to touch, to be touched— surely, oh, surely, she couldn't want more. Not now.
Yet she knew what he smelled like when her face was pressed into the crook between his neck and his shoulder, knew the way his muscles quivered when she licked him there. And it was too much, simply too much, her desire for this man, the need that bubbled up ceaselessly like the clear, hot water from a hidden spring. Too much, on top of everything else that was curvy in her life.
For once, Min refused to face, straight out, what had to be faced. "Whatever you're cooking will be okay." Without looking at him she reached for her coffee.
"In that case, lunch will be ready in a few minutes."
"Fine."
Zhao studied the woman he was lying to for a moment longer before turning away. He didn't fool himself he'd won, or even that he'd really convinced her. But he was here, and that was enough for now.
Besides, he thought, smiling as he headed for the kitchen, he had Min's door key in his pocket. She was going to have one hell of a time kicking him out once she pulled herself together enough to try to do it.
Min ate two burritos, spoke little and fled to take a shower as soon as she finished eating. Xinou arrived when she was barely dry. Zhao let him in, then set his laptop computer on her table and worked on a report, giving her a degree of privacy while she talked to her boss. He didn't even listen in... much.
He heard enough to know she was on indefinite medical leave.
Staying away from the job she loved wasn't going to be easy for her. Zhao knew that much, though he was beginning to realize there was one hell of a lot he didn't know about the woman who was carrying his baby. A few months ago he would have said Min wasn't capable of putting anything or anyone ahead of her career.
He knew better now. He'd seen her last night, when she thought she might lose the baby. When Xinou stood to leave, he spoke to Zhao. "Want to walk downstairs with me, Yang?"'
Their eyes met. Zhao read the other man's intentions easily. Min didn't have any family to look after her, but apparently she did have friends who would stand up for her.
Zhao found he was pleased to learn that. He nodded and hit a couple of keys, saving his work.
Min groaned. "No, Xinou. You promised."
"I didn't call him," the older man said mildly.
"You're determined to embarrass me, aren't you?"
"It's all right," Zhao said, shutting off his laptop as he stood.
"No, it isn't." Min sat on the red couch, her legs tucked up, looking aggrieved and luscious. The loose, swingy shirt she wore had wide yellow-and-white stripes and ended at her waist, concealing what Zhao knew were splendid breasts. Her snug white shorts bared every inch of her long legs. Zhao 's mouth went dry when he looked at her.
"The two of you," she said firmly, "are not going to sneak out of here and play macho man games, do you hear?"'
He smiled, dry-mouthed and aching as he crossed the room to stand next to the couch and torment himself by looking down at her. "You're cute when you pout." Her eyes went wide with outrage. "I do not" He bent quickly and dropped a light kiss on her mouth.
"I'll be back in a minute."
The kiss had been a mistake, he decided as he closed the door behind him. No matter how much he'd enjoyed astonishing Min into silence, it had been a mistake. Even that casual taste of her was too much.
Damn, he was obsessed, wasn't he? Or maybe masochistic. He was hard and aching from one look at her legs, one brief taste of her mouth, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it for at least a week. Maybe a lot longer.
Like the next seven months or so.
"We've run into each other a time or two over the years," Xinou said, taking the stairs one slow step at a time.
He used his cane on one side and the railing on the other to steady himself. "I don't claim to know you well, Yang, but what I do know I've respected."
"Until now?" Zhao asked dryly. He held himself to Xinou's slow pace. The stairs were bound to be hell on the man's knees, but he'd come to see Min anyway, when he could have called or sent someone or both. Zhao had respected Xinou before. Now, he thought he was beginning to like him. "Did you come here to talk to Min, or to check me out?"
"No reason I can't do both, is there?"
"I guess not," Zhao said, and with those words conceded Xinou's right to question him about Min.
"I know you've been Min's cop for the last year or so.
She's gotten a few tips from you, passed you some information."
They were almost to the landing. "Yeah, we've worked together awhile now."
"I also know you hurt her." Xinou reached the landing and turned to face Zhao. The skin on his face was taut— maybe from pain. Maybe from anger. "Not that she confided in me. Min's too used to being alone to do that, but I know her. She'd been unhappy the past couple months, deep-down unhappy. I didn't know why until I learned about her pregnancy."
Zhao sucked a breath in. "I didn't intend to hurt her.
I... made a mistake,"
"Don't make any more."
Xinou was a tall man, tall enough to look Zhao in the eyes, but he was also over sixty and half-crippled. The threat in his voice might have seemed ludicrous. Zhao met the judgment in those hard brown eyes and didn't feel the least amused. "I won't make the same mistake again," he said quietly. "But I can't promise never to hurt her."
"Do you love her?"
Anger surged in from nowhere, a confusing force, fierce and directionless, that swept over him in a wave. "I like her. I respect her." I want her so badly I don't know how I'm going to stay sane when I don't dare touch her.
"That's not what I asked."
As swiftly and unreasonably as it had hit, Zhao 's anger receded. He clenched his fists against the undertow. "I don't know what the hell I feel, all right?"
"Are you going to marry her?"
"Yes," Zhao said, because this much he was sure of.
The other man's eyebrows went up in surprise or disbelief. "She's agreed?"
"No. But she will."