Her fingers missed his touch. She focused on that lack, glommed on it as the camera once again moved across her belly. She couldn’t see the screen now. Wasn’t sure if Seth could. She wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she’d closed her eyes. Was remembering him standing beside her. Holding her hand.

  For that second, he’d been the man he’d once been in her life.

  She missed him.

  “I see.” Dr. Miller broke the silence that had fallen. “Right.” Annie figured she was speaking about something Shanice had relayed when she’d gone to collect her.

  Had the doctor been in another patient’s room? Was whatever they were looking at urgent enough to interrupt an exam?

  No. She’d had a glimpse of Dr. Miller at the desk in her office when they’d come down the hall.

  “I’m just going to try to move the baby a bit,” Dr. Miller said, applying very slight pressure to Annie’s stomach. And then said, “Okay, let’s try to get a heartbeat.”

  A tense few seconds followed, with Annie staring at the two medical personnel crowding the space. She’d held on for about as long as she could. Panic was welling.

  Movement sounded off to her right. Slight. And then big, warm fingers enveloped her cold hand lying on the edge of the table, and she could breathe again. She didn’t look at Seth. Didn’t dare. She couldn’t fall apart. And she couldn’t fall into him, either.

  There were three people with her at that moment, but when she left that room, she’d be alone. Handling the situation as a single mother had to do.

  Her choice.

  She’d made it.

  The knowledge gave her an odd kind of strength. Seth’s fingers seemed to have cleared her mind enough for her to come out of the black abyss of the unknown and back into herself.

  “And...there.” Dr. Miller turned just as a sound hit the room. Not as loud and strong, but unmistakably a heartbeat.

  “There are two of them,” Shanice exclaimed.

  “And both have healthy heartbeats,” the doctor said, turning to smile at Annie as she moved away from the screen.

  Da dum, Da dum, Da dum...she heard the sound. Could see the screen now, though her eyes were blurred with moisture, but couldn’t make out two separate bodies.

  She needed to see them. To have proof that...

  And then another sound hit the room.

  Da duh, da duh, da duh... Definitely different. To her ears, it was completely different. “Like different voices,” she said, her own voice cracking. Two heartbeats.

  Two voices.

  Two babies.

  She was having twins!

  And Seth slid away from the table.

  * * *

  What was he doing here? As the ultrasound ended and they were ready to leave the room, Annie had asked Seth if he wanted to go with her to meet with the doctor. To hear about what was next.

  To hear the actual results of the ultrasound, which hadn’t yet been discussed in any detail.

  He’d said yes as though he’d given her question any thought. He hadn’t.

  But he should have done.

  As the doctor showed them to side-by-side chairs in front of her desk, he could barely lower himself into his seat. They’d been in the office before. As husband and wife.

  He knew how it looked, the two of them there together again, and it wasn’t that.

  Wasn’t ever going to be that.

  He sat out of respect for Annie. She didn’t deserve a scene. Most particularly not when he’d been the one to ask to be there at all.

  He started to clarify his reason for being there, briefly, when Dr. Miller started to speak.

  He was present as the biological father, not the dad to the baby...babies...two of them...twins...

  Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades. On his neck.

  “...the way they’re positioned, one of top of the other...” He heard more words than those, but didn’t compute them. Maybe they’d come back.

  Annie was having twins. From the embryos they’d created together. He kept hearing the same words, as he had been from Annie’s first visit to him almost three months before, as though a mere repetition of basic facts was going to serve some purpose at some point. Get him somewhere.

  They didn’t.

  “We’re going to need to watch closely,” Dr. Miller continued, speaking mostly to Annie, but looking in his direction a time or two, as well. As yet she hadn’t said anything directly to him.

  She’d know that he’d signed away his right to the embryos.

  Had Annie told her anything more about his presence there that day? Warned her?

  “It’s not unusual for one baby to be larger than the other, but I’m a little concerned about baby number two’s small size...”

  “So, what do I do? Are there some other vitamins? Something that will encourage growth? Do I sleep on my other side, or...”

  The doctor shook her head as Annie, sitting slightly forward, started in with the questions. Annie’s intent look, her attention to detail when he’d been off lolling around about where he fit in the picture, smacked him upside the head.

  Him being there wasn’t about him.

  “What are the next steps?” The calm he heard in his tone settled over him. He was the fact guy. The one with the clear head.

  That was his role. That was why he was there. It all started to play out for him in an order that made sense.

  “We’re just going to keep a close watch on things,” Dr. Miller said. “I’m telling you what I saw, and what we hope to see over the coming weeks, in terms of growth. There’s nothing for you to do.” She was looking at Annie as she said that last part. “Just continue like you are. Take your vitamins. Eat well, as we’ve already talked about, and get plenty of rest.”

  “Are you worried?” Annie asked, seeming not to relax one iota at the doctor’s words. “What do you think are my chances of carrying both to term?”

  His heart jolted. He didn’t think they needed to be going there. Though he was the one who planned for the future. Who insisted on a plan.

  “I think you have a good chance,” the fifty-something-year-old Dr. Miller said, her lab coat seeming to give the words more weight. “Twin births do tend to go into labor earlier, and with your age...we’ll be watching more closely when you get to your third trimester. We might adjust your activity level. But for now...” She shrugged.

  Seth was reassured, but looked at Annie to ascertain her emotional state. If she needed more information, they’d continue to sit there.

  She was nodding. Still intently focused. But her face didn’t look quite as pinched.

  And then the doctor mentioned that she wanted to schedule an amniocentesis, talked about the reasons why, possible genetic defects for one, as well as the risks in having the test at all, and Seth’s agitation started up again.

  His genes could be creating peril inside those little bodies. A slight risk of miscarriage came with the test to find out. There were two sacs, but a way for one needle insertion to test both.

  Annie’s skin had paled, her cheeks sucked in with tension again.

  And he knew he wasn’t done yet.

  The test was serious. And potentially uncomfortable, too.

  No way was it right for him to sit back and have Annie go through that alone.

  He was, after all, a biological contributor.

  And he loved the woman who’d have to deal with whatever he’d contributed.

  * * *

  Annie left the doctor’s office in a daze. She was having twins! More work. And more joy! A second child even if she only got the one pregnancy. Excitement rippled through her every time she relived the seconds when she recognized her second baby’s heartbeat as unique and different.

  And...the heartbeat had been fainter. That baby was too small.

  Great joy and a huge worry, all meshed together, left her emotionally exhausted and unable to slow her nerves down enough to get herself centered.

  And then there was Seth...walking silently beside her, his black dress shoes crunching against the gravel in the parking lot, his face not quite grim. But close.

  What the knowledge of two babies was doing to him, she could only guess. But knew it wouldn’t be good.

  Twins were...special. Like icing on the cake, but more like cake on cake. Two cakes.

  Before the morning’s news he’d been dealing with the loss of one baby. Now he was losing out on two...

  She had an entire, brand-new future spreading before her. A family.

  Thank God, she was finally going to have a family!

  And Seth had...nothing. Except his job. Volunteer work.

  And girlfriends along the way.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she blurted. “Work-related.” She’d thought of him a time or two over the past twenty-four hours, in terms of a case, but had specifically and stridently told herself she wasn’t going to mention it to him.

  She knew it was wrong to pull him any further into her sphere. Had consciously made the decision not to do so. And yet...something drove her to reach out to him in the only way she felt she could.

  “Because of the work you’re doing with Ben Kinder...with the youth task force...” He’d jumped right in. And with good success.

  “What do you need?” He stood a foot away, sort of meeting her gaze. Looking more toward her forehead than her eyes, but dipping down briefly, too.

  They’d reached her department-issued, unmarked sedan. She unlocked the door, hoping he didn’t see that her hand was shaking.

  She was having twins! Two babies. Two cribs. Two needing to eat at night...

  He was going to leave. Go back to San Diego. And deal with his lack of participation in the wealth all alone...

  “There’ve been a series of burglaries, mostly here, but we think they’re tied to a couple in the LA area, as well. We’ve got a fourteen-year-old kid who’s sitting in detention waiting to be arraigned, but he insists he’s innocent. That he’s been set up to take the fall for a couple of rich kids he knows...” The whole story came pouring out. About the string of burglaries, where home invasions had happened through the same kind of windows. Only cash and video games were stolen. Nothing that could be traced, like credit cards or guns. No electronics. Standing there with Parent Portal patients arriving or leaving around them, she explained how Emilio knew the kids because he’d been delivering pot to them for his older brother. Always to different places. How his brother had told him he had to keep doing what they wanted because they needed the money. And how his brother had driven him to LA to make the drop-offs.

  “Sounds like, if anything, the brother is in on it...”

  She shook her head. “My detectives already went that route. Big brother has never met the teens in question. He says they approached Emilio down at the beach because they knew his brother had connections. Emilio has been the go-between all along.

  “The two teens he names, both male, are white, with wealthy, divorced parents. Both sixteen. Neither has any kind of record or history of wrongdoing. They admit to buying pot from Emilio, but that’s all.”

  “And the LA connection?” Seth was frowning, but with concentration. It had been a long time since she’d seen him at work. Since she’d thought about how much she admired the passion he gave to his job. No one worked harder than Seth did.

  “Scott Thomason, one of the teens, visits his father there twice a month, both visits coinciding with recorded pot deliveries and burglaries.”

  “Did you get search warrants for all parties, to see if the video games turned up?”

  She nodded. “They didn’t.”

  “And I’m guessing no surveillance camera footage or prints were found from any of the scenes?”

  “There’s some footage, blurry... We can only make out movement from one body...”

  “One body, not two.”

  “It’s just in a corner of a neighboring camera. If there were two perps, the footage wouldn’t have shown it. Not from that angle. And there were no prints or anything we could get off the windows themselves. They’re a common window used by many of the builders in the area.”

  “How’d you come up with Emilio as a suspect?”

  That was part of what was making the case hard for her. “His older brother came in, gave himself up as a dealer, pot only, because he was worried what he’d gotten his brother into. He heard about the burglaries, put together that they coincided with Emilio’s deliveries, and was afraid his kid brother was heading down the wrong road.”

  Big brother cared. Annie had no doubt about that.

  “So, what do you want from me?” His words wiped out all thought for a second. She looked up at him, unable to answer.

  And then remembered what they were talking about.

  “A fair shot,” she nearly blurted. “For Emilio. The teens’ parents have already called in high-dollar attorneys. Emilio can’t afford anything but a public defender. In all of my time questioning him—after my detectives had had their go first—Emilio never came off his story. He says he didn’t do it. And that we have to believe him. Either the kid is a pro already, and working me...or he’s counting on me to help him. My detectives are still going through things, looking for anything that could prove, definitively, who’s behind the burglaries, but if they don’t come up with anything new...the best I can do is try to get this kid a top-notch attorney. I know you can’t represent him in court. But...like with your volunteer work at the center...if you could take a look at things...at least talk to him so he knows he’s being heard...give him the same high-priced-lawyer edge that the other kids have, it would level the playing field some.”

  Or give Emilio the impression that he was getting more of a fair shot.

  Not that that was necessarily going to change his outcome. But...

  “He reminds me of my dad at that age,” she said, wishing the sun shining down on them would warm the chill in the air enough that she’d quit feeling like she was ready to shiver. “If anyone had given my dad any hope that he’d be treated fairly, he’d have been off the streets long before he was...” Danny Bolin had been a good kid in a rough neighborhood. He’d done some minor things—stealing food mostly—but had been judged harshly because of where he was from. And as a young kid, with the pressure of needing to stay alive, he’d compromised his ethics a time or two, hanging with a gang for a while, for safety more than anything else. But he’d never hurt another life. Or carried a weapon.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Seth said, and while she knew real relief for Emilio, she also was swamped with guilt. She never should have called in her “dad” element. Seth knew more than most how much her father’s early years had affected her career choice. She’d played an emotional card and that hadn’t been fair.

  It was beneath her.

  Unlike her.

  But then, she didn’t know who she was, sometimes, when she was with him. The past, the years in between, the person she’d become...they all got confused, like balls in a bingo wheel, when he was around.

  He was her ex. The man who’d hurt her more than she’d ever thought possible for one person to hurt.

  He’d been the love of her life.

  He was the father of her children.

  Biological father, she amended as Seth was saying... “I can’t see him this afternoon, but I can drive back up tomorrow...” Letting his sentence float, he walked off in the direction of his own car. He was just going to leave? Had she pissed him off?

  She wanted to tell him that it was okay, she’d manage without him. That she’d been wrong to say anything. That she’d find another way. And saw him head to the passenger side of his car, instead of the driver’s side. He wasn’t leaving. He was reaching for a folder.

  And she remembered the trust. They’d emailed back and forth, and the final version was ready for her notarized signature. He had the folder outstretched as he made it back to her, saying, “Have this signed and notarized by tomorrow and I’ll get it from you when I come back and get it filed.”

  He was all business. Not mad at all, just...so distant. After what they’d just shared. She wanted to call him on it, but she just nodded. Gave his hand a squeeze he didn’t return, unlocked her car door and lowered herself in the seat, turning, with one foot still on the ground to look up at him.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded.

  “For Emilio. But also for this morning. Having you there made it...easier.”

  He nodded again. Said nothing, and then turned to go.

  Giving her neither a “you’re welcome” nor a “goodbye.”

  Annie closed the door of her car and sat watching him in the side mirror until he’d made it to his vehicle, with tears in her eyes at his aloneness. He wasn’t hers anymore. And she didn’t want him to be. But he still had the power to move her. And she still cared about what happened to him.

  Maybe life wasn’t as cut and dried as she’d thought.

  Chapter Twelve

  He loved her. Still in shock from the revelation, Seth topped the speed limit all the way back to San Diego. The hour-long commute, doubled with the return visit, meant two fewer hours in the day to get things done. And he’d be doing a repeat performance the next day, as well.

  He loved Annie.

  Of course, he did. Made sense. She’d been the other half of him, able to know his thoughts sometimes before he did...

  Love didn’t die just because someone changed professions. Maybe it didn’t ever go away. No matter how the people carrying it screwed up.

  Did she know how he felt?

  Miles flew by, road signs glinting under the sun, blue skies overhead sending promises of a bright day, and he couldn’t seem to be a part of it. He was outside looking in. On the day.