I would ever mentally bond with this character. He gives me the creeps.” Just touching the folder made her skin crawl. He had to get these women to trust him, played on their vulnerability and then struck. He was a loathsome creature of the lowest order.
Warrick was more concerned about her right now than the Sleeping Beauty Killer. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while?” He glanced at his watch. It was close to two. If he didn’t miss his guess, she hadn’t left her desk, except for bathroom runs, since she’d come in this morning. “Want to pick up some late lunch?”
She tilted her head, studying his face, suppressing a grin. “You buying?”
“No way.” Warrick laughed shortly. “I’ve seen the way you eat lately. We’ll go Dutch.” He moved behind her. “I will, however, help you out of your chair.”
Another crack, however veiled, about her weight. She could do without that, even though she’d gained a good twenty-eight pounds in the past two months. Before then, she’d stayed rail thin, actually losing weight because of an extra-long bout of morning sickness.
“Forever the gentleman. Thanks,” she waved him away, “but I’ll pass.” She opened the folder and spread it out on her desk. “I want to go through this file.”
Serial killers were not something a woman about to give birth should be concentrating on. Maybe that made him old-fashioned, he mused.
“You know, you could start thinking about decorating that spare bedroom of yours.” He knew from her brothers that she still hadn’t bought a single thing to reflect her pending motherhood.
C.J. looked at him sharply. Not him, too. He was the last one she would have thought would bother her about this. “Bad luck.”
He shook his head. “I never took you to be the superstitious type.”
Her shoulders rose and fell in a vague gesture. “We’re all superstitious in our own way.” It had taken her time to come to terms with this phase of her life, but now she wanted this baby, wanted it badly. And was afraid of wanting it. “I don’t like counting on anything unless it’s right there in front of me.”
Her comment surprised him. It wasn’t like her. “I thought I was supposed to be the cynical one.”
Her smile went straight to his inner core. It never failed to amaze him how connected he and this woman were. Even more so than he and his wife had been. As a rule he wasn’t given to close relationships, always keeping a part of himself in reserve. But there was something about C.J. that transcended that rule.
“Spend six years with someone,” she told him, “some bad habits are bound to rub off. But if you must know, you didn’t have anything to do with this one. My mother’s four aunts did a number on me once the cat was out of the bag.” Aided and abetted by her enduring trim figure, it had taken her five months to tell her family about her condition. They’d been wonderfully supportive, and ever so slightly annoyingly intrusive. “They had a dozen stories about miscarriages to tell me. Each.”
He leaned over the desk. A strand of her hair hung in her face, and he tucked it behind her ear. In typical obstinate behavior, she shook her head, causing it to come loose again. He wondered why he found that so damn attractive. He shouldn’t.
“You’re eight months along and the doctor gave you a clean bill of health. I don’t think you have to worry about miscarrying. Just about how to make the spineless wonder pay his fair share.”
Warrick was definitely too close—and making odd things happen inside her. C.J. pushed herself away from the desk—and her partner. “Warrick, I know that in your own twisted little way, you care about me. But get this through that thick head of yours. I don’t want anything from Tom Thorndyke. As far as I am concerned, this is my baby and only my baby.”
He crossed his arms before his chest. “Another case of the immaculate conception?”
Her temper was dangerously close to going over to the dark side. “Byron—”
He winced at the sound of his first name. One of these days, when he got a chance to get around to it, he was going to have it legally changed. Lord Byron had been his mother’s favorite poet while she was carrying him, but there was no reason that he had to suffer because of that.
“Okay, I’ll back off.”
“Thank you.”
He started to head for the door. “Want me to bring you back anything?”
She glanced at the folder on her desk. “Just the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s head on a platter.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Afraid that’s not the special of the day.” Warrick paused for a moment longer, looking at her. There was affection in his eyes, as well as concern. “Take some personal time.”
She just waved him off, then watched appreciatively as he walked away. The man had one hell of a tight butt.
“Damn hormones,” she muttered to herself as she began to pore over the folder he had given her.
Her hands braced on the arms of her office chair, C.J. pushed herself up to her feet. It was late, but she wasn’t finished yet. Time for her hourly sojourn to the bathroom.
She hated this lumbering girth that had become hers. In top condition since the age of ten when she’d picked up her first free weight to brain her older brother, Brian—an occurrence her father had prevented at the last moment—C.J. hated physical restrictions of any kind. The last two months of her pregnancy had forced her to assume a lifestyle she disliked intensely.
The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that she was doing it for her baby’s good. But it was rough being noble, especially as she watched War rick team up with other people, handling cases she wanted to be handling. She’d never been one to sit on the sidelines and it was killing her.
“Ah, I see you’re ready to go.”
Turning around, C.J. saw Diane Jones coming toward her. She didn’t remember making any arrangements to meet her mother at the office. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your mother?” Diane pressed a quick kiss to her daughter’s temple. “Ethan had a deposition to take not far from here. He dropped me off.” She tapped her wristwatch. “Chris, your Lamaze class starts in half an hour. At this time of day, it might take us that long to get there. Let’s go.”
She’d only gotten halfway through the details in the reports. Besides, she wasn’t in the mood to stretch and lie on the floor. Class wasn’t as much fun now that Sherry and Joanna were gone, each having given birth.
“I was thinking of not going,” she told her mother.
Protests had never gotten in Diane’s way. She hooked her arm through her daughter’s, tugging her in the direction of the door.
“Fine. And you can continue thinking about it on the way there.” She used her “mom” voice, the one that had allowed her to govern four energetic boys and a daughter whose energy level went off the charts. “Let’s go, Chris. Don’t make me get Warrick in here to convince you.”
Funny how much a part of her family her partner had become. “He’s out in the field.”
Diane picked up on her daughter’s tone. “You’ll be out there, giving me heart failure, soon enough.” She gave C.J.’s arm another tug. “Now let’s go.”
Resigned, C.J., sighed and got her purse from the bottom desk drawer. “Yes, Mother.”
Diane nodded, pleased at the capitulation. “Well, it could be a little more cheerful, but I’ll take what I can get.”
So saying, she gently pushed her daughter out the door.
“We have to stop at the bathroom,” C.J. told her.
Diane’s smile didn’t fade. “I never