Sept. 13th

Sept. 30th

Oct. 11

THE ROOKIE
(The Taylor Clan, Book #4, copyright 2003)
by
Julie Miller

Chapter One

Dr. Livesay,
I’m watching.
I want what’s mine.
The baby you’re carrying belongs to me.
Take good care of it.
Daddy

Dr. Rachel Livesay stared at the snow-speckled piece of paper in her hand. Images of each boyfriend she’d dated through high school and college flashed through her brain. Of course, none of them could be the father. She’d married when she was twenty-five, and, unlike her philandering husband, she hadn’t felt the need to betray her vows with a lover. And since the divorce over two years ago, she hadn’t felt the desire to get that close to any man again.
     Or maybe it was just her judgment in men she didn’t trust anymore.
     At any rate, Daddy’s message was just a cruel joke. There was no father to speak of, no man who could lay claim to the miracle growing inside her.
     “Jerk.” Rachel wadded up the typewritten note she’d found stuck under her windshield wiper and stuffed it into her coat pocket. This was probably just a stupid, tasteless prank. Still, she couldn’t help but survey the dull gray grounds and concrete buildings around her to see if anyone actually was watching.
     Though the snow had stopped for the time being, the February morning still held the damp chill of a Missouri winter. The students, staff and faculty members hurrying to their ten o’clock classes from the parking lot and public transports huddled with their chins tucked inside their collars, or were bundled up beyond recognition beneath scarves and hats.
     No Peeping Tom’s. No unwanted daddies in disguise.
Rachel shook her head at her own foolishness. Someone was just tyring to get a rise out of her. A disgruntled student, no doubt. The set of papers she’d returned at her last Community Psychology class had been less than stellar. True, she’d found a few gems, but she’d also given out Ds and Fs. Including one plagiarized paper titled “Psychoses of Inner-City Youth.”
     That’s what this was about. Attack the pregnant professor where it hurts the most. Get your jollies at her expense. “That’ll teach me to challenge them to think beyond my lectures.” She inserted her car key into the lock, exhaling a sigh of relief. “What was I thinking? Expecting them to take notes and read the text.” She raised her eyebrows in mock shock and opened the door, addressing the imaginary student. “Oooh, you got me this time.”
     With as much grace as a belly-heavy woman could manage, she bent across the seat and retrieved the stack of lecture notes she’d left inside her Buick. She shifted her balance back over her hips and straightened, relocking the car behind her.
     She braced her gloved hand on the roof of the car.
     I’m watching.
     So much for not letting the note get to her.
     A sudden shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature cascaded down her spine. She huddled inside her long, cocoa-brown wool maternity coat and turned to look beyond the Holmes Street parking lot toward the heart of downtown Kansas City.
     Someone was watching her.
     The creepy sensation sparked along her nerve endings and made her spin around and embarrassing 360 degrees.
     The bustling energy of a city campus kept everyone moving quickly along the sidewalks and makeshift short-cuts. Sometimes alone. More often in chatty pairs or small groups whose animated conversations created a cloud cover of sorts in the cold air, preventing her from really making eye contact with anyone.
     “Get a grip, Rache,” she scolded herself.
     She rubbed her distended belly, cradling her hand against the tender muscles where her miracle baby loved to stretch and kick. “Imagine.” Her voice slipped into that breathy pitch reserved for mothers speaking to their unborn child. “Calling you an ‘it.’ That’s probably why Daddy isn’t doing very well in my class.”
     Right on cue, the baby kicked against her hand. Rachel smiled, imaging a shared high-five between mother and infant. Her tension eased on a cleansing breath.
     There was no daddy in their lives, she reminded herself, slinging her leather tote over her shoulder and heading toward class.
     As far as she was concerned, the father of her baby was 93679. A brown-haired Caucasian with an excellent health record, a high I.Q. and interests in classical music and Jayhawk basketball.
     The dark hair and intellectual pursuits were to match her own. The clean bill of health was to prevent any future need to contact the donor of the sperm she’d selected from the Washburn Fertility Clinic.
     She’d paid good money to insure anonymity. That stupid note meant nothing. This was her baby. No one else’s.
     It wasn’t the way she’d planned to have a family.
     But it was the way it had to be.

     JOSH SAT IN THE SECOND ROW of his Community Psychology class and watched his professor, Dr. Rachel Livesay, rub the small of her back. It was a subtle movement done with her left hand, hardly noticeable considering the way her right hand flitted through the air with the grace of an exotic dancer, emphasizing each point she made as she lectured.
     He liked watching her mouth, too. Her lips were tinted with a frosty neutral shade of lipstick. They were full and sensual, and moved with the same fascinating grace as her hand, in spite of all the technical jargon and graphic examples that flowed between them. Her eyes were green and almond-shaped, a perfect foil for her dark-brown hair. As rich as a sable pel, it fell thick and straight to her shoulders in a boxy cut that sung back and forth each time she lifted her face to look at the students sitting behind him, near the top of the banked, theater-style lecture hall.
     But the best thing about her was her breasts. Ripe. Full. Sensuous treasures that oculd fill a man’s hands and spill over into his fantasies.
With the cold of winter, she wore smooth-knit tunic sweaters that emphasized the shape and size and beauty of her breasts.
     Josh breathed in deeply, slowly, silently, savoring the gentle course of heat that raised his body temperature several scintillating degrees.
     His psych professor was a hottie.
     A very pregnant, and very off-limits, hottie. Despite the fact she wasn’t wearing a ring on her left hand. He wondered about that last observation. He’d heard that pregnancy drew couples closer together. But Rachel Livesay seemed to be conspicuously alone.
     His own sister-in-law had given birth just a few months ago, and Mitch Taylor, his cousin and boss—whom Josh considered his eldest brother—had mellowed considerably. Sure, falling in love in the first place had changed Mitch from a hard-ass workaholic into a much more grounded—though no less tough—precinct commander.
     But with the baby… Hell, Mitch and his wife, Casey, had been downright frisky at the family’s Christmas get-together. Always touching. Holding hands. Sneaking kisses. Cooing over their newborn and each other.
Where was Doctor Livesay’s attentive mate? Was her pregnancy the accident of a misguided affair? The leftover burden of a messy divorce? The last memory of a deceased husband?
     Why was a woman that beautiful and that smart walking around unattached? He couldn’t imagine any sane man not staking a possessive claim on the mother of his child.
     Or those luscious breasts. Those eloquent hands. Those beautiful green eyes. Those come-kiss-me lips.
     Stupid bastard.
     “Mr. Tanner.”
     Josh’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of his alias, as if he’d been caught condemning the unknown father out loud. But no, the professor wasn’t telepathic. And he hadn’t been broadcasting his appreciation with an admiring glance.
     Had he?
     It still took him a split second to assume the Josh Tanner persona and make himself think like a coed, even after a month and a half of campus life. But without allowing more than a smile of acknowledgement to crease his face, he pulled himself from the politically incorrect yet inevitable trail of his thoughts to listen to Dr. Livesay’s question.
     “What do you think?”
     Though he’d just turned twenty-eight, he knew a moment of juvenile panic. He broadened his smile until it dimpled on either side, buying himself some time to think. Technically, he’d been paying attention. He just hadn’t been listening to what she was saying. He rolled the dice and gambled that he could fake his way through this.
     “I agree with you.”
     His answer earned a few snickers from his classmates.
     Dr. Livesay shushed them with an upraised hand. Oh, great. What had he just agreed to?...

 

Question: What subject does Rachel Livesay teach?

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