The Baby Bonus: A Tangleweed Prequel

(Twenty-five years before THE PREGNANT PROPOSITION)

PROLOGUE

The First Saver’s Bank was just begging to be robbed.

Crossing his arms, Mitch Flaherty leaned back against a black marble counter in the service lobby. Some banks reminded him of solid gold bars—smooth, gleaming, and impenetrable. Others he equated with new bills, crisp and still gritty enough to catch on his calloused fingertips when shuffled through his hands. This bank reminded him of a twenty he’d once found not far from here on the streets of downtown L.A. The flat face of Jackson had peered up at him through the sludge—exposed, vulnerable, there for the taking.

Vulnerable. Mitch rolled the word around in his mind. Yeah, that described this bank perfectly. It was vulnerable. The unexpected splendor of a mural of angels high on one wall and the chubby cherubs depicted in the ornate molding along the vaulted ceiling probably distracted most people from that fact, but Mitch wasn’t most people. Discovering the weaknesses hidden beneath the facades was what he did best.

Narrowing his eyes, he assessed the worn and faded red carpet, the even more worn and faded customers wending their way between dusty velvet ropes to the tellers’ windows. Conversations, held in the hushed tones reserved for churches and banks, were punctuated by faint “dings” as the tellers hit small bells signaling their readiness for another customer. Two outdated cameras perched high in the corners on both sides of the mural provided a record of the banking transactions. Not a security guard was in sight. On his first visit two days ago, Mitch had figured the guard was on a break. It wasn’t until his second visit that he realized the bank didn’t have a guard. The only male employees in the place were the portly, gray-haired manager absorbed in a fishing magazine and a pretty-boy loan officer who’d spent the past twenty minutes on the phone.

Yet, the lack of a guard didn’t surprise him much. Guards, especially good ones, were expensive, often earning as much as three tellers. What did surprise him was the fact that five of the seven women working the line were pregnant.

Hugely, obviously, ready-to-give-birth pregnant.

He stirred restlessly and the blunt edge of the Colt stuck in his rear pocket jabbed his hip as someone bumped into him. He glanced sharply down. A bent, white-haired lady clutching her purse and social security check timidly met his eyes. Nodding in response to her faint “excuse me,” he pushed his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose as she scurried away.

It was almost time to get started. Searching for the person in charge, his gaze moved dismissingly past the manager. The true power in most banks wasn’t the manager, but the operations officer who oversaw the employees and handled the day-to-day security measures. Mitch looked over at the two employees seated by the file area behind the tellers. It wasn’t the plump, older woman manning the phones, he decided. She was too isolated; none of the employees had approached her since he’d been in the lobby. His gaze lingered on the younger woman constantly being interrupted.

He hoped it wasn’t her, but the sinking feeling in his gut told him it was. Damn it, she looked too young to be an operations officer—no more than twenty-four or five judging by her smooth skin and thin figure. He estimated she’d weigh a hundred and ten pounds dripping wet and that ten more pounds in the right places would be of benefit. If she had anything on top, it sure wasn’t noticeable beneath her serviceable gray suit and white blouse.

From this distance, he couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but her hair was brown and cut short, exposing her slender neck. Another woman handed her a piece of paper. As she signed it she smiled, and two shallow dents flashed in her soft cheeks.

Dimples. Mitch’s jaw tightened. Give me a break. No doubt about it, he’d been set up. “It’s an easy job,” his partner Raul had assured him. “No complications; no problems.” Yeah, right. A bad area, a rundown building, pregnant tellers and an operations officer who looked too damn naive and trusting to be for real.

Well, that last fact would soon change. He crossed his arms again and settled back to wait a few minutes longer. Mitch Flaherty was here to educate her.

CHAPTER ONE: CASING THE JOINT

“He’s here again!”

The strident whisper broke Jessica Kendall’s concentration and the numbers she’d been mentally adding dissipated in her mind. She looked up.

Pamela Frost, one of the tellers at the bank, pressed her seven months pregnant stomach against the opposite edge of the oak desk. Balancing slightly on it, the red haired teller stood on her tiptoes, rolling toward her operations officer as she hissed, “I’m sure he’s a robber, Jessie. Look at him! Just look at him!” A half-excited, half-frightened expression covered Pam’s round, freckled face. “He’s casing the joint right now!”

Casing the joint? Jessica suppressed a groan. Pam must have been watching old James Cagney movies again. “Who’s a robber?” she asked, weariness combining with her southern accent to slur the words a little.

“That man! Right over there!”

In response to Pamela’s furtive pointing, Jessica began searching with her stocking-clad toes for the high heels she’d slipped off under her desk. She wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t find them. It was one of those days.

Not that anything unusual had happened. The bank was busy, but that was typical of June, especially when the third of the month struck on Friday, and the Social Security recipients crowded in. No, it wasn’t any major problem stressing her out, but rather the small irritations that threatened to overwhelm her by sheer number. Like the hole in her stocking just large enough for her little toe to get caught in. Or the melting ice cream cone stuffed in the instant deposit box. Then there was the toilet in the women’s restroom that wouldn’t stop leaking no matter how many times she called out a plumber, and the ancient air conditioning that was no match for the humid summer heat.

But most of all, it was the interruptions that tried her patience—the never-ending, sometimes important but usually idiotic, interruptions that kept her from finishing anything and made her long to be back home in Tangleweed, Texas. Nothing ever happened in the small brick bank where she’d worked there. Of course, the pay had only been half as much as she made in L.A., too. Stifling a sigh at the thought, Jessica bent down and snagged her shoes from behind her trash can. Slipping her aching feet into them, she stood up for a better view of Pam’s “suspect.” Her gaze brushed over Lupe and Maria, two more of her pregnant tellers who were gossiping in fluent Spanish in between customers, and fastened on the man leaning against a service desk.

Trouble, she thought, immediately understanding why he made Pam nervous. He made her nervous, too. Adrenaline flushed through her, erasing her tiredness and causing the fine hairs on her nape to lift in an atavistic signal of danger. Her muscles tensed, her skin prickled with awareness. Yes, the man was definitely trouble. Whether he was a robber or not was a different story.

She studied his face to commit it to memory for a possible police report. He wore sunglasses, dark enough for anyone working the line to suspect they were intended for a partial disguise. His short dark hair was combed back from his forehead emphasizing rugged cheekbones and finely cut lips. His nose wasn’t overly large, but had a bump on the bridge, as if it had been broken.

She tried to estimate his height. Six foot? Six, one? Faded jeans encased lean hips and powerful thighs before tapering down to black running shoes, negligently crossed at the ankles. His tanned arms were folded across his chest, his bulging muscles displayed beneath the short sleeves of his untucked black T-shirt. Despite those muscles, something in his build gave the impression of flexible power, like a man who did physical labor for a living—like a carpenter, or maybe a roofer—rather than one who spent his days bulking up in a weight room.

Jessica knew some of the tellers would be big-eyed over those sculpted biceps. Others would appreciate his broad chest. Personally, she wanted to admire his cute behind—as it headed out the door.

“When was he in here before?” she asked, looking back at Pam.

“This morning. I’m sure I saw him because I told Kathy he looked like a fighter with that broken nose and square chin.” Waving her plump hands in an expressive gesture, Pamela rolled her eyes heavenward. “And those arms! He wore sunglasses this morning, too, but it didn’t strike me as being odd then cause he just got change for a fifty and left. Now, he’s probably come back to make a hit.” She shuddered, and her frizzy red curls seemed to quiver with excitement. “There’s something about him that worries me.”

And when Pam worried, anything could happen, Jessica added silently.

To be fair, the teller had reason to be nervous. In the past few months the bank had been hit three times, an unusually high average even for this rundown section of the city. But ever since she’d been robbed six weeks earlier Pam constantly “spotted” criminals, twice setting off false alarms, and once almost causing a bearded old man with a cane—”I swear the beard looked fake, Jessica!”—to nearly have a heart attack when he walked out of the bank to face hard-eyed policemen with their weapons drawn.

The police hadn’t been pleased to discover they’d been called out by a nervous teller with an overactive imagination. One more false alarm, the stern-faced sergeant had warned Jessica, and the bank would be fined.

Which meant, Jessica thought, biting her lip, that she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes now. Her gaze returned to the man in the lobby. He should have looked relaxed as he lounged against the counter, but the taut readiness of his powerful body negated the casual stance. His concentration on the tellers’ activities was also suspicious. The bank was crowded, yet he appeared oblivious to the ebb and flow of people around him.

Better to be safe than sorry. Reaching a decision, Jessica said, “You take down his description.” She walked around the desk and grasping the other woman’s arm, led her to the chair she’d just vacated. “And don’t get so excited. Because a man looks tough” —and dangerous and sexy— “doesn’t mean he’s a bank robber. Half the men whose paychecks we cash fit that description. But I’ll speak to him.”

She turned away, only to be stopped short by Pam’s clutch on the back of her straight-cut gray skirt. “But what if he is a robber, Jessica? Promise me if he does anything suspicious—Anything!—that you’ll touch your ear and I’ll push the alarm under the desk.”

“I’m almost positive he’s not. He probably just needs some information.” She tugged at her skirt, but Pamela refused to loosen her grip.

“Promise to give me a sign,” Pam insisted.

Jessica closed her eyes a second, summoning patience. Opening them she focused on the other woman’s face. Pam’s cheeks had whitened until her freckles stood out in stark relief. Her blue eyes were crinkled with worry. Jessica’s irritation disappeared. She couldn’t be angry with someone who was only concerned for her safety.

“All right, I’ll touch my ear if I think he’s a ‘bad guy,'” she conceded. “Now, for heaven’s sake, let me go!” She pulled insistently, tottering backwards a couple of steps on her two-inch heels as Pam released her. Regaining her balance, she warned, “But don’t jump the gun, Pam. We can’t afford another false alarm.”

She had started his way, when a deep angry voice at the other end of the line shattered the hushed atmosphere.

“Give me my money, you little bitch!”

Immediately forgetting the robber suspect, Jessica whirled around, heading to where a man stood shouting obscenities at Diane, her youngest teller. Heads were turning; a little old lady hurried out the door.

Approaching the altercation, Jessica recognized James Edwards. Edwards was tall with a once muscular frame that had melted into fat. Judging by his angry tones, Diane had refused to cash his weekly construction paycheck. Usually when his check was bad, Edwards left grumbling. No such luck today. Diane, who’d been pale all morning from a vicious bout of morning sickness, looked even more drawn now. When Edwards lost his temper, he definitely wasn’t easy for anyone to handle.

Maria offered to try. As Jessica rushed past Maria hissed in Spanish, “Let me help that…” Jessica wasn’t fluent enough to translate the final word, but the gist was more than clear. Shaking her head reprovingly, she kept moving.

The stench of beer and stale sweat hit her as she reached the window where Edwards stood, half-sprawled on the counter. Her heart sank. Oh, great. He’d been drinking.

“Give me my money, damn it! I’ve been waiting in that line forty-five minutes and no snot-nosed little b—”

“Excuse me.” Jessica’s deliberately soft voice interrupted his tirade. Taking advantage of his momentary silence, she gestured the younger woman away from the window and stepped forward. “Keep your voice down, please. What is the problem, Mr. Edwards?”

Red-rimmed, watery eyes glared down at her. “The problem is this stupid girl refuses to give me my—”

“Sir.” Jessica lowered her voice even further, her words as curt as her Texas drawl would allow. “If you can’t be civil, then my employees are not required to help you.” She paused. “Neither am I.”

He glared at her. Keeping her expression impassive, she gazed back. A fine gray film of plaster sprinkled the top of his thinning brown hair and his stained coveralls. Additional flecks dotted the darkening red of his fleshy cheeks. His thick brows bristled together. Hiding her escalating tension beneath a deliberately cool mask, Jessica glanced fleetingly at the manager’s and loan officer’s desks. No help there. John and Rod’s seats were both empty.

Shoving aside the uncharitable suspicion that they’d fled at the first hint of trouble, she looked back at Edwards. “May I see your check, please?”

Scowling, he shoved it across the counter, subsiding into a sulky silence as she punched his employer’s account number into the computer.

Insufficient funds.

For a brief second Jessica considered cashing the check anyway, counting on the construction company to make it good, but pushed the temptation aside. Edwards’ employer was poised on the brink of bankruptcy, ready to go under at any time in the uncertain California economy. She couldn’t afford to take a chance on a loss from this check. Besides, Diane had been doing her job and deserved to be backed up.

Squaring her shoulders, she held the check out across the counter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Edwards. This check isn’t good at this time. If you’d like to try tomorrow—”

“What!” Bursting into rage, Edwards ignored the check. His meaty hand jerked out to grab Jessica’s wrist.

She stiffened, but displayed no other sign of alarm. It was Edwards who appeared surprised, as if he’d been unaware of his action. “What in the hell…” he muttered. Jessica saw his bloodshot eyes widen slightly as he met her gaze. His grip tightened for a brief second, then his glance slid away, his hold loosening. Before he could release her completely, however, a deep voice intruded.

“Let her go.”

Jessica and the man holding her turned startled eyes to the newcomer. Sunglasses still in place, the robber suspect she’d been watching earlier stood next to Edwards with his arms down by his sides, his jaw squared in an unrelenting angle.

Unconsciously, Edwards’ grip tightened again. “Who’s gonna make me?”

“I am.”

“Who the hell are you?” Edwards demanded.

The man pushed the concealing sunglasses up over his dark hair. Jessica barely had time to notice the white scar etched in his right temple before his gaze snared hers. His eyes were blue—a deep, compelling blue. Something in that heavy-lidded gaze caused her to tense, and her stomach muscles clenched even more when he shot her a narrow, warning glance. Oh, God, he was going to do something stupid.

She yanked on her wrist, but Edwards’ didn’t let go. The newcomer turned fully toward the heavier man, saying, “I’m Mitch Flaherty, the man who’s going to break your arm if you don’t release her. Right now.”

“Damned if I will—”

“Hold on both of you!” Rising tension made Jessica’s voice sharp. This was ridiculous. A small incident was escalating into World War III. She looked at Flaherty. “Thank you for your—” she bit back the word interference— “help, Mr. Flaherty, but I assure you everything is fine.”