by Tawny Weber
“You okay?” His arms closed around her, pulling her close.
“Going to be,” she promised. “You really think we need to leave? We can’t wait this out inside?”
He scrubbed a hand over his head. “Look, you want to stay, it’s do-able. I can wet the house down more, stand guard on your front porch with the hose, but it’s a risk. I’d rather drive you out of here, take you into Strong for the night, and then we can come back in the morning and laugh at how overprotective I was.”
He was right. They both knew that, but he was going to let it be her decision, her call.
“Then let’s play it safe.” Funny, that word safe. She’d wanted so badly to feel safe, to know that she wouldn’t have to lose anyone or anything again. Instead, she’d discovered that her heart was perfectly unsafe around Kade.
Abbie’s house felt two sizes too small when they pulled the curtains. He’d ducked inside to make sure the place was as secure as it could be in case the fire did the unlikely and hopped the river. Closing the curtains would cut the ambient heat inside. The lack of light was an illusion, he told himself. He’d been fine five minutes ago when he’d been able to look out the glass. The glass was still there, just like the trees and the space outside were still there. His head simply needed to accept the fucking logic that a few yards of fabric weren’t a problem.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Five minutes later, he put Abbie in the truck, loaded up her gear, and drove her out. She spent the first five hundred yards twisted around in her seat, staring at the smoky hillside like she was channeling Lot’s wife.
“It’s not going to jump the river. If it does, we’re going to be miles away. It’ll be just like watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.” He hoped. Fire wasn’t entirely predictable.
“It’s a fire, not a barbecue.” She paused. “I hope.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. This was so not the time for them to suddenly be on the same page.
“And we’re not watching anything. We’re driving like hell toward Strong.”
“Look at the bright side,” he countered. “You didn’t want to live out here anyhow. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse to move back into your own bungalow.”
“The owner’s already rented it,” she pointed out.
He hit the gas a little harder. Just in case he’d misjudged the fire’s proximity, he’d feel better when he had her on the highway. “Instant roommate.”
“Right.” She laughed. “Because everyone wants to live with a single mom and her newborn. I’m going to be awesome company.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.” The peanut would be a handful if she was like her momma, but he wouldn’t mind being there for each and every minute.
She sighed, like she was working up to something big, and he concentrated on the road and making like a race-car driver. They needed to pave the road to her place, because the gravel had made for a bouncing, spleen-shattering ride on his way in. He’d nearly fishtailed into the ditch twice because sticking to the recommended twenty miles an hour wasn’t in the cards. With Abbie and the peanut riding in his front seat, he’d slowed down considerably, but he was still pushing the truck as fast he could comfortably.
“Did you mean it when you asked me to marry you all those years ago?”
He wasn’t sure if he should apologize or repeat the offer. Damn it. Did she really want to start a conversation now, when they had a forest fire on their ass? Not that he thought the fire was likely to jump both the hill and the river, but he wasn’t taking any chances with his Peanut and Abbie.
“You ever know me to lie to you?”
She pulled her knees up against her stomach, her toes curling into the seat. “You can’t answer a question with a question. That’s not fair.”
“When I asked you to marry me, I meant it.” The road and sky in front of them were clear. No smoke, no sparks, no mass wildlife exodus. He could probably ease up on the accelerator now
“The condom broke.”
“Maybe that sped things up some,” he agreed. “But I’m thinking I would have gotten around to asking you sooner rather than later. I’m sorry you have to ask that though.”
The space between them on the front seat yawned wide like it was the Grand Canyon, and he was trying to gun from one side to the other going twenty miles an hour. It was a long way to the ground, but—looking at Abbie, having had a second chance to hold her and love her—the risk was worth it.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until we’re somewhere…”
He paused, and she finished dryly, “Safer?”
There was no safe time to say some things.
“That would be one way to put it,” he muttered.
One more mile, and they’d be on the highway. The low throb of tanker passing overhead was reassuring. Good. His boys would spray down her place with retardant, giving her some extra insurance. When he reached the turnoff for the highway, he pulled over. He and Abbie had some talking to do.
“This doesn’t look like Strong.” She got that pissy, mulish look on her face that promised much arguing in his future, and he resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her. Kissing made her less mad, but they still had things that needed discussing.
“You’re the one who wanted to talk,” he pointed out.
Before she could launch into her talking points—and Abbie being Abbie, he’d bet she had a half dozen ready to slay him with—he reached over and unbuckled her, pushing the seat back and dragging her into his lap. Granted, he didn’t have a whole lot of room to work with. The seat was small, the steering wheel omnipresent, and the peanut kept right on growing. In another month, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of fitting her between him and the wheel. When she sucked in an indignant breath, her breasts brushed his chest, so he didn’t have any complaints about her position. Abbie being Abbie, however, she had plenty.
“Shouldn’t we be on the highway? There’s a forest fire.”
Ten miles and a river behind them. He wrapped his arms around her waist, running his hands up and down her back. She sighed, wriggled, and launched into a new round of arguments. It was probably just as well they hadn’t tried sheltering in place in the house. He’d have gone deaf or demented long before the fire passed by.
“Abbie?” He interrupted her barrage of comments on fire safety, his driving (apparently some of the worst she’d encountered, which meant she definitely hadn’t been driving with Laura Jo lately), and the possibility of turning around and just making sure the house (the one she hadn’t wanted) was okay.
She huffed. “What?”
“Shut up,” he said tenderly and kissed her.
Hello. Kade didn’t tell her to shut up. Not only was it rude, but it violated the unspoken rules in the male-female relationship handbook. Of course, they might not still have a relationship—thanks to her less-than-superior relationship skills—but she was doing her best to remain positively optimistic, along with unscorched and in one piece.
It kind of sucked that her heart hadn’t gotten that message.
“You—” she started, intending to explain the relationship rules to him, but then he covered her mouth with his, and she went up in flames, body and heart.
Long minutes later, he lifted his head and looked at her, the sleepy, heated look in his eyes finishing what his kiss had started.
“You still want to complain?” he asked.
Honestly? No. She wanted seconds and a repeat of his kiss. Maybe a three-peat, four-peat, or five-peat. Kade didn’t play fair. She knew that, so poking at him while he’d been driving might possibly have been deliberate on her part.
“I’m squashed,” she pointed out, just on principle.
He shrugged. “You started it, baby.”
And she’d finish it, too. She wiggled on his lap. The erection she felt beneath her said he might be up—hah—for finishing things too, although their parked-by-the-highway situation wasn’t really the best place for them to be getti
ng it on. Plus even though she didn’t really believe the forest fire was bearing down on them—Kade would have been driving like a madman down the highway to get her somewhere safe if that had been the case—it still seemed kind of stupid to stop and have sex right now. So instead she asked the question that had been on her mind since the last time she’d seen Kade.
“You really would have asked me to marry you if the condom hadn’t broken?”
“Yeah.” He rested his forehead against hers, his big hands still rubbing and pressing against her spine in a way that made her want to purr. “I was young and stupid, but even then I knew you were the best thing to happen to me.”
“I’ve wondered about it. What we would have been like if we got married. How it would have turned out.”
“Good parts and bad parts, baby. We would have had them both.”
She thought about that for a moment, breathing in Kade’s scent. God. He was so solid and so very, very here. There were no guarantees that life wouldn’t snatch him away like it had Will, but she knew in her heart of hearts that Kade would do everything he could to stay with her.
He pulled her a little tighter. “There’s no way to go back, and that’s okay.”
It was?
“We both moved on and got busy living. I loved who you were that night in my truck, but I love the woman I’m holding right now even more.”
Oh. God. She looked up at his face, not sure she’d heard right. When he’d proposed the other night, he hadn’t said anything about love. He looked kind of pained—and totally sincere.
“Life’s short,” he continued gruffly, “and sometimes there’s less time than you think. If you’re ready, I’m ready. I’m not looking to replace him or be him, but I’m wondering if you have room for three.”
Somehow love had snuck up on her. Not the poetic sunset stuff but something quieter, friendlier, and with smoking hot sex. She wanted to say something wise or poetic—even spouting Baudelaire would have been smoother—but instead she squeaked out a small sound of assent.
He grinned. “You’re speechless. I like that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “My loving you isn’t going to change some things.”
His smile got wider. “That’s good news, but I don’t want to do this in the truck.”
“Do what?” Her heart was bouncing up and down in her chest, like her stomach was a trampoline.
“Ask you to marry me. You want romantic, you get romantic.”
“Maybe it’s my turn,” she said, twining her arms around her neck.
“That would be fair.” His eyes drifted down her face, stopping on her mouth, and she figured she had maybe thirty seconds before she got that repeat kiss she wanted. She’d need to move fast, but nothing about this relationship had been slow, had it?
Do it. “Kade Jordan, will you marry me?”
His mouth brushed hers. ”We’re going to have one of those modern relationships, aren’t we?”
She nipped his bottom lip. “Would you prefer to relocate to the Dark Ages?”
“Can I go all caveman on you and drag you off to have my wicked way with you?” He sounded hopeful—and amused.
“As long as you love me and I love you, we can work the details out.”
“I love you,” he promised, and she had just enough time to whisper, “Perfect,” before he was kissing her.
Bonus: The Firefighter SEAL’s Baby
Short Story
ABBIE
I can’t remember the last time I could see my toes. They’re terra incognita, completely hidden by the ginormous mound of my belly. I can’t sleep, can’t put my own shoes on, and vicious leg cramps twist my calf muscles arriving with more regularity than a train at a station or even the Braxton Hicks contractions my body has been practicing for the last three weeks.
Moonlight spills into the bedroom. I refused to put up curtains when I moved into the house. One advantage to living way out in the boonies with only Ponderosas and wildlife for neighbors was that I didn’t have to worry about flashing anyone my undies and therefore I didn’t have to block the spectacular view out of my window. When Kade moved in here with me a few months ago, he petitioned for a change in the no-curtain policy.
Of course, I can’t see my own panties anymore.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I slide out of bed. Since the Peanut has his or her feet firmly wedged in my ribcage, I have to sleep sitting up now. It feels like I’ve got an entire team of smoke jumpers camped out inside my stomach—and when they aren’t punching and wrestling, they’re parachuting and my kidneys are the LZ. The Peanut has excellent aim.
If Kade were here, he’d fetch my midnight snack for me. He’s not, though—he’s out fighting fires. Not that he wanted to go, but Donovan Brothers’ team is currently shorthanded, the fires are fierce, and we still have three weeks until my due date. While his knee still won’t handle a free fall from a plane, he’s been working as their spotter, telling the boys on the team when and where to jump. He’s a fucking hero—my fucking hero—and he can’t put his life on pause just because I have a leg cramp. Although he totally would.
I want him, and I want him here with me now. The Peanut revolves lazily in my stomach, punching upward with tiny fists and feet until my belly looks like some kind of mutant version of whack-a-mole. By the time I’ve levered myself all the way out of bed and am upright, however, snacking seems less important.
I pad across the floor to the bathroom. Kade insisted on installing an enormous claw-foot tub. It’s absolutely gorgeous, guzzles water faster than an old car does gas, and it’s more than large enough to hold my beached-whale self. I run the water—not too hot now since the Peanut is onboard and no bath salts since we don’t want a peony-scented Peanut either—and strip down. When Kade is out in the field, I like to wear one of his old T-shirts. Of course, now that I’m nine months pregnant, I don’t fit in his shirts because my man has washboard abs and I… don’t. I solved that problem with a pair of scissors, a bad sewing job, and another T-shirt. Kade didn’t even blink when I told him he’d sacrificed not one but two shirts to the cause.
Getting into the tub is a challenge these days, but Kade fixed that problem too, rigging up a system for me. He parked a chair next to the tub, and I sit down and swing my legs over the tub’s edge and stand up in the water. Seconds later, I’m floating in glorious, wonderful, tepid heat, the strain off my back. The Peanut feels like it weighs approximately the same as a small Volkswagen, although my ob-gyn assures me the baby’s gonna be born somewhere just north of eight pounds. I sort of float off, half-dozing, imagining what the Peanut will look like when he or she makes the grand arrival in a few weeks.
“Babe?”
The voice floats through my dreams and I sit up, splashing and shrieking. Big hands catch me.
“It’s just me.” Kade grins down at me, bracing my shoulders with his palms. He looks wonderfully solid in my sleepy haze, broad-shouldered, dependable, and so hot that even now, nine months pregnant, I have to fight the urge to lick him.
He winks at me and holds up a paper bag. “I brought a peace offering.”
God bless him, he’s brought eggrolls from the local fast food joint.
“Forgiveness granted,” I say and pull him down to me for a kiss. The food’s an added bonus, but Kade tastes even more wonderful. He brushes his lips against mine softly, but I don’t want the appetizer when I can have the main course. The heat that grows between us is wonderfully familiar, as is the aching, restless need. We’re not supposed to have sex now, but Kade is all about the rain check. He kisses me, his tongue slipping inside my mouth and taking me the way he can’t have my body.
We kiss and we talk (and he trades kisses for bites of my egg roll), and eventually he lifts me out of the tub, I’m happy to fall asleep on top of my firefighter pillow. Everything’s perfect until I wake up at dark o’clock.
There’s something not right.
Something embarrassingly, horrify
ingly wrong.
Oh God. I’ve peed on my man.
KADE
Holy fuck. Abbie stirs suddenly beside me, and I run my hands over her belly. There’s so little separating me from the baby, so little keeping him or her safe. I’ll be there. Nobody, nothing gets to the Peanut or Abbie. I’ve got them.
I’ll always be here for her. I’ve promised her this, and I mean it. But… Will said the same things, made the same vows, and he died. Fire doesn’t give a shit about promises made. It doesn’t care when good men die and babies lose their daddies. Fire doesn’t care. Period.
For a long time after I got lost Khost, I wanted to be that way, too. To not care. To give the universe the finger and stomp my way through the life. Abbie changed that. She made me a better man, a better me, and now I’m gonna need all of that for the Peanut and her momma.
“Abbie?” When I say her name, she bolts upright on the bed, looking horrified. I don’t need to hit the lights to pick out the way her beautiful face reddens. God. What’s wrong? I sit up with her, but my brain’s already filling in the details. Our bed is wet. Okay.
It’s no big deal—shit happens and the doctor warned us that babies like to bounce on bladders—but she tears up.
“It’s fine,” I whisper. I’ll take care of her any way she lets me. I lift her out of the bed, and carry her into the bathroom. “Abbie?”
She needs to talk to me, but instead she fists my T-shirt in her hands, hanging on like it’s a lifeline. I have to pry her fingers free so I can strip her down and clean her up.
“Hello in there.” This time, though, when I rest my hand against her belly, the skin tightens and hardens, and she pants softly. Fuck. Me.
Abbie’s having a baby.
When the contraction fades, she grabs my shirt again. “We have to go. Now.”
I’m one hundred percent in agreement with her. We’ve got an evac plan, a birth plan, a hundred fucking plans—but for a moment my brain zones out, focused on one thing and one thing only. That contraction clearly hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and I can’t fix it. Can’t take the pain, can’t make it better.