Heat of the Night (Island Fire Book 2)

by Amy Knupp

  She could tell by his tone he didn’t have any inkling of what she was about to say to him or how his life might change. She wished she could prepare him somehow. Really, she did. Ease him into the truth. “Selena? It’s okay, darlin’. Talk to me.”

  Very quietly, she took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes. “It’s not okay, Evan. I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter Five

  Evan turned his head to look Selena in the eye. He felt as if he were moving in slow motion, as if life was happening through a thick, colorless, syrup-like substance.

  “Pregnant,” he repeated stupidly.

  “Yes. Pregnant.” Selena’s voice was firm, confident. “I haven’t slept with anyone else in a long time.”

  “No,” he said. It couldn’t be true. “We were careful.”

  “I thought so too, but there must’ve been a problem with a condom somewhere along the line. We, um, used several…”

  He remembered. Remembered well. “You’re sure? I mean, that you’re pregnant?”

  She nodded. “Believe me, I wanted the negative as much as you. More than.”

  “Dammit.”

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was always careful. He wasn’t stupid. And he sure as hell wasn’t up for parenthood.

  The air in the SUV felt thick and stale. Suffocating. He opened the door and got out quickly. Made his way to the beach. Vaguely, he heard the other car door slam. Selena’s shoes clicked along the pavement and became silent as soon as she hit the sand. He could sense her approaching, though he didn’t look at her.

  What could he say?

  “Evan.” She was by his side, touching his forearm. “What’s going through your head?” she asked quietly.

  Something inside him snapped. “What’s going through my head?” He pulled his arm away and put distance between them. “What’s going through my head is that this wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m not ready for it. Can’t fucking handle it. Hell, Selena, if I wanted a family, I would pursue one. Fall in love with a woman, ask her to marry me. Maybe think about kids.”

  He saw her take a step back as if he’d slapped her. It only registered on the surface of his brain what an asshole he was being. He was engrossed in the ramifications of her pregnancy.

  “Ditto on all points,” she said in a wavering voice. “We barely know each other. I get that. I have no idea whether we could make a go of it together if we even wanted to try.”

  She faltered and Evan made a point of not looking at her. She was upset? Well, so was he.

  “I’m not trying to trap you. I’ve known for all of four days and I’m still trying to figure out what to do.”

  “Are you considering ending the pregnancy?” He didn’t have the fortitude to examine his deep feelings on that, but the idea of making it all go away did appeal to him.

  “No.” Her answer was firm. Closed to debate. “Ultimately, someday, I wanted a child. Not today. But what if this is my only chance?” She shook her head. “I can’t do it.”

  “So then we’re stuck.” He heard the harshness, the chill in his own voice, but couldn’t bring himself to care.

  “No,” she said again, and this time the word was even more adamant. “If you can’t handle it, I’ll raise the child myself. I’ll have my lawyer contact you about child support.”

  His entire lifestyle was in danger. His freedom, his leisure time. His income and savings. Even the damn boat. Everything he’d worked for, for almost ten fucking years, was washing away.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” How would he? He barely knew this woman.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. “All you have to do is answer one question. Do you want to be involved in this or not?”

  As if it were that easy. He wasn’t going to decide anything now, just after having this bomb dropped on his head. “I’m outta here.” He took off in the opposite direction of the parking lot.

  “That’s it then?” Selena called after him, her voice full of hostility.

  “Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, not stopping. “I need…” What the hell did he need? A do-over. A little willpower where a certain brunette was concerned. A different box of condoms.

  “I’ll get myself home,” he finally said.

  oOo

  Well. Selena had her answer then.

  Evan did not want to be in the baby’s life. Or hers. She’d given him an out and he’d taken it.

  Her throat tightened and tears flooded her eyes. Hot, angry tears. If he could walk away so easily, there was no doubt it was for the best. Obviously she hadn’t taken time for a character assessment before she’d gotten naked with him, and that, she supposed, was on her.

  The wind whipped her hair across her face and sent a shiver down her spine, but she didn’t turn toward the Hyundai. Instead, she was drawn to the water.

  The moon was hidden by clouds tonight. Very little light hit the sand, but still, she could see the white glimmer of bubbles along the waves even through her threatening tears. She removed her shoes and sank her feet into the cold sand. She walked toward the water, stopping at the edge of the dry sand and lowering herself to the ground.

  Though she knew she and Evan had never had a chance at a future, she felt more alone than she’d ever been in her twenty-seven years. She glanced up and down the beach, looking for any movement, another living being, but the sand was deserted. A gust of wind hit her, and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.

  Funny how your life could get away from you and become something you never in a million years expected, all in a fit of defiance and recklessness that lasted less than twelve hours.

  Selena rested her chin on her knees and gazed out into the darkness, trying to pick out the line where sea became sky. It was impossible. But because she was stubborn and was in no position to give up on what seemed impossible, she kept right on staring. She figured the longer she looked, the clearer it would become.

  oOo

  Evan stormed through the door of his apartment and barely noticed Clay on the couch watching TV. He made a beeline to the kitchen and opened the cupboard above the fridge. Vodka, gin, tequila, rum.

  “Where the hell’s the whiskey?” Evan hollered.

  “What whiskey?”

  “I don’t know. Any whiskey. Or bourbon. That’d work.”

  Clay muted the television and sauntered into the tiny kitchen. “We don’t have bourbon or whiskey. I don’t drink it. Last I knew, neither do you.”

  “Things change,” Evan said, closing the cabinet and opening the fridge. He settled for a beer. He popped the tab and downed over half the can in one go.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Clay asked, helping himself to a beer.

  Evan finished his and went for another. “I am screwed, man.” He swallowed a gulp and heaved himself up on the countertop. “Sca-rewed.”

  Clay took out a bag of pretzels from one of the cabinets and ripped it open. “Why are you screwed?”

  “Remember Selena?”

  “If that was Selena who was just here, it’s hard to forget her. What’s wrong?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Ah, fuck.”

  “Exactly.” Evan leaned back and purposely banged his head on the upper cabinets.

  “You’re sure it’s yours?” Clay asked.

  “She says it is. Says she hasn’t been with anyone else, and if I had to guess, she’s telling the truth.”

  They sat there for a couple of minutes, saying nothing, Clay digging in for more pretzels every few seconds and Evan crushing the empty beer can in his hand.

  “So what else did she say?” Clay asked in between bites.

  “She asked me what I wanted.”

  “And?”

  “I left.”

  “Nice.”

  “I needed time to think, man. What was I supposed to do? What would you do in the situation?”

  “I’ve been in the situation.”

  Well, hell. Ev
an had been so wrapped up in himself he hadn’t even thought about that. “I forgot. So what’d you do when she told you?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. It’s been three years. It shook me up. And my baby was already born.”

  “Did you get pissed?”

  “Nah. I handled it much better.”

  Evan studied Clay’s face and saw the corners of his lips twitch.

  “Lying son of a bitch. Give me some of those.” He grabbed the pretzel bag and helped himself to a handful.

  “Yep, I was pissed at the world.”

  Evan tried to imagine not finding out until Selena was toting around an infant. He couldn’t even picture that.

  “I proposed eventually,” Clay said. “But I wouldn’t advise it. You see where it got me.”

  Yeah. Court battles. That’s where Clay was with his ex, even though they’d never married.

  “I’ve got a custody appeal in right now.”

  “Don’t take this wrong, man, but what are you going to do with a kid?”

  “Raise her, I hope.”

  “How?”

  Clay shrugged. “I don’t know. But I can do better than Robin’s doing. Not a doubt in my mind about that.”

  “You’d have to move out.”

  Clay laughed at that. “You don’t want a three-year-old princess as a roommate?”

  Evan shuddered. “I’m sure she’s cute but … my lifestyle wouldn’t mesh well with a kid.”

  “Sounds like it’s time for you to change your lifestyle then, dude.”

  “Fucking hell,” Evan muttered, then hopped down from the counter, grabbed another beer, and walked out the front door.

  He leaned over the railing, looking into the parking lot, thankful there was no one around. The spot where Selena had parked her SUV was empty. Her face filled Evan’s mind. Specifically, the look on it when he’d snapped at her. He’d seen fear. Terror.

  And he’d walked away.

  They said your real character came through when you were faced with a major crisis, and if that was true, he was a goddamned son of a bitch. He’d taken all his shock and anger out on Selena for the few seconds he’d hung around. Then he’d walked off, right out of her life, as if he didn’t have any responsibility in the whole deal.

  Exactly like his father had done.

  He straightened and winged the half-full beer can down one flight to the sidewalk, unsatisfied when it didn’t explode. He wanted to crush something.

  If there was one thing he believed in, one thing he’d sworn since he was a kid, it was that he would never, ever turn out like his father.

  Evan knew his name but he’d never known the man. Never would, now, but there’d been a time when he would’ve given his right leg for a real dad. To have a father in his life. One who shot hoops with him in the driveway, who watched Simpsons episodes with him in the evening. One who gave half a damn about his family.

  In his early teens, Evan had tracked his father to a prison cell. Before he could confront him, the jackass had gone and died. Evan had outgrown the dream of a true family and had replaced it with hatred and pity for the man who had fathered — only in the scientific sense of the word — him and his twin sister.

  Evan wasn’t going to be that man.

  He couldn’t allow a child to grow up daydreaming about some fantasy dad who never appeared, inventing stories for his buddies to overcompensate for the father who wasn’t part of his life.

  His kid wasn’t ever going to feel unwanted or worthless because of a dad who wasn’t involved.

  And honestly? Dammit. He couldn’t desert the woman he’d created that kid with either. As far as Evan knew, his mother had never heard from his father again after the day he’d walked out on her — before Evan and Melanie were even born.

  That was not the kind of man Evan wanted to be.

  He’d gotten himself involved — with both Selena and their unborn child — so he would have to step up. No matter how tempting it was to walk away.

  Evan climbed up on the railing and sat on it, his feet hanging high above the first-floor sidewalk.

  He had to marry Selena. They’d make a family together, bring up the child as a team. Marriage was the last thing he’d been looking for, but if he had to be trapped into one, he could do a lot worse than Selena — whose last name he still didn’t know. They definitely didn’t lack in chemistry, and he suspected she had a level head on her shoulders. Suspected but didn’t know, because when you got down to it, he didn’t know jack shit about the woman who was going to make him a father. But that would come.

  Determination pounded through him, along with the firm belief that this was the right thing to do.

  In the morning, he had to start a twenty-four-hour shift at the station, but as soon as he finished it, he’d pay her a visit. Apologize. Ask her to marry him.

  Chapter Six

  Art was Selena’s refuge. Her own personal psychotherapy. Always had been. When life got tough to handle, she spent more and more time painting.

  God knew she needed a super dose of therapy right now.

  Even better, today’s intense session of sketches for the city murals and beginning a new, moody acrylic of a lone fishing boat was doing double duty as earning a living. Or at least working toward such an end.

  She’d worked in her studio until the sun set and then emerged from her cozy, if in need of TLC, beach house to grab some amazing fish tacos from Ruiz’s Restaurante a few blocks west. Wrapped up in thoughts of her work, she hadn’t realized a bank of clouds had blown in, and on the way home, a cold drizzle had started to fall.

  When she walked in the door of the beach house, she went directly to the fireplace and stacked the wood she’d picked up the other day as she remembered her dad doing. It took a while for the big logs to catch, but she knelt on the floor in front of the fire, poking it, mesmerized by the palette of oranges and yellows in the flames and embers. As soon as heat emanated from her respectable fire, her lids grew heavy, her eleven-hour workday catching up with her.

  She lay down on the couch, perpendicular to the fireplace, and pulled the fleece throw blanket from the back of it over her. As she drifted to sleep, images of Evan found their way into her mind.

  Her dreams were filled with unrest, stress. An angry man who wanted nothing to do with her. Even in sleep, she wanted to lash out, scream, remind the world, or maybe just the man, that winding up pregnant wasn’t her first choice either. Everything was wrong. Off somehow. Although she was only partially cognizant, that discordant feeling gradually overtook the anger, eating away at her, worrying her sleep until she started to wake up.

  Then Selena realized it wasn’t just in her dreams where something was wrong. A rumbling, crackling sound filled the room, as if someone was shaking out a heavy blanket repeatedly. Continual pops and snaps added to the noise.

  Her eyes popped open and all her senses were barraged by impending danger. Thick smoke was quickly filling the room.

  She jumped up, swearing, looking frantically around and trying to gather her wits enough to figure out what to do. The curtains at the sliding glass door were burning, and the chair next to it. Black smoke dried her throat and nose. For all of two seconds, she wondered if she could throw a pan of water on the flames and put them out, but then she realized it was beyond that. She ran to the island in the kitchen and grabbed her purse, praying her cell phone was in it, then shot out the door on the street side and down the flight of stairs to the driveway.

  Her heart raced and she was in enough of a panic that she struggled to dial 911. Finally, she managed it, gave the dispatcher her address, and tried to answer his questions. Before they broke the connection, a fire engine rounded the corner down the block.

  As she watched the truck pull up to the curb, she shivered and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head against the light rain, huddling away from the noise of the rig and keeping her distance from the house.

  A firefighter in full gear hurried out of the pa
ssenger side of the truck and gave the house a once-over from this angle. Two other men followed and started grabbing equipment while the first talked into his radio to, she assumed, the dispatcher. He reported that engine one had arrived and there was smoke showing from the rear of a three-story stucco structure. He said some other things she didn’t catch and that they would be entering through the front door.

  Selena’s heart raced, and she tried to imagine doing their job. Walking into a burning house. No thank you.

  “Are all people and pets out of the house?” the firefighter asked her as he approached.

  Selena nodded.

  “Can you tell me where the fire is? What’s burning?”

  “The living room on the back side,” Selena said shakily. “In that corner of the main level.” She pointed to the left end of the house. “Up that flight of stairs. The curtains and a chair were burning.”

  “You stay here,” he said. “Don’t go back in the house for any reason until we give you the okay.” He went back on his radio and repeated what she’d told him.

  She nodded again, finding that easier than trying to be heard over the roar of the truck, and sat on the ground, hoping to catch less of the wind that way. She moved over so the engine blocked some of it and curled into her jacket, longing for the blanket she’d been wrapped in, the blanket that was probably charbroiled by now.

  The firefighter who’d spoken to her quickly conferred with the others, and they carried a flat hose to the house. They disappeared through the door, where light smoke was starting to appear.

  Selena’s throat felt swollen and scratchy, making it difficult to swallow. What if the place blew up? Burned to the ground? She could only see a little black smoke on this side, but that could change at any second, couldn’t it?

  Losing the house her father had loved so much would break her. She felt closest to him here and couldn’t stand to see his dream disappear. Besides, she truly didn’t have anywhere else to go. This was it, and her own carelessness was to blame if the house was destroyed.