The Slow Burn

by Caro Carson

  “Actually,” he began, then stopped to clear his throat. “Actually, I’m going to have to take a rain check. I start my shift at dawn tomorrow. I’ve got to get some stuff done at my house tonight.”

  It was a flimsy excuse, and judging by the way her smile slipped, she knew it.

  “I wish you could stay.”

  Her sincerity killed him. She was something special—and she was going to head down to Houston to tell a man in person that he was going to be a father.

  “Thank you for everything,” she said. “The test, the glucose tablets, listening to me talk about pregnant women and locker rooms. It was really nice of you. All of it. You’re a—a really nice guy.”

  “I’ll see you around.” He probably would, too. Masterson was a big college but a small town. Nine months was a long time to not run into somebody.

  She stepped back and put her hand on the door that would shut them off from one another. Her frown had returned.

  The second before the door closed, he called her name. “Hey, Tana?”

  “Yes?” She waited, hand on the door.

  What? What are you going to say? He couldn’t get the contrast between her and his sister-in-law out of his head. Every woman deserved to be as happy as his sister-in-law had been.

  “Since I’m the first person in Masterson who knows you’re expecting, I get to be the first person in Masterson to congratulate you on the big news.” His smile was not forced. “Congratulations, Montana McKenna.”

  “Thanks.” It took a moment, but she smiled. It started small, even shy, but she ended up beaming at him. “Thanks. Really.”

  Happy. Beautiful. That was how she should look, even if it blinded him.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night.” She stepped back and shut the door.

  He started the engine, but he didn’t back out of his space until he’d watched her cross the street safely, open the etched-glass door of the pub and disappear inside.

  “Goodbye, Montana McKenna.”

  Chapter Five

  “Hello, Lieutenant Sterling.”

  Tana tapped him on the shoulder. He had his back to her as he stood in front of the white display of milk and eggs and yogurt, but it was definitely him. Those navy blue firefighter slacks and dark T-shirt on that big frame had drawn her attention the moment she’d headed down the huge grocery store’s aisle, and she’d been more certain with each step that he was the one firefighter in town she knew by name.

  He turned around. “Hi.”

  “Happy Halloween.” She shouldn’t feel as startled to see his face as he seemed to be to see hers, but she’d somehow forgotten in the past seven weeks just how attractive the man was. Most of that emotional tsunami of a day was a blur in her mind.

  “Nice to see you...” He dipped to look under the brim of her pointy witch’s hat. “Montana?”

  She flipped back her cape and got lightly choked by its black ribbons, which she’d tied into a bow at her throat. “I guess my costume isn’t much of a disguise. It’s just Tana, by the way.”

  “It’s a great costume. The black lipstick threw me for a minute.” He put back the gallon of milk he’d been holding as if it didn’t weigh a thing. With arm muscles like his, it probably didn’t.

  Eye candy. Trick or treat.

  “And it’s just Caden, Tana.”

  His smile was warm. That was the one thing about him she’d remembered the most clearly, more than the strong body, more than the contrast between those light eyes and his dark hair. She remembered being taken care of by a firefighter who had smiled at her as if her world was not actually going to hell in a handbasket. Congratulations, he’d said, and she’d believed he really meant it.

  She didn’t need eye candy, not for the rest of her nine months. But she’d wanted to say hello to Caden. He was, so far, the only person who’d acted like her pregnancy was something to celebrate. Jerry had informed her she would not ruin his sabbatical, and during her first prenatal visit, her new doctor had been all business about calculating due dates and prescribing vitamins for her, before moving on to the next woman in the next exam room.

  Nobody else knew. Still.

  Ruby came up to them, her pink tutu bouncing with every step, her hands full as she carried a party platter from the supermarket’s deli. “Well, hello there! Remember me? I remember you.”

  Tana could tell the lieutenant was both amused and clueless. Ruby had dark circles under her eyes, blood dripping from her lips and her hair teased into a rat’s nest.

  “This is Ruby,” Tana said. “She was in the CPR class with me.”

  “Ruby, sure. Nice to see you again.” He turned right back to Tana. “How have you been? Are you able to eat now? No more—”

  “Fine. Just fine.” She should have warned him that her pregnancy was still a secret before Ruby joined them, but she hadn’t, so she smiled too brightly and spoke too quickly. “Isn’t Ruby’s costume great? Can you guess what she is? It’s a secret.”

  Caden and Ruby both looked at her.

  “I mean, she told me what she was planning to be, but I’ve been keeping it a secret.”

  Caden gave her a nod so slight, nobody would have noticed it, but Tana did. He’d gotten her message. She was relieved—and embarrassed. He must wonder why she hadn’t even told her friend yet. That CPR class had been almost two months ago. Seven weeks, to be precise. If there was anything pregnancy did, it made one pay attention to calendars.

  “It’s not a secret,” Ruby protested. “It’s so obvious. I’m a zombie ballerina.”

  “Right.” Caden drawled the word. “Perfectly obvious. Everyone knows the zombie virus hit hard during Swan Lake.”

  With her hands full, Ruby bumped shoulders with him. “What are you? A hot fireman?”

  “Just a fireman. I’d rather not be hot when I’m working. That would mean I’m in a burning building. Halloween is a busy enough night for us as it is.”

  “Aw, you’re so cute.”

  Tana had to agree. He was warm and funny...and good-looking. Tana was glad she’d gone with a glam kind of witch costume. She’d used black eyeliner to give herself dramatic cat eyes. Thank goodness she hadn’t used it to draw in frown lines and wrinkles, because...

  It didn’t matter, did it?

  She was in a new phase of her life now. She was pregnant. Apparently, her hormones were still capable of responding to a man, despite the fact that the biological purpose of sex had been accomplished and she was beginning the second trimester. Things like flirting with men at costume parties were now in her past.

  Caden picked up an egg carton. “We stopped to grab things we can cook up fast, before the night gets too crazy. Scrambled eggs and orange juice can keep us going between calls. We’ll have a lot of calls tonight, guaranteed. All you witches and zombies are trouble.”

  “You poor things,” Ruby said. “I guess a fire truck can’t fit through the McDonald’s drive-thru. You boys and your toys are just too big. Not that there’s anything wrong with large boys’ toys.”

  Caden shook his head and rolled his eyes. He winked at Tana after she rolled her eyes, too, but then he got serious with her. “We worked a call about a woman who’d fainted on campus a few weeks ago. I was glad it wasn’t you, but I’ve been wondering how you’re doing. Any more fainting?”

  “None. I feel really normal, nothing...different.” Which was odd. She would have thought being pregnant would be this momentous change, but so far, there’d been nothing after those first few weeks of feeling queasy.

  “Drinking a lot?” he asked.

  “So much that I have to use the ladies’ room everywhere I go. That was memorable advice.”

  He grabbed the gallon of milk again. Really, the flex of that arm muscle was a thing of beauty. “The guys are probably waiting for me at the register. It was g
ood to see you. You look great, black lipstick and all. Glad to see it.”

  “Hey,” Ruby said, bumping Caden’s shoulder again before he could turn away. She held her deli platter higher. “We’re bringing this to a big party for the staff and faculty at the Treville Center. Everyone’s bringing guests. There’s going to be more food there than anyone knows what to do with. Maybe we’ll see you there later?”

  “Let’s hope not,” Caden said. “I’m on duty until morning, so if I showed up, it would mean—”

  “We’re in a burning building.” Ruby sighed. “Well, a zombie girl can dream. Happy Halloween.”

  “You, too.”

  He had to go. Tana knew he had to go, and there was no reason to keep him, but as he turned away, something in her pleaded Stay. Here with him in the dairy aisle, she felt like she had an ally, one person who understood the subtext when she said she felt fine, the only man who knew it mattered if she ate, because there was another life depending upon her to stay healthy. This man not only spoke to her, but he smiled at her while knowing everything, and she wanted him to stay.

  She blurted out, “Be safe.”

  He turned back and looked at her with serious blue eyes. “Thanks. You take care of yourself, too.”

  She knew what he meant. You’re pregnant. Drink and pee and don’t faint.

  “I will.”

  She and Ruby both watched him walk away.

  They kept watching, until he turned down an aisle and disappeared.

  “Really,” Ruby sighed in approval, “the view from behind is as nice as the view from the front.”

  New phase of my life. A handsome man with a firm backside and a confident, masculine walk was just a handsome man with a firm backside and a confident, masculine walk.

  Tana turned back to the dairy display and examined the row of sour-cream dips. “Should we get ranch or French onion?”

  “He is so into you, you lucky witch.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Then you must’ve cast a spell that forced him to act like a man who is really into you. He could not take his eyes off you.”

  “That’s not true.” Tana frowned at the cucumber dip. “It’s just not.”

  “Hey, look at me.” Ruby prodded her with the deli tray. “That man is totally interested in you. He looked you over from head to toe. He liked what he saw.”

  It was surprisingly painful to hear that. In another time, another situation, another Tana might’ve been thrilled if Ruby was right. But Ruby was wrong, and Tana didn’t want to imagine otherwise. It would make her want things that didn’t matter anymore.

  She pulled the ranch, French, and cucumber dips off the shelf, all three, stacking the extra-large tubs on her palm. She slapped her other hand on top of the tower to hold them steady. “Trust me, he wasn’t looking at me like that.”

  “You are blind.”

  “Ruby, I’m serious.”

  “You could have him with a snap of your fingers, I’m telling you. He barely knew I was here, he was so into you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  The stack of dips and the deli tray kept them far enough apart that Tana couldn’t whisper, but she looked over her shoulder to make sure nobody else was in the aisle. “I’m pregnant.”

  Ruby’s mouth fell open, a zombie struck speechless.

  “And he knows it, so he wasn’t looking at me like that, okay?” Tana turned back to the cold, white shelves, her black cape swishing around her, tugging on its tie at her throat. She inhaled the refrigerated air through her nose slowly and deliberately. She wasn’t angry at the situation, not bitter at all. “He knows.”

  “Why does the world’s hottest CPR instructor know that? Is he—is he the father? Tell me he did more than give you a ride to the pub. Did you two have a little extracurricular activity? A little welcome-to-town kind of—”

  “No! Jeez. No.” After another quick glance around, Tana spoke quickly and quietly. “I was already pregnant when I fainted at the CPR class. I told him then, because, you know...fainting.”

  “Oh, Tana.” The zombie makeup did nothing to mask the pure pity in Ruby’s expression.

  “So, if you saw him checking me out from head to toe, he was looking to see how far along I am, or if I look dehydrated or whatever. He wasn’t flirting with me. He’s just being a paramedic, checking up on a patient. Okay?”

  “You’ve been pregnant since the start of the school year, and you’re just now telling me?”

  “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I hate failing. I hate admitting I failed.

  She’d had seven weeks to think about it. She was pregnant because she’d failed to make her boyfriend use a condom correctly. Jerry had always slipped in a few strokes before begrudgingly donning a condom, telling her he just wanted a taste of how good sex could feel for him, if only Tana would go to the doctor and spend the money and put herself on the pill, if only she’d swallow one every single day to alter her body chemistry, so that when he spent the night a few times each month, he wouldn’t have to wear a condom.

  In retrospect, his attitude meant she’d failed to choose a decent man to be her boyfriend in the first place. Now, she was going to spend the most critical part of the swim season as a waddling whale who couldn’t travel with her team, a coach who couldn’t coach, and the odds were that she’d fail to get her contract renewed for a second season. She might never coach at the college level again, once her résumé showed that she’d lasted only a year at Masterson. She could coach high school, perhaps, but high schools barely paid even a thousand dollars a semester, not enough to live on, not enough for a baby to live on, not enough to hire a lawyer to make Jerry pay enough for a baby to live on.

  She was scared.

  She answered Ruby with a shrug.

  “Is Jerry still in Peru? You poor thing. You should have told me, at least to have someone to sympathize with you. When is he coming back?”

  He had not sent her his mailing address. He hadn’t contacted her in any way, and it sucked to have to tell anybody that. Tana should have let Ruby go on and on about how much the fireman was into her.

  “I have no idea where Jerry is,” Tana said. “We’re not a couple anymore.”

  “He left you? Oh, honey.” Ruby set the deli tray on the bottom edge of the refrigerator case, freeing her arms to hug Tana despite the tubs of dip between them. She squeezed Tana hard, knocking the tower askew, then released her. Tana juggled the dips back into place.

  “Listen to me,” Ruby said. “The rat will have to come back when you take him to court for child support. I hope the judge takes his last dime for running off to Peru when you needed him the most. Oh, I hate him.”

  It wouldn’t change her situation at all. Jerry might grudgingly give her money now and then, when he was in the country, if the courts forced him to after the baby was born, after the paternity testing was done, after they’d waited to get on the docket to appear before a judge, but Tana could end up spending more money on lawyers than she’d ever receive in child support.

  The cape’s black bow was choking her, but her hands were full. She shouldn’t have thrown the cape back while she’d been talking to Lieutenant Sterling. To Caden. In this costume, she’d felt confident, walking up to him without hesitation. He’d smiled at the glamourous witch who’d tapped him on the shoulder.

  He’d stopped smiling to ask her about her health as a pregnant woman. Ruby wasn’t smiling now, either. Their expressions were so similar when they looked at her.

  Pity. Pure pity.

  Anyone who knew pitied her. Even the doctor had felt sorry for her when he’d asked about the expectant father, and she’d said he did not want to be part of the pregnancy.

 
; Poor thing, pregnant with no partner.

  Ruby wanted to help. “If Jerry refuses to take a paternity test, I think the courts can order him to, if you can provide some reasonable evidence that you guys were together. I’ll testify that we went on that double date. Please let me testify against that rat fink bastard.”

  Jerry hadn’t pitied her. He’d simply not believed her. Tana was not going to beg anyone, not a judge and especially not Jerry, to believe her about the father’s identity. She would not drag a baby through paternity tests and family court, just so he or she could be legally saddled with a man who didn’t want to be a father.

  “Sorry, Ruby. There won’t be a court case, because there won’t be a paternity test. Jerry’s not a father, not by any stretch of the imagination.”

  “He’s not? Oh, thank God.” Ruby’s whole expression changed from pity to relief to something else. Her zombie lips twitched in a mischievous smile. “I hope Jerry stormed off to Peru dying of jealousy, then. Let him eat his heart out.”

  Two things hit Tana instantly. First, Ruby had completely missed that Tana had said Jerry was not a father. As in, not a man cut out to be a father. Not fatherhood material.

  Secondly, the pity wasn’t for her pregnancy. It was for the circumstances, for the baby being an accident, for Tana being abandoned. If Tana hadn’t gotten knocked up accidentally by a loser like Jerry, then she wouldn’t be a loser, even if she was pregnant.

  If only that were the situation.

  The plastic tubs were starting to freeze Tana’s hands. She said nothing as she started toward the cash registers.

  Ruby snatched up the deli tray and walked down the aisle with her, giving her one of her flirty shoulder bumps. “So? Who is it? You can tell me. Who’s your secret guy? Can I meet him? Do I know him already?”

  You misunderstood what I said. It’s Jerry, of course. All of Ruby’s pity would return. She’d apologize for having been so obviously relieved that it wasn’t Jerry a moment ago.

  “I—I don’t know what to say.” Tana only had the length of the cereal aisle to figure it out.

  That last, awful phone call with Jerry had been playing on repeat in Tana’s head for seven weeks now. You’re the one who is pregnant, not me.