The Slow Burn

by Caro Carson

  Those words hurt, but maybe she could use them. Maybe she could turn it around and own them.

  “I’m the one who is pregnant, not him. The father is nothing more than a sperm donor. He’s not important.”

  “He’s not?”

  “Once the sperm has done its thing, the man’s existence doesn’t affect the situation at all, does it? I’m the one who decided to have a baby.”

  That was true, in a way. From the doctor’s first phone call, it had never occurred to her that motherhood wasn’t her new future, ready or not.

  “Wow,” Ruby said. “Did you always plan to have a baby on your own?”

  Tana had always planned to fall in love, get married and have a baby. She had imagined herself in love with one of her physical therapists while she’d been in training for the Olympics, so she’d married him when he’d asked, but she’d been far too young. She’d been married for less than a year, a huge mess of a failure that her parents would never let her live down. Ten years had passed since then. She had no love, no marriage, no baby—because no man had chosen her.

  She stopped in front of the tea. “I hate that women are expected to wait around until a man decides whether or not he thinks they are good enough to be the mother of their children. We’re supposed to live our lives single and alone until the day we die, unless some guy decides to get down on bended knee with a ring box while we’re still in our fertile years. Then we’re allowed to have a family? It’s such bull.”

  She started walking again. The cash registers were only a few yards away. The sound of her high-heeled black pumps striking the hard floor sounded strong. She was wearing a cape. She had cat eyes, damn it.

  “You’re so badass,” Ruby said. “What’s your plan?”

  “I’m not waiting for Prince Charming to show up.”

  Caden Sterling walked up to the cash register line. So did two other men in similar blue uniforms. Tana and Ruby would be standing right behind them in a matter of seconds. Caden would look at her with heart-stoppingly blue eyes that were filled with a professional kind of concern. He’d look at her with pity.

  She spun away. “Chips.”

  Ruby scrambled after her. “What?”

  “I got all these dips, but I forgot to get the chips. Maybe pretzels.”

  “I think someone else signed up to bring the chips.”

  Tana kept heading in the opposite direction of the checkout line, anyway. “I need you to keep this a secret, Ruby. I can’t announce anything until I’ve figured out everything. Travel, maternity leave. Childcare, so I can come back next season. All kinds of things. It’s a lot.”

  “Oh, you poor thing. I’ll just bet it is, and you have to make these plans all on your own?”

  Jeez, not more pity. Tana couldn’t stand it, so she lifted her chin and ignored the ribbon tied around her throat, focusing instead on the fabulous flutter of the cape flaring out behind her. “My plan is to grab some chips. I’m going to go to a costume party and be your designated driver. Monday, I’m going to run swim practice, just as I did last Monday.”

  “What about your pregnancy?”

  “I’m going to be pregnant while I do those things.” She let go of the tower with one hand and tugged her witch’s hat more firmly into place. “One day at a time.”

  “Load me up with chips, then.”

  Tana placed a supersize bag on top of the party tray, and they headed back to the checkout line. There were only two firefighters up ahead. Caden was missing.

  Ruby spoke sotto voce. “Whoever the father was, I hope he gave you mind-blowing orgasms.”

  That surprised a laugh out of Tana, loud enough that the two firemen looked over their shoulders at her. The firemen looked at each other, then looked back at them.

  Tana murmured, “If there’d been mind-blowing orgasms involved, then I wouldn’t be talking about sperm donors right now, would I?”

  “Maybe next baby, then,” Ruby said under her breath, just before they got in line. “Hello, gentlemen.”

  The guys told them they liked their costumes, then told them to go ahead of them.

  “Thanks. I like your costumes, too, by the way. You look like real firemen.” Ruby smiled with her bloody lips and gave Tana’s cape a subtle tug, so Tana forced the corners of her black-painted lips into a smile, too.

  “Stay safe tonight,” Tana said, after they’d paid for their party food. “Tell Caden I said goodbye.”

  * * *

  Caden cursed himself all the way back to the dairy aisle. He’d remembered the eggs, but he’d forgotten the bacon. The guys had given him hell, rightfully enough, because bacon was the best part of the whole meal. He’d had to walk the entire length of the big-box store again. There’d been no sign of Tana along the way.

  No sign of Ruby, either, but Tana was undeniably the one he’d been looking for. That sexy-witch look had scrambled his brains badly enough to make him forget bacon existed. Her skirt had been longer than the khaki shorts she’d worn in September, but her legs looked frigging out-of-this-world in sheer black pantyhose. She’d stood beside him in high-heeled, pointy-toed, feminine-as-hell shoes, and he’d totally forgotten for a moment that she was taken.

  But she was.

  He stared at the gallons of milk.

  She looked fantastic, because her morning sickness had subsided, and her pregnancy was progressing without any problems. She looked happier now than she had at the CPR class. She was a happy, pregnant woman.

  Taken.

  Bacon—that was what he was here for.

  Caden grabbed the first pound of bacon he saw and headed back to the registers using a different aisle, but there were no further sexy-witch sightings.

  Just as well. What kind of pervert made the effort to get a second look at a pair of legs belonging to a woman who was having a baby with another man? She’s taken. If he repeated it to himself another thousand times, maybe he wouldn’t forget it the next time he ran into her.

  The guys, Keith and Javier, saw him coming and put the rest of their food on the conveyor belt. Caden tossed the bacon. It hit the milk jug and scraped along the metal bumper as the belt dragged the food toward the cashier.

  “You just missed them,” Keith said.

  “Who?” Caden asked, but it was a stupid question.

  “Some kind of dead ballerina and a totally hot witch.”

  She’s taken.

  “Funniest thing,” Javier said. “I was just thinking the witch seemed like she was exactly your type, and I was trying to think of a way to stall her until you came back, but then she says, ‘Tell Caden goodbye.’”

  Keith clapped him on the shoulder. “My dude. Well done.”

  “You’re congratulating me on having a woman say goodbye?” Caden paid the cashier with cash from the kitty they kept to cover their family-style meals during shifts. “That’s not an achievement in the dating world. I’ll explain it to you when you get older.”

  Keith, as the rookie, grabbed the grocery bags, and they headed out to the fire engine.

  “It means something when she says it like this.” Javier wiggled his fingertips and batted his eyelashes and made little kissy noises.

  Keith pitched his voice into a falsetto. “Tell Caden I said bye-eee.”

  I wish. But Caden knew Tana had said nothing flirtatious. She was friendly. Pregnant and friendly. She didn’t look pregnant, but she was. Good for her. Really.

  Javier and Keith were still carrying on.

  “Give it a rest.” Caden reached up to yank open the engine’s shiny red door, then he hauled his six-foot-almost-two self into the cab and said the words out loud. “She’s taken.”

  As lieutenant, he used the passenger seat. Javier drove. Keith sat behind them. They all buckled in and put on their microphone headsets, because the engine was too loud to speak over, even with
out running the sirens.

  Nobody spoke.

  At the first red light, Javier sat back from the massive steering wheel and looked back at Keith. “Taken, the lieutenant says. I didn’t see a ring on her hand, did you? I’m betting she won’t be taken for long. I’ll put twenty on Caden getting her to say hello-ooo to him by Valentine’s Day.”

  Caden snorted. “Bad bet. Don’t take it, Keith. I’m telling you, she’s not free.”

  Not for the next nine months, for certain. Or seven months, or however the hell much longer she had to go. She wasn’t showing, not at all, but she was happy and pregnant and going to a Halloween party with some man who was luckier than he was.

  Except there’d been no man with her. When Caden had driven her to the pub, she’d said something about going to Houston, because some news should be given in person. Maybe the lucky guy was on his way to meet her at the party.

  If Caden had a girlfriend like Tana, he’d damn sure come up from Houston early enough on the weekend to drive her to every party they went to. If he had a girlfriend like Tana and she was carrying his child?

  She wouldn’t be his girlfriend, for starters. She’d be his wife, or he’d be doing his damnedest to put a diamond on her finger and make it a forever kind of thing.

  His dad had that kind of thing with his mom. His brother and sister-in-law had it, too, plus two babies and counting. Caden wanted his own forever, someday.

  Keith’s voice came through Caden’s headset. “I’m not taking that bet. The lieutenant’s gonna make her his date for New Year’s Eve, at the latest.”

  Their money was safe, because they were both going to lose and cancel out each other’s bets. Caden couldn’t tell them why. Just as he wouldn’t poach someone else’s pregnant girlfriend, he wouldn’t spill Tana’s secret to anyone.

  The first call of the evening came in. A candle in a jack-o’-lantern had set a decorative hay bale on fire on someone’s front porch. The structure—which meant the house, in this case—could become involved in seconds.

  Caden hit the sirens, then he shrugged into his turnout coat and started buckling himself into the air tank that was always stored as part of his seat’s back.

  “And so, it begins,” he said into his headset.

  And so, it ends. The busy night ahead meant that he’d have no time to ruminate on a sexy witch, committing every detail to memory. She’d asked his crew to tell him goodbye.

  Goodbye to you, too, Tana—for the second time.

  Maybe there would be a third.

  Surely, in a small town, he would run into her a third time. As soon as he thought it, he tried to douse a spark of anticipation. He wouldn’t find his own forever-girl by obsessing over someone else’s sexy witch. He knew that. He did.

  But when they reached the house with the flaming hay bales, Caden still hadn’t managed to douse that inner spark.

  Putting out a real fire was easier.

  Chapter Six

  She’d had to buy new bras.

  That was it, so far. Tana’s breasts had gone up a full cup size, maybe more, but her stomach still didn’t have the slightest bit of a bulge. It was bizarre to be four months pregnant, yet now have her sexiest figure, ever.

  She toyed with her turkey and gravy. She wasn’t showing, so why had she broken the news to her parents during Thanksgiving dinner?

  There were only the three of them this year, tucked into the little house where Tana had grown up on the outskirts of Houston, so she’d thought it would be a positive, private family time for her announcement. Then again, Thanksgiving was always just the three of them. Tana had no siblings. Neither did her parents. No aunts, no uncles. Not one cousin.

  “Please pass the mashed potatoes.” Her mother pronounced every syllable as its own word: Poh. Tate. Toes. The extra emphasis on the Ts meant she’d like to throw the bowl against the wall, probably.

  Her mother would never do that. Tana kept a helpful smile on her face. “Would you like the gravy, too?”

  “I did not ask for the gravy.”

  Tana should have waited until Christmas to tell them. Her second prenatal appointment had been two weeks ago. The doctor had pressed all over her abdomen, squishing everything. Tana had asked how much longer it would be before she’d start looking pregnant. Of course, she’d wanted to know how much longer she could hide her pregnancy. The Musketeers had won their first two swim meets, men and women, both. The men’s diving team had won, too. Women’s diving had lost by a mere point. Everybody was happy with the new director of aquatics at Masterson University, so far. Tana wanted to bank as many positive impressions as she could, before she had to lower everyone’s expectations.

  The doctor had been amused by her question, as if she were disappointed that she wasn’t wearing maternity clothes yet. “Generally speaking, with a first pregnancy, you might not show for four months, even five, sometimes. The abdominal muscles haven’t been stretched before, so they stay tighter longer. Could be quite a bit longer for you. I don’t run across a lot of Olympians in my practice. Your abs are particularly strong, compared to my average patient.”

  And so, Tana had been forced to correct somebody, once again.

  “I’m not an Olympian. I made the team, but I didn’t go to the Games.”

  Because I fell in love, and I sacrificed everything else that mattered to me.

  “But thanks for the compliment on the abs. I still swim almost every day.” She’d patted her stomach good-naturedly, to show that it didn’t bother her at all to bring up her failures.

  As her mother scooped mashed potatoes with force, Tana took a quick bite of cranberry sauce, mostly because it was easy to swallow, so she could keep up her pretense that this failure didn’t bother her, either. It was only an accidental pregnancy with a man who’d turned out to be even more selfish than her parents had warned her he was. They’d warned her, and they’d been right.

  She swallowed more cranberry sauce. “The doctor said I’m due April twenty-third, plus or minus two weeks.”

  “NCAA championships are the last week of March,” her father said—to her mother, not to her. “It’s back in Indiana this year for the men. Georgia for the women.”

  “She won’t be able to travel,” they said, practically in unison.

  It had taken her parents one second to pinpoint the issue that kept Tana up at night, the one fact that she couldn’t change.

  Stress and poor sleep weren’t good for a pregnant woman. Fortunately, the doctor had already assured her that she could continue swimming throughout her pregnancy, up until the day her water broke.

  She had only a vague idea of what that meant. The internet said it was a sign she’d be going into labor, but that it was unlikely to be a sudden gush of amniotic fluid. She might feel a trickle of water running down her leg, if anything. How would Tana know that her water broke if she was in the pool at the time?

  Regardless, she planned to be using the pool up to the very last day. She would have gone crazy already if she hadn’t been able to put her head down and drive through the water, where the only sounds were those her own arms and legs made as she propelled herself forward, always forward, lap after lap. She counted her strokes and took a breath every twelfth one during the first laps, then every tenth, until she was winded enough to need one every eighth stroke, then sixth. Numbers and air and water filled her mind until there was no room to worry about anything else—as long as she stayed in the water, head down, moving forward in her lane.

  “Please pass the chestnut dressing.” Mom was still doing the T thing. The chesTnuT dressing meant MonTana was in trouble.

  I’m a grown-up. They can’t ground me for the rest of the holiday break.

  But it sure felt like they could.

  “The turkey is delicious, Mom.” She shoved a forkful of turkey into her mouth. Lean protein was good for her. It had alwa
ys been good for her, but now...well, she didn’t want to wake from a faint on a hard floor again. Not even with a good-looking fireman cradling her head in his hand, smiling at her with the warmest of smiles. There you are, he’d said.

  Tana tried again. “So, have you heard any interesting news lately? Any other interesting news, besides mine?”

  Her mother looked up at her father mournfully. “Poor Coach Nicholls. After everything that man has been through...” She pressed her fingertips to her lips, pausing to maintain her composure.

  Tana set down her fork, alarmed. “What happened to him?”

  Her father drizzled gravy over his mashed potatoes, a very precise operation, given the petite size of the silver ladle they used only at Thanksgiving and Christmas. “My understanding is that he put in a good word for you, not only with the athletic director of Masterson, but with the president of the university. Despite—” he pursed his lips, as if the words he was thinking would taste bad if said aloud “—everything.”

  “He did, yes. But what has happened to him? Is he ill?”

  Her father ladled another tablespoon of gravy. “You can’t be unaware of the consequences for what you’ve done. Coach Nicholls convinced everyone to give you a second chance at a school which competes at the national level. He must be so disappointed in you. You’ve let him down again.”

  Nothing was wrong with Coach Nicholls, then. Tana was the problem.

  “Coach Nicholls isn’t disappointed in me.” Not yet. “We beat the Longhorns last Saturday. They’re the reigning champs. It was a huge upset. Coach Nicholls sent me an email to congratulate me, actually.”

  It had been one of the best days of Tana’s professional life. “You should have seen it. We beat them off the blocks, almost every swimmer, every heat. I’ve been having the distance swimmers do block work like sprinters this month. They practically gained a second before the first breath on the first lap. It’s so satisfying to try something new at practice and see it pay off like that.”