The Slow Burn

by Caro Carson

  “It’s okay, Max. Accidents happen.” His niece could speak big words clearly in her little voice. Caden recognized the singsong lilt to that particular phrase. Little Abby could impersonate her mother, Abigail Sterling, to a T.

  Abigail slid out of her side of the booth and scooped up the wailing Max. “I think this is our cue to get back to the ranch. What a long day.”

  As Thanksgivings went, this one hadn’t been restful for anybody. It had been a good one, though. Caden had volunteered to work Christmas this year, so the guys with little kids could be home for Santa duty. That gave him Thanksgiving off. Of course, he’d gone to his parents’ house. Caden’s brother, Edward, had come down from his ranch with his wife, Abigail, and their two kids. His mother had both bragged and complained about the size of the turkey she’d put in the oven before dawn.

  Mom had served the meal around noon, as she always did. The family had finished their seconds and were settling in to watch some football before diving into the pumpkin pies, which meant they’d all intended to catch a nap, sprawled out all over the family room in front of the TV, when a phone call had thrown the rest of the day into organized chaos.

  Edward and Abigail allocated space on their ranch for horses who needed rehabilitation. Today’s call had come from an animal welfare group that had been keeping tabs on a mare that was underfed and slowly starving. Since the law couldn’t do much to force bad owners to surrender their animals, rescue groups had to persuade negligent owners to turn their animals over to them. The mare’s owner had, perhaps in a fit of holiday spirit, finally agreed to allow the group to take the horse. The mare needed to be picked up immediately, because owners were known to change their minds on a whim, deciding to keep the animal just because someone else wanted it, or as a way to keep getting attention from the rescue group, as twisted as that was.

  Little Abby and baby Max had been left with their grandparents while Caden, Edward and Abigail had headed an hour north to the ranch to hitch up the horse trailer. The three of them had the routine down pat. Abigail would charm the negligent jerk of an owner, praising him or her for being so smart to let the animal go. Caden and Edward would stay silent and try to look meaner than they were. Edward’s ranching and Caden’s firefighting kept them in better-than-average shape, so they’d stand behind the smiling Abigail like a couple of surly cowboy bouncers at a country-western bar. The combination of his sister-in-law’s flattery and the brothers’ brawn usually worked, and it had worked again today.

  Watching the mare check out the small quarantine pasture on the Sterling ranch had made Caden’s Thanksgiving Day. She’d rolled around on the clean ground, stretching her back out, now that she had a space free of rusting car parts and broken lawnmowers. That horse was a special horse, still spirited despite the neglect. She’d been worth every mile they’d driven.

  They’d driven a few hundred, so far. Caden’s parents lived south of Masterson. The ranch was north of Masterson. The horse had been rescued fifty miles west of the ranch, brought back and settled in. Afterward, they’d had to drive back through the town to get the kids. Their parents had suggested meeting halfway in Masterson itself, here at the Tipsy Musketeer, to knock some miles off their journey.

  “These kids are ready for bath and bed,” Abigail said, swaying to soothe baby Max. “And so am I. We have to go now.”

  “I don’t want a bath,” Abby said. “I don’t have to go now.”

  Caden tried not to laugh at her perfectly correct logic. It would only earn him a matching set of glares from his sister-in-law and brother. Instead, he got out of the booth and held out his arms for his niece. “Come on, kiddo. You gotta go when Mommy and Daddy tell you to go.”

  Max’s tears were apparently contagious, because Abby’s upper lip quivered. Her little voice wavered. “I don’t want to go.” She threw her arms around Caden’s neck.

  Caden blew one of her strawberry curls away from his mouth and raised an eyebrow at his brother. Edward was the stricter of the two parents. Caden was just the indulgent uncle. He wasn’t about to get all hard-nosed with Abby. Not my job, brother.

  Edward opened his mouth to say something firm and fatherly, but then he sighed and patted Abby on the back. “If we leave now, you don’t have to have a bath, okay? You can eat pumpkin pie with me.”

  “Oh, goody,” his wife murmured. “Bribery. Exactly how we planned to parent.”

  “I had pie at Gramma’s house.” Abby pouted.

  Edward negotiated. “Was it good? Would you like another piece? I haven’t had any yet.”

  Abigail turned the stroller toward the pub’s etched glass door while baby Max kept fussing on her hip. She smiled sweetly at her husband. “You don’t want me to witness this, honey, because I’ll never let you live it down if I do. I’ll meet you at the truck.”

  Edward shrugged a little sheepishly as she kissed his cheek and walked away. With a sigh, he held out his hands to Abby. “Come on. Time to go.”

  Abby strangled Caden and shook her head, getting more curls in his mouth. Caden didn’t mind. It was always fun to see his big brother get bested by a tiny tot.

  Edward pleaded with Caden. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come back to the ranch with us and spend the night?”

  “Can’t. My shift starts at seven in the morning. Since my truck is still at Mom and Dad’s, I’m going to sleep at the station tonight.” Pretty much everything in Masterson was within walking distance of the pub, from the college campus to the fire station. The Tipsy Musketeer had Est. 1889 etched in its glass door. It had been built first, back in the days of the wild, wild West. The rest of the town had grown around it.

  Edward looked resigned to his fate. He’d have to carry Abby out of the pub as she protested all the way, but when he moved to pry Abby away, Caden held up a hand to stop him.

  “Hey, Abby,” he whispered. “Did Gramma give you whipped cream with that pie?”

  Abby nodded.

  “I think that’s the best part, don’t you?”

  Abby nodded some more.

  “If I were you, I’d go with my daddy, and when he got his pumpkin pie, I’d eat all of his whipped cream, really quick, before he got to. Then he’d have to put more on his pie, and I’d eat all that, too.”

  “I don’t think she’s fast enough to eat all my whipped cream,” Edward said.

  Abby picked up her head to give her father an offended glare.

  Edward ignored her and spoke to Caden. “I guess I could race her, but there’s no way she can eat as much whipped cream as I can.”

  In a matter of minutes, Abby was willing to be handed off from uncle to father in order to prove her ability to eat whipped cream.

  “Do not ever breathe a word of this to my wife,” Edward said to Caden under his breath. He carried his daughter out of the pub.

  Caden sat in the booth to finish eating in peace. His Irish stew had gone lukewarm, but he was used to eating whatever food he could, when he could, while he was on duty. Since he was not on duty, however, he ordered an ice-cold beer after he’d polished off the sourdough rolls.

  “You can’t drink alone.”

  Caden looked up.

  “Remember me?”

  “Zombie ballerina. You look like you’ve rejoined the ranks of the living.”

  “Until next Halloween.” Ruby helped herself to his sister-in-law’s vacant spot as she gestured to the largest corner table. “Come join us. We’ve all been perfect little boys and girls with our families all day, and now we’re having a drink to recover. There may be cussing and dirty jokes. I saw you with those little kids. Totally adorable, but if anyone needs to chill out now with adults who are not relatives, it’s you, am I right?”

  Ruby wasn’t hitting on him, Caden was pretty certain. Not that there was anything wrong with being hit on by a friendly, attractive girl. Ruby was just...well, as much as he disa
greed with Javier that he had a type, Caden had to admit that he didn’t feel that kind of attraction to Ruby. They could be friends, though, easily. That was a good thing.

  Caden checked out the folks at her table. He recognized another face from that same CPR class, but the one face he wanted to see, which was the one face he ought to avoid for his own peace of mind, wasn’t there. No sexy witch tonight. That was a good thing, too.

  A country-western DJ was upping the volume of the music, now that the family dinner hours were ending, and more couples and singles were showing up. The light from the pub’s Victorian-era chandelier was dimmed, and the tables in front of the stage were removed to create a dance floor. The Tipsy Musketeer usually had live sing-along folk music. The music was known for being good, because this was a college town, and the owner was a smart man who hired the university’s music majors. But, since this was a college town, all those student musicians were home for the extended holiday weekend, along with the faculty.

  Like the swim coach.

  He could hang out here with other Masterson locals, and nothing would mess with his resolve to forget about a witch with cat eyes and a lifeguard license.

  Caden brought his beer over to Ruby’s gang and said his hellos. He’d barely started debating football conference rankings with the woman next to him when he and the other men were pushed onto the dance floor by all of the women, and line dancing commenced.

  It was a relaxed way to dance. The steps were the same for everyone as they formed a few loose lines. The ladies tended to throw a lot of hip-wiggle into it, but Caden and the other men just hooked their thumbs in the belt loops of their jeans as they kicked the heels of their cowboy boots against the floor. Heel, toe, kick, shuffle back four steps—

  Tana McKenna walked into the pub.

  Ruby squealed and grabbed her and hugged her. Tana was barely given a second to drop her purse on a chair before she was pulled onto the dance floor, too. The whole crowd turned a quarter turn, and Caden was intensely aware that she was somewhere behind him. Heel, toe, kick, shuffle—another quarter turn, and Tana was dancing beside him in the same line.

  She gave him a little wave and a smile, and damn it to hell, he did have a type, and Tana McKenna was it.

  Another kick and turn, and he was behind her for the final lines of the song. She still had on her light jacket, and she wore slacks instead of a skirt or shorts. It was her dark hair that caught his attention tonight, the way it fell loosely to her shoulders, catching the light from the antique chandelier. He remembered that her hair had smelled like flowers when she’d sat next to him in the cab of his truck and pulled it up into a ponytail.

  At the last note, Caden headed off the dance floor and dropped into the chair in front of his beer.

  Tana retrieved her purse and came over to the table. After a moment’s hesitation, she chose a chair away from his.

  She didn’t look pregnant yet. That was the first thing he noticed.

  She had arrived alone. No man had dropped her off, parked a truck, then come in a few minutes later to join her on the dance floor. That was the second thing he noticed.

  She wasn’t happy. That was the third thing he noticed, when their eyes met again. She smiled politely as they exchanged How are you? and Good, thanks, how about you? Underneath that, something was bothering her. She seemed almost embarrassed to see him.

  He played it cool and turned to talk to the woman next to him, resuming their debate on which college teams should go to which bowl games over Christmas and New Year’s.

  It worked. When Caden casually looked her way again, Tana looked more relaxed. His first thought had been wrong; she was starting to look pregnant, after all. She had that glow about her, that super-healthy thing that Caden had seen in his sister-in-law during both of her pregnancies. Tana’s face was a little fuller, just a little softer around the edges, sort of.

  Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe he wanted to convince himself that she looked pregnant, because, whether she was softer or glowing or not, Tana McKenna was off limits.

  Tana shook off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. She was bigger in the chest. A lot bigger. He was not imagining it.

  That damn spark was hard to douse, but Caden knew a fire couldn’t burn out of control if the fuel was taken away. He turned back to the football-loving woman. “You want to go dance?”

  It helped, two-stepping in a lazy circle around the dance floor with a woman in his arms, but the song only lasted so long, and if he kept her out here for song after song, she’d start assuming he wanted more than he did. He walked her back to their group.

  “Oh, you’re a good dancer,” Ruby said, before he could sit down. “My turn.”

  Back to the dance floor he went, but so did Tana, with another guy from the group. Caden and Ruby assumed the ballroom-style hold of the two-step. Next to them, Tana and her partner did the same. Caden felt things he didn’t want to feel when he saw another man’s arm around Tana’s back, another man’s hand holding hers out to the side.

  The song ended before they could begin. The DJ started a country waltz.

  “Oh, shoot. I don’t know how to waltz,” Ruby said, dropping her arm and stepping back from him.

  Tana’s partner was saying the same thing. Caden felt a little desperate. If Tana was going back to the table, then he wanted to stay on the dance floor, far enough away to not fan any flames.

  “Waltzing isn’t that hard,” Caden assured Ruby. Unfortunately, Tana said the same exact thing at the exact same moment.

  “Neither one of you is going to call jinx?” Ruby asked.

  The four of them laughed, but Tana’s laugh didn’t sound any more genuine than his.

  “It’s just counting to three instead of two,” Tana said to her partner. “I can show you how.”

  The guy had that trapped look about him, like he’d rather do just about anything than stumble through his first waltz right this second. Ruby grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, let’s go to the bar. They can show us how it’s done. We should order a round of shots for the table.”

  That was how Caden found himself with Tana in his arms, waltzing to a classic country-western song. She was a good dancer, which he appreciated, because he enjoyed dancing. She was better than good, actually, which shouldn’t have surprised him. She was the woman of his—

  She could have been the woman of his dreams.

  Honest to God, Caden hoped he’d run into a woman just like her one day, this time before she was starting a family with someone else.

  Tana stayed relaxed in his hold, moving lightly in whichever direction he turned them, trusting him not to steer her wrong or run into another couple. Her slacks and sweater were dressier than his jeans and plaid shirt, but the two of them meshed together effortlessly, her boot stepping neatly between his on every downbeat, one-two-three, one-two-three, and not once on his toes. She was both athletic and graceful—and entirely too soft in his arms.

  Honest to God—how about meeting a clone of Tana one day soon? Soon would be good.

  In the meantime, he might as well make friends with the original. Friends danced. Friends talked. So far, they had one out of two going.

  He broke the awkward silence. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask if you’ve been drinking enough. You must be. You look like you’re feeling good. You’re starting to look a little bit pregnant, just in your—”

  “Chest. I know. It’s so bizarre. My bustline is heading toward Dolly Parton territory.”

  Awkward didn’t begin to describe that as a conversation starter. Caden had to laugh. “That was not what I was going to say.”

  “It wasn’t? I thought it was so obvious. Isn’t it?”

  “No comment.”

  They were getting boxed into a crowded corner of the dance floor. Caden spun them in a full 360, just because he could when he had a p
artner as good as she was, then led them into a more open area.

  “That means yes,” she said.

  “That means no comment. I have some manners, you know. I don’t casually chat with women about their chest size, pregnant or otherwise. Jeez. How’s the weather?”

  “Sorry. Now I’m embarrassed.” She bit her lip, but it looked like she did so to keep from smiling. “I guess I think of you as being a medical provider, so, you know...”

  “Yeah. But no. I’m not your doctor. I’m your dance partner.” He made their steps smaller, making the dance less challenging, so they could talk more easily.

  “Got it. Sorry.” Her apology was definitely playful now. “I’m going to go broke buying new bras every month, though.”

  “Stop.”

  “Guys have no idea how expensive bras are, do they?”

  “I’m trying to be your friend here. Do you always torture your friends?”

  “Only when it’s fun.” She laughed—that laugh, the real one.

  He hadn’t forgotten how perfect it had sounded that first night, when they’d been parked right outside this pub. He looked at her smiling face, felt the bustline in question brush against him as she laughed, and Caden gave up trying to think of her body as maternal. The fact was that he was dancing with a gorgeous, desirable woman, and this waltz was sweet, sweet torture.

  “You’ve got me curious,” she said. “If I hadn’t interrupted, what part of me were you going to say looked pregnant?”

  “Your face.”

  “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure. Friends tell friends when they have something on their face. Spit it out, friend.”

  “It’s nothing bad. You’ve got that pregnancy glow going on.”

  She froze, just for a fraction of a second, just long enough that they stuttered a step out of sync. He caught her closer and got them back into the rhythm.

  “I didn’t know that was really a thing.” She sounded more subdued.

  He kept it light. “Sure, it is. My mom says pregnant women are radiant because their bodies are going full-out, operating at max capacity. Getting things done. Big things.”