The Slow Burn

by Caro Carson

  * * *

  The future sucked.

  Tana was going to lose Caden.

  She’d thought nine months of not knowing her future had been bad. Would being pregnant be hard? Would she let down the kids who’d come to the university to swim? Was this one-season contract going to be her last?

  She’d kept moving forward, hoping the answers would be good ones.

  This morning, out of vacation days and sick days, she’d checked her work email and her voice mail, and she’d gotten her final answer. The athletic director had not responded to any of her requests to discuss a contract extension. His administrative assistant had, but only to say their calendar was too full to schedule a meeting. It was a gutless way to let someone go, but being let go was the result.

  She wished she could go back to not knowing what the future held.

  Her van crawled along with the graduation-week traffic jams. The student-athlete awards were today. Sunday would be Mother’s Day, then Masterson University would graduate its latest batch of Musketeers, and Tana would be officially unemployed. Her faculty apartment lease ran out in two weeks. Tana was going to move back to Houston, back into her parents’ house.

  She had no choice.

  She dreaded telling Caden after the awards. He was going to be shocked; she hadn’t even hinted to him that her time was running out. The very worst part of her very near future was that she was going to lose her very best friend.

  Caden loved her baby. When she left Masterson, he would be devastated to lose Sterling. Then Tana would lose Caden, because who could be friends with someone who caused them so much pain?

  She pounded the steering wheel. Damn her boss. Her heart was breaking, but he wasn’t sparing her a moment’s thought. The only thing the athletic director thought about was football. Every other sport only mattered if it won a national championship.

  In one season, Tana had taken Masterson’s program far. Having swimmers finish second, third and fourth in multiple events was a greater achievement than having a single superstar place first, while the rest of a college’s swimmers finished so far down the list, the school might as well have not brought them to the meet. To Bob Nicholls, it was so obvious that he couldn’t imagine her contract not being renewed—but that wasn’t how the Masterson athletic director’s mind worked.

  Tana had flown thousands of miles and driven a thousand more while pregnant, hoping for that one big trophy she could plop on her boss’s desk, but she hadn’t gotten it. There was no other athletic director she could appeal to, no other channel to use. The only person her boss answered to was the president of the university.

  Tana gripped the steering wheel as a crazy, daring idea threatened to knock her sideways.

  The president would be at today’s awards. Tana’s swimmers were going to be raking in the recognition. There would be socializing afterward, the polite meeting and greeting that normally took place at any banquet. What if she spoke with the president in that environment, when her biggest coaching achievement, the athletes themselves, would be celebrated? Could she go behind the athletic director’s back without making it look like she was?

  She was already dressed for battle. She was wearing the one non-maternity skirt in her closet that had an elastic waistband, the one blazer that looked good, although she couldn’t button it yet. For the first time in thirty-four days, she’d styled her hair and put on her makeup and high heels. It wasn’t as empowering as cat eyes and a cape, but Tana looked as much like a successful director and coach as she possibly could, thirty-four days after having a baby.

  At last, she reached the event center. She pulled in to a faculty parking spot and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror. It was time for the coach’s pep talk.

  “I think you can do this. You have nothing to lose, and your whole life to gain.”

  She was far from fearless, but she was going to try.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tana slapped the steering wheel.

  She’d needed one of Caden’s miracles, and she’d gotten it.

  Tana hadn’t had to maneuver herself into the president’s vicinity. He’d come up to her by the dessert buffet, with the athletic director at his elbow. The president had been impressed with her team, not only with their podium count, but with their attitudes as they’d accepted their individual awards.

  Tana hadn’t planned on speaking to him in front of the athletic director, but she’d gone for it, anyway. She’d shaken the president’s hand and told him how much she was looking forward to developing more Masterson student-athletes in the next two years, although three would let her see this year’s freshmen through to their senior years.

  The president had insisted on three years.

  The athletic director had taken the easy route and agreed, although Tana had practically seen him desperately flipping through his internal files, trying to remember if he’d ever bothered getting around to offering the director of aquatics any contract at all. Regardless, if the president wanted three years, the director would have his assistant write up a contract for three and be done with it. On to next year’s football prospects.

  Three years. Tana could stay here in Masterson. She could keep all of her friends, especially the man who’d taught his CPR students to try, even when success seemed impossible.

  The man who’d held her baby before he’d taken his first breath.

  Oh, Caden—she wanted to see him. She wanted to be with him, with Caden and Sterling, both.

  At last, she reached the apartment building. The ancient, creaky elevator was too slow, so she started running up the stairs to the third floor. Excitement could only carry her so far. She hadn’t swum since before the championships in March, so she was overheated and out of breath by the second floor. By the time she got to her door, she was walking, carrying her pumps in her hand and her blazer over her arm, but she was home.

  Nobody else was. There was no man stretched out on her couch, no man cooking in her kitchen. The baby swing was empty. The bassinet was empty. Her apartment felt like it had before Sterling had been born.

  Lonely.

  She dropped her shoes and hurried to the baby’s room, but the changing table was empty and the rocking chair deserted. She backtracked to the living room, but she didn’t see any note from Caden. Her bedroom door was cracked. She pushed it open, hoping, even though Caden never spent time in her bedroom, never, she was hoping—

  “There you are,” she whispered in relief.

  Her bedroom blinds were drawn, making the room as dark as night in the middle of a bright Texas afternoon, but in the daylight from the hall, Tana could see the unmistakable shape of a man stretched out on her bed, sound asleep, with one sculpted arm thrown over his head. Her baby slept on his chest, held in place by Caden’s sure hand, even as he slept.

  She willed her silly heart to slow down. Of course they were here. Caden wouldn’t leave her. He’d promised.

  She wouldn’t leave, either, for three years. That would be triple the length of her marriage. Double the amount of time she’d wasted with Jerry. No man had stayed in love with her for anywhere close to three years, but Caden wasn’t in love with her. He was her friend. She couldn’t keep a man for three years, but she could keep a friend forever.

  She watched him sleep. It didn’t matter how handsome his face was. It didn’t matter how appealing his solid, strong body looked on her bed. She wouldn’t hope that she’d catch a hint of his aftershave on her pillow tonight. This was not about men and women and sex, he’d said, and she needed to keep it that way, so that she could keep him in her life.

  She sat on the mattress carefully, her hip by Caden’s. She and Caden would never split up, never divorce, as long as romance never changed their friendship.

  He must have come into her bedroom for the darkness, either to help himself or Sterling fall asleep more easily. Probably hi
mself, after a twenty-four-hour shift. He’d done her a huge favor by coming over so early. Friends took care of their friends, and he always took care of her.

  She wanted to take care of him. She should carry Sterling out to his bassinet, so Caden wouldn’t be disturbed when the baby got hungry. She slipped her fingers between the warm baby blanket and warm, muscled man, but Caden pulled Sterling more tightly to him, a little reflex. He mumbled in his sleep. “Itsababy.”

  Well. Tana didn’t want to wake anybody with a tug of war. The baby looked as peaceful as Caden, so she slipped her hands free again. Now what?

  There was nothing she had to do. She hardly knew how to feel, now that the fear that had been hanging over her head was gone. So relieved, so happy, so tired, all three.

  It was a little bit like the way she and Caden had felt after Sterling had been born. The three of them had stayed close together in the truck, locked together in an embrace that made her warm every time she remembered it. To feel that again, even for a few minutes...

  Gingerly, she lay on her side and put her hand on the baby’s back with Caden’s. She watched Caden’s chest rise and fall, and she breathed in time with him, an easy breath with every stroke, a lazy way to swim.

  She was nearly asleep when she realized she was slow-blinking into Caden’s tropical-blue eyes.

  “Had a long night?” she whispered.

  He nodded slightly, a little rustle on the pillow. “Your day?”

  “I’m home. I’m so glad I have this home. I’m so glad I have us, like this.”

  But Caden had closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  She closed hers and followed his lead.

  * * *

  Caden checked his watch.

  Fifteen minutes until his shift started. Tana was cutting it close this time. The school year had begun, and she was juggling a new schedule this September. Sterling slept through the nights now, so Caden no longer had an excuse to sleep at Tana’s place. But, between the daycare center’s hours and Tana’s coaching schedule, Caden still had plenty of excuses to see her and Sterling. It was babysitting, not dating, friendly meals and laughter, not passionate nights, but it kept them in his life.

  Caden sat on the massive chrome bumper of Engine 37 and waited. Sterling sat in his lap, facing out. He loved to see what was going on in the world.

  “What’s up, my dude?” Keith was speaking to the baby, of course. Everyone spoke to the baby, and Caden couldn’t blame them. He thought Sterling was one of the most interesting people he knew, too.

  Tana rounded the corner of the station, calling to him from down the sidewalk. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  And there was the most interesting woman he would ever know.

  She was as athletic and graceful as ever. Her face was still beautiful and her eyes were deep brown, but she had something extra now. Motherhood had put a permanent glow about her, one that came from loving her child and being loved in return.

  Sterling was never stingy with letting his mother know how much he loved her. When Tana walked into a room, the baby would kick his feet in enthusiasm, babble or laugh, and generally light up like a Christmas tree.

  As Tana got closer, Caden stood Sterling on his thighs, so the baby could bounce in joy. “I feel you, little fella, I feel you. She’s pretty awesome.”

  Caden wished he could be so open with his feelings. He couldn’t go striding out of the engine bay to eliminate the distance between them faster, couldn’t scoop Tana off the sidewalk and kiss her hello like she was the woman of his dreams.

  Not yet.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling as she came right up to him, as if she were going to greet him with a kiss—but she dropped the kiss on top of Sterling’s head, inches from Caden’s mouth.

  Caden smelled orange blossoms. “Someone got her laps in today. Must be why she’s in such a good mood.”

  “How do you always know?” She scooped up Sterling with an unconscious toss of her hair. More orange blossoms.

  It had taken Caden a few weeks to figure it out, once the doctor had given her the go-ahead to resume her swimming. She used a regular shampoo at her apartment, but she showered at the pool with a special chlorine-removing shampoo that smelled like orange blossoms.

  He’d first smelled flowers in her hair when he’d given her a ride to the Tipsy Musketeer after the CPR class. He knew now that she’d been swimming the day he’d met her. He knew a lot of things about her now—except the reason she kept him so firmly in the friend zone.

  Caden stood to say goodbye. He stepped close to Tana and the baby, so close he could have wrapped them in his arms, his to have and to hold. His gaze dropped to Tana’s lips as they curved into a smile, soft and inviting, and he willed her to meet him halfway. She wanted to, he was certain, because she started to lean toward him, but she caught herself. Again. Always.

  Not always, he corrected himself. Just not yet.

  Caden brushed his kiss over Sterling’s baby-fine hair instead, because that was all Tana could handle.

  “Bye. I’ll miss you.” He said it to Sterling, but his gaze was locked with Tana’s.

  “We’ll miss you, too.”

  We. Not her, the woman, missing her man. We meant her and her baby. It was nice. It shouldn’t make the space between his shoulder blades tense with irritation.

  “I’m dropping him off at your place tomorrow, before Javier’s CPR class, right?” She leaned around Caden to smile at Javier. “You’re not planning to keep us more than an hour, I hope.”

  “I want to get home as much as you do,” Javier answered.

  It struck Caden that her smile for Javier was different from her smiles for him. Tana and Javier were just friends.

  He and Tana were not. They were more, so much more, and tomorrow would mark a year since he’d met the woman of his dreams.

  Not yet needed to become now.

  “Bring Sterling to the classroom with you,” Caden said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  He watched her walk away until she rounded the corner and was out of sight, not even trying to kid himself that he wasn’t checking out the legs that her khaki shorts revealed. It had been a long time, a long, long time, since he’d held her ankle in his hand. The sensation was burned into his mind, all the same.

  He turned to Javier. “Ever think to yourself, ‘If I could do it over again, knowing what I know now...’?”

  Javier raised a brow in question.

  “Do me a favor,” Caden said. “Let me teach that CPR class for you tomorrow night.”

  Javier raised both brows. “I don’t think you know what the word favor means.”

  Caden breathed in the lingering trace of orange blossoms. “I met a woman named Montana McKenna at that CPR class. I’ve waited a year to have a chance for a do-over.”

  * * *

  The CPR class was being held in the same building as last year.

  Tana waited by the vending machines, pushing the stroller back and forth to keep Sterling asleep. He’d zonked out during their walk across campus, which was exactly why she kept his car seat clipped to the stroller more often than she buckled it into the swim-mobile.

  The indefatigable Granny Dee was peering into the car seat. Tana was afraid she was going to poke the baby, so he’d wake up and she could play with him. She wouldn’t really, of course. Probably not.

  “Oh, joy. Oh, rapture.” Ruby was the center of attention. “It’s that time of year again. The annual CPR recertification. Nothing says autumn like the scent of alcohol wipes and a plastic dummy.”

  Shirley giggled. “Maybe the instructor will be another hot bachelor. Since Tana didn’t want the last one, maybe she’ll have better luck this year.”

  “Not want him?” Tana objected. “We’re best friends.”

  “That’s not the same thing as wanting a man,” Ruby said
. “I have no idea why you haven’t let Caden out of the friend zone, but if it’s not going to happen, then I guess it’s not going to happen. What kind of guy would make you want to hire a sitter and go out for some adult fun?”

  Strong arms, but holds babies like they are precious. Whips up the fluffiest scrambled eggs before you even know you’re hungry. Sets your parents straight without being a jerk. Dances like a man who knows what he’s doing. Looks hot in a uniform, coming and going.

  In other words, Caden Sterling. The one man she couldn’t have, because then she wouldn’t have him as a friend. It made sense to her, but she’d given up trying to explain to Ruby why she needed a friend more than a lover.

  Tana pulled the stroller closer to herself. Granny Dee was trying to wake the baby, darn it.

  Ruby bit her lip in consternation. “You’re not bringing the baby to class, are you? That is not going to help you catch a guy. Walking in with a stroller and a diaper bag is kind of a boner-killer.”

  “Ruby...please. There are innocent ears here.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes. “If Sterling’s first words are boner-killer, then he really will be the most impressive baby ever born.”

  “I think she meant my ears,” Granny said. “But I know all the lingo you kids use.”

  Behind Tana, a masculine voice addressed the milling group of people. “All right, CPR time. Let’s get started.”

  Tana smiled before she turned around, because she knew Caden’s voice. “Hi. How was work?”

  “I’m still working. There’s been a change in plans. I’m teaching this class.”

  “Oh.” Sterling was sleeping like an angel. She doubted it would last for another full hour, though. “Then I’m so sorry, but my childcare arrangements just fell through. I’ll have to bring my baby to class. If he cries, I’ll just slip out. I’ll still be able to pass the test, if you let me take it.”

  “You have to do what you have to do, Coach. We’ll work it out.”

  “I’m getting that déjà vu feeling.”