The Slow Burn

by Caro Carson

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  Ruby huffed past them, rolling her eyes. “You two need to get a room. Please, please, get a room. I can’t take another year of this.”

  Ruby held the door open and gestured for Caden to go in, so he could set the dummies down at the front of the classroom. Tana followed, pretending not to admire the fit of a firefighter’s navy uniform slacks, the way she and Ruby had at a grocery store last Halloween.

  Granny followed them all. She kept her voice pitched just under the squeak of the stroller wheels as she poked Tana with one finger. “I cannot believe you’re keeping that hunk of bacon in the friend zone.”

  * * *

  Tana watched Caden as he tossed his bags into the back of his truck.

  “I can drive you over to the Tipsy Musketeer,” he said.

  Except for the fainting, this night was going like it had last year.

  Tana played along. “We have someone new with us this time, but I let Granny Dee give him a bottle while you were testing the rest of us. He should be good for a little while.”

  Caden put the stroller in the truck bed while Tana buckled Sterling’s car seat in the center of the leather bench where he’d been born.

  They drove toward the Musketeer in silence, which wasn’t how it had been the year before. “If we’re reliving last year, then I think you should be telling me to keep drinking until I have to pee.”

  Caden smiled briefly as they stopped at the one traffic light between campus and the pub. He put his hand on Sterling’s chest and gave him a wiggle. “How’re you doing there, little fella?”

  Sterling looked at him with a perfectly serious expression and answered by blowing some slobbery bubbles. Satisfied with that communication, he went back to work on getting a giraffe-shaped teether into his mouth.

  Caden parked across the street from the pub. It was the same spot he’d parked in one year ago, the exact spot where he’d congratulated her on her pregnancy. Babies are a good thing.

  She hadn’t expected to feel emotional about a parking spot. “Why are we doing everything the same tonight?”

  “When I look back, it was one of the most significant nights of my life. I met you. But if I could go back and do it again, I would do it differently.”

  “You would?” She sounded a little breathless, but those three little words, I met you, had sounded almost as significant as the romantic three little words that changed lives. They’d changed hers when other men had said them, and not for the better. It was irrational for her to wish she could hear them from this man.

  “Last year, things were going well up to this point,” he said. “So far, so good, right?”

  On the other hand, men could be so dense. Even Caden.

  “Maybe good for you. I’d fainted.”

  “Which is how I found out you were pregnant. If I hadn’t known, I would have asked you out after class.”

  “What?” But she’d heard him.

  “You wouldn’t have given me your number or let me buy you a drink, but I wouldn’t have known why. It would have hurt my pride. I might have done something stupid, like giving up on getting to know you. Or I might have tried even harder to get you to go out with me, and you would have shut me down, and that would have been the end of us.”

  The end of us. It sounded frightening, a loss she didn’t want to contemplate.

  Caden turned off the truck and sat back. “I’m kind of glad you fainted, because here we are.”

  “That’s...something I’ve never thought about. I didn’t know you’d been planning to ask me out.”

  He jiggled the giraffe in Sterling’s mouth affectionately, then shifted in his seat to face her full-on. “The first time I saw you, you had your back to me. That’s my defense for immediately checking out your legs. I couldn’t see your personality or even your face, but you had and still have the sexiest legs I’ve ever seen, bar none.”

  Tana gaped at him. He thought her legs were sexy? She walked on them all the time around him—well, duh—but he never checked them out, not that she’d noticed.

  “I looked away to talk to someone. When I looked back, you were facing me with this expression on your face like...” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like you were looking to see if I was who you thought I was? The bottom line is that I saw your serious brown eyes, and I thought, ‘I have got to get her name and number. I need to know her.’ Simple as that.”

  Tana looked away, out the windshield. This was really dangerous. He was saying things she wouldn’t be able to forget, things that would forever color their relationship differently. She should stop him, say something bright and friendly and change the subject, but much too much of her was deeply flattered, drinking this in like it was what she’d always wanted to hear.

  “You were talking to Granny Dee,” she said. “I was thinking that you were very respectful and kind to her.”

  “That was it? I’ve wondered about it for a year. I moved your certificate to the bottom of the stack, so you’d be the last to leave and I could ask you out, did you know that?”

  “But then I told you I was pregnant, so that threw a wet blanket on everything.”

  “No, it didn’t.” He touched her face.

  He never touched her face. They sat next to each other a lot. They bumped shoulders to get each other’s attention, and they put the baby in each other’s arms when he was sleeping or screaming, but she’d never run her fingertips over Caden’s cheekbone or under his jaw, like he was doing to her now, tracing the lines of her face.

  “By the time you told me, I’d already seen how smart you were, how much other people liked and respected you. I’d already seen you force a CPR dummy to come back to life with a vengeance. You told me you were a lifeguard and the new director of aquatics, and I thought you were so interesting. I liked you. Being pregnant didn’t change any of that.”

  He put his hand back on the steering wheel and looked toward the pub. His profile was serious in the town’s lights. “But this is the point I wish I could do over, Tana. Right here, this moment. This is when I watched you walk across the street and disappear inside that pub.”

  “Nothing bad happened to me.”

  “I was so sure you were starting a family with another man, that there was a boyfriend who was about to hear the biggest news of his life, some guy in Houston.”

  Tana caught her breath.

  “I know,” he said, as if she’d argued. “There was no man, but I was certain you had someone. A boyfriend, a lover. You wore no ring, so I assumed there was no fiancé or husband, but there would be, if the man had any kind of a brain. Now I know it was your parents that you were going to tell in person, in Houston.”

  That much was true. She hadn’t really lied about that. She hadn’t really lied about anything. Ruby had misunderstood her analogy of Jerry being no more involved than a sperm donor, and Tana hadn’t said anything to correct her. Everything had snowballed from there. She hadn’t known one could make a snowball out of things that were never said, but it was huge, and it was chilling.

  Caden shook a plush rattle toy for Sterling, then waited patiently as the baby concentrated on grabbing it. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I would do differently, if I had it to do over again?”

  She really shouldn’t.

  But she did. “What would you do differently?”

  “I was the only person who knew you were pregnant. I told you that you should have your friends toast you with cranberry juice, remember?”

  She nodded.

  “If I had it to do over again, I would get out of this truck and go drink a glass of cranberry juice with you.”

  It sounded so simple, yet he sounded so remorseful.

  “Since it was a secret, I would catch your eye and raise the juice in a silent toast. You’d know what I meant. If I could,
I’d go back and add a little celebration to your night, because you had something to celebrate, but no one else to celebrate it with.”

  The expression on his face was one she’d never seen before, not in an entire year. Regret? Sorrow.

  She didn’t fight the impulse to smooth her thumb over the tiny wrinkles at the corner of his eye, although there were no tears for her to wipe away. He closed his eyes as she touched him in this new way.

  “It’s a lovely thought, my friend, but please don’t be so sad. You barely knew me.”

  He opened his eyes, and she pulled her hand back at the intensity she saw burning in them.

  “Imagine it, Tana. If I’d chosen that path a year ago, your friends would have become my friends so much sooner. We would have tailgated together at some football games last fall. You would have made friends with the guys at the firehouse in January instead of May, because I would have asked you to be on our team for the station’s pancake fundraiser. I would have volunteered to be the medic at every one of your swim meets this season. All of that could have happened, even if you were married and pregnant with your third baby. Our lives would have been better, if we’d been friends.”

  Friendship. He was talking about friendship. Sexy legs and serious eyes were thrilling, but thrills didn’t last. The baby chewing on a giraffe in between them was more important than the way her heart had pounded as Caden had traced her face. Friendship gave her child stability. A passionate night with Caden would disrupt everything.

  The dangerous part of her wanted it, anyway.

  “Instead, since I couldn’t have you the way I wanted to have you, I felt so sorry for myself that I pulled out of this parking spot and drove home. I ended up not having you in my life at all.”

  “Everything’s good. We are friends now.”

  “Yes. But if I’d walked into that pub a year ago, we would have already been friends when we waltzed to that Christmas carol at Thanksgiving. I would have known you well enough to believe you when you said you couldn’t work things out with a sperm donor, instead of assuming you were just really pissed off with someone in Houston. I could have talked with you later, maybe caught lunch at the diner with you one day, to try to understand why you’d chosen to have a baby on your own.”

  He cupped her face fully. No light touch, this. His hand was strong, his palm was warm, the same hand that had taken her pulse on a pool deck, the same palm that had caught her newborn’s kicking foot. “And then, Tana...then I would have asked you out on that date, because I’ve caught you looking at me the way I look at you. We would have been dating for four months before the baby came. You would never have wondered who would be your ride home from the ER. You would never have cried over not having a Lamaze coach—”

  “Caden. Caden.”

  “And I would not have had to wait an entire year to kiss you.”

  Caden pulled her close and claimed her with a kiss that held nothing back. He reached for her with his other hand, too, cupping the back of her head, tumbling her hair forward, stirring up the scent of orange blossoms.

  Tana grabbed a fistful of his shirt at his shoulder. She kissed him with all the pent-up passion she’d kept so carefully hidden, but not because he was the type of man who could inspire her to hire a sitter for some adult time. Not because he was a handsome man with a firm backside and a confident, masculine walk. Not because he was the man with the bare chest and low-slung jeans in the golden light of sunset.

  She kissed him because he was her everything.

  The baby between them kicked his feet and babbled “da-da-da-da-da” in delight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She had time.

  Tana’s apartment was only minutes away, but the baby forced them to pause, to think things through, to cool off. A diaper had to be changed. Footed pajamas had to be snapped over chubby legs and soft arms.

  I shouldn’t do this. If we start something, there will be an end to it, someday.

  She placed the baby in the crib that Caden had assembled for her this summer. He’d offered to do it last Thanksgiving, when they’d been dancing at the pub. He’d offered to do so many things as an ex-boyfriend, with no expectation of sex. After a romance died, he’d said he’d still do everything he could for his baby, and that included taking care of its mother.

  She’d wished, as she’d waltzed, that he was her ex-boyfriend.

  If she took him to bed tonight, she would get that wish, sooner or later. Boyfriends became ex-boyfriends even more easily than husbands became ex-husbands. Her heart would break, but if the man who broke it this time was Caden, then her son would not suffer. Sterling wouldn’t be cut out of Caden’s life with a phone call, then forgotten as if he’d never existed.

  Caden walked up behind her. In the soft pink light of the nursery, they looked into the crib together, cheek against cheek. She kept her hand on the baby, her other on the safety rail.

  Caden pushed her hair to the side, baring the nape of her neck, and placed his mouth on her skin.

  She let go of the baby and held on to the safety rail with both hands. She wanted to touch Caden, to have the right to touch him, everywhere and in every way. She wanted to feel his hands on her.

  Caden tasted his way to her ear, where he bit her ear lobe lightly, as she listened to the way his breathing changed with arousal. Not with anticipation, but with purpose, for this was it. She didn’t want to keep resisting this.

  “Tonight?” he asked in a hushed tone.

  “Stay. Please.”

  Caden lifted the edge of her shirt and smoothed his palms over her stomach. His fingertips slid under the waistband of her khaki shorts, under the elastic of her underwear, and he pulled her back against his body, away from the crib.

  Nearly six months of wanting and wishing were over for her. Incredibly, a year was over for him. Because Caden would be the perfect ex-boyfriend in the future, she could make him her boyfriend.

  Now.

  She let go and fell into Caden. They pushed each other far enough away to grab for buttons and zippers, they pulled one another close to kiss in greed and need, and they tripped their way out of the nursery and down the hall. By the time they reached her room, she was naked except for her white cotton underwear. Caden had gotten out of his boots. She had taken care of his belt. As she backed up to her mattress, she pulled his navy firefighter T-shirt off over his head, a whoosh of fabric, a release of body heat.

  Caden pushed her down firmly to lie on her back, and for once, she had no desire to get up. He stayed standing to pull out a foil square and drop the rest of his wallet on the floor, like the useless thing it was in a moment like this. Then he shoved his uniform slacks all the way off.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows, wanting to see more of him. Instead, their gazes met and held, brown eyes into blue. He stood over her confidently, gloriously nude, and sheathed himself.

  Time stopped for a breath as they looked at one another.

  Then he was on her, pushing her up the mattress to where he wanted her, kissing and tonguing his way over her breasts and down her stomach, taking big, greedy mouthfuls of her body. It was so wanton, so uninhibited, it was hard to believe she could have conceived a child with the tepid sex she’d had before.

  But she had conceived a child. She felt a flash of fear, a flush of guilt—she shouldn’t do this, the baby was more important than her love life—but she could do this, as long as Caden became the ex-boyfriend that he’d described during a waltz. He just had to.

  “You have to promise me something,” she gasped.

  “Yes.”

  He pulled her underwear over her hips, down her thighs, backing up on the mattress as he did, so that he could follow the cotton with kisses on her hip, her inner thigh, the side of her calf, all the way down the legs he found so sexy. He dropped her underwear on the floor, then his hand circled her ankle. He
caressed his way back up her leg, smoothing his hands over all the skin he had kissed, until he was above her once more, his chest and arms beautifully braced as he looked her over from her head to her toes. The way the corner of his mouth cocked into a half smile meant he liked what he saw.

  She was burning for him. As long as the baby was still loved when the passion cooled—

  “Promise me,” she panted.

  “Anything.”

  Caden shifted all his weight to his left arm, so he could reach down with his right to take her ankle and wrap her leg around his waist. She felt the smooth, hard heat of him, pressing where she was so ready to have him.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise,” he said, and he sank into her body.

  She wrapped both legs around him and held on all night.

  * * *

  Caden lay on his back, looking at the ceiling of Tana’s bedroom as the morning light turned it from gray to white.

  He’d never been playing, not once, not ever. But last night, she’d been his playmate, and the games they’d played had been intimate. Turn all the lights on, I want to see you. Close your eyes, guess where I’ll touch you next. Turn the lights off. Touch me everywhere.

  He’d made love to the woman of his dreams. She would be his forever, the mother of his children. She’d want more babies, since she’d gone to all the trouble of artificial insemination to have her first. But every one of Sterling’s brothers or sisters would be born in a hospital or birthing center, not in a truck, so help him God. They’d watch those children grow up and have their own children. Tana would be the sweetheart Caden held hands with until the day he died.

  But right now, he didn’t know what to say to her.

  He couldn’t propose. Less than twelve hours ago, she’d been surprised that he wanted to be more than just friends.

  She rolled onto her back with a rustle of sheets, and sighed. He couldn’t see much of her face, not when she was using his shoulder as her pillow.

  “Are you okay?” He picked his head up to look at her, but mostly he saw the tip of her nose.