“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 good 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.
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 without 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.