Heatwave (7 page)

She chewed her bottom lip again, then nodded. “I will. But not yet. Look, I know what you’re thinking,” she said defensively. “That I’m this horrible woman who’s going to deprive her child of his natural father, but that’s not even close. The guy dumped me. He’d been having an affair for months, and I didn’t have a clue. If I tell him now, he’s going to think this is some desperate attempt to get him back, and that’s the last thing I want.”

For reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely, her revelation filled him with a hefty dose of relief. “What
do
you want?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Don’t know. The day before my vacation, I was laid off. Charlie informed me he’s keeping the apartment. Technically I’m homeless and unemployed, and I have a child to think about now. Who knows how long my grandmother is going to be in the hospital? And when she’s released, she’s going to need someone here to help take care of her. Right now, I’m needed here. Besides, what reason do I have to go back to New York, anyway?”

He waited, but not a single warning signal alerted him to the problems that lay ahead. In fact, the notion of her remaining in California failed to generate an ounce of dread. That truth alone should have had him
scooting out the door and outrunning his mysterious white charger.

“You could work for your grandmother until after the baby’s born.” He couldn’t believe it. Since when did he encourage a woman to stick around? He’d always made it crystal clear that anything longer than a couple of weeks of fun and games was out of the question. “She’s going to need someone to run things for a while and would probably feel better having a family member take over for her.”

Emily stretched her arms over her head and gripped the sofa arm behind her. “I’ve thought about it, but the only thing I know about gourmet is the Budget kind you throw in the microwave. The administrative end of the business, no problem, for a while at least. But Grandy would be better off hiring someone more qualified in education administration. I’m an advertiser, not an educator, even though I have my doubts about finding gainful employment now.”

“Discrimination is illegal.”

“Big deal. It’s not exactly ethical to accept a job knowing I’ll be taking an extended leave of absence in a few months when the baby arrives, either.”

“So you’re planning to stay?” The answer shouldn’t have held any more importance to him than the weather forecast, but in fact, the opposite was true. He only wished he could understand why.

“For the time being, I suppose, but I’ve yet to make any long-term decisions. So much has happened in the last couple of days, I haven’t had time to absorb it all. I
feel displaced, and I’m still trying to get used to the fact that I’m going to be someone’s mother.”

“Parenthood is a big responsibility to shoulder alone.” Not that he had plans of applying for the job of her assistant, but he knew what it was like to grow up in a single-parent household.

She regarded him quizzically. “That part doesn’t bother me.”

“But something does,” he prompted when her frown made a reappearance.

“Let’s just say I’m grateful I had Grandy as a role model. My mother, and I use the term loosely, was never into that whole domestic scene.”

“A woman can have a career and still be a good mother, Emily. Mine was a firefighter long before it was considered acceptable.” And the job had cost her her life, leaving behind three sons and a husband who mourned the loss of his wife so deeply, it had killed him.

“Glynis worked, but at being a free spirit.” An edge of bitterness filled her voice. “A lifestyle much easier to accomplish without a demanding daughter begging for her attention. My grandparents raised me for the most part. Whenever Glynis decided she wanted to play Mommy, it never lasted more than a couple of months, then I’d be sent back to live with Grandy and Pop.”

Until now, he’d never actually thought of himself as sharing a common bond with anyone other than his brothers, or maybe Tilly. Like Emily, he’d been raised by someone other than his parents. At the time, he’d
only been a little kid and hadn’t realized the impact he and his brothers had had on Debbie’s future, but at a young age, their aunt had shouldered the responsibility of raising her nephews without ever showing them a lick of resentment. She’d become mother, father and friend to each of them.

“I have an idea what it’s like,” he said, a little surprised by the admission. He’d never before spoken of his private life with a woman outside of the family. “My aunt raised me and my brothers after my folks died.”

A sense of discomfort nudged him as compassion filled her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “How old were you?”

“Eight by the time my aunt took us in. It couldn’t have been easy for her. She was young, around your age, I guess, but I never heard her complain once.”

A slight smile curved her mouth. “Your aunt sounds like a very special woman.”

“She is.” He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “She’d like you.”

She rolled her eyes as she pulled her feet from his lap and swung them to the floor. “I bet you say that to all the girls.” She stood and lifted her arms over her head and stretched. “It’s all part of this whole charm thing you have going. Very effective, too, I might add.”

He didn’t like that she considered him a charmer, as if he were all show and no substance. “No,” he said, standing. “I don’t say that to all the girls.”

Covering her mouth with her hands, she yawned.
Loudly. “Excuse me,” she murmured. “It’s been a really long day.”

He took the hint. They still hadn’t resolved the issue of her remaining in her grandmother’s house…alone.

“Will you come with me,” he asked, “or should I stay the night?”

She lifted her chin a notch, obviously preparing for another argument. “Neither.” Her stubborn tone equaled the determination in her sleepy gaze. “I’ll be fine.”

The tight line of her lips made him want to kiss them until they were soft, pliant, welcoming. She looked so damned adorable when riled, he could easily stand around and argue with her all night, but the shadows beneath her eyes brought him to his senses. Keeping his hands to himself if he stayed with her would be next to impossible. He also had a few doubts about his ability to convince her she shouldn’t be alone in the house.

He tugged his wallet from his hip pocket and withdrew a business card. “My cell phone number,” he said, handing her the card. “You hear a single noise, you call. You get spooked, you call. You need me for any reason, you call.”

She tucked the card between some wax fruit in a milk-white glass bowl on the maple coffee table. “There goes the superhero image. I thought you guys had supersonic hearing and X-ray vision.”

If he wasn’t dead serious, her sass might have amused him. Right now, it irked him. “Promise me, Emily.”

She let out one of those little puffs of breath which spoke volumes. “Okay. Okay. I promise.”

He wasn’t completely satisfied, but what choice did he really have? He couldn’t very well play caveman and toss her over his shoulder to carry her off to someplace safe.

“Oh, don’t forget these,” she called to him as he reached the door. “The files you wanted and Grandy’s lesson plans. You’ll need those for Monday.”

He took the folders and tucked them under his arm. “What time did you plan to see your grandmother tomorrow?”

She reached around him and opened the door. “Around ten or so. Why?”

“I’ll swing by and pick you up. I won’t be able to stay, though, because I promised to pick up the cake for the wedding shower tomorrow, but I can come back for you in the afternoon.”

“You’re going to a bridal shower?” She offered a hint of a smile, just enough to draw his attention to the slight curve of her mouth. “Isn’t that a ladies-only affair?”

“It’s more of a party,” he said as he slipped through the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

The click of the lock on the screen door echoed between them in the darkness. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “your grandmother’s car went up in smoke today. The hospital’s nearly ten miles from here, and after what happened to you yesterday, it’s not a good idea for you to walk around in this heat.”

She slipped her hands in the side pockets of her skirt and leaned against the doorjamb again. “Compared to New York subways, RTD is a walk in the park. I grew up here, remember?”

Reluctantly, he stepped off the porch, shaking his head. “I’ll see you Monday, then.”

“Drew?”

Hopeful, he stopped and turned.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For everything. I really do appreciate it.”

He nodded, then took off toward his vehicle, his hopefulness changing to disappointment that she hadn’t asked him to stay.

“Y
OU AGREED
to do
what?
”

Why he’d gone and ruined a perfectly good Sunday evening celebrating with family and friends the upcoming nuptials of Cale and Amanda by answering Tilly’s questions about Emily, Drew couldn’t rightly say. He supposed his willingness to sing like the proverbial canary had more to do with the continuing question of his sanity rather than with any dire need to confide in his best friend.

Okay, so Tilly
had
asked him about Emily. She’d treated her in the ER. Maybe if he was in a more charitable mood, he might even be a little understanding of her curiosity. Tilly knew him better than anyone, maybe even his own family. When he hung around a hospital for not one, but two days in a row, with his intense dislike for hospitals, his behavior was bound to raise a few questions.

He propped his shoulder against the refrigerator door. “I’ve taught classes before,” he said in defense. “I have an idea what I’m doing.”

Tilly slipped a trio of miniature quiches onto her plate, paused, then added another. “Teaching basic arson detection to a classroom full of rookies at the fire hall is a far cry from showing somehow how to make
pastries at culinary school,” she reminded him. “I can see Cale helping some woman who’s down on her luck, but you? You’re not the one who has to rescue every stray that comes along. Cale is.”

“Was,” Drew corrected her. Cale had all but retired his superhero gear ever since Amanda had come into his life, at least as far as rescuing damsels in distress. The way Drew figured it, his future sister-in-law had fulfilled whatever void had been a part of Cale’s psyche, eliminating the need for him to right the world around him. At least to some degree, anyway. Drew suspected that, like most people in his brother’s line of work, Cale would eventually turn to instruction after a few more years as an active paramedic. The chances of him turning away a stray animal were minute, however. In fact, just last week Amanda had mentioned something about Cale adding another homeless kitten to their menagerie of pets.

Tilly slipped a chin-length lock of sable hair behind her ear. “Maybe you should come in for tests. I think you could be seriously ill.”

He crossed his arms, not at all offended by her good-natured sarcasm. “Bite me, Tils.”

“Something already has.” She propped her backside against the counter and smiled. “Or someone. Emily Dugan perhaps?”

He definitely shouldn’t have said a word to Tilly, especially since he sensed an all-out interrogation coming. He shrugged. “So? She’s an attractive woman.”

“With a brain, too,” Tilly teased him. “I picked that
up from her right away. Productive gray matter is a vital element missing from your usual type.”

“I’ve dated smart women before,” he answered defensively. Well, some of the time.

He vainly attempted to recall a name…and came up empty-handed.

Tilly rolled her eyes, then popped a miniquiche into her mouth. “I have one word for you, Drew,” she said after a moment. “
Bimbo
. And an understanding that red means stop and green means go isn’t the equivalent of intellect. More like basic urban survival skills.”

“Oh, like you’ve dated nothing but winners,” he countered, remembering how Tilly had used his shoulder to cry on more than once in the past, whenever some loser wounded her pride. “Speaking of which, how’s Scorch treating you?”

She dragged a tortilla chip through the spicy cheese dip on her plate. “Don’t you dare get all big brother on me. I can handle Tom McDonough just fine on my own.”

He didn’t doubt her claim for a second. She’d been dating Scorch for the last couple of months, but both parties had been unusually silent in that regard, raising Drew’s suspicions that their relationship was indeed serious. If Tilly was happy, that’s all that mattered.

Laughter from the living room caught his attention and he glanced over his shoulder. Cale and Amanda sat together on his aunt’s love seat surrounded by several gifts wrapped in varying shades appropriate for a bridal shower. Since the party guests consisted mainly of the crew from the firehouse and their significant others,
most of the gifts were gags with a sexual bent, a long-standing tradition with the crew members of Trinity Station. They were reserving the more traditional wedding gifts for the wedding the following weekend. Even the cake Drew had picked up that morning for his aunt was non-traditional, bearing a caricature of a man running from a burning building with a redhead slung over his shoulder. The balloon caption over the woman’s head read, “Who am I?”

Amanda blushed prettily as Cale held up a scrap of black lace in one hand and a large cardboard rendition of a Viagra prescription in the other, while his aunt snapped another picture.

Drew spied Scorch, lounging against the newel-post, a bottle of beer in his hand. He blamed Tilly for the miserable expression on his pal’s heavily freckled face.

He turned to face her. “How long do you plan on making him suffer?” he asked her, referring to Scorch’s admission of forgetting her birthday the previous week.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I haven’t decided,” she said as she reached for her wineglass on the counter beside her.

Poor Scorch, he thought, unable to stifle a grin. He’d known Tilly long enough to know firsthand she could be one stubborn woman. “Is it serious?”

“Dating is like shopping for shoes,” she said airily. “You have to try on a few styles to find the right fit.”

He wasn’t buying her noncommittal response. “That’s no answer.”

“Well,” she said, after devouring another miniquiche.
“It’s all you’re going to get for the time being. Unless you tell me about Emily Dugan.”

“You go first.”

She laughed. “Nice try, pal, but I haven’t fallen for that one since the fourth grade. What’s going on, Drew?” The laughter faded, replaced by genuine concern. “I can’t remember a time when you ever offered more than dinner and a movie—or a night of hot sex—to any woman.”

Neither could he, for that matter. Maybe a kernel of truth did exist in Tilly’s shoe analogy. He sure wouldn’t walk into a store and buy a new pair of sneakers or work boots without trying them on first. Just because he’d gone above and beyond his standard operating procedure with the opposite sex this time, didn’t necessarily mean Emily was the right fit, even if he did find her a whole lot more comfortable than his usual style.

Tilly exchanged her now-empty plate for her wineglass. She took a sip and peered at him quizzically over the rim. “She’s different, isn’t she?” she finally asked when he remained silent.

He shrugged as more laughter filled his aunt’s house. How exactly did he explain his interest in Emily? Nothing about his behavior made sense, yet everything about her made perfect sense. Family had always been important to him and he respected her devotion to her grandmother. There was a deep inner strength about her he admired, even though her stubbornness frustrated him. Never had any woman he’d dated ever stood up to him the way Emily had done, but then
again, he hadn’t let one get close enough or hang around long enough to push his buttons before, either.

“Drew?”

He lifted his gaze to Tilly’s, fearful of the answers attempting to take root in his mind. “Yeah,” he reluctantly admitted. “She’s different.”

The admission made him edgy, unsettled. Until Emily, he’d always thought of women as an amusement, a source of entertainment…for brief periods of time.

Tilly took another sip of wine. “Is that such a bad thing?”

Hell yes, his conscience roared. He didn’t get involved. His relationships, such as they were, remained short and sweet. Never had he allowed a woman to occupy his mind. Not in the way Emily had done.

“It’d never work,” he said. The sharp stab of disappointment was as foreign to him as a second language.

“Why wouldn’t it? Granted, I haven’t spent all that much time with her, just when you brought her into the ER, but my first impression is that I liked her.” She drained the last of her wine and set the glass on the counter beside her empty plate. “I can’t say that about most of the airheads you bring around.”

Speaking the truth had never been one of Tilly’s failings. She could be brutally honest. Today was no exception.

Drew pushed off the refrigerator and moved to one of the bar stools at the breakfast bar and sat. “For one, she lives in New York City. Or she did,” he corrected. “There’s a chance she could end up moving to California.”

Tilly shrugged. “That’s not much of a problem as far as I can see, either way. They do have fires in need of investigating in New York, you know.”

His family was here. He wasn’t about to move three thousand miles away just to be with a woman. Not a chance. Of course, if she stayed, geography would hardly be an issue. “She’s rebounding,” he said, scrambling for more excuses.

Tilly folded her arms and gave him a look filled with a wealth of knowledge, the look that said she saw right through his flimsy arguments, as if they were nothing more substantial than the scrap piece of black lace Cale had held in his hands earlier.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” she said, “but not all rebound relationships are destined for failure.”

Was she referring to her and Scorch? Tilly had been on the rebound, so he’d understood why she’d put the paramedic through the wringer when he’d first shown interest in her. It’d taken her weeks to finally agree to go out with Scorch, not that Drew could blame her for being gun-shy in the relationship department. Not after discovering her previous boyfriend in bed with another woman.

“Yeah?” he questioned, not willing to give up the fight. For what? he wondered. His freedom? No way was he in danger of risking his bachelorhood. He was attracted to Emily. Big deal. He’d been attracted to a lot of women. “How about rebounding
and
pregnant?”

Tilly shrugged, then folded her arms. “And this is a problem because…”

“Because there’s a father to her baby out there somewhere,
and once she tells him about it, he might want her back. Okay, so the guy left her for another woman, but once Emily tells him he’s going to be a father, that could all change. The responsibility of a child is involved here. Marriages have been based on a lot less, you know.”

Tilly dropped her hands to her sides in exasperation. “For crying out loud, Drew. Has she said she wants to marry this guy?”

“Well…no,” he admitted slowly. But she hadn’t said she wouldn’t, either.

“Just because she’s going to have this guy’s kid,” Tilly argued, “doesn’t mean she’ll
want
to go back to him.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it shouldn’t matter to him in the least. He didn’t get involved, dammit.

Tilly moved away from the counter and approached the breakfast bar. “You want to know what your problem is?” She leaned forward to rest her arms on the Formica top.

“No,” he told her, primarily because he didn’t like the direction their conversation had turned. “But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“You’re right,” she said, determination filling her warm brown eyes. “You intentionally date women that are all wrong for you.”

“I enjoy the women I date.”

“Really? Then why don’t you go out with any one of them more than a few times? Why hasn’t anyone seen you with the same woman more than once?”

Because he didn’t get involved. Because he preferred
to keep his relationships, such as they were, light and easy. No strings.

“Because they bore you to tears, Drew,” Tilly said with more of that brutal honesty he was beginning to resent. “I don’t think Emily does, and that has you more than a little nervous.” She let out a sigh. “You’re a sweet, funny, caring guy. Do yourself a favor. Get to know a woman you have something in common with for a change. You might find it’s nowhere near as terrifying as you think.”

Light and easy relationships, or safe and unemotional ones?
his conscience taunted.

“You don’t understand, Tils. It’s not—”

“Yes, I do,” she interrupted. “More than you think I do.” She reached for him and cupped his face in her hands. “Drew, you are not your father.”

Anger pierced him and he pulled away from her. She’d hit a nerve, and they both knew it. “I never said I was.” The words erupted more coldly than he intended.

“Then tell me why you’re so afraid to let a woman get close to you?”

He shot off the bar stool. “This conversation is over.” To emphasize his point, he grabbed a cold bottle of cola from the fridge and headed out the sliding-glass door to the covered patio.

Instantaneous heat slammed into him, exacerbating his flash of temper. He’d been six when his mother had died, but he’d been old enough to know his old man had slunk into the bottom of a gin bottle and had never come out again. Alex Perry had given up when he’d
lost his wife—on his family, on his career, and eventually, on his life. He hadn’t committed suicide, but he might as well have. Instead, he’d lingered, allowing his forgotten sons to witness his slow demise.

Drew stood at the edge of the patio, allowing his temper to simmer. With the plastic bottle of innocuous cola clutched tightly in his hand, he stared into the darkness of the backyard where he’d played as a kid with his brothers and Tilly. Beneath the light of the full moon, he could see his aunt’s vegetable garden needed watering. The sound of the sliding-glass door opening and closing along the track behind him drew his attention.

“You’re not going to let this drop, are you?” he asked when Tilly came up beside him.

“I want you to be happy,” she said quietly. “I care about you. You know that.”

He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long pull. The cool liquid did zilch to calm the rioting in his gut. “Then leave it alone,” he said after draining nearly half the bottle.

“Tell me why, Drew.” Her tone was a far cry from gentle and coaxing, but demanding and insistent instead.

He muttered a vile curse and turned to face her, knowing from years of friendship she’d hound him relentlessly until she wrangled the answer from him. “Because there’s no way in hell I’m going to be the cause of the kind of suffering my old man went through after Mom died. When he lost her, it killed him, Tilly. You know that as well as I do.”