Harlequin Special Edition November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Lilian Darcy

  Well, this really wasn’t so very different. It was time to take a risk. To move forward instead of hanging back because she wanted every detail planned out. Life just didn’t allow that, no matter how hard you tried. It happened, often with unintended consequences, like the baby she carried inside of her.

  What, after all, was the likelihood that she’d have sex just once in her life, with a man using a condom, and still get pregnant? Probably not very likely over the span of a lifetime, but over the span of one night, the odds had gone from 2 or 3 percent failure rate to 100 percent.

  Yes, there were some things she had to be sure of, like the fact that she was going to keep this baby. Some idea of the changes she’d need to make to her career and lifestyle. But by and large it was going to remain a huge unknown until it happened. Whatever it was.

  Just like going on a mission in enemy territory.

  Except this probably wouldn’t be nearly as deadly. It might prove painful, but not deadly.

  “Crap,” she said to the empty kitchen. Playing games with herself. Denial in so many forms a psychologist probably couldn’t name them all.

  Not very cute, not very smart. There was a cliff she needed to deal with, laden with risks, but it had to be climbed because in four months she was going to be a mother.

  What she ought to be doing was counting herself lucky that her baby’s father wanted to be part of all this. She wouldn’t have blamed him for heading for the hills.

  But that wasn’t Seth, and there was a steadiness and constant determination in him that she had come to appreciate. She wanted that in her child’s life. Maybe even in her own.

  Forget love. Many years ago, she’d dreamed about it, but over the years she’d come to count it as a problem. How many marriages had she seen fail? Too many. How many friends had she nursed through breakups? Too many.

  So maybe love wasn’t the best reason for an undertaking like this. Maybe there were other reasons, better ones, as long as your expectations matched reality.

  The idea of marriage still made her uncomfortable, but when she remembered how Seth had been cut out during her short hospital stay, she knew they were going to have to deal with that somehow. She knew how she would have felt in his shoes: frantic and furious.

  The easy way or the expensive way, that had to be dealt with. She had to make arrangements so that if anything happened to her he would get their child.

  As for her career...well, if he was willing to step in, that might get back on track.

  But oddly, as she sat there in the morning light, she wondered if that was really what she wanted anymore.

  * * *

  Three days later, Seth drove her out to a small airport to fly the Huey with Yuma. Excitement was building in her, the itch to take the stick again and fly around in the air. She’d been grounded for months now, and she hated it. She missed flying. For her it was a deep-rooted passion, never just a job.

  They met Yuma and Wendy in the small office of the emergency response unit. This morning it was just the two of them and a bored-looking young man who was evidently the dispatcher.

  “Everybody else is resting up,” Yuma said as he shook their hands. “We had a big pileup out on the state highway last night and had to fly three patients to a trauma center. I hope it’s a quiet morning.” He looked at Edie. “Wendy’s coming with, in case we get a call.” Then he turned to Seth. “You stay here, man. If we have to race to a scene, you’d be excess baggage.”

  “No problem,” Seth said. “I didn’t expect to go. I brought my own entertainment.” He pulled a paperback from his hip pocket.

  Wendy laughed. “You guys. Always prepared.”

  Yuma positioned Edie in the left-hand seat, the pilot’s seat, and refreshed her about the controls. “We can’t stay out long, sorry to say. We have a tight fuel budget.”

  Edie hesitated. “Then maybe I shouldn’t fly at all.”

  Yuma shook his head. “We have a certain allowance for training. I don’t have to tell you we can’t go too long without flying. Never wise.”

  “It’s been a couple of months for me, and even longer since I took the stick in a Huey.”

  He flashed a smile. “I’m right here, Edie. You’ll do fine.”

  At last she hit the ignition and listened to the rotors wind up, that unforgettable whop-whop that was so distinctive to Hueys. Her excitement mounted, and behind the microphone she felt a smile stretch her face until it couldn’t get any wider. Flying again!

  Takeoff was a breeze, but once she started flying forward, she wobbled a bit as she got used to the dynamics of the metal monster around her.

  “Doing great,” Yuma said in her earphone.

  “Like a baby learning to walk all over again.” She heard him laugh.

  “I’m belted in,” Wendy said from the rear. “Have at it.”

  It didn’t take long. So much of flying was feel, and she got the feel for this bird quickly. “She’s a solid girl,” she said to Yuma.

  “One of the best ever built,” he agreed. “You ought to think about flying one more often.”

  “Not likely. I’ll be teaching others how to fly Pave Hawks when I get back on status.”

  “I was talking about here.”

  Her hand jerked infinitesimally on the stick, and the helo juddered a tiny bit. “What are you talking about?”

  “I want to cut back on my hours. We’ve been kicking the idea around for some time. I know you probably won’t even consider it, but I’m just mentioning it. It’s pretty much the same job you do right now, without any flak. I like the no-flak part.”

  He let the subject drop, and she, too, let go of it. It didn’t fit. But damn, she was enjoying flying again. She headed them toward the mountains, laughed when they hit some turbulence, passed low over some trees, then sighed and headed back, talking to a rather lackadaisical tower control. Returning made her sad. She’d have loved to be up here for hours and really put the Huey through her paces.

  But at last she hovered over the landing pad and set them down. There was more of a bump than she was used to, but only because she wasn’t accustomed to landing this bird.

  It killed her to pull off the headset, killed her to listen to the rotors wind down. But at last she had to climb out and return to life on the ground.

  That was when the exhilaration hit her. Standing on the pavement under the shadow of the slowly turning rotors, she threw out her arms, spun around and cried, “That was great!”

  Wendy and Yuma both laughed. Wendy took her hand and Yuma patted her back. Seth emerged from the office and came toward her with a grin. “Great?” he asked.

  “Absolutely great! God, I’ve missed that.” She turned to Yuma and gave him an unexpected hug. “Thanks so much for that.”

  His smile turned crooked. “Hey, I was just a passenger.”

  They had just started making plans once again for the dinner that hadn’t happened yet when a call came in. Time to transport a critical patient from the local hospital to a bigger medical center. Seth and Edie hung around to watch Wendy and Yuma take off, headed for the local hospital.

  She didn’t say a word to Seth about the suggestion Yuma had made. She still didn’t know whether she even wanted to consider it.

  “The ERT also does mountain rescue,” Seth remarked as they walked to the car. “It’s not all about emergency transport. We’ve got some good ground teams in this county.”

  “Are you thinking about it?”

  “Along with being a deputy, it’s crossed my mind. I have the training for it.”

  “You certainly do. In fact you could probably give the training.”

  He seemed to grow pensive as they headed back to his place, and she wondered what he was thinking. He’d already looked into the possibility of two jobs here, but he was prep
ared to throw that all up to follow her around the world. Damn, didn’t that make her feel awful.

  Yet, there was still their baby. Hadn’t she already pondered a bit about how a child had to come first in everything?

  Almost without realizing it, she muttered a cuss word under her breath, wondering why there seemed to be some new wrinkle at every turn. As soon as the word slipped past her lips, she hoped he’d missed it in the car noises. He hadn’t.

  “I thought you just had a great time. Why are you cussing?”

  She could have offered almost any excuse under the sun, but it was growing increasingly clear to her that denial was dangerous, that concealing things was pointless. They had a lot to deal with, and ignoring any part of it could have bad consequences. Honesty, not evasion, had to be the policy from here on out.

  “I was just thinking that you’d already looked into two good possibilities of jobs you’d like. Traveling with me would take that away from you.”

  “So?”

  “So?” She repeated the word loudly. “It matters!”

  “What matters first and foremost from now until forever is our son. This isn’t going to happen without some sacrifices from both of us. You know that, Edie. Don’t feel bad that I might make a few. You’re making most of them.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, right. You’re the one unwillingly grounded. You’re the one with career plans that are really blowing up. I’m the lucky one. I haven’t committed to any particular future yet except being the best father I can manage. That makes the rest of my choices easy.”

  Really? His words stuck with her the rest of the way home, and she began to wonder if he wasn’t right. What if she threw everything else out the window and just thought about being the best mother possible. Would that make it easier to reach decisions?

  She suspected it would. The balancing act she’d been trying to pull for months wasn’t going to end with the baby’s birth. As long as she felt she had to balance, instead of making one clear choice, she’d always be balancing.

  As they neared the house, she said, “You don’t have a computer, do you?”

  “Not yet. Not while I’m remodeling.”

  “Then what about a bookstore?”

  “We have Bea’s place. What do you want?”

  “It’s time,” she said, “to start choosing names.”

  Chapter Nine

  Poring over a book full of baby names actually turned into a riotous afternoon. Seth was in some kind of mood and refused to get serious about it. They went through names, picking the ones that sounded absolutely awful to them, imagining some poor little boy saddled with some of them, and worse, coming up with all the possible terrible nicknames.

  Edie’s sides ached from laughing. It had been a while since she’d enjoyed being so silly, and Seth had a wicked wit. But just as she was beginning to think he was avoiding the entire issue with humor, and that they were getting nowhere at all, she glanced over at the pad beside him and realized he’d written down a few names.

  She leaned over to read it, even as she begged him to stop making her laugh because it was beginning to hurt, and saw that he’d copied names neither of them had either willingly or unwillingly made fun of.

  “Wow,” she said. “We have names!”

  “And we’re not even halfway through the book yet,” he reminded her. A smile resided in his green-brown eyes.

  “Are we going to get to Seth?”

  “You want to call him that?”

  “Why not? Don’t most people do that?”

  “I don’t know what most people do, but if you have two Seths around, the poor kid is probably going to be called Junior for the rest of his days.”

  She frowned. He had a point. “We could call him Seth Too.”

  “The number?”

  “No.” She spelled it out for him.

  He snorted. “I can already hear him being called Too, and everyone thinking it is a number. Let’s skip that idea. Names are really important. Look at my dad. I don’t think his parents ever considered what calling him Nathan Tate would cause. Nate Tate? I’m sure he got a lot of double takes before everyone around here got used to it.”

  “I admit I wondered when I heard it. But it fits somehow.”

  “Sooner or later.” He tapped the pad. “We’ve already got a few we didn’t trash one way or the other. We’ll have more by the time we’re done. Then we can really wrangle.”

  He rose and went to pull a casserole out of the freezer. He pulled off the note taped to it and popped it in the oven. “From Doris Whelan, two doors down. Her prize-winning mac and cheese. From scratch, and she uses a good white cheddar. You’ll like it.”

  “It doesn’t come out of a ration box.”

  He laughed again, set the temperature on the oven. “An hour, she said, from frozen. Add fifteen because I didn’t preheat.” He taped the note to one of the few cupboard doors so he would remember where to return the dish. He’d been doing that as they ate the neighbors’ bounty.

  “I’m surprised so many people brought food,” she said. “It must be because of you. They don’t even know me.”

  “They don’t know me all that well yet, either, but it seems to be a tradition around here. I like it.”

  She realized she was getting to like a lot of things about the quiet little town. Even her constant urge for action seemed to be quieting as she settled into an easier pace.

  “So you had a great time flying today,” he said.

  She looked up, a smile coming to her lips, but the instant their eyes connected, it was as if all the air left the room. A deep certainty settled over her, not unlike that morning in Afghanistan, and she knew what was coming.

  He stood there, his eyes alight with promises and hungers she still could barely imagine from their one brief coupling. Waiting. Saying nothing. Doing nothing. As if he didn’t want to send her into flight. Giving her a chance to act as if she didn’t feel the same thing.

  But she felt it. Oh, man, she felt it. She’d been feeling it like a nagging itch since she’d set eyes on him again. Up or down, angry or laughing, the itch never went away.

  It remained at the edges of her consciousness, or it burst into the foreground at surprising moments. She kept pushing it away, telling herself it was just another complication she didn’t need.

  Maybe she didn’t need it, but she wanted it. Maybe it wasn’t smart, but she didn’t care anymore. All the things she had so steadfastly tried to avoid by avoiding sex had happened anyway: her career was in a shambles, her future was up in the air and she had a baby on the way.

  What was there left to avoid?

  Her limbs seemed to grow heavy, and heat pooled between her thighs. She rose, facing him, but unsure what to do. It had been so easy that night so long ago. So what had changed? Was it easier with a stranger than with someone you knew? That didn’t make sense.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Seth said, his voice husky. “Tell me now if I should turn off that oven.”

  She knew exactly what he meant, but he’d given her a graceful way to pretend she didn’t understand. Her own response sounded hoarse even to her. “Turn it off.”

  He smiled then, an almost lazy, sleepy smile. Somehow that look ratcheted up the growing heat within her. It seemed to promise so much. Memories of their brief time together tumbled around in her head, exquisite, exciting. She knew she wanted even more this time, although she didn’t know exactly what. Slow? Fast? Right now she thought she’d die if it wasn’t fast and furious. Later...she hoped there would be a later, but at that moment she didn’t care.

  Now and Seth. All she wanted.

  There was a click, oddly loud, as he switched the oven off. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and laid his hand on h
er belly. “I’ll be careful.”

  “I don’t think I’m that fragile.”

  “Still.” The smile reached his eyes, but seemed to hold a burning intensity. She wouldn’t have imagined it could feel this good, this heady, to realize a man wanted her that much. And the more so because it was Seth.

  She wanted him, not just a man. Of that she hadn’t the least doubt.

  He guided her toward the stairs, then rested his hands on her hips as she climbed them ahead of him. His touch, so ordinary, nonetheless felt almost like fire through her clothes. Those flames were growing, heating her inside then turning into the most amazing ache. It far exceeded anything she had felt the last time until they were approaching culmination. Now her body was as ready to go as her mind.

  At the top of the stairs, still standing behind her, he murmured, “Slowly this time. I want to appreciate you.”

  The whisper of his warm breath in her ear sent a thrill racing through her—his words were almost a promise.

  One last sane thought tried to poke through the hot haze of desire: What was she getting into?

  It vanished the instant his lips touched the side of her neck, caressing her. All of a sudden her legs felt rubbery. As if he sensed it, he swept her right off her feet, turned sideways and carried her into the bedroom. He stood her beside the bed, facing him, cupping her face and looking deep into her eyes.

  “Me, too,” he said, as he had on that memorable night months ago. “Me, too.”

  A shudder of longing ripped through her, and she tipped her head back. Never in her life had she felt more like surrendering. Never.

  As he reached to lift her shirt, she muttered, “I have no waist.”

  “Believe me, that only makes you more beautiful. Did I tell you that you have a glow about you that you didn’t before? I can’t explain it.”

  “I was tired before.”

  A quiet chuckle escaped him. “Not that I noticed. This is for us, Edie. Just for us.”

  She liked the sound of that. More heat and heaviness drizzled to her core and all of a sudden she felt energized. She reached for the buttons on his shirt.