Heatwave

Cale slapped a hand down on Drew’s shoulder. “Yup, he knows what a fire thinks.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” Drew asked his brother.

“Not at the moment.” Cale never could take a hint.

Drew decided to continue ignoring him. “Have they told you about your grandmother?” he asked Emily.

She nodded. “I’m going up to see her as soon as they release me. Do you know how it happened?”

He had a pretty good idea. Someone was setting fires. Until today, no one had been injured. Velma Norris’s burns might not be life-threatening, but next time she might not be as fortunate.

“A fire was smoldering in the trash bin outside the school,” Drew told Emily. “When your grandmother opened the bin, oxygen fed the flames. Her right hand and part of her forearm were injured.”

Emily opened her mouth to say something just as a young doctor pushed through the curtain. He glanced at Emily, then at Drew and Cale. “Which one of you is responsible for the patient?”

“I am,” Drew said, before he could stop himself. He wasn’t really responsible for her, but he sure felt as if he’d been assigned the task of taking care of her. Exactly why, however, remained a mystery, especially since rescuing damsels in distress was Cale’s gig, not his.

The doctor looked down at the chart, then back at Emily. “We have good news. Your labs came back in good order, and there were no signs of heatstroke. But I do suggest you take it easy and be sure to drink plenty of liquids as a precaution.”

“May I leave now?” Emily asked, a hopeful note in her husky voice. The kind of voice that held the power to drift over a man’s heart.

The doctor nodded, then tucked the chart under his arm. He gave Drew a stern look. “Don’t leave her alone tonight. Just to be on the safe side…considering.”

Drew frowned. “Considering?”

“Yes, considering her condition.” The doctor smiled suddenly and extended his right hand to Drew. “You’re going to be a father, Mr. Dugan. Congratulations!”

2

PREGNANT?

How on earth had that happened?

Emily wasn’t stupid or naive. She knew all about the how, but the whys and why nows had her more than a little dumbfounded.

Alone on her grandmother’s side of the semiprivate room, amid the get-well bouquets already arriving from friends and relatives, Emily lounged in the hard taupe vinyl chair and absently nibbled on her thumbnail while staring at the television screen where Pat Sajak interviewed the contestants on Wheel of Fortune. She hadn’t spent five minutes alone with Grandy when an orderly had come and taken her away for therapy on her hand and arm, which was probably a good thing. At least Emily had a few minutes to herself to try to absorb the news the doctor had given her.

Drew had left, too. Well, run away was more like it after the doctor had mistakenly assumed she and Drew were together, not that she could blame the gorgeous arson inspector. She’d been as shocked by the news as Drew had been horrified by the doctor’s assumption. Drew’s brother had been highly amused, something which had brought a nurse in to ask Cale to leave because his chuckles were disturbing the other patients.

Drew had really surprised her when, despite everything, he’d told her he’d come back for her in a couple of hours so she’d have some time to visit her grandmother, no matter how much she’d insisted otherwise. Didn’t she have enough problems without the unwanted attention of a handsome stranger, who was apparently very into playing Prince Valiant? Obviously someone thought her plate wasn’t quite full enough.

Not that she was all that worried about it since she’d sworn off men, effective immediately.

She let out a sigh, her third in as many minutes. Pregnant? How on earth had that happened?

Better yet, how had her life managed to spin so completely out of control in virtually the blink of her eyes. She’d been a successful advertising executive, leading a creative team through a multibillion dollar ad campaign for a major department-store chain. She’d believed she was in a secure, stable and very comfortable long-term relationship, living together with her own supposed Mr. Right in an absolutely perfect two-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment on the west side. The next thing she knew, she was not only unemployed and single, but homeless and now pregnant, as well. All in the space of twenty-four hours.

Forget lemons. Life had handed her a whole basketful of limes, which everyone knew were much more bitter-tasting. In her state of impending motherhood, she didn’t even have the luxury of being able to reach for the closest bottle of tequila and shaker of salt to make the best of a bad situation.

She nipped the skin surrounding her thumbnail and winced. On the other side of the pink-and-gray striped curtain, Grandy’s roomy snored softly while a very enthusiastic young woman bought vowels on the television. If Emily was feeling sorry for herself, which she wasn’t, she figured even Shakespeare would be hard-pressed to write anything more tragic than the mess her life had become. Somehow, everything had managed to tilt so far off balance, she wondered if she dared tempt fate by holding even an ounce of hope that she might regain a modicum of control. She’d leapt from being a smart, savvy businesswoman with not only solid goals for her professional future, but with a finely detailed map of what she planned to accomplish in her personal life, onto an emotional roller coaster with more twists and turns than she could keep up with, even on a good day.

How in the world had that happened?

Before she did more damage to her thumb, she wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned forward in the chair. She was pregnant, something she figured would take her a little time to get used to.

But she’d been on birth control, for crying out loud. Why now, especially since her so-called boyfriend had dumped her for another woman just two hours before her flight to Los Angeles. For a junior partner in his law firm, he’d said. A woman more in tune with his professional needs.

Professional needs? The last time she’d looked, relationships were based on matters of the heart.

Charlie, now unaffectionately known as Cheatin’ Charlie, hadn’t even had the decency to end their relationship in private, but in the passenger check-in area of JFK Airport, of all places. Correction, he’d ended their relationship and informed her he would have her stuff moved into storage while she was in L.A. Considering she’d just been handed a pink slip the day before, along with twenty percent of the work force at Anderson and McIntyre Advertising because of corporate downsizing, she hadn’t put up much of a fight. Yep, she’d gone from smart and savvy all right…straight to doormat.

Perhaps she’d just been too stunned to feel anything. With one striking blow after another, who could blame her? Even now, a dozen or so hours later, she still had a hard time mustering up anything close to an emotional outburst, angry, hurt or otherwise where Cheatin’ Charlie Pruitt was concerned. Well, other than the fact that she’d decided to swear off men for a good long while. And for good reason, too.

Charlie wasn’t the first bad choice she’d made in the relationship department. According to her small group of women friends, she was practically famous for her lousy choices. If she wanted to examine her twenty-seven-year history of relationships truthfully, which she most certainly did not, even she knew they were right. When it came to the opposite sex, she had a radar for men that were wrong for her, and the track record to substantiate the claim.

High school had been a series of dating disasters she’d tried hard to forget once she went away to college. She hadn’t dated much her first couple of years, but her junior year she’d met and fallen head over heels for Rick Murdoch. He’d been premed, an all-American track star and vice president of the junior class. He’d also been stunningly gorgeous, just the kind of guy women spent hours drooling over in magazine ads. They’d had a lot in common, more than she’d ever imagined. Unfortunately, Rick turned out to be gay, something he decided right after she’d lost her virginity to him. How was she supposed to know the one thing they both really had in common was their attraction to men?

When she’d first moved to New York, after landing the account-rep job at Anderson and McIntyre, she’d actually met a wonderful guy who she was sure would make her forget about Rick. Jake was an actor, good-looking in a smooth pretty-boy sense. Attentive. A wicked sense of humor. And an absolutely incredible lover, which went a very long way in restoring the level of her battered sensuality-ego after the disaster of Rick.

She wasn’t a perfectionist, not by a long shot. She understood people weren’t perfect and came with quirks and baggage. Only there were some quirks she simply could not overlook. Jake turned out to have a taste for pornography she found a little too distasteful—like him being cast in the starring role of several X-rated films.

Then there’d been the guy who could never make a decision about anything unless he conferred with his mother first, followed by the borderline obsessive-compulsive who carried his own set of plastic ware to restaurants, something the maître d’ at the Tavern on the Green had found so offensive, he’d asked them to leave. Alan Fontaine had had a few other idiosyncrasies regarding the physical aspect of relationships, as well, but she thought wearing surgical gloves while making love was taking things just a bit too far.

Finally a little over a year ago, she’d thought she’d finally found Mr. Right with Charles Pruitt, III. Tall, slender, with preppy Ken-doll good looks, he had a mesmerizing gaze filled with intelligence. He was a brilliant research attorney. Not a skin flick or latex glove in sight—that made him a plus. He had lacked any real sense of humor, but he had goals similar to her own, which made them work well together.

Turned out Cheatin’ Charlie was really Mr. Not-A-Chance and the father of her baby.

Well, she thought resolutely, she wasn’t the first woman to find herself pregnant and alone. As sure as the sun rose at dawn, she wouldn’t be the last, either.

She shook her head, still trying to wrap her mind around the fact she was going to have a baby. It wasn’t that she didn’t want children, she was just…well, stunned. Starting a family had been part of her most recent five-year plan, but she’d hoped to have a husband, a home and a job first. She still had another couple of years before she figured she was ready to purchase a house, but she did have enough money saved that it wouldn’t be a problem readjusting the real-estate portion of her plan. Provided she found another job first. The husband part, however, had just become moot. Good grief, she hadn’t even realized she and Charlie were having problems.

She sat up straight and slid her hand over her tummy. A baby. Boy or girl? she wondered. Would her child look like her, or like Charlie? She had to admit, other than his rotten sense of timing and the fact that he’d apparently been cheating on her with Ms. Junior Partner, Charles Pruitt, III, wasn’t all bad. A little too self-absorbed obviously, but not completely narcissistic. And they’d had a good time together. At least until she’d been assigned to lead the team of advertisers for the large ad campaign. She’d been keeping long hours for the last couple of months, and Charlie hadn’t seemed to mind. Of course, she hadn’t known he’d been otherwise occupied.

She hadn’t even realized she was pregnant, and she couldn’t help wondering what that said about her. When she’d become increasingly tired, she’d first suspected the long hours spent on the ad campaign had her run-down. She’d caught that wicked cold, followed by the flu, and had just never seemed to regain her usual verve. With her hectic and demanding work schedule, there hadn’t been time to take off work to see a doctor for antibiotics, so Charlie had stocked her up on over-the-counter cold relievers. She’d managed to muddle through the cold, but the flu had left her feeling weak and tired much of the time.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. That was it! That was the how—the antihistamines in all those over-the-counter flu and cold medications she’d been taking must have counteracted her birth-control pills.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside her, but she tamped it down lest she wake Grandy’s roomy and the poor woman thought a lunatic was loose in the room. It might take two to tango, as the centuries-old saying went, but it looked as if Charlie was even more responsible for her newly acquired status as mother-to-be than she’d originally believed.

Cheatin’ Charlie might have a skewed version of the meaning of monogamy, but he did know about responsibility. Of course, she couldn’t tell him. He might be the father and he did deserve to know, but not now. Later, when he wouldn’t dream of accusing her of stooping low enough to make a desperate attempt to hang on to a relationship that had gone south.

As for a place to live and finding gainful employment, she knew all she had to do was ask and she could temporarily room with either of her two dearest friends, Susan or Annie, until she found a job. She and Susan Carlson had been roommates in college, so it really wouldn’t be much of an adjustment for either of them, especially since Susan traveled a great deal, thanks to her recent promotion in the public relations firm where she worked. Annie Pickett, on the other hand, a struggling actress who waited tables in between plays to pay the rent, would no doubt appreciate the financial assistance of a roommate.

Emily wasn’t exactly destitute, but finding a job that paid as well as Anderson’s would be difficult in the current job market. And an employer willing to hire a pregnant woman would be virtually nonexistent. Equal opportunities and discriminatory laws aside, when it came down to a final decision, why would someone hire her when she’d be taking a couple of months off for maternity leave within six or seven months of being hired?

She had a lot of thinking and planning to do. A natural list-maker, she reached into her purse for the small pad and pen she always carried with her and started making notes.

She was out of her home, out of a job and her man had dumped her.

Home, she wrote, followed by, Call Annie.

Job…Call headhunters.

Man. She made a noise and crossed that one off her list.

Baby. She tapped her pen, staring at the word, not having a clue where to begin.

A small smile curved her lips as she put pen to paper again.

Ashley, Adam.

Brandi, Brandon.

Chloe, Charles.

She drew a line through Charles. Carter.

Daisy, Drummond.

Eleanor, Ethan.

Fiona, Franklin.

Georgia…

DREW PARKED the state-issued, red Dodge Dynasty in the lot behind the firehouse, then took the rear entrance into Trinity Station. He headed up the back stairs to the second floor, avoided the bunkroom and walked straight to the deserted locker room. The guys who weren’t out on calls would either be playing a few rounds of pinochle, watching the tube or catching some Z’s before the next alarm sounded. Since he’d promised Emily he’d come back for her in a couple of hours, he didn’t have time to guzzle coffee and shoot the breeze the way he usually did at the end of his shift. All he wanted was to change out of his uniform and take Emily back to her grandmother’s house.

What came next, he couldn’t say. He agreed with the doctor’s opinion that Emily shouldn’t be left alone tonight. She’d suffered a shock to her system, physically and definitely emotionally based on her stunned reaction to the announcement of her pregnancy. When he’d asked her if there was anyone he could call for her, she’d recovered enough from her surprise to give him a hard stare and emphatically state there was no one in her life to call.

He wasn’t exactly certain what that meant, but one thing he did know, Emily Dugan was not his responsibility. Unfortunately that didn’t prevent him from feeling otherwise. Not only had she fainted on him, but he’d gone and promised her grandmother he’d look after her. And a Perry’s word was like oak—solid and unbreakable.

Before returning to the station, he’d gone back to the school to further inspect the damage. While he’d suspected an accelerant had been used, he’d been unprepared to find cooking oil coating the trash bin, which meant he had to consider Velma Norris as a suspect, at least temporarily. He didn’t want to think the sweet old woman could be his firebug, but neither could he discount the evidence. The blaze hadn’t been an accident. No one had simply disposed of old cooking oil. Someone had literally taken the time to coat the interior of the Dumpster. In his book, that spelled arson. Firebugs weren’t limited to a specific gender, age group or even social or economic status. In Drew’s experience, there were usually four motivating factors for an arsonist. Vandalism was a typical one, and these fires were usually started by teens. Trash bins, like the one today, were often the most common starting point, and if it hadn’t been for the two previous fires and the evidence he’d found at the cooking school, he might have discounted this latest incident to vandalism.

The motive to profit from an insurance claim, especially during hard economic times, as a way to escape a failing business or a big mortgage was likely, and something he had no choice but to consider. The place was definitely run-down, and from his two prior visits, he hadn’t seen all that many students hanging around.

Revenge was often an arsonist’s main objective, and usually an enraged, jilted lover or disgruntled employee was responsible for the burn. Actually, Drew considered revenge fire starters the most dangerous because of their emotional instability. They were also the easiest to catch, primarily because they were more concerned with the act of revenge than with hiding their crime. He’d considered this option briefly, but since there’d been no witnesses, he had his doubts this was the motive. Nor did he believe he was dealing with a garden-variety pyromaniac or even a firebug wanting to cover up another crime. Which brought him back to the answer he dreaded the most…fire for profit.

He tugged his shirt out of his trousers before he sat on the varnished wood bench to remove his work shoes. Reaching forward, he lifted the latch on his locker and opened the door. A basket tumbled out, followed by the plaintive cry of “Mama” from a child’s doll. It sounded more like a braying lamb than a baby as it rolled over the concrete floor to his feet.

He leapt up and nearly toppled over the bench as a series of bubble-gum cigars in blue and pink fell from the top of the locker, raining over his head and shoulders. “What the…”

Snickers and the shuffling of feet echoed in the locker room. “All right, who’s the comedian?” Drew called as he stooped to pick up the doll.

“Mama,” the doll whined, followed by louder chuckles.

He turned to put the doll back in the basket, but set it on the bench instead, since the white wicker carrier that had held the little baby doll with blond ringlets was stuffed full of disposable diapers.

“Mama,” the doll cried again.

Drew let out a sigh as his eye caught the shelf in his locker. Upon closer inspection, he realized the guys had replaced his shampoo with a no-more-tears formula of baby shampoo. Instead of his black comb was an infant’s brush and comb in pink, with tiny blue flowers no less. His bar of soap had disappeared, too, but his co-workers had included a bottle of baby soap, along with economy-size bottles of pink baby lotion and talcum powder.

“You can come out now,” he said. He suspected Cale was responsible for the joke since he’d been with him when Emily’s doctor had mistakenly assumed Drew was “the responsible party.” A big joke at that, since marriage and family were absolutely not part of his lifelong agenda. He might have one of the lower-risk jobs in the fire department, but he still faced a good amount of danger investigating fires each time he entered a burned-out structure. Since he had no intention of hanging up his gear, he’d decided a long time ago there was no way he’d put a child or a wife through one ounce of the pain he’d suffered at the loss of his parents.

“Drew, buddy,” Tom “Scorch” McDonough said as he rounded the corner. A wide grin split the paramedic’s freckled face. “You should have told us.”

Cale slapped Drew on the back. “He’s been keeping this one quiet.”

Drew shrugged off his brother’s hand. “Hey, I hardly know her.”

“Wow.” Fitz, another third-generation firefighter, laughed. “That’s fast work. Even for you.”

Cale crossed his arms and leaned against the row of lockers, careful to avoid the bubble-gum cigars littering the floor. “Yeah, but you’re interested. I saw the look, Drew.”

He frowned. “What look?” Since when had he become so transparent that Cale could tell what he was thinking?

“The one you get when your interest is piqued by someone of the opposite sex,” Brady, Cale’s paramedic partner, added.

Scorch nodded knowingly. “That starving-dog look.”

“More like a lovesick-puppy look,” Ben Perry said.

Drew shot them all a scathing glance, then tugged his T-shirt over his head and tossed it in the bottom of the locker. “I’m doing an old woman a favor. End of story.”

A slight smile curved Ben’s mouth, something that didn’t happen often enough. “Sounds like the beginning of one to me.”

Drew shucked out of his trouser and briefs, then picked up a clean towel to wrap around his waist. “Shows how much you don’t know. Now if you comedians will excuse me, I need to shower and get back to the hospital.” He turned his back on the practical jokers, shrugged and grabbed the bottle of baby shampoo from the shelf. Shampoo was shampoo, after all.

“See what I mean?” Cale said.

“He can’t stand to be away from her,” Brady added.

Scorch laughed. “Looks like his Casanova days are numbered.”

Drew stopped in front of the last locker at the end of the row and turned to face them. He could give and take with the best of them, and had even been the engineer behind more than a practical joke or two. But they’d just gone too far in his mind. No way in hell were his bachelor days in danger of disappearing. He enjoyed women, a lot, and preferred the freedom of sampling all they had to offer too much to be tied down to only one woman.

“You guys should talk,” he told them. “Cale’s engaged, Brady’s wife is pregnant and not talking to him again, and Scorch is tied up in knots over Tilly. Now whose days are numbered?” He couldn’t blame a woman for putting Ben through the wringer. As far as Drew knew, the last time his older brother had gone on a date was at least three, maybe even four, months ago.

Cale grinned. “Not Scorch. Tilly’s ticked off at him. Again.”

“What’d you do this time?” Ben asked Scorch. “Forget the one-month anniversary of your first date or something?”

Scorch shoved a hand through his permanent case of bed-head carrot-red hair. “Worse,” he admitted. “Her birthday.”

“Aw jeez. You’re screwed,” Fitz offered sympathetically. “I missed Krista’s birthday once and let me tell you, it’s gonna take some major sucking up. Think jewelry, pal.”

Scorch let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his head. “She hated the flowers I brought her today. She threw them at me. Plastic vase and all.”

Drew grinned triumphantly. “See what I mean? Until you idiots can get your love lives straightened out, don’t even think about lecturing me on mine.”

Not that he had a love life that included Emily Dugan. Then again, she had made it crystal clear she was single. When it came to women, Drew was always open to exploring the possibilities…of anything short-term, of course.

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