With Courage And Commitment

He nodded and dished some lasagna onto her plate then served himself. At age sixty-three, he was still as fit as he had been at thirty, Stephanie suspected, although his hair was gray now and he wore it in a short butch cut.

“Evidently Alice was happy,” he commented.

Stephanie’s brows shot up. “She called?” When? They’d both been scrubbing—

“Yep. Seems the kids were so impressed with my firefighters they want to give one of them an award. Danny Sullivan, as a matter of fact.”

Fortunately Stephanie hadn’t taken a bite of food yet because she would have choked. She forced a smile. “Really? How nice.”

“That’s right.” He forked some lasagna into his mouth. “Seems he saved Arnold’s life. Pretty courageous of him, I’d say.”

She nodded, thinking it was time for her to get an apartment of her own—before her father threw her out for putting one of his men at risk.

“I’ve always liked Danny, even when he was a little wild as a kid. You know, he’s our top man on the department’s triathlon team.”

“I guess I hadn’t heard that.” Although she did know fire departments across the country were always coming up with one athletic contest or another in order to encourage physical fitness.

“Yep. Without Danny, Paseo wouldn’t have a chance of winning the state finals this spring.”

“Interesting.” All the more reason her father was about to hand her her head on a platter for making Danny rescue a hamster.

Harlan Gray glanced up from his meal and gave her a fatherly smile. “Why don’t we do something nice for him, like invite him over for dinner some night?”

She gaped at her father as he resumed eating his meal with obvious relish. That was it? She wasn’t going to get the lecture on fire prevention? Safety first? The importance of human life, which included his men?

A seriously uncomfortable feeling raised the hackles on the back of her neck. Her father couldn’t be doing a little matchmaking, could he? In cahoots with her friend Alice? She knew her father was distressed about her not being married. But she was in no condition to be matched with anyone.

Besides, what man in his right mind would be interested in a woman whose silhouette would soon resemble a blimp?

When she finally took a bite of dinner, the taste was bitter, much like the knowledge that if Danny hadn’t been interested in her years ago, he certainly wouldn’t be now.

Chapter Two

“You shouldn’t be doing that.” Danny wheeled his racing bike up behind Stephanie’s ancient Honda, which was parked in her driveway, the trunk open. He’d been about to go out for a training run on his day off when he’d spotted Stephanie hauling heavy sacks of groceries into the house.

She straightened with a sack in her arms. “Doing what?”

“Lifting heavy stuff. Pregnant women aren’t supposed to do that.”

“So now you’re an expert on pregnant women?”

“Evidently I know more than you do.”

“Being pregnant is not a physical disability. I’m fine.”

More than fine. She had the usual fire in her eyes, golden embers and hot sparks shooting in his direction. She’d been an imp as a youngster. As a woman, she was—

On a sudden surge of irritation, he unsnapped his bike helmet, rolled his bike out of sight behind some bushes near the back door, then took the sack from her arms. “You go sit somewhere. I’ll bring in the groceries.”

“Oh, for pity sake! I’m not disabled.”

“Sit,” he ordered and marched inside, as familiar with the Gray’s house as he was with his own. Not much had changed since he’d been here as an adolescent—Harlan Gray as close to a father as he’d had in those days, Mrs. Gray like a doting aunt. And Stephanie a pesky little sister.

Naturally Stephanie hadn’t listened to him any more today than she had when she’d been younger. Instead she’d picked up another bag of groceries and followed him inside. She gave a little toss of her hair that set the waves bouncing and put the groceries on the counter. “There are two more bags in the car,” she said with false sweetness. “If you really think poor little me can’t handle it.”

He glowered at her. “I’ll get ’em.”

“Oh, my, such a big, brave man,” she crooned.

On the way past her, he almost gave her a friendly little swat on her backside as he might have when she was a kid. But she wasn’t a kid anymore. She was a woman. A pregnant woman wearing a bright red oversize T-shirt with a yellow target in the middle. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands except stick them into his pockets. Except his bicycle shorts didn’t have pockets.

He grimaced as he walked back to the car to get the last of the groceries. He never should have stopped to help her. He’d known that. Perversely he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

STEPHANIE SQUEEZED HER EYES shut and took a deep breath. If she’d thought Danny was overwhelmingly masculine in his bunker pants and turnout coat, she was blown away by him in a skintight riding shirt and thigh-hugging shorts. Every muscle from shoulder to calves was well defined. A classic sculpture created in the flesh. No doubt warm flesh.

None of which gave him the right to boss her around. She’d had enough of that with Edgar, both at the office and in their relationship. Served her right for getting involved with her employer. But he’d been so smooth, so sophisticated—

So uninterested in becoming a father until the twenty-second century.

“Where do you want this stuff?”

She whirled toward him. “Anywhere. I can handle it from here on my own.” Because that’s how she was going to be from now on—on her own with a baby to raise.

And no one to tell her what to wear to the opening night of the San Francisco opera or what she should prepare for a dinner party for seventeen of his closest friends, all of whom were big clients of his advertising agency, not friends at all.

“Great. I’ll be on my way then. I’ve gotta workout for a big race.”

“I know. A triathlon.” She plucked a gallon of nonfat milk from the first sack and put it in the refrigerator. Danny lingered by the back door. Maybe if she got out the fly swatter—

“When did you get back in town?”

“About a week ago. Alice needed a part-time teacher. All things considered, it seemed like a good time to come home.” There hadn’t been any point in remaining in San Francisco longer. Edgar wasn’t going to change his mind about the baby. After the way he’d acted these past few months, she didn’t even want him to.

Danny’s gaze slid to her belly. “So you’re going to be staying a while in Paseo?”

She refused to flinch. “Indefinitely.”

“That’s great. Uh, I’m sure your dad’s happy to have you home.” He made a show of glancing around the room as though her pregnancy made him uncomfortable, which it probably did. “The place looks pretty much the same as when I was here last. I remember when your mom framed that painting.”

Involuntary Stephanie glanced at the wall above the kitchen sink that displayed her blue-ribbon high school painting—a helter-skelter modern cubist affair of reds and blues with streaks of virtually every color to be found in a box of crayons. It was awful.

“Mom thought I was going to be the next Rembrandt.”

“You got a scholarship. How wrong could she have been?”

In spite of herself, Stephanie smiled. It had been nice to have parents who believed in her, and she still missed her mother, who had died four years ago during Stephanie’s senior year in college. “Commercial art was the best I could do.”

He leaned against the doorjamb as though he had nowhere else to go. “I’m pretty good with stick figures if you need some help with any of your projects.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “The only art I’m doing these days is the four-year-old variety. Mostly finger painting and setting candle wax on fire.”

“Yeah, well, they tell me primitive styles are back in vogue.”

She lifted her brows. “What do you know about primitive art styles?”

“Hey, I watch a lot of PBS when I’m riding my stationary bike, okay? Broadens the mind.” He touched a two-finger salute to his forehead. “Unless you need some other heroic deed done, I gotta go. You know what they say about practice, practice, practice.”

She swallowed another smile. The last time she’d heard that remark she’d been sixteen years old and it had been a comment about sexual prowess. She hadn’t gotten the meaning then. She tried not to now, though the heat of a blush crept up her cheeks, and she became defensive. “I think I’ll be able to manage without you—barely. You might want to leave a couple of quarts of blood and your cell phone number just in case some grand catastrophe happens and you’re not here to rescue me.”

“I recommend you call 911.”

Now, that conjured an interesting image. Frustrated pregnant woman puts in an emergency call to the fire department to quench her hormonal upsurge—Daniel Sullivan specifically requested to fill the bill.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine what Chief Gray would do about that kind of call coming into dispatch. Although Emma Jean at the station would probably be able to handle it with considerable aplomb, her silver gypsy bracelets jingling as she did.

Sighing, Stephanie wondered what Emma Jean would see in her crystal ball about her future. Right now the best Stephanie could see was that the chocolate ice cream she’d purchased—purely for medicinal reasons, of course—was melting. She reminded herself to worry about only one thing at a time.

Instinctively she slid her hand across her belly. The future would take care of itself whether she wanted it to or not.

STEPHANIE POURED SMALL amounts of blue paint into four paper cups, setting them on the miniature easels in preparation for the children’s arrival at school.

“I don’t see why you had to make such a big deal out of Danny Sullivan rescuing the hamsters,” she complained to Alice, who was unstacking pint-size chairs from the play table. “It’s not like he did anything all that brave.”

“The children think he’s a hero. And you do have to give him some credit for kissing a hamster.”

“He did mouth-to—”

“Besides, I was talking to one of the other fireman after all the excitement was over. Turns out he’s single, and the way he was looking at you I got the distinct impression—”

“Aha! You are trying to do some matchmaking. For your information, Danny and I go back a long way and there hasn’t been a single ounce of chemistry between us.” Not on his part, at any rate. Her adolescent angsting didn’t count.

The angelic smile on Alice’s face didn’t quite match the devilment in her gray eyes. Happily married women with devoted husbands and the standard two-point-seven healthy children were the bane of all single women. Constitutionally unable to pass up an opportunity to matchmake.

“Well, you do need a daddy for your baby and if you two have a past—”

“No past, not like you mean. No future, either.” She dumped red powder into a clean cup and mixed in some water, stirring more vigorously than was wise. “I’m probably the last woman on earth he’d want to get involved with, even if I wasn’t pregnant. Which I am. So just cool it, okay?”

Alice’s retort was cut off by the arrival of the first two children of the day. She lifted her shoulders in an unconcerned shrug, then hurried to greet the preschoolers.

Stephanie frowned at the spatters of red across the newspaper she’d been using to protect the table—and at the matching spots on her blouse. Fortunately she liked wearing bright colors. The print on this particular maternity blouse was of a flower garden in full bloom with the words, “From little seeds grow the most beautiful things.”

She sighed. At least the paint was washable.

For the next hour, she supervised outdoor play, the February morning so mild the kids only needed a light sweater to keep them warm. Then she brought the youngsters inside for juice and show-and-tell. Jason Swift announced that he’d stuck an ant up his nose yesterday, and Tami Malone shared the news that when her daddy slept on top of her mommy, her mommy made funny noises, but it was all right because they loved each other.

Stephanie ruled out both topics from any further discussion.

She was about to send them off for free play with blocks and plastic dump trucks and the indoor playhouse, when the front door opened. She looked up and her heart did a ridiculous stutter step.

Danny Sullivan stood there in his navy-blue dress uniform, the pants and shirt perfectly creased as though he were about to stand inspection, his badge glistening. His midnight-black hair was combed back, the usually unruly curls tamed for the moment. She had an almost irrepressible urge to muss his hair with her fingers, to thread her hands through the fullness until he looked like—

She didn’t want to go there. Not now. Not in the presence of twenty wide-eyed preschoolers.

Nor did she want to admit how her lungs seized when his eyes snared hers, their color almost as bright as the royal-blue the children used to color the sky in their paintings.

Only when he stepped farther into the room and young Tami cried out, “He’s gots a doggy!” did Stephanie notice Danny had brought the station’s mascot with him. Mack Buttons, a chocolate Dalmatian with brown spots and a sweet disposition, waggled his tail as the preschoolers gathered around him. Looking a little uncertain about so many children, Danny ordered the dog to sit.

“Careful, children,” Alice warned, snaring the most fearless of the youngsters who had surged forward. “Remember you need to ask before you pet a strange dog.”

“But he’s so pretty!” Tami insisted.

“Yes, I know. And I’m sure Fireman Sullivan will let you all have a chance to pet him.” She hustled the children to the rug, asking them to make a story-time circle. Stephanie helped out by corralling those who failed to respond to the initial request.

Danny stood uncertainly at the edge of the rug while all the commotion went on around him. His gaze followed Stephanie. The room seemed to light up with her in it, everything else paling by comparison. Which was saying something given the rainbow-painted walls and bright splashes of color around the room.

He noticed how easily she touched the children, a brush of her hand on a shoulder to steer a kid in the right direction, a caress of her fingertips on a rosy cheek to elicit a smile.

In contrast, he felt like a giant among Lilliputians.

“Why don’t you sit in the rocking chair in the center of the circle?” Stephanie suggested.

“I think I’d rather stand.” It was better than being surrounded by a mob of giggling three- and four-year-olds.

“Is something the matter?”

“I don’t have much experience with kids. They, uh, make me nervous.”

She looked offended. “They won’t bite.”

“The hamster did.”

“I wish you’d told Alice when she called that you don’t like children, then we could have—”

“I like kids well enough,” he protested. “I just don’t have many occasions to be around them.”

“Think of this as your chance to get used to them, then.”

She took his hand, startling him with the feel of her slender fingers wrapped around his. A jolt of electricity shot up his arm. Not just static electricity but something high voltage. Sexual. Potent. With it came images of hot sweaty bodies—his and Stephanie’s—and rumpled sheets.

Before he could analyze what had happened, she led him to the chair. He sat because the shock had sent his heart into overdrive. He wasn’t supposed to feel any sexual attraction to Stephanie. And if he did feel any, he was supposed to keep it under tight wraps.

No way did he want to get involved with Harlan Gray’s daughter. The girl who had pestered him through half of his life. A woman who was pregnant with another man’s baby.

Buttons sat on the floor beside him, looking at the children expectantly.

Danny made it a point not to look at Stephanie. He didn’t want to know if she’d felt the attraction flowing between them, too.

“Before we give Fireman Sullivan his hero’s medal,” Alice said to the children, “would any of you like to ask him a question about being a firefighter?”

A half dozen hands shot up. Alice gave the nod to a pixie blonde. “Do you get to turn on the siren?”

“No, that’s the engineer’s job—the driver of the fire truck. I sit in back.”

His answer seemed to disappoint the little girl. Maybe he should have lied. A part of him wanted to impress the youngster—and Stephanie, too. But since her dad was the fire chief, she’d probably had her fill of sirens.

A boy asked, “Do you get scared?”

“Sometimes. But firefighters are very well trained. You all know fires can be dangerous and—”

“When were you scared?”

His gaze slid around the room. He had the kids’ attention. Stephanie’s, too. He didn’t want her to know that bravery didn’t always come easily. That sometimes the most courageous man could turn into a coward.

“I spent a couple of summers fighting forest fires in Idaho. I was a smoke jumper. Do you know what that means?”

When the kids shook their heads, he explained that he parachuted out of a plane near a fire that couldn’t be reached in any other way. He didn’t tell them of the terror of his last jump, the fear that still had the power to wake him up in a sweat from a dead sleep.

“That can be kind of scary,” he concluded after the briefest of explanations.

The questions got a little easier after that. Did he rescue cats from trees? Not usually. Was his helmet heavy? Not really, and he was sorry he hadn’t brought his along so they could try it on. Finally little blondie asked if they could pet the doggie yet.

A frequent school visitor, Buttons tolerated the petting with his usual patience, giving only a small yip when one of the kids stepped on his toe.

Then came the medal presentation.

Danny squirmed uncomfortably in the chair as the day’s designated “pet feeders” brought out the hamsters to witness the big event. Giving mouth-to-mouth to a rodent wasn’t Danny’s idea of being heroic. And every shift since last week, he’d been razzed by his buddies one way or the other. He’d be happy for everyone to forget the incident.

Solemnly two children carrying a blue velvet pillow marched in from the back of the room. They halted like little soldiers in front of Danny, an aluminum foil star with a red, white and blue ribbon resting on the pillow. The little girl gave him a shy smile. In a few years she’d be a killer, the boys unable to resist her.

“Let’s ask Miss Stephanie to put the medal around Fireman Sullivan’s neck, shall we?” Alice suggested.

The kids seemed amenable to idea. Danny wasn’t sure if he preferred Stephanie to do the deed or a four-year-old with sticky hands and a streak of blue paint on his chin. Neither seemed a good choice.

Stephanie’s teasing eyes as she approached suggested the kid would have been the better bet.

“Maybe I ought to call the Paseo Daily Press,” she said, grinning at his discomfort. “A front-page photo of this would be great PR for the fire department.”

“You pull a stunt like that and you’re toast!” he whispered through gritted teeth and forced a smile.

Her light laughter rippled around him like the rainbows circling the room. He caught her scent, something fresh and floral, as she leaned forward to place the medal around his neck. Her breasts loomed in front of him. Eye level. Tempting. Definitely not Twiggy.

Leaning back, he tried to escape the allure of her full figure. The rocker landed on Buttons’s tail in mid-wag. He yelped and scrambled away. The sudden movement caught Stephanie off guard. With a cry of alarm, she tumbled into Danny’s lap. Instinctively his arms wrapped around her.

She didn’t weigh much, he thought with a rush of conflicting emotions. She fit nicely where she had landed but she didn’t belong there. Her skin was soft, caressable. He ought to help her up but he didn’t want to let her go. Her kissable lips were enticingly close to his. His rebellious body wasn’t listening to his brain, definitely had a mind of its own.

Shoving her hands against his chest, she righted herself. Her breath came fast, in tiny gasps; so did his. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair mussed, the coffee-brown curls going every which way. He wondered if she realized how she affected him. A totally inappropriate reaction given the situation. And he didn’t know how she could have missed his response to her being in his lap.

With a whispered “Sorry” she stepped away from him.

Amid giggles and screams, the preschoolers had cleared the way.

Still unable to figure out quite what had happened, Danny stood, tugging Buttons to heel as a way to distract himself and get his reactions back under control.

Alice swept up beside him. “Perhaps we’d better let Fireman Sullivan put the medal around his own neck.”

“Good plan,” he muttered. Stephanie was still staring at him as if she’d felt the earth move. Or maybe she’d been offended by his reaction to having her in his lap. Or maybe she knew he wanted her there again without such a big audience.

Somehow they managed to make the exchange, their fingers barely brushing as she handed him the medal, which sent off a new round of sparks. He reversed his earlier conclusion. It had to be the dry air and static electricity that was giving him jolts with a high-powered charge. Not Stephanie.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Alice said, her voice as soft and sweet as ice cream as he looped the ribbon around his neck.

“No problem,” he lied.

“If you’re not doing anything this weekend, Stephanie and I are planning to paint the kitchen on Saturday. You know, spruce up the place after the fire.”

His head whipped around to nail Stephanie with a frown. “She shouldn’t be painting. She’s—”

“If you and some of your friends were to drop by, that might be a good idea.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable feeling in his midsection. He was being manipulated. He knew it and still he couldn’t figure out how to avoid the inevitable. He couldn’t let Stephanie expose herself to paint fumes. Not while she was pregnant. Who knew what that would do to the baby?

Grimacing, he swallowed hard. “I’ll be here.”

Alice smiled in a way that suggested she’d known all along he was a sucker.

“No, wait!” Stephanie protested. “I don’t want you to—”

He ignored her. “Bye, kids. Thanks for the medal.” They waved to him, and he made a hasty retreat out the door with Buttons on a short leash.

Naturally Stephanie didn’t leave it at that.

“Danny, wait!”

Running away wasn’t an option. He’d just been awarded a medal for bravery, hadn’t he? So he halted at the fence gate. He could still make a quick getaway if she’d gotten the wrong idea about him. About them. There wasn’t any them. There couldn’t be.

“I don’t want you to help paint the kitchen.”

“You shouldn’t be exposed to the fumes.”

“There’ll be ample ventilation.”

“I doubt your father would agree with that.”

“It’s not my father’s problem. It isn’t yours, either, and I don’t appreciate you trying to boss me around.”

“Me?” His hand covered his chest in mock surprise. “I never bossed you around in my life. Even if I tried, you wouldn’t listen.”

“You’ve always tried to boss me around, ever since I was a little kid. But you’re right about one thing.”

He frowned. Stephanie rarely conceded he was right about anything. “What’s that?”

“I don’t listen. Now will you please forget about coming in to paint on Saturday?”

He considered her request. He wanted an excuse to stay away but her health and that of the baby came first. “If you won’t listen to me, will you at least ask your doctor? Listen to him?”

“To her.” At the sound of recorded music coming from inside the school, she glanced back over her shoulder. “All right, I guess that’s fair. I’ll check with my doctor.”