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Wait a minute, a voice inside her head cautioned. What are you doing? A woman who’s having a… A woman who’s pregnant isn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Isn’t that what you’ve heard? Isn’t that why you’ve always pitied those poor females in the heat of summer who are sweating for two without benefit of a little cold fermented malt grain?
Slowly, certainly reluctantly, Helen lowered the bottle back into the cooler.
“What’s the matter?” Donny asked. “It’s close enough to noon, even for you.”
She wiped her wet hand along her shorts. “It’s not that. I just changed my mind.”
“Suit yourself.” He held up a roll of sandpaper. “Anyway, if you’re sticking around for a while, you might as well tear off a piece and start to work on the deck rail.”
She walked closer to the boat, but didn’t reach for the sandpaper. “Donny, I have to tell you something.”
He set down the roll and went back to work. “Okay, go ahead.”
She watched him a moment longer, listened to the sound of the rough-grained paper on the already smooth teakwood. For a minute, her skin tingled as if he were abrading her body instead of the sailboat. She rubbed her arms briskly. “Donny?”
He glanced up, squinted, returned his attention to the task. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He stopped sanding. Her heart skipped a beat. For a few torturous seconds, he glared at her over Donovan’s Dawn with extraordinarily wide eyes, and Helen waited for his next words to restart her breathing.
He dropped the paper and planted his elbows on the railing. “What did you say?”
“I just found out yesterday. I took one of those tests. It was positive.”
He shook his head as if denying it would make it so. “That’s impossible.”
“No, only nearly impossible. Anyway, remember Friday night two weeks ago after we… Well, didn’t you say that something didn’t seem right, that maybe there was something wrong with the condom?”
“Oh, hell, that was just talk. Besides, it was after your friend’s engagement party. We were too juiced to know what we were doing.”
She felt the grip of shame in the tightening of her stomach muscles. The reminder of her overindulgence at Claire’s party was still enough to make her cringe in mortification. She was too old to excuse such irresponsible behavior anymore. Getting drunk and stupid was just, well, stupid.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said. “I’m pregnant and that’s a fact.”
At least he didn’t argue the indisputable. He simply draped his hands over the side of Donovan’s Dawn and mumbled something. She thought she heard the word damn.
“What are you going to do?” he asked after a moment.
The wording of his question stunned her since it seemed as if he’d completely left himself out of assuming any responsibility. By asking her what she was going to do he was, in effect, telling her to do something.
She fought an escalating anger. Finn always told her she tended to act without thinking, to strike without having a justifiable target. She wasn’t going to do that, this time. She’d just dropped a bomb on Donny’s plans, on their plans together. He had a right to be defensive, confused.
“My first thought was to tell you,” she said calmly. “You’re the father, so obviously you have a stake in what happens with this ba…pregnancy.” She looked into his eyes and spoke with clear intent. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well, hell, I don’t know.” He rubbed his hand along the railing of the sailboat. His touch seemed gentle, caressing, even more than when he made love to her. “We have plans, Helen. When I got the boat done, we were going to take her around the Keys, sail all the way to the Turks and Caicos Islands, just you and me.”
“Plans can change, Donny. Life happens.” She’d never told him that his idea had been impractical from the start, anyway. Maybe deep down she’d hoped they could sail away just the two of them, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe some people believed in fantasies, but not Helen Sweeney.
Donny took a long swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The eyes that focused on hers were cold and distant. So were his words. “I don’t know, Helen. I’m forty-two years old. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of a kid and a mortgage and a college savings account.”
Her eyes burned and Helen cursed her frailty. She wasn’t going to cry. “I know it’s a shock, Donny. It is for me, too. I still can’t believe it. But it’s happened, and we have to…” Her voice hitched. Damn. She couldn’t go on, so she sat on the cooler, dangled her hands between her knees and took a deep breath.
At least a minute passed, the longest minute of Helen’s life, until Donny came around the boat and stood in front of her. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she brushed at a stubborn tear and looked up at him.
“It’ll be all right, Helen,” he said. “You tell me what you want, and we’ll make it work. If you want to go through with this, have the kid, I’ll stand by you. If you decide on a different course, I’ll be there for that, too.”
Her body went limp with relief. She covered the hand that still curled over her shoulder. “We don’t have to get married,” she said. “It’s enough to know that you’ll be here.”
“Sure. Don’t worry about me. You’ve got more important things to think about. We’ll still sail the boat. It may just take a little longer than we’d planned.” He crouched down in front of her and took her hands. “So, you’re going to have it? That’s what you want?”
Her lips quivered. Stupid hot tears spilled down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away. But it was okay. They were tears of gratitude. For the first time, she allowed herself to think of the little seed growing inside her as a human being, not a condition.
Donny smiled. “I guess that’s my answer.” He stood up. “You go on home now. Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
She let him pull her up from the cooler. “I’m fine,” she said. “In fact, I’m better than fine.”
“Atta girl.” He turned her around and nudged her toward the Lionheart. “I know you’ve got a charter in the morning, but are you coming back tonight for the first set, at least?”
She smiled over her shoulder. “I’ll be here.”
She felt the warmth of his gaze as she left him and climbed the steps to the entrance to the bar. Everything was going to be okay. She held that thought all afternoon as she prepared for Friday’s trip into the Gulf. She believed it as she drove back into town that night. Her confidence grew with each breath until she arrived at the Lionheart at nine o’clock and realized that only a few cars sat outside, far fewer than normal. She didn’t really worry until she parked a block away from the pub and walked to the front door. The sandwich sign was no longer sitting by the entrance. That could only mean one thing. The great Donovan Jax was no longer playing at the Lionheart Pub.
“I DON’T KNOW MUCH, Helen,” the owner of the Lionheart said a few minutes later when she sat at the bar, nursing a Coke.
“He just left without any explanation?” she asked.
“Yeah, well, he said there was an emergency. He apologized for leaving me with no entertainment, packed his bags and took off.”
There was an emergency, all right. Someone without a backbone was about to become a father. “I suppose this is pointless to ask, Stan, but did he leave a forwarding address?”
Stan shook his head slowly while wiping his perfectly clean bar. “Sorry, Helen. I think it’s lousy of him to walk out without letting you know.”
She swallowed the rest of her drink and slid the glass across the bar. “Don’t waste your sympathy on me. Donny and I weren’t getting along, anyway. I was about to end it. Probably would have tonight if he hadn’t bolted.”
Stan draped the damp rag over the sink behind the bar. “Maybe he sensed that and left before you broke his heart.”
Helen got down from the stool. “Right. I have to get up early, so I’m calling it a night.” She headed for the door, but stopped and turned around. “One more thing…”
“What’s that?”
“Donovan’s Dawn. I noticed the sailboat is still in the vacant lot. Did Donny say anything about it to you?”
“Yeah, he did. Said he’d send a mover to pick it up as soon as he could. I expect in the next week or so. I can keep a watch out there. You want me to try and get a location where the boat’s going?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.” She walked out onto the porch and paused in the overhead light. Knowing where Donny went really wasn’t important. Everything had changed in the last few minutes, and once again Helen had to face a grim reality. Planning a future with Donny had been a ridiculous dream, anyway, and was best ended quickly. Now, without Donny’s support, Helen knew she couldn’t raise a kid and keep the Finn Catcher going and take care of Finn. She barely made enough money to keep her family going as it was, and she couldn’t do any more. So this little bean inside her belly was the sacrifice she’d have to make.
She went down the steps, but stopped at the street. So, if this was her decision, why the hell had she ordered a Coke? She could be in the Lionheart right now, tossing back Wild Turkeys like there was no tomorrow. But she’d ordered a damn Coke.
She stared down at her flat stomach before closing her eyes to the image that had been stuck in her mind all afternoon. Little bean. What did it look like after two weeks? She remembered a picture in a high-school biology book. It looked like a lima bean. A tiny round speck, one a person could barely see without a magnifying glass. It had no heart, no brain, no sense that its mother was contemplating…
“Aw, hell.” Helen went back to the door of the Lionheart. She had a bit of time to wait and hope for a damn miracle.
Stan looked up and saw her at the door. “You forget something, Helen?”
“No, I just changed my mind. It wouldn’t hurt to ask the boat mover where the Dawn is going. In the next few days I might think of something Donny left behind. Something important I’d need to contact him about.”
“I’ll keep a watch,” Stan said. “If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”
Helen didn’t walk to the Suburban. She went into the vacant lot and stared at Donovan’s Dawn. The boat’s teak sides shone in the moonlight, testament to the weeks she and Donny had worked so hard. That had been a ridiculous dream, too, thinking she could take weeks away from Heron Point and sail around with Donny. Helen hadn’t been away from home for more than a couple of days in her life.
She’d been born in Micopee thirty miles away, and from the time her parents had brought her to the little cottage she still shared with Finn, she’d been as much a part of Heron Point as the giant cedar trees, the dozens of pelicans that squatted on all the old pilings, the sea itself. But the Gulf was ruled by the tides, so even the water moved to and from Heron Point more than Helen ever had. Maybe if Finn hadn’t lost the use of his legs, maybe if her mother hadn’t run off, maybe then Helen could have gone to college, made something of herself. But not now. And if she had this baby, not ever.
A cloud covered the moon, and suddenly the Dawn was a great hulking shadow of unfinished business just like Helen’s life. The sailboat stood on her supports, mocking Helen for believing in her, for believing in Donny. Finn was right, after all. Helen didn’t have a lick of sense when it came to men. She fell too fast and didn’t take long enough getting up before letting it happen again.
Well, not anymore. This time it wasn’t just her heart that was stomped on. This time the betrayal left her with a mountain of guilt about what she planned to do and a seriously wounded self-respect she’d never faced before. It wouldn’t be so easy to put the last three months out of her mind. This time it hurt.
Anger coiled inside her until she thought she would explode. Finding no outlet, she clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. She started to walk out of the lot, but when a shiny silver can by her feet caught her eye, she picked it up and rolled it between her hands. An innocent beer can. A weapon, a release. She hurled it at the sailboat. It pinged against the polished surface, hit the ground and rolled to the end of the lot. Tension ebbed from Helen’s shoulders. It felt good to fling her anger at the only tangible reminder left of Donny’s deception. She went to the garbage bin, picked up another can and threw it, too. Then another. Then many more.
She might have continued until the ache in her throat faded and her tears stopped flowing, except she heard men’s voices coming from the street behind her.
“Helen? Is that you?”
She froze. Just what she needed. Jack Hogan, Heron Point’s new chief of police and the man her best friend Claire was going to marry in a few weeks. She spun around and stepped into the shadows. “Hell, no, Jack. It’s not me, but I’ll clean up this mess somebody else left.” And then she saw who he was with and she couldn’t seem to speak another word. Her mouth dried up. Her lungs were incapable of drawing in air.
“That’ll be fair enough,” Jack said. He was still in uniform and she figured that technically he could nail her for vandalism. “Are you okay?”
“Dandy.” She stared at the sky, the dirt beneath her feet, anything but Jack and the man he was with, the town savior she’d nearly decapitated yesterday.
“It looks to me like somebody was picking on an innocent sailboat,” Jack said.
“Yeah, right. Not so innocent when you’re looking at it through my eyes. I see someone’s face very clearly on the side of that boat.”
Jack smiled. “I heard about Donny leaving. Sorry. But like I told Claire, you can do better.”
She huffed her opinion of his conclusion but mentally thanked him for saying it.
He turned his attention to Ethan Anderson. “I’d introduce you to our local fishing guide, Ethan, but I know you two met accidentally yesterday.”
“Yeah, we met,” Helen said. “Ethan sort of got in my way.” She managed to smile a little at the guy who was still dressed like he’d just gotten off the plane, in pressed pants and a blue oxford shirt. “You don’t need to arrest him, though, Jack. I’m not pressing charges, and I think he learned his lesson.”
“That’s generous of you,” Ethan said. He switched a foam takeout box from one hand to the other.
“Dinner?” she asked.
“Dessert.”
“Ethan and I just ate over at the Tail and Claw,” Jack said. “He’s waiting for a rental car to get here from the Tampa airport.”
Ethan looked at his watch. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. I’m only going to give them another few minutes.”
“I guess I’ll go on home, then,” Jack said. “You going to the hotel?”
For some reason, Ethan looked at Helen as if she could contribute something to his answer. “I think I’ll wait out here a little longer,” he said. “Tell Claire hi for me.”
“Will do.” Jack started to walk away. “Oh, by the way, Helen, Claire said if I saw you, I should remind you about Thanksgiving dinner. She’s planning to cook up a feast, and obviously she’s counting on you and Finn to come.”
Thanksgiving? Right now, the holidays were the furthest thing from Helen’s mind. “When is it?”
“Same as always, I suppose,” Jack said. “Fourth Thursday of November.”
“Oh, right. And what’s today?”
Jack chuckled. “The third Thursday. Gives you a week to mark the calendar.”
He said goodbye to Ethan and headed toward his vehicle. And Helen thought how lucky Claire was to have found someone like Jack. Solid. Dependable. And very rare.
After a moment, she turned toward Ethan. “Good luck with getting that rental car delivered. In a way, I feel somewhat responsible for you standing out here waiting for it.”
He smiled. “No offense, Helen, but once the new car arrives, I’m going to stay as far away from that truck of yours as I can.”
“No offense taken.” They stood without talking in the gloomy silence of a battlefield littered with beer cans. Helen figured she ought to start picking up the mess she’d created, but before she took a step, she heard the subtle squeak of the foam restaurant container.
Ethan held it out to her. “Do you like chocolate cake?”
ETHAN DIDN’T VERY often feel as if he walked a thin line between boardroom executive and idiot, but that’s exactly how he felt right now. What was he doing, standing here with a peace offering for a woman who’d been doing her best in the last two days to destroy two perfectly fine modes of transportation?
She peered over the edge of the box. “You’re giving me your dessert?”
He shrugged an indifference he didn’t feel and said, “Seemed like the quickest way to soothe the angry beast. I have to wait out here for my car. You’re here, too, and there are still a few cans in that trash bin.”
Her lips twitched. He hoped it was a hint of a smile and not the beginning of a snarl. And then she said something that in his experience was a predictably female reaction. “I’d do most anything for chocolate.” She stuck her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and nodded down the street. “Come on. I’m not eating standing up.”
He followed her a block to where her Suburban was parked. She stepped up on the front bumper, turned around and sat on the truck. He noticed a slash of flesh through a slit in the knee of her denims. She patted the hood beside her and said, “There’s room.”
He looked at the seriously faded steel, taking in the gritty remains of road dirt, and, considering her occupation, who knew what else, and stared down at his perfectly pressed beige Dockers. And he remembered that during his tour of Heron Point today he hadn’t seen a business that was essential to a Manhattan male’s lifestyle—a dry-cleaning establishment.
She must have correctly interpreted his reluctance because she sort of smiled again and then gripped the edge of her shirt cuff and wiped a small circle beside her. “Don’t worry, Princeton,” she said. “In all my years in Heron Point, I don’t recall anyone ever catching something from the hood of a truck.”
Princeton? He thought about correcting her and saying he was a Harvard man, but didn’t think that would earn him any points. And that’s what he was here for, after all—to establish a good working relationship with the locals. For some reason, his father, head of Anderson Enterprises, had decided to invest in this quirky Florida island by buying an old, run-down resort, and he’d sent his son to see that the renovations went smoothly.
It helped that Archie Anderson’s chief security officer, Jack Hogan, had been in town a month longer than Ethan and had become something of a superhero to the two thousand people who lived here. In fact, Jack had even decided to stay once he’d fallen for the town’s mayor. But Ethan needed to relate to these people on his own, one at a time, if he had to, and despite the way he and Helen had met, he didn’t mind starting with her first.
He placed the toe of his Italian loafer on the bumper, hoisted himself up to the hood, and admitted to a grudging admiration of the old truck. The metal didn’t even groan when he sat his clean chino-covered posterior on top of it.
He handed the box to Helen. She took out the fork, poked through a quarter inch of creamy icing and brought up a wedge of cake to her mouth. While she chewed, she handed him the utensil. “There’s only one fork,” she managed to say. “I can always light a match and sterilize it between bites.”
Any sympathy he’d begun to feel for this teary-eyed woman who’d dropped a can in front of Jack like a guilty delinquent vanished. Helen Sweeney was about as vulnerable as a barracuda. And just as alien to a Manhattan guy who’d never been closer to a fish than the city aquarium. Unfortunately, what was unfamiliar was almost always fascinating, as well. And Ethan couldn’t take his eyes off Helen’s smart mouth as she chased a trail of frosting with the tip of her tongue.
