Her Firefighter SEAL (6 page)

He nodded. “Yeah. I hear you there. How are you going to keep on doing that after the baby is born?”

“I’m still figuring that part out.”  So money was tight. She pinched a mean penny, and she’d figure it out like she always did. Will had been a contract employee, which meant she wasn’t eligible for a pension or other state-funded benefits. It went without saying that the hotshot team would always be there for her, but it felt like charity and she’d gotten her fill of that in high school. After her dad had been laid off from his job as an engineer, he’d only found part-time work and the family income had taken a nosedive. She’d worked weekends at a fruit stand to buy her own tampons and shampoo along with groceries for the family, too. It had been tough, but she’d made it then and she’d make it now.

She didn’t want taking care of. If she was being honest with herself, she didn’t know what she wanted, but she did know one thing. She was a fake who was tired of faking. She also wasn’t a nice person, because Will hadn’t been her sun, moon, and stars, and he should have been. Kade wouldn’t be volunteering to help her if he knew the truth. She grabbed the coffee. Kade was
nice
. She wasn’t. End of story.

~*~

K
ade hoped to God Abbie didn’t need to pee or puke or do any of those things a pregnant woman did. Or so he’d heard. His experience with pregnancy consisted of eyeing Gia Donovan’s pregnant belly from the other side of the jump team’s hangar during his occasional visit. He wasn’t father material, uncle material, or even babysitter material. Hell, he probably shouldn’t be trusted with Stan, but Stan was pretty basic. Feed him, walk him, pick up the poop. Abbie was far more complicated, and he had no idea how to interpret the expression on her face. Gas pain, nausea, something else? Fuck, but he was out of his league here.

“Roll the window down if you have to puke.”

She took a long gulp of her coffee, and the stuff stayed down. Maybe that ruled out his nausea theory. “Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s going to be a long ride to the lake if we’re both stinking of vomit?” Memories pushed at his head, demanding insta-replay.
Not going there
. He’d puked his guts up in Khost, laid there in a stinking puddle of his own bile because he could hold in the screams but not the bile. Those bad times had no business here in the cab of his truck with Abbie.

“No.” She shook her head, and he could feel himself being moved to
the idiot of the century
mental bucket she kept in her head. Still, her disdain was better than reliving Khost. “I mean, why would I throw up?”

“Because you’re pregnant?”
Hello
.

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. He felt a punch of awareness he had no business feeling. She was his former girlfriend, a widow, and his current rescue mission, not his date or even a possible blip on his horizon. He tightened his hands on the wheel, battling an unfamiliar urge to pull over on the side of the road and wrap his arms around her. She wasn’t the hugging type, and she hadn’t given any indication that she wanted full body contact with him. Which was fine with him. Mostly.

She sighed and knocked back more coffee. He’d seen a SEAL attack a cold beer with less enthusiasm. “You don’t know much about pregnancy, do you?”

He’d seen the health class movie. He’d pass. “Since it’s not happening to me, no. No, I don’t.”

“Morning sickness is a first trimester thing. I’m in my second trimester.”

“Good to know you won’t be puking on the fish.”

“I’m not going fishing with you.”

Pointing out the obvious was fun and guaranteed to get a rise out of her, which made it win-win for him. “It sure looks like you are.”

She tightened her fingers on her cup. “This is an obscene time of day to be awake, and I haven’t given consent, which means you’re committing felony kidnapping.”

Now she was splitting hairs with him. “Do you see the sheriff’s office chasing me?”

She huffed out a breath, a cute little sound of exasperation. If he had a dictionary of Girl, he’d bet it translated into “God, he’s such a
man
.” Reaching over, he tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear, then removed his fingers quickly before she could bite him or otherwise extract vengeance. Abbie was definitely more
get even
than
cry over it.
Will must have had his hands full.

“Why?” Her feet tapped an impatient rhythm on the floorboard.

He patted the steering wheel. “Because you stole my truck, and I needed to get it back?”

She glared at him from her side of the truck. “It was a joke. You used to be able to take a joke.”

“You’re mean.” And he didn’t mind. He definitely needed his head examined, although the military’s doctors had crawled all over him after Khost before clearing him to return to normal life.

“You’d be an expert in that.” She laughed though, even as she reached out and swapped her coffee cup for his. He’d filled them both with decaf, so he settled for raising a brow and enjoying her laugh.

For a while, they rode in silence, the dark forest flashing past outside the windows. Sunrise was still a good half hour away, and they’d be out on the lake before the sun got all the way up in the sky.

“Was it bad?” She set his now-empty cup back in the cup holder while he wondered where she’d put all that coffee and if she knew that
bathroom
at the lake meant
bush with a water view
.

“Was what bad?” He guided the truck off the highway and onto a dirt access road.

“Khost,” she said simply.

“It wasn’t a tropical vacation.” That usually shut people up.

Of course, Abbie had to be difficult. Different.
Dangerous
, his head supplied. Because, yeah, she was definitely that. She curled up on his front seat and watched him from eyes that held plenty of her own pain. “I know that,” she said, a snap in her voice.

“You want details?” He could hear the buzz of anger in his own voice. He wasn’t some kind of roadside accident to looky-loo at. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t think that was why Abbie had asked. He also didn’t want to burden her with those kinds of details.

Three months as the insurgents’ house guest had beaten that shit out of him. Literally. The blast had caused the injury to his leg. Everything else... he wasn’t thinking about. What didn’t kill him, made him stronger, right? He ought to be made of Teflon or some kind of Ironman super-suit stuff, because his captors had done their best to kill him. The only reason why they hadn’t finished him with a knife to the throat, he suspected, had been because they were saving him. Either to trade for one of their own in US custody or for one of those gruesome beheading videos that rocked YouTube and the world.

“I want to know you’re okay,” she said quietly. “The same way you want to hear I’m okay. That everything’s safe and fixed and that nothing bad is going to happen again.”

“Are you okay?”

She looked at him. “I will be.”

“Me too,” he said, and for the first time, he meant it.

She nodded and returned to staring out the window. The sky was turning a paler shade of charcoal somewhere over the mountains, the lake a flat, dark sheet of water. The sun would come up fast now, and there was no better place to watch the sunrise than from a boat.

Throwing the truck into park, he gestured toward the rocky strip of sand. “
Voilà.
”

“What is it with you and French stuff?”

He could hear the smile in her voice, though, as she shrugged off her blanket and fumbled for the door. He didn’t bother answering, even though the answer was probably
Because it makes you smile
. She was already out and walking toward the boat pulled up on the shore. Her interest was a great start, but her bare feet were a problem. He needed to work on that.

“Is this our ride?” She looked over at him and tapped on the aluminum hull of the boat. “She looks even more beat to hell than she did in high school.”

Everybody was a critic. “
She
has a name.
Whosurdaddy.
And some of us are showing even more wear and tear than the boat.”

He slapped his knee. Yeah. He had even more scars than the boat and he was even uglier than
Whosurdaddy
.

“I’d forgotten how awful your taste in rides is.” She started unfastening the boat cover.

It was true that his boat had seen better days. Plus he’d named it when he’d been fourteen and still learning how to drive, which explained at least half the dents in the boat.

“People who jeer don’t get sandwiches.” He peered in the cooler in the back of his truck. “Or Oreos or muffins. They might get carrot sticks if their host takes pity on them.”

She had a nice laugh, warm and slightly rueful.  She might do yoga, but she’d never been one for warm carrot sticks. “Give me a muffin. You made me miss breakfast, so you can make it up to me now.”

He gave her a muffin and his gym bag. “Clothing. In case we didn’t grab enough stuff from your place. They’re clean.”

She took a ginormous bite of muffin and looked into the bag. “You need to spend more time at Nordstrom’s. Trust me.”

She didn’t look like she minded too much though. Rolling up her sweatpants, she shoved her feet into the rubber waders he handed her. “How well did you plan this kidnapping?”

He tossed her the toothbrush he’d snagged from her place. “Exhibit A. You get to practice oral hygiene.”

~*~

“A
-plus for you,” she said.

Kade smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile that did dangerous things to her insides.
Friend
, she reminded herself.
Ex-boyfriend.
Not
dessert.
He was being nice to her because he felt sorry for the widow and Katie had asked him. She had no doubt that he loved Katie in his own manly, wouldn’t-ever-admit-it way.

“We’re launching in ten minutes,” he said and tossed her a bottle of water. “Your five-star, en suite bathroom awaits.”

“Next time, we field trip to the Four Seasons.” She waddled toward a low strip of bushes to pee and primp. The man’s feet were positively ginormous. His waders swam on her. When she came back, teeth brushed and bladder emptied, he passed her a tube of sunscreen and the ugliest fishing hat she’d ever seen. “Really?”

He grinned at her and added an equally ugly orange life jacket to the stack. The thing was bulkier than her sofa and sported a suspicious smear on the front.  His previous fishing companion had gotten a little too close to the catch of the day.

“Safety first. No sunburning the baby. No drowning. Not on my watch.”

“Did you bring the Bubble Wrap?” She pulled the life vest on though, because there was a look in his eyes that said he wasn’t negotiating. Fine by her if they didn’t go fishing, except... now that he’d got her out here, she was kind of curious to see what happened next. Kade definitely wasn’t boring, even if he was more safety conscious than a ninety-year-old man.

“I’m saving that for later,” he said agreeably, and then he proceeded to check her straps. The safety check brought him into close proximity with her, his hands moving perilously close to her breasts and other parts. He paused when he got to the bottom buckle, apparently not sure if he should tighten it or if he’d squash Will Junior. Since she enjoyed watching him squirm, she didn’t help him out.

“All aboard,” he said finally, gesturing toward the boat. “You ride. I’ll push.”

Since she
was
the pregnant one, she climbed into the boat and kicked off the boots. As the nonreproducing member of this fishing party, he could be the one with wet feet and get them launched. Whistling, he waded in and pushed them off, then vaulted into the boat. The boat rocked and then settled lower into the water.

“One of us weighs too much,” she pointed out.

“Hah. Pot. Kettle.” He turned the motor on, guiding the boat out toward the middle of the lake.

“You did not just call a pregnant woman fat.” She flicked water at him.

“You called
me
fat,” he pointed out.

“Good to know you’re an
eye for an eye
kind of guy.”

Yes. He was. He turned the motor on low and putted them out toward the middle of the lake at a sedate two miles an hour.

“I swim faster than this,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “You’re a speed demon.”

When they got farther from shore, he killed the motor, gliding them toward some unseen target.

“Secret ninja stealth approach? Do fish even have ears?”

“They can feel the vibrations from the motor. Shut up,” he said agreeably, reaching out to twitch her hat lower. His own hat was a monstrosity, rainbow-colored camouflage with a dozen equally neon fishing lures. He’d blind any fish stupid enough to surface near the boat.

She considered saying something, or possibly singing the ABC song at the top of her lungs, just to be contrary, but it was strangely peaceful out there on the lake. Or maybe she was still in a stupor from her dark o’clock wake-up.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she mouthed and trailed her hand over the edge of the boat, hoping his wonder fish weren’t light sleepers. She hadn’t planned on fishing, but she didn’t actually want to ruin his day, and Kade seemed really, really into fishing.

She took the rod he handed her and cast off, watching the red float bob along the surface of the lake. He didn’t seem to feel the need to fill up the silence, and that worked for her.

The fish were biting, which probably meant he’d be all
I told you so
when they got back to shore. For the first hour, she concentrated on her reel, but Kade was the one pulling in one trout after another. Since he had the fish covered, she set her reel down and settled for looking at him.

In addition to a ragged pair of cargo shorts, the battered fishing hat, and a fire department T-shirt, Kade sported a pair of hiking boots on his feet. Either the boots were waterproof or he had no problem with wet socks. His arms flexed as he expertly worked the reel.

The baby moved, waking up, and she rubbed her hand over her stomach. It was kind of nice to have him there. She felt another pang for Will, but at least she had this, and really, it would have been Will’s idea of a joke to send a surly, badass SEAL with a shared past to look out for her.