Marie Ferrarella - A Bachelor and a Baby

Served him right for leading with his heart rather than his head. First and last time. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. Both his parents had told him that someone in his position had to be careful about the friends he made, the women he cared for.

Well, he’d learned all right. The lessons that you paid for dearly in life were the ones that stuck.

So what was he doing driving through her part of town, driving onto the winding streets of her development, threading his way toward her block?

He really didn’t know.

He didn’t turn back.

Self-torture had never been his way. He’d always been the philosophical one. Things happened. You got over them and moved on. And he had. Moved all the way across country to Atlanta, Georgia, the place that, until a month ago, had been the headquarters of his father’s company. Georgia, where his grandfather had originally been from. But certain economical circumstances had arisen in the last year that made that arrangement no longer as advantageous as it once had been. Almost fully recovered from his heart attack, Howard Masters wanted to have the home office of his company moved to Southern California so that he could be closer to its operations. Tax advantages were no longer a factor. Only control was.

The old man still wanted to exercise control over the company his great-grandfather had begun in the back of a barn. Rick couldn’t fault him. Keeping control had something to do with extending a man’s mortality and Rick could sympathize with that.

Even so, he’d resisted the move at first. But then, he’d challenged himself to face up to his demons. After all, he’d been in love with Joanna a long time ago. He was smart enough now to know that love wasn’t something to build a life on.

If he doubted that, he had only to look to his parents. Two icons of the social world who’d looked perfect together on paper, in photographs, everywhere but in real life.

Love, that wild, heady mysterious substance he’d once believed to have taken command of his soul, was only the stuff they wrote songs about. It had no place in the real world, and he was part of the real world. What he did or didn’t do affected thousands of people. Heavy burden, that.

He should be turning back. It was late and he had things to do.

The April night was crisp and clear and unusually warm, even for Southern California. He’d left the windows of his classic 64 Mustang down. His father had urged him to get a car more suitable to his present station, so he drove a Mercedes to work, but he’d refused to get rid of his Mustang. He wanted the car. Even though it had been the one he’d been driving the night he’d wanted to elope with Joanna. Even though they had made love in that car.

Or maybe because of it.

Rick shook his head as he retraced his way through a maze of ever-climbing streets. Hell of a time to be playing shrink with himself.

The houses here all lined one side of the street, their faces looking out onto carefully manicured vegetation that hid the backs of other houses as they progressed up the hill.

One more block and then he’d be passing her house.

Dumb idea, Rick upbraided himself. He needed to be getting back. Those contracts weren’t going to review themselves and he believed in being a hands-on executive.

Hands. He could remember the way his hands had felt on her warm, supple flesh, remembered how it felt to lay her down on the cool spring grass and make love with her in the meadow behind his parents’ summer home. It was just the two of them there. The two of them against the world.

Until he discovered what she was really like.

Rick wrinkled his nose. An acrid smell wove its way into the stillness.

Probably just someone using their fireplace. Some people didn’t care if it was warm or not. It was just the beginning of spring and a fire in the fireplace was romantic.

His mind started to drift back again, remembering.

He knew he shouldn’t have come this far. Annoyed with himself, Rick looked around for some place to turn his car around and go back the way he’d come.

The smell didn’t go away.

Instead, it intensified with each passing second. He wasn’t sure exactly what made him push on instead of turn around, but he kept going.

Like someone hypnotized, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator, urging his car up the incline and toward the smell.

And then he saw it.

The sky was filled with black smoke.

Joanna felt herself rebelling.

The dream was back to haunt her. The one where everything and everyone was obscured. The one that had her running barefoot, in her nightgown, through an open field enshrouded in fog and mists.

Everything was hidden from her. Hidden and threatening.

But this time, it wasn’t fog, it was smoke that curled around her legs and crept stealthily along her body.

It didn’t matter, the effect was the same.

She was lost, so very lost. And then she began running faster, desperately searching for a way out. Looking for someone to help her.

There was no one.

She was alone.

Every time she thought she could make out a shape, a person, they would disappear as she ran toward them. The resulting emptiness mocked her.

It was a dream, just a dream, she told herself over and over again as she ran. Her heart twisted within her, aching in its loneliness.

She’d be all right if she could just open her eyes. Just bridge her way back into the real world. Over and over again, she told herself to wake up.

With superhuman effort, she forced open her eyes.

They began to smart.

Joanna woke up choking. Her lungs began to ache. Had the nightmare taken on another dimension? Groggy, she sat up in bed. Her bulk prevented her from making the transition from lying to sitting an easy one. She felt as if she’d been pregnant since the beginning of time instead of almost nine months.

Your own fault. You asked for this.

Her eyes were seriously tearing now. This wasn’t part of her dream. She smelled smoke, felt heat even though she’d shut the heat off just before she’d gone to bed more than an hour ago.

And then she realized what was happening. Her house was on fire.

Stunned, her heart pounding as she scrambled out of bed, Joanna grabbed the long robe that was slung over the footboard. She was hardly aware of jamming her fists through the sleeves.

Barefoot, Joanna hurried to her bedroom doorway, only to see that her living room was flooded in smoke. A line of fire had shadowed her steps, racing in front of her. It was now feeding on the door frame, preventing her flight.

Flames shot up all around her.

Something came crashing down right in front of her, barely missing her. Backing up, she screamed as flames leaped to the bottom of her robe, eating away at the hem. Working frantically, Joanna shed the robe before the flames could find her.

Driving quickly, Rick took the next corner at a speed that almost made the Mustang tip over. He jerked his cell phone out of his pocket and hit 911 on the keypad with his thumb.

The instant the dispatch came in the line, he snapped out his location, adding, “Two houses are on fire, one’s almost gone.”

As the woman asked him to repeat what he’d just said, he heard someone scream from within Joanna’s house. Rick tossed the phone aside. It landed on the passenger seat as he bolted from the car. He barely remembered to cut off the engine.

The scream echoed in his brain.

Somehow he knew it wasn’t her mother, wasn’t some renter or some trick of the imagination.

That was Joanna’s scream.

She was in there, in that inferno. And he had to get her out.

The last house on the corner, next to Joanna’s, was already engulfed in flames. It looked as if the fire had started there and had spread to Joanna’s house. So far, from what he could see as he ran toward the building, only the rear portion was burning.