Melinda Curtis - Expectant Father

“I don’t sleep around with married women, lady, especially pregnant ones. You’ve made me something I really did not want to be.”

Never much good at lying, Becca realized her mouth was still hanging open when Aiden stopped his tirade.

“You thought I was married?”

He scowled. “Not then. But when I saw you here—pregnant as a house—what was I supposed to think?”

“Uh…” It finally registered in Becca’s tired, stressed-out brain. He thought she’d been cheating on her husband. He didn’t know she didn’t have a husband. He didn’t suspect the baby was his.

A nervous, relieved laugh escaped before she could stop herself.

“Wait a minute.” Aiden peered at her in the gathering darkness. Then he snatched up her left hand. “You’re not wearing a ring.”

Becca pulled her fingers back. “I’m not married.” It was too late for that.

“If you’re not married, whose baby is that?” He pointed at her belly as if it were repugnant to him.

“It’s mine.”

Dear Reader,

Have you ever held on to a belief until some life-changing event forced you to rethink things? Such is the attitude of Aiden Rodas. Kids in his future? Bite your tongue! After the way his father abandoned him as a young child, Aiden is determined the Rodas line will end with him.

But Aiden didn’t count on Becca Thomas, an older career woman who’s let life pass her by and is now playing catch-up by having a baby of her own, on her own. When Aiden discovers that the baby Becca is carrying is his—holy moly!—he becomes determined to always be there for his child. And that means acknowledging to the world that he had a lot to do with Becca’s pregnancy.

Aiden doesn’t fit into Becca’s plans at all, but this expectant dad won’t leave her alone, and soon Becca’s not sure she wants him to.

I hope you enjoy my twist on a May-December romance. I love hearing from readers through my Web site at www.MelindaCurtis.com or at P.O. Box 150, Denair, CA 95316.

Melinda Curtis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the fathers out there who never cease to be surprised when they’re told they’re going to be a dad (this is how babies are made, guys).

Special love to the dads in my life— John, Paul, CR, Jeff, Jim, Sam, Pop, my own Dad and my husband. You all turned out okay when the babies arrived!

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” Spider shouted as he sprinted after nineteen men and women through a tunnel of flame.

No one heard him above the roar of the fire.

The Silver Bend Hot Shots were in a race for their lives down a mountainside they’d been trying to save. A few minutes ago, they’d been scraping away brush with shovels and Pulaskis, clearing a firebreak below a tame flank of the Flathead, Montana, fire and joking about how there’d be no overtime because this one would soon be out.

Then the wind changed, no longer a gentle breeze drifting up the slope from the creek. Instead it came from above, injecting life-giving oxygen into the smoldering embers until it was a ten-foot-tall wall of menacing flame. The new fire toyed with the Hot Shots for only a moment before bending across their six-foot-wide break and igniting a fresh blaze on the opposite side with a heated kiss. Tools scattered and packs were abandoned as the group began a desperate run for the ribbon of water they’d started at this morning.

As one of the two assistant superintendents of the crew, it was Spider’s job to make sure everyone made it out ahead of him. One misstep by someone and they’d go down like dominoes, more food for the fiery dragon on their heels.

How much farther?

Ahead of Spider, the fire seemed to be closing ranks around them. The heat and smoke made it difficult to fill his lungs with air. His heart pounded wildly from exertion, adrenaline and fear.

Someone stumbled. Swerving to the side, running perilously close to the tongue of flame on his right, Spider dragged Victoria back onto her feet.

“We’re not going to make it,” she cried, barely audible above the angry roar of the fire.

Even as some part of Spider agreed, he rejected defeat. At thirty, he still had things to accomplish, places to see and women to meet. He was single, with few responsibilities and few regrets, with only his dad to mourn him. The world was his oyster.

Too bad he was about to be fried.

TAP-TAP-TAP.

Inside the Fire Behavior tent at base camp, Becca Thomas smiled and tried to ignore the little one trying to get her attention. She focused instead on the most recent satellite photo of the Flathead fire taken that morning and compared it to the latest computer simulation she’d run on the computer provided by NIFC, the National Interagency Fire Center.

Tap-tap-tap.

“Give me a minute,” Becca murmured, rubbing her stomach, hoping her baby would be patient. She was happy to be pregnant, even if she was thirty-eight and single. She’d thought it all through, had planned down to the last penny. She and the baby were going to be all right on their own.

Her attention returned to the papers on the table that was her desk in this portable camp. There was something about this simulation she didn’t like. As one of NIFC’s senior Fire Behavior Analysts, Becca had learned to trust her instincts. She prided herself on finding the chaos factor in the weather, terrain and fuels, along with a dozen other things she considered when making predictions about a fire’s behavior. Still, there were things she couldn’t control—the way fires created their own wind and weather, and the decisions made by those in the field as to the risks they were willing to take, sometimes against her advice.

Tap-tap-TA-A-AP.

Sitting hunched over her makeshift desk at the Flathead fire was not her baby’s favorite position. Becca would have to get up soon. Until then…

What was it about the simulation that troubled her? She ran her finger over the inputs—the fire’s point of origin, wind speed, types of fuel, degree of slope, humidity readings. She returned her attention to the map of the area. The locations where lightning had struck and started the fire were marked, as was the perimeter of the fire as of eight hours ago.

The fire had spread from three strike points down three sides of a tall peak within the Flathead National Park, a remote, rugged mountain range lacking paved roads. It was bound to the east by the almost vertical, rocky cliffs of the Continental Divide. Everywhere else, the fire was moving hungrily through two generations of forest—giant pines and spruce towering sixty to eighty feet in the air, and younger trees twenty to forty feet high, interspersed with small, steep meadows that hadn’t yet given way to the forest. This area had not seen fire or been thinned by logging in years. Add to that two years of drought and you had one heck of a fuel source. If they didn’t stop it, the fire could easily work its way down to civilization in as little as a week.

Becca’s finger ringed the area around the fire once, twice, trying to pinpoint what was bothering her. And then she saw it—a small, thin creek twisting its way through ridges and rises. It wasn’t much, but in a craggy place like this the wind could ride along the creek bed and push to the top of a ridge, where it could dance with the wind cresting over the top of the mountain, creating a whirling dervish that would wreak havoc on an otherwise tame bed of fire. Making it unpredictable. Making it treacherous.