“Fourteen-pound grouper,” Drew put in.
“Yeah! A groucher!”
“That’s grouper, sprout.”
“It sounds like the fishing mission was a success.” When she could no longer put it off, Alison finally looked at Drew. He gazed back at her steadily with an inscrutable expression. She sensed him holding back. It seemed he was always holding back, she thought, and the realization only strengthened her resolve about the move to San Diego.
“I need to talk to you,” Drew said evenly.
Her heart gave a couple of hard raps against her ribs before she willed it to slow. From his tone, she sensed he wanted to talk to her privately, away from the sensitive ears of her son. Just what she needed: a lecture from Drew on all the reasons he wanted to “cool it.”
Kneeling, she tugged on Kevin’s T-shirt. “How about a hug for your mom?”
Grinning from ear to ear, Kevin threw his arms around her.
“Did you have a good time?” she asked.
“Yeah! I wanna do it again tomorrow.”
She chuckled. “You smell a little fishy.”
“Do not!”
Easing him to arm’s length she touched the tip of his nose with her finger. “And you’re sunburned, too.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. Hey, maybe Drew can stay for dinner, Mommy! Wouldn’t that be great?” He squirmed away from her. “Drew, do you want to stay for dinner?”
Alison closed her eyes briefly, then glanced over at Drew. “Drew probably has things to do, honey.” Gently grasping Kevin’s shoulders, she guided him toward the bathroom. “Let’s get you into the tub and scrub that fishy smell off you while I whip up some dinner, okay?”
Kevin made a halfhearted attempt to escape the horrors of bath time, but in the end Alison got him into the tub with his mini jet ski and a boatload of bubbles. Leaving the door open so she could hear him, she walked into the living room to find Drew standing near the door, looking out through the front window.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.
He turned to her, but he wasn’t smiling. In fact, he didn’t even look friendly. “Kevin thinks I don’t want you here in South Florida. That’s crap, Alison, and you know it.”
She felt the words as if he’d struck her. “I don’t know why he would think something like—”
“He overheard you talking to your sister.”
Remembering the conversation she’d had with Kimberly, Alison turned away from him, not wanting him to see the quiver of pain that ran the length of her. “I didn’t realize he’d overheard.”
“Yeah, well, he did and he’s upset. I’d appreciate if you’d set the record straight. I don’t want that boy thinking I don’t want him here.”
No, she thought, it would be her job to break the news to him. “I’ll talk to him.”
“What’s this about your moving to San Diego?”
Alison needed a moment to catch her breath, but he wasn’t cooperating. “There’s a clinic in San Diego,” she said. “I told you about it.”
“You told me you had decided to settle down here.”
She stared at him, wondering if she really wanted to get to the heart of the matter. If she wanted to put that much of herself on the line. Or if they were both better off just letting it go. “Look, Drew, some things happened between us. I didn’t plan it, but it happened nonetheless.” Feeling at a loss, she shrugged. “You made your position perfectly clear.”
“I made it clear that I didn’t want to get involved with you. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be your friend. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a friend to Kevin. Or that I don’t want both of you around.”
“Maybe this isn’t about what you want.”
“Can you stand there and tell me moving to San Diego is what you want?”
A dozen responses tangled in her throat, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak any of them. How could she relay what was in her heart without making an utter fool of herself? “I’ll talk to Kevin and explain this to him as best I can. It’s going to be difficult, considering I don’t quite understand it myself.”
“I care about you, Alison. I care about Kevin.” His jaw flexed with tension. “That’s all I can give right now. That’s got to be enough.”
She didn’t say anything.
He stared hard at her, his expression incredulous and unhappy. “I have to go,” he said and reached for the doorknob.
She didn’t want to leave things the way they were. “What are you running from, Drew?”
“Don’t go there, Alison.”
“Or should I ask from whom?”
He opened the door, then stepped onto the porch. “Tell Kevin I said goodbye,” he said and walked away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The subtropical sun beat down on Drew’s back with the merciless heat of a branding iron. Shirtless, he could practically hear his skin sizzling. Sweat gathered between his shoulder blades and dripped ungracefully onto the waistband of his denim cutoffs. The bandanna he’d tied around his head did little to keep the sweat from his eyes. But he was barely aware of the discomfort as he concentrated on the waxing mitt and the stretch of sheet metal in front of him. He polished with the determination of a man with something on his mind. Something he needed badly to forget.
He was finally doing what he’d been putting off all summer: waxing the Grumman. He usually hated that kind of work. It was hot and dirty and physically exhausting. But for the first time in a long time, Drew needed the distraction.
It had been two days since he’d seen Alison. Two hellish days since he’d set foot in her cozy home or touched her satin skin or breathed in the scent of her. Two days since he’d seen her little boy or heard his laugher.
Damn it to hell, he missed them both.
He’d thought of her every waking hour since he’d last seen her. Worse, he dreamed of her at night. Dreams that left him sweating and aroused and frustrated as hell. He’d never wanted a woman so badly in his entire life. His body and his intellect had never been more at odds. He told himself a hundred times that avoiding her was the right thing to do. But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why doing the right thing felt so wrong.
He wanted her.
He couldn’t have her.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Drew told himself things were better this way. Alison was better off without him. Hell, Kevin was better off without him. They deserved happiness. Alison deserved a man who would love her and respect her and be a good father for Kevin. Someone without the kind of crippling baggage Drew had been dragging around like a ball and chain for the last four years.
The rumble of thunder contrasted sharply with the hot sun beating down on him. Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, Drew looked up to see a dark line of thunderheads roiling over the Everglades to the northwest. Heat lightning flashed like a strobe, and he knew the storms would arrive within the hour. As far as he was concerned they couldn’t get here fast enough. He’d had enough of the heat and grime for one day. A quick shower and he was off for a drink at Crazy Nellie’s. Maybe he’d watch the storms roll in from his favorite bar stool. Maybe he’d indulge in a little meaningless conversation, a couple of laughs and a lot of rum.
The bar used to be the one place he could go for peace of mind. Recently, however, a pretty blonde with Caribbean blue eyes and a very sweet little boy seemed to be following him there, too.
The crunch of tires against gravel drew his attention. He looked toward the parking lot to see Seth’s BMW pull up next to his truck. Drew frowned. Usually, he enjoyed the occasional visit from his cousin. On this particular afternoon, he didn’t much feel like company. Alison was working for Seth now, and Drew knew his cousin well enough to know her name would come up in their conversation. Frankly, he didn’t want to talk about her. Damn it, he didn’t.
Knowing
there was no way to avoid his cousin, Drew set the wax mitt down and capped the tub of wax. He was climbing down the stepladder from the wing where he’d been working when Seth looked up at him and whistled.
“She’s looking good,” Seth said.
Drew stepped off the ladder and set the mitt and tub of wax on his rollaway. “Needed a good wax.”
“You picked a hell of day to do it. Hot as hell.”
“Yeah, well, a little sweat never hurt anyone.” Frowning because Drew knew his cousin was just stubborn enough to make him ask, he put his hands in his pockets and bit the bullet. “How’s Alison working out at the office?”
“She’s working out great. Sharp as a whip. Organized. Overqualified as hell.” He paused. “’Course she had to leave early this afternoon. Some kind of emergency with her son.”
Concern hit him like a fist right between his eyes. “What? What happened?”
Seth cut him a sharp look. “Kevin had some kind of asthma attack while he was at day care.”
Drew felt the words like a shocking cold pail of ice water tossed into his face. “And you didn’t see fit to call me?”
“I might have if you’d answer your damn phone.”
Drew swore. “How long ago?”
“About an hour and a half. I thought you might want to know. On the outside chance you wanted to crawl out of your shell of self-pity and go see them.”
Without saying a word, Drew grabbed his discarded T-shirt and started for his truck a few yards away. Vaguely, he was aware of Seth behind him, muttering something unbecoming about his parentage, but he didn’t turn around to defend himself. After the way Drew had treated Alison and Kevin, he figured he had it coming.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Find Alison. Make sure Kevin was okay. He’d figure out the rest of it once he had them in plain sight and knew everything was going to be all right.
Holding that thought, he climbed into his truck and headed for the hospital.
* * *
Alison didn’t like hospitals. The hushed atmosphere and antiseptic smells made her feel claustrophobic. She supposed she’d spent too many worried hours in rooms just like this one in the last few years to hold anything but disdain for the sterile offices and stark white walls and doctors who seemed to speak in code.
She thought of Kevin’s attack and lowered her head to rub at the headache pounding behind her brows. There was no horror in the world she could compare to seeing her child gasping for breath and weak from lack of oxygen. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the way he looked: his brown eyes filled with frightened tears, his body straining for every breath, his lips turning blue. She couldn’t get the image out of her head.
She’d received the call at just after noon from the Happy Hippo Day-care Center where she’d enrolled Kevin in preschool. He’d complained of a tight chest, the coordinator had told her, so they’d pulled him from his play group. A few minutes later he’d started wheezing. By the time they got Alison on the phone, his lips were turning blue, so they’d called an ambulance. Alison had told them to have him taken to the Waterton Clinic, which was just a few minutes away from the day-care center.
She barely remembered the drive to the clinic. A higher authority must have been looking out for her because she broke every speed limit and blew through half a dozen red lights along the way. She’d arrived to find Kevin in the emergency room, looking incredibly small atop the examination table. He’d lifted his little head and looked at her, and her heart had simply broken. He’d been crying—the asthma attacks frightened him terribly—but she could tell he was trying very hard to be brave. Then he’d smiled at her through the oxygen cup that had been placed over his nose and mouth, and it had taken all her willpower not to fall to pieces.
She’d hovered like a nervous hen while the doctor examined him and administered medication. She told Kevin how brave he was and tried valiantly not to cry herself. After the examination, the doctor announced to her that Kevin was going to be fine, though he wanted to put him in a room and observe him for a few more hours, just to make sure he tolerated the stronger medication without any ill effects. If all remained well, she could take him home at the end of the shift.
Once Kevin was settled in a room and the doctor had left, Alison climbed onto the bed and held him until he fell asleep. She’d held him and cried and thanked God for keeping an eye on her little boy while she’d been at work.
That had been nearly two hours ago. Kevin was still sleeping soundly, but Alison had left the bed and stood staring out the window, feeling more exhausted than she’d ever felt in her life. Rain and wind pelted the windows and sent the palm fronds skittering against the glass. Even though it was still early, the room had grown dark, but she hadn’t bothered to turn on the light.
“How is he?”
Alison spun, a dozen emotions pulling her in different directions at the sound of Drew’s voice. He stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright light coming in from the hall. Her heart did a slow roll at the sight of his broad shoulders and lean hips. Shadows obscured his face, but she could tell he was looking toward the bed where Kevin slept. She told herself she wasn’t pleased to see him. That she hadn’t been feeling small and frightened and incredibly alone. That she hadn’t been secretly hoping he would come.
Drew didn’t wait for her to answer. He strode over to the bed and flipped the switch next to the bed, turning on the indirect lighting. For the first time she realized he must have driven directly over to the clinic from Water Flight Tours. He was wearing cutoffs, an old T-shirt with sleeves cut off and a blue bandanna tied around his head. He looked hard and tanned and incredibly male as he set his hand against her son’s cheek then leaned down to kiss him.
The sight moved her so profoundly that for several long seconds she couldn’t find her voice. When she finally did, it was thready and high. “He had a really bad attack at the day-care center today.”
“He’s all right?” he asked again.
“The doctor said he’s going to be fine. They changed his medication. They want to watch him for a few hours and then I’m allowed to take him home.”
His eyes moved from Kevin to her. “I’m glad he’s okay. When I heard...” His voice trailed.
“How did you find out?”
“Seth came by the marina.” He tilted his head slightly as if to get a better look at her. “You holding up okay?”
She nodded, then choked out a laugh. “Only a few days on the job, and I run out of the office screaming.”
“Seth has that effect on the people who work for him.”
She laughed, feeling lighter than she had all day. “I should call him.”
“Seth can wait until tomorrow.”
“I barely gave him an explanation.”
“He figured it out.” When she still didn’t relent, he added, “Besides, the afternoon is shot.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and for several minutes the only sound came from the buzz of the lights and the rain against the windows. “Do you want to go get a cup of coffee or something?”
Alison looked over at her son’s sleeping form. He looked so small and helpless lying in that bed. She knew it was silly, but she didn’t want to leave him.
As if noticing her reluctance, Drew said, “I could bring some back.”
“No, I’ll walk with you. There’s a waiting area down at the end of the hall,” she said. “It’s not too far and there’s a coffee machine.”
He waited by the door while she kissed Kevin’s cheek and picked up her purse. Her heart was pounding when she crossed to him. “You didn’t have to come,” she said.
“I came because I wanted to.”
She gave him a sad smile. “He asked about you.”
Drew wasn’t exactly sure when that little boy had come to mean so much to him, but he did. He meant a hell of a lot more than Drew had ever intended. More than he was comfortable with. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Wasn’t sure how he was going to
deal with it.
“Come on,” he said. “Coffee’s on me.”
Because he was an EMT, Drew was usually comfortable in just about any type of medical environment. The Waterton Clinic, however, was different. It was a small, twenty-eight bed facility that catered to sick children, most with serious asthma or some type of allergy-related malady. He didn’t like it when children got sick. In all the years he’d been an EMT, that got to him more than anything else.
The nurses’ station at the end of the hall was brightly lit. But several offices they passed along the way to the waiting area were darkened and quiet. As he and Alison made their way toward the coffee machine, Drew could hear the bump of the food cart as it was wheeled from room to room. He could smell the food being served, hear the clink of silverware and the cheerful voices of the late afternoon food service nurse trying hard to raise the spirits of her young charges. They passed a room where the sound of a blaring TV emanated through the open door. Inside, a little boy around eight years old watched cartoons, laughing from within his oxygen tent.
On reaching the waiting area, Drew went to the hot beverage machine, fed coins into a slot and bought two cups of coffee. Alison stood at the floor-to-ceiling window as if watching the storm beyond. The overhead fluorescents cast harsh white light onto her face, and for the first time since arriving he was able to get a good look at her. Signs of heavy-duty stress were etched into her every feature. Tension formed a crease between her usually smooth brows. Her face was colorless. He could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks and realized she’d been crying at some point. But even disheveled and worried, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He knew it was crazy, but he wished he could have been there for her.
“You look like you could use this,” he said, handing her one of the cups.
“That bad, huh?”
“I figure if your shoulders get any more tense you might dislocate one.”
“I hear that’s pretty painful. Good thing you’re an EMT.”
“I’m pretty good at working out kinks, too.” He set down his coffee. “Come here.”