Chapter Four
He wanted to kick his own ass.
Harvey set sights on his SUV parked across the lot of the visitor’s center and headed toward.
His shift had ended nearly two hours ago, and he was working off less than a handful of hours of sleep.
The estate lawyer just wouldn’t give up.
Calls, messages, voicemails, letters. He didn’t want any of it.
He didn’t want a damn thing from his father.
Every decision he’d made over the past twenty years had been in exact opposition to the son of a bitch who’d claimed to raise him, but even in death, his father was going out of his way to make Harvey’s life hell.
The military had given him an out, but twenty years hadn’t provided nearly enough distance between them.
Then the bastard had to go and die from a stroke and leave him everything.
Life insurance policy, checking and savings accounts, the house…
What had been going through his father’s head when he’d signed his will and trust, Harvey didn’t know.
They hadn’t talked in decades. Just how Harvey had liked it after everything that man had put him and his mom through.
The abuse had killed her in the end. Not all at once, but a slow draining Harvey had never been able to put a stop to, and he wouldn’t accept a penny or sign a single document admitting he was his father’s son.
No matter how many times the estate lawyer tried to convince him otherwise.
Everything he’d done had been to ensure he never ended up like that man.
Miserable. Angry. Strung out and blaming his problems on anyone but himself. Harvey wasn’t going to be that person.
Except he’d just offered to financially support his and Drennan’s kid. And while his biweekly National Park Service paycheck covered rent, food and transportation, it wouldn’t stretch as far with a baby in the picture.
Hell. He could’ve handled her news better. Should’ve taken the time she’d offered for him to get his head straight. To explain. A baby. He was going to be a father whether he was involved or not, and the shot of terror he couldn’t swallow since she’d given him the news doubled.
Harvey added more weight to his opposite leg, but there was nothing that would relieve that pain until he got off his feet, popped a few ibuprofen and iced his knee until his next shift tomorrow morning.
Switching his water bottle from one hand to the other, he attempted to balance his weight, but it wouldn’t do any good.
Never did. The army had spit him out without an option to re-up thanks to the piece of shrapnel lodged under his kneecap, and he’d decided the best choice to prove them wrong was hiking up and down these cliffs all damn day.
Seemed he had a knack for making stupid decisions.
Screeching tires peeled through the parking lot. He caught sight of the plain white van he’d helped load a body into skidding to a halt. The driver’s side door shot open, and Harvey abandoned his escape.
Drennan scrambled from the driver’s seat and doubled over, hands pressed against the van’s panels as she heaved.
Harvey was already moving across the parking lot toward her, a knot of something he didn’t recognize squeezing his chest. Pain flooded from his knee into his upper thigh as he picked up the pace, holding him back from an all-out sprint to get to her. “Drennan?”
She flung a hand out. “I’m fine. Just stay back. You don’t… You don’t want to see this.”
Her hair fell over her shoulder as she heaved again.
The water she’d gulped after their descent from Emerald Pools splashed across his boots.
Harvey gathered her hair back out of the way and set his free hand along her spine.
His stomach convulsed at the thought of her so miserable in this heat. “Believe me, I’ve seen worse.”
Her shallow exhales caused her back to arch against his hand, and he started soothing circles into her skin.
Nothing but a distraction she needed to breathe through the nausea.
It helped sometimes. He’d seen enough soldiers lose their breakfasts, lunches and dinners from the crap they’d had to face overseas on the front lines in Afghanistan. Bodily fluids hardly scared him.
Drennan swiped at her mouth but didn’t move to straighten. Waiting for the next wave? “You’re right. Pulling a body from the pond this morning is worse. You win.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about that.” He couldn’t stop the laugh escaping his chest. Even in the face of one of the most uncomfortable situations, she managed to shift his mood.
But hadn’t that been why he’d approached her in that bar in the first place?
She’d smiled at him from her single table with a beer in hand, and all that rage and betrayal he’d held on to since the funeral disappeared.
Instant magic. It hadn’t taken much to convince himself to chase that feeling straight into his bed, and hell, she’d done an amazing job in helping him pretend the world could stop turning.
“You’ve seen worse than a dead body?” Drennan shifted away from the fluid inching into the cracks of the broken asphalt.
“I was military. Infantry. You see a lot of stuff you never thought you’d be able to stomach on the front lines.” But he didn’t want to think about any of that. “Are you sick, or is this…”
“Morning sickness?” She faced him then, tugging her hair free of his hand, a little paler than when he’d told her he wouldn’t help her raise this baby a few minutes ago.
Despite the circumstances, she couldn’t even bother to look anything short of beautiful with all those sharp features, an inner glow and a few shards of hazel in her green eyes.
Otherworldly and powerful as she’d been the night they’d met.
She closed her eyes, her shoulders rising on a deep inhale.
“Sure. You could say that. Except it’s almost lunchtime, and the body I have stashed in the back of the van is starting to smell of algae and decomposition in this heat. ”
His cringe filtered into his expression.
He didn’t know a whole lot about pregnancy short of what his mother had told him of his birth story and the cravings she experienced while she was pregnant.
Everything else in that arena he’d picked up in health class or by experimenting with girlfriends.
His dad certainly hadn’t given him any of those talks other than threats if Harvey had ever got a girl knocked up.
Funny how the old man’s death had led to just that. “Anything help?”
“Not that I’ve found.” Swiping at her face with her sleeve, Drennan motioned to him. “Thanks for the assistance. My hair appreciates you keeping it vomit free.”
“Anytime.” The word had slipped out naturally, and Harvey instantly regretted the offer. He’d made it clear he’d support their child financially. Getting involved any further opened him up to a world of mistakes he wasn’t looking to repeat. Ever.
Silence cut between them as Drennan seemed to weigh the slip.
A good man who’d gotten a woman pregnant would want to know every symptom, every change she was going through to ensure her and the baby’s health.
He’d go out of his way to make things easier for her and go the extra mile to meet those midnight cravings.
But Harvey wasn’t a good man. He’d been corrupted the moment his dad’s fist had first met his face, and he’d do whatever it took to protect Drennan and this baby from that future.
A horn blared from behind him. A car had rolled up a few feet short of the van, waiting for them to get out of the way.
Drennan practically jumped out of her skin, and reality rushed to meet them all over again.
She hiked a thumb over her shoulder, stepping backward toward the driver’s side door, and that sick feeling charged through him.
“I better get going. Heat tends to speed up decomposition. Could alter the time of death readings and compromise any evidence.”
He needed to let her go. To go home and ice his damn knee and recover enough for him to hike those trails all over again tomorrow. Except he was stepping into her all over again. “Give me your phone.”
“What?” Those already wide eyes of hers grew impossibly brighter.
“Come on!” The car horn blasted a second time.
Harvey turned, holding up a single finger for them to wait. “Your phone.”
Slipping the device free of her back pocket, she handed it off with shaky fingers. “I think they want my parking spot.”
“I don’t really give a damn what they want. You’re more important than a parking spot.” He made quick work of tapping the phones together. “Now you have my number. Message me when you get the bills from the doctor’s office or if there’s an emergency.”
“Okay.” She took her phone back—still shaking—and made it one more step toward the driver’s seat. “How about now?”
His instincts fired in warning. Harvey countered her retreat. “Drennan?”
“I don’t feel so good.” She reached for him. Just before her eyes rolled back. She swayed on her feet as she had at the edge of the upper emerald pool.
Harvey caught her a split second before she hit the side of the van. Pain flared up his leg from her added weight. He couldn’t stop the strength from giving out. His knee slammed into the asphalt, and they fell together. “Drennan.”
“I’m okay.” Her voice had gone breathy, barely audible over the grumble of the waiting car’s engine, but she’d yet to open her eyes. “Just dizzy. I think… I think I need to lie down.”
A car door slammed. Movement registered in his peripheral vision. The driver waiting for the damn parking spot. “Hey, man. Is she okay?”
“Help me get her in the passenger seat.” Harvey did his best to get to his feet, but his knee had reached its limit.
It took everything he had to trust the driver with the woman in his arms. A ridiculous notion considering he and Drennan weren’t anything more than acquaintances, but possessiveness strangled him all the same.
Together, he and the driver maneuvered Drennan into the van, but the vice around his rib cage refused to release until he’d climbed behind the wheel and tore out of the visitor’s center parking lot.
Screw the body in the back. Something was wrong. Pregnant women didn’t just pass out for no reason. He might not want to be part of this baby’s life, but he’d sure as hell step up when it came to its well-being. He owed Drennan that much.
Pulling in front of the small Springdale emergency clinic, Harvey left the van running with air-conditioning to counter the heat collecting around the body in the back and rounded the hood to Drennan’s side.
His knee threatened to give out a second time, but he bit through the shredding discomfort, lifting her against his chest with an unfamiliar panic building behind his sternum. “Almost there.”
The glass doors parted as he pushed himself to his limits.
Two nurses caught sight of him and rushed to meet him halfway with a stretcher.
Harvey laid her out, every sense he owned screaming to get her back in his arms. “She passed out about ten minutes ago after throwing up. She’s pregnant, about eight weeks. ”
“We’ll get her checked out as soon as we can.
” The nurse strapped a blood pressure cuff around Drennan’s arm and pressed a stethoscope to her chest as the stretcher headed for the back rooms. Then cut her attention to Harvey.
“Sir, you have to let go of her hand. Unless you’re family, you’re not permitted back here. Are you the father of the child?”
He hadn’t realized he’d intertwined his hand with Drennan’s and released his hold.
Instant cold flooded through him at the loss of her warm skin pressed against his, but Harvey had survived this loss two months ago when he’d let her drive away.
He’d do it again. For Drennan and the baby. “No. I’m not the father.”