Chapter 6
Clay watched every tantalizing step of Andie’s departure until his view was blocked by his sister.
Bridget hugged Payton, then looked questioningly at Andie, who gestured toward Clay. As Andie went upstairs, Bridget and Payton walked toward the pool, where Clay still sat like a guilty teenager checking out a porn site.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” he said, hoping to cover his thoughts of thirty seconds earlier.
“Gorgeous day,” she said cheerfully. “This girl needs some fun in the sun.”
“We were just going to change into swimsuits, weren’t we, girly?”
“Yes!” Payton jumped up and down and dragged Bridget by the hand back toward the stairs.
“I’ll come up with you,” Bridget said.
The three of them left the pool area, and Clay closed the gate behind him. Payton scurried to the stairs and started up, while he and Bridget took their time.
“So,” Bridget said heavily, once they’d passed Andie’s landing, “What’s going on with her?” She pointed toward Andie’s door.
“Not a thing.”
Bridget stared hard at him when they got to his landing.
“What?” he said. “What do you think is going on with her?”
“You sound defensive.”
“You sound offensive.”
Bridget laughed as they went inside. Payton was already coming down from her room wearing her pink-and-purple swimsuit.
“Don’t forget your towel,” Clay said, and Payton went back upstairs. When she was out of earshot again, he added, “Andie’s a renter. For a month. That’s all.”
“You were drooling, Clay.”
“What man wouldn’t drool at a woman who looks like that in a bikini?”
“A man who’s trying to fight a nasty custody battle, maybe? Look, Clay, I don’t know Andie, but from my objective viewpoint, maybe you shouldn’t mess around with just anyone right now. Unless you have wedding bells in mind, it’d be smart to be a good boy until after the hearing.”
As if he wasn’t already aware of that. “Got it under control, Bridge,” he said, fighting to keep his tone level. “I’m going to change.”
When he returned, Bridget had helped herself to a glass of apple juice.
“No coffee?” he asked, checking the pot he’d brewed earlier. It was still half-full, so he poured some into a travel mug.
“Giving it up, actually.”
“Let’s go!” Payton said, rushing between them and grabbing their free hands.
“Lead the way, girly. What’s up with no more coffee?” Clay asked as they trooped down the stairs again. He made a concerted effort not to glance at Andie’s door as they went by.
“Well…” Bridget took her cover-up off to reveal her simple bright blue one-piece suit. Pointing at her abdomen, she said, “This bulge? Is not due to fat.” She grinned widely, glancing toward Payton to make sure she was otherwise occupied.
It took several seconds for what she’d said to get through to Clay. He stopped as he was about to jump into the water and looked at her belly again—which, yes, was slightly swollen—and then at her face. Her eyes were full of excitement. “Bridget?”
She laughed and nodded. “I’m pregnant.”
If people could glow, she definitely was.
“Congratulations,” he said, studying her. “I take it you and Reid are happy about this?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Very. He’ll be such a good father.”
A month ago, Clay would’ve heartily agreed. Now he found himself wondering what the heck a good father was. Fatherhood seemed to consist of constantly walking a fine line—between friend and disciplinarian, between protecting and letting a kid breathe.
“Reid’s a decent guy. If anyone can find his way on this twisted path, he can.”
“Thanks for the overwhelming support,” Bridget said, then added as if it just occurred to her, “You’ll find your way too.”
“Hope it’s before my daughter turns thirty,” he said with a grin. He glanced around at Payton, who had wandered over to the turtle-shaped sandbox in the corner of the yard. She was intent on shoveling sand into her pail. “When are you two getting hitched?”
She tested the water with her toes. “We aren’t.”
“You’re not.” Clay sat on the edge of the pool and dipped his legs in.
“No.”
“You love each other.”
“Of course we do.”
“You’re having a baby.”
“Right again.” She lowered herself to the ladder, submerging to the waist as she sat on the top rung and bracing herself against the cool water. “We don’t need a marriage certificate to verify our relationship.”
“You’re going to be parents though.”
“Yes. We live together, Clay. We love each other. We’ll raise the baby together. Just like if we were married.”
“So why not get married?”
She stared at him for several seconds, head tilted. “I thought you’d be the one to understand.”
“Why? Because I have a kid and I’m not married? Bridget, that’s entirely different. I don’t love Payton’s mother.”
“Did you ever?”
He hesitated. “I thought I did. Before she got pregnant.”
“Well, I love Reid. He loves me. That’s all we need.”
“You two are lucky. Why won’t you take that final step for the sake of your child?”
“Marriage isn’t what we want.”
“Why not?”
“Why? Because everyone else does?”
“Yeah, actually.”
Bridget shook her head, her forehead wrinkling in disgust.
“Mom and Dad aren’t going to be okay with this.”
“If so, it’s my problem. Not yours.”
Clay laughed mirthlessly. “I wish that were true. They’re going to blame me for being a bad influence on you.”
“Clay.”
“They will. I set the bad example for my little sister.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know it, and you know it, but they love to see me as the bad guy.”
“So you were the rebel boy growing up. So what? You’ve changed. The minute you found out you had a child, you cleaned up. Enough of the doom and gloom ‘I’m the bad guy’ crap. No one in the family still believes that.”
“Parenting is…hard, Bridge. I don’t get why you’d want to be single…”
“Not single. There will be two of us.” Bridget launched from the ladder into a leisurely sidestroke. She grabbed the wall next to Clay. “I get that you’re scared. Getting custody so suddenly would make anyone’s head spin.”
“I’ve been trying for this for so damn long… Now that I have her, all I can think of is what if I screw it up?”
“You’re doing absolutely right by her,” Bridget said quietly. “Trust yourself.”
“This was supposed to be about you,” he grumbled, not liking how easily she’d hit on his Achilles’ heel. “Not me.”
He studied his little sister. There was no denying the joy in Bridget’s eyes.
Who was he to judge her or try to change her mind? He had as much as he could handle with Payton…and then some.
The princess in question pranced toward them then, spilling sand with every step. She burrowed into his side for a hug. Clay picked her up and set her on his lap, squeezing her tightly, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Hey, girly.”
“Hey, Daddy.”
He held her close, wondering whether his sister was right. Was he doing okay? He was doing the best he could, dammit.
And yet he would always worry it wasn’t good enough.
How could a man who battled fires and handled every kind of emergency imaginable be felled by three and a half feet of toddler?
“Really? You’re going to a baby shower?” Andie said to Derek as she climbed into the backseat of Macey’s Corolla that evening.
Derek frowned as he backed the car out of Clay’s driveway. “Not a shower,” he said. “I’ve been assured this is just a party.”
“It’s a party to celebrate the impending birth of Evan and Selena’s baby,” Macey clarified from the passenger seat.
“You invited boys,” Andie remarked.
“Lots of ’em. Lots of firefighters, several of them single.” Macey turned enough to raise her brows suggestively at Andie.
“Also lots of beer,” Derek said. “Which is the only way to get lots of firefighters to a baby party.”
“This should be interesting,” Andie said.
“Yeah,” Derek said. “Who will be most out of place? The men? Or you? Female or not, you don’t really seem the shower type.”
“You’d be correct with that assessment,” Andie muttered, leaning back in the seat and wondering how early she could cut out for the evening.
The party was at the home of Pilar and Curt Silver, who lived on the mainland, just a couple of miles past the bridge.
Curt was a firefighter on the island. Andie remembered meeting Pilar a few times at the Shell Shack last summer—she worked in administration at the fire station and socialized a lot with the firefighters.
With everyone, actually. Extrovert to the extreme, but she wasn’t so bad.
Andie stood at the edge of the large backyard when they arrived, watching the hostess make her rounds, cracking jokes with the guys, hugging the women, making sure everyone had something to drink.
Might as well be on another planet, Andie thought.
Macey was in the kitchen with the caterers. Good thing she was used to being an outsider.
“Miss Andie, I’m sure glad you came back to San Amaro to see me,” Gus said, hobbling up to her.
Derek’s uncle—one of the only other people Andie knew in the whole place—wore a shirt with a wild chili pepper print on it and a tight belt to keep his khaki pants on his scrawny body.
As always, his light blue bucket hat was perched on his head of wispy hair.
“You’re looking fine, too, Gus,” Andie said, genuinely happy to see him. “Are you going to introduce me?”
By his side was a woman who looked even older than his eighty or so years, with snow-white hair, cheekbones that jutted out from her thin face but must’ve been beautiful years ago, and a vibrant energy about her that said Gus would have to work to keep up with her.
“This is the love of my life, Thelma Ballard.”
“Nice to meet you,” Andie said, holding her hand out.
The woman ignored her hand and instead pulled Andie into a surprisingly robust hug. “Come here, sweetie. Pleasure to meet you. How did you meet my Gus?”
“She’s a barmaid at the Shell Shack,” Gus said. “Helps Macey keep my nephew in line.”
“That’s quite a chore.” Thelma winked. “To have to keep a big handsome man like him in line. If I didn’t have Gus, I’d be shopping around for one of these firefighters here tonight.”
Andie laughed, believing her.
“Look, there’s one. You can tell by the muscles,” Thelma said, motioning to the gate. “A lonely one.”
Clay stood there by himself, taking in the scene, nodding to people as they said hello.
“You talk too much, woman,” Gus said to Thelma.
“Let’s go dance.” He winked at Andie and pulled Thelma onto the flagstone terrace at the back of the yard where several others had already started dancing.
They were, by several decades, the oldest ones out there, but it was undeniable that they were having the most fun too.
“Crazy old man,” Clay said from behind her. “I hope I’m half as alive as he is when I turn eighty.”
“Hope I’m getting half as much,” Andie said.
“There goes living proof that sex doesn’t have to end with senior-citizen-hood.”
The warmth of Clay’s smile caught her off guard. She looked into his eyes, which were focusing all that sexy maleness on her, sending a shiver clear through her.
“Where’s your daughter tonight?” she asked, in search of something innocent to say.
“Staying with Bridget. Had a hard time convincing her she’d have more fun with her aunt than coming to a baby party with me.”
“She has no idea how lucky she is,” Andie said.
“What made you show up?”
Andie shrugged. “I like Evan. Selena too. Trying to play nice with others, I guess.”
“My theory is as long as there’s decent food and drink, I can persevere. Speaking of which, can I get you a drink?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I can get one myself.”
“Prickly woman,” Clay said with a shake of his head.
“I prefer self-sufficient.” She said it over her shoulder as she walked toward the patio to coolers overflowing with soft drinks and bottled alcoholic drinks. The keg was in the back corner of the yard. She was surprised to find Clay behind her when she bent to choose a drink. “Following me?”
“Since you didn’t offer to get me a drink.”
“I’m inconsiderate that way.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Do you know everyone here?” Andie asked, gesturing to the expanse of the yard with her can of lemonade. The place was crowded, with probably fifty or sixty people.
Clay followed her gaze. “Lots of them. Firefighters, wives, office staff, friends. Have you met Evan’s twin sister?” He held out his arm to the nearest woman. Andie shook her head.
“Melanie, this is Andie Tyler. Melanie helped Macey and Pilar organize this party.”
“Nice job. Lots of people,” Andie said, immediately seeing the resemblance between Evan and his sister in their blue eyes and the shape of their faces.
“Where’s your little man tonight?” Clay asked.
“We got a sitter for him. He would’ve loved being Mr. Social, but I’d be too preoccupied with him here.”
“Payton still talks about playing with ‘the baby.’ We’ll have to get them together again soon.”
“Absolutely. I’m sure they’ll spend some prime playtime together at the wedding.”
While the two of them discussed babysitting options for Macey and Derek’s wedding, Andie took the opportunity to escape back to her place along the perimeter, away from Clay’s hot-as-hell-ness and everyone else’s small talk.
She glanced at her watch and tried to hide her disappointment. Dinner hadn’t even been served. They were heating up the grills now, but it’d be an eternity before she could leave. Even if she could beg off, she had no way home until Macey and Derek were ready to go.
She tried to settle in mentally for a long, painful night.