Chapter 10

Pregnant.

Tristan had repeated the word so many times it had lost its meaning and started to sound wrong in his head, like he’d forgotten how to pronounce it.

Enceinte. It wasn’t any better in French. And that reminded him of his mother and how pregnancy changed things between people who thought they had their relationship all figured out.

He’d like to say he’d handled that encounter with Cass in the empty storefront with style and grace but that would be a bald-faced lie. Instead, he’d mumbled his way out of the conversation with a few trite phrases about sleeping on it. Like that would change the fact that he’d clearly misunderstood the nature of his prediction.

You will experience a great shift in your love life if you are willing to put in the work. After much give and take over the last year, you must make emotional adjustments and surrender to the flow of life and death before you will find intimate love.

Actually, he’d never really understood it, and clearly, he didn’t have the luxury of spending some quality time with Cass while trying to figure it out. If anything, it sounded like he was supposed to get right with the idea that his relationship with Cass would die. Like every other relationship he’d ever had.

If that was in the cards, then pregnancy was not a risk he had any intention of taking. Especially after hearing that marriage would be a part of the equation before any talk of positive pregnancy tests would be a possibility, not that he’d expected anything less.

What he’d expected was for Cass to give him a break, to agree to an experiment where he tried going a lot slower and didn’t spend the majority of his efforts on his exit strategy. Would it have worked? Who knew? He wasn’t getting the chance to find out. With Cass, it was apparently all or nothing, full tilt, strap in because we’re on a downward slide into eternity from step one.

Bottom line, she wasn’t the woman his prediction had meant. Obviously. And he’d left her in that storefront with things between them pretty well finished. What else was he supposed to do?

Which left him at loose ends and completely unclear on how to move forward. Not to mention miserable, which lasted for several days until Rafferty rapped on his door with blunt orders to get his butt out of bed.

Tristan flung open the door of his small hotel room. “What?”

Rafferty folded his arms across his broad chest and leaned on the open door casually, which was anything but casual as Tristan knew from years of watching the man question al-Qaida detainees. The pose showed off his mammoth biceps, prevented the door from being shut with Rafferty on the wrong side of it and gave his prey a false sense of security all at the same time. None of which worked on Tristan, but he also knew better than to get between Hudson Rafferty and his amusements. So he kept his mouth shut.

“I need a second set of eyes,” Rafferty said with a fraction of a chin lift meant to indicate that Tristan was the named party in the iron-clad contract that had just been established.

That was how a black and white guy like Rafferty worked. He said stuff and people did it. You could argue, but you’d lose. Either Rafferty would outwit you with his eidetic memory or he’d outlast you by never speaking a word until you grew so agitated with the silence that you agreed to whatever he had in mind strictly to stop the invisible ants that crawled across your skin when he stared at you with his pale hazel eyes.

No problem. Tristan had a few tricks in his bag as well. “Hardy sent you, ouais?”

“Do I look like Hardy’s errand boy?”

Not hardly. West usually got that job and the two were poles apart in the physical appearance department. Not to mention their personalities and okay, yes, it was hard to picture Hardy sending Rafferty to do anything outside of intimidating someone. “Mr. Mayor has been on a kick lately about shoving me in the direction of a civil service job. Just making sure he didn’t brainwash you onto his side.”

Rafferty lifted one brow a quarter of an inch, the only comment he’d make on the absurdity of Hardy having even the slightest shot at influencing him one way or the other. “Maybe you should take the job.”

Yeah, and maybe Rafferty should mind his own business. “Would you?”

“Hardy asked. I said no. The kick ended there.”

Figures. Tristan checked his huff of annoyance strictly because this conversation would take longer if he irritated Rafferty. But dang. Saying no to Hardy was a skill he’d like to learn, like yesterday. Or at least before the next time the mayor came sniffing around to talk about fire chief positions.

Seemed like he was due any day now. Actually, Tristan couldn’t remember the last time Hardy had talked to him about it. It had been a while. Had he found someone else to take the job or just finally accepted that Tristan wasn’t biting?

Either way, it sat funny with him.

“What are you going to do to put a stake in the ground then?” Tristan asked with genuine curiosity. “If you said no to a civil service job?”

Hardy had been selling the team on this town as a permanent place to settle down since the moment the Navy handed down the honorable discharge sentence, and they’d all followed him to Texas, presumably because there was something to be said for leaving California where they’d lived on the base. Nobody was forcing them to stay in Superstition Springs, which was barely a town and had a lot of backbreaking work yet to be done in order to get it into the shape Havana Nixon had laid out.

None of them had left. Tristan didn’t have anywhere else to go but staying meant contributing, which he’d be happy to do as soon as he found something a little lower profile than heading the team dedicated to saving lives by battling his nemesis. Also known as fire.

“That’s the thing I need eyes on,” Rafferty said without an ounce of inflection in his voice but still managed to coat the statement in a good layer of irony. It was one of his many gifts that drove Tristan out of his gourd. “If we can be done with the chit chat.”

Tristan rolled his eyes without comment because what would be the point? He followed Rafferty down the stairs to the first-floor lobby, where Serenity and Ember were coming through the door with bags from the grocery store in La Grange where they’d probably gone to pick up staples not readily available at Voodoo.

“Cheating on Mavis J?” Tristan said with mock severity. “Whatever will the neighbors think?”

Serenity laughed and patted him on the shoulder, giving Rafferty both an indulgent smile and a wide berth because she knew he didn’t like to be touched but loved him anyway, just as a surrogate mom should. “They’ll think she doesn’t dote on us like she does you. I’ve been trying to get her to stock chicken broth for ages, bless her vegan soul. You’re the only one who gets special orders, sweetheart.”

Tristan grinned and ducked his head. “I just asked. She could have said no.”

“As if,” Ember threw in with a saucy grin that matched his. “When’s the last time anyone with girl parts said no to you?”

She almost didn’t say it as a question because in her mind, it had likely been rhetorical, but his mind instantly supplied the answer, complete with a name, date, timestamp and the look on Cass’s face as she spit out the pieces of her prophecy that meant he’d be spending the foreseeable future alone.

Especially since if he didn’t want to be alone, his first response to Ember should have been something along the lines of No woman can resist me. Let’s test it, shall we? Have dinner with me tonight.

That’s what he would have said pre-Syria. Ember was a stunning woman with long red-gold hair that begged for a man’s fingers, and she dropped subtle come-ons in his direction on a daily basis. She’d never say no if he asked her out. But he couldn’t seem to picture himself actually having a real conversation with her, one where he was honest with her about the things inside him. Where he paid enough attention to figure out what was going on inside her. Where he felt safe enough to test out something new and different.

Because he didn’t want to do the same things he’d always done with women. Not anymore. He wanted to know what it felt like to be the better man, to be the one a woman chose because…well, he didn’t know why a woman would choose him above anyone else. Maybe that was part of the problem—none of them ever would.

“I just try to use my powers for good instead of evil,” he said, which was a good enough non-answer to Ember’s loaded question to avoid the slightest bit of encouragement and also served as a great segue to get him and Rafferty out of the lobby.

Rafferty, who had yet to say a word, took that as his exit cue and strode toward the door. When he passed Ember, she shifted a hip ever so slightly so that she moved into his path which caused him to brush her arm, an event that fascinated Tristan all the way around because it had been so skillfully done that he doubted Rafferty realized it had been deliberate.

Didn’t stop Rafferty from jerking his arm out of the line of fire as if he’d been stung. Ember called out after him, “You should watch where you’re going next time.”

Tristan shot her a smile as he trailed his teammate, who had already disappeared onto the street and as he passed her, he leaned in to murmur, “You should watch that stick you’re poking into the hornet’s nest.”

“Is that what I was doing?” she asked with mock astonishment and winked, skirting him to take her bags up to the second floor where she lived with her son, Judd, who must have stayed with Aria while his mom went shopping.

Rafferty had already eaten up half the concrete between the hotel and the end of the block by the time Tristan hit the cracked sidewalk. With a sigh, he chased down his teammate, easily catching up mostly because the town wasn’t that big.

Heat radiated off the ground already even though it wasn’t yet noon. A far cry from the weather in San Diego, but Tristan didn’t mind the weather. There’d been plenty of sun in the Middle East, where he’d spent a good portion of his life while dealing with the baddies who needed to be dispatched.

“What do you need my eyes for?” Tristan asked just as Rafferty stopped in front of the empty storefront that had been the sight of the prediction whammy Cass had dropped on him.

“Since you’ve got nothing else going on, walk through this building with me,” he said, his gaze on the plate glass window that overlooked the street. “Tell me if you think it’s a viable place to open a restaurant.”

“A restaurant?” He stared at the same spot as Rafferty, but nothing appeared that would further expand on that, and his mate had said all he’d say on the subject unless prompted. “Who wants to open a restaurant in a nearly dead town like this one, especially when there’s one right across the street?”

“I do.”

Tristan covered his shock, barely. “You know you have to talk to people. They’re called customers and they like it when you say thank you as you take their money.”

Rafferty leveled the same malevolent look at Tristan that had once reduced an al-Qaida general to a blubbering idiot. “Save the editorial for your fan club and give me your honest opinion.”

“Why me? West has a much better handle on what the town needs with his fancy new job enticing folks to move here permanently.”

“Because you needed to get your head out of your—”

“Excuse me.” A female voice cut into their conversation and they both turned to see a woman standing behind them, her palm over her eyes to shade them from the sun. Her gaze slid to Rafferty. “Oh, hi. I met you at the party the other day.”

He nodded once, his mouth firmly shut, leaving her a touch flustered at his lack of response as she turned to Tristan.

“We didn’t meet,” he supplied easily and held out his hand, which she shook and released quickly enough that he immediately gathered he wasn’t her type. “Tristan Marchande. I was unavoidably detained and sorry to have missed the shindig. Did you have a nice time? Enough that you’d actually come back for seconds?”

She laughed and gestured toward the equally empty building adjacent to the one he and Rafferty had just been peering into, which still had the faded stenciled letters that spelled Clinic in uppercase font. “I’m considering opening a clinic here in town. I’m India Kingston.”

The doctor, apparently, and yes, she was cute in a girl next door kind of way. “India. That’s a great name. Very bohemian. You’ll fit right into Superstition Springs. Welcome, by the way.”

“Thanks. I was supposed to meet someone here to talk about the logistics, but I’m afraid I’m really late and I can’t get my cell phone to pick up a signal.” India held up the useless brick in one hand and went on before Tristan could explain that cell towers and Superstition Springs did not belong in the same sentence. “Do either of you know how to get in touch with Mayor Hardy?”

“I can do better than that.” Tristan jerked his head toward the opposite side of the street. “His office is over there between the antique store and Ruby’s. Come on. I’ll take you.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant. Thank you.” She swept past the silent hulking Rafferty and fell into step beside Tristan.

“Did you spend time in England?” he asked her as they trod across the dusty street.

“I did. Oxford for my undergrad. How did you know?” she asked with a smile.

“Only Brits say ‘brilliant’ like that,” he explained, laughing as he opened the door to Hardy’s temporary office. “Though I like the way you’ve adopted it.”

The laugh froze in his throat as he registered that Cass stood on the other side of the door. Cass, whose expression had gone harder than a diamond as she glanced back and forth between Tristan and India Kingston. Clearly, she didn’t like finding him in the company of the doctor but why that would bother her when she’d been the one to lay down the law between them, he couldn’t fathom.

Speaking of which, why was his mouth so dry at the mere sight of her? He should be done with involuntary reactions where Cassidy was concerned. There was nothing between them but one long conversation and a few experimental kisses. They weren’t meant to be and that was that.

“Cass,” he croaked, cursing his stupid voice for giving away things he’d rather keep secret. “Have you met Dr. Kingston yet?”

“No, I haven’t had the pleasure,” she said tightly and nodded to the woman, but didn’t offer to shake her hand. “I’m Cassidy Calloway. If you’ll pardon me for running off, I just had a very long meeting with Havana about the paperwork for my new school and I need to take care of a few things.”

To her credit, India took Cass’s comment in stride, just as she had Rafferty’s complete lack of comment earlier. Obviously, she was used to difficult patients and had developed a thick skin, a point in her favor. “Sure, it was nice to meet you.”

He did not have a thick skin and got no points because he was not okay with the way Cass dashed out of the mayor’s office without even glancing at Tristan. “Rafferty, would you mind showing Dr. Kingston down the hall? I have a few things I need to take care of as well.”

Hopefully they’d both forgive him for his own hasty exit, but he had choice words for Cass that weren’t fit for public consumption. But when he caught up with her in front of Ruby’s just as she rounded the corner to head down McDonald Lane toward the schoolhouse, he couldn’t seem to get much out around the lump in his throat.

She was just so…everything. There was so much inside him he wanted to say that it got all tangled up. Because nothing had changed. And yet, he couldn’t stop wanting it to. She’d awakened the passion inside him that he’d have sworn was dead. Only to cut him off at the knees.

Cass, who clearly had no clue she’d gotten him in a twist, didn’t slow her pace an iota. “Following me again?”

That got his tongue moving. “You keep leaving.”

All at once, she wheeled around and faced him down, her brown hair falling into her face like a silky waterfall. “Do you even hear yourself? I like what you’ve done with that fantastic fake British accent, Dr. CutiePie,” she mimicked in a high voice.

That was what had caused her speedy exodus? Not the fact that it hurt down to her bones to see him the way it did when he saw her?

“She doesn’t have a fake British accent,” he said because that was one part of her statement he could definitely refute. The rest? Confusing as all get out. “I didn’t even say that.”

“It doesn’t matter what you actually said, Tristan. The point is that you flirt by default. It’s like breathing to you. You don’t notice it.”

His temper swirled and he clamped down on it because getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with Cass while standing just off the main strip of downtown wasn’t on his agenda today. The fact that he had no idea what should be on the agenda didn’t matter a whit. “I wasn’t flirting with her. I was being nice, something in short supply in this place all of a sudden. We need a doctor. What we don’t need is kooky residents scaring her off.”

Cass went white and her jaw stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m kooky now because I have a problem with the way you fall all over the first pretty woman to waltz into town?”

“First of all,” he ground out. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about Rafferty. He—never mind. What’s important here is, what do you care who I flirt with? You’re the one who erected the back off billboard with all that prediction talk.”

Yes, that was the number one item on the agenda. She had some nerve.

“Because you’re a flirt! That’s why I told you to back off. Chicken, meet egg. If you could be in the presence of a woman for two minutes without charming her pants off—”

“Hey, I have a naturally charming personality,” he cut in, fully aware that ironically, he was at his least charming currently, but come on. “I can’t help it. And I was not trying to do anything with her pants—”

“Please don’t insult me. I’m good at undressing women,” she mimicked again in a voice that started to grate on his nerves. “I know what I saw, and it was you smiling at her and she was loving it, just lapping up your attention like a—”

“Now hang on.” Jealous, much? And why, for crying out loud, was she jealous of India? Neither of them had any interest in each other. He’d stake his life on it and that meant she fell in the category of women he could flirt with. If he wanted to. Which he did not. “Take a step back and get over yourself for a minute because really? You’re completely overreacting. At what point did we ever have a conversation where we decided to date each other, let alone become exclusive? The way I heard it, you had no interest in anything I was offering.”

That’s how they’d left it. He’d swear on a stack of Bibles. Besides, she’d been the one to back off every time, not him.

“Yeah, really.” She inhaled deeply and started counting to ten under her breath, but before she hit four, she’d jammed her hands down on her slim hips, fire erupting in her gaze. “This is the whole problem with you. You only hear what you want to hear. I never said I was done with you. Only that you needed to understand the big picture.”

Wait. What? That was revisionist history if he’d ever heard it. “You basically said if I wanted to go out with you, I got to skip right over dating, courtship and a blow-out proposal because we were having a baby inside of forty-eight hours. I’m not father material. That means I’m out.”

“You’re out because you want to be out,” she stressed. “Prediction or no, all of that is a risk in any relationship. All relationships either end or they don’t, and you have to be thinking about…oh.”

She dragged out that one syllable with a lilt of comprehension like she’d just translated the Rosetta stone singlehandedly and now had the key to every secret of the Egyptian empire. It was annoying. “Oh, what?”

“That’s why you flirt with other women. It’s a failsafe, right? To ensure everyone is fully aware you’re not into commitment and by the way, even if you tried, it probably wouldn’t work. That’s the most passive-aggressive way to push off a woman I’ve ever heard of.”

“That’s not what I do,” he levered back her and then flinched as what she’d said sunk in. It took a lot of the wind out of his sails. “I mean, I don’t think I do that and if I do, it’s not intentional.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded generously. “I get that maybe it’s subconscious, since you didn’t see it with Dr. Kingston. But you even told me that you like to burn out your relationships quickly and why not help it along?”

The problem here of course was that Cass wasn’t letting him burn out his relationship with her. They couldn’t get past step one, and he’d even offered a compromise that would allow him to try on commitment without really committing—which she’d refused to take. It was killing him.

He couldn’t just jump in with both feet, no potential for exit and no guarantees that Cass would find anything in him worth committing to. That was the meaning of his prediction—he had to be okay with the death of the relationship. No babies allowed in the middle of that.

It wasn’t that he shunned the idea of commitment. He just couldn’t risk finding out that there was really nothing special enough about him to keep a woman around forever. He might yearn to be the better man all day long, but deep down inside, he already knew he wasn’t. Why test it?

And maybe she had a point. It was easy to flirt with someone who pushed none of his buttons. Cass didn’t have to know that it meant nothing to him.

“You’re right,” he said flatly, mostly to keep his voice from cracking because what kind of loser got emotional about a woman telling him he was destined repeat the same cycles over and over again? “The way I treat women is too ingrained and I’ll never be able to stop. The risks are too big. For both of us. I’ll stay away from you from now on.”

It was far better to feel dead inside than alive with the knowledge that it would be ripped away before he was ready.

This time, he spun on one heel and walked away from her.