An Unlikely Father

Her father silenced the Sweeney’s fifteen-year-old yellow Lab and wheeled around in his chair. “Who is it, Helen?”

“It’s Muldoone,” she said.

“What in the world does he want?”

“I clipped somebody on Gulfview Road today,” she said. Seeing the worried look on her father’s face, she added, “It was no big thing, Pop. The other guy’s fine. Our truck just got a scratch.”

“And you didn’t tell me this?” Finn asked.

The pounding on the door increased, and Helen turned the knob. “I knew there’d be time enough.” She opened the door. “Hi, Billy. Nice day, isn’t it?”

“Not for you, Helen.” He handed her a ticket. “Reckless driving. Again. You’ll have to make a court appearance on this one. About six weeks from now.”

She took the ticket. “I’m probably busy that day, but I’ll try to squeeze it in. By the way, how’s that guy, the one who got in my way?”

Muldoone sent her a strange look, one that hinted he was amused by her question. “You don’t know who you hit, do you?”

“No.” She hadn’t bothered to look at the business card, which right now sat on the bathroom counter. “Who is he?”

“Ethan Anderson,” Billy said smugly. “Does the name ring a bell?”

It did. Almost as if the bell were clanging against the side of her head with the intention of deafening her. “The guy from Anderson Enterprises.”

“Oh, yeah. And you sure taught him a lesson about Heron Point hospitality. If he doesn’t hightail it back to New York on the next plane, he’ll at least avoid you from now on.”

Could this day get any worse? Now she’d hit the one man people in Heron Point were looking to as a financial savior.

Sticking his head inside the front door, Billy said, “How’s it going, Finn?”

“It’d be better, Billy, if you hadn’t given us that ticket—and that news.”

Helen closed the door a couple of inches. She had to get rid of Billy. She had to go down to the edge of the water and scream as loud as she could where no one would hear her. “Okay, then, boys,” she said. “Enough chitchat.”

Billy stubbornly leaned his two-hundred-pound frame against the jamb, preventing her from shutting him out. “Hey, Helen, you still going out with that folksinger?”

“Sure am. We’re as cozy as a pair of fleas on a dog’s ear.”

He moved a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You let me know when you break up. You still owe me a date.”

Helen couldn’t remember the debt, but even if it were true, there was no way Billy Muldoone was going to collect. “Right. You’ll be the first person I tell.” She shut the door and collapsed against it.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Finn said. “The ticket you just got or the fact that an Anderson has finally showed up in Heron Point.”

Helen had never understood her father’s resentment of anyone associated with Anderson Enterprises, and she’d grown tired of asking him. Finn would tell her when he was ready. “My money’s on the ticket,” she said. “You’re the only one in town who hasn’t been looking forward to Anderson’s arrival.”

Finn frowned. “You okay? You weren’t hurt in that little mishap, were you?”

“No. I’m just dandy.” She stared down at the ticket in her hand. That, and the bad impression she’d made on Ethan Anderson weren’t the most disturbing pieces of information she’d gotten today. In fact, they weren’t even a close second and third. The absolute winner in the bad-news category was that eight-letter word printed in blue on the plastic wand in her bathroom. It said, pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK THURSDAY morning Helen parked the Suburban behind the Lionheart Pub and entered the establishment through the back door. She’d been up since seven preparing fishing tackle for her charter trip the next morning, but she’d put off coming into town until she knew Donny would be awake. His last set at the Lionheart didn’t end until nearly two o’clock, and he liked to sleep in after performing late.

Helen hadn’t come to see him play last night. He’d called during his first break to ask where she was. She’d tried to sound cheery, as if nothing was wrong. She’d said she was tired and would see him the next day.

And now that she was going to face him, she didn’t feel any more confident about telling him the news than she had the day before. She’d hoped that a quiet night alone with her thoughts would result in a clear plan for what she was going to do about the pregnancy, but that hadn’t happened, because her decision depended heavily on Donny’s reaction. Now, as she came through the Lionheart’s kitchen, she pondered the two conclusions she’d come to sometime in the middle of a restless night. She would tell Donny today. He was the father. He deserved to be the only other person she confided in. And for now, she would think of her condition in terms of the clinical word pregnancy. She refused to think of herself as having a baby. That was too intimate. Too conscionable. And certainly, until Donny reacted as she hoped he would, too scary.

Vinnie, the Lionheart’s luncheon cook, looked up from a bubbling cauldron of spaghetti sauce as she walked by. “Hey, Helen, it’s kind of early for you to be here.”

“Hi, Vinnie. I could tell what you were cooking all the way over at the Finn Catcher this morning, and had to see for myself if it tasted as good as it smelled.” She took the spoon he offered, dipped it in the pot and slurped a healthy portion. The rich tomato sauce settled in her stomach like a lit firecracker, and reminded her that two cups of coffee and a helping of garlic probably wasn’t a fit breakfast for a pregnant woman. “Yep, just as I thought,” she said. “Delicious.”

He smiled with pride. “Come back for lunch. I’ll make sure you get a big helping.”

She laid her hand over her stomach. “I’ll hold you to that. Is Donny outside?”

“Yeah, hard at work as usual.”

Helen knew what that meant. Donny spent most of his waking hours building his sailboat. Luckily, the vacant lot between the Lionheart and the Heron Point Hotel was large enough to accommodate the twenty-nine-foot hull that he’d lovingly assembled in the three months he’d been on the island.

She went through the public area of the bar without being noticed by the few patrons inside, walked out the front door and looked at the sandwich sign standing under a front window. While she gathered her courage for what had to be done, she silently read the advertisement she knew by heart.

The Lionheart Pub proudly presents the mellow folk styling of Donovan Jax. Six nights a week beginning at nine o’clock.

In the time he’d been here, Donny had seemed to fit in with the varied population of Heron Point. At least folks came to the Lionheart with enough regularity for Helen to believe they liked his singing. The only person who didn’t seem to take to the town’s most recent performer was her father. But getting Finn to admit to liking anything new on the island was always a challenge.

Helen descended the two steps from the porch to the sidewalk and strode around the side of the building. Donny was there, a kerchief around his forehead and his shoulder-length brown hair tied with a bit of twine at his neck. Dust motes rose in the sun as he sanded the bow of Donovan’s Dawn, the vessel he’d promised would take the two of them around Key West and into the eastern Caribbean.

Helen watched him work for a moment. She noticed especially his strong arms, since he was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cropped off at the shoulders. His muscles flexed with each smooth, practiced swipe of the sandpaper—muscles as finely tuned to this task as they were to playing a guitar. His devilish green eyes narrowed as he studied the results of his labor before his full, sensuous lips rounded and he blew a puff of sawdust into the air.

He looked up, saw her leaning against the building and gave her a cheeky smile. “Hello, cupcake. How long you been standing there?”

She walked toward him. “Long enough to know that I’ll be glad when this thing is finished and I can see if she’ll really float.”

“Oh, she’ll float all right, if I have to swim underneath her holding her up the whole time.” He picked up a rag and brushed wood specks from his damp arms. “I thought you had a charter this morning.”

“Nope. Wish I did.” Any day Helen didn’t have a fishing trip was a day she didn’t make any money. “Got one tomorrow, though.”

“Good. Then you can help me today.”

“Yeah, how?”

He pointed to a stained foam cooler a few feet away. “By tossing me a beer.”

She pulled a bottle from the melting ice and threw it to him.

“Have one for yourself,” he said. “Once you start sanding, you’ll find out how hot that sun is today.”

A beer sounded good. Maybe it would help relax her. Helen reached into the ice again and withdrew a tempting bottle. She wrapped her hand around the cap and started to twist, anticipating the hiss of carbonation that always tantalized her taste buds.