An Unlikely Father. Cynthia Thomason

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      “This is a busy road. All the locals know you can’t just park your car on the side like you did.” She shrugged her shoulders with all the bravado she could muster. “Makes you a target for oncoming traffic.”

      He stood up, towering over her by several inches. “Oh, sure. A target for any vehicle that barrels around that curve at sixty miles an hour.” He nodded toward the Suburban, which was idling like a tethered dinosaur, smoke hissing from its radiator. “And, by the way, that death trap of yours is the only car that’s come down this busy road in the last ten minutes. I should know. I’ve been waiting to hail the first vehicle that showed up.” He wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead and stared at it on the back of his hand as if he’d never perspired before. “Just my luck, you were driving it.”

      Helen tried to recall the details of her pitiful auto insurance policy. She knew she didn’t have coverage on the Suburban. Why would she? That tank could survive anything. And she seemed to recall that her liability coverage had a deductible equal to the payoff of a winning lottery ticket.

      Lately, Helen’s meager savings account had suffered some major hits. The future didn’t look much better if that pregnancy test came up positive. Certain that her best course of action was to maintain a tacit innocence, she shoved her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. “So, you had car trouble even before—” she glanced from the Lincoln to the dismembered door “—this happened?”

      “Yeah. I rented this thing in Tampa, exactly—” he checked his watch “—one hour and forty-five minutes ago. It ran beautifully for eighty miles and then conked out on your deserted stretch of Heron Point superhighway.”

      Helen leaned against the hood of the Lincoln. “Tough break. A car this fancy should get at least a couple hundred miles before breaking down.”

      He smiled grimly and looked at the pad of the cell phone. “At least we agree on something. I was just calling Diamond Rental to come pick up this two-ton pile of misery when you decided to make my complaint a bit of an embarrassment. I think the rental company might question the validity of my claim, now.”

      He started to dial, but paused and said, “Maybe you ought to get your insurance information. And I suppose we have to report this to the police.”

      Oh, great. Just what she needed. It’d probably be Billy Muldoone who’d swoop down upon the scene with his siren blaring and his features cemented into a condescending sneer. He’d write her up faster than the women of Heron Point turned him down for dances at the Lionheart Pub. In the pit of her stomach, Helen sensed a tingling of panic—the second time today. She didn’t like the feeling, though she figured she’d experience it again while she waited for the pregnancy-test results. But right now she needed to calm down so she could plan a course of action for this current disaster.

      “Ah, sure,” she said. “I’ll get my insurance card from the truck.” She walked to the Suburban and lifted the hood to make sure none of its parts had been crippled. Thank goodness the steam had cleared and the engine hiccuped with its usual congestive rattle, telling her its internal workings were A-okay.

      “Any damage to your vehicle?” the new guy called to her.

      She looked over at him. “A busted headlight.” Then she flashed him a little smile, hoping to distract him from following accident protocol to the letter. “Guess you’d better get your insurance information, too. Last time I replaced a headlight in this beast it cost me twenty-five bucks.”

      He held up a card between his thumb and index finger. Naturally, he already had his card ready even though he’d probably determined he was the injured party.

      Helen scribbled a phone number on a scrap of paper and walked back to him. Ignoring a persistent niggling of guilt, she said, “I forgot my wallet. Here’s my number. How can I reach you?”

      He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “I’m staying at the Heron Point Hotel temporarily,” he said. “You can leave a message if I’m not in.”

      She stepped closer to him and reached for the card. When she took it, he wrinkled his nose and jerked his hand back. “What’s that smell?”

      Well, great. Barely an hour ago she’d been cleaning the bait well on the Finn Catcher, getting the boat ready for its next charter trip on Friday morning. She hadn’t bothered to change clothes before running into town for a quick visit to the doctor, and now she noticed a few glistening fish scales still stuck to her cargo shorts. Fishy smells didn’t bother her. She’d grown up with them, but that obviously wasn’t the case with this pressed and polished out-of-towner.

      She slipped the business card into her waistband. “It’s fish.”

      “Fish?” He said the word as if he needed a zoology textbook to figure out what she was talking about.

      “This is an island,” she said. “We are surrounded by the little creatures.”

      He stared at his hand but at least had the decency to chuckle a little in a self-deprecating way. “Of course.” Then he abruptly changed the subject to one she definitely wasn’t interested in. “I guess I’ll call the police now.”

      She pointed a finger at him. “You do that. I’ll wait in my truck.”

      She walked away from him, got behind the wheel of the Suburban and backed out of the palm thatch. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she peeled down the road. It was the coward’s way out. Helen knew that just as she knew she wasn’t getting away with anything. Maybe he’d call that number she gave him and have a nice little chat with the old guy who repaired fishing rods in town, but the decoy wasn’t going to get her out of trouble. Everyone in town, and especially the police, knew who drove a rusty old Suburban.

      So, it was only a matter of time until she had to face up to what had happened here. Helen frowned at the package on the passenger seat. But first she had to face something a whole lot more important.

      APPARENTLY FINISHED WITH his inspection of the damages, the muscle-bound cop leaned against the Town Car and rested his elbow near the retractable sunroof. “So, what did the driver of the other car look like, Mr. Anderson?”

      Ethan stared at the police officer who had arrived a few minutes ago heralded by earsplitting sirens and flashing lights. Ethan had considered the entrance a somewhat over-the-top reaction to what he’d called a “minor traffic accident” when he’d phoned in the report. Pad in hand, and his eyes narrowed in that officious scowl police officers seemed to perfect, the cop had sauntered all around Ethan’s car, and its missing door fifty yards away.

      “What did she look like?” Ethan repeated.

      Officer Muldoone removed his arm from the top of the car and prepared to write. “It was a female, then?”

      “Right, yes,” Ethan answered. He held his hand just under his chin. “She was about this tall.”

      “About five feet, five inches?”

      “Give or take. She was skinny. No, thin. Not too skinny.” Now that Ethan thought about the daredevil driver, he decided she was actually quite pleasantly proportioned. She was slim all over, though her breasts were certainly full enough to satisfy any man’s standards. And ignoring this woman’s better features under that ribbed tank top had been impossible.

      “Anything СКАЧАТЬ