He shoved the vehicle into Park, unable to help himself from studying the soft lines of her face in sleep. His brain had conjured a whole catalog of false situations and imaginations when it came to this woman. Not a single one of them had help up against the real thing. Drennan Hawes wasn’t like anything he’d fantasized about. He didn’t know a single person who would’ve kept as calm in her situation as she had. Most of the women he’d dated over the years had gone to the extremes to get his attention, to demand his concern, and yet Drennan had beenmore than ready to get herself home after being released from the clinic. Then again, she was a medical professional. He didn’t know much about what it took or the education it required to become a medical examiner, but she was obviously levelheaded under pressure.
Where he’d nearly driven the nurses at the clinic to call security to remove him over his worry for her, she’d managed to bring him out of that spiral the second she’d walked into the lobby on her own two feet. How was that possible?
He was former military. Two decades of training had forced him to think logically instead of overreacting to any threat, but when Drennan had collapsed in that parking lot, every ounce of logic had died. He couldn’t explain the sudden protectiveness that’d reared its ugly head. Just as he couldn’t explain why he’d brought her back to his house. He and Drennan weren’t a couple. They were barely acquaintances. Hell, he’d only learned her name a handful of hours ago, thrown together on an investigation he never wanted part of in the first place. But the tension in his chest wouldn’t relent.
Shoving free of the SUV, he rounded to the passenger side, keys in hand. He popped her door and reached across her middle for her seat belt. His forearm brushed her low belly, right where their child was growing. Harvey froze, air crushing from his lungs, gaze locked on the soft rise and fall of her shoulders. No. Not theirs. Hers. Her child. He had no claim on the baby, and he didn’t want it. He compressed the release for her seat belt, then threaded his arms behind her shoulders and at the backs of her knees.
His knee barked louder than ever before. One of the nurses had recognized him from a previous visit, noting the exaggerated limp as he carved a deep back-and-forth gorge through the lobby while the physician was tending to Drennan. In minutes, she’d arranged a cortisone shot to ease the inflammation, but theeffect wouldn’t take hold for a couple more hours. He’d survived worse injuries in his years growing up in his childhood home, and after everything she’d been through today, he wasn’t going to ask Drennan to give anything more before she was ready.
A moan escaped her throat as he shifted her against his chest, her eyes fluttering against the sun’s western assault. Her mouth parted on an exhale and reminded him of the few short hours she’d been tangled around him the night they’d met. How he’d played that exact sound over and over in his head, how she’d trusted him of all the people she could’ve gone home with in that bar. How she’d given him a gift of reprieve he’d have to work the rest of his life to repay. Starting now.
“Shhh.” Harvey intensified his hold on her, that dark hole of all the things he’d imagined going wrong with her and the pregnancy calming as her body heat filtered through his uniform. She was here. She was alive. She and the baby were healthy despite what’d happened in the park. He hauled her up the three stairs leading to the front door and tapped in the key code for the smart lock, then kicked the door open. “I’ve got you.”
She turned her face into his chest, as though seeking him out as they crossed the threshold. “Harvey.”
An electrified shock shot straight from his head to his toes at the sound of his name coming from her lips. He’d been more than happy to go along with their silent agreement to leave everything they were out of his bedroom that first night he’d brought her home, to just be in the moment. But now, regret from not hearing her say his name on repeat as she’d shattered beneath his touch struck hard.
Using his heel to close the door behind him, Harvey headed straight for the back bedroom, bypassing his sad living room, the too-small galley kitchen and bare walls. Still carrying her in his arms. Where she belonged.
The thought brought him up short of crossing that second threshold. He stared at the crisp black comforter and sheets begging for her scent as much as his senses craved that dose of her in the weeks after she’d gone. Her lithe weight barely registered as an internal battle waged, though his knee had a bit more to say. Part of him recognized how easy it would be to settle her back in his bed. To allow her to claim it all over again, even just for a few hours of rest. Drennan would be comfortable and be able to sleep off the physical lethargy of the pregnancy, as she deserved. But that other part of him, the one that refused to drag her and the baby into the pain and suffering he couldn’t stop carrying had him retreating back into the living room.
The couch wasn’t new, the navy fabric stretching in some places and stained in others. A hand-me-down that served its purpose as a place to ice his knee and catch the next hockey game on his days off, but for the first time, he wanted to drive straight to the furniture store and buy something worthy of the woman in his arms. Something new with deep cushions, lots of space to relax or take a nap on and without stains. Maybe in her favorite color.
This whole house had come furnished apart from his mattress to serve as a low-rent option for rangers assigned to work Zion National Park. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom layout provided privacy without the need for a roommate and an escape when his people skills had run dry, which was more often than he wanted to admit. His lease kept him from painting the beige walls with a color from this century or from tearing up the peeling linoleum in the kitchen and the shag-like carpet through the rest of the place, but he’d managed to add some personal touches here and there. Though the stark realization of how little his child would enjoy a place so empty and bland shocked him straight to the core.
Damn it. Not his. He hadn’t brought Drennan back here to play house. He wasn’t going to have weekends with his kid or first steps in this room. The baby wasn’t going to have a decorated room of their own or birthday parties at the kitchen table. This was nothing more than him ensuring the woman he’d gotten pregnant didn’t pass out while behind the wheel on her way home. As soon as she was out of here, he’d go back to his pathetic life, his job that got him out of his head and keeping his distance from her.
Easing Drennan across the longest side of the L-shaped sectional, he untangled her fist from his uniform shirt and arranged a pillow behind her head. Dark eyelashes fanned across the tops of her cheeks, and he couldn’t help but hold on to her hand a little longer as he realized how at ease she’d become despite barely knowing him. She needed to be more careful. Harvey smoothed a couple strands of hair away from her face, a jolt of want squeezing the air from his chest.
For quiet moments like this as they wound down from their jobs at the end of the day, for home-cooked meals spent right on this couch in front of the TV together. Probably burned if he was in charge of dinner. For breaking in this couch, the dining table, the kitchen counter, the hallway wall with their lovemaking, and filling this empty house with Drennan’s gasps. For mornings when he could feel the baby kicking before she woke up and late night runs to the grocery store to fulfill her weird cravings.
His body moved without much conscious thought on his part. In this moment, Harvey could see it so clearly. Wanted it more than he’d wanted anything else in his life. He took a seat at the edge of the couch, careful not to rouse her, but Drennan turned into him, once again seeking him out.
But none of those wants were real. And they wouldn’t ever be real. He was too corrupted by the evil that’d raised him to have anything so pure and beautiful to himself. Hadn’t hisfather always warned him of that? That no matter how hard Harvey tried, he would always end up hurting the people he loved. He couldn’t outrun it. That vicious streak for cruelty ran in his blood. Had become part of him from a young age. The betrayal, the rage. The military had helped him shape it into something useful, but now that he was a civilian, Harvey could feel it building up under his skin. Just waiting for the perfect opportunity to lash out. He would always crave to release the inner burn of anger in the most violent way possible, but he could do better than the men in his family had. He could make the choice not to let it ever touch Drennan or his baby.
The demon that resided inside of him—inside his father—would only be put off for so long. Mere days seemed to be the longest his dad could go without coming home from work wound too tight and ready to spring. On those nights, Harvey had managed to find someplace to hide for the most part, but he’d been too weak to protect his mother from taking the brunt of his father’s anger. The bills they couldn’t meet, too few work hours, his lack of promotion, spending money Mom didn’t have permission to spend—it all combined into a hell Harvey hadn’t been able to escape until he was eighteen. And in that hell an angel had suffered.
His mother’s smiles had shone less as weeks and months and years under her husband’s fists passed. The circles beneath her eyes had gotten darker. She’d gotten thinner. The most beautiful and kind woman he’d known had wilted to almost nothing by the time Harvey had been ten years old. It was why he’d never spent more than one night with a woman over the years, why he’d kept to himself in junior high and high school and throughout college and isolated himself from friends. No close relationships, even in the military, and he hadn’t wanted them.
Until Drennan.
Harvey dropped his hand away from her face, forcing himself to stand and back away from the temptation sprawled across his couch. The hollowness that’d made him one of the army’s finest infantrymen seemed to hiss at the loss of her skin pressed against his, but emotional—physical—distance was for the best.
He’d let her get some sleep, make sure she was eating enough for the benefit of the baby, then take her back to her place.
Stick with the plan, see it through.
It was the only way to protect her.
Chapter Seven
Her stomach groaned loud enough to wake her.
This was not her house.
Oh, crap. Had she passed out again?
Drennan shoved her upper body up, her elbows sinking into a sectional that’d seen much better days. Flickers of memory tried taking hold as she studied the simple living room. The layout looked familiar. A stinging in the back of her hand reminded her of the IV. Then Cassidy. And Harvey. He’d offered to drive her home, and then… She’d fallen asleep.
