An Unlikely Father. Cynthia Thomason
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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.
Wait a minute, a voice inside her head cautioned. What are you doing? A woman who’s having a… A woman who’s pregnant isn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Isn’t that what you’ve heard? Isn’t that why you’ve always pitied those poor females in the heat of summer who are sweating for two without benefit of a little cold fermented malt grain?
Slowly, certainly reluctantly, Helen lowered the bottle back into the cooler.
“What’s the matter?” Donny asked. “It’s close enough to noon, even for you.”
She wiped her wet hand along her shorts. “It’s not that. I just changed my mind.”
“Suit yourself.” He held up a roll of sandpaper. “Anyway, if you’re sticking around for a while, you might as well tear off a piece and start to work on the deck rail.”
She walked closer to the boat, but didn’t reach for the sandpaper. “Donny, I have to tell you something.”
He set down the roll and went back to work. “Okay, go ahead.”
She watched him a moment longer, listened to the sound of the rough-grained paper on the already smooth teakwood. For a minute, her skin tingled as if he were abrading her body instead of the sailboat. She rubbed her arms briskly. “Donny?”
He glanced up, squinted, returned his attention to the task. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He stopped sanding. Her heart skipped a beat. For a few torturous seconds, he glared at her over Donovan’s Dawn with extraordinarily wide eyes, and Helen waited for his next words to restart her breathing.
He dropped the paper and planted his elbows on the railing. “What did you say?”
“I just found out yesterday. I took one of those tests. It was positive.”
He shook his head as if denying it would make it so. “That’s impossible.”
“No, only nearly impossible. Anyway, remember Friday night two weeks ago after we… Well, didn’t you say that something didn’t seem right, that maybe there was something wrong with the condom?”
“Oh, hell, that was just talk. Besides, it was after your friend’s engagement party. We were too juiced to know what we were doing.”
She felt the grip of shame in the tightening of her stomach muscles. The reminder of her overindulgence at Claire’s party was still enough to make her cringe in mortification. She was too old to excuse such irresponsible behavior anymore. Getting drunk and stupid was just, well, stupid.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said. “I’m pregnant and that’s a fact.”
At least he didn’t argue the indisputable. He simply draped his hands over the side of Donovan’s Dawn and mumbled something. She thought she heard the word damn.
“What are you going to do?” he asked after a moment.
The wording of his question stunned her since it seemed as if he’d completely left himself out of assuming any responsibility. By asking her what she was going to do he was, in effect, telling her to do something.
She fought an escalating anger. Finn always told her she tended to act without thinking, to strike without having a justifiable target. She wasn’t going to do that, this time. She’d just dropped a bomb on Donny’s plans, on their plans together. He had a right to be defensive, confused.
“My first thought was to tell you,” she said calmly. “You’re the father, so obviously you have a stake in what happens with this ba…pregnancy.” She looked into his eyes and spoke with clear intent. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well, hell, I don’t know.” He rubbed his hand along the railing of the sailboat. His touch seemed gentle, caressing, even more than when he made love to her. “We have plans, Helen. When I got the boat done, we were going to take her around the Keys, sail all the way to the Turks and Caicos Islands, just you and me.”
“Plans can change, Donny. Life happens.” She’d never told him that his idea had been impractical from the start, anyway. Maybe deep down she’d hoped they could sail away just the two of them, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe some people believed in fantasies, but not Helen Sweeney.
Donny took a long swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The eyes that focused on hers were cold and distant. So were his words. “I don’t know, Helen. I’m forty-two years old. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of a kid and a mortgage and a college savings account.”
Her eyes burned and Helen cursed her frailty. She wasn’t going to cry. “I know it’s a shock, Donny. It is for me, too. I still can’t believe it. But it’s happened, and we have to…” Her voice hitched. Damn. She couldn’t go on, so she sat on the cooler, dangled her hands between her knees and took a deep breath.
At least a minute passed, the longest minute of Helen’s life, until Donny came around the boat and stood in front of her. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she brushed at a stubborn tear and