Page 15 of Delivery After Dark
Life was a major drag, with no chance of anything changing to make it better. John’s silence was an answer, even if it wasn’t the one Niall had hoped for. Being on this tiny island, in the off-season, made it more likely they’d run into each other somewhere like the grocery store or the pharmacy or somewhere else everyone had to go eventually.
That hadn’t happened yet, and he’d stopped hoping it would. What good would it do to come face-to-face with the one he wanted but couldn’t have? That would only make a bad situation worse.
He sang “Brown Eyed Girl” because familiar favorites usually got the crowd singing, too, which took some of the pressure off him. Every face in the place was familiar to him since the tourists had left, which was usually comforting. Now, though, the only face he wanted to see was the only one that wasn’t there.
Many of the island’s year-round residents had turned out to support Billy’s brother, Morgan, and a lot of them had ended up at the Beachcomber. He’d looked for John at the funeral, since he was a regular at the gym and had been friendly with Billy. If he was at the service, though, Niall hadn’t seen him. Perhaps that was strategic on John’s part.
Ugh, he hated thinking about this nonstop. That was the primary reason he’d stayed single after ending a long relationship back home in Ireland. He’d had enough heartbreak then and had vowed to steer clear of the whole mess when he came to Gansett. That plan had worked well until John made him forget all about his plan to stay single. And look at where that had gotten him.
Niall caught Jace looking at him with an odd expression on his face. You okay? He mouthed the question so no one else would hear him ask it.
Why was Jace asking him that?
After realizing he’d zoned out between songs, Niall nodded and forced his attention to the music that’d been his salvation before and would be again. If that didn’t work for him, he had no idea what would.
* * *
Tiffany had wanted to come to support Morgan, but the longer they were there, the worse she felt about being away from Ashleigh. Her mom was with Ash, which was the next best thing to Tiffany herself, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to be with her little girl around the clock to keep a watch on her, even if that wasn’t feasible.
Ash had gone back to school a couple of weeks after Jim’s body was found, and she’d done pretty well getting back into her routine. Tiffany was in regular contact with her teacher and had picked her up early a few times when she’d been having a rough day.
Nothing could’ve prepared her or Blaine or their extended family for the challenge of helping a seven-year-old through the sudden loss of her father. Add that to the complicated feelings Tiffany had toward Jim, and it’d been a rough couple of months.
In the last hour, there’d also been a nagging pain in her midsection that was becoming harder to ignore. She shouldn’t have eaten that piece of pizza from the food table. Everything gave her heartburn in the third trimester, especially tomato sauce. She knew better, and now she was paying the price.
Except the pain wasn’t the usual sting of heartburn. This was more like a hard cramp in her side that intensified every few minutes.
“What’s wrong?” Blaine asked.
“Nothing.”
“You keep flinching.”
“Do I?”
He nodded. “Twice in the last ten minutes.”
“I have a weird pain in my side.”
“What kind of pain?”
“The kind that hurts.” She gasped when it showed up again, harder than ever this time. “It can’t be the baby. It’s too soon.”
“Let’s get you to the clinic right now.”
Tiffany bit back a moan. She didn’t want to go to the clinic. She wanted to get home to her girls.
Blaine didn’t give her a chance to object as he helped her up and held her while she got her bearings.
A gush of liquid between her legs caught her by surprise as she looked down to see a watery mess on the floor.
“Oh my God.” Blaine picked her up and rushed her out of there so fast, her head spun as the people they passed went by in a blur of concern and curiosity. He had her to his police department SUV in a matter of seconds, buckled her in and ran for the driver’s seat. They launched out of the Beachcomber parking lot with the siren blaring.
“Is that necessary?” she asked of the siren between sharp pains.
“Yeah, it is.”
He drove faster than he ever had before with her in the car and pulled up to the clinic less than a minute later.
