Page 2 of Burning Love
“What’s going to happen to me? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Just tell me.”
“Your father’s name is Dean Rigby and he’s in town. I met with him yesterday. He’ll be here in thirty minutes. You’re still a minor and we’ve got legal paperwork for him to get custody of you. I’m not going to make it until you turn eighteen.”
“I’ve got to live with a stranger?” he shouted out. “Where?”
“Dean lives two hours away. He’s getting an apartment in town for the next few months so you can finish school and graduate. You and he can figure it out after. I hope you give him a chance. He’s a great guy.”
“If he was so great why did he leave you?” he yelled.
“I left him,” his mother explained. He was shaking his head like a dog in the rain. “I never told him I was pregnant.”
“Why?” He was running his hands through his hair. All he wanted to do was slam out of the room, but his mother wouldn’t be able to get up and give chase and he needed an answer. “Make me understand.”
“He would have taken you from me,” she said. She was tiring now and he should let her rest, but she forced herself to hit thebutton and have the bed lift her higher. “His family had more than I did. I didn’t want to share you. I was mad at him. We’d only dated for a month. His parents didn’t like me. They only met me once, but I heard his mother telling him that he could do better.”
None of this made sense. “So after a month of dating you just left without a word to him?”
“I broke it off with him, then I left. When I returned home I found out I was pregnant and decided not to tell him. He didn’t come after me, so it’s not like he cared all that much.”
“I don’t know what to say about this.” What he wanted to do was put his fist through the wall.
“There isn’t much for you to say,” his mother said. “Dean will be here soon. Don’t fight this. Give him a chance. You not only look just like him, you act it too. You guys are going to get along great. Please, promise me you’ll try.”
“I can’t promise you something like that,” he spit out.
Jace turned and walked out the door.
His world was already being torn apart knowing he was losing the only person who’d been there for him and now he found out she’d been lying to him his whole life. This was a nightmare worse than the one he was living.
The minute he whipped the front door open to leave in his car, a truck pulled into the driveway and blocked it. The guy climbed out and it was as if a time machine from the future dropped him in front of himself aged twenty years.
They both stood rooted to the spot, Dean speaking first. “Oh my God, I’ve got a son.”
The guy burst into tears, Jace doing the same. Only rather than embrace the stranger who stood there with his arms held out, he turned and ran down the street.
1
SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THAT
Twenty Years Later
The bells were ringingand alarms going off.
Captain Jace Rigby and his men of Fayetteville Station 11 raced into their gear and to the trucks.
He jumped into the captain’s truck and was ahead of them speeding through the streets.
A gated community had private security and they were patched right through for an alarm of smoke and no one responding at the residence.
It was the middle of the day, which probably meant no one was home.
When they got to the gates, they were opened and he and his men went through the streets to the house on their call.
They ran to the front door and were banging on it, found it locked and alerted the security company to override the locks or he was breaking the door down.
The door was unlocked in seconds and he was rushing through the door first, as he always did, with his men behind him.
Hoses in hand, ready to battle the blaze, once they could find the source of the smoke in this massive house.
