The Bachelor's Sweetheart

“Newcomb’s here,” Tom said. “Pulled in right after us.”

As if on cue, the second emergency squad came down the bank.

“We’ll get this little guy up,” Jon said. “I don’t like the looks of that smoke from the engine, not with all the dead winter growth.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Tom said. “Jack, Donnelly.” He motioned to the front of the car, and Josh and Jack began soaking it.

The third emergency squad arrived as Josh and the other firefighters were tramping back up to the road.

Tom approached the deputy when they reached the pavement. “If you want to get him to county lockup—” he jerked his thumb toward the deputy’s car “—we can take over traffic control.”

Josh made a furtive glance toward the car. The man had his head down, chin resting on his chest. It couldn’t be Dad. He looked away. One wrecker had removed the pickup, and he could hear the fading siren of the Schroon EMS team on its way to the hospital. Hill’s truck waited to take the car. Soon after, the other two rescue squads had extricated the woman and other child and taken off for the hospital.

“You guys can head back to the fire hall,” Tom said. “I’ll go back to the shop with the wrecker.”

“The guy in the cruiser,” Josh said. “Anyone we know?”

Tom shook his head. “The deputy said he didn’t have any ID.”

Josh wiped his forearm across his forehead. Responding to accidents always took more out of him than the actual physical demands warranted. He looked at the evening sky. If it wasn’t too late, maybe he’d stop by the Majestic and hang out with Tessa and Myles. The drunk in the deputy’s car and the little boy on the stretcher were juxtaposed in his mind. He could use some companionship to take the edge off before going back to the empty cabin.

His cell phone buzzed as he walked to the truck. It could be Tessa. He stopped and checked the phone. Connor’s, not Tessa’s, name flashed at him. Two missed calls and a text. His little brother was on his honeymoon. What could he want?

Josh swiped his finger across the screen and went stock-still when he read the text.

Call me. We got back from the beach, and there was a voice-mail message on my cell, forwarded from the parsonage phone. From Dad.

Chapter Four (#ulink_e8cae50f-fbc4-5dba-9d9d-14b183122f48)

Josh stared blankly at the phone screen. The colors of his apps blurred together. He shook his vision clear and jammed the phone back in his pocket. Dear old Dad. He had no doubt the call Connor had gotten was from their father. It fit his MO. Reappear after a bender expecting the family to welcome him home as if nothing had happened. Except this bender had lasted nine years. Dad had known better than to call him or Jared. He’d called Connor because Connor was a minister and most like their mother, making him the only one of them likely to take the call.

Josh grabbed the door handle and hurled himself into the back of the fire truck, looking over at the cleared accident scene. Bile rose in his throat as he focused his mind on the glimpse he’d had of the man in the sheriff’s car. Once they were back at the firehouse and he called Connor, the first thing he was going to ask was when his father had called and from where. His skin tightened. If it was his father, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d hurt someone driving drunk. Only this time it was kids.

“You all right, Josh?” Paul Delacroix, Connor’s brother-in-law, asked.

Josh blinked Paul and the other guys in the truck into focus. “Yeah.”

“Kids,” Paul’s father said. “I hate responding to injury accidents, but it’s always worse when kids are involved.”

“Right,” Josh said. And not only in car accidents.

When they got to the firehouse, Josh took his time stowing his equipment. Now he sat in his pickup in the parking lot, his finger hovering over Connor’s call notice on his phone screen. He touched it and pressed the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Josh,” Connor answered.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Connor laughed. “No, we just got back from supper.”

“So, was it really him?” Josh refused to personalize the man by calling him Dad.

“Yeah, it was Dad.”

“You’re saying that from the message he left, or you got back to him?”

“I called him back before we went to dinner.”

“And he was drunk.”

“He didn’t sound drunk, wasn’t slurring his words.”

That didn’t mean he hadn’t been impaired enough to hurt that family.

“Dad called to—”

Josh clenched his free fist. How could Connor sound so calm about this? “I have a good idea why he called.”

“He—”

Josh cut Connor off again. “What time did he call and when did you call him back?” Connor had probably called when their father was in the sheriff car and still had his cell phone, before the deputy had taken him to Elizabethtown and booked him. “Where did he say he was calling from?”

“Back off. Do you want to know what he said or not?”

“I’d like the answers to my questions. When you called and texted me, I was responding to an accident caused by a drunk driver. A woman and two kids hurt. When we got there, the sheriff’s deputy already had the other driver in his car. From his profile, the driver could have been the old man.”

“The woman, the kids, do you know who they are?”

“No, only that one of the kids looked about Hope’s age. The rescue squads took them to Glens Falls Hospital. Tom Hill probably knows.”

“I’ll call him later. As for Dad, he left the message this afternoon. I called him back about five-thirty at the Super 8 in Ticonderoga.”

The original call had been too early to be the old man calling for Connor to bail him out of the DWI. But the callback was in line with the accident before the deputy had left. “That’s what he told you, he was at the Super 8?”

“No, the number he called from that I called back was the Super 8. I did a reverse phone number lookup before I called.”

Josh rubbed the back of his neck as some of the anger drained out of him. The man who’d caused the accident this evening couldn’t have been their father. “Where’s he been and what does he want?”

“All over the country. California mostly. He said being homeless was a lot more comfortable in San Diego than in Plattsburg.”

“I’m supposed to feel sorry for him? He had a home here.”

“No. He’s in a twelve-step program and wants to make amends to us.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. I wonder what he really wants out of us.”

“He said he went down to Pennsylvania and talked with Mom.”

Josh shook his head. “Unbelievable that he could show his face to Mom after everything he put her through, including dropping off the face of the earth and letting her think he was dead. Did you call her? He was probably looking for his share of money from her selling the house in Paradox Lake, the one she wore herself out working at the diner to pay for.”