Island Haven Read online

  Temptation has the worst timing

  Mercedes Stone has no time for men. Between caring for her sick grandmother, running her own business and volunteering at her family’s women’s shelter she barely has time for herself. So dating a man as complicated as Scott Pataki is definitely out of the question.

  That doesn’t mean she’ll turn her back on Scott’s pregnant teenage sister. Even if helping her does put Mercedes dangerously close to the temptation that is Scott. It’s not just the killer abs and dimples that make him so irresistible. It’s the man she sees when his guard is down. If only she could help him realize the importance of family. And remind herself that his family doesn’t include her.

  Scott knew who was at the door before he answered it

  And he opened it anyway. “You get an A+ for persistence,” he growled.

  “We brought lunch.” Mercedes held out a large paper bag that smelled of Mexican food. A meal wasn’t going to sway him. He was about to tell her that when Mercedes pushed past him into the living room, dragging Gemma, his half sister, behind her.

  “Mind if we invade your kitchen?”

  “Yes. I do.” The kitchen wasn’t fit for any visitor, let alone this woman who, he would bet, groomed her kitchen as well as she groomed herself. Say whatever else you wanted to about her, she did make herself pretty and smelled nice to boot. Like...springtime. He couldn’t say what that meant exactly, except the scent took him back years, to a time when life was easier. Lighter. He scowled.

  “Here’s fine, then.” Mercedes shared a conspiratorial look with Gemma and helped herself to the couch and coffee table.

  Mercedes must have found her stubborn, pushy mojo overnight. Wasn’t he lucky?

  She was average height with nicer-than-average curves. Her dark wavy hair was everywhere, though she’d tried to control it by pulling the front parts back in a clip. Her calculating smile at Gemma highlighted prominent cheekbones and drew his attention to her glossy lips.

  If she hadn’t been so bent on steamrolling him into being this girl’s knight in shining armor, he might have considered getting to know her on a more personal level.

  Short-term, of course.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for picking up the fifth The Texas Firefighters book! If you’ve read any of the earlier books in the series, you may remember mentions of paramedic Scott Pataki. Scott seemed like a good guy, so I thought I’d give him his own story.

  He is a good guy, but he’s in a bad place. A dark one. And he believes the only way to save himself from the things that are eating away at him is to escape San Amaro Island.

  It’s a bad time to get involved with someone. Anyone.

  When his pregnant half sister, someone he’d never met and never wanted to meet, shows up and brings Mercedes Stone with her, involvement is inevitable. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to fight it for all he’s worth, though.

  I hope you enjoy Island Haven. If you’re inclined, please let me know what you think of Mercedes and Scott at [email protected]. To read more about my other books, visit my website at www.amyknupp.com, or look me up on Facebook.

  Happy reading,

  Amy Knupp

  Island Haven

  Amy Knupp

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amy Knupp lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, five cats and a turtle named Scuttle. She graduated from the University of Kansas with degrees in French and journalism and feels lucky to use very little of either one in her writing career. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America, Mad City Romance Writers and Wisconsin Romance Writers. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, college basketball, addictive computer games and researching island havens, preferably in person. To learn more about Amy and her stories, visit www.amyknupp.com.

  Books by Amy Knupp

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1342—UNEXPECTED COMPLICATION

  1402—THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  1463—DOCTOR IN HER HOUSE

  1537—THE SECRET SHE KEPT

  1646—PLAYING WITH FIRE*

  1652—A LITTLE CONSEQUENCE*

  1658—FULLY INVOLVED*

  1702—BURNING AMBITION*

  1748—BECAUSE OF THE LIST

  *The Texas Firefighters

  Other titles by this author are available in ebook format.

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  For Justin...you know why.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER ONE

  LAST NIGHT WAS GRUESOME.

  Scott Pataki poured himself a glass of whiskey, straight up. So what if it was a quarter after eight in the morning?

  Eyes closed, he downed half the glass, trying to expel the gory images from his paramedic shift. The motorcycle-and-cement-truck tangle had been bad enough. Grisly. Closed casket for sure. But to follow that up, not fifteen minutes after they’d gotten the ambulance cleaned and restocked, with a suicide call…

  Thirty-six more days was all he had to make it through. Then he would finally escape—if he was lucky, before the job ruined him completely.

  He swigged down the rest of the liquor, set aside the glass and headed to the hallway, unsnapping his jeans as he went. Before he could reach his bedroom, the doorbell pealed through the quiet. He swore and resumed his path to the shower but heard the sound again not twenty seconds later.

  “At 8:26 a.m.?” he muttered, glancing at his watch. “Should be illegal to bother someone at this hour.”

  He retraced his steps to the living room. If he didn’t get rid of whoever was out there right now, chances were they’d only come back in a few hours and interrupt his sleep. If he still had the ability to collapse like the dead and ignore it, there’d be no problem. But these days his sleep was as bothered as his waking hours.

  Jaw clenched, he whipped the door open, planning to celebrate ridding himself of the unwanted visitor with another shot. Two if it was a religious zealot trying to save his soul.

  If the teenage girl on his front step was a religion freak, they were getting younger. And tougher.

  “Hi,” she said, sizing him up. Vaguely familiar, restless-looking hazel eyes stared at him expectantly. Obviously she’d gotten the wrong apartment.

  “Can I help you?” he said impatiently.

  “You’re Scott Pataki, right?”

  “That’s me.”

  That she knew his name didn’t faze him. He was a paramedic. He met scores of people. He didn’t recall seeing this girl before, though.

  “I’m Gemma Lawrence.” She said it alm
ost as if she was challenging him.

  He looked her over thoroughly, racking his brains for a connection. She was only a few inches shorter than his six feet, with messy, coarse-looking dirty-blond hair that hung to her shoulders. Her face was bare of makeup, except for the dark eyeliner she’d look better without. Her sloppy, oversize sweatshirt was not only stretched out and wrinkled as though it’d been slept in for a month straight, but it was all wrong for the weather. The temperature on San Amaro Island this stifling June morning was already close to ninety-five degrees. Ripped, faded jeans and orange camo tennis shoes rounded out her out-of-season getup.

  “Dale Pataki is my father,” she added.

  Oh, hell, no…

  Son of a bitch, yes. The eyes. That’s where he knew them from. Once you filtered out the too-heavy eye makeup, they matched his own father’s. The realization reared itself like a rabid pit bull that’d worked its way out of a too-small backyard kennel.

  Scott fought the urge to slam the door and act as if the past sixty seconds hadn’t happened. Just as he’d been doing for ten years.

  Make that three shots.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  She glanced to the side, probably at one of his crazy-ass neighbors down the way, then back at him. “Hot out here.”

  “That’s summer in Texas for you.” Chitchat about the weather wasn’t going to win him over even if she hadn’t just uttered the name of the man that made his blood boil.

  “Can I come in?”

  He eyed her warily, then inadvertently looked in the direction of the shower and bed he ached for. This problem wasn’t going to go away until he handled it. He stepped aside to let her in, glancing at his watch. “It’s past my bedtime. Make it quick.”

  As Gemma swiftly entered his apartment, chin up, he noticed the overstuffed backpack hanging from her shoulders and the black purse with metal accents that was big enough to hide a small child in.

  “Do you have a roommate?” she asked, looking around the living room, taking a couple of steps toward his video-game system at the other end. She seemed to be scoping out the place.

  “Not anymore. What do you want…Gemma, was it?”

  She whirled around and pegged him with a determined, measuring stare. “Yes. Gemma. I always imagined you being friendlier.”

  He’d never imagined her being anything. Never thought of her as a real person. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?”

  She looked at him for another moment then became unusually interested in the thumbnail on her right hand. As Scott’s patience slipped, she raised her long lashes again as if daring him to look away first. “I need a place to stay.”

  “Why would you think you could stay here?” Scott uncrossed his arms and did his best to remain calm as she wandered to the window. In the silence, he fought an inner battle against the rage his father’s name stirred. Why today? He wasn’t sure he could handle that particular memory lane anytime, but today of all days, after his worse-than-usual shift, he was at the end of his rope.

  When she didn’t immediately answer his question, he fired more at her. “Why aren’t you at home with your mom? Fort Worth, wasn’t it?”

  Her shoulders jerked slightly, as if she’d been absorbed in her thoughts. Seconds ticked by.

  “My mom kicked me out.” Her tone was indifferent, cool. She walked over to the old couch and sat. The only sign that she wasn’t totally at ease was a subconscious rubbing together of the fingers and thumb of one hand. With the other hand, she touched her abdomen purposefully. “I’m…pregnant.”

  Pregnant? He glanced at her belly but between the army-green sweatshirt that sagged over her and the way she was leaning forward, he couldn’t see any telling bump.

  Though she looked mature for her age, she wasn’t much more than a child herself. Her skin looked soft and fresh, undamaged by the sun. Her eyes told a different story, though.

  Scott opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t figure out what to say to her announcement. Instead, he lowered himself to the arm on the opposite end of the couch and chewed on his dry lip, at a loss. Anger he could handle, but her revelation dampened that from a bottled-up rage to more of a slow, steady boil. Sympathy was tempering it, in spite of himself.

  “Your mom kicked you out because you’re pregnant?” he asked unnecessarily.

  Gemma nodded. “In theory. Personally, I think she’s just been waiting for an excuse. Which works for me because I planned to leave after graduation anyway.”

  “Did you graduate?”

  “Close enough. The ceremony’s tomorrow. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about my mom, but she’s not terribly reasonable.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about your mom.” Nor did he want to. “How pregnant are you?”

  “Twenty-eight weeks.”

  He calculated the months in his head and looked again at her middle.

  “The sweatshirt covers it and I’m relatively small, I’ve been told, because of my height, but I assure you I wouldn’t make that up.”

  “Where’s the father?”

  Where was he coming up with these questions and why was he asking them? This was so far from being his problem and still…he couldn’t throw her out. Yet.

  The thing was, she damn sure couldn’t stay here.

  “He’s not in the picture.” Her answer came quickly.

  Scott had several things to say about Daddy-O leaving her high and dry, but he reminded himself again this wasn’t his problem. His concern was finding a place for her to go, someone to help her. He was in a bad state himself, but maybe not as coldhearted as he and everyone else thought.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked, softening his tone.

  He’d been aware, painfully aware, his dad had a child with another woman, but until now, she’d never had a face. It’d been easier to hate her before.

  “We’re in the same boat. It was you, our honorable father who I haven’t talked to in almost four years, or the street. You win.”

  He tensed at the blunt reference—the use of our—to the reality that had caused him to walk away from his so-called family ten years ago. It didn’t bear thinking of, not now with this stranger sitting in his apartment. Not ever. “Why would you even come up with the idea of showing up here?”

  He’d never once had any desire to meet his dad’s other family.

  “You live on an island. We’re practically family. Sounds ideal to me.”

  “We’re not family.” Scott had once been perfectly content being part of a family of three—just him, his mom and his dad. Then he’d found out the truth. Now the word family had very little significance to him.

  “Half.” She had a way of sounding removed from the argument, as though she didn’t have any stake in it, and yet, there was a contradicting edge beneath her words.

  Scott swore as he shot to his feet. “Come on.”

  “What?”

  The unveiled spark of hope that flitted over her face got to him, but he wasn’t going to be her solution or her savior. Couldn’t.

  “I’ll buy you a bus ticket to get home.” He didn’t have much cash available, but he could spare a little if it would get her back where she belonged—and give him some peace. “Your mom is probably worried about you.”

  He expected her to protest, but she stared at him for several long, heavy seconds, all traces of toughness gone from her face. She rose wearily, straining under the weight of her backpack, and he wondered how long it’d been since she’d left home.

  Shaking his head, he reminded himself of who she was and led her to the door. A stop at the ATM was all he could do for her. His father’s love child wasn’t someone he could handle charitably, now or ever.

  Sometimes the person you pinned your hopes on wasn’t cut out to be a hero.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MERCEDES STONE WANTED to wrap this beautiful girl in a hug and protect her from the crazy world. Didn’t matter that Gemma seemed fully able to protect hersel
f—at seventeen years old, she shouldn’t have to.

  She and Gemma had sat together for the better part of two hours on the pillow-covered love seat at Ruby Herman Women’s Services, founded by none other than her grandma, where Mercedes volunteered every other week. Four hours a month wasn’t much, and someday Mercedes would do more, but for now, Gram needed her at home. People like Gemma were the reason Mercedes burned to be more involved at the shelter, and ultimately to become the director. Helping women in need was much more her calling than her paying job of social-media marketing.

  Gemma had shown up in the middle of the afternoon after pocketing the cash her half brother had given her and tracking down the shelter on foot. Though she’d been reluctant to tell her story at first, Mercedes had eventually gotten her to talk more. To let some of it out. The girl, who had gone from defensive, crossed arms to leaning on the back of the love seat as if she needed it so she could stay upright, described herself as a loner. Mercedes was sure she’d been holding so much inside for so long that she wasn’t far from bursting.

  Gemma had kept her composure better than Mercedes, who’d become teary. She couldn’t help it. No one should have to deal with such a combination of bad luck, tough circumstances and crappy parenting. How could her mother send her away during the hardest time of her life, when she needed love and support the most?

  Mercedes turned her Honda CRV in to the parking lot on Miller Street that Gemma indicated. “This is where your half brother lives?”

  The building, squeezed between two larger condominiums in the center of the island, was in need of upkeep. It was tough to find any place on San Amaro Island that was low-rent, but this neighborhood was about as close as you could get. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “This is it. He’s in 6A.”

  Mercedes parked and turned off the engine. “You’re sure you want to try again?”

  “At this point, I don’t have a lot of options. I hope he’s done with his nap, though, otherwise I probably don’t stand a chance.”

  The clock on the dash read 7:22 p.m. At the end of their session at the shelter, Gemma’s growling stomach had snagged Mercedes’s attention. She’d discovered that today Gemma had consumed only a pint-size jug of milk and a bag of mini chocolate-chip cookies. Needing to get dinner for her grandma, Mercedes had taken Gemma home with her and made grilled cheese sandwiches for the three of them.