Lana was packing her duffel when the front door burst open. She whirled, heart leaping into her throat as if she expected . . . what? The fire to blow her door down like an uninvited house guest? Get a grip, Lana, she thought as she darted out into the hall.

But her heart refused to descend when she saw the man standing in the entryway.

Hank Logan breathed raggedly, in and out, like he had a pair of bellows for lungs. Like he had run back to her—all the way from Alaska. The way his shoulders squared, she knew he was ready for a fight, but—fight who? With fear, with the fire? With her?

It was with her.

"What the hell are you still doing here, Lana?" His voice was hoarse as he stalked toward her. Lana backed to the doorway of her bedroom, but not because she was intimidated by him. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to take in just how much more she needed to pack. "The fire already caught a few houses down! What are you thinking?"

"Don't talk to me as if I were a child." She surprised herself by the tone of voice she used, and she could tell she surprised Hank, too, by the way he stopped walking toward her. "I know the fire's here, Hank. I'm almost done packing. I just had to get a few more things."

Hank glanced around the room. She knew that he was only just noticing for the first time the naked walls of her home.

She turned from him, trying to keep her composure, all the while stunned by his sudden reappearance in her life. She crossed to her bed to finish, and found herself arrested around the middle—though she managed to retain her grip on the duffel bag's handles.

"Hank!"

But the fire chief wasn't to be reasoned with. He had caught her around the waist, and he was hauling her out of the house. Lana kicked out at the empty air—she didn't know why she thought that would be an effective protest—and clutched at her bag to keep the contents from spilling out. She was furious that she should feel anything remotely resembling embarrassment at being dragged bodily out of her own home.

She decided to convert that humiliation to anger.

As soon as they were out on the front lawn, she hauled off with her duffel bag and hit him in the face. The roar of the encroaching fire, the smoke, the sparks in the air seemed to mirror her roiling emotion.

Hank grunted and stepped back, finally releasing her, and Lana was ready. She whirled. "Get your hands off me, Hank Logan! You have no right to touch me! You have no right to come back here!" She was yelling nonsense, but it was the truth from her heart. Everything she said, she felt with her whole being in that moment.

"What if a gas main catches, Lana?" he demanded. "This whole block will go up! We have to leave, right now!"

Lana realized too late that the duffel bag had done nothing to deter him. Hank was coming for her again. She pulled away, out of reach, teeth clenched in anger. She had never felt so incensed in all her life.

"Get away from me," she repeated. "You were leaving—what do you care?"

"Of course I care!" Hank snapped. "Why do you think I came flying back into town?"

"I don't know!" Lana cried. "So you could be the hero? Isn't that why you came back to town in the first place all those months ago? Do you think that's the only time I need you? And what happens when the crisis is over? What happens to the hero? He'll take off as planned! So he might as well have never come back to begin with!"

Hank seized her arm and began to tug her toward the idling truck. Lana knew it was stupid to fight him on this point; she had been planning on leaving, anyway. What did he think? That she was so crushed by his departure, by her own sorrow, that she was willing to die in her own home?

"We can talk about this once I get you somewhere safe," he said, but Lana barely heard him.

"I don't need you, Hank," she protested desperately. "I don't need you. I don't need your help. I don't need you to be a hero, and I don't need you to be a father. I can do this myself!"

Hank froze. "Father?" he repeated dumbly.

Lana stared. Did she look as stricken as he did in that moment? Oh God, how had she let any of that slip out? She’d thought she would never see him again! Her defenses were down, and the truth was out.

She turned from his intense gaze back toward the fire. Another house down the block, one closer, had caught as the fire advanced; hungry flames were climbing the walls and shooting high into the air from the roof. The wall of heat was coming for them.

And there was no retreating from this.

"Yes, Hank," she said finally. She shut her eyes against it all. "I'm pregnant."