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“Did you know you were pregnant when we slept together?

“I don’t sleep around with married women, lady, especially pregnant ones. You’ve made me something I really did not want to be.”

Never much good at lying, Becca realized her mouth was still hanging open when Aiden stopped his tirade.

“You thought I was married?”

He scowled. “Not then. But when I saw you here—pregnant as a house—what was I supposed to think?”

“Uh…” It finally registered in Becca’s tired, stressed-out brain. He thought she’d been cheating on her husband. He didn’t know she didn’t have a husband. He didn’t suspect the baby was his.

A nervous, relieved laugh escaped before she could stop herself.

“Wait a minute.” Aiden peered at her in the gathering darkness. Then he snatched up her left hand. “You’re not wearing a ring.”

Becca pulled her fingers back. “I’m not married.” It was too late for that.

“If you’re not married, whose baby is that?” He pointed at her belly as if it were repugnant to him.

“It’s mine.”

Dear Reader,

Have you ever held on to a belief until some life-changing event forced you to rethink things? Such is the attitude of Aiden Rodas. Kids in his future? Bite your tongue! After the way his father abandoned him as a young child, Aiden is determined the Rodas line will end with him.

But Aiden didn’t count on Becca Thomas, an older career woman who’s let life pass her by and is now playing catch-up by having a baby of her own, on her own. When Aiden discovers that the baby Becca is carrying is his—holy moly!—he becomes determined to always be there for his child. And that means acknowledging to the world that he had a lot to do with Becca’s pregnancy.

Aiden doesn’t fit into Becca’s plans at all, but this expectant dad won’t leave her alone, and soon Becca’s not sure she wants him to.

I hope you enjoy my twist on a May-December romance. I love hearing from readers through my Web site at www.MelindaCurtis.com or at P.O. Box 150, Denair, CA 95316.

Melinda Curtis

Expectant Father
Melinda Curtis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the fathers out there who never cease to be surprised when they’re told they’re going to be a dad (this is how babies are made, guys).

Special love to the dads in my life— John, Paul, CR, Jeff, Jim, Sam, Pop, my own Dad and my husband. You all turned out okay when the babies arrived!

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

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” Spider shouted as he sprinted after nineteen men and women through a tunnel of flame.

No one heard him above the roar of the fire.

The Silver Bend Hot Shots were in a race for their lives down a mountainside they’d been trying to save. A few minutes ago, they’d been scraping away brush with shovels and Pulaskis, clearing a firebreak below a tame flank of the Flathead, Montana, fire and joking about how there’d be no overtime because this one would soon be out.

Then the wind changed, no longer a gentle breeze drifting up the slope from the creek. Instead it came from above, injecting life-giving oxygen into the smoldering embers until it was a ten-foot-tall wall of menacing flame. The new fire toyed with the Hot Shots for only a moment before bending across their six-foot-wide break and igniting a fresh blaze on the opposite side with a heated kiss. Tools scattered and packs were abandoned as the group began a desperate run for the ribbon of water they’d started at this morning.

As one of the two assistant superintendents of the crew, it was Spider’s job to make sure everyone made it out ahead of him. One misstep by someone and they’d go down like dominoes, more food for the fiery dragon on their heels.

How much farther?

Ahead of Spider, the fire seemed to be closing ranks around them. The heat and smoke made it difficult to fill his lungs with air. His heart pounded wildly from exertion, adrenaline and fear.

Someone stumbled. Swerving to the side, running perilously close to the tongue of flame on his right, Spider dragged Victoria back onto her feet.

“We’re not going to make it,” she cried, barely audible above the angry roar of the fire.

Even as some part of Spider agreed, he rejected defeat. At thirty, he still had things to accomplish, places to see and women to meet. He was single, with few responsibilities and few regrets, with only his dad to mourn him. The world was his oyster.

Too bad he was about to be fried.

TAP-TAP-TAP.

Inside the Fire Behavior tent at base camp, Becca Thomas smiled and tried to ignore the little one trying to get her attention. She focused instead on the most recent satellite photo of the Flathead fire taken that morning and compared it to the latest computer simulation she’d run on the computer provided by NIFC, the National Interagency Fire Center.

Tap-tap-tap.

“Give me a minute,” Becca murmured, rubbing her stomach, hoping her baby would be patient. She was happy to be pregnant, even if she was thirty-eight and single. She’d thought it all through, had planned down to the last penny. She and the baby were going to be all right on their own.

Her attention returned to the papers on the table that was her desk in this portable camp. There was something about this simulation she didn’t like. As one of NIFC’s senior Fire Behavior Analysts, Becca had learned to trust her instincts. She prided herself on finding the chaos factor in the weather, terrain and fuels, along with a dozen other things she considered when making predictions about a fire’s behavior. Still, there were things she couldn’t control—the way fires created their own wind and weather, and the decisions made by those in the field as to the risks they were willing to take, sometimes against her advice.

Tap-tap-TA-A-AP.

Sitting hunched over her makeshift desk at the Flathead fire was not her baby’s favorite position. Becca would have to get up soon. Until then…

What was it about the simulation that troubled her? She ran her finger over the inputs—the fire’s point of origin, wind speed, types of fuel, degree of slope, humidity readings. She returned her attention to the map of the area. The locations where lightning had struck and started the fire were marked, as was the perimeter of the fire as of eight hours ago.

The fire had spread from three strike points down three sides of a tall peak within the Flathead National Park, a remote, rugged mountain range lacking paved roads. It was bound to the east by the almost vertical, rocky cliffs of the Continental Divide. Everywhere else, the fire was moving hungrily through two generations of forest—giant pines and spruce towering sixty to eighty feet in the air, and younger trees twenty to forty feet high, interspersed with small, steep meadows that hadn’t yet given way to the forest. This area had not seen fire or been thinned by logging in years. Add to that two years of drought and you had one heck of a fuel source. If they didn’t stop it, the fire could easily work its way down to civilization in as little as a week.

Becca’s finger ringed the area around the fire once, twice, trying to pinpoint what was bothering her. And then she saw it—a small, thin creek twisting its way through ridges and rises. It wasn’t much, but in a craggy place like this the wind could ride along the creek bed and push to the top of a ridge, where it could dance with the wind cresting over the top of the mountain, creating a whirling dervish that would wreak havoc on an otherwise tame bed of fire. Making it unpredictable. Making it treacherous.

Tap-tap. The baby continued its protest. Becca pushed herself up out of the chair and began an ungainly pacing. At seven-and-a-half-months pregnant, she had the grace of an elephant.

Ignoring the sweat trickling between her breasts, she paused, squinting down at the map. The creek was mostly in Sector Three. Before dawn they’d sent a team in that area to build a fire line. The crew would have looked for an anchor to their line, something that would offer a safe-retreat zone or a natural barrier to the fire. A creek?

“Is something bothering you? Can I get you anything?” Julia, Becca’s assistant, offered, starting to rise from her seat in front of their computer. “Maybe NIFC shouldn’t have sent you out here.” Julia pronounced the federal agency nif-see.

“No, I’m fine.” Becca straightened, stretching her aching back. Maybe she was overthinking this one. Maybe she was looking for pitfalls and challenges where there were none because this was her last fire before the baby came, her last fire in the field if her career plans worked out right. And her plans had to work out right. She’d bet everything on them, had even put an offer on a little house outside of Boise a few weeks ago.

Someone shouted outside, an urgent command Becca couldn’t make out.

The stuffy, cramped tent that served as the office for the two women on the Fire Behavior Team barely sheltered them from the sun’s rays and did little to keep out the constant noise of base camp. Over the last three days, NIFC had created a small tent city to organize the fight against the Flathead fire in the middle of nowhere, complete with command tents filled with computers and phones, shower and kitchen trailers, and generators large enough to power it all. Not that NIFC expected this fire to last long. The plan was to contain it with as few resources as possible, leave a skeleton crew to mop up and move on.

The unusual sound of booted feet racing past filtered through the tent’s canvas walls, accompanied by more urgent voices.

“Did you hear what they said?” Becca swung around in the direction of Julia. In the process, Becca bumped her tummy against the desk, spilling water from her open water bottle all over the fire maps spread across the worn surface. As quickly as she could, Becca shook out the maps, then mopped up with the paper towels she kept below her table because she’d become such a klutz.

When she looked up, Julia was already moving to the door wiping at the makeup under her eyes. The unusual-for-late August heat and mountain humidity melted makeup right off one’s face, but Julia kept on trying. “I think someone said the fire overran a crew.”

Becca froze, unable to move as fear raced through her veins. Her brother had died in a wildland fire when she was in college. She knew how devastating such a loss was on a family. Since then, she’d worked on fires where lives had been lost, and each time, she’d asked herself what more she could have done to prevent the tragedies.

Only when her hands started to shake did Becca snap out of her shock, running them down the sides of her belly in an attempt to regain some measure of calm. “We need to get to the Incident Command tent ASAP.”

“How could this happen? The computer didn’t predict anything that dangerous.” Julia looked at Becca with wide eyes. She was still new enough to place complete faith in computers.

“We won’t know until we talk to the Hot Shots. Let’s go see what the IC team knows.” Although Becca tried to keep her words light, she left the tent dreading what they might discover. Had she let someone else down?

Minutes later, they joined the rest of the Incident Command team in the main tent.

“We’ve got a bunch of Hot Shots heading into camp with singed whiskers and eyebrows.” Not one to waste time, Sirus— Socrates to the firefighters—the Flathead Incident Commander, had a map spread out on the old, scarred meeting table. “They were lucky. They all made it out alive and relatively unscathed. I want the IC team to meet them in Medical and find out exactly what happened. I want a complete report on my desk by morning.” For a moment, Becca was relieved, until Sirus gave her a stern look. He was no happier than she was with the situation.

Becca operated almost exclusively in California, and was only filling in on this fire. Because she’d never worked with Sirus before, Becca still had to prove to him she was capable. Erratic fire behavior when she’d predicted none wasn’t going to help Becca’s credibility. She couldn’t afford to show her new boss any weakness.

Not now. Becca passed a hand over her belly. Not when so much rested on Sirus’s recommending her for another position.

“We’ll understand what happened before the evening briefing,” Carl, the team meteorologist, assured Sirus, setting his baseball cap more firmly on his bald head. “It won’t happen again.”

In his first year with NIFC, Carl, like Julia, needed to become more familiar with the unpredictable nature of fire before he made such confident statements. Becca often found herself patiently explaining things to Carl, a tricky situation due to his unaccountable ego. Rumor had it he’d been a TV weatherman until his hair had fallen out. Carl didn’t like Becca counseling him, but that hadn’t stopped him from hitting on her.

Puh-lease. Her belly was so large she couldn’t even see her toes when she looked down. What kind of guy hit on a pregnant woman? Only the most desperate, as far as Becca was concerned.

“We may want to consider that we’ve got too much fire for the number of crew we’ve got working,” Becca said as she pulled her T-shirt lower over her belly, only to have it rise back up. Becca forced her lips into something she hoped resembled a smile for the team, a hodgepodge of men and women from different disciplines, including communications, supply and personnel. She didn’t know what had happened out on the fire line, but she was already blaming herself for not thinking about that narrow creek sooner. “Maybe we’ve even got a sleeper.”

One of the trickier fires, sleepers tended to be underestimated and take firefighters by surprise, sometimes with deadly consequences.

“Let’s not go jumping to conclusions.” Carl laughed and gave Sirus a look as if to say “Let’s not panic over what the little woman got in her little head.”

Not wanting to see IC’s reaction, Becca turned to go wait in the Medical tent, her mind already full of questions. Where had the fire crew been? Had the wind changed suddenly? What was the fire like before they realized they were in danger?

“No need to rush.” Bobby, the supply officer, pulled her aside and lowered his voice. “Unfortunately, we’ve run out of gas and they’re hiking down from the drop point.” The drop point, or DP, was five miles up the mountain trail, ten miles on a narrow, winding dirt road.

Fire crews were comprised of men and women of action. The Hot Shots would chafe at having to cool their jets while they waited for transport.

But Becca was willing to bet they wouldn’t wait. They’d hike to the camp. And when they arrived, the adrenaline of survival would have worn off and they’d be in no mood to talk to an official IC representative, much less a tent full of them. More than likely, they’d want a hot meal, a cold drink and an audience of their peers. By the time she talked to them, they’d have woven the truth into something that was several steps removed from reality. She wouldn’t get the detailed information she needed to identify where her fire prediction had gone wrong.

Unless she met them along the way and got the story first.

Becca stepped into the doorway, looking for Julia.

Her assistant had hung back to talk to Sirus. She was trying to be his next Fire Behavior Analyst and, with a bit of hard work, Becca thought she might just make it. “Sir? Which Hot Shot team should we expect?”

“The Silver Bend crew,” he answered, stone-faced. His stepson, Jackson Garrett, led that team.

Becca’s fingers clenched the doorframe. Working in California, she’d effectively avoided the Silver Bend, Idaho, crew for more than seven months. She’d hoped their paths wouldn’t cross on this one special assignment.

For just a moment, Becca considered waiting in the Medical tent with the rest of IC, hiding at the back of the crowd when the fire crew reached camp.

She blinked, coming out of her panicked stupor. No. She would not compromise her duties, even if it put her plans for the future at risk. If she didn’t get to know this fire intimately, other firefighters might face unnecessary danger.

Becca knew only one Hot Shot from Silver Bend, although one was more than enough. Aiden Rodas was a wiry, good-looking, risk-loving playboy. He was younger then Becca, with a really immature nickname— Spider—and a really immature attitude. Not that most Hot Shots didn’t have nicknames, Aiden’s just seemed to stick out more than others.

She’d seen him the other night at a briefing. He’d stood at the rear of the tent, his eyes skimming over her as if she were chopped liver while she explained what the fire would do during the next twelve hours. He didn’t seem to remember that he’d slept with her, which meant he didn’t know he’d helped create the baby she carried.

And she wasn’t about to tell him.

“THEY’RE QUIET,” Cole Hudson said, half under his breath.

“Yeah, too quiet.” Spider considered the somber team of men and women walking the wooded trail behind them. “Chainsaw, you don’t suppose they’re all meditating as we hike, do you?”

“Nope.” Cole hefted his namesake, a thirty-six-inch chain-saw, across his broad shoulders and grinned at Spider before continuing to hike down to base camp. He’d abandoned his chainsaw and day pack containing gasoline when the fire belched this morning, but had been lucky enough to pick up new equipment at the DP.

Spider followed his friend down the steep, winding mountain path. “You think they’re thinking about the fire?”

“Yep.”

The crew, including Spider, had talked excitedly about their hair-singeing escape on the hike back. Spirits still up, they’d recounted their tale to the staffers at the DP while Jackson, better known as Golden, had radioed their situation back to base camp and received instructions to return and debrief IC. And then they’d received the news that they had to hike down the mountain because of some supply snafu, and the team had gotten quiet.

Surviving a run-in with the fire had left Spider feeling like a superhero. That was what he loved about being a Hot Shot—going head-to-head with Mother Nature. Having to walk back to base camp cut him down to size. Admittedly, reality tended to suck after an adrenaline rush like he’d experienced today, leaving him shuffling his booted feet like an old man. Spider imagined the rest of the team felt the same.

He was ready to fill his belly with a hot meal and grab as much sleep as he could before their next shift. But first the group would have to be checked out by the medics, file some reports and obtain more equipment.

“We can’t exactly come down out of the woods looking whipped,” Spider observed. Other crews would give them grief. The Silver Bend Hot Shots were a proud bunch, unused to defeat.

“Nope.”

“I suppose you think we should do something about it.”

“Yep.” Chainsaw swung around to grin at Spider again, nearly taking off Spider’s head with his chainsaw.

Spider ducked and wove to the left. “Couldn’t agree more.” They were a tight-knit group that watched out for each other. Spider had a bad feeling about this fire. It was hungry, and not just for timber and grass. It looked tame, but there were signs that said otherwise.

If Spider saw Socrates he’d tell him what it was like up on the slopes. He’d tell him about the timber as dry and parched as kindling, just waiting for a spark to set it aflame. He’d point out that the seventy-degree slopes were just waiting to trap a fire team and overtake them as they tried to scramble up to safety.

He may consider himself some kind of superhero, but his grandmother hadn’t raised no fool. There were adrenaline-pounding risks, and then there were fool’s errands. Spider hoped this fire wouldn’t turn into the latter.

“It’s not going to look good, us coming into base camp with our tails between our legs.” Logan McCall, the crew’s other assistant superintendent, commented, catching up to them along with Golden.

“Agreed. Any ideas?” Golden asked, looking at each of the three men as he spun his gold wedding band around his ring finger with his thumb.

Spider tilted his head from shoulder to shoulder in an attempt to loosen up. “Yeah, let’s head back to the front line and forget all this political BS.”

Golden looked heavenward. “Sure, let’s head out without Pulaskis.” The combination ax and hoe used to dig out brush as they cleared fuel from a fire’s path was an essential firefighting tool. “Or shovels.”

“Or gas,” Chainsaw added.

“Otherwise, I’d have no problem heading back out to a hungry fire,” Golden concluded.

A hungry fire… Spider couldn’t stop the ominous thought. What was wrong with him? It must be the downside of adrenaline. He had to lighten up. He tried to smile, but only one corner of his mouth seemed to work.

“They’ll be serving dinner soon,” Chainsaw groused, swinging his chainsaw to the ground. “I can’t believe they didn’t have a transport for us down from the DP.”

“I can,” Spider mumbled. Not only had the fire teased them today, but the normally anal, almost military-like structure of NIFC hadn’t yet kicked in full force. Case in point: vehicles without gas. Maybe NIFC thought the fire would burn itself out or be contained in a day or two.

Logan slapped his hand on Spider’s shoulder. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

“I’m schlepping my tired, filthy butt down the mountain, aren’t I?” Spider made a halfhearted protest. He was sweaty from the oppressive heat beneath the fire resistant Nomex pants and long-sleeved shirt that had protected his skin mere hours ago. What he wouldn’t give for a mountain lake or stream to swim in.

“Look at all the gloomy faces.” Chainsaw gestured toward the rest of the group, who started to cluster around them, looking just as hot, tired and beaten as Spider felt.

Normally, he loved being where the action was, making wisecracks to lighten the tension. His Hot Shot lifestyle provided lots of fodder for excitement and amusement, which he gladly spread to keep up team morale.

So why couldn’t he shake the grim feeling that clung to him? Because, he suddenly realized, the crew wasn’t hanging together well. A few were underperforming. Didn’t anyone else see it?

Spider knew a weakened crew could be dangerous—even deadly. He’d been on fires where others had lost their lives, been on fires where the dragon’s breath had singed him, all because the crew members had been distracted, tired or simply fed up with fighting.

Something was going to have to change. First off, the one woman on the team, Victoria, was going to have to either shape up or realize she had no place on his, or any other, Hot Shot crew. He’d have to tell Golden. Thank heavens she was in his unit.

Earlier today, she’d rolled down the cuffs of her protective gloves because it was too hot. And then she’d gotten burned when a smoldering stump she’d been trying to yank out of the ground had flared into flame. It was a rookie mistake, unexpected in a second-year Hot Shot. Spider didn’t know where her mind was, but it wasn’t on her safety or that of the crew’s. Golden liked to nurture and protect his firefighters, but Spider had no patience for underachievers.

Then there was the fact that his father was working on this fire on another crew. Even though his dad had more than twenty years experience, the guy had no legs. You could see the pain on his face with each deliberate step he took. If things got ugly and his crew had to race to safety as Spider’s had, his dad wouldn’t make it. He didn’t know who had let the old man pass his physical last spring, but someone should make him retire.

“This situation isn’t hopeless, just pretty damn depressing,” Golden said with a shake of his head. “Let’s move.”

Hopeless? It didn’t matter that Spider couldn’t find a happy thought at the moment. Nothing was supposed to be that bad.

Spider forced a grin on his face. “Wait. I’ve got an idea.”

“COME ON, BABY,” Becca spoke under her breath. “Move your butt so I can feel my leg.” The baby had shifted and was resting on something that cut off the circulation in her right leg, which now felt as if it were sandbagged as she forced her way uphill.

Sometimes being pregnant was sucky, but it would all be worth it in the end.

Becca didn’t usually let anything slow her down or get in the way of her goals. A planner by nature, she was working toward a fire behavior management position at NIFC’s headquarters in Boise. She’d do just about anything NIFC wanted her to do to be given the job, because there was no way she could chase fires from one forest to another all summer long and raise this baby.

The Boise position meant giving up being in the trenches, crafting attack strategies to make firefighters’ lives safer, but it was a trade-off Becca was willing to make in order to have a child of her own. She’d focused too long on her career, letting the chance for romance, marriage and babies pass her by. To get the job, she had to appear tough and in control for just a few more weeks, in spite of her pregnancy, which slowed her down in ways she hadn’t expected.

The baby sure hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to slow down. It considered her bladder a trampoline and her rib cage a punching bag. Her baby was go-go-go, just like Aiden Rodas.

Becca groaned.

She did not want to think about Aiden—not his smile, not his enthusiasm, not his unique observations on life. He’d actually told her that nothing in life should be harder than checkers. He didn’t realize life required complicated planning.

“Do you want some dried fruit?” Julia asked, dangling a plastic bag filled with the snack toward her.

Becca took an apricot.

“Shouldn’t we have seen them by now?” Julia asked with a crinkle of plastic. She hadn’t wanted to leave base camp and hike out to meet the Silver Bend crew. Julia was a sweet thing until she left her comfort zone.

Ironically, the great out-of-doors seemed beyond Julia’s comfort zone. It was an aspect of Julia’s character that frustrated Becca, yet she felt her assistant would overcome it. After all, there was no way Julia could have assumed a Fire Behavior Analyst would work in a nice air-conditioned office, was there?

“Why don’t we rest here and take a reading?” Becca suggested, ignoring Julia’s question. She slung her lightweight backpack to the ground and dug around until she found her handheld weather meter, grateful to be distracted from thoughts of Aiden.

Ninety-two degrees. Sixty-five percent humidity. Wind speed five. That and the extra pregnancy pounds she carried explained the sheen of sweat covering Becca’s body. She recorded the results in her small notebook, balancing the sheets of paper on her belly, then tucked everything back in her pack.

She bent awkwardly to pick up a handful of spruce needles. “Look at how easily these snap.” She held the needles out to Julia, wanting her to experience the forest fuels firsthand, but Julia looked at the crushed needles as if Becca held a rattlesnake.

Trying not to frown, Becca continued to teach. “Too little rain this past year has left the forest dry and the floor covered in combustible fuels, making it a prime target for a lightning strike. What do you suppose it’s like farther up the mountain?”

“I’m not going to have to find out, am I?” Julia wiped at her eyes.

“Walking the woods brings the topography to life. The more you know of the terrain, the better your predictions.” Disappointed in Julia’s lack of interest, Becca shouldered her pack and continued up the trail. She was determined to find a way to wean Julia’s dependence on computers for fire prediction.

“What makes you think this fire is a sleeper?”

Atta girl. Curiosity led to growth in a job like theirs.

With a small smile, Becca glanced up at what little smoky skyline was visible through the trees. “First, the slopes on these ridges aren’t gradual or smooth. As wind speed picks up, it can really blow in some places and not at all in others.” She paused to catch her breath.

“And second?”

“For the most part, the westerly winds are working for us.” Filling her lungs with air, Becca continued up the slope. “But, I was talking to some of the local kitchen crew yesterday and they say that when the heat breaks at the end of summer it’s because the wind shifts to come from the north. There are a couple of valleys back here that open up onto the highway to the south. With the right northerly wind, there’d be no natural barriers in a fire’s way.”

“Locals?” Julia couldn’t disguise her disbelief. “You asked a local fry cook? You can’t be serious.”

Becca kept the impatience out of her voice because she remembered when she’d been young, immortal and perfect, too. “Locals are a great source of information. And these locals are Native Americans who’ve passed weather knowledge down through the generations.”

Julia tilted her head as she pondered that bit of knowledge, before falling back on what she knew. “Carl will let us know if the wind is about to shift, won’t he?”

“I hope so.” Carl had yet to prove himself worthy of Becca’s trust. Despite the heat, she shivered. Becca didn’t want to think about firefighters in the fire’s path if they didn’t have advance warning.