by Amie Denman
“We can’t take any more heartbreak,” her father said.
Her parents stared at her with sad eyes.
The trip to the airport a few hours later was as silent as an empty house. There were volumes of things Laura knew her parents wanted to say, and she would have loved to have been able to put her feelings into words, but they were at a place where they couldn’t meet.
Not yet, anyway.
Laura went straight to a secluded section of the beach when she returned from the airport so she could watch the waves and think. She sat in the sand and thought about the ground she had gained that summer, but also the losses she’d caused.
Nicole had come around, slowly. If she weren’t on a cruise ship somewhere, maybe Laura could have talked with her about their parents. But Nicole deserved her happiness.
And what about Tony? He would understand. He’d seen what was going on when he stopped by their table. She’d hurt him the night before, she’d thrown her parents back into misery after the happy wedding and now what? As Laura sat on the sand, she scooped it up and let it fall in cascades back onto the beach.
She could give up the fire service. Maybe her own happiness wasn’t worth destroying the happiness of others. Her parents would be overjoyed if she came home and continued just as they had been. And Tony? If she gave up the fire service, she could date him without guilt, but that would lead to other pain and her giving up would always come between them.
Laura lay back on the sand and let the sun bake her eyelids. It would be so easy just to say her summer had been a whim and she was quitting the station and leaving Cape Pursuit. Back home, no one would even know.
Except her. She would know how she’d clawed open the cage of her grief and escaped just to turn around and thrust herself back in.
She sat up. She had not come this far just to give up. Laura dug her phone out of her back pocket. Her parents would be on the plane by now, but she could leave them a voice mail telling them how much she loved them even though she knew they disapproved of her choices. As she left the message, her phone buzzed. She checked the screen when she disconnected and saw something that stopped and then kick-started her heart.
Her phone displayed a wide red bar, an alert notification calling volunteers to the station for a fire.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IF HE’D KNOWN how much danger the neighboring house was in, Tony would have called in the volunteers much sooner. Kitchen fire. That was what the dispatcher said. Maybe the fire started in the kitchen, but when he rounded the corner of the residential street, smoke was rolling out the front door in dark gray plumes.
It was a seething, working house fire on a street with houses packed tight together. A car was parked in front of the hydrant across the street, violating the law and making a bad situation worse. Gavin hopped down and hooked the hydrant while Tony parked the pumper in the middle of the street that he was officially closing.
He radioed the station and ordered the ladder truck, rescue truck, backup pumper and tanker. Basically, everything. The volunteers who were available on a Sunday afternoon were going to make the difference between losing the neighboring houses or not.
He tried very hard not to think about Laura being one of those volunteers. She’d mentioned driving her parents to the airport that afternoon. Maybe she would still be out of town, safe from the flames no matter how much she would regret missing her first big fire. He knew she was right...that his desire to protect her was a distraction and a potential danger.
A man came out from the house across the street with car keys in his hand. Tony was in no mood for niceties.
“If that’s your car,” he said, “you have five seconds to move it.”
He felt anger rolling off him in waves. Their job was going to be hard enough without bystanders being stupid. The man jumped into his car.
With the hydrant now cleared, Gavin had a hose hooked up and waiting.
“Anyone in there?” Tony asked the people assembled on the lawn. A woman shook her head. “We’re renting it for the week. My husband is at the beach with the kids and I was starting dinner. I don’t know what happened.”
“We live next door,” another man said. He pointed to his house, which was only about fifteen feet from the fire.
More trucks arrived with full-timers and volunteers, and two firefighters suited up with air packs went in the front door with a hose. Tony stayed outside, running the pump on the truck and keeping an eye on the entire scene. The backup pumper arrived, and his heart sank when he saw Laura jump off the back.
“Need to send two more in through the garage entrance and drive the flames out through the kitchen,” Tyler said.
Tony nodded. “Suit up.”
Laura, Allen and Ethan came up to Tony.
“Tyler’s going in through the garage, you go with him and keep a hand on the hose,” he told Allen.
“I can—” Laura began.
“Need a water curtain between the houses,” Tony said. He pointed to Laura and Ethan. “You two set it up and babysit it.”
Laura turned and followed Ethan without a word. What he was asking her to do was important, maybe even more than going inside with a hose. This house was well on its way to being a total loss, but the one next door could be saved. Tony watched anxiously, keeping an ear on the radio for communication from his four men inside. The flames rolling out the door slowed and he heard Gavin on the radio saying they’d knocked down the fire.
Ethan and Laura had two hoses trained on the side of the burning house and the space between it and the next home. They alternately hosed down the roof and siding of the house next door, making an effective shield against that one going up in flames, too. It was a textbook way to fight and contain a fire, and the danger was over within thirty minutes.
What wasn’t textbook was the anxiety Tony felt seeing Laura before the burning house. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to do, but Tony couldn’t help wanting to go to her and shield her from the heat and smoke. What if the wall fell or part of the roof collapsed? She could be in danger. Would Ethan act fast enough to save her?
They loaded up wet, dirty equipment and returned to the station several hours later, after going through the house looking for hot spots, securing the wreckage and writing a report.
“Could’ve been worse,” Gavin commented as he drove the pumper. Tony rolled the window down and propped his elbow on the door frame. “I thought the house next door might be a goner when we first rolled up.”
“Good water curtain,” Tony commented. Good, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the snap decision he’d made to send Allen into the fire and Laura to protect the house next door. If she had been one of the guys, would he have sent her in as he had Allen? She had exactly the same training and experience.
In his heart, he knew the answer, but what mattered was what was in Laura’s heart.
She had arrived at the station a few minutes before Tony and was already scrubbing hose on the concrete apron. She had her helmet and coat off but wore her bunker pants and boots as she used a long-handled brush to remove soot from the white hose. He remembered seeing her in a green T-shirt that morning as she sat with her parents outside the bakery, none of them touching their pastries and coffee.
What a day.
Of the new class of volunteers, only Laura, Allen, Brock and Diane had shown up. Diane was too late to get on a truck, so she’d stayed in the radio room. Brock had helped direct traffic around the block and away from the scene, and Laura and Allen had gotten direct roles in fighting the fire.
“Nice job,” Tony heard Travis telling Allen and Laura as they worked together to clean hose. “Your first big fire.”
“That wasn’t a big fire,” Gavin said, waving his hand as if he were shooing away a bird. “Hardly got your feet wet,” he added, smiling.
“Wet enough,” Trav
is said. “You did a good job staying right on my tail and keeping hold of the hose, Allen. Most important thing, never let that hose go or you could be toast.”
Tony watched Laura’s face as Travis spoke. He knew she would have done just as well if he’d given her the chance.
“Hey,” Ethan said, giving Laura a friendly one-armed hug. “I believe we were the ones who saved the neighbor’s roof.”
“And siding,” Laura added. “Although I don’t think that hibiscus plant is going to bloom again this year.”
“There was a plant?”
Laura nodded. “You were standing in it.”
“Then it didn’t burn,” Ethan said. “That’s a win.”
When the hoses were in the dryer, the trucks washed and the extra firefighters gone home, Tony saw Laura laying her gloves on top of her locker so they would dry better. Now or never.
“Hi,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the post by her locker. She acknowledged him with half a smile. “How did it go with your parents?”
“Do you ask all the firefighters about breakfast with their parents?” she asked, reminding him painfully of her first visit to the fire station.
Tony’s shoulders fell. “I’m sorry.”
Laura pushed her boots into the space at the bottom of the locker. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault that it was pretty bad, and I think it’s going to be a while before they forgive me.”
“They should have seen you in action this afternoon.”
“In action hosing down the neighbor’s house instead of going in?”
“Not everyone goes in,” Tony said, defending himself.
Laura crossed her arms. “You had two equal choices in me and Allen. As equal as you can get except for one thing.”
“If this is about you being a woman—”
Laura turned and walked out of the station. Tony followed, walking quickly to catch up to her. She whipped around when she heard him behind her.
“Is it because I’m a woman?”
Tony searched his mind for the right answer, but he didn’t know what it was. So he went with the truth. “No. It’s because you’re you.”
“Me?”
Tony put his hands over his face, not caring if he was leaving dirt streaks, wishing he could go back and do a lot of things differently. But when he focused on Laura standing in front of him, her cheeks flushed and shoulders back in defiance, he knew there was nothing he could have changed.
“It’s because you’re you,” he repeated. “And I love you.”
He saw her swallow as she stared at him with shock. The seconds dragged past. Finally, she held up one finger.
“No,” she said. “Don’t you dare. This is why I said we could not have a relationship. It would ruin everything I’ve worked for. Do you know what happened today after the fire was out? Even though I thought I’d drawn a less important job, it meant the world to the people who lived next door. The family who lived there actually came up and gave me a hug and said thank you for saving their house. I helped save their house. They’ll never forget it, and neither will I. It’s exactly why I wanted to be where I am.”
“You did a great job,” he said. “I knew you would.”
Laura shook her head. “You’re a good teacher, Tony. But there’s one thing you never told us in class, and that was how good it would feel to do something important for someone else.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know. It’s something we have to find out for ourselves. Earlier today, I almost considered calling it quits with the fire service. I questioned whether I had the right to break my family’s hearts for my own happiness and satisfaction.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Tony ventured, afraid to say much more.
“I am, too. I’m not letting them stand in my way no matter how much I love them. And I’m not letting you make me question what I’m doing here, either.”
He noticed she did not add, No matter how much I love you.
“If you say you love me, there’s only one way you can prove it to me and that’s by letting me do my job and trusting me to do what’s right for myself.”
Laura left without giving him a chance to respond, which was just as well. Tony couldn’t think of a single word that would make things better.
* * *
“COMES IN THREES,” Kevin commented on the way home from the airport. Nicole told her sister all about their cruise for the first thirty minutes of the drive, and then Kevin wanted to know what had been going on at the station during their week’s honeymoon. Laura told him about the house fire the day after the wedding and another house fire caused by faulty wiring. That one the volunteers had also been called out on, but Laura had been the only person working the beach shack and couldn’t leave.
She’d gone to the station an hour later when she got off work, but the situation was under control so she stuck around and helped clean up.
“Don’t say that,” Nicole said. “Just because there were two house fires this week doesn’t mean there’s going to be another.”
“Just saying,” Kevin said. “It seems to happen.”
“We should have gone on a longer cruise,” Nicole said. “I talked to Mom when we got back into port.”
“Is she still mad?” Laura asked. The previous Sunday had been one of the most painful and yet exhilarating days of her life. The hug from the family whose house she’d helped save had made everything else worthwhile. Even her parents’ disappointment in her, even Tony’s crushed expression when she all but told him to get out of her way.
She had seen his face every time she closed her eyes this week. Why did she have to fall in love with the one man she couldn’t have?
“Still mad, but the message you left them went a long way. They may come around sooner than I will,” Nicole said.
“Hey,” Laura said, laughing. “I thought you were on my side already. Remember the top layer of your wedding cake is in my freezer, and if you make me sad enough, I might just eat it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Nicole said.
“Probably not, but you should be nice to me just in case.”
Laura took the newlyweds home where Arnold was already waiting. The old dog made a big effort to get up and wag his tail, even putting his paws on Kevin’s knees as a welcome. Laura had also brought Nicole’s cat, Claudette, over earlier in the day, but the cat was hiding under a bed as a silent protest to her new dwelling. Laura hoped she’d come around.
The sun was setting as Laura pulled into her driveway. Over the past week, she’d gotten used to the idea of having her sister’s house all to herself, but seeing her sister glowing with happiness over her marriage made Laura’s empty house seem lonelier.
Maybe she should get a dog. She wondered if Tony had gone to the shelter to find a companion. A man as sweet and decent as Tony deserved to be happy. She sighed. He had offered her his affection, and she’d pushed him away with both hands. Did he understand?
Laura would like to have talked with her sister about Tony, but she couldn’t do that with Kevin in the car, too. Besides, her sister deserved to have her honeymoon last, without being interrupted by someone else’s drama.
Laura put her purse and phone on the kitchen table and dug through the freezer for something she could microwave and eat on the back deck. She pulled out a plastic container that looked as if it might contain leftover pot roast.
Her phone vibrated on the table and Laura leaned over to look at it. A red alert band. She shut the freezer door, grabbed her keys and took off without even reading the description. Whatever it was, she was going to the fire department to do what she could.
As she drove to the station, she tried to stay within speed limits and obey every stop sign to the letter, but her adrenaline fought her all the way. When she finally turned onto the fire station’s street, she parked, ran in
side and suited up.
She didn’t have to ask if it was a fire because all the men were getting into their yellow turnout gear and two of the fire trucks were already running, filling the station with the soft rumble of their power.
“Pumper one,” Tony yelled, pointing at Laura and Charlie. “Put your tanks on en route.”
Tony drove, Ethan rode shotgun and Laura and Charlie got in the back. “What do we know?” Laura asked.
“Two-story house, neighbor called it in, fire has a huge start,” Charlie said. He and Laura put their arms through the straps on their air packs set up so a firefighter could easily slide into the pack on the way to a fire. Laura had practiced the maneuver many times both with her group and when she thought no one was looking. It was difficult with the heavy coat, but she did it.
“Do we know if the fire is on the first or second floor?” she asked. She was running scenarios through her head on how they could attack the fire, even though she knew Tony would make those decisions. Would they set up the ladder truck? Get on the roof and ventilate the fire? Go inside and attack it? Most importantly, was Tony really going to send her in? He’d had a chance once before and didn’t. She’d called him on it, but had she really changed his mind?
And what would it mean if she had?
“Probably both floors by the time we get there. Fire moves fast,” Charlie said. “I hate it when a neighbor calls it in because you never know if the occupants are home and trapped or just lucky enough to not be home.”
“How will we know if there’s anyone trapped?”
“We won’t,” he said. “Not until we look. Which makes our jobs a whole lot tougher. We’ll send in two teams right away. One to search for victims, one to knock down the fire. If we’re the search team, remember victims are usually hiding under something.”
Laura thought of her brother, his body found under the fire blankets that were supposed to save him and his crew from the rapidly advancing forest fire. She pushed that thought away and reviewed everything she knew about search and rescue on the drive to the fire.
