by Julie Miller
“Gran!” This was hardly the time for matchmaking, even if she had been looking for Mark among the crew from Firehouse 13. “I haven’t seen Mark since the last time he was out here.”
“But I know you’ve been texting him on the phone. He makes you laugh. That makes me like him.”
“I only saw him briefly,” Amy confessed. “I talked to Mark’s brother Matt. He said we were safe here.”
“Did he say anything about that body...?” Comfort moved her hand to her chest, mindlessly rubbing her hand over her heart. Was her heart racing? Her blood pressure spiking? “No one was living there unless we had a squatter. Who is it? How badly are they hurt?”
“They don’t know any of that yet, Gran. Matt told me to make sure the three of us were safe.”
“We’re not hurt.”
Danger aside, Amy didn’t like the effect this stress was having on her grandmother’s health. “Did you take all your pills today?”
“I’m sure I did. Although, I’d have to check my pillbox.”
“I’ll do that,” Amy offered, hating that her grandmother seemed so fragile tonight. Normally, Comfort Hall was a tough old bird, but Jocelyn’s murder and these arson fires seemed to be taking a toll on her. Coming just two years after her husband’s death and Amy’s life blowing up over her breakup with Preston, it was a lot for a woman Comfort’s age—of any age—to deal with. “Why don’t you go lie down? Do your breathing exercises or read a book and try to relax. I’ll get your blood pressure cuff and we can check your BP, just in case.”
Comfort adjusted her glasses on her nose and frowned up at Amy. “I’m worrying you, aren’t I?”
“If I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t.”
“You don’t need this stress any more than I do. It’s like Preston all over again.” She found Amy’s hand and squeezed it. “I want only good things for you. A good man. Happiness.” She looked down at the burning house and shook her head. “Not this. I don’t want this to be the legacy I leave to you.”
“None of this is your fault, Gran.” She tightened her hug around Comfort’s shoulders. “This is your home. You were born and raised here. You raised Dad here, then me. No one has the right to force you to leave your home.”
“If I find out Mr. O’Brien set any one of these fires, I’ll be first in line to punch him myself.” Amy thought she detected a soft chuckle from Gerald.
Amy found she could smile, too. “That’s my girl. You and I are going to be okay.”
Comfort reached up to cup Amy’s cheek and smiled. “I am a little tired, dear. You’ll tell me when the fire is out? Or if it comes toward the house?”
“Of course.”
Then Comfort turned to Mr. Sanders and squeezed his arm. “Thank you for waking me, Gerald. And for staying with me. It’s nice to have a man around the place again. But I’ll be all right now that Amy is here.”
“I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt, Comfort.” He covered her hand with his own before she released him and headed into the house. Once the door was closed, he nodded to Amy. “I’d better be going.”
“Would you like to stay here tonight?” Amy stepped into his path at the edge of the porch, thumbing over her shoulder to the firefighters behind her. “Looks like they’ll be working for a while yet.”
His white brows knitted together. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
Matt Taylor had told Amy to take care of these two. And since he’d helped her grandmother tonight, she owed Gerald. “I’m a grown woman. And so is Gran. It’s going to be noisy and smell like smoke at your place for a couple of hours yet, if not the rest of the night. Maybe just a cup of coffee? I promise I won’t try to make conversation with you.”
He snorted a sound that she thought might just be a laugh. His dark eyes studied her sincerity a moment before he nodded. “Well, I suppose I won’t have any water pressure tonight, either.” That sounded more like a joke than a complaint. Finally, he nodded again. “I’ll take the coffee. Decaf, if you have it.”
“It’s all Gran drinks anymore.” Amy opened the door and let him precede her into the foyer.
Before closing the door, she turned to give the fire one last look, checking every firefighter until she found Mark again. No wonder he hadn’t answered her texts. He was busy saving lives. He didn’t have time to rescue her tonight, and she shouldn’t have wanted him to. She should be stronger than that, strong enough to handle aging grandmothers and fires and Derek Roland and Dale O’Brien and whatever else the world tossed at her.
But it was hard to always be strong. It was lonely, too.
What if she was only imagining a relationship between her and Mark? They hadn’t even had that date he kept pestering her about yet. Still, she felt like she knew him. And she couldn’t ignore the attraction they shared.
She was setting herself up for heartache by thinking she could trust any man the way she’d mistakenly trusted Preston. But Captain Good Guy and the whole Taylor family seemed like the embodiment of trust. Mark wasn’t even hers to worry about. But she did. She’d never forget seeing him burst out of those flames, knowing he’d risked his life to save a stranger.
How could she deny feeling something for Mark when her stomach was too knotted up with fear for his safety to join Gerald in the kitchen for a cup of coffee?
Chapter Nine
An hour later, Mark took the steps to Amy’s front porch two at a time. It might have been the longest hour of his life, knowing he couldn’t leave his Lucky 13 crew or the woman he’d found in one of the back rooms of the burning house until the fire was contained and the scene was secure. Although it had been a relief to see Amy alive and well, he’d known a stab of jealousy at seeing Matt getting those few minutes of conversation with her by her truck.
He was the one who cared that she was all right. He was the one who’d had to remind himself more than once that Amy was tall, leggy and built like a curvy farm girl. So, even without being able to recognize the woman’s face, he’d known the petite thing he’d carried out the front window behind Ray Jackson wasn’t her. He should have felt guilty at feeling even one moment of respite that the badly burned woman the paramedics hadn’t been able to revive wasn’t Amy.
A woman was dead.
Another fire had consumed Amy Hall’s property.
He’d finally had a chance to read the texts she’d sent him tonight. She’d been in trouble. Upset about something. She’d needed him.
And he hadn’t been there for her. Not for any of it.
Mark draped his turnout coat over the porch railing and set his helmet on top, scratching his fingers through his hair since heat, sweat and a whole lot of water had plastered it to his head. He knocked on the door before checking the time on his utility watch, hoping it wasn’t too late to pay a quick visit. He needed Amy in his arms. He needed to see her face up close and personal to know she was all right. He needed to tell her that he was ready to take whatever this was between them to the next level.
Hell, he was already at that level. He wouldn’t be worrying and jealous and anxious to touch her if he wasn’t feeling next level for her.
He held his breath when he heard the dead bolt disengage, then emptied his lungs on a deep sigh when he saw her.
Amy had changed into jeans and an aqua blue tank top that hugged every womanly curve. He did a quick check from head to toe, finding her face had been washed clean of makeup to reveal a pale canvas dotted with freckles. That silver knot pendant rested between her lush breasts, rising and falling with every breath. And she was barefoot. Her toenails were painted a shade of turquoise darker than her shirt.
And just as he acknowledged the hammer of desire that hit him at the sight of her naked, colorful toes, she grabbed one of his suspender straps and tugged him over the threshold. The foyer was dark. The door closed, and then he stumbled back against it when she pushed at his che
st, stretched up on tiptoe and sealed her mouth against his.
The tension in Mark unfurled as Amy moved her soft lips over his. Then a whole different sort of tension grabbed hold. Mark settled one hand at her waist, pulling her hips closer to his. He tunneled his fingers into the thick waves of hair at her nape, cupping the back of her neck and tilting her head back a fraction to pull her full bottom lip between both of his and demand he be an equal partner in this unexpected kiss.
Amy’s hands fisted in the front of his shirt, pinching the skin and muscle underneath and sending little electric shocks of heat through his body. She leaned into him and the kiss, and Mark was aware of every soft curve pillowing against his harder frame. He felt the cold metal of her pendant caught between them. He felt the heat of her lips and tongue, testing, tasting, parting, asking and answering every eager foray, every soothing touch, every needy claim of his own mouth on hers.
It might have been seconds, it might have been forever, before he heard the soft mewling sounds in her throat. Whether they were a reluctant protest or an unsatisfied hunger, Mark felt the frustrating flexing and pushing of her hands on his chest and broke off the kiss. Their ragged breaths blended as he rested his forehead against hers. Amy’s green-gold eyes opened beneath his, looking up into his gaze with a frown of confusion, a bit of surprise and a dozen questions that probably matched his own gaze.
“Hello to you, too.” His voice was a husky rasp from deep in his throat. “I should warn you, my boots are pretty messy—”
Amy silenced his teasing by pressing her finger to his lips. Then she touched the same finger to her own lips in the universal sign for quiet and grasped his hand to pull him into step behind her.
She pointed to the dimly lit living room off the foyer, and he saw her neighbor, the elderly black man—Sanders something—sleeping in the living room recliner. The older man who’d upset her the last time he’d seen her must be a welcome guest now because someone had covered him in a crocheted afghan. Or maybe because of the man’s age, she didn’t see him as any kind of threat.
Amy pointed out the low clearance of the scaffolding that arched across the foyer, and Mark ducked and willingly followed the pull of her hand to a first-floor bedroom where she peeked in on her sleeping grandmother before closing the door and leading him down the hallway into the kitchen. He squinted against the bright lights shining down from the ceiling, inhaled the sustaining smell of freshly brewed coffee and planted his feet, stopping Amy with a tug against her hand.
When she turned to face him, Mark buried his fingers in the silky thickness of her copper-red hair one more time, angling her mouth to reclaim it with his own. He backed her against the countertop, needing the anchor to brace them both as he drove his tongue inside her mouth to taste the sweet heat of her instant response.
He’d suspected her touch would be incendiary, that his body would react like tinder to a flame. But greeting him with a kiss that hinted at desperation and relief as much as it did bottled-up desire had ignited a different kind of fire in him. Yes, he wanted her. He wanted to pull off that tank top and set her up on this counter and find out exactly where this fiery chemistry would lead them.
But more than that, he wanted to understand if she truly felt the same connections their bodies did. Kissing Amy assuaged a lot of emotions that had been roiling inside him. But it also raised questions he needed answers to. He was falling for her. Falling harder and faster than he had for any other woman. Did that kiss—did this kiss—mean the same thing to her that it did to him? Did she care? Did she want? Did she need him the way he needed her?
This time, Amy pulled away. Her uneven breathing warmed the skin above his collar as she rested her forehead at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. She wound her arms around his waist and snuggled in, cooling passion to comfort. Mark willingly wrapped his arms around her, breathing in the herbal scent of her hair and the faintest notes of sulfur and ozone that clung to her clothes and hair, no doubt from the welding work she did in her studio. He felt a little raw himself and craved the soothing warmth and softness of her body settling against his.
“Is the fire out?” Her whisper tickled the skin at the base of his throat.
Mark had to think about that for a second. She was talking about the structure at the bottom of the hill, not the sexual chemistry still simmering inside him. Distance. He needed distance and something cold to splash onto his skin to replace the fire she generated by clinging to him if he wanted to think straight. He tilted his face to the paneled ceiling and exhaled a heated breath before pressing a kiss to her temple. “It’s contained enough that I could take off for a few minutes. It won’t reignite and nothing else should collapse.” He shifted his hands to the more neutral position of her shoulders but couldn’t help stroking the soft skin of her arms as he pulled back. Her hair hung in loose waves around her face and he brushed a long tendril behind her ear before he resolutely moved away. He folded his arms across his chest, keeping his hands firmly tucked away from the impulse to touch her. “My brother said you wanted to see me.”
“I didn’t tell him that. I asked about you, but...” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, matching his deceptively impersonal stance. “Why did you kiss me just now?”
Mark arched a questioning brow. Um, hadn’t she started this kissing thing? Had he misread the whole next level connection between them tonight? But then he saw the tightness around her slightly swollen lips and read the doubt behind her bold question. For some reason, Amy wasn’t used to following her impulses. Those two weeks of texting, sharing so much, yet keeping him at a distance, told Mark a lot about her willingness to trust. But who? Men? Him? Herself? What had happened in her past to make such a wildly creative and headstrong free spirit be so guarded with her personal life?
He suspected complete honesty was the only way to earn this woman’s trust. He shrugged, attempting to take the anxious concern he’d felt out of his tone. “You’re too pale. I remember how scared you were when we found your friend after that last fire. I know you must have seen me carrying that body out. Figured it would trigger some bad memories. I wanted to feel your energy, know that you’re okay.” He raked his fingers through his hair, admitting another truth. “I was jealous of my own damn brother because he had the chance to talk to you and I couldn’t.”
“You were in the middle of risking your life—of saving someone else’s life. It was nice of your brother to check on me.”
Right. Save a life? Apparently, that was a skill he’d lost somewhere along the way. But she didn’t need to know what he’d found in that house. Not yet. So, he went with a joke. “You’re talking about my taciturn big brother? You sure have a funny first impression of my family. First you think my dad is sexy, and now you think Matt is nice?”
“I must have been projecting some aura that told him I was worried.” She reached up to smooth his hair across his forehead. It was a tender, intimate gesture, putting her fingers into his admittedly damp and messy hair. And yeah, it took a little of the edge off his concern for her. “I was scared when I realized it was you running out of that fire.”
“So, you kissed me at the front door because you were scared?”
“I kissed you because...” She pulled her hands together in front of her, as if she needed to control the urge to touch him, as well. “I needed to know that you were okay, too.”
When he realized she was shaking, Mark gave up on the idea of keeping his distance and pulled her into his arms. Her hands snaked around his waist to fist in the back of his T-shirt as he palmed her head and nestled her into that sweet spot where she fit so perfectly against his neck and shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m fine. Just doin’ my job, Red.”
“I know, Fire Man. I know you’re well trained, and you have your crew there to back you up. But you shouldn’t have to come here, to my property, to fight fires that shouldn’t be happening. You and your brother and
everyone else shouldn’t have to risk your life because some jerk is trying to hurt me.” He could still feel the tremors ebbing from her body, but he got the idea from her words that her fear had transformed into anger, and it was now abating as she reassured herself that he was in one piece. They stood there, holding each other for several moments before Amy rubbed her nose against the column of his throat and breathed in deeply. Her smile felt like a soft kiss against his skin. “You smell like you’ve been fighting a fire.”
“Sorry.” Right. Smoke and sweat weren’t big turn-ons. Mark started to pull away, but Amy pushed her body into his and held on tighter.
“Don’t apologize. I’m just glad you’re here. Like you said, you were doing your job. You smell like you.” She eased her death grip on the back of his shirt and reached up to stroke her fingers along his jaw. “Like hard work and honesty. Strength and doing the right thing.”
“Uh, none of those are scents, Red.”
“Maybe that’s what I feel from you.” She pushed away from his chest, but her fingers lingered on his face. “Like art. It’s not always an exact representation, but the feeling you get from the piece. I told you that you were a work of art.”
Although her purposeful exploration of his features was a surprising turn-on, there was something about her smile that seemed forced. “Is this about more than the fire? You being scared? Did something happen tonight at your fancy party?” Her fingers stilled against his cheek, telling him something had. “I just had a chance to read your last text before running up here. It’s a stupid nickname, but why do you need Captain Good Guy vibes? Are you okay?”
Amy pulled away entirely. She pulled out a chair from the table and invited him to sit. “Could I get you some coffee? It’s decaf. Cold water? A beer?” Nice deflection of the question, but maybe she needed a few minutes to sort her thoughts and regain control of her emotions, too.
