BRIDGER'S LAST STAND

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Mal leaned against the passenger door and stared at her as she came toward him. "It was the—"

  He never got to say the word truth. The blast was deafening, the light that exploded directly behind Frannie so bright it hurt his eyes. Momentarily Frannie was backlit by a flash of white light, before she fell to the ground and orange and yellow flames erupted behind her.

  He ran toward her. "Frannie!" She lay still on the ground, facedown in the grass. She'd covered her head with her arms, and she didn't move.

  Mal dropped down beside her, his heart in his throat as he laid his hand on her back. She'd been far enough from the blast that it shouldn't have injured her, but she was so still, hiding with her face against the grass and her ears covered with trembling arms. A small spot of blood bloomed on the back of one arm, and then another, and another.

  "Frannie?"

  An inferno claimed her house. Fire licked from every window, and already danced from the roof, alive and deadly. That quickly, the entire house was engulfed in flames. Waves of heat washed over him, an unnatural assault of warmth. Neighbors left their homes and congregated on the street, their eyes on the fire. One elderly man carried a cordless phone with him, and Mal could see that he practically shouted into it.

  He put his hand in Frannie's hair, against her neck. "Come on, honey, say something to me."

  She lifted her head at last, and Mal closed his eyes. She was all right.

  The heat from the fire grew hotter, and flames lit Frannie's face as, with his help, she sat up. He'd never seen such heartbreak on a woman's face before. There was a pain so deep in her eyes that he ached for her, and he would have done anything, anything, to take the pain away.

  "My house," she whispered once, and he took her into his arms and held her face against his chest. She didn't need to see any more, didn't need to feel the heat of those flames against her face. She could hide here, in his arms. She should hide here.

  In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens.

  "Come on." As gently as possible, he half carried, half dragged Frannie away from the heat. The fire was smaller now, but just as fierce. Black smoke rolled upward, thick and ominous.

  When they were beside his car he stopped, sat down and gathered Frannie into his lap. She shuddered once, as she laid her head against his shoulder, and the rage he felt as he absorbed that deep tremor welled up in him and wouldn't subside.

  Neighbors rushed forward, asking if they were all right, and Mal waved them back, barely lifting his head as he dismissed them. He should be doing something, he knew, taking charge, making phone calls, getting things in order. But he stayed right where he was, holding Frannie close.

  She buried her face against his chest, hiding perhaps, and then she turned her head and forced herself to look at the fire. "Everything's gone," she whispered. "Just like that. I tried so hard to make it mine, to make it home. It's the only true home I ever had." She took a deep, ragged breath. "What happened?"

  Mal forced Frannie's face against his chest again. She didn't need to watch this.

  "It's okay," he said softly, knowing as he said the words that nothing was okay. "We'll find another house, I promise. A bigger, better one." We, he said without thinking. He couldn't take it back. And at the moment, he didn't want to take it back.

  She lifted her head and looked at him. She didn't turn her head again toward her burning house. Maybe she didn't want to see. He smoothed her hair away from her face and looked into those big blue eyes that were colorless in the fire-filled night. She was stunned, scared, confused. He wanted to make it all go away.

  "Something old and battered we can paint and fix up," he whispered. "We can buy more angels, and you can make more afghans, and I'll plant a garden in the backyard." He could imagine it too well, and dammit the very thought comforted him. That wasn't his intent, as he said the words. The picture he painted was meant to soothe Frannie, and yet he found an unexpected hint of peace for himself, as well. "You can make a home anywhere."

  She started shaking, and so did he. Sitting on the ground while the fire blazed hot and all-consuming, he shook. "All that matters is that you're okay." It was the truth. She could have been in there, she could have been trapped in the fire, heat and flames all around. He could see it too clearly. If she hadn't come back outside to tell him he had a black hole where his heart was supposed to be, she'd be in the burning house right now.

  And he'd be with her. There was no way he could stand by and watch Frannie die. Watch her burn.

  The fire engines arrived, and the firefighters set about trying to save the two houses adjacent to Frannie's. Hers was beyond saving. Paramedics were right behind the firemen, and they tried to take Frannie from him. Mal wouldn't budge and neither would she.

  She leaned against him and held on tight.

  The medics checked Frannie's heart rate and pupils, right there where she sat, and they bandaged the small cuts on the back of her arm. Flying glass. Mal's stomach twisted at the very thought of what might have happened had she been closer to the house at the time of the explosion.

  Frannie was silent as the commotion that surrounded what had been her home continued. Fat hoses were dragged across the yard, and firefighters sprayed an endless stream of water into her burning house and the homes on either side.

  When the medics suggested taking Frannie to the hospital where she could stay overnight, she held on to Mal even tighter and shook her head.

  Frannie didn't need to be in the hospital, she just needed to be held and comforted and reassured. That's all. He could do that.

  He was, he knew, the only one who could.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

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  Frannie sat in the tub with her knees drawn up and her head resting on those knees, while warm water rained on her from the showerhead set into the tile wall high above. She felt every drop of water that hit her skin, heard very clearly the sound of drizzle against flesh, and the roar of the shower above, and the gurgle of water going down the drain.

  The droplets were soft, her hair was soaked through, and rivulets of water ran down her skin to pool beneath her and run lazily toward the drain. The cuts on the back of her arm stung a little, and she tried to ignore the pain. The sting was a too-clear reminder of exactly what she was trying to forget.

  She watched the water run, concentrating on the little streams so maybe, for a moment, she wouldn't have to think about what had happened tonight.

  Her house was gone. Her house and everything in it. Every time she felt she was beginning to think straight, she remembered something else that was gone. The new angel, her favorite dress, the afghan she'd crocheted last year.

  Frannie lifted her head and allowed the water to wash over her face, closing her eyes as the droplets rained, soft and warm. Surrounded by warmth and pelted by the caressing sprinkle, she could almost forget that she'd watched her home go up in flames tonight.

  It came to her, as she sat there, that she'd always planned to put a showerhead in her bathroom, over the big claw-foot tub. She'd never gotten around to it. Now it didn't matter.

  This was Bridger's bathroom, in his apartment, and he paced in the hall outside the door. She shouldn't be here, it was a bad idea, but when he'd put her so gently in his car and brought her home with him she hadn't protested. Not once.

  We'll find another house, a bigger one. Did Bridger even know what he'd said as he'd held her after the explosion? Probably not. He was surely in shock, as she was. Then again, maybe he was just fine and her memory was failing. Maybe she'd only heard what she wanted to hear.

  The water turned cold, and still she sat there. She couldn't move, didn't want to move. With her eyes closed she allowed the cold water to rain down on her face. She wasn't comfortable anymore, and she couldn't forget anything so she stopped trying. Her favorite mug, the brass angel, her jewelry box. All gone. Her haven, her home … destroyed.

  "Frannie?"

  She opened her eyes to see Bridg
er standing over her, a fat white towel in his hand, an expression of confusion and concern on his face. Looking at him, really looking at him, she knew that everything she'd said to him on the way back from the peach farm was true. She'd love him, and he would never love her back.

  He turned off the shower and very gently helped her to her feet, even as she argued halfheartedly that she didn't need any help. Her knees trembled when she stood, so maybe it was a good idea that he held on to her arm so securely as she stepped from the tub.

  "You're cold," he said as he began to dry her body with the fat towel. He didn't look her in the eye, but very carefully patted the towel against her skin, taking great care with her arms. He might have been drying an egg, his touch was so easy. Did he think she would break?

  His body leaned close to hers, so close that he almost enveloped her. He towered over her, his long arms and legs sheltered her. Was he trying to protect her, still, or was she just imagining things again?

  "Oh, Bridger, I used all your hot water. I'm sorry." Her voice shook slightly, and now he did glance up to look her in the eye.

  She wondered if she'd fallen in love with him the first time he'd looked at her this way, wary and weary. His brown eyes were ancient, somehow. Deep, determined, somber. Yearning. There was love hidden in there, she knew it. If he was capable of love, why couldn't he love her?

  "It doesn't matter," he said softly as he continued to dry her body. "The hot water tank will refill quickly, and I can take a shower later."

  He moved the towel to her hair and rubbed it gently over her scalp. "I can dry myself, Bridger," she said shakily, but she didn't make any move to take the towel from him.

  He shook his head. "I should have let them take you to the hospital."

  "I hate hospitals."

  "Me, too." He brushed the towel over her already dry shoulder, leaned close and rubbed her back, the towel raking down her spine.

  "I went to the hospital once, when my father died," she whispered. "I was five years old, and I still remember the smell and the bright lights and the icky green walls." And most of all she remembered her father—a man she'd been sure, as she looked at the battered patient on the bed, was not her daddy—bruised and bleeding and dying, the victim of a drunk driver who would walk away without a scratch or a single day of jail time.

  "Okay," he said as he stepped back and dropped the towel to the floor. "No hospital."

  He took a white dress shirt from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. It hadn't been there before, so she assumed he had brought it in with him. With as much care as he'd used when drying her body, he slipped her arms into the shirt and buttoned it from the second button down to the hem. The shirt hung almost to her knees, but for the vented sides that revealed her thighs. She watched Bridger's hands as he rolled up sleeves that hung well past her hands. They were strong, capable, steady hands.

  When he finished she was well covered, almost as well covered as she'd been in her football jersey. She flinched as she realized that even that was gone.

  "We're alive," she whispered, and the truth of that statement hit her like a thunderbolt. Everything else could be replaced. They were things, possessions, inanimate objects that didn't feel pain or love. "If we hadn't been arguing, if we'd just walked into the house, we'd both be dead now."

  "I know."

  She reached out and stroked Bridger's cheek. His face was rough with stubble and warm beneath her fingertips, and there was comfort in the easy caress, a giving and a taking comfort. She needed to touch him, and whether or not he knew it he needed that touch, as well.

  He needed her to love him. Maybe it wouldn't last, maybe there was no future for a one-night stand kinda man and a forever woman, but Bridger needed to be loved as much as she needed to love him. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

  Her fingers traced a lazy trail down Bridger's face to his throat, a trail as winding and certain as the water that had run off her body and down the drain. He answered with an easy exploration of his own, a finger that brushed across her temple and down her cheek. A soft kiss followed as he laid his mouth on her forehead and her cheek and, finally, her mouth.

  Her knees went weak again, her body turned to liquid fire as Bridger kissed her. The kiss was gentle for a moment, soft, easy lips moving against hers, as if Bridger were still afraid she would break, and then it changed. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and the kiss became demanding, probing, fierce.

  He touched her, a palm against her breast, against the nipple that hardened to his touch. His hand brushed lightly over the fabric that came between her hardened nipple and his touch, and a burst of lightning cracked through her body. She trembled, down deep, and her inner core quaked. A wordless plea escaped from her throat.

  The moment Bridger lost control she knew it. He trembled, too, as deeply as she did, and a plea of his own rumbled in his throat. He pulled her close, held her impossibly tightly, and she felt the hard ridge of his arousal pressing against her.

  He lifted her easily, and she wrapped her legs around him. As he carried her into the hallway they kissed, dancing tongues and hungry mouths mating and searching. She cupped the back of his head, threading her fingers through short hair and pressing his mouth tighter, ever tighter, against hers.

  Bridger carried her into his bedroom, the neat, semidark room that was illuminated only by the light from the hallway. A double bed covered with a forest green comforter sat in the middle of the room. At the moment, it was the only piece of furniture Frannie noticed.

  He crossed the room and lowered her slowly to the bed. Her legs were still wrapped around him, still held him close. She heard the rasp of a zipper, a low moan, and then he thrust to fill her.

  It was impossible to separate the sensations—his mouth, the stroke of his body inside hers, the love that filled her. They were wonderful, magical sensations that rocked her body and made Bridger, for this moment, hers. Completely, totally, hers.

  He moved rhythmically, filling her with hard, quick thrusts until she was certain their hearts beat together, their lungs breathed together. She felt his pleasure and pain and he felt hers. One. One being, one soul.

  She shattered, the climax bursting through her body like yet another, more powerful, bolt of lightning. She arched her back, coming off the bed and crying out, a cry Bridger caught in his own searching mouth as he drove deep one last time and shuddered above and inside her.

  Yes, they were definitely alive.

  And being alive meant living, loving, taking chances.

  "I love you, Bridger," she said breathlessly.

  He lifted his head slowly and looked down at her. Oh, those eyes got her every time. "Don't," he whispered.

  She didn't get angry. She smiled at him and cradled the back of his head with her hand. "You can ask me not to say the words out loud, but you can't ask me not to love you. I do love you," she confessed. "You're going to break my heart, because there's no way you can give me what I need, but I can't help it."

  The pain in his eyes was clear.

  "But I promise not to tell you again." She pulled his mouth to hers for a brief kiss. "Because we've still got some of the night left just for us, and I don't want to spoil it."

  Was she a complete fool to offer herself up this way? She knew Bridger could never give her what she needed from the man she loved. He would never love her back. She wished she could convince herself it didn't matter.

  But it did.

  * * *

  He might never sleep again.

  Mal lay on his back in his own bed, Frannie's head against his shoulder as she slept peacefully. The hall light was on, illuminating the room faintly, and the comforter was covering the two of them from the waist down.

  Someone had tried to kill her. The investigation into the fire wasn't over, probably hadn't even begun, but he knew in his heart they wouldn't find any gas leak or electrical problem in what had once been Frannie's home. The explosion he'd seen behind her wasn't a natural disast
er, and it sure as hell wasn't any accident.

  Someone had tried to kill her, and the very idea kept him enraged enough to stare at the ceiling half the night.

  That, and those words that wouldn't leave his head. I love you, Bridger. She was in shock, she was scared, she'd had her world turned upside down in less than a week. She thought she loved him because he watched over her, protected her, and because they had great sex.

  Really, really great sex.

  He'd never lost control with a woman before, never. He'd never been so blinded by what his body demanded that he forgot everything else.

  Forgot that she said she would love him more every time he touched her, forgot that he didn't want or need a forever woman. Forgot that his box of condoms was under Frannie's sink, burned to a crisp along with everything else.

  He'd never been inside a woman without one. Never. Malcolm Bridger was a lot of things, but he was not stupid, and he was never careless.

  The hand that rested against his stomach moved, ever so slightly. "You're awake," she whispered.

  "Yeah." He placed a hand in her hair. "Go back to sleep, Frannie. You need your rest."

  She hummed, apparently in agreement, but her hand didn't still. Warm fingers raked across his chest, across flat nipples that hardened at her touch. "If you can't sleep, I can't sleep." Her hand moved lower, slipped inside the waistband of his silk boxers and cupped his erection. "Oh, my. No wonder you can't sleep."

  He flicked open the buttons of his shirt, the white dress shirt that looked so right and sexy on Frannie, revealing bare skin that shone in the pale light. He touched the swell of her breasts, flicked a thumb over a nipple that puckered at his caress. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, delighting in, he knew, the feel of his hands on her flesh.

  He tasted her there, lashing his tongue across her pebbling nipple, suckling gently until she arched into him. He drew her soft, warm flesh into his mouth as one hand dipped to delve between her legs to touch her where she was already wet for him.

  He wanted her, again. He wanted nothing between them, again. This time he would relish every stoke, every shiver, every breath she took. This time he would watch her fall apart before allowing himself release.