But as I pivot back toward the door, it blasts open and Ben thunders inside.
I freeze. So does he. And we just stand there. We stand there and we stare at each other and I feel like there's a fist curling mercilessly around my windpipe.
A long, tense moment passes before he speaks. "You're...you." I narrow my eyes at him in confusion, not understanding what he's trying to say. He flashes a smile, causing a pair of prominent dimples to pierce his cheeks. The dimples...I'd almost forgotten about the dimples. Up close, I can’t even handle it. He’s still got his looks. The quintessential boy band heartthrob.
That fist squeezes tighter, still fucking with my air supply.
He shakes his head, looking a little embarrassed. "I just mean—I wasn't sure that it was really you." He takes another step closer.
I hold my spine straight, trying to come off as neutral and unaffected. "Yup, it's me," I say coolly as I swerve around him and wrap my fingers around the cool brass of the door handle.
The familiar scent of his skin hits me like a boot to the chest. But his fingers sliding into the curve of my elbow is what makes my steps falter. Gooseflesh rises along my skin. I turn and pin him with a glare. He’s so handsome, I almost have to squint. It’s like letting my eyes adjust to the direct glare of the sun.
His expression grows serious. "How have you been, Angie?"
His voice is so low, so grave. If it weren’t for the callous way he threw me away all those years ago, I'd think he actually gave a damn about the answer. "I've been fine, Benjamin."
On the outside, I wear an armor of steel. On the inside, I’m struggling to find a coping mechanism. Something to help me deal with the fact that his voice has dropped half a dozen octaves since the last time I heard it. And if I could get my ovaries to stop overreacting to the deep, gritty, delicious sound, that would be great.
I make another attempt to pull the door open but his grasp tightens on my elbow. My nipples are tingling. I really, really wish they weren't.
"We should catch up," he tells me, standing so close that the warmth of his breath tickles my face. "Maybe we can go grab a hot chocolate. There's this place in town—the Broken Cupcake—they make really good hot chocolate. They even have these great, little cherry tarts sometimes. They taste just like the Pop Tarts we used to have.” A smile curves his lips at the memory. “Remember those—"
"I don't drink hot chocolate!" I snap. I don't drink hot chocolate since you ruined hot chocolate for me. And you ruined cherry tarts for me. And you ruined love for me.
Hot chocolate and cherry tarts used to be our thing. We’d have those every afternoon when we were making out in his bedroom instead of doing our homework like we were supposed to.
Fuck hot chocolate and cherry tarts! Fuck Benjamin Riggs!
His glittering blue eyes broadcast his confusion. "Okay, so maybe we can go for coffee?”
I don’t answer. I just keep on glaring so he tries again.
“…For warm milk?”
My expression doesn’t budge.
“…For a glass of freakin' water?" He angles his head, his whole attention focused on me. "Anything to sit down with you, Gigi..."
Gigi...
A lick of fire flares beneath my skin. Why'd he have to go and call me that? To make me weak? To push me to spend the day replaying on loop the tender moments we shared so very long ago? That's just cruel.
"Thanks for the offer, Lieutenant Riggs, but I don't need a drink. I'm very well hydrated. If you'll excuse me."
His hand falls away from me and he takes a step back. Finally, I'm able to break free of the stairwell. Finally, I'm able to take a breath. I practically run out of the room and down the hallway, back to the safety of the intern's locker room where I collapse onto a bench and try to get myself together.
How am I going to manage living and working in this town when something as basic as oxygen uptake becomes a struggle with this man around?
Chapter Four
Ben
Back at the fire station, the guys are busting my balls. That's to be expected, I guess.
"Did you see his face, though?" Blaize Mitchell points his fork in my direction and yells from the far end of the table.
Buddy Callahan plants both elbows on the table and laughs heartily. "He was like a deer in the damn headlights. Freakin' hilarious!"
Sawyer Payne shoves a piece of toast into his mouth. “Classic stage fright, man!"
"Laugh it up, assholes. Laugh it up," I mutter bitterly, pushing my scrambled eggs around on my plate.
Tammy Grayson looks over at me with compassion in her stare. "C'mon, guys. Stop being jerks. Ben feels bad enough as it is already.” She takes a sip of her coffee and cuts her eyes back to her Kindle. “Put yourselves in his shoes."
I cringe when she says that.
I like Tammy. She’s nice. She brings a soothing, feminine touch to the station and she keeps the rest of us from acting like absolute hooligans around the clock. She has the best of intentions but begging the guys for pity on my behalf isn't exactly winning me any Chest-Pounding Alpha Male points.
The table falls silent for a long moment. The guys stare contemplatively at their plates. Maybe, just maybe they’ll cut me some slack just this once…Yeah, right.
Mitchell smirks in Tammy’s face. “Y’know, Grayson—sometimes, just as I’m about to take you seriously, I remember that your brain is polluted by fine pieces of literature such as—what’s this one called?—” He peeks over her shoulder at the screen of her e-reader. “—Taken by the Reverse Harem.”
Her eyes narrow threateningly even as her nostrils twitch with restrained laughter. “B.J. Hamilton’s writing is breathtaking. This is a beautiful, beautiful book. Beautiful.”
“A book about some chick getting pounded by a bunch of werewolf billionaire lumberjacks from outer space,” Payne quips. “Right up there with To Kill a Mockingbird, I’m guessing?”
Masculine laughter echoes around the table as Tammy waves her fork in annoyance. “The lot of you are just closed-minded and superficial,” she retorts. “That’s why you will never know true passion in your lives.”
Callahan tsks and turns his goading back on me. His big, stubby paw lands hard on my shoulder. "Anyway, did anybody check this guy’s diaper since he's been back? He looked like he shat his pants up there on that stage!”
Rolling my eyes, I lean back in my chair and watch as my brother discreetly slips into the kitchen. He makes his way over to the counter by the stove, no doubt scavenging for leftovers. Nobody else seems to notice and, even if they did, they wouldn’t say a word. For Madden and me, this firehouse was our home away from home when we were growing up. Our dad was in the fire service for eighteen years before he died. Although Madden chose law enforcement over firefighting, he’s pretty much an honorary member of the fire department.
Payne’s husky voice rings out again. “Told ya—classic stage fright.”
“Wasn’t he in a boy band?” somebody mumbles sarcastically from the other end of the table. I think that was Mitchell.
Right then, my phone lights up on the table next to my plate and the sound of a new CheekyChat notification fills the room. The guys groan with jealousy.
Tammy smiles knowingly and bumps her shoulder into mine. "Don't listen to them, honey. They're just mad because you get laid more than all of them combined without even trying."
Ignoring the stupid phone, I lift my glass of orange juice to my mouth. I don’t expect them to get it. As far as they’re concerned, I got up on stage and clammed up under pressure. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
It’s the sight of Angie that sent me reeling. Just one look at her face was like pushing the ‘reset’ button on my brain. My priorities shifted automatically and when she ran out of that room, I had to follow her. Fuck the meeting. I had no choice.
My brother finally decides to make his presence known. He comes strolling to the table like he actually belongs here. "Yeh, y'all are fucking assholes,"
he says in my defence as he hovers over our meal. My shoulders heave on a sigh of relief. It's nice to at least have my twin in my corner. But when I look up at him, I see the mischief in his eyes. "My Benjie doesn't poop his pants. He's fully potty trained." He reaches down and swipes a slice of bacon from my plate before pinching my cheek hard. The table erupts into laughter.
Glowering up into his face, I mutter a few obscenities under my breath and swat his hand away. Doesn’t the police station get their own damn food budget?
I nudge him hard in the thigh with my elbow then point at the sign over the door he just walked through. "Dude—personnel only. No cops allowed. Can't you read the sign?"
He rolls his eyes. "I've got a warrant," he says sarcastically and gives my shoulder a rough shake. "You're under arrest. Come with me." His words may be teasing, but something in his voice tells me that he’s serious about needing to talk to me.
I don't waste a second. I ball up my paper napkin and toss it into my plate as I rise. The guys continue to give me shit as I follow Madden out of the room but I don't care. When my brother or my mom need me, everything else falls by the wayside.
Madden gets to the end of the gallery overlooking the engine room below and leans against the railing. He glances around to make sure we're alone and he lowers his voice. "Bro, what the fuck was that back at the hospital this morning?" he demands. "You've been talking my ear off for months about wanting the captain’s job. This was your chance to prove that you’ve got your shit together. And you freeze under pressure?”
It's not like me to buckle in the face of a challenge. My brother knows that. My life and the lives of those I come in contact with depend on my bravery. I'm a firefighter, after all. So Madden knows there's more to the story.
Raking my fingers through my hair, I slump against the railing next to him. "You don't get it, man...She was there. Angie was fucking there."
He furrows his bushy brows. "Angie? Angie, who?"
"Are you fucking serious, Madden? Angie Gallo," I say purposefully.
"Angie Gallo? That chick you used to date back in high school?"
I want to punch this guy in the throat right now. My fingers instinctively ball into fists and I growl, incensed. Angie Gallo isn't some chick I used to date back in high school. Angie Gallo is the love of my fucking life. The girl whose heart I broke. The girl I never fucking recovered from. My brother knows that—he shrugs his thick shoulder and acts all nonchalant but the twitch in his jaw gives him away.
He takes a quick step back, holding his palms up in surrender. "Hey, hey! Sorry, man...It's just that, high school was a long time ago."
With each word that comes out of his mouth, I only get angrier because I know what he's doing. He's trying to downplay the relationship I had with Angie so that I don't feel like shit about what I did to her. I respect him for trying to make me feel better but there's no way to minimize what she meant to me. "Time isn't a factor, asshole. I never forgot about that girl."
My brother's voice is so damn bitter when he leans in and lowers his tone even further. “So, basically you're telling me that you were distracted. You get the opportunity you’ve been waiting for—the chance to prove to the captain that you're the man to replace him when he retires—and you let yourself be distracted. By a woman. How are you ever gonna make captain if you’re too pussy-whipped to even tie your own damn shoelaces?"
I don’t care about the promotion right now. I just care about how it felt to see Angie. I keep replaying the scene in my head, wishing I’d said things differently.
Or apologized.
Or invited her to ride my face.
Or something.
Because it’s all for her anyway. On some level, aiming for that promotion, buy the house, all of it—those are my pathetic attempts to finally prove to myself that I did deserve her all those years ago. I'm well aware that I blew my shot with her and that she probably wouldn't want me even if males of the human race became an endangered species. Still, I need to prove to myself that I was good enough for a girl like her.
I won't say that out loud, though, because I don't expect him to understand. My brother's never been in love. He's never met a woman whose smile cuts him off at the knees, whose voice makes him lose his train of thought, whose touch makes every other thing and every other feeling inconsequential. Angie is all that to me. She's everything.
And she hates me.
I gave her some bullshit reason for pushing her away like I did. She doesn't know the truth. Back when I was 17, my pride wouldn’t allow me to tell her what was really going on. I never got the chance to make things right.
"So, what was she doing there at the hospital?" Madden asks.
I shake my head and stare out at the fire engines sitting idle on the ground floor. "I don't know. Where we left off, she'd gotten accepted into pre-med. Then, I heard she was doing her internship somewhere on the West Coast." I accepted that I'd never see her again. I especially never thought I'd see her sitting in the crowd in the local hospital's tiny auditorium. And now that I know she’s in town, I’m hopeful that she’s here for good, that she won’t be leaving again.
Yes, today she made it reasonably clear that she isn't interested in having any sort of conversation with me, but I need to talk to her. I need to know how she's been, how life has treated her over the years, if she's been out there breaking hearts. I need to know why she came back to Copper Heights when I'm sure she has the whole world at her fingertips.
My CheekyChat app rings again and my brother laughs throatily. "Dude, we need to write an ebook on how to get laid with that app. We'd be rich in a week. All the guys I know complain that they can't pick up chicks on it. Me? I got six notifications before I had my coffee this morning."
His bragging only irritates me further. "Did you not hear me say that the girl I never got over is back in town?!" I pull my phone out of my pocket and start jabbing at the screen. “How the hell do I delete this stupid app anyway?”
That’s when an alarm starts blaring throughout the station. My crew bursts down the hall, sprinting toward the pole. All traces of the razzing and joking from earlier have disappeared. That’s how it always goes around here—as soon as that alarm rings out, the men and women of the fire service transform into the utmost professionals. It's time to go to work.
My phone goes into my pocket. "What do we got?" I yell out as I run toward them.
"Multi-vehicle collision on the I-90 south," someone yells out.
"One of the cars rolled over. A child was ejected."
I glance over at my brother. He's listening in on his radio. He's probably being called to the very same accident. I throw him a quick salute and in a flash, I'm sliding down the pole onto the ground floor, yanking on my turnout gear and hopping into my truck. Angie lingers at the back of my mind as we peel out of the station.
Chapter Five
Angie
"Dear Dr. Duckett...Your husband is a dick. And as for you? You can suck it."
My late-night attempt at writing a scathing post-termination letter to my former boss causes my sister to laugh. “It sounds like an x-rated nursery rhyme. Dr. Seuss Gone Wild.” Sophia glances at me over her shoulder as she waddles toward the mint green vintage refrigerator in the kitchenette.
I huff under my breath, my attention fixed to the screen of my phone where I’m typing. “I assure you—the alliteration is unintentional and the rhyming is by accident. There’s certainly nothing poetic about the situation I’m in.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she says flippantly. “Things could be worse, right?” Half of her body disappears into the fridge as she rummages around.
“Please don’t even suggest that,” I warn with a groan. “I’m positive that the Universe is listening in and cooking up even more creative ways to screw me over. Don’t give it any ideas.”
After my first day at my new job, I’m beyond discouraged. Copper Heights is a small town in the sticks outside of Chicago with a population b
arely brushing 5000 residents who are all apparently in impeccable health. The ER was absolutely dead all day. Pun intended.
I got my hopes up when we got word that there’d been a highway accident nearby but all the victims got routed to the hospital in Reyfield. Fantastic! No traumas, no medical emergencies, nothing all day.
That left me ample time to linger around the nurses’ station while Nina gave the rest of the staff a titillating scene-by-scene rundown of some raunchy MFMMM (did I forget an ‘M’?) romance that she’s been reading on hospital time. As I zoned in and out of the discussion, a half-dozen variations on my encounter with Ben played on continuous loop in my mind.
From the looks of it, this is what my life will be for the foreseeable future. Therefore, optimism is definitely not on tonight’s menu.
“Do you realize that the most exciting thing I worked on today was pulling a splinter out of a preschooler’s big toe? This is how I’m making use of my Ivy League education.” I fold my legs up under me on the couch. “Plus, the idea that my ex-boyfriend might come waltzing around the corner at any minute, looking ripped and heroic like the star of a pornhub.com firefighter video, had me on edge all day. I can’t think straight under these conditions.”
Sophia’s muffled voice barely rises above the drone of the ancient kitchen appliance as she speaks. “Come on, the Universe has got an amazing sense of humor. You’ve got to let yourself laugh at your situation every now and then. At least so you don’t drive yourself crazy.” She emerges from the fridge with a tub of chocolate yogurt, a bottle of mustard and a jar of orange marmalade. She lays it all out on the cracked vinyl countertop.
I blink. “Humor? There is no humor. My life is in the gutter.”
She pauses at the counter where she’s spooning yogurt into two small bowls. She nails me with a merciless scowl. “Excuse me!” She whips her arms around like an air traffic controller waving down a jet. “I’m the queen of terrible luck. You’re talking to the girl who planned the high society wedding of the decade, got stood up at the altar and then two weeks later, found out she’s pregnant…If I can find a way to laugh, then so can you.” She picks up the bottle of mustard and aims it at one of the yogurt bowls. “Want some?”
The Blue Collar Bachelors Box Set: The Complete Blue Collar Bachelors Series Page 64
