Flashback

by Jill Shalvis

  “Shh,” he was murmuring. “I’ve got you. It’s okay, Kenzie, it’s going to be okay….”

  She was hurt, but not so hurt as to stop the memories bombarding her at the sound of his voice. How could she not have instantly recognized him?

  He was the first man who’d ever broken her heart.

  He’d ditched his helmet and she could see his face now. He didn’t look happy to see her, and honestly, on that point, if he hadn’t been saving her sorry ass, they’d have been perfectly in sync. “Aidan.” She could see the fire reflected in his eyes. Blake’s Girl was really blazing now. “My God, we almost—”

  “I know.” His short, dark hair was plastered to his head. Water ran in rivulets down his face, which was starkly pale. His long, inky-black eyelashes were spiky, and he had a cut above one eyebrow that was oozing blood. In spite of all of that, she had the most ridiculous thought: wow, he looked good all fierce and intense and wet.

  Aidan Donnelly, first real boyfriend. First…everything…. She could hardly believe it, certainly couldn’t process it, so she craned her neck, staring at the boat that looked like one big firecracker. “It just blew, and I—”

  “Kenzie—”

  “—I mean one minute I’m sitting there missing my brother, and the next…”

  He looked into her eyes, his cool and composed. “It’s going to be okay, but I need you to—”

  “And it blew. I was just sitting there, surrounded by his things, missing him, and then boom. My Choos are probably halfway to China by now. I really liked those Choos.”

  “Kenzie,” he said in a tone of authoritative calm. “I need you to listen to me now. Can you do that?”

  She could take a gulp of air. But listening? The jury was still out on that one. Her ears were ringing. And the water was so damn cold. In fact, she was shaking and hadn’t even realized it, shudders that wracked her entire body and rattled her teeth.

  “Hold onto me, Kenzie. That’s all you have to do, okay? Just hold onto me.”

  Right. Hold onto him. She’d grown up here in Santa Rey, and once upon a time she’d held onto him plenty. She’d held onto him, laughed with him, slept with him…

  Actually, there’d never been much sleeping involved between them, a thought which brought an avalanche of others. Him fresh out of the firefighters’ academy and possessing a body that had made her drool, not to mention the knowledge of how to use that body to make hers go wild…

  But that had been what, six years ago? Hell, she could barely think, much else handle any math at the moment, so she couldn’t be sure.

  He was towing her out, away from the boat and any danger of falling debris, while shouting something to two firefighters on the other side of the burning vessel, both of whom had hoses on the fire.

  She’d been in a fire before. On the set of her soap opera, Hope’s Passion, before it’d been cancelled. But that was under carefully controlled circumstances. This wasn’t a TV show with lines for her to follow. This was the real thing, with no makeup department standing by to color in pretend injuries, dammit.

  She’d have loved a script right about now, with a happy ending, please.

  At least she was still breathing.

  Hard to beat that.

  Blake’s Girl hadn’t gotten so lucky.

  Neither had Blake. Oh, yeah, there was the familiar rush of pain, slicing right through the numbness from the cold water, lancing her heart—the pain that had been with her since she’d learned Blake was dead. Making it worse, adding confusion and anger to her grief was the fact that he’d been accused of being an arsonist and murderer.

  God, Blake…

  Another chunk of burning debris fell from the still flaming boat, and she imagined it was something of Blake’s, something she’d never see again. Or maybe it was her own suitcase, or her laptop, which wasn’t a big loss in the scheme of things, but it held the scripts she’d been writing…

  At least if she died, she would no longer be a freshly unemployed soap star.

  It was so damn ironic—she’d never been able to come home when Blake had been alive because she’d been too busy working. Then days after he’d died, her soap had been cancelled. Now she could drive up all she wanted, and he was gone…. Her first trip home in forever and it had been to see after his things, things that were now smoldering in the water around her.

  “Don’t give up on me,” Aidan said. His eyes focused ahead on where he was swimming to, some point invisible to her. It was too dark to see their color clearly but she knew them to be a light brown with flecks of green that danced when he laughed.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  Nope.

  He glanced at her, then resumed swimming straight and sure, moving them away from the flames, which also meant away from any warmth, while she did as he’d asked and just held on. She could do nothing but. Like old times…

  Why did it have to be him, the guy who’d crushed her heart, stomped on her pride and then walked away from her without a backward glance?

  Did he hurt over the loss of Blake?

  Did he believe the lies?

  Because that thought, and all the others that came with it, came close to defrosting her, she shoved them aside. The blessed numbness was working for her. She hadn’t come to Santa Rey in the past six years, but Blake had visited her in L.A. on the set, whenever he could, and on top of his visits, they’d been in frequent contact by e-mail, texting and phone calls, and had remained close despite their physical distance. He was the only family she’d had.

  And now he was gone.

  Forever gone.

  “Kenzie? You still with me?” Aidan’s lean jaw was tight with tension and was scruffy, as if he hadn’t had time to shave in a day or two. Or four.

  “Unfortunately.” She’d like to be anywhere but “with” him. She could feel his longer, stronger legs moving, bumping into hers, and it made her irrationally mad. She didn’t want help, not from him, but when she wriggled free to prove herself fine, she went down like a stone. Straight beneath the surface of the icy water, where she promptly did the stupid thing of opening her mouth to breathe and got a lungful of extremely cold salt water for her efforts.

  Thankfully, she was immediately hauled back up again and pulled against a hard chest, one hand fisted in the back of her shirt, the other arm across the backs of her thighs in a grip that could have rivaled Superman’s.

  Firefighter to victim.

  Not ex-boyfriend to ex-girlfriend.

  And wasn’t that just the problem? Once upon a time he really had had her, only he’d been the one to let go. He’d done it, he’d said, because of their respective careers and because he didn’t like hiding their relationship from his friend Blake, but she knew the truth. It was because he’d decided she’d been falling in love with him and he hadn’t been ready for love, so he’d shooed her away and had moved on.

  She’d hated him for that for a good long time, for not giving himself a chance to feel what she’d felt, and, yeah, he’d been right—she had been more than halfway in love with him. It’d taken a while, but eventually her anger had drained, and she’d acknowledged that he’d been right to break it off with her before she’d gotten even more hurt…. But that hadn’t eased her pain at the time.

  Maybe she should consider herself lucky they were doing this reintroduction in an official capacity—him on the job, and her being just one in a blur of people he rescued. Less personal.

  “Stop fighting me.” His voice cut through the shocking noise of the night: the sirens, the shouting of the other firefighters and personnel, the ever-present, horrifying crackling of the flames, the small waves smacking into each other, waves that would be cresting over her head if it wasn’t for Aidan’s holding her with what appeared to be little to no effort. “I’ve got you.”

  “I don’t want you to have me.”

  “Okay, roger that. But at the moment you don’t have a choice.”

  “Of all the firefighters in this damn tow
n…”

  She thought she caught a flash of a grim smile. So he was no more thrilled than she was. He wasn’t even looking directly at her, his attention instead focused on the boat behind her, and the dock behind that, reminding her that not only was he saving her hide, he was simultaneously looking for other people who needed help.

  “I was alone on the boat,” she told him.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Saying good-bye to Blake.”

  Sorrow, regret, and anguish all briefly flashed in his eyes. “Kenzie—”

  “He didn’t do those things you’re all accusing him of, Aidan.”

  She had his attention now, all of it, and she’d forgotten the potency of having Aidan Donnelly giving her one-hundred-percent of his focus. “He didn’t.”

  “Did he say something, anything to you at all, before he died?”

  Died…Hearing the words from his mouth made Blake’s death all the more real, as did being back here in her hometown, and it hit her hard. Throat so tight that she couldn’t speak, she shook her head. No, Blake hadn’t said anything at all, which made her feel even worse. “It wasn’t him who set those fires. I know it.”

  “Kenzie,” he said very gently, but she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to hear anything he said, so she shook her head again and closed her eyes, which brought an unexpected and horrifying sense of vertigo, making her clutch at him. “I want out.”

  “I know. They’re coming for us right now.”

  That was good. Because something was definitely wrong. Her vision was getting fuzzy. Her brain was getting fuzzier. Scared and a little overwhelmed, she pressed her face into the crook of his neck, her nose to his throat, the position hauntingly familiar and at once flooding her with memories.

  She’d been here before.

  Okay, not here, not in the water, freezing, scared, but she’d been held by him, had pressed her face against his warm flesh and inhaled him in, absorbing the way he held her close, as if he’d never let anything happen to her.

  He smelled the same, a scent she’d never quite managed to forget, and it was messing with her brain in spite of the fact that she’d just survived an explosion, a nighttime swim in the freezing ocean, and an uncomfortable reunion with the one and only guy she’d ever let break her heart.

  Dammit. She blamed Blake. Blake…

  “Kenzie.” Aidan gave her a little shake. “Stay with me now.”

  No, thanks…

  “Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Come on, Kenzie. Stay awake, stay with me.”

  As opposed to giving in to the delicious lethargy slowly taking over? Nah… “Too tired.”

  “I know, but you can do this. You can do anything, remember?”

  She nearly smiled at the reminder of her own personal motto, but then remembered who was talking. Yeah, she’d once believed that she could do anything, with him at her side.

  He’d proved her wrong.

  Oh, boy. Her eyes were closing. It’d be so easy to let them, to just drift off and not feel the cold anymore, but even in her fuzziness, she knew that was bad, so with great effort, she pried her eyes open.

  And her gaze landed on him. The last time she’d seen him, she’d been so young. They’d been so young. She’d just turned twenty-two, been signed by a Los Angeles agent, and had landed her first small walk-on role. He’d been two years older, fit and gorgeous, and on top of his world as a young firefighter.

  Plastered against him, her hands clenched on his biceps, her legs entwined with his, her chest up against him the way it was, she could feel that he was still fit.

  Very fit.

  And thanks to the flames and also the spotlights from the guys on the dock keeping track of them, she also knew that he was still gorgeous. If he hadn’t cut her loose without a backward glance, she’d be happy to see him.

  Very happy.

  A group of firefighters had made their way through the flames to the end of the neighboring dock, and had secured it with criss-crossing lines of water. One of them leaped into the ocean, and with long, sure strokes swam toward them.

  “Here,” he called out to Aidan, holding out an arm for Kenzie.

  “I’ve got her,” Aidan said.

  But Kenzie had had enough, of Aidan and his capable, strong arms, of his scent and especially of the memories. So she reached out for the second firefighter, going into his arms without looking back, arms that had never held her before, arms that didn’t know her, arms that didn’t evoke the past.

  Even though she wanted to, she wouldn’t look back.

  3

  BY THE TIME AIDAN HAULED himself out of the water, Ty had handed Kenzie off to the EMTs. Dustin and Brooke took her away from the flames and straight to their ambulance.

  Good.

  Chilled, drenched to the skin, Aidan made his way through the organized mayhem to his rig, where he stripped down and pulled on dry gear, the questions coming hard and fast in his head.

  What the hell had Kenzie been doing there? Odd timing, given that in all these years, she’d not shown up in Santa Rey, not once. At least that he was aware of. Blake had never mentioned any visits, but then again, why would he? He’d had no idea that Aidan had dated his baby sister, and then walked away rather than engage his heart. They’d never told him, knowing he wouldn’t have liked it.

  Nope, Kenzie hadn’t been back, not even for Blake’s memorial service, and yet suddenly here she was, on Blake’s boat, a boat that just happened to blow sky high once she’d set foot on it.

  Odd coincidence.

  During the time the two of them had been in the water together, the sky had lightened. Dawn had arrived. The chief had put an explosives team in place, and had a plan to contain the fire. Aidan needed to get back into the thick of it, but first he had to see Kenzie and make sure for himself that she was okay. She’d had a head laceration and multiple cuts and wounds, and that had been before he’d tossed her into the water.

  He looked through the horde of people working the flames—Eddie and Sam, Aaron, Ty and Cristina, plus the guys from Thirty-Three, all on hoses and past the explosives experts surveying the still burning shell of Blake’s Girl to where the ambulance was parked.

  Kenzie was seated at the back of the opened rig between Dustin and Brooke. She was dripping everywhere, her clothes revealing what he already knew, that she was petite and in possession of a set of mouthwatering curves that had gotten only more mouthwatering in the past few years. She wore layered tees, the top one pink, ribbed and long-sleeved, unbuttoned to her waist, the one beneath white with pink polka-dots, opened to just between her breasts, both soaked through and suctioned to her body enough to expose her bra, which was also pink, lace and quite sheer.

  He’d been a firefighter for years and he’d rescued countless victims, many female, some of whom had been as wet as Kenzie, and never, not one single goddamn time, had he ever stopped in the middle of a job to notice their breasts.

  It was his first clue that he was in trouble, deep trouble—but when it came to Kenzie, that was nothing new. He chose to ignore his observation for now, for as long as he possibly could. His gaze dropped past her shirt with shocking difficulty, to a pair of button-fly jeans low on her hips, also dangerous territory because he’d always loved her legs, especially how bendy they could get….

  Don’t go there.

  She shoved her hair out of her face, which still looked far too pale, even a little green, although that didn’t take away from her beauty. Once upon a time she’d been a gorgeous study of sexy, frou-frou feminine mystery to him.

  Some things never changed.

  As if she felt his gaze, she looked up, and from fifty feet, between which were other firefighters, equipment and general chaos, she found him.

  Between them the air seemed to snap, crackle, pop.

  Six years ago, the thought of a long-distance relationship had been as alien to him as a close-distance relationship, and he’d told himself he had no choice but to break things o
ff, even though that had really just been an excuse.

  He’d broken things off because she’d scared him, she’d scared him deep. And apparently, given the hard kick his heart gave his ribs, she still did.

  She’d been able to get inside him, make him feel things that hadn’t been welcome, and, yeah, he’d run like a little girl.

  He felt like running now.

  But this time it was Kenzie who turned away. Dustin unfolded a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, while Brooke checked her pupils, then dabbed at the various cuts on her face.

  Kenzie sat still, eyes closed now, looking starkly pale but alive.

  Alive was good.

  She huddled beneath the blanket, cradling a wrist, nodding to something Brooke asked her. Aidan knew that Brooke and Dustin, both close friends, would take good care of her. They took good care of everyone, which meant that Kenzie was in the very best hands.

  Still in the thick of the organized chaos around him, Aidan took a second to let his gaze sweep over her. She really did seem as okay as he could hope for, and he told himself to turn away.

  He was good at that. After all, he’d learned to do so at a young age from his own family, who’d shuffled him around more than a deck of cards on poker night. Yeah, he was good at walking away. Or at least good at pretending he didn’t care when others walked away from him.

  And after all, he’d done the same to her.

  God, he’d been cruel to her all those years ago. Not that he’d meant to be. Going through the academy had been a life lesson for him. He could belong to a “family.” He could make long-lasting friends. He could love someone with all his heart.

  But loving his fellow firefighters like the brothers they’d become was one thing.

  Loving Kenzie had been another entirely.

  Since she’d left, he’d seen her only on TV. As a rule, he didn’t watch soaps. He didn’t watch much TV at all, actually. If he wasn’t working, he was renovating the fixer-upper house he’d bought last year, emphasis on fixer-upper. If he wasn’t doing that, he was playing basketball, or something else that didn’t cost any money because the fixer-upper had eaten his savings.