Single Dad FILF: Fireman I'd like to.... (HotShots Book 3)

by Savannah May

  “Screw this brain fog headache.” I growl and slam my fist down on the dash.

  I can’t force my mind to catch the connection I know is there. It’s like when a word or someone’s name is on the tip of your tongue but keeps slipping out of your reach.

  Lainie

  Everything’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s nearly Christmas and it’s early morning. Neither are times that psychos typically appear at the door. Still, I miss Ryder whenever he’s not with me. Even when I was in the hospital, although I was kind of bitchy with him, I thought of him almost constantly.

  “You want chocolate or syrup on your pancakes?” I ask Jasmine, who is standing on a chair at the stove, laughing gleefully as she tries to flip another pancake. What a turnaround to see her so delighted and not so serious all the time.

  I’m glued to her side making sure nothing bad happens to her. I’m edgy bordering on paranoid, imagining the worst scenarios. I just wish Ryder would come back and show me how to do this parent thing.

  “I’ll take syrup on mine.” The voice comes from behind us.

  I whirl around from the stove, almost losing my balance. My heart is stampeding in my chest like a rodeo.

  “Hallo Jasmine.” Thad says.

  “Who’s that man, Lainie.”

  “No one, Sweetie.” I tell Jasmine.

  No one at all. How does he know Jasmine’s name? Is the guy such a nut that he’s researched all the occupants of the house just to prove a point? She puts her hand in mine.

  “How did you get in here?” I ask him as coolly as I can manage with everything trembling, putting an aggressive tone in my voice. Where’s that damn kitchen knife? Still under the couch.

  “I’m trained to come through locked doors.” He smirks.

  I have no idea what his line of work is, as I never asked. For some reason I thought he was a trucker. But at the bar I only ever heard his endless whining tales of how hard it is to find ‘the perfect one’. They quickly became the kind of fake flattery you know is meant to seduce you but only turns you off.

  “What do you want?” I snap.

  “You know what I want.”

  “Please go, Thad.” I sound so proper, talking to a lunatic like he can be reasonable.

  “I told you to keep your mouth shut.” He says, ignoring my request. “But you had to send your boyfriend to tell the police about me.”

  Ryder went to the police? Fuck, did he tell them about me?

  “Lainie?” Jasmine wobbles on the chair.

  “It’s okay baby.”

  “Yes, it’s okay Baby.” Thad says to me. “I’m not too mad at you. Just a little bit that you’ll have to be punished for.”

  “Thad, please, there’s a child here. Please stop.”

  I’m keeping my voice level so as not to scare Jasmine. My eyes fly to the door. Where the hell is Ryder? He’s been gone an age, so long Jasmine got too hungry to wait for pancakes.

  “I’m not going to do anything to Ryder’s kid.” He says. “If you come with me now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “I have to watch Jasmine.”

  His smirk falls from his face and his features turn pointed with cruelty.

  “You can move in with him and babysit his kid without a second thought but you spurn me for months. That isn’t nice Lainie.”

  Thad advances slowly across the floor, like a beast circling his prey. I can feel Jasmine’s nervousness. The hairs rise along the sides of my arms. My only weapon is a hot fry pan. I’m not sure it’ll be enough.

  “I’ve decided it’s the season for you to be naughty and nice to me.” He burrs. “Naughty. And - nice. I know you’re going to be very, very nice to me at last.”

  He advances further, coming to the edge of the countertop. He only has to walk up the side and around the short edge to reach us. On an impulse, I make a grab at Jasmine, picking her up off the chair and clutching her to me. I run, hurtling along the hall for the bathroom. We can’t possibly make it. I’m carrying a load and Thad is strong and lean. He can easily catch me. But I run anyway. Anything to get away from him and not surrender.

  I bolt into the bathroom and slam the door. Leaning into it, I fiddle with the lock. My fingers are shaking so hard it’s difficult to make the key turn. Eventually I do and I lean my back on the door gasping for air, Jasmine’s arms are clinging tight around my neck and my chest hurts where my heart is pounding so hard.

  But we made it. I bought us some time. Although it won’t be for long as this dickwad seems to have the ability to materialize through locked doors. Strange I don’t hear Thad behind us, or his breathing at the door. I move abruptly away from it, in case he does that creepy talking through the frame thing that he gets off on.

  “You okay Sweetie?” I ask Jasmine as I set her down on the floor.

  She nods with her serious little frown back. I can see Ryder in her intense features and I love her even more. She hasn’t cried or made a fuss about this situation I’ve dropped her into.

  “Who is that man and how does he know my name?” She asks.

  “He’s not a very nice man but don’t worry.”

  “When is Daddy coming?”

  “Soon, Sweetie.” Oh god let it be soon.

  My ears are straining to hear any sound of Thad moving about out in the hall, or even better giving up on his stupid game and leaving us alone. My heart has stopped thumping and is now making that kind of screeching pain that comes with anxiety stress. He has to go away right? He won’t do anything in broad daylight. I strain for a sound but there’s nothing.

  “Jersey.” Jasmine cries. “We left him out there. I have to get him.”

  “No baby, you have to stay in here.”

  Jersey is barking wildly and then we hear him let out a squeal of pain. Oh god, what did you do to him, you bastard? Jasmine’s face becomes a mask of sadness. She’s so empathetic she feels the dog’s hurt. I consider going out and getting Jersey but before I go for it, I smell an acrid aroma that gives me chills of recognition.

  Small wisps of smoke are coming under the crack of the door. Every goosebump rises on my skin. I grab Jasmine again and carry her to the tub. There, I set her down inside and pull the curtain across. I crouch down beside her, just as Ryder did when washing my hair and touching my body with his luscious mouth for the first time. Damn, where are you?

  “Okay, you stay here in the tub promise?”

  “Why Lainie?”

  I fumble the plug into the drain as she watches wide-eyed.

  “If anything happens and I can’t get you out, you turn on the taps and put lots of water in the bath. Can you do that?”

  She nods yes, watching me closely as I roll up a towel into a tight snake.

  “Good girl. Now you stay behind this curtain like we’re playing hide and seek.”

  I turn on the tap and shove the towel under the flow to soak it. Then I set it along the bottom of the door where the smoke is snaking in, a little thicker now. I stand up and look at my handiwork. It’ll have to do.

  The door handle jiggles and I jump back with a startle. Just in time to avoid the crack of one of the door panels being smashed in.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are.” Thad calls through the hole he’s battered in the wood.

  The door receives another massive smash and again Thad laughs. But the fanatical sound of his hilarity is cut off abruptly and a second later the man himself slams through the splintered wood with a crack like thunder and he comes barreling into the room, backwards.

  Thad has flown halfway across the room and landed on his back. Ryder is on top of him, his face contorted with rage.

  “I will fucking end you. Is that what you said to my girl?” Ryder growls.

  He slams the back of Thad’s head into the floor as he speaks then pulls back his fist and rams it into his jaw with a sickening thwack.

  Then again, his fist makes contact again and again until Thad is bleeding
all over the floor. Still Ryder’s rage doesn’t calm down. His hand is also covered with blood, whether Thad’s or his own I can’t tell.

  “Ryder stop.” I shout.

  He doesn’t hear me. He’s going to kill Thad, just like he promised. While I wouldn’t mind having the dude gone from my life for good, I don’t want Ryder to live with killing a man in front of his daughter.

  “Enough.” I scream.

  This time he hears me. The rage drains from his limbs and he stops, still on his knees over Thad who’s lying prone on the floor. He isn’t dead, thank god. I know because his eyes are open staring back at Ryder with hatred.

  “You come to my house and set a fire with my kid inside.” Ryder grits out at him.

  Thad doesn’t respond.

  “You’re a firefighter for chrissakes.” He adds. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Still no response from Thad, just the stone cold stare. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Thad is a firefighter? As in they work together?

  “I thought we were friends, Tom.”

  Tom? Oh god, a flare goes through my core when I realize that something is wrong with Ryder. He said he had a headache and this morning he forgot what I’d told him less than a day before. You’d have thought he had dementia the way he was acting but it can only be that the smoke has caused more damage that we thought. And since Thad lit a fire here that Ryder had to fight, he’s been inhaling even more.

  My eyes fly to the smashed in door but the hallway is clear now and no smoke is billowing around. Ryder must have made short work of extinguishing the blaze Thad started. Still, he’s hallucinating. He thinks Thad is some guy named Tom that he works with.

  “We were friends until you had to go playing the hero with my girl.” Thad gasps.

  “You set that fire too, you asshole.”

  Ryder is still bearing down with his full weight on Thad’s chest. I step back close to the bath tub and put my arms around Jasmine.

  “You called me a psycho. That wasn’t nice, Ryder.” Thad whines.

  “That’s exactly what you are and you can’t even see it. You set the fire, then you went in as a firefighter and made sure she wouldn’t escape. It’s goddamn murder and I’m going to make sure you pay for it this time.”

  “Yeah who you gonna believe me or the slut?”

  The name calling makes me mad and I decide to add my two cents.

  “And you planted drugs in my home and told your brother in law to threaten me in the hospital.”

  “Shut the fuck up bitch.”

  Chapter 21

  Ryder

  A hard burn rushes up my body and before I realize what I’ve done, I pull back my bicep all the way then slam my fist into Tom’s cheek like I should have done the night he left two beings in a burning building to die. If I had outed him fully back then, some of Lainie’s nightmare hassles would have been spared.

  “Don’t you ever speak to Lainie like that or curse in front of my daughter unless you want me to end you.” I growl, fighting down the blaze in my muscles that yearns to do what I promised and rid the earth of this scumbag.

  “Ryder, he’s not moving.” Lainie whispers. “Is he…”

  “No. I wish.” I grunt. The dick still has a pulse. He’s just out for a while. “Come here Baby.”

  When I reach out my arms for my kid both my girls come and settle into my lap where there’s enough space for both of them to perch on my thighs.

  “Are you okay Daddy?” Jasmine’s tiny fingers curl around my wrist where blood is dripping from my hand.

  “I’m fine, Baby. Daddy had to stop the bad man being mean to his girls.”

  Lainie’s reached for a towel, rolled up and wet, from beside the door and wipes the blood off my hand.

  “See all good now. No more boo-boo.”

  Jasmine nods her satisfaction then climbs off my lap and walks out of the bathroom. Lainie looks up at me with a mix of emotions I can’t read.

  “I’m sorry.” She mouths at me.

  “No I’m sorry, I wasn’t here when I should have been protecting you. I really messed up.”

  “You rescued me - again.” She says, making me feel better.

  “I’m gonna call the police to come pick up this lunatic, as soon you explain what you meant about Tom’s brother in law.”

  “Ryder, I think we should get you to a hospital.”

  “Why? I’m fine.”

  “You know you keep calling him Tom?”

  “Baby, I don’t know what name he gave you, but his real name is Tom. He works with me, or he did until he was suspended for not bringing you out of the fire.”

  “It was him who set it.”

  “Yeah we weren’t aware of his fascination for arson. I’m sorry Babe, I should have been more careful.”

  “Daddy, Jersey’s hurt.”

  I look up to see my beautiful little angel in the doorway cradling one of her fur babies - the live one she’s fallen in love with.

  “I think Thad must have kicked him.” Lainie whispers, turning her head so Jazzy doesn’t hear.

  “I’d like to…”

  Her hand on my forearm calms me from actually following through with pummeling into a man while he’s out cold. I’m in such a rage that Tom managed to hurt every one of my new little family that I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back if she weren’t here at my side. I call the cops and when they arrive they find me performing first aid at the kitchen counter. Jasmine is standing on a chair beside me, promising Jersey she’ll feed him pancakes as soon as his leg splint is completed.

  “He’s in the bathroom, fellas.” I tell the bemused task force. Officer Crane isn’t among them.

  I called my Chief as well, just so that there wouldn’t be any mind fuck headgames played by the brother in law from hell.

  “You hog-tied him?” Chief says, trying not to smirk when he sees Tom in my bathroom.

  “Yeah. He set fire to my house, threatened my kid and kicked my dog. I’m not about to let him wander around like a guest.”

  “You got yourself a whole little family all of a sudden.” The chief says suspiciously. He has no idea.

  They take the asshole away and I tell the chief I’ll fill him in fully. I wasn’t about to let him know Lainie is hiding out in Jasmine’s bedroom. But then I feel sick of the lies and I’m not going to live with Lainie as a guilty secret. I intend to keep her here with me permanently and if she wants to stay then people need to know the truth.

  “Lainie, come out and say hi to my boss.” I shout.

  “Lainie.” When she doesn’t immediately appear, Jasmine climbs off her chair and goes down the hall. She returns leading Lainie by the hand before taking off again.

  Lainie emerges looking shy but with her head up. Man, the woman is beautiful when she’s happy, which I can tell she is even though nervous as well.

  “Tom’s been stalking Lainie for months.” I tell the Chief. “When she refused him he set fire to her home and then later he left the scene so that she wouldn’t expose him. When she survived…”

  “Thanks to you.” Lainie whispers.

  “When she survived, Tom had his brother in law cop plant the cocaine and threaten her in the hospital.”

  “Well you’ve been on one hell of a ride, young lady.” The Chief tells her.

  I can see she’s studiously avoiding meeting my eye and trying not to crack up laughing at the chief’s unintended joke. Yep and she’s just getting started on her saddle abilities.

  I see the chief out. When I shut the door, Lainie’s in the hall beckoning me urgently. Now what?

  She takes me to the bathroom and we peek around the door to where Jasmine is on her knees wiping up blood. Jesus.

  “Baby, you don’t have to do that.” I go right in and pick her up off the floor.

  “Shannon told me I have to.” Jasmine says, confused about what she’s done wrong.

  “No Sweetie I’m sure she didn’t mean for you to clean the house.” Lainie
says.

  “She told me that I’m like Cinderella and I have to work if I want to stay. And that no Prince will want me if I don’t make the house all clean.”

  Argh. Seems like I’m getting to work off a good amount of rage today, at all the people in my life who need to be cleaned out.

  “I’ll clear it up.” Lainie says.

  “I’m the one who made the mess so I’ll clean it.” I insist. “That’s the first rule of the house now.”

  We spend the evening as a real family. Even Jersey has a seat at the table, which I don’t approve of but it’s Christmas Eve and my kid’s pleading eyes were as big as the mutt’s.

  “I’m outnumbered.” I say with a cheesy grin after we’ve put Jazzy to bed with stockings and cookies and all the usual hoopla tradition. “You girls are going to have your evil way with me and I’m a pushover.”

  “You mean you find us irresistible?” Lainie says with a look that makes my blood start rushing.

  “I can’t resist you for a second.”

  I scoop her up with one thick arm around her waist. She doesn’t resist me one bit and only squeals with delight as I throw her up over my shoulder. I intend to carry her down the hall and toss her down on the bed so I can relish her beneath me, but the urge pushing through every blood vessel doesn’t allow me to wait even that long. I set her down on the edge of the countertop and shove her mini skirt up her thighs.

  Our hands are everywhere at once. I cup the back of her head to pull her mouth onto mine and delve my tongue into her, lapping and sucking and reaching deeper into her crevasses.

  Her small hands tear at my clothes and scrabble for my jeans button. My hand comes up over the indent of her waist to clamp on the side of her breast, squeezing the perky flesh as I strum her nipple with my thumb.

  Lainie’s limbs entangle around my body in a web of flesh and muscle. Her thighs clamp around my pelvis, as I free my raging cock from my jeans. I position my head at her entrance and circle my pelvis a little to wet myself with the juices pouring out of her.