Finding Mr. Right Next Door (Firefighters of Station 1)

by Sarah Ballance

  She dove straight for her borrowed dresser to grab a shirt, but she didn’t get the chance. She was still laughing when Matt came up behind her, snatching the shirt from her hands and tossing her playfully to the bed.

  Then he followed her down, and they stopped laughing just as quickly as they’d started.

  It wasn’t funny anymore.

  It was real.

  Chapter Seventeen

  At some point in the last few days, Matt had come to a rather startling conclusion: in every way that mattered, he’d been a damned virgin before Lexi. She made him feel things he hadn’t before. Hell, she made him feel, period. And he didn’t need to dip his toe in a deep pool of retrospect to realize that she’d always been the best part of everything.

  He didn’t know where they were going with this, or where they could go, or if she wanted it to go anywhere at all—especially considering that they’d agreed they were ignoring it, a strategy that had lasted only a few hours—but he had this moment, and he had Lexi, and if this was the last moment they’d share like this, he wanted it for all it was worth.

  So he didn’t think. He didn’t try to justify what he wanted, or whether it was a good idea. He just pulled her as close as any two people could be and kissed her as deeply as he knew how. He captured one of her hands, tightly lacing her fingers with his own, pressing against the mattress, the comforter pillowing around them until his entire world consisted of softness and heat.

  He brushed back her hair, everything hinging on the moment her eyes fluttered open and somehow captured his soul.

  “We suck at ignoring this,” she said, the fingertips of her free hand tracing the line of his jaw, the ticklish spot behind his ear, curling in his hair. She stretched beneath him, her legs seemingly miles long when she hooked one around his thigh and opened the other around his hip.

  “The only thing I want to ignore,” he said, “is our previous plan to ignore this. Now, unless you object, hush.”

  She probably had about a hundred replies to that, but he saw the spark in her eye and knew that not a single one involved a request to stop. So he didn’t, other than the time it took to run across the hall and grab a condom from his room. He was going to have to start buying them in bulk. And stash them in every room of the house so there were no interruptions ever again.

  When he returned, her gaze took his breath. She was so unbelievably beautiful that he had to take a moment to believe she was real. This wasn’t wall sex or sofa sex or frantic sex. This was different. A bed had never seemed like a big deal to him before, but he’d never made love to Lexi in one. Hell, he’d never made love to anyone in one, for the simple reason that there hadn’t been anyone before her. Not anymore.

  But those were thoughts for later.

  He couldn’t remember the exact moments they’d joined before. Just the explosion of sensation, the kind that blinded him to everything but the sheer bliss of it. This time he felt everything, inch by inch, her heat enveloping him, her body seizing and claiming him, the sinking, the falling. The moment lingered, a stillness between them, until she’d taken all of him and couldn’t take more, when he saw the passion blazing in her eyes and the lust swollen on her lips.

  For a few precious seconds, he didn’t know how to move. How to be worthy of her. But then she arched her back, driving him impossibly deeper, and he matched her movement, retreating on a long, slow slide that left her whimpering and making filthy demands, her breath hot against his ear.

  He smiled and sank again, the pace so brutally slow that he thought he’d die, but if ever a moment was worth a last breath, it was that one. The slower he moved, the more frantic she grew until she was panting and hot, her body clenching so tightly around him that he nearly saw stars. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer, he shifted to one knee, changing the angle, knowing he’d hit the right spot when she gasped and flailed and almost instantly shuddered. He held on until her trembling slowed, then gave in, rocking his hips in long, deep strokes that did the job faster than he ever could have wanted.

  By the time he finished, he was wasted, but he had one more thing he needed to do. As far as fantasies went, it wasn’t anything that would make the front page, but it mattered to him.

  He hoped it would matter to her.

  As soon as he had feeling in his legs, he scooped her in his arms and carried her to his room, pulled back the covers, and followed her into his bed.

  …

  Lexi was so blissed out that she didn’t think to question Matt or what he was doing. Not until she found herself in the middle of his king-sized bed, her limbs tangled with his, his gaze intense and holding her in a kind of reverence.

  “Why?” she asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure of her question.

  “Since the first time,” he said, “I’ve wanted you in here.”

  “I’d think your bed has been christened plenty,” she said, softening her words with a smile.

  “Not by you. Not by us.” He glanced briefly toward the window that faced her own bedroom window. “I used to lie here and think about you lying there. Especially after we’d finish a movie or whenever I’d leave your house late, I always hated to be here alone, knowing you were there alone.”

  “You thought about us?” she asked, surprised.

  “If I thought I could have gone over there, if I ever thought we had a chance, I would have been there so fast,” he said. He didn’t mention whether that had changed, but there was something in his voice that gave her hope.

  He traced her skin with his fingertips, detouring nefariously to the deepest, hottest, wettest parts. Lexi gasped, incapable of controlling her physical reaction. The only thing better was the slow creep of his grin, the promise that was for her alone.

  His voice saying he’d do anything, anything, to make this real.

  Something about it then, in the easy darkness, made her think it just might be possible. That it might be worth it to try.

  Her next orgasm came so quietly, so intensely, that tears filled her eyes. He couldn’t have known that, yet he seemed to know exactly what to do as he kissed his way from her inner thighs to her quivering belly, past her aching breasts, to gently stroke her face and make a quiet promise that there wasn’t anything he wanted more than a thousand more nights just like this one.

  And God help her, she believed him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lexi woke to the sound of knocking on the front door. On instinct, she attempted to climb out of bed, but Matt’s arm was hooked around her and the second she moved he pulled her into the warmest, squishiest embrace. Well, squishy enough, considering the man’s entire physique had been carved from stone.

  “Door,” she murmured.

  “Leave it,” he said, dragging her even closer, his fingers threading her hair as his mouth closed against her neck, all hot and warm and—

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  “I don’t think we should ignore that,” she said, right about the time Waffles responded with a hearty series of woofs of his own.

  “Fine.” Matt didn’t sound like he meant it, and a lowered glance suggested he wasn’t in any state to greet anyone, but he pulled on a pair of sweat pants and headed toward the door, leaving Lexi to steal one of his shirts and a pair of boxers before joining him.

  She entered the front room in time to hear Keith, her contractor, say, “Good news.” Then he caught sight of Lexi, and stopped on the cusp of whatever amazing thing he wanted to say, his gaze sliding from Matt, shirtless, to Lexi, in a shirt that swallowed her and boxers that one could safely assume didn’t belong to her, either. Self-conscious, she dragged her hand through her hair, hitting tangles, and realizing at that point that she probably looked like she’d just stepped off the set of an old Bon Jovi video.

  Not helping matters, both Matt and Keith were now eyeing her. Keith’s expression held bemusement. Matt look
ed like he wanted to haul her right back to bed. Instead he tore his heated gaze away and fixed on Keith. “What’s the good news?”

  Addressing Lexi, he said, “Your house is ready. Just got the final inspection approved late yesterday, so you can go home any time.” He glanced from her to Matt and back again and grinned. “If that’s still the plan.”

  “That is…great.” Lexi said brightly. “You finished early.” A solid week early.

  “And under budget,” he added with a wink.

  Yep. Great contractor. So why was her heart sliding slowly, gracelessly to the floor?

  “It’s all you asked for,” he continued, “so you won’t find any surprises, but I think it came together nicely. Come check it out when you’re ready.”

  “Will do,” Lexi said. “Thanks.”

  They said their goodbyes, then Matt shut the door with a resounding click.

  “So, that was fast,” Lexi said. “Ahead of schedule and under budget. Maybe it won’t pass inspection.” She laughed weakly at her joke.

  “It already did,” Matt said. He walked away from the door then, and her. She watched his back as he moved, lost herself in the fluid movement of muscle working under skin, and felt like she’d left those marks there a thousand years ago.

  But no, it had been hours, at most. Five minutes ago, he’d wanted to keep her in his bed. And now, he seemed to be avoiding her eyes as he went to the kitchen, started his coffee, and looked at anything else.

  She couldn’t stare after him forever, so she mumbled, “I guess I should get dressed.” She waited for a moment, for him to suggest that no, she was far too dressed, and that maybe they should go to bed, but he just stood there, back to her, something beyond the window infinitely more interesting than what was left of the two of them.

  He said he’d do anything to make this real.

  Well, in the bright light of day, reality was a bitch.

  Her eyes grew hot, tears threatening, but she’d already given him everything else. She wasn’t going to give him that. So she stepped out of the boxers, stripped off the T-shirt, and tossed them on the sofa. It was one of the two places he typically left laundry, the other being the floor beside his bed. “Right where you like it,” she said, her voice sounding weak and off and bitter, but she didn’t stay to try to save face. Instead, she walked naked to her room and pulled everything from the drawers. She dressed, tossed the rest in the suitcase she’d brought over from home, and stared at the door she’d left open a crack.

  She didn’t leave. Not yet.

  She instead dropped to the mattress, the sheets still softly rumpled from the night before. His words came back to her. He said he wanted this between them, and she’d believed him. She still did. But he also said he knew it wouldn’t work.

  The same thing he’d said at the fire station.

  Things change—those were his words—but maybe not everything. Maybe not the important things. The fact that he wanted her when they were close, that his gaze grew heated and made her soul take flight, should have meant something, but it didn’t. Because when they stepped back, when he wasn’t tracing filthy words against her heated skin, when the haze lifted and they found themselves back in the real world, that was when he didn’t want her.

  At least not enough.

  Maybe they’d been right to fight it. Maybe they’d been right to fall in. None of it mattered now, because he’d made it clear there was nothing left to say, so she grabbed her suitcase and walked back to her house and her beautiful new kitchen and her own bed.

  He didn’t even say goodbye.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two days. Matt couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone two days without seeing Lexi, or believe how much he missed her. Even when he was at work, unless the shift fell on a weekend, she was there, so her absence wasn’t accidental. She was avoiding him. And he couldn’t exactly blame her. He’d been taken aback to find out her house was ready early, but it was more than that. He just assumed he’d spend the next few days in some kind of domestic-bliss bubble, with Lexi in his life and his bed, maybe accompanied with breakfast, some syrup thrown in to ruin his sheets. Things were going to be different. He’d have time.

  Then Keith had showed up, the only goddamn contractor to finish a project early since a long-dead prehistoric dude had rolled a rock in front of a cave and grunted the word for door, and what had been fun and carefree turned into a choice. Then Lexi had made hers, and Matt had been too afraid to say the words that could have stopped her.

  He couldn’t ask her to stay.

  He wanted her to be happy, and he still didn’t think he could be that guy. The problem was, without her he still wasn’t that guy. He loved Lexi. He didn’t have any problem admitting that to himself, at least not anymore, but loving her wasn’t the problem.

  Loving her enough was.

  Because he loved her enough to let her go. To find someone who knew what he wanted, who wanted the same things she did.

  He tipped back his third warm beer of the day, wondering if Brews Brothers had ever familiarized itself with the concept of refrigeration. And why Matt had needed more than two decades and the threat of losing Lexi to realize it wasn’t that he had a great life and a great best friend, but that he had a great life because of his great best friend.

  But she wanted something he wasn’t sure he could give her, and there was nothing he could do about that to make the stale air in that bar any easier to breathe.

  He didn’t look up when someone sat beside him. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the bar was almost empty. Sitting on the barstool directly next to someone under those conditions was akin to not skipping a urinal, and Matt was in no mood then to look one of those fuckers in the eye.

  “You called in sick,” the fucker said. “The best I can recall, that’s a first.”

  Matt knew that voice. He looked up as Diego caught the beer the bartender slid his way. As soon as his palm hit the bottle, Diego made a face. Must’ve been warm.

  “Personal day,” Matt said, taking a swig of his own drink.

  “At the bar?”

  “Well,” Matt said, “Lexi isn’t here. And Lexi isn’t supposed to be here. It’s pretty much the only place I can sit where I don’t have to look at her or see that glaring empty space she used to fill.”

  Diego laughed softly. “So who screwed up this one?”

  Matt shot him a look of utter disgust. “Do you actually think it could have been her?”

  Diego shrugged. “Women aren’t infallible,” he said, chasing the statement with a swallow that emptied half his bottle. “Maybe not even Lexi.”

  Matt immediately felt like shit. Diego had been cheated on and divorced by a woman who’d hung the moon, stars, and her underwear on some other guy’s bedpost, and it had taken him a long time to get over it. Matt wasn’t sure how a man could ever climb back to trust after something like that, but if anyone deserved the chance to get there, Diego did.

  “Lexi is definitely not perfect,” Matt said with a sour laugh. “But who the hell wants to live with that?” He sighed and tapped the bottle harder than intended, inadvertently signaling for another—something he didn’t realize until a fourth warm beer hit the scarred counter in front of him. He stared at it for a minute, then said, “Screw it,” and tipped it back.

  “Who wants to live with perfection?” Diego asked. He gave a humorless laugh. “Women, mostly.”

  “Well I can’t speak for her, but the gist of it is simple. She wants something solid. Marriage, kids, the whole deal.”

  “And what do you want?” Diego asked.

  Matt was quiet for a long moment. “I just want her.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “I don’t know if I can give her what she wants. I’ve never had a real relationship in my life. I’ve never wanted one.”

  Die
go hung his head, laughing. Eventually, he asked, “Have you ever wondered why you’ve never wanted one?” When Matt didn’t answer, he added, “Because you already have it, man. You’ve just been too blind to see it.”

  Matt frowned. “Lexi and I are…were…weren’t even a consideration until she moved in with me. I know you guys don’t believe us, but literally, nothing had ever happened.”

  “You’re missing the point. You’ve had everything together. Everything. You blew past the false expectations years ago, the romanticizing, the part where you’re blind to her faults and she’s telling her friends how perfect you are. Screw that. You both know better.”

  “I’m not sure this is helping,” Matt said drily.

  Diego laughed quietly, shaking his head. “She already knows you leave your dirty clothes all over the place—at least that’s what I heard her tell Caitlin—and you know she can’t cook and—”

  “She leaves the orange juice out,” Matt grumbled.

  “Right. You guys didn’t start by screwing each other’s brains out thinking everything was perfect, only to wake up to reality. There’s a reason she’s such a big part of your life. She fits. You’ve never thought about looking for a relationship because you had one.”

  Matt didn’t say anything. Could Diego have a point?

  “This beer is hot,” Diego said after a moment.

  Well, he definitely had a point there.

  “I just don’t know about this marriage thing,” Matt finally said. “She’s wanted that forever. No woman wants a man to show up with a ring saying I guess so.”

  “Let me tell you something about marriage,” Diego said, his tone more matter of fact than bitter. “Women seem to be wired to want it. Men are more wired to…accept it. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t guys out there waiting for the right woman to come along, biding their time by choosing their tuxes and seating arrangements, but in general, they don’t. The fact that you haven’t been wasting away looking for someone to give a ring to doesn’t mean it’s not what you want. It means you’re normal.”