Flames 0f Love (Firefighters 0f Long Valley Book 1)

by Erin Wright

  His stomach rumbled again, this time loud enough that a table two booths over all turned to stare. Jaxson ducked his head and began spreading jelly on a fat, fluffy roll. Biting into it…heaven. He hadn’t tasted anything this good since…

  Well, since the last time he ate a donut from The Muffin Man.

  He ignored that thought and shoved the rest of the roll into his mouth. Maybe if his mouth was full, Chloe would take the hint and not ask him any questions.

  She sank into the booth opposite him. At his cocked eyebrow, she shrugged. “I told Betty that I needed to take a 15. She said that was fine. She expected me to step outside or something, but I’m free to sit out here in the dining room if I want. And I do. Because you’re going to tell me everything.”

  It was official – his stuff-his-mouth-full-so-Chloe-wouldn’t-ask-any-questions plan had not exactly worked out the way he’d intended.

  Chapter 23

  Sugar

  Sugar slid Gage’s latest creation – a peanut-butter-and-dark-chocolate swirl cheesecake, topped with chocolate shavings – into the refrigerated showcase. The man was wickedly good – or terrible, depending on your point of view – at whipping up creations that’d tempt a saint. It was a damn good thing that Sugar liked salty, crunchy snacks, not sugary ones, or she figured she’d be about as round as she was tall by this point. But even to her, this cheesecake was temptation incarnate.

  Maybe she’d just watch to see if anyone bought it. If it was still there by the end of the week, well, she’d just have to buy it so Gage wouldn’t wonder if maybe his latest creative idea wasn’t a good one. That would be a tragedy, she figured.

  The bell over the door jingled as a blast of cold air whooshed in. “Be right there!” Sugar called out over her shoulder, scooting the cheesecake to the right just a smidge before shutting the door and wiping her hands in satisfaction. She turned, a smile firmly planted on her face, when she saw Jaxson standing there, his Elmer Fudd hat in his hands, turning the brim of it around and around as he stared back.

  Her stomach hit somewhere around her knee caps as she stared at him. “Uhhh…” she croaked.

  It’d been nine days since he’d come into the bakery. Nine long, painful days.

  Not that she’d been counting or anything. She hadn’t. She just happened to remember how long it’d been because she had an amazing memory.

  “Uhhh…” she croaked again.

  Truth be told, she had a terrible memory. She’d always chalked it up to how shitty her life had been up to this point, and figured this was a self-defense strategy her brain employed to keep her from slowly going insane.

  Before she could do something dreadfully embarrassing, like croak again, Gage came out through the swinging doors. “Sugar, have you seen the—” He stopped short when he saw Jaxson, and his whole body stiffened up. “What are you doing here?” he growled, acting for all the world like a papa bear protecting his cubs. He was only three years older than her, but some days, he acted more like it was twenty.

  For once, she didn’t mind, though. She would’ve demanded the same thing if her body had done something more useful than begin an imitation of a frog croaking in the wilds of the swamps.

  “I wanted to talk to Sugar for a minute,” Jaxson said quietly. “I wanted to apologize.”

  Gage swung around to look at Sugar. “Are you okay with that?” he asked quietly, clearly ready to throw Jaxson out on his ear if she said no. For the last week, he’d been supportive, listening to her whine and cry and complain about being an idiot. He’d quite literally been the shoulder she cried on.

  She couldn’t ask for a better friend.

  “I am,” she said, nodding firmly, sounding much more sure of herself than she actually felt. And she did want to hear what he had to say. Then she’d tell him to get lost. Not only because of his disappearing act for the last nine days – not that she’d been counting – but also because she was incapable of just being friends with benefits. It was an impossibility for her. She’d tell Jaxson that…

  Right after she listened to whatever it was he had to say.

  “All right,” Gage said, the note of disapproval clear in his voice. “Well, it’s close to closing time. Why don’t you just head on out? I’ll close up tonight.”

  Sugar headed into the back and snagged her jacket off the coat rack. Gage followed her, stopping her for a moment. “You sure?” he asked softly. “I could throw him out if you want me to. After the bags of flour I throw around, I don’t think he’d be too much harder.”

  She let out a little laugh at the thought. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I appreciate it – I really do. I’ll be fine, though. See you tomorrow?”

  Gage gave her a one-armed hug. “Good luck,” he said gruffly, and then turned back towards the mixer bowl.

  She headed back out front. “Ready?” she asked, overly cheerful. He nodded and they stepped out into the bitter cold, the temperature surely hovering around zero, without the wind chill factored in. “Let’s hurry,” she said, already speed-walking down the sidewalk. “I have to get out of this before I turn into an icicle.”

  Jaxson’s long legs helped him quickly catch up, and then they hurried down the sidewalk together, ice and snow crunching with every step, no sound passing between them otherwise. It was too bitterly cold to meander and chat. It was too bitterly cold to breathe, really. The icy air stabbed her lungs, making each breath an agony, but she hurried on, her eyes stinging and watering as they went.

  Finally, they burst into her apartment and she shut the door behind them, shivering and shaking with cold as she stood there, trying to hurry the heat back into her bones.

  “Wowsers,” Jaxson said with a laugh. “Why is it that we live here again?”

  Sugar sent him a painful smile. “No idea!” she said cheerfully.

  Hamlet came bounding into the living room, yipping and growling with pleasure, flopping over onto his back for a belly rub. “Hello, you handsome boy,” Sugar said, stripping her gloves off and loving on him. “Did you have fun today?” He yipped and howled a little more and she laughed. “I see. Sounds like you had quite the day.” Hamlet’s tail whipped across Jaxson’s boots, thumping with every pass, his lips pulled back in the most doggyish smile she’d ever seen. She knew it was just the gravity at play, with him lying on his back and all, but it still made her chuckle.

  She finally stood up and Hamlet heaved himself to his feet, hurrying to Jaxson’s side for a dose of loving from him. “I need to take him on a walk,” she said. “I’ll put a jacket on him to help him keep warm, and then bundle up myself. Are you coming with us?” She had a challenge in her eye when she asked him that, and he met it with a level stare of his own.

  “Planned on it. Put on long johns and wore my thickest coat. And of course, my hat.” He pointed to his Elmer Fudd hat, planted squarely on his head. She laughed a little.

  “I should get me one of those. Do you think they make Elmira Fudd hats? Pink camouflage with rhinestones?” At his chuckle, she said, “Well anyway, let me change. I’ll be right back. You keep loving on Hamlet. He needs some attention after me being gone all day.”

  She’d almost said “we” instead of “me.” Now wouldn’t that have been the damnedest thing to let loose.

  She was awfully glad she didn’t make that particular mistake.

  Chapter 24

  Jaxson

  He pushed himself to his feet when Sugar came back out of her bedroom. “Ready to…” He stumbled for just a moment as he took in her Michelin Man outfit; she had so many layers on, she appeared to be waddling. “To go?” he finished weakly, forcing the smile off his lips. He couldn’t laugh, he just couldn’t. She’d never forgive him, and he already had enough to ask for forgiveness about.

  She spun in a clumsy circle, a smirk on her lips. “This is all the rage, you know,” she informed him. “In Antarctica.”

  He did bust out laughing at that and she grinned up at him for a moment, before taking off
on a hunt for a leash for Hamlet. Finally finding it, she clipped it to his collar. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “You found his jacket. Thank you.”

  Jaxson shrugged. “It was right in with the rest of his stuff and it gave me something to do while waiting.” He liked the big smile she sent him. It made him feel real good. Like he’d accomplished a huge feat – slain a dragon or climbed a mountain to pick a star out of the sky just for her.

  She had a way of making a man feel ten feet tall, and it wasn’t just on account of her being on the short side, either.

  They headed out towards the park, the wind still howling and biting at them, but Sugar seemed to take it a little better this time. With all of those layers on, he imagined the cold was barely touching her. She sniffled – her nose must be running – and he smiled to himself. Okay, maybe she was feeling the cold on her face. Without donning a ski mask, there wasn’t much in the way of being able to protect one’s face from the biting wind.

  It was too hard to talk and walk into the wind at the same time, so Jaxson just matched her shorter strides as Hamlet darted this way and that, smelling everything along the way, his huge golden head shining in the winter dusk.

  They reached City Park in record time, and Sugar unclipped Hamlet’s leash and lobbed his ball, hurrying to get the chore done and over with. It went sailing away, and then she turned her back to the wind, huddling up against its piercing power.

  Jaxson snuggled her up against his side, figuring that body warmth was a good thing to be sharing right now. He stared off through the frozen, icy park, wondering how to start, when Sugar did it for him. “Why’d you sneak off like that?” she asked, her voice thick with pain. “And then, not show up for nine days to the bakery? Not that I was counting or anything,” she said quickly. “I just happen to remember, is all. But…I thought you’d enjoyed that night between us. Did I do something wrong?”

  He pulled her tighter against his side, the pain in her voice cutting through him, hurting more than the icy wind ever could. “No, Sugar, you did nothing wrong. I…I screwed up. I was wrong.”

  Hamlet came bounding over, dropping his ball at Sugar’s feet, backing away, his tail wagging madly. She stooped and picked it up, launching it as far as she could, before snuggling back up against Jaxson’s side. He continued on as if nothing had happened. “I can’t be just friends with you, not even friends with benefits, and I was stupid to think I could.”

  She stiffened against his side. “I see…” she said, a suspicious quiver in her voice.

  Grand. He’d made her cry. Wasn’t that just the cherry on the top?

  “No!” he said, harsher than he’d intended. She began to pull away, and he yanked her back, tilting her head up, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were bright with tears, and a lonely trail wandered down her face. He wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. “I can’t just be friends with you, Sugar. I…I want so much more than that.”

  Her mouth made a perfect O, but no sound came out. She gulped as the tears began streaming down her face faster. Jaxson felt panic hitch his breath in his throat. “I shouldn’t want more and I’m sorry that I do. It’s selfish of me. I thought I learned my lesson with Kendra – I shouldn’t jump into relationships so quickly. Especially not with everything going on with this job and my boys and…” He shut his eyes for just a moment, and then opened them again. Pleading with her to understand. “But this past week – nine days,” he amended quickly, just to tease her, “has been downright miserable. It was Chloe down at the diner who showed me the error of my ways; she told me to pull my head out of my ass. She’s not one for mincing words.”

  Sugar laughed weakly. “She moved to Long Valley years ago – she’s a transplant from Arizona, actually – but the way she talks, you’d think she’d been here her whole life. She fits right in.”

  Hamlet was nudging them then, obviously over trying to wait patiently for someone to remember to throw his ball for him. Jaxson picked it up this time, a ball of grime and slobber and ice, and hucked it, Hamlet taking off eagerly into the darkening twilight after it.

  “Fitting in…it’s not something I’ve managed to do real well yet,” Jaxson admitted with a grimace. “I had no idea there’d be such a culture shock, moving up here. It’s only 90 minutes away from Boise, but it might as well be on the other side of the world in some ways. I stick out like an Eskimo at a beach party.”

  She let out a full-fledged laugh at that one and he grinned down at her, back to feeling ten feet tall again. He loved making her laugh. “You know how much this job means to me,” he said softly. “I can’t screw it up. I can’t lose it. My boys mean too much to me. But I’m starting to realize that I don’t have to choose between them and a relationship. I thought I had to, but I…I don’t.”

  He cleared his throat and said formally, “Sugar, will you be my girlfriend?” He felt stupid asking it; he felt like he was in junior high all over again.

  But he wanted to know.

  The edges of her mouth quirked up and he knew she’d had the same thought about junior high, but before he could properly build up a blush on his cheeks from embarrassment, she said quietly, “Yes. Yes, please.”

  He grinned, his mouth muscles aching from the cold, or maybe it was just from grinning so wide. “It seems like we ought to seal this with a kiss,” he said, lowering his face to just above hers, hovering over her mouth. “You always need to seal a bargain somehow.”

  His lips danced lightly over hers as her breath, soft and light, whooshed out. “Bargain, eh?” she whispered against his lips. “Who do you suppose got the better end of the deal?”

  “Hamlet. Now he has two people to love on him.”

  Her laughter tinkled out into the bitter cold air but Jaxson wasn’t feeling the cold any longer. Nothing existed in his world except for her. He settled his lips over hers, feeling their softness and creases as his tongue flicked out, begging for entrance, and then she opened her mouth, moaning with pleasure as her fingers dug into his shoulders, clinging to him with everything she had.

  It was right about the time that Jaxson was trying to unzip her jacket so he could reach her body that he was jerked back to the present. They were standing in the middle of City Park, in sub-zero temperatures, and he was trying to undress her?

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, jerking his hand back. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  She laughed shakily. “I don’t know what I was thinking either, because you’ll notice, I wasn’t stopping you.”

  He looked around the park. “You know, I keep complaining about how small towns know your business, and then I kiss you like that in the middle of City Park. No wonder people know everything that we’re doing.”

  She laughed again, melting against him. “Welcome to small towns,” she said breathily, looking up at him. “Where you’re living out a real-life episode of Cheers every day.”

  “Cheers?” he repeated blankly.

  “Remember the theme song? ‘Where everyone knows your name’? That’s Sawyer for ya!”

  “Well, I think we oughta give ‘em somethin’ to talk about,” he said, another grin spreading across his face. “Ready to go? Your place or mine?”

  “Yours,” she said, scooping up Hamlet’s ball from the ground and shoving it into the Ziploc baggie in her pocket. She snapped Hamlet’s leash on. “It’s a little closer, and at this point, I don’t want to wait.”

  He let out a belly laugh. “C’mon, girlfriend of mine, I love how you think.” He grabbed her mittened hand and they hurried down the blustery, wintry street together, heads bent against the wind, hearts as warm as the wind was bitter cold.

  Chapter 25

  Jaxson

  It was the most infuriating thing in the world. He’d known that Sugar was dressed in layers while out on their walk, but frankly, this was beyond that. She was buried in clothing.

  It all began when Jaxson nearly ruined everything by trying to shut the door before Hamlet was completely inside the
apartment. That would've destroyed the mood. It’s a very good rule to never slam a door on the tail of your girlfriend’s dog if you actually wanted to, you know, get some.

  Then, Jaxson couldn't seem to get his gloved fingers back around the pull of the zipper on her coat. He’d had no problem back at City Park, but now that it was time to actually follow through, he couldn’t manage to get a grip.

  Literally.

  He began pulling at his gloves and couldn’t seem to get them off either. Sugar laughed as he grunted in frustration and then, in the grips of pure desperation, stuck the tips of the gloves into his mouth, bit down, and yanked mercilessly at them.

  He wondered for a moment what he’d done in a former life to deserve gloves like these. Surely, he couldn’t have done something that awful.

  Meanwhile, Sugar’d somehow managed to work the zipper of his coat without any problem at all.

  Magic. She was magic. Or very, very good in a past life.

  Finally free of his thick ski gloves, he returned to removing her parka. Her clothing – apparently hellbent on making things as difficult as possible on him – began snagging on itself, the zipper catching on the fabric of her puffy coat several times, further delaying him from his ultimate goal.

  She shoved at his coat and he stopped his work long enough to shake the sleeves free of his arms. Her hands immediately attacked the buttons of his flannel shirt.

  Jaxson finally won against the dastardly zipper and as his prize, slid the arms of her coat over her shoulders, causing Sugar to pause her assault on his clothing.

  Jaxson leaned down and their lips met again. Their tongues battled for position and he felt the heat of excitement rising inside of him. His hands increased their frantic exploration of this wonderful woman’s body.