“He claimed they were innocent,” she shook her head. “He said he just wanted to be my mentor.”
“And people believed him?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” she sighed. “He was a pillar of the community. He had been at the department for over thirty years. Nobody was going to take my word over his.”
“But you had already told people that he was a creep…”
“It didn’t matter. Everyone turned on me. My friends, my coworkers… people I thought I could trust.”
“What about your father?” I asked. “He was the sheriff, right? Couldn’t he do something?”
“That was the sickest part of it all,” she grimaced. “The chief had been close friends with my father since before I was even born. When the chief made his accusations against me, my father didn’t doubt his word for a second.”
“Beck, that’s so…” I trailed off, shaking my head is disgust.
“Fucked up?” she finished for me, finally blinking up at me.
“Yeah. Incredibly fucked up.”
“I know,” she sighed. “That’s why I came to Hartford. My career and reputation were ruined. I just wanted a fresh start. But now things feel just as fucked up as they were back home…”
“No way,” I insisted firmly. “The only thing that got fucked up tonight was that asshole’s career as an EMT. Come Monday morning, I doubt he’ll even have a job.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said sadly. “I’ve learned that the hard way…”
“Trust me, Beck. That guy isn’t getting away with what he did to you. I won’t let him.”
She sighed as she reached for the bottle of Fireball and brought it up to her lips.
“I know that you’ve been burned in the past, but you’ve gotta give us a chance,” I pleaded. “Give Hartford a chance.”
It was only after I had said those words that I realized what I really wanted was for her to give me a chance.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN | OLIVIA
“I wax my chest, I have the Firehouse 56 emblem tattooed on my back, and I have never voted in a presidential election.”
Duke punctuated each of his declarations with a mysterious smile, then he raised the bottle of Fireball to his lips and took a swig as he waited for me to separate his facts from fiction.
It was some odd hour between Friday night and Saturday morning and we were sitting across from each other on the leather sofa, deeply engrossed in a whiskey-fueled game of ‘two truths and a lie.’
Besides the fresh shiner around Duke’s eye and the bag of frozen peas that had thawed and melted on the glass coffee table, the Rusty’s debacle felt like a distant memory; long replaced with hours of conversation and laughter and gulps of Fireball.
“Hmm,” I scrunched my face thoughtfully as I pretended to ponder Duke’s latest set of statements.
This was all for show; despite what he wanted to believe, Duke Williams actually had the world’s worst poker face. He could recite his truths just fine, but he couldn’t tell a damn lie to save his life. Every time he tried, the corners of his lips twitched up.
At first the telltale quirk had seemed so obvious that I had assumed he was doing it on purpose. Then, after losing several rounds of the game, he had accused me (mostly jokingly) of being some sort of telepathic succubus. That was when I realized that his incompetence when it came to lying wasn’t intentional; just endearing.
Even though I could identify the lie as soon as it came out of his mouth, I still couldn’t resist playing along…
“Let’s see,” I said, cocking my head as if deep in thought. “You’re from old money in Manhattan, so your family must have some sort of political affiliations in the city. It would be impossible not to…”
His eyes narrowed slowly and he started to smile.
“But on the other hand,” I added quickly, “You’re not really close with your family, so maybe they couldn’t convince their wayward son to make it the polls and cast a vote on their behalf.”
I reached for the bottle of Fireball and took a swig, wetting my lips with the taste of fiery-hot whiskey as I continued to feign deep thought.
“You do seem like the kind of guy who would wax his chest,” I narrowed my eyes and studied his chest through the heather grey Henley shirt that he was wearing. Besides the definition of his abs poking through the fabric, there was no indication of what else was hiding under that shirt.
“But…” I said slowly as I shifted my gaze back up and met his stare. His eyes were warm and brown, and tonight, in the dim light of the living room, they reminded me of cinnamon and whiskey.
Those eyes were like quicksand; the longer I stared, the deeper they dragged me in.
“But?” he repeated with a crooked smile, reminding me of the unfinished thought I had left dangling in the air. I blushed and swallowed.
“But,” I began again, “as far as back tattoos and chest hair are concerned, I can’t really make a proper educated guess because I’ve never seen you without your shirt on.”
I tried my best to ignore his cocky grin as I maintained my Sherlock Holmes charade, stroking my chin thoughtfully with my index finger.
“You were the only crewmember to pose for the Firehouse 56 calendar with your shirt on,” I said. “What were you hiding underneath that t-shirt, Duke Williams?”
Duke seemed to completely ignore my question as his crooked grin grew wider and a flash sparked behind his syrupy brown eyes.
“Were you checking out my calendar spread?”
“No!” I stammered quickly. “I accidentally saw it. It was hanging in my coworker’s cubicle. I didn’t look, it was just… there…”
“Your coworker keeps her calendar displayed on the month of March?” Duke frowned playfully. “It’s the middle of summer…”
“It wasn’t displayed on March…”
“But you said—”
“Ok, I might have flipped through it,” I confessed. I was flustered and I could feel my heartbeat pounding through my cherry-red cheeks. If I blushed any harder, my face would start to blister.
“Well there must have been something about my photo that was worth remembering,” his eyes twinkled again. “Did you get a case of March Madness?”
“Eww, of course not! Gross!”
I did my best to feign disgust, but Duke wasn’t fazed. If anything, he looked even more flattered and amused as he crossed his arms over his chest and beamed gleefully across the sofa at me.
“You’re blushing,” he pointed out.
I already knew that. My cheeks were burning so hot that they were probably a fire hazard.
“It’s probably just the whiskey,” I lied.
I glanced up at him and our eyes locked for several seconds. I could feel something tangible fill the void between us; something hot and dangerous. The warmth from his honey-brown eyes spilled into me, thawing me like an ice cube on asphalt.
Speaking of hot asphalt, that was exactly what my insides felt like after I threw back a double-swig of whiskey. The hot cinnamon sizzled through my body, spreading like molten syrup through my torso. I felt like every inch of me was on fire, tingling and burning…
“So what’s the verdict, Beck?” Duke wanted to know.
“Huh?”
“What are my two lies and one truth?”
Oh. I had forgotten all about the game, and I had forgotten all about my little detective charade. I swallowed heavily, then I named the declaration that I had known was a ‘lie’ the entire time.
“You don’t have a tattoo. That’s the lie.”
His brow bent down into a tiny frown and he pressed his lips together. In the whiskey-tinted swirls of my brain, I wondered what his lips would feel like on mine…
“You sure about that?”
“Well there’s only one way I can know for sure…” the words slipped out before I realized what I was saying.
Duke’s eyebrows lifted in shock and his mouth c
urled up into a grin, but his eyes never left mine.
“Are you asking me to take my shirt off?”
“For the integrity of the game, obviously,” I said, somehow managing to sound officious and sincere even though I was neither of those things. “I need to verify that you’re telling the truth.”
“You think I’m bluffing?”
With your poker face? You couldn’t bluff if you tried…
“Seeing is believing,” I shrugged. I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice; it sounded just like the whiskey — syrupy and slow and filled with the same heat that was coiling around inside of me.
I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, either, but at the same time I didn’t feel embarrassed or shy anymore. Something had shifted between us; the energy had changed.
We were still playing a game, but it had nothing to do with back tattoos or voting records. This was a game of unspoken truths.
“I think I like you better when you have a little whiskey in you,” Duke teased.
I knew this wasn’t just the whiskey. I could dive headfirst into a swimming pool of Fireball, and it still wouldn’t compare to the heat that suddenly radiated between the two of us.
“Shut up and take your shirt off.”
Duke’s eyes narrowed as he stood up slowly from the couch. He reached for the hem of his shirt and I felt my heart skip a beat… except, instead of skipping in my chest, I felt the pang between my legs.
He rolled up the hem slowly, inch by inch revealing the sculpted ab muscles that were chiseled into his torso. For a split second, the scene unfolding in front of me was a mirror image of the photograph from the calendar.
I hadn’t moved an inch, but my heart was racing and I was out of breath. The fire burning through my body was out of control, and the heat pulsing between my thighs was so intense that I was worried I might burn a hole straight through my denim shorts.
Duke rolled the shirt up over his shoulders and flicked it off, and then I saw all of him; every tantalizing, perfect inch of him.
“Try not to ogle too much,” he teased. “I’m not just a sex object… I’m a human being.”
I tried to chuckle to diffuse the tension, but I just sounded like a cat choking on a fur ball. Since my tongue was burning with things to say, I decided to let the whiskey take over and do the talking.
“Well now I’ve finally seen Mr. March, in all his glory.”
“For your eyes only.”
He watched me closely as my eyes digested him, inch by inch. I was seeing parts of Duke that nobody else got to see; I was seeing the parts that weren’t on display in the calendar.
“So you tell me, Beck,” he grinned. “Does this prove that I’m an honest man?”
“Let’s see,” I stood up slowly from the sofa. My legs were trembling as I took a few shaky steps towards him. I could feel the heat between us like a magnetic force, drawing me closer to him… but he stood his ground. He didn’t move an inch.
I raised my hand slowly and traced my fingertips across his abs. He was hard and soft all at the same time, and I could feel the heat of his skin spreading into me like an electric charge.
“Perfectly smooth,” I observed, tracing my fingers over his abs. “So you do wax…”
I traced my fingers around his waist as I circled around him to inspect his back. His skin was tanned from summertime and my fingers found the divot of his spine and the dimples of his shoulder blades. But his skin was bare.
“No tattoo,” I confirmed.
I circled back around to the front. I didn’t realize how close we were until I glanced up and found our faces just a few inches apart.
“See?” he said in a low whisper. “I told you that you could trust me.”
The fire pouring from his eyes was almost unbearable. My touch had lit a fuse, and it was burning rapidly between us. The safe thing to do would be to run away.
I was ice and he was fire, and those things just don’t mix.
I should have been thinking about the million and one reasons why this was a bad idea.
We practically work together. He’s my fucking roommate. He’s a player. He tried to hit on me at Vaughan’s. He told me that I’m not his type. We don’t even like each other…
But reason and logic had been replaced by whiskey and lust, and in that moment the only thing I could focus on was the fire burning between us.
“It’s your turn,” he whispered. “Two truths and a lie.”
I gulped, trying to force my brain to think about something other than the fact that I had Duke’s nearly-naked body at my fingertips.
“March happens to be my favorite month of the year…”
His lips immediately curled into a smile and I thought about kissing them again.
“…I have pink hair…”
His smile grew wider and he frowned slightly, eyeing the blonde curls that were tied up in my usual messy knot on top of my head.
“And…” I hesitated, running my tongue over my lips and staring up at him. “For some fucked up reason, I kinda can’t stop thinking about kissing you right now.”
Duke’s poker face failed him yet again as his lips fell open in surprise and his eyes flickered with intrigue.
“Well,” he said slowly, sticking to the game. “March is the best month of the year…”
He caught a loose tendril of my blonde hair and coiled it around his finger. “…and your hair is definitely not pink…”
I gulped, knowing what came next.
“But that leaves us with the kiss,” he studied my face thoughtfully, and in that instant I realized that it was possible to suffocate in a room full of air, to drown without ever touching water.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
“This isn't about me. This is about you,” he reminded me as he traced my jawline with the edge of his finger, then he caught the point of my chin and gently lifted my face towards his. “Question is, why would a girl like you want to kiss a guy like me?”
That question stunned me sober. I wasn’t expecting that…
“What’s wrong with girls like me?” I demanded stubbornly, scowling.
“Not a damn thing. You’re perfect, Beck,” he whispered. His eyes were tracing the shape of my mouth. “That’s why you shouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
Duke didn’t need to warn me. My internal asshole-radar could detect a douchebag from a mile away. I was used to seeing red flags and warning lights before a guy even opened his mouth.
When I first met Duke, he had tripped all of my alarms.
But the Duke Williams standing in front of me now was different. Instead of alarm bells, I just heard my own heart pounding through my eardrums…
“I thought you said that I could trust you?” I reminded him. His brow knotted into a frown and my heart rattled through my chest. I wondered if he could feel it; our bodies were so close…
“I thought you wanted me to treat you like one of the guys,” Duke countered. “What do you want, Beck?”
“I want to know what it feels like to kiss someone that I actually want to kiss.”
Duke blinked down at me without saying anything. Then I realized that he was waiting for permission; he was waiting for me to say two little words.
“Kiss me.”
And he did.
Oh, he fucking did.
His lips engulfed mine and I felt the tingle of cinnamon and whiskey burn my tongue as I tasted him. His hand slid down my jaw and wrapped around the back of my neck, then his fingers dug a path into the forest of curls at the nape of my neck.
His other hand slid around my waste and caught me in the small of my back. He jerked me forward and our bodies collided. I felt him all over me; every inch of him. I could feel the warmth of his bare chest through my cotton t-shirt, and I could feel his rock-hard cock piercing through the double layer of denim; his jeans and my shorts.
I had never been kissed like that before. I had never felt my body surrender to anyone the way it did to Duke. I was amazed and perplexed, and every cell and atom inside of me was spinning in a glorious free-fall.
But what’s that thing that people always say about free-fall? You know, before you bungee jump or hop out of an airplane or plunge down the first drop on a rollercoaster?
Don’t look down.
Because if you look down, you’ll realize how high up you are, and you’ll realize just how fast you’re falling…
Kissing Duke reminded me of how wonderful it felt to fall. But I fucked up. I looked down.
More precisely, I opened my eyes. I saw the leather couch and the nearly-empty bottle of Fireball. I saw the frozen peas on the coffee table. I saw Duke’s shirt cast aside on the shag rug. I saw my roommate, and I saw his arms wrapped around me.
And then I felt my stomach clench and my body stiffen as I realized how high off the ground I was, and how quickly I was falling…
I jerked away.
“Beck—” Duke looked shocked, then shock turned to concern. His voice softened, and he said my name again: “Beck?”
I knew that I owed him some sort of explanation, but I couldn’t think of any words to say.
“I’m really tired,” I said finally. “It’s been a long, weird night… I think I’m gonna go to bed.”
I didn’t wait to see his reaction. Instead, I did what I do best. I turned on my heel and never looked back.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN | DUKE
I blinked open my eyes and was immediately struck by a sharp ray of bright white sunlight that was beaming mercilessly through my bedroom window.
“Fuck,” I grunted, pinching my eyes closed. The sun burned bright red through my eyelids, and I shielded my face with the palms of my hands. Out of habit I started to rub at the fuzzy auras that were burned into my eyes, but I immediately stopped when I felt a jolt of pain ripple through the entire left side of my face.
What the fuck happened last night?
My mind was completely blank. Then I blinked and saw the sudden flash of a fist flying into my face. I winced, remembering the pain of four knuckles cracking against my brow bone.
March Heat: A Firefighter Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 10
