Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay

by Ashe, Lila

The door jerked open. “Yes?”

  “Is Hank home?”

  “Yes.” The older woman started to close the door again, but Samantha wedged her boot in the crack.

  “Good,” said Samantha. “Can you tell him I’m here?”

  “No.”

  Really? That’s what she got for screwing up her courage to find him? She probably deserved a lot, but as far as she knew, she didn’t deserve this. “Good grief, lady, what did I do to you?”

  The door opened a few inches wider but Samantha didn’t pull her foot back. If she had, she knew the door would have been shut and locked again in a heartbeat.

  “You didn’t do anything to me,” said the woman.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “You hurt my grandson. A long time ago.” The woman scowled. Her eyelashes looked crooked and sparkly. “But I’m still mad at you for it.”

  That was totally fair. “Yeah, well, me too.”

  A surprised look played across the woman’s face. “You’re mad at yourself?”

  “Completely. I was a stupid kid who didn’t know a good thing when I saw it.”

  The door opened another eight inches. “You’re right. You didn’t. He’s the best boy in the world.”

  Samantha wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t call him a boy anymore. Would you?”

  The woman clutched the door jam. “Of course. He’ll always be my boy. You can’t blame me for trying to protect him.”

  Hank’s voice rose from somewhere inside. “Gramma? Who is it?”

  “No one,” said the woman over her shoulder, but then she appeared to relent. “Just that girl who smashed your heart into tiny little pieces when you were twenty-one.”

  “Samantha?”

  Hank came into the hallway, and Samantha lost her breath. He was barefoot, wearing a white tank top that showed off every one of the sizable muscles in his upper torso and bulging arms. Faded black sweat pants hung from his hips. He was carrying a plate that looked like it had held pasta of some kind. A strand of too-long dark hair dropped over his eye, and Samantha wanted to rush him and kiss, grandmother notwithstanding.

  And the way his eyes had heated to see her, she was pretty sure he might allow her to.

  “Gramma, let her in.”

  “Over my dead body.” But the words weren’t said as roughly as they could have been, and it was the woman who pulled the door all the way open, not Hank. “Just for a minute. But then you have to go, girl.”

  “My house, my rules, Grams.” Hank bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek, and Samantha’s heart grew two sizes. “Samantha, this is Maureen, my pistol-packin’ grandmother. Maureen, this is Samantha.”

  Maureen trundled ahead through the hallway, grumbling something about pasta sauce and a waste of meat. Hank and Samantha let her go into the next room.

  Samantha’s newly huge heart pounded heavily.

  Hank leaned against the wall, appearing comfortable in his own skin.

  His eyes smoldered darkly. “What’s up, trouble?”

  “I thought…” What had she thought again?

  “Yeah?” His voice was a purr. Damn him.

  “About class. A thing. I, um, just wanted to go over a couple of things.”

  “Uh-huh.” He wasn’t buying it, she could tell.

  “But I can just catch you up later. At the next class.”

  “Okay.”

  From around the corner came Maureen’s voice. “Are you two coming into the kitchen, or should I just go home by myself in the dark?”

  Never taking his eyes off hers, Hank stepped forward. He got so close to Samantha that her breathing hitched in her chest, and she could feel the heat coming from his body. He lifted her hair from where it lay on her shoulder and put his mouth on her neck, just below her ear. It was the softest touch, the lightest caress of his lips, and it made Samantha’s legs tremble. He brought his mouth up slowly, so slowly, up the curve of her jaw, pressed a final kiss against the top of her cheekbone, right next to her temple. She could hear him breathing next to her, and his breath was as ragged as hers.

  He dropped her hair back to her shoulder and stepped back.

  “Coming,” Hank called, never taking his eyes off hers. His gaze heated to the point where Samantha thought she might melt into a puddle on the spot. His eyes promised something that, heaven help her, she was going to stick around to take. Hank was heated steel tension, his body taut, rigid with need.

  If his grandmother wasn’t in the next room, Samantha would have walked right past Hank, shedding clothes as she went, hoping to find the bedroom, and not caring if she didn’t find it. The living room would be just fine. The kitchen. The laundry room would have been hot at this point.

  How had she not slept with him back then? Had he looked at her this way? There was no way he’d had that heavy-lidded gaze back then. He’d been just a kid, and so had she.

  But the Hank Coffee who stood in front of her now was raw need, barely controlled lust. A muscle in his jaw tightened. He was all man. One hundred and twenty masculine percent.

  “Excuse me? Can you hear me or not?”

  “Sorry,” he grated. “She’s not going to stop calling us.”

  “Didn’t figure she would. I’ll just see you later, okay? She doesn’t want me in there.”

  “Maybe not. But I do.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE KITCHEN WAS all male, dark green walls with deep blue accents. It also looked like a kitchen that was used. The two pots sitting on top of the stove looked well-loved, burnished with age and scrubbing. There was a clock made out of a record above the stove. Samantha tiptoed to read the disc label.

  “Prince’s Purple Rain,” Hank said. “And I make no apology for it.”

  “Nor should you,” said Samantha in admiration.

  “He’s stuck in the 80s,” said Maureen, her back to them as she scrubbed a plate.

  “She’s stuck in the 90s,” said Hank easily. He moved in next to Maureen, dropping his plate in the soapy water. He looked at Samantha. “Have you eaten?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” said Samantha. Her stomach took that moment to grumble loudly. She put her hand over her belly. “Whoops.”

  “You like mostaccioli? Gramma makes the best.”

  “We’re out,” grumped Maureen. “All out.”

  “Bull.” Hank pulled out a foil-covered glass pan from the fridge. “Still warm. Grab me a plate from that cabinet.” He gestured with his chin.

  Samantha complied, wondering how handy Maureen was with her needles. Was she going to stab her with them? Or was she handier with a knife? Samantha resolved to keep all her extremities to herself.

  Hank dished out a huge portion.

  “I can’t eat all that.”

  “We’re carbo-loading for class,” he said.

  “I teach. I stand there and yell. You’re the one who might want to eat a few more calories. Those women aren’t joking around.”

  Hank caught her gaze again, sending her that look, the one that sent a shiver of lust through her body right down to her very toes. When he handed her the full plate, she caught his scent—he smelled faintly of wood shavings and pine, as if he’d been sharpening pencils in the woods. It was both a comforting and heady scent.

  “Sit,” he said. “Eat.”

  It was easier to just comply.

  Maureen, her hands dripping with soapy water, turned and fixed Samantha with a stare. Her fork stilled in mid-air.

  “You still drinking?”

  It felt like a slap. But it was a fair question. It just hurt that the recovery she’d prefer to keep hidden was common knowledge for the whole town. She knew how gossip worked. She was—dimly—aware of the way she’d acted in the Wooden Duck on the few occasions she’d come back to town before getting sober. One Christmas Eve, she’d walked to the bar and she hadn’t made it back to Grace’s until the day after Christmas. The actual holiday itself was lost to her—she’d met a guy during her blackout and if she’d woken up to
find out they’d gotten married, she wouldn’t have been surprised. The feeling of embarrassment was still so painful that she could almost not bear to think of it. But that was part of how she managed to stay sober. That pain.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Will you start again?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Can you promise you won’t?”

  Wouldn’t that be nice? Samantha would love to be positive she wouldn’t ever take another drink. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t. But she knew that the one thing she had to do was look at one day. Today. “I can promise I won’t today.”

  “Do you think that’s good enough?” Maureen folded a red dish towel over her arm.

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  “Humph.” But Maureen’s voice had softened a bit. “I guess you’re trying.”

  “I am.” Samantha decided she’d take a risk and take a bite of the woman’s food. The knitting needles were still in their basket and the worst that Maureen might do right now was snap her with the wet towel. A forkful of the mostaccioli proved to be as delicious as it had smelled. “This is wonderful.”

  Maureen didn’t answer but took a plastic-wrapped block of parmesan out of the refrigerator and grated some over the top of the plate. “Needs more cheese.”

  “Thank you.”

  Maureen said, “I’m leaving you the dishes, Hank. Come see me tomorrow.” She straightened her sweater which was wet at the belly button area.

  “I thought you were going to make me watch that dancing show you like.”

  Raising an eyebrow at Samantha, Maureen said, “I think you’re busy tonight. I can’t say I approve of you, girl. You know he hasn’t fallen in love since you? I blame you for that. For scaring him.”

  That couldn’t be true. Samantha tried to catch Hank’s eye but he busied himself drying a fork meticulously. “How is that possible? Hank?”

  “Come on, Gramma, you know I’m not scared of anything but a scolding from you. Love just isn’t for me. I fall in deep like as often as I can, though.” He gave Samantha a cheeky grin and tossed the fork in a drawer with a flourish.

  Maureen wasn’t done. “How do I know you won’t hurt him all over again?”

  “It’s just like the drinking,” said Samantha. “I can only try not to do that again today.”

  Maureen picked up her knitting basket and held it to her chest. “Try hard. As hard as you can.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss Hank’s cheek goodbye. “You be good, too. Don’t either of you let me down.”

  She slammed the door on her way out.

  Hank laughed. “That was her last word. I’m sorry about that.”

  Samantha spoke around another mouthful. “This pasta would be worth her giving me a sharp punch to the nose.”

  “It’s my favorite. You picked a good night to come by. To train, I mean.”

  But there it was, in his eyes again. That banked, quiet heat, the look that seemed to say so much more. Samantha’s appetite suddenly fled. “Train,” she repeated weakly. Like the one that was about to hit her.

  “That’s what you said you came by for, right?”

  “Um. Yeah.” That’s what she’d said. What she’d meant to do was kiss him. She’d meant to march in, wrap her arms around his neck and not stop kissing him until he ran out of protests and took her to his bed. They’d work out what to do the next day. Samantha knew that leaping before you looked might not be the best game plan in all cases, but in sex? Sometimes you just get something out of your system. Maybe it would help her get over these jangling nerves she felt whenever he was near, the sense that nothing else mattered but touching him, getting her skin next to his.

  Hank angled his head like his neck hurt. “Or we could just go to bed.”

  Samantha’s mouth fell open and she forgot how to speak, which was fine, since she wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. She’d planned to make it happen, not to talk about. And that was before she’d been derailed by an angry grandmother.

  “You know. Get it out of the way.”

  “Yes!” Samantha felt light with relief. “That’s it!”

  “Way I figure it, we’ve had it building up between us for what, thirteen years? Might be time to just jump right in the sack.”

  Samantha coughed and took a sip of the water he’d given her.

  “Naked, I mean,” Hank clarified. “In case you didn’t think that’s what I meant.”

  “Mmm. I…”

  “You want to go there now?”

  “To bed,” she hedged.

  “My bed.”

  “With you,” said Samantha.

  “All six foot three of me. If you don’t mind a—” he paused for effect “—big guy.”

  Samantha wondered if it was actually possible to faint from lust. “I’m not sure talking about it so…prosaically is exactly the way it usually goes.”

  “What?” Hank said, hooking a leg around the chair next to her and pulling it toward him. He straddled it like a horse, looking long and easy in his body. “This kind of planning? I reckon that sometimes thinking about something you want is almost as fun as getting it. And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve sure spent some quality time thinking about the way you’re going look under me.”

  “Oh!”

  “I like thinking about the way you’ll feel against my body, when I’m moving against you. I like wondering how your breasts will fit in my hands.” Hank held out his fingers and looked at them, and Samantha noticed again how very large his hands were. “I like thinking about how soft you’ll feel and I like wondering how wet I can make you before you come.”

  “Oh,” she said again. There weren’t any other words left in the world.

  “I like thinking about that last moment, right before you climb to the top, when I’m inside you. Your hair is all over my pillow, and your eyes are closed and then you cry out and you look at me, and then I kiss you. Hard.”

  Samantha touched her lips. She could almost feel it, could almost feel him holding himself over her.

  “What do we do now?” she whispered.

  He rocked forward on the chair so that they were only inches apart. “We go in my bedroom. I take off your clothes. You take off mine. Then we get in the bed.”

  “Naked.”

  “Extremely naked.”

  She stood, unsure if her knees would hold her up.

  “Don’t you worry,” he said. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HANK WOKE UP with Samantha in his arms. She was cradled perfectly against his chest, her cheek on his shoulder as if she’d slept there for years. She breathed steadily, a dark strand of hair fluttering in front of her mouth every time she exhaled. Samantha Rowe was not only the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, she was also the cutest.

  His plan had failed spectacularly.

  When he’d seen her standing on the other side of Maureen in his doorway, with that look on her face, the look she couldn’t hide from him even though she tried to be all business in front of his grandmother, he’d decided he’d go along with her.

  He’d get her out of his system. He’d give just about anything not to feel this way about her. In love.

  Honestly, last night Hank had hoped that one good roll in the hay would clear his brain, for once and for all.

  Instead, he woke up and realized that he still wasn’t over her. Maybe he never would be.

  And that just sucked, because if he knew one thing about Samantha Rowe, it was that she wasn’t a good bet. Above anything else, Hank used to want safety. Now he wanted Samantha. How the hell was that safe?

  And while maybe he should be upset about it, he wasn’t.

  Instead, even though his plan had backfired, Hank realized he was in just about the best mood of his life. Right there, in that pile of sunlight and sheets, with Samantha lying on his shoulder.

  She stirred, stretching her legs and giving a slight, low groan in the back of her throat. Hank felt himself get hard again.r />
  Nuzzling herself under his chin, Samantha pressed her nose against the stubble of his jaw and made another throaty noise.

  Then he felt her jerk backward. She gasped.

  In an instant, she was sitting upright, the sheet pulled up to her chin. “Oh, man.” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “I was just having this dream, and…”

  He filled in the blank. “And then it wasn’t a dream.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m going to make you some coffee. Don’t leave.”

  She made a high-pitched noise and pulled the sheet over her head.

  Hank laughed his way into the kitchen.

  #

  She had to get out of there. As fast as possible.

  She’d done the worst thing she could have.

  The worst thing ever.

  And it wasn’t sleeping with Hank Coffee.

  That was the thing—sleeping with Hank had been wonderful. Okay, there had been precious little sleeping involved, mostly there had been his fingers and his tongue and his glorious body…

  He’d fit her like no man ever had. She’d felt beautiful in his arms, like a sexy tramp. Like a goddess.

  But what had broken her, really, what had made it clear to her that this wasn’t normal, none of it was, was when he’d kissed her at dawn. It had been a different kiss than all the others.

  It was a kiss with a promise of the future.

  Samantha didn’t do the future. One day at a time wasn’t a slogan to her, it wasn’t just a motto. It was her life. Tomorrow, she might be gone. She could only bank on today. The only time she thought about the future was when she was planning her training class. When it came to the women she was responsible for, yes, she’d look into the future. But apart from that? She’d made sure to sign a month-to-month lease on her apartment, so she could leave at a moment’s notice. She always bought a pint of half-and-half for her coffee, never a quart. Just in case.

  Coffee. Hank Coffee was making her coffee.

  And heaven help her, she was wishing he’d do that every day for the rest of her life.

  Why did the word love keep sounding in her head like a bell she couldn’t stop hearing? It was a quiet bell, as if she was hearing it from far away, but it was insistent and clear and beautiful.