Flame (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 3)

by Rachael Herron

  There was a half-smile on Hank’s face. A sweet smile.

  And at the same time it was so sexy her toes curled.

  “I can’t. We can’t. Not if we’re going to work together.”

  “Okay. I quit.”

  Honestly surprised, Samantha said, “No! I need you.”

  “Then go out with me.”

  She twisted the bottle in her hands. In about one second she’d start stripping the paper from it with nervous fingers, the way she used to strip beer bottles sitting at the bar.

  He continued, “Just once. Just give it a shot. It’s probably a bad idea, just like it was back then.”

  It hadn’t been a bad idea. She’d just been an idiot, that was all. But time went on, and life changed, and people like Hank stayed good and sweet and unspoiled. “Hank,” she said slowly, “I hurt you back then. I don’t want to do that again.”

  He barked a laugh. “Are you still worried about that?”

  Samantha curled her fingers tighter around the bottle. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Honey,” he drawled. “I’m not talking about falling in love with you. I’ve done that, and honestly, you cured me of the whole love thing, way back when. I’m just thinking about what your mouth might taste like.”

  Samantha couldn’t help it—she gasped. Then she said, “One date. Just one. Tomorrow night.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Without thinking, she said, “Something risky. Something scary. Something I’ve never done.”

  “Night kayaking?”

  “Done it.”

  “Hang gliding from Bogel Peak?”

  She laughed. “In the dark?”

  “Maybe not.” He paused. “Have you ever been rock climbing?”

  “No! I’ve always wanted to go, though. I just hadn’t gotten around to it. There’s that new climbing gym in Eureka, right?”

  Hank nodded and finished hanging the padded suit inside out so it could air. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “In the seventy-two Mustang?”

  “You know my car?”

  “You kidding? I saw you drive up. Is that stock black?”

  Hank nodded in surprise. “She’s my baby.”

  “Well, if you ever need a babysitter…” She looked slightly embarrassed. “Anyway. See you tomorrow.”

  Hank started to leave and then said, “Almost forgot.” He turned and wrapped her in a hug. It felt different this time, without the padding. With the desired kiss burning between them. She could smell his deodorant, green and crisp, and the scent underneath it, good clean, well-earned sweat.

  And then he left, leaving Samantha standing alone in the middle of the padded mat. She dropped to a cross-legged position. She touched her lips.

  She felt her mouth stretch into a grin.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DOWNSTAIRS IN THE bagel shop, Samantha was pulling her normal Thursday morning shift. She wasn’t good at being in the back, making the bagels. She’d tried, and every single time she pulled them out of the water or moved them to the oven, she’d burned a finger or wrist to the blister point. She wasn’t allowed in the kitchen anymore, and Johannes made her use the bagel guillotine to slice every bagel. “No knife for you.”

  “Come on, Johannes. I’m smart enough not to cut my finger off.” But secretly, Samantha was relieved. She was clumsy everywhere but the training mat. Although she was a good cook, she didn’t do well with knives and she probably would have damaged herself permanently if he’d wanted her to cut a gajillion bagels every morning. The guillotine was fast and safe, and it gave a satisfying thunk every time she shoonked the bread in two.

  The line in the well-lit bagel shop that morning had been constant, with moms with strollers in tow and kids coming in before school. The girls always ordered the fancy, sweet ones—light fluffed strawberry cream cheese on cinnamon bagels—and the boys ordered bagels with scrambled eggs. Samantha’s favorite customers were the older men who spent the day rambling in and out of all the businesses on First Street. They started early, at Mabel’s Cafe, for thick black coffee. Around nine, they’d wheel into the bagel shop, ordering poppyseed or everything bagels, toasted dark. They never used anything but the traditional thick cream cheese. They liked their coffee black and she’d never seen even one of them drinking water.

  Her favorite was Gus Treat. He was of indeterminate age, somewhere north of eighty. He’d been a career military pilot, and he still put a lot of energy into looking neat and trim. Today he wore a dark blue shirt with matching pants, the pressed lines clean and sharp. His face was shiny from his close shave.

  “Morning, Gus. The regular?” Samantha had learned early in the food industry that nothing made a customer happier than making their order before they asked for it. It made them feel special, which was good, because Gus was.

  He nodded and reached in his back pocket for his wallet.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Fine, just fine.” He reached for a mug to help himself to the coffee on the counter. “Gotta ask you a favor, girlie. Got a minute?”

  Samantha took off her apron. She loved talking to Gus. He had more gossip at his fingertips than anyone else in town, and no one loved to speculate on other people’s business more than he did. She didn’t know most of the people he talked about so she wasn’t very invested, but his chatter was friendly. Welcome.

  “Hey, Johannes, I’m going to take a quick break, okay? The salt bagel is for Mark, okay, and the poppyseed that’s in the toaster is for Gus. But I’ll get it for him when it’s ready.”

  Johannes nodded and took her place.

  Gus had taken a seat at the small bar that ran along the window, facing the pier.

  Samantha pulled up the stool next to Gus. Outside the window, a blue boat with a red furled sail chugged by under motor power. Through the glass she could just hear its thump as it hit the dock’s bumper. She touched the window with one finger, knowing she’d be the one to clean off the smudge later.

  “What’s up, Gus?”

  “Who’s the boy?”

  Samantha pretended ignorance. Sometimes it was best. “The boy who fell off the wall yesterday out there?” She pointed. “I didn’t know him, but he’s fine.”

  “The other boy. The firefighter.”

  “Oh, him.”

  Gus shot her a look and then peered over her shoulder. “My bagel’s done.”

  Samantha got up and took out Gus’s bagel just before it burned and slathered it thickly with cream cheese. She slid it in front of him and sat down again.

  “So. A fireman, huh?”

  Samantha smiled and traced a star pattern with her thumbnail on the napkin. When she’d dated Hank so long ago, she’d asked him what lengths he’d go to in order to become a firefighter. He’d said he would do anything—absolutely anything, short of hurting someone—and she hadn’t understood that passion, his drive. She’d only had one motivating force back then, to go, to do, to be. She’d wanted to live fast and hard. She’d wanted to get all the things done that her mother had always wanted to do but hadn’t had enough time to get done before she died. For her mother, Samantha had to travel, to cross the Pacific and Atlantic, she had to be brave, she had to push herself. Unfortunately, she’d pushed herself in the wrong direction, and had ended up with not only the wrong men but the wrong habits.

  “What was your father like?” Gus asked unexpectedly.

  “Steady. Reliable. We weren’t that much alike except that he got obsessed with things. For him, it was mostly strawberries. His farm. Once he made up his mind he wanted something, he went after it like a dog after a chicken bone.”

  “For you it was booze.”

  After a while, yes. She hadn’t seen it coming—she thought she’d been chasing adventure in her mother’s name, in her honor, but what she’d really been doing was chasing a kind of drunken peace.

  That peace just never stayed. “Yeah.”

  “And then it was fighting? That trai
ning stuff you do for girls?”

  “Women,” she corrected him. “Yeah.”

  “And now him.”

  She narrowed her eyes at her neighbor. “I’m not chasing him. Actually, the opposite. What do you do upstairs? Send Anchor out to spy on me?”

  Gus shrugged. “That cat comes in handy. And that’s what I wanted to ask you, actually. I’m going out of town for a week to Costa Rica, can you watch him?”

  “Fancy. Of course.”

  “Might not come back.”

  “Nor should you,” Samantha said. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “Slow down,” Gus said.

  Confused, Sam said, “Excuse me?”

  “Not about my cat. But about everything else. You move too fast.”

  Samantha smiled. “Are you accusing me of being the town hussy? Should I be offended?”

  Gus shook his head impatiently. “All of you kids, with your phones and tablets and cordless whosiwhatsits, you’re all moving too fast. Sit on the porch with that boy. What’s the sunset for if not to watch it with someone?”

  Glancing over her shoulder, catching Johannes’s harried look, Samantha said, “What if I like going this fast?”

  Gus lifted his coffee mug to his mouth, slow as fog. “You’re going to miss something, girlie. Or someone. Take your time. Make sure you don’t fall off the cliff you’re always in danger of jumping from.”

  Spontaneously, she kissed his smooth-shaven cheek. “I hear you, friend. And I’m going to sit on my porch and watch the sunset, just for you.”

  “Maybe with that fireman.”

  “Maybe,” she granted before standing. “Leave Anchor’s food by my door, okay?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WASN’T A good idea.

  He knew it wasn’t. Hank shouldn’t have said it.

  Rock climbing.

  But heck, it was exciting and scary and what better thing to do to inspire trust between two people?

  Okay, he could think of one other thing, and he was trying super damn hard not to go there in his mind…

  He knocked on the glass pane of her window that was still loose.

  “It’s open,” he heard her call from inside.

  Of course it was.

  “I’ll just be a second, I’m sorry, I lost track of time.” Her voice floated out the cracked bathroom door. He caught a brief glance of her in a sliver of mirror—she was pulling back her hair into a ponytail, and for one second, he imagined pulling out the rubber band, running his fingers through that incredible mane of hers. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Take your time.” Sticking his hands in his pockets, he moved to the French doors and pulled back the curtain. The early winter night had dropped, and the lights in the harbor glittered at him. Yeah, he loved his house, sure, and it was awesome that it was a ten minute walk to the waterline, but this view was something else. Turning, he brought his gaze to the inside of her apartment again.

  It was different at night. Softer. One lamp glowed in the corner, lighting a patch of sofa that looked just right to sink into with a book. At the top of her walls, running along all of them, were white twinkle lights. They provided the only other light, and they glowed gently.

  A white extension cord caught his eye. Oh, hell, no.

  Hank crouched. He tugged the cord and watched the strand of lights above his head bounce slightly.

  Samantha came out of the bathroom. She looked different than she had yesterday at the community center—her eyes were smokier, smudged with a dark brown. Her lips were soft pink and glossy.

  Hank had never wanted anything more than to kiss that gloss away.

  Instead, he said, “You’ve got a fire hazard here, ma’am.” He lifted the white cord as high as he could to show her.

  “You sound very professional, sir.”

  He touched an imaginary hat. “At your service. But really, you can’t do this.”

  She looked up at the white lights. “Seems I am, though. I don’t have enough outlets in this ancient apartment.”

  “There are ways to fix that,” he said. “Safer ways than this. Seriously, how much did you pay for this cord? Five bucks?”

  She looked chagrined. “I think I got it at the hardware store on sale for ninety-nine cents.”

  “No. Uh-uh,” he said. “Didn’t your mom ever teach you that you get what you pay for?”

  Samantha shook her head. “My mom was the biggest cheapskate that ever lived. She not only washed and reused our sandwich bags, she asked the next door neighbor for her kids’ bags, because she noticed they didn’t do the same thing.”

  “Maybe she was being environmentally responsible.”

  “Nah. She just liked to save money. I kind of like it, too. It’s fun to make new things out of old.”

  “Were you two close?”

  Samantha's face softened. “The closest.”

  “She’s…”

  “She died when I was a kid.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. She was only forty-five.”

  “Too damn young.”

  “Yeah. You? Your parents?”

  Hank said, “Both died when I was twelve. Both of cancer.”

  “Bad year.”

  “Really bad year.”

  Samantha pushed those invisible glasses up on her nose. “Anyway.”

  “Do me a favor and get better extension cords?”

  Her look was patient. “Look. I’ll try to remember to do that, but I tend to live life on the edge a little bit. I drink milk that’s expired, I light my own pilot on the stove, and I’ve never had trouble with extension cords or people breaking into my apartment. Until you, that is.”

  “You light your own pilot?” No one did that anymore. It was hot.

  “I smelled gas the other day and I hesitated a little, but I figured if the other pilots were on, the house was in no danger of exploding.”

  “You smelled natural gas? You sure it was just your pilot?”

  “Hank?” She touched his arm, and he completely forgot what they were talking about.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s go climb a rock.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AT THE CLIMBING gym, Samantha proved to be an eager pupil. Hank enjoyed the feeling of teaching after being her student the day before.

  It would have been normal if she’d been a little hesitant when she first looked up at the rock walls. Six stories overhead, people hoisted themselves, using nothing more than their body weight to scale the height. Ropes dangled from the very highest heights, and everywhere, men and women in harnesses glided and soared.

  But instead of looking worried as she craned her neck to look up, she seemed to glow.

  There she was, the girl who taught him never to trust in love, looking almost as young and even more beautiful as she had back then. And damn, the woman looked good in a harness. The canvas straps cupped and outlined her rear end in a way that might be classified as dangerous. It was a good thing he was hoping to just have a physical fling with her to get her out of his system, for once and for all. Because how could a man hope to keep up with a woman like her in the long run?

  Men didn’t keep up with Samantha Rowe. That’s why she was still single. And that was why, when this whatever it was ended, he’d be ready to get into a good relationship. A healthy one.

  Samantha pulled the rope tighter around her waist, touching the knot at her bellybutton with her fingers. “Did I do this one right?”

  The first time she’d done the figure eight knot, she’d done it wrong. It was that kind of mistake that killed people, and Hank had a hard time slowing his breathing, looking at it.

  But this time, on only her second try, she’d gotten it exactly right. She held her arms out. “Check me!”

  “Yes.”

  They’d spent the first hour with Raul, the manager. Although Hank was experienced enough he could have taught Samantha all the rope moves, all the safety information, he’d left that to
Raul. What if he got distracted by something Samantha said or did and forgot to show her something important? He wouldn’t take that chance. Besides, it never hurt for anyone to get a brush-up.

  Samantha struggled with her first attempt going up. It was never as easy as it looked, and everyone found that out in their own way. Those rock handholds looked as if they were in reasonable places, but once your body was on the wall, it was different. The blue 5.6 grade you thought would be simple would turn out to require taking a toe-jump or a spiderman-stretch.

  “Take,” she yelled at him from only about four feet up. This was the signal that she was going to come off the wall, that in a second he’d be supporting her weight on the leveraged rope.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Hank had to hand it to her—he’d heard a lot of women, and men, for that matter, fall off the wall their first time with a sharp scream that sent grins around the climbing gym. But she didn’t yell.

  Instead, when the rope caught her, leaving her dangling in midair, she laughed. She whooped with delight, and when he let her down to the ground, when her feet made contact, she was still laughing.

  “That was the best thing ever!” She stood straight, brushing the chalk off her hands, leaving white handprints on her leggings. “I want to do it again, but I can’t. My arms need a break. My fingers. I had no idea it would be that hard to hang on.”

  The delight in her voice was almost something palpable, something he wanted to hang at his waist with his chalk bag and extra carabiners. “It’s fun.”

  “It’s not simply fun. It’s amazing.” She held out her hands, already red and scratched. “I am so badass.”

  She was. But Hank had a sneaking suspicion she’d been born that way. “My turn.”