Tasting Fire

by Kelsey Browning

  He was sure he was about fall and tumble down the ladder, taking two of the most important women in his life with him. Breaking all their necks.

  “Be still, Riley,” he ordered. “I’ve got you.”

  For once, she did as she was told, becoming a limp sack of potatoes against his back. The heat from behind him was so intense that Cash imagined he could feel the back of his neck blistering even through his protective gear.

  He took three careful steps down the ladder and away from the burning building.

  Donaldson stomped up the ladder and held out his arms. Cash dipped his right shoulder and let Riley roll into the man’s safe grip.

  Her pretty face was a mess of soot, wide eyes, and tears. “Cash—”

  “Get her down.” He adjusted his grip on Emmy. The last time he’d held her like this they’d been teasing. They’d been about to make love. Now, he was trying to keep her alive. “It’s okay, Em. I’ve got you.”

  She didn’t stir at his reassurances, but that didn’t stop him from rambling on. “Everyone is out. Your mom, Kris, Riley. You’re all going to be fine.”

  His own words were the only thing keeping him from losing his fucking mind right now. When he hit the bottom ladder step, the on-duty medics from another station had a stretcher ready, and they helped him lay Emmy on her back.

  Her head lolled to one side and an arm drooped off the side before the medic could get her totally secure.

  “Oh, Jesus. Is she—”

  “Pulse is a little high. BP is normal,” the medic told him before instructing his partner, “Get her in the ambulance and on supplemental oxygen.”

  Cash tried to keep up with the gurney, but he was clumsy in his turnout gear. The medics slammed the ambulance doors in his face and he stood there like a statue watching it speed off.

  24

  When Emmy opened her eyes and tried to blink, they felt as if someone had stuck hundred-year-old contacts into them. With Gorilla Glue. And although the light above her was dim, it seared her retinas. Her throat felt as if she’d gargled with gravel.

  She didn’t remember drinking that much wine.

  Where were her mom and…

  She gingerly turned her head and recognized the pale yellow walls. This wasn’t her apartment. She was in the hospital.

  On the wrong side of the bedrail.

  “Mom?” she croaked. “Kris? Riley?” The panicked feeling inside her ratcheted up with every name. She fumbled for the call button. Pushed it.

  Pushed it. Pushed it. Pushed it.

  Just the way the nurses hated.

  When none of them appeared in two point four seconds, Emmy grabbed the rail and dragged herself into sitting position.

  A halo of twinkle lights revolved around the edges of her sight, and her stomach was not charmed by them.

  No puking.

  She had way more important things to do, like getting the hell out of this bed and finding out what had happened. She and Kris had been sitting on the floor, her mom and Riley on the LSD-trip couch. Emmy had leaned her head back against her mom’s leg, letting the wine and the good feeling flow through her.

  She’d been so satisfied. So happy. So… joyful. Even though Jesse’s death was still hanging over her.

  She’d gotten up to go to the bathroom and the last thing she remembered was washing her hands. Wait… She’d smelled smoke… Had reached for the bathroom door and the smoke rolled over her.

  As she yanked on the bedrail, trying to disengage the release lever, she noticed the IV snaking into her arm. Like that would keep her in this bed. She would march buck-ass naked through these hallways dragging a PET scanner to find her mom, Kris, and Riley if she had to.

  She had one sock-covered foot on the ground when the room door swung open.

  “Whoa! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cash rushed in and took her arm, the one that wasn’t clinging to the IV pole as if was a lifeline. “Get back in the bed.”

  “Where are they? I have to find them.” She tried to slip out of Cash’s grip, but he didn’t budge.

  “On this same hallway,” he reassured her. “Everyone’s getting fluids and being checked out.”

  “Something happened. I don’t remember.”

  “If you’ll get back into bed, I’ll tell you.”

  It was then she noticed that he was in his station blues, but his hair and face were streaked with black and his upper and lower eyelids looked as if they’d been outlined with bright red lipliner. He helped her scoot her hips back onto the bed, but she didn’t lie down. Just sat there with her bare legs dangling from under a hospital gown. “I’m on the bed.”

  “I said in not on,” he grumbled, gently brushing his palm over her cheek. “But it’s better than nothing. Em, there was a fire. When we arrived, all four of you were unconscious. You were in the bathroom. Not sure if the others were asleep before it started, but it looks that way. And smoke inhalation took them from sleep to…”

  “Unconsciousness.” She rubbed her cheek and stared down at her smudged fingers. “How are they? When can I see them?”

  “You were the last one to wake up. Of course, this was the only time I left you alone.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “I went to check on the others. Once the doctor gets a look at you, you can—”

  “I am a doctor, and I say I’m fine.”

  “Doesn’t work that way.”

  She wouldn’t tell him that given how shaky her brain and body were feeling right now, she’d be lucky to correctly administer a Band-Aid. “What’s the damn benefit of being a doctor if you can’t treat yourself?”

  “I often ask myself the same question, Dr. McKay,” a handsome fifty-something man in a white lab coat said from the doorway as he studied the tablet he held. When he looked up, he smiled, making his blue eyes crinkle at the corners.

  He held out his hand to shake. “Dr. Haverson.”

  Emmy shook and assessed him. “Are you a good doctor?”

  “I like to think so.”

  They’d see about that. “Where’s my mother? Jennifer McKay.”

  Dr. Haverson poked at his tablet. “Room 209.”

  “How is she?”

  “She and your sister—cousin, I think?—will be fine. Ms. Kingston, too. A little smoke inhalation for everyone. But the firefighters got you out in time.”

  Emmy looked up at Cash. “You were there?”

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly.

  Dr. Haverson smiled and gestured for Emmy to use the bed as it was intended. “Dr. McKay, if you’ll lie back for a minute, I’d like to check a few things.”

  Emmy did as she was asked, but kept her attention on Cash as he circled the room several times. Finally, he stopped to stare blankly out the window. Dr. Haverson listened to Emmy’s lungs and for any stridor in her neck. He looked up her nose and down her throat. “Vitals are good with the supplemental oxygen you received earlier and everything sounds and looks as I would expect. You were all very lucky. Everyone should be released in the morning, assuming everything stays on this trajectory.”

  “I can see them?”

  “Don’t see why not, if Mr. Kingston will serve as your wheelchair driver.”

  She nodded her agreement, because that little edge of the bed venture earlier had swiped her breath and her energy.

  “The nursing staff will interrupt you all night long,” the doctor said cheerfully. “It’s a perk we offer to all our valued patients. I’ll sign release papers in the morning.”

  He and Cash shook hands and the doctor left, but Cash turned back to the window and stared at the metal blinds.

  “Cash, what aren’t you telling me?” She didn’t think the doctor would lie to her about her mom and the others, but something more was going on here.

  When Cash turned back to face her, his brown eyes were dark with something she’d never seen in them before. Straight-up fear.

  “Don’t lie to me. I want to see my mom and Kris now. Get me a stethoscope from the nurse
’s desk and—”

  “Dr. Haverson was telling you the truth. They’re in good shape. You’re the one with the worst smoke inhalation.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s unconfirmed. But at preliminary investigation, it looks like the fire was arson.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Cash was so sweet to help Emmy’s mom and Kris get settled at her mom’s house. His mom and dad had bundled Riley into his dad’s farm truck and taken her back to their house.

  Emmy hugged her mom at the front door of her childhood home. “I’ll be at Cash’s for a little while.”

  Her mom pinned Cash with a stare loaded with meaning. “You took care of her—and us—last night. Thank you for that, but I’m still nervous about letting her out of my sight.”

  “I will watch out for her. I promise.” He put his arm around Emmy and drew her away. Rather than making Emmy feel weak, his action encouraged her to straighten her spine a little more. “Maybe I’d like to say that I’ll completely take care of her, but I’m hoping she and I have learned a little about taking care of one another. Try not to worry, Mrs. McKay.”

  Her mom’s eyes flooded with unshed tears. “Doesn’t matter how old your babies are. A mom always worries. It’s part of the job description.” She kissed Emmy on the cheek. “I expect to hear from you no less than once a day. I figure you owe me that for a good three months.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  In the truck, Emmy found a bag filled with clothes, toiletries, and a pay-as-you-go phone. “When did you… How did you get all this?”

  “Mom rounded it up for you with a little help from Brynne Whitfield and her boutique.”

  “This is why I love this town,” she said. “Even with the things that have been going on, most people are caring and thoughtful. I need to call and thank them both.”

  He put his hand over hers. “They know you appreciate it. You have more important things to do right now than play Emily Post.”

  “Are we going to talk with the arson investigator?”

  “No, I just told your mom I’m taking you to my house, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” he said, backing out of the driveway. “I don’t lie to mamas. They see right through that shit.”

  “I just realized… The tox screen report on Jesse Giddings. It was in my apartment. I guess you didn’t have time to pick that up while you were inside.”

  The look Cash gave her was pure your-screws-are-loose. “You think? Getting you and the others out of there were much higher on my priority list.” His eyes narrowed. “Why? Did you find something in it?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “But I wanted to go over it again, just in case. Think we could get inside the apartment to—”

  “No.” That one word was definitive and unyielding. “Everything is unstable and it’s an investigation scene.”

  “Then I’ll see if Max can get me another copy of the report.” She pulled out the new phone to text him and a sudden thought occurred to her. “You don’t think someone set fire to the Murchison building because of that report, do you?”

  “No one but you, the lab director, and I know you have it. Do you have any reason to suspect Max?”

  She deflated. “No.”

  “Let’s wait for the arson report to be finalized. Until then, I’m keeping you close. If the fire was set on purpose, Maggie will be on it like flies on roadkill.”

  “And until then, we’re just going to sit around like good little townspeople?”

  He chuckled and parked in his carport. “Like that would ever work with you.” But he turned toward her and pulled her in to rest his forehead against hers. “I was scared fuckless, Em. When I saw your mom, Kris, and Riley sprawled out on the floor, completely helpless, I almost lost my mind. But when I couldn’t find you, the panic I felt… I can’t even describe it. I almost heaved into my mask.”

  That made Emmy smile because she knew Cash. He was cool and focused under pressure. His emotions might’ve been all over the place, but he was too good at what he did to let them interfere with his work.

  “You got to us in time. And you proved once again that you are not only one of Steele Ridge’s finest, but that you are the finest.”

  He kissed her, the sweetest, most gentle touch of lips on lips. It made Emmy’s heart ache with a painful pleasure. His fingers brushed over the plain braid she’d secured her hair in before leaving the hospital.

  When their lips parted, slowly, Emmy breathed out. “Yesterday, before we were interrupted by flames and fanatics, you said you wanted to show me something. About something still standing between us.”

  “Not now, Em. You need to rest.”

  “I have some things I need to tell you, too.” She hated to bring out the big guns, but today of all days, she deserved to get her way. “I could’ve died last night.”

  “I know what you’re doing.” He shook his head and got out of the truck to come around and open her door. “We’ll talk. On one condition.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You don’t even know my condition.”

  “See how accommodating I’m being?”

  He grunted in answer.

  Inside his house, he pointed toward a tweed sectional. “Curl up and I’ll be back in a sec.”

  When he returned, he handed her a leather-bound journal.

  “What is this?”

  “Everything you ever wanted to know about Cash Kingston and a few things you didn’t.” He turned toward the kitchen. “I’m getting some much-needed coffee. You want a cup?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She balanced the journal on her lap and gazed down at it with equal measure of apprehension and intense curiosity. Slowly, she unthreaded the knot in the leather tie that secured the wraparound cover.

  Cash’s handwriting wasn’t nearly neat as the careful print in her spiral, but it was immediately clear that this was where his dreams and goals were stored.

  The book chronicled his time at the fire academy, his experiences as an EMT. Emmy flipped through the pages and found several mentions of his desire to do even more. To become a paramedic.

  Then pages and pages were filled with the insanity of his paramedic training in Los Angeles. How he and his preceptors had talked a man with schizophrenia off the Colorado Street Bridge. The run-in with the guy who nail-gunned himself to the floor. The first cardiac call he’d managed on his own. A twelve-year-old banger who’d died while Cash was holding him.

  Which meant he’d experienced exactly the kind of pain she’d felt when she had to pronounce TOD on little David Hernandez.

  Cash returned from the kitchen and set a cup on the coffee table.

  “You don’t have to show me this—”

  “Yes, I do. Keep reading.” He stood there and sipped his coffee.

  With him standing over her, nerves flipped and flopped in Emmy’s stomach. But she read on, wincing over the accounts of him screwing up, of the ass-chewings by his preceptors, of failing a skills assessment because he’d bandaged another student’s forehead too low and given the guy an eyebrow wax to end all eyebrow waxes.

  Of the stillborn baby he’d brought into the world and wept over in private later.

  “This is pretty personal.”

  “Em, I’ve been inside your body. What can be more personal than that?”

  He was right.

  She fanned the pages until she came to the last few filled with writing. They spoke of his feelings—of his confusion and anger and desire—when he heard she was getting married. And the same when she turned up in Steele Ridge and stole the job he’d believed should be his.

  Was his now.

  She wanted to close her eyes and put her fingers in her ears. He was allowing her to see the rawest, most truthful part of him.

  He was forcing her to see him for what he truly was—a paramedic and firefighter, yes. But as a man. He was laying it all on the line, exposing his vulnerability in a way that made her want to shrink away.r />
  Not from him, but from the thought of being that vulnerable herself.

  She flipped back to the very first page and found it dated a year after she turned down his proposal. She looked up at Cash and found him glaring at his coffee as if it had somehow wronged him. But she knew that disappointment was meant for her.

  She’d rejected him, but worse, she’d underestimated him. “Do other people know how motivated and ambitious you are?”

  “Does it really matter what other people know or believe?” He touched the left side of his chest with his cup. “If I’ve got it all in here, isn’t that what counts?”

  “You’re right,” she said quietly as she flipped through his journal, absorbing that he was the kind of man who had a mission and purpose in his life, but who didn’t need the validation of others knowing it. “Because of my dad I’ve always believed you have to be serious to do your best.” She carefully tied the leather strap into a bow and placed Cash’s journal on the coffee table. She didn’t need to see more to know that she’d walked away from the one man who could have helped her be the best version of Emmy McKay she could be, a woman able to be a good doctor and have a life. “But I’m the one who made them into some kind of mantra. No, that’s not right. I made them into a damn manifesto.” Looking up at him, she confessed, “I may have lived my whole life for him.”

  Cash’s face softened and he dropped down on the couch beside her. “I don’t think so. Hell, we’re all shaped by stuff that happened to us when we were kids. Your dad’s death, the sheer waste of it, was a huge blow. But even a tragedy can’t completely mold a person’s personality.”

  “So you’re saying I was born to be a person who lives life a certain way even if that means giving up everything that makes life worthwhile.”

  “No, I’m saying that you have the natural talents and drive that make you a helluva medical pro. Smart, decisive, compassionate, quick-thinking.”

  “I like the power of it.”

  “Of course you do. It takes a chunk of God complex to do what we do.” He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “And the people we care for want that. They want us to be confident, cocky even. It reassures them.”