by T. J. Kline
“I have some vacation time coming. I’ll stay here with you,” Ben insisted.
She should have realized he’d offer. It would have actually been out of character for him not to but she couldn’t let him risk his position at the fire department. What if this lasted longer than a few days, or a week? It had already been a month. She couldn’t let him put his life on hold, and she wouldn’t let him put himself in danger.
“I appreciate that, I really do, but it’s fine. Cana will protect me if anyone comes around and I can call you,” she said, pointedly looking at Andrew. Ben frowned and she hated the uncertainty that flickered in his eyes. Letting him stay would only put her heart more at risk for falling for him.
“He was hiding behind you when I arrived,” Ben pointed out. “I’m not sure how much protection that will give you.”
“We’ll be fine. Really,” she assured them both. “I’ll call the paper. Maybe if I offer to do an interview, or invite a group to come for a tour, they’ll see there is nothing here threatening the town, and its livestock.”
“No!”
“That’s a great idea!”
Ben glared at his brother when they answered in unison. Emma knew Ben wouldn’t like the idea but it would be a great way for people to see that there was nothing at the sanctuary for them to be afraid of. She might not be ready to open it back to the public yet but it would also prove she was just as able to run the place, perhaps even more qualified, as her father. It was also a way to lure this anonymous reporter into their midst and put a face to the ass writing these hyped-up stories.
“Emma, if this reporter is the one after you, the last thing you need to do is to invite him in.”
Andrew jammed his hands into his pockets. “Or maybe it’s the best way to lull someone into thinking they have you fooled, that they are completely safe.”
Ben ate up the distance between him and his brother with quick strides. The pair stood only inches apart but Ben looked down at Andrew, taller by several inches. “He is safe. You have no clue who this person is and yet you want Emma to roll out the red carpet. Have you forgotten that this person already mutilated two calves? Who knows what his next move is?”
Andrew shot his brother a warning look and Ben could read the dare. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d come to blows. “I haven’t forgotten anything. But it’s not like we’d leave her here alone.” He shoved his brother to one side. “If you have a program, or a tour, or whatever, you need help right?”
“It depends on the size of the group but, usually, yes.”
“You set it up and the two of us can come act as your assistants.”
“What do you know about wild animals?” Ben scoffed.
“I know as much as you do. Plus I know how to shoot one if need be.” He quickly glanced at Emma. “Not that I’d have to. I’m just saying that we can be here to protect you.”
Emma looked at Ben. It was clear he didn’t want her to do this. Worry colored his eyes and she could easily see the tension bunching his muscles. The side of his jaw twitched as his mouth pinched into a thin line. She bit the corner of her lip and looked back toward the enclosure where the animals were starting to make noise, reminding her that mealtime was nearing.
“What day are you off, Ben?” She shouldn’t put him in this position to feel responsible for her, shouldn’t give her heart any more opportunities to fall for this man.
He threw his hands into the air and turned in a circle, talking to no one in particular. “This is absurd. Do you really think no one will recognize us?” Ben shoved his hand into Andrew’s shoulder. “This is a small town, you jackass. Everyone here has grown up with us, they know our family. You’re going to put her in even more danger.”
“So, we’ll just say we both volunteer here a few days a week. We do it for the animals.” Andrew gave him a smirk. “It wouldn’t exactly be untrue, unless you volunteered for other reasons.”
Before Emma realized what was happening, Ben had drawn back his fist and knocked his brother to the ground.
Andrew pushed himself up on one elbow and held his jaw, moving it from side to side. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He drew himself up onto one knee, preparing to stand. “I’m on duty, you son of a bitch. I could arrest you.”
“Go ahead.” Ben sucked in a shaky breath as he tried to calm himself. Emma had never seen him so angry. “I won’t let you do this, Emma. Ignore whatever this prick says. He just wants his own headlines since he can’t seem to get them any other way.”
Andrew laughed bitterly. “Oh, Ben, there you go again. Getting yourself all worked up for a woman who isn’t emotionally available.” He pressed the back of his hand against the corner of his mouth, dabbing at the blood Ben had drawn. “Have you told Emma about your tendency to look for women in trouble? How you so desperately want to be a hero?” Andrew shot her a pained glance. “It’s sad really.”
“Shut up, Andrew.”
“Or how I had to arrest your last fiancée for selling half of your apartment and stealing your car?”
“Last fiancée?” Emma’s eyes widened as her gaze swung toward Ben. “How many . . .”
“Oh, there have been a few over the years.” Andrew laughed sadistically as he rose, only to be knocked back to the ground when Ben tackled him.
Emma wasn’t sure what was happening, or why the pair were even fighting, but she couldn’t just let them go at it like two kids in a playground fight. However, she wasn’t about to get in between two brothers any more than she was about to get into the middle of a dogfight. She looked around from something—anything—that might distract them. She ran down the stairs and jerked the hose from the flowerbed, twisting the spigot and turning the water onto the men wrestling in front of her house. They jumped apart as she’d hoped they would, sputtering, trying to block the water from their faces with their hands raised.
“Knock it off, both of you!” The two men glared at one another, looking like they were sizing each other up for round two. “You,” she said, pointing at Andrew. “Go. I’ll call you after I talk to the newspaper.”
Andrew nodded as he bent over and collected the pictures that had scattered over the porch stairs when he fell. As he headed toward his patrol car, he muttered something colorful about where Ben could put a hose. Ben started to go after him again but Emma reached for his arm, pressing her hand into the middle of his back to direct him toward the house.
“Inside, now.”
He shot another glare at his brother as he climbed up to her porch. “Don’t use her to prove to this town you can get your shit together, Andrew.”
“Maybe you should take your own advice, big brother.”
Andrew slammed the car door shut and headed down the driveway without a backward glance. But Emma knew the damage was already done. Andrew had accomplished exactly what he’d intended. She now had her doubts about Ben. In addition to those she already had about herself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Emma found Ben in the guest bathroom, where he was using a hand towel to wipe the dirt from his face. There were three scratches on his cheek and several running the length of his bicep but they weren’t deep. She leaned against the doorframe.
“So, you want to tell me what that was about?”
“This is a bad idea. It’s too dangerous. This person has gone from spray-painting to slaughtering animals. It’s insane that you want to invite trouble right in your front door.”
Emma arched a brow. “Insane?”
He dropped his hands to the counter and bowed his head forward for a moment before turning to pin her with a pointed look. “Yes, Emma, insane. As in you’re deliberately putting yourself in harm’s way. Rational people avoid that.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Um, didn’t we just have this conversation? You know, the one where I told you how my job and relationships don’t mix well because it’s dangerous. And,” she tapped a finger against her cheek, staring up at the ceiling, “weren’t you the sam
e guy who told me we’d figure it out?”
“That was about working with dangerous animals, not some crazy guy out to get you.”
“Protecting my sanctuary from some guy trying to get it shut down is part of my job. Safeguarding this place and the animals housed here is my job. This is my job, Ben. This,” she said, circling her hand in front of him, “is why I don’t date and do relationships.”
“I’m trying to protect you, Emma. Not some animals, not some land. You.”
She took a deep breath and looked up at him. His eyes begged her to understand, to agree with him, but she didn’t. She laid her hand against his cheek, feeling the stubble on his jaw, rough but seductively so.
“Ben, I’ve never asked you to protect me and I’m not asking for your permission. I am a grown-ass woman and this is my business to protect.”
Maybe Andrew was right, even if he was acting like a dick about it. Ben wanted to save her from her troubles. He did. But the fact was, Emma didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted someone to believe she could be her own savior. She’d thought Ben understood that but, apparently, he was no different than anyone else in this town. Emma knew what she had to do, had known this was a bad idea from the start, but it didn’t break her heart any less to utter the words.
“You should go.”
Ben could feel the sweat trickling over his skin as the late afternoon sun bore down on them and they tried to turn the grass fire back toward the pond nestled in the center of the pasture. The dry pastureland had been a perfect opportunity to give the two probies experience fighting grass fires with plenty of veterans to help out if there was any trouble. Unfortunately, as a lieutenant, Ben always ended up working behind the newbies, carrying the hose. A boring, thankless job if there ever was one on the crew.
“Hey, probie,” he said. Ben tugged the hose, pulling Ryan back slightly as he corrected his trajectory and aimed at the fire he was supposed to be putting out. “Watch the flames instead of Angie. You’re crossing the fire line.”
“What?”
Ryan looked down at the ground where he’d stepped outside the charred grass, taking his focus off the fire ahead of him. The kid had been mooning over Angie ever since she’d gone home with him. Ben knew several of the others were already razzing him about it. He needed to get his head back on straight or they were going to have to cut him loose. Ben dreaded the talk he was going to have to have with the guy.
“This is why you don’t sleep with women on the crew, kid.”
“I’ve got this under control.”
Ben heard the defensive note in Ryan’s voice. He didn’t have time to pander to some joker playing fireman when it was his life on the line. “Then maybe next time you should turn the hose on the fire before you start walking through it.”
“Do you want to take this end?” Ryan sounded pissed. Ben could hear it in his voice but he really didn’t care. The kid was reckless and he wasn’t putting his neck on the line for reckless people anymore.
Images of Emma filled his mind. She wasn’t just reckless, she was impetuous, hot-headed and irrational. Why the hell couldn’t that woman recognize the fact that she needed help, whether it came from him or someone else, and stop taking risks she had no business taking?
“You coming or are you going to keep daydreaming?” Ryan jerked at the hose Ben was carrying for him, tugging him off balance.
Shit! He’d just done exactly what he scolded Ryan for doing—losing focus on the task at hand. It was something he didn’t do. At least, he never had before Emma. He wasn’t going to start doing it now.
They finished dousing the fire and headed back to the trucks. Angie moved closer, sliding her goggles onto the top of her helmet before tugging it off.
“What’s your issue, Ben?” He shot her a sideways glance and kept walking, ignoring her question. “Hey! I’m talking to you.” Angie reached up and jerked the back of his turnout coat in her gloved fist. “What the hell gives you the right to interfere in my relationships when you can’t even manage your own?”
“Relationship?” He leaned over her, shadowing her with his much larger frame, hoping that it was enough to convince her to back off. This wasn’t a subject that was up for discussion. “You’ve slept with half the guys on the crew and propositioned the other half. How is that a relationship?”
“Wow! I had no idea what a son of a bitch you could be. I thought you left that up to your brother. Good to know.” She shoved him back a few steps, not intimated in the slightest by him. “Ryan is different. If you ever got your head out of your ass you’d realize that not all relationships look the same.”
“He’s five years younger than you.”
“So? What does that have to do with anything?”
Ben looked over at Ryan laughing with one of the other guys near the engine as they cleaned up. Angie and Ryan? As in a serious relationship? She’d never had one, not even for the six months they’d been together.
She arched a brow at him, daring him to question her again. “Things aren’t always the way they first appear, McQuaid. Just because we started out as a one-night stand doesn’t mean it can’t turn into more, or that we have to get married. Quit being such a judgmental prick.”
He opened his mouth but she shook her head and slammed her helmet into his chest. “For almost screwing up my date for tonight, you can take care of my gear. No bitching either since I saved your ass last week.” She winked at him. “Oh, the joys of having you owe me favors.”
Angie walked to Ryan and Ben didn’t miss the way the guy’s eyes lit up. It was easy to see he was head over heels for Angie. Ben had no doubt that Angie was going to tear him up and rip his poor infatuated heart to shreds. She had never been serious about anyone. Angie smiled at the kid, grabbing him by the front of his coat and tugging him close for a kiss. The look on her face as they separated suddenly made him question his own presumptions.
If that wasn’t love in her eyes, he’d clean every engine at the station single-handedly.
And it was the same way Emma looked at him.
At least she had until yesterday.
Emma watched as the crowd made their way to the gate of the main compound. She’d already been through the facility, double-checking all of the locks and making sure the animals were fed before hanging signs and rope barriers where she didn’t want visitors wandering. During her last walk-through, most of the animals had been sleeping, full and happy, after breakfast. She glanced at Andrew, who walked in the lead, directing the visitors to an open area at the sanctuary gate. She almost laughed at seeing him decked out in cargo shorts and a polo shirt bearing the sanctuary’s emblem.
“If everyone will come this way and gather around, we can start the tour,” she instructed. “We’re going to split everyone up into smaller groups. Some of you will follow Sadie.” Her volunteer raised a hand and waved at the crowd. “And some of you will follow Drew.”
Andrew glared at her but recovered quickly, waving at the group. They’d planned it the day before in hopes that most of the people attending wouldn’t recognize him. Since each volunteer carried a clipboard with them, Emma had written him a script to use while taking his group on the tour. They had invited twenty people from the community, including a Make-a-Wish child and the reporter from the local paper who had been writing the articles. While there were several people with cameras ready, there was only one with a lens long enough to capture every individual hair on Buster. That had to be the reporter. Emma would make sure that he ended up in Andrew’s group where they could keep an eye out for suspicious activity as well as his reactions to the animals.
She handed out colored slips of paper to the group, including the three children in the group. She knew the Make-a-Wish girl wanted to pet a wild animal and Sadie had been instructed to let them all pet Millie since she was tame. “Everyone with a yellow card will follow Sadie. She’s going to take you to the see the cats first.”
Emma glanced at Andrew as he jerked his chin tow
ard the man she suspected was the photographer. “The rest of you are going to go with Drew and start with our aviary and the birds we house in there.”
Andrew nodded as he headed for the bird enclosure, with the group following him closely. It was an easy place for them to start and for no one to be suspicious when she followed since she would be taking Winger, their red-tailed hawk out for them to see up close. She heard Andrew making small talk with the reporter as she hurried to grab the gauntlet from the trunk and meet them outside the aviary.
“Emma.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the sound of Ben’s voice behind her. Part of her wanted to rejoice at his presence. Part of her ached with pain at his return, knowing they could never make it work. She kept her back to him, hoping that if she didn’t turn around, it would hurt less and she could maintain her restraint. Especially when her legs were twitching, wanting to turn and run into his arms.
“Why are you here? You made your thoughts about this clear the other day, Ben.”
“I was wrong.”
She turned hesitantly. She had no idea what had caused this change of heart and, as much as she didn’t want to, she had to question his sudden backtracking.
Before she could ask him, he closed the distance between them, looking far too handsome in his jeans and a polo shirt matching Andrew’s. “I’m here to do whatever you need, even if you just want me to go to hell.”
He started to raise his hand, reaching for her, but she sensed the hesitation in him. She wanted to reach for him, to drag him down to her, to feel his mouth on hers, to savor the taste of him again. But nothing had changed. He was still trying to rescue her, to save her.
“You promised me once that you’d be whatever I needed. I need a friend. Not a lover.” His hand dropped back to his side and she saw the defeat flicker in the depths of his eyes. “Ben, we both know that neither one of us can go back to that.”
He dropped his chin toward his chest, disappointment clear, and closed his eyes. When he looked at her again, there was something different in them. She no longer saw the softness, the gentle gaze he always seemed to have when he looked at her. There was a fierce determination in them she’d never seen before.
