“What kind of business?” he asked. “We should probably should keep our distance. At least until we get our property war settled.”
“About the old Clapham place. I may have found a property you’ll like better.”
“I doubt it,” he said.
“You’ll never know until I show you what I’ve found. Can you meet me for dinner at the diner tonight?”
“I’m off at five, so yes, I can swing it.”
“Good. What’s left on the tour?” she asked.
“Just the fire pole,” he said.
The kids who’d already sat behind the wheel of the fire truck heard Rory’s words and started dancing around and clapping. Meg watched them, wondering when she’d gotten so old that she’d stopped celebrating when good things happened.
Chapter Five
RORY LED THE KIDS around to the building in the back where the fire pole was. Meg was a natural with children, and he wondered why she was still single at thirty. He wasn’t saying there was anything wrong with that. His own sister had been single a lot longer.
But he realized there was still a lot he didn’t know about her. She seemed like the girl next door. The woman that every boy dreams of growing up to marry because he knows that life with her would be good, settled.
But Meg wanted to chase her dreams in the big city. Some place vastly different from Twin Palms. What was she running from? She had to have a reason for wanting out so badly.
Didn’t she?
Or maybe he just wanted her here, so he could focus on her problems. In relationships, he didn’t feel needed until he found some way he could make the other person whole. Too bad that had backfired on him last time. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had a relationship with Meg.
But he did have a second date.
She might look like every small-town sweet dream that he’d ever had, but inside, she wanted more. She’d pretty much said that from the moment they’d met.
Still, he wanted her and denying himself wasn’t his style. He’d always followed his gut, but right now, he wasn’t sure where that would lead. But as he climbed the stairs with the kids, he knew that he needed to pay attention to what he was doing.
No matter how wild Meg made him feel, he always put safety first. At least on the job. He had to be the best he could be, prove to himself that he still had it.
“Fireman Tim is going to demonstrate how to go down the pole. Then you’ll all take a turn and he’ll be at the bottom to give you your honorary firefighter’s badge,” Rory said. “Miss Jenny is going to take your picture as well.” Noticing some worried faces, he added, “It’s easy, really. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
Tim gave his demonstration, and within seconds, all the kids were clamoring for their turn. But they were small and there was a big gap between the platform and the pole. He looked at the first child in line. “I’m going to lift you over and then you all can slide down the pole. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the girl said. She reminded him a lot of his sister when they’d been kids. Andi had been determined to prove that she could do anything her brothers could do, only better. Usually she’d been right. He wondered if this little girl might find her calling working as a firefighter when she got older.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” she said.
Rory lifted her and helped her get her hands into position. “Wrap your legs around the pole and then just slide.”
She did it and jumped off at the bottom, giving him a big grin and thumbs-up. The other kids hustled, fighting to be the next in line.
The kids all went except for the little boy who’d told him about the class hamster. He kept moving back in the line, letting all the other kids go in front of him. Soon, it was just Meg, Rory and the little boy on the platform.
“It’s your turn, Charlie,” Meg said.
“I don’t think I want to go,” Charlie said.
“You don’t have to,” Meg said.
“That’s right,” Rory added. He’d felt the same the first time he’d stood in front of the fire pole.
“Will I still get a badge?” Charlie asked.
Rory nodded. “I don’t see why not. You’ve finished the tour like everyone else.”
“The other kids might say I didn’t.”
Rory squatted down so he was eye level with the little boy. He put his hand on the kid’s shoulder and leaned in. “What other kids say doesn’t matter. We already know how responsible you are.”
“How?”
“Your teacher picked you to watch the class pet. She wouldn’t have chosen you if you hadn’t shown her you could handle it.”
He nodded. Then he took a deep breath. “What’s it like?”
“Have you been down the big slide in the park?” Meg asked.
“Sure, lots of times,” Charlie said.
“It’s like that,” Meg said.
“Have you ever done it, Miss Meg?”
“Yes, I have,” she said. “Would it make you feel better if I went first?”
He shook his head. “I’d still have to go down by myself.”
“How do you feel about getting a piggyback ride down?” Rory asked.
Meg looked at him. “I don’t think I can carry him down the pole.”
Rory nodded. “I can.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Rory said. “You want to try it that way?”
Meg looked at the both of them. “Are you sure about this?”
“I am. Trust me,” Rory said.
Charlie didn’t need to be asked twice. Rory turned his back to the little boy and he climbed on. And then, with a cheeky grin in her direction, they both went down the pole. She stood there watching them, feeling fear for the first time. Because she realized that he could be the right man for her. Only, she didn’t want the right man.
Everything she learned about him made her like him just a little bit more. But she knew that not all of his days were this low-key. He regularly put himself in danger, just like her dad. And by watching her mother, she knew just how hard and lonely loving a man like that could be.
AFTER THE KIDS left, Rory wondered why he’d agreed to go to dinner with Meg. He wasn’t going to change his mind and suddenly decide not to buy the piece of property that had brought him to this town. He suspected his own reasons were more carnal in nature.
He had a lot of time to dwell on it. It was a long summer afternoon with no calls until 3:30. Then the bell sounded—there was a three-car pile-up on I-4. Rory jumped into his gear and felt no ebbing of the tension in his gut. It was a call-out, which was a good thing—he craved the normalcy that came with working in the firehouse, but he was waiting for the first fire.
“Yeah, baby,” Tim Carrow said as they got on the truck in their turnout gear.
Rory just exchanged headshakes with the guy in charge of their three-man crew, Lieutenant Frank Meers. Newbie. But then again, they’d all been there, so they understood his reaction. Of course, it wouldn’t stop any of the guys on their crew from ribbing him about it later.
“Wait until it’s a fire,” Rory said.
“Man, I can’t. That’s why I joined up,” Tim said.
The truck made its way through town with the sirens blazing and out to the interstate where the cops were just arriving and diverting traffic. The first vehicle wasn’t a car at all but a construction truck with a load of rebar sticking off the back. The second vehicle was a small Toyota Prius with a piece of the rebar through the driver’s side of the windshield. The third vehicle was a monster truck that had buried itself halfway inside the Toyota.
Rory hopped out of the truck and was the first to get to the Toyota. When he saw that the rebar had gone neatly through the driver’s shoulder, his instincts took over. The driver was
a young guy in his twenties. His face was pale from blood loss, Rory guessed, and he looked scared.
“Am I going to die?”
“No,” Rory said, reaching through the open door to pat him on his uninjured shoulder. “Sit tight while we get an EMT over here to check you out. Then we will get you out of the car.”
The guy nodded and Rory turned to see Tim running over. He took one look at the driver and Rory saw the man who’d been an EMT take over. All traces of being a newbie were gone.
He knelt next to the car and took the driver’s wrist in his hand. “Look at me. This is one hell of a day, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” the driver said.
Rory left Tim and went to find the lieutenant. “Rebar through the shoulder. I don’t know if it’s close to an artery but I’m really not sure we can just yank it out.”
“Let’s go take a look. Who’s with the driver?”
“Tim.”
“‘Yay, I’m so excited’ dude?”
Rory nodded. “His training is seeing him through. He’s keeping the driver calm and getting a handle on the extent of the guy’s injuries.”
“Good. I knew the Cap hired him for a reason,” Frank said. “You strong enough to yank it out if it comes to that?”
“I am,” Rory said. “But the angle is weird. I’d rather just get him out of there with the rebar in and let the doctors at the ER handle it.”
“Me, too. The other vehicles’ occupants are fine. So the Toyota is the only priority.”
Rory nodded, pulling the equipment from the truck that they’d need, including the Jaws of Life. Rory had used the equipment a number of times. This accident, while bad, wasn’t the worst he’d seen.
As he approached the vehicle, Frank went ahead to check in with Tim. Rory knew that cutting from the driver’s side would be impossible because the driver was pinned in his seat. So he got to work with the hydraulically-powered shears, making a relief cut in the passenger door, and then used the spreader to force some space between the door and the roof of the vehicle so they’d be able to get in there with their equipment.
“How’s our patient doing?” Rory asked Tim.
“Not bad,” Tim said.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just get me out of here.”
“We are,” Frank said. “Rory is going to try to cut the rebar, so we can move you. I need you to tell Tim if it hurts in any way. What’s your name?”
“Allan,” he said. “Allan Jones.”
“Okay, Allan,” Frank said. “Tim is going to keep hold of your hand so he can monitor your pulse while Rory gets to work.”
Allan nodded.
Frank looked up at Rory and he took a deep breath. The best strategy was to make the cut close to Allan, as long as he didn’t jar him as he did it. Rory got the hydraulic shears in position and put a little pressure on the bar without cutting, then checked to make sure the patient was still okay.
But Allan didn’t flinch, so Rory made the cut. The rebar broke easily under the powerful cutters. And Frank was there to catch the free end, pushing it out of the windshield and onto the hood of the car.
Allan was breathing heavily, listening to Tim’s instructions. Tim looked up at Rory and nodded. The guy was still okay. Rory then maneuvered around to the backseat and noticed that there was barely enough room to get the shears in.
“Tim, can the seat go forward at all?” Rory asked.
“I’d rather not move him,” Tim said.
Rory cursed and kept trying positions until he found one that would work for both his long, lanky frame and the shears in the small space of the back seat. “Frank?”
Frank came around next to him and leaned in through the open door. “What’s up?”
“I think we should try to cut out the fabric on the back of the seat here so I can get my cut as close to the exit wound as possible. It will make it easier to get Allan out.”
Together, they cut away the seat with knives, disabling airbags as they encountered them. Before cutting off the other end of rebar, they covered Allan in a flexible shield to protect him. And then they got to work, finally freeing Allan from his car.
Rory was tired and hot when they got back to the firehouse. Tim, too, was strangely quiet. Rory wasn’t much of a talker, so he was glad for that. His arms ached from operating the heavy machinery. There was a big difference between working out and actually using his body for physical labor. He was in good shape, but the Jaws of Life were heavy.
He wasn’t fully back to his old self, yet. But at least he no longer felt like an investment banker. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to dwell on the fact that, despite how well he’d worked today, he still felt just a little bit lost.
He’d sort of hoped that he’d find his footing once he was back in turnout gear. That being in action would act like some sort of magic elixir that would make the last few years disappear. But that hadn’t happened.
Natalie had hurt more than just his pride when she’d left him after he’d changed for her. She’d compromised something deep inside of him—a place he hadn’t realized he was vulnerable—and he really had no idea how to repair it.
He’d been faking it for his family and for his crew at the firehouse, but he didn’t know how much longer he could do that. He wanted things to change. He wanted the man he saw in the mirror—the guy who looked like a firefighter—to truly reflect who he was on the inside.
He filled in the necessary paperwork from the call and then showered and got dressed in a pair of jeans and a Salty Dog T-shirt before heading to the diner and the woman who wanted the one thing that he needed. A piece of property that was the key to his future.
He stepped off the sidewalk into a small alleyway and leaned against the brick wall as he suddenly felt a rush of energy—a delayed reaction from the accident. His pulse raced and his mind flooded with all the ways things could have gone wrong on the interstate, if he’d lost his grip on the hydraulic shears, cutting through the seat and into Allan.
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands. Was he doing the right thing, “finding” himself as a firefighter again? Was it smart to go out on calls when fear was still riding on his back like monkey?
Was it fair that he was thirty-three years old . . . and lost? He had always thought that by this time in his life, he’d have it all figured out. Instead, it seemed he was deeper in the weeds than ever.
He rubbed his eyes and forced himself to stand up. Man up. He heard his dad’s voice in his head urging him to pull himself together.
“Rory?”
He shook his head, but didn’t look up. He wasn’t ready to spar with Miss Trouble right now. He didn’t need her trying to talk to him about something that, if he was being honest with himself, wasn’t nearly as important as he had been trying to force it to become.
“You okay?” she asked.
He heard the sound of her walking toward him and caught a whiff of her citrusy perfume.
“I’m fine. I just needed a break from the heat,” he said, straightening up. Meg was a stranger. One he was attracted to, granted, but still essentially a stranger. He didn’t want her to know anything more about him than the facts that he was a firefighter, a good kisser and her adversary for a piece of property.
That was all he could ever be to her.
“In this alley?”
“The trees on Main Street seem to have a bit of growing to do,” he said.
“Yeah, they do. The council had to pull out all of the older ones two years ago after Hurricane Floyd ripped through town. I came home to help my parents clean up their property. That storm did a lot of damage.”
“I didn’t realize the winds could get that intense this far inland,” Rory said.
“They were,” she said, still watching him close
ly.
He felt her interest and knew she didn’t really want to let him change the subject, but in the end, he assumed she’d come to the same conclusion he had. They were strangers, and digging any deeper didn’t make sense.
“Since you’re hot, let’s go grab some sweet tea at the diner. Then I’m going to make you an offer you’d be a fool to refuse.”
He followed her out of the alleyway, watching the sway of her hips with each step she took. She’d changed her clothes since he’d seen her earlier. Now, she was wearing a sundress, and the skirt blew around her legs as the hot summer wind kicked up. Pulling a tendril of hair back from her face, she opened the door to the diner and faced him.
In her cinnamon eyes, it was easy to pretend he saw a chance at salvation, a chance to find a place for himself.
Chapter Six
MEG KNEW BETTER than to try to get Rory to talk about whatever had happened in the alley. To her, it had looked like a flashback, something she’d witnessed her dad go through when she’d been younger. It had been so hard to watch him struggle in private at home when in public, everyone hailed him as a hero.
She was tempted to call Connie, since her husband would know what had happened today. But Rory had made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to discuss it.
And he wasn’t hers to fix.
They both ordered sweet tea to drink. Once the waitress brought their drinks, she left them alone.
“What do you normally have for dinner on Wednesday nights?” she asked him. “You eat here a lot, right?
Rory leaned back in the chair and rubbed a hand over his chest. He gave her a quick glance. “I do eat here a lot, as a matter of fact. I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook.”
“I am. Play your cards right and maybe I’ll make dinner for you sometime,” she said.
“Are you a good cook?” he asked.
“I took a few lessons from a celebrity chef in New York. For a while, one of the producers I worked for was desperate to do a foodie show.”
In The Heat 0f The Night (The O'Roarkes Duet Book 2) Page 5
