by J. R. Ward
Danny cut that shit off, his patience running out. “No. Let’s get Mom or Dad on the horn. Now.”
chapter
20
When members of the 499 arrived with a stretcher, Anne stepped back and needed a distraction so she chatted up Chris again. It turned out Dave of the broken leg was a serial PITA who hadn’t been properly checked in, and both receptionists were finished with his act.
“You’ve done the best you could. It’s going to be fine.”
As she spoke, she was mostly talking to herself. Moose, Danny’s old roommate, was at the head of the stretcher and Emilio Chavez was on the back end, the pair advancing through the open space with purpose. Both men were dressed in working uniforms, the shirts with the fire-service crest on the pec and the navy blue pants, the uniform Anne used to wear every day and night.
The men faltered when they saw her. And again when Danny stood up.
Then Moose snapped out of it. “Hey, you two. What have we got here?”
Danny looked at her. She looked at Danny.
“Compound—”
“Fell from the ceiling—”
“—fracture due to—”
“—resulting in a compound—”
“—unrestrained fall.”
“—fracture.”
As they shut up at the same time, she forced herself not to look away. “David is a minor, and his mother is on the way.”
Moose gave her a smile and then it was all about the patient, he and Chavez following a protocol that Anne knew only too well. In New Brunswick, the fire service also functioned as paramedics and EMTs, and she ran through each assessment step in her head.
I can still do this, she thought. I can still do the job.
But even as the conviction hit to her, it was a useless revelation, a lantern without a wick. This kind of a run was only part of it. Sure, a person on the fire service needed to be able to handle a kid with a broken leg in a non-confrontational, non-emergent environment like this. But they also dragged charged lines up stairs, punched through drywall with axes, pulled downed colleagues out of hot spots.
Danny moved over to her, his head tilting as he watched the IV line get set. “How you doing?”
The words were so quiet, she almost missed them, and she was reminded of the way he’d always spoken to her on the job. Private, even in public.
Anne opened her mouth to I’m-fine him, but didn’t follow through on the impulse. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t speak the lie—and had no intention of looking too closely at why a perfectly appropriate deflection dried up in her throat.
After Dave was on a board with a cervical collar around his neck and his lower leg stabilized, Moose and Chavez got him up on the stretcher. Mom arrived just as they were strapping him down, and she was in full scramble, hair a mess, her coat flapping, her purse clapping against her leg as she ran to her son.
“What the hell is wrong with you!”
Danny muttered, “Not the first time she’s been in this situation.”
“Yeah.” Anne went over and got her duffel. “Let’s go.”
This show-off session had been a colossal mistake, and the fact that it was ending with her on the sidelines as Moose and Emilio did the job she’d had to leave behind? She’d been right. God did not like the prideful, and although she had wanted to prove to Danny she was a-okay, she had to cop to some ego being involved.
As Moose interceded with Mom and brought the woman up to date, Emilio hesitated and then approached. He nodded at Danny, but it was a cursory hello—because hey, those two were going to see each other on next rotation.
Besides, this was about her. “How are you, Anne?”
Chavez had always been a good guy, and the gentle way he looked at her was everything she remembered about him. He was also still the tall, dark, and handsome firefighter hero who belonged in a centerfold calendar of guys in turnout bottoms holding long hoses—and yet he’d never been her type. Nope, back in the day, she’d never managed to look past Danny Maguire.
What was the question?
“I’m good.” She smiled brightly, and then hit the dimmer switch so she didn’t come across as desperate. “I’m great.”
After the collapse in that warehouse house, Emilio had come by the rehab hospital once, and the resolute way he’d focused on her face and not her arm had made her rush through the visit. He’d seemed relieved at the excuse she’d given him to leave, and she hadn’t faulted him. As he’d stood awkwardly next to her hospital bed, no doubt he’d been glad that he hadn’t been hurt—and he was decent enough of a guy to feel bad about that understandable relief.
“How’s you?’ she asked. Because she had to.
“Ah, great. I’m great. Yeah, thanks.”
He smiled, but then lost the expression. When he resolutely put the lift back on his lips, she wanted to tell him not to bother.
Anne rubbed her sweaty palm on the seat of her legging again. “I’m glad. That’s good.”
“Yeah, it’s . . . it’s good.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like we’re moving. Good to see you, Anne—later, Dannyboy.”
“Great to see you,” she said too loudly. “Really great.”
Chris came over. “I didn’t know you’re friends with the EMS guys.”
“I’m not. I mean, I was. I used to be—” She shook her head. “Listen, I’ve got to say it again. I feel really badly about all this. I shouldn’t have been showboating.”
“That kid’s been trouble since he joined. At least now we have an excuse to cancel his membership. And he signed the standard release, so hopefully we won’t get sued.”
Danny stepped in. “If you need us to make statements, you know where to find us.”
“You have my number,” she corrected. “Let me know if I can help. I feel responsible.”
Chris smiled. “You’re the best, Anne. Chilli and I appreciate you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Danny said as he barged in and stuck his hand out like it was a sword pointed at the other man’s gut.
There was an awkward pause before Chris shook what was put out there, and then Anne headed for the door before Danny broke the poor guy over his knee and threw the two halves into the street.
Outside, it was dark as midnight, and Moose was closing up the back of the ambulance. The flashing red bubbler on the cab took her back to the job again, the rhythmic pulses of light so familiar and yet so foreign, now.
Sadness, insidious and castrating, stole her breath.
“So,” Moose said as he looked back and forth between them.
His smile was slow and suggested Danny was going to get a boatload of shit back at the firehouse. And all she knew was that if Maguire tried to put his arm around her shoulder or insinuate anything, he was going to learn firsthand what it was like to be in her situation.
’Cuz she’d rip his damn limb off.
“Don’t you have a patient to take care of,” Danny muttered.
Moose shrugged. “Chavez is taking a medical history.”
“Which can be done in transit.”
“Mom asked us to wait so she could bring her car around. She wants to follow.”
Anne was tempted to walk off, but then Danny wouldn’t have a ride, and no doubt that would come up in conversation.
“So.” Moose rocked on the heels of his boots. “Nice weather we’re having—”
Danny glanced at her. “Come on, let’s go.”
Damn it.
“Hey,” Moose said, “we should do dinner this Saturday. Come to our place—Deandra is taking a cooking class and she loves to show off.”
As a tense silence bloomed like a bad smell, Anne threw some words out to fill the void. “I thought she was going to be a hairdresser.”
“Well, that’s just the first tier of her lifestyle business
. She wants to be into hair, makeup, skin care, fashion, home decor, healthy eating. She’s going all the way. I’m very proud of my wife.”
When the guy gave Danny a look, Anne lost her patience—and was rescued by Mom tooling up in a minivan that had led a very hard life. The thing had a ding on the front bumper, scratches down the side, and a side-view mirror that was hanging by its proverbial optic nerve.
Made you wonder whether the apple didn’t fall far from the tree—either that or it just stole the car keys a lot.
Moose clapped his hands. “Gotta go! See you Saturday—Anne, I’ll give Deandra your number so she can text you with instructions.”
Instructions? And how the hell did she yell out, Please don’t, without being offensive? The last person she wanted to get to know better was that wife of his. She’d been through the wedding, and that had been more than enough contact.
The ambulance left sweet diesel fumes in its wake as Moose piloted it off in the direction of University of New Brunswick Hospital, the beaten-up minivan a sad-sack wind sock following its path.
Anne looked at Danny. “I’m not going to dinner with them. Or you. It’s not appropriate.”
“Not worth the time, is more like it.”
They stepped off the curb at the same moment, and the fact that they fell into stride together as they headed for her car was the kind of thing she deliberately messed up with a hop and a skip. The good news was that as they got in, he seemed uncharacteristically quiet. At least he wasn’t spewing a bunch of it’ll-be-great rhetoric about the never-happening, in-Moose’s-dreams Saturday dinner from hell.
Out on the road, as Anne went through the series of stoplights and bunch of turns that she could do in her sleep, she found her palm getting sweaty again. Matter of fact, her body felt like it was under a heat lamp. As she came up to a red light, she peeled her fleece off over her head and tossed it into the back.
“How did you get to my house?” she asked. “I didn’t see your car.”
“I walked.”
She glanced over. “Five miles?”
“I needed to clear my head.” As his hand dipped into his windbreaker, he cursed and took it back out. “Yes, I know. No smoking in your car.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Already said I know,” he shot back.
At the next light, she noted the way his knee was bouncing up and down like the left half of him was running a hypothetical sprint.
Like being in step across the parking lot, she knew the feeling. Her heart was beating about as fast as that foot of his was tapping in that wheel well, and she wasn’t stupid. They were both rattled, the past and present colliding and leaving shattered pieces of “normal,” “forever,” and “never going to happen to me” in the street.
That was the thing about life. Habit and routine made things feel permanent, but that was all an illusion based on the very flimsy foundation of repetition. Change and chaos was a far better bet to put your faith in.
At least you would never be surprised when things went tits up.
“I’ll take you home then,” she announced.
“I can walk.”
“I know you can.”
“It’s fine—”
“It’s cold—”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Anne locked her molars. It was either that, or this—whatever it was—was going to uncap into a whole lot of yelling over nothing.
And meanwhile, the pressure was building. In her. In him. Until she was damn sure they were within two psi of blowing the safety glass out of the Subaru’s doors and windshield.
When she got to his house, she pulled into the short drive, went around back, and hit the brakes. She could tell he was rank pissed at her reroute, but guess what. She didn’t care.
She wanted him angry at her.
It was safer that way. Somewhere along the ride to his apartment, frustration and pain had kindled into energy of a different kind. Heat of a different kind. Urgency . . . of a dangerous kind.
Abruptly, the confines of the car’s interior shrunk down on her. On them.
“Put the car in park,” Danny said in a gruff voice.
Nope, she thought. Not a good call. Reverse was the gear she wanted.
But her hand had other ideas, not just moving the gear shift into place but turning the engine off. In the sudden silence, she was aware of breathing heavily, and she parted her lips to get some more oxygen into her lungs.
“We are not doing this.” Her voice was too low. And not in terms of volume. “I am not doing this.”
Danny turned to her. “You sure about that. Tell me to get the fuck out of your car—”
“Get the fuck out of my car.”
Except only a part of her meant it—and Danny, the idiot savant when it came to emotions, knew that. The bastard knew it.
Losing her temper and her mind, Anne reached for him, clapping a hand on the side of his neck and yanking him to her mouth. And because she could always rely on Danny Maguire not doing the right thing, he didn’t hesitate.
He kissed the ever-living shit out her, his lips grinding on hers, his tongue penetrating her with such an erotic dominance that she was instantly reminded of why he’d given her the sex of her life the one time she’d been with him.
When they separated, his hooded eyes were a mirror she didn’t want to look into. She didn’t need confirmation that all her heavy-handed, holier-than-thou rhetoric was about to get haymakered in favor of Danny’s stellar coping mechanism.
Namely meaningless sex.
“Are you going to make me ask,” he said. “Because I will.”
Damn it, there were all kinds of reasons not to do this.
Too bad each and every one of them was in a foreign language.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said as she killed the engine and got out of her car.
And what do you know, as Danny came prowling around to her, he didn’t seem to be focused on conversation, either.
chapter
21
No talking. As Danny followed Anne to his back door, she was obviously determined not to think too much about this, and that was fine with him. He wasn’t interested in conversation. He wanted in that woman right now. The delay taking down her pants and fucking off his button fly was going to test the limits of his patience.
Once they were inside his crappy kitchen, it was on again, their bodies colliding in the darkness, his hands rough, her nails digging into his windbreaker. Backing her up to the counter by the sink, he popped her off the floor and jerked her knees apart.
He didn’t want this to happen in his bedroom, and not because the place was a mess. He had done a number of women in there, and even though the first thing Anne was going to do was convince herself this didn’t mean shit, he was not confusing her with those one night stands.
This meant too much.
When Anne braced herself up, he hooked the waistband of her leggings and stripped them off. Then he was running his hands up those smooth muscles of her thighs. She was in great physical shape, nothing like those soft, augmented types he’d been picking up at Timeout, but he wouldn’t have cared what her body was like.
This was Anne.
“I used a condom. With the others,” he said as he looked her straight in the eye. “Every one, each time.”
When she closed her eyes, he figured he’d blown it, but he wanted her to know. He had a pack of Trojans in his bedroom, and he’d get them if she told him to. The truth was, though, in the last ten months, he’d practiced safe sex not because he gave a shit about himself, but because he had hoped, prayed, for this moment with her.
He had taken care of himself for her.
“Just kiss me,” she muttered.
And that was the last thing they said to each other. Beneath his roving hands, she arched, bringing
her breasts against his chest. Closer, he wanted to be closer to her, but he also wanted to slow down because he needed to remember every moment of this.
When her hand fumbled at his fly, he was on it, tearing the buttons apart, his cock doing the rest of the job.
Anne tilted her hips and took a hold on him, the sensation of her hand on his shaft enough to make him groan. It was awkward, though, their two bodies not quite right at counter height—so he solved the problem by cupping her ass and holding her up.
It was better than he remembered. The fit. The slick, hot squeeze. The smell of her shampoo, her hair in his face, her grip on his shoulders strong and sure.
He walked them through to the sitting room, letting his stride do the pumping and the rhythm. And then there was a brief parting as he laid her down.
That didn’t last.
Danny was on top of her in a heartbeat, hooking his forearm under her knee and cranking her leg up, his erection going back in on a rush. He didn’t hold back, his pelvis punching in tight and retreating, her body absorbing the pounding, her breath harsh and hoarse.
He refused to orgasm. Even though his body had been on the brink the instant he’d entered her, he was holding off. But it was getting tough. He was starting to shake, the temptation to let himself go becoming a painful denial.
Anne solved his problem. With a gasp, she threw her head back, and that was when he stilled. He wanted to feel her come for him, and he closed his eyes concentrating on the way her sex gripped him. And then he was off on his own ride, his hips rocking into her, locking on, his release the kind of thing that made his head spin.
So good.
Too good.
* * *
Damn it.
As Anne felt Danny pump into her, she knew what that meant. Also knew that he was the kind of man who wasn’t done even after he finished. At least it hadn’t been that way with her before.
Opening her eyes, she stared at the ceiling of his sitting room and decided she was way too old for the kind of college hookup this was: guy’s apartment, on the sofa, reckless and regretful. Or at least that was what she was telling herself this was.
