by Jan Irving
“Nope. But we’re not officially open yet.” Dharma narrowed one eye. “Are you sure you want to be here today?”
“It is ‘Take your Daughter to Work’ day,” Stacy said. She bit into a raisin scone. “And since your my Dad’s GF, you qualify.”
“Okay. Look, I’m sorry about the clothes. I’ll have them dry cleaned and I will never, ever allow your Dad to do that again. He doesn’t understand what a boundary he crossed.”
“He didn’t know I had Victoria’s Secret P.J.’s until this morning,” Stacy grumbled.
Dharma had to grin, that would have been an eye-opener for a single dad.
Stacy traced a pattern on the counter. “So are you, like, going to be around all the time?”
Dharma sighed. If she were dating a single man, she could just bliss out and enjoy, but she wasn’t. Fred was a package deal. “Probably. Are you going to hate that?”
“You’re not my mother.”
“Please!” Dharma laughed. “You’re almost all growed up.”
Stacy seemed to relax. “I might be cool about the occasional night—without the closet sharing—if you talk to my dad about Jeff.”
“Oh.” So that’s what Stacy’s secret was. And Dharma had a feeling it was going to give Fred another heart attack. She knew that if Stacy had a boyfriend and he’d known about it, he would have shared before this. “You are so using and abusing whatever power I have over your Dad.”
“Get used to being manipulated.” Stacy smiled.
Dharma laughed. “You’re all right, kid.”
* * * *
Flames shot across the valley as if shot from a scatter gun. Fred saw another truck arriving on the scene, the red and blue revolving lights adding to the haze of hell in this burned out part of the landscape. Shouts came from his people desperately digging a fire break, trying to make a stand.
“Where are those goddamn water drops I ordered?” he growled.
The wind was picking up, playful and deadly, straight off the ocean.
He knew in his gut they were going to lose more ground…and on the hill below this valley was the beginning of their little part of town. The houses, the fire hall and the strip mall containing Coffee Dreams.
His woman was there. His child.
No, they weren’t. Dharma would have got his message. She’d clear out, keep Stacy safe.
Fire leapt like a merry bonfire, igniting brush so they exploded like puffy matches.
Losing it. “Fall back!” he yelled into the radio. “Fall the hell back!”
Way out in the field, Fred saw Taz tackle Luke. They went down in the trench. Verooom. The acid fire breath of the dragon. Sparks and debris whistled past.
Fire everywhere, unstoppable.
But somehow he would stop it.
“We have to get you out of here, now!” Dharma dragged Sian away from the spot fires erupting all around the little strip mall. There was a crazy wind, hot and full of sparks that tore at the women’s clothing and hair.
Oh, Goddess, they were going to lose the coffee shop.
“But Luke’s here somewhere. I feel him!”
Sian was ice cold and shaky in Dharma’s arms, tears running down her cheeks. “He’s hurt. I can feel he’s hurt,” she moaned.
“Listen to me, if he is, there is nothing you can do. You can’t stay here!” Dharma shoved her best friend into her car next to Stacy, who was pale and saucer-eyed, one hand pressed against the closed window. “We have to go. Now!”
She threw the little car into drive and they fishtailed out of the familiar parking lot. She heard the roaring sirens of approaching sirens. A fire truck past them, charging up the hill beyond Dharma’s little car.
She knew Fred was up there.
“Be safe,” she whispered.
* * * *
“How did the fire start?” Stacy asked Dharma hours later as they sat in the hospital waiting room. Sian had begun early labour pains so Dharma had taken her straight here from the coffee shop.
“Some orderlies were saying robbers ignited it deliberately to hide their escape from a convenience store.”
“Someone started it deliberately?” Stacy looked like she was going to cry. “We might lose our house.”
Dharma put her arm around the girl. “At least your sis is with her mother.”
“Shopping. Mom’s totally trying to buy our love.”
“Hey, don’t knock it, it’s a time-honoured tradition.”
Just then the swinging doors opened and Taz walked in. His face was blackened so his green eyes stood out like bleak emeralds. He walked as if he was caught in a nightmare.
Dharma leapt to her feet. Fred! Oh, God, had something happened to—
“Taz!” She snatched his arm.
He looked at her as if she was a ghost, barely visible to him before he shook her off, continuing to head down the hall. She watched as he talked to a nurse then collapsed in a chair.
“What is it, Dharma?” Stacy asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not your dad, honey.” Somehow she had to believe it.
A second later the door swung open again and Luke appeared, looking more exhausted than Dharma had ever seen him. His eyes darted frantically, found her.
“She’s all right!” Dharma called. “She and the baby are fine.”
Luke squeezed his eyes closed. He had a bandage on his forehead. “The coffee shop is gone,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry. I’m…” His voice was hoarse from smoke inhalation and a chill ran down her back. It was easy to forget sometimes that the men and women of Station 57 risked their lives. Every day, they did this, putting themselves on the line.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Sian created Coffee Dreams and she can do it again.”
Faint light sparked in his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we can do it. Where is she?”
“Next room to the right. But Luke, is Fred—?”
“Dad!” Stacy was suddenly crushed against Fred’s heavy fire retardant coat. A second later so was Dharma. She breathed in man and sweat and smoke and felt him, solid and exhausted and filthy. But alive.
He pulled back, looking them both over with bloodshot blue eyes. “Marilyn’s just behind me. She’s going to take you back to her hotel room, Stace,” Fred said. “I’m going to be on call through the weekend.”
Stacy nodded against his chest. Dharma guessed she was used to the tough side of being a firefighter’s kid.
“Come and sit for a moment,” Dharma said, guiding Fred carefully to where they’d been waiting. “Stace, can you get your Dad a glass of water?”
The girl raced off in the direction of the nurse’s station.
“You’re all right?”
He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath. “Yeah, but I’m afraid you’re out of a job for a while, honey.”
“I heard.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, as long as no one was hurt.”
“Just the poor folks the robbers held up in that store.” Fred looked over at Taz, who was slumped in his chair, head cradled in his hands. “They hurt someone he knows, a neighbour lady.”
“Oh, Fred.”
Fred looked deeply into her eyes then kissed her, a man to his woman kiss. She returned it. “I love you, I love you,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
His lips quirked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Now…go talk to Taz. I think you might be the only one who can reach him right now.”
“You’re a tough broad, you know that? I knew you’d take care of everyone on the home front.”
Dharma crossed her arms, forcing herself to let go of Fred, to let him do what he needed for his men. “Apparently I’m going to have to be, living with you.”
“Try married to me, honey,” he said then laughed when her eyes popped.
* * * *
Fred had never felt more his age than he did walking down the corridor towards Taz. When he reached him, he didn’t speak. He just settled next to hi
m.
Stacy appeared with a glass of water. Fred drank gratefully and pulled his daughter in his arms. She complained he was holding her too tightly. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Look, here’s your mother.”
Stacy grimaced. “Maybe she’ll take me shopping and make everything better.”
“Stace—”
“Don’t worry, I’ll let her have her shallow way with me.” Stacy gave him a level look. “One more thing—I like your girlfriend, but lend her my clothing again and you die.”
Before he could deal with what she’d said, Marilyn was there. Stacy let herself be led away with her sister and all he could feel was a rush of relief that his girls were safe. The fire could have raged longer, taken more homes, taken lives, but somehow his people had helped stop it.
It was worth all the aches and pains and knowing he was going to hurt like hell in the morning. And for several mornings after this one.
He saw Dharma and Luke talking down the hallway before disappearing into one of the rooms. Going to Sian? He’d heard she’d had contractions…
His eyes closed. Burning and sore and so tired…
He roused a while later. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Taz was gone and Dharma was holding his hand. Her brown eyes, her long hair and shapely figure made her a knockout, even as washed out as she was.
“Come home with me?”
She nodded.
“I have to change clothes, go back out into the field. We’re putting out spot fires…”
“Okay.” Brave and tough. And she loved him. Christ, he couldn’t believe it.
He had wanted nothing but her for months but told himself it couldn’t happen. He hadn’t let himself hope until she hadn’t been shocked and repelled by his darker side but aroused by it.
Mmmm. He pleased her.
And maybe if he kept working at things with her, trying to figure out this relationship with a younger woman thing, ideas would come to him like offered bouquets. His ex-wife, Marilyn, was going for it.
She was trying to find new love.
She was…brave?
It was a new way of seeing her, aside from the haze of bitterness like smoke in his eyes. So they hadn’t made a go of it, he and Marilyn. But he hadn’t loved her the way he did Dharma. And maybe the wanting to make a baby with Dharma right now wasn’t so crazy. He’d been a single dad long enough to know he loved it, and he didn’t have time to mess around if he was going to play a big part in his new kid’s life.
With Dharma’s hand in his, he led them both out into daylight and his truck.
* * * *
Fred was quiet on the drive to his house. Dharma had slid close to him as soon as he’d started up the truck, her arms around him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Now and then he stroked the back of her head protectively with one hand.
He liked her where she was, liked her blatant show of affection.
When he pulled into his garage, she blinked in surprise. Usually he parked outside.
The doors slid shut behind them and Fred freed her from her seat belt, then himself.
She was on him in a second, straddling him, kissing him, tears running down her cheeks.
“Oh, baby, it’s okay,” he soothed.
“Need you.”
He kicked back the seat and yanked her skirt up, tearing off her panties. He thrust his fingers into her and she gave a sharp cry.
Lying back, he let her free him, take him in her hand. A second later she was riding him, moving hot and hard in the too tiny space.
She was as beautiful as a dancer, her face glowing, her hair all around them. He shoved up her shirt and bra so he could palm her bouncing tits, remembering how he’d wanted to do this that night in the bar.
“Ummm.” She leant back, enjoying the hell out of riding him.
He wet a finger in her slick heat then traced it to her other opening. Her eyes shot open as he deliberately penetrated her there. “I’m going to take this pretty little ass sometime soon.”
“I’ve never…”
“You will. And you’ll like it.”
Her eyes were dark and serious as she nodded. “Yes, I will.”
He pushed his finger deeper, rubbing her harshly. She screamed and came, and he was right behind her, on fire with the idea of screwing her ass at that club. He’d take her against that coffee table. Maybe by then he would have her collared. It wasn’t something he wanted twenty-four seven, but he had decided he liked the idea of embracing certain traditions when they visited the place.
Besides, he wanted his ownership of her completely obvious, as if her coming on his cock or begging for his hand between her legs or slapping her ass wasn’t enough.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever share her with another man again, not now he was feeling more confident of her feelings for him as a man, but he still liked the idea of showing her off.
And she was so okay with that.
She was, in fact, perfect for him. And he’d felt it down deep inside, all the time they’d talked and flirted in that coffee house.
“I’ll help you get out of those clothes,” Dharma said. “And you’ll need food and a hot shower.”
“If you share the shower with me, honey, I won’t have time to eat.”
She nibbled her lip. “Okay, I’ll overlook the lack of shower sex this once in the interest of feeding you.”
He brushed her lips with his. “I love you,” he said and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes pop a second time. “I’m putting an engagement ring on your finger before the end of the week. Got that?”
“Ah…yeah. Okay.” She looked completely dazed.
He planned to keep surprising her like that for a very, very long time.
Coming Soon from Totally Bound Publishing:
Men of Station 57: The Protective Dominant
Jan Irving
Released 11th April 2014
Excerpt
Chapter One
Jenny Ann Green was digging in her garden again.
Taz watched her from the open door of his kitchen, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
Dirt shot like it was geysered out of the ground, hitting her face, hitting the ratty-looking things in her gardening basket. She dropped her trowel and began tunnelling into the earth with her bare hands, more dirt whipping out, shooting onto the neatly kept grass.
“Fuck this,” Taz growled.
He reached her in seconds. Stood there, trembling. Closed his eyes. Don’t touch her, asshole. You can’t touch her.
But it was hard, so freaking hard not to yank her off the ground and into his arms.
“Jenny?” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat, balling his fists. Don’t scare her.
She kept on digging. She probably hadn’t heard him.
“Jenny, look at me, sweetheart.” A memory of a female voice mocking him for using the word ‘sweetheart’ came to him. Dharma, his friend Fred’s smoking new girlfriend. Yeah, she’d pointed out that using that word hadn’t suited him at all since he was such a bastard with women.
She’d been right.
He was.
He didn’t like women. He didn’t trust them.
They had their use and he kept what he wanted from them tightly compartmentalised.
With his head thrown back, he dragged in deep breaths, trying to centre himself. As an experienced dominant, he knew the first rule was to master yourself before you tried it with anyone else.
But it was so hard because Jenny got past all that. She was the crack in his armour that kept getting wider and wider, and it scared him because what the fuck would spill out if he kept letting her in? Nothing good. Absolutely nothing good, he knew.
When he had control, he knelt beside her, ignoring the dirt that she shovelled in his direction. Hell, the girl couldn’t even see him out of those spacey eyes so the dirt coming towards him was nothing personal.
Jenny was too polite, too sweet to ever throw dirt his way, much as he deserved it for the way he’d tre
ated her.
He remembered the evening he’d come home and found that she’d planted flowers along his drive. “If I want fuckin’ flowers, I’ll plant them myself. Now get your ass off my property.”
Yeah, he’d been a real prince.
“Jenny Ann.” His voice was calm. “Jenny, wake up, sweetheart.”
No response. She was putting the weedy-looking things into the hole she’d dug. Damn, it was as deep as one Bo, his friend Mike’s golden retriever, routinely dug in Mike’s backyard.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m…” She frowned and looked down at the bulb in her fist. “Saffron bulbs. Come up in the fall,” she said in her honeyed Southern lady drawl.
“That’s good, Jenny,” Taz said. “But do you have to do this now?”
“Now…” She blinked. He could see her mind slowly coming back online. Suddenly she shuddered violently, looking around her.
It was killing him. He had to put his arms around her. “Jenny.”
She was ice cold. Ice cold. Shivering in her little threadbare nightie. No slinky red gown and red shoes for Jenny Ann. No, she went to bed alone in soft cotton, worn from too many washings.
He tried not to look at her nipples through the gown. She had larger breasts than he’d thought. She had a way of hunching her back or wearing too-large clothing so he hadn’t been able to see them clearly. He wanted to take them in his hands. Bastard, to be thinking that now.
“Let me go, let me go!” She was tearing at him, clawing, smacking—all of it so ineffectual because he was a big muscular guy and she was a tiny little thing.
Aching, he let her go. Watched her fall on her butt in the earth, watched her glance around frantically, getting her bearings. Her chest rose and fell. Finally she curled up in a little ball, a thready sound coming from her.
Panting, he stared.
“Oh, Jenny.”
When she didn’t move, he couldn’t take it anymore. He reached down and picked her up, tucking her ball shape under one arm.
And she growled at him.
Taz blinked. Frowned. That was new.
Women as nice as Jenny Ann didn’t growl.
“Stop that.” He tapped her butt then froze. What the hell was he doing? She wasn’t one of the women he used. But his palm wanted to stay on the warm, lush fullness, wanted to squeeze. She was not a stick woman. If a man made love to her, he’d sink in, be surrounded by feminine warmth.
