Hot Mess

by J. H. Croix

  I grinned as a tear rolled down my cheek. “I’m happy. I can’t believe you did this.”

  He stared at me, his eyes flashing silver. “I’d do anything for you.”

  Epilogue

  Ward

  Looking out the window of the small plane, I watched the mountains pass by underneath us. The sky was clear today and the sun high, casting its rays over the snowcapped peaks. The ocean was visible in the distance, telling me we were close to Willow Brook.

  For me, Willow Brook was home now. I loved the little town, but that wasn’t why it felt like home. It was home because Susannah and Wayne were there. They were my life, the sun in my universe now.

  I’d been gone for three weeks, three weeks too long. I still loved my job. Yet, whenever we had to fly out to the backcountry to deal with a fire, I missed them the whole time. On the heels of a deep breath, I leaned my head back against the seat, rolling it to the side to see Beck checking his phone. He glanced up, catching my eyes.

  “Lemme guess,” I said. “Checking in with Maisie?”

  He flashed a grin. “Of course. You know what it’s like now. You’ve got a family waiting for you.”

  I had no trouble admitting I’d do anything for them. I returned Beck’s grin. “I sure do know. Being away is the only thing I don’t like about our job.”

  Beck nodded. “Completely agree. But it keeps everything in perspective.”

  Later that night, or more specifically in the middle of the night, I rested against the pillows while Susannah nursed Wayne. A lamp in the far corner of the bedroom caught the soft gold in her hair. I looked over at her, thinking I’d never ever get tired of the sight of her.

  Her strawberry curls fell in a tousle around her shoulders, and her eyes looked tired. She was so damn beautiful. I ran a fingertip down the side of her neck and over the curve of her shoulder. Her gaze caught mine, her mouth hitching at the corner in a sleepy smile. “I keep hoping he’ll sleep through the night.”

  “Well, he’s only waking up once a night now. He’s hungry. At least he goes right back to sleep after you nurse him.”

  She nodded, glancing down at his dark curls and sifting her fingers through them. We fell into quiet while she nursed him, and I rested beside her. The silence was comfortable. But then, I was always comfortable with her.

  After a few minutes, Wayne fell asleep, his mouth finally releasing her nipple. She stood carefully and stepped into the small room off to the side where his crib was. Within minutes, she returned to bed. I figured whoever designed this house must’ve had a baby in mind because that little room right off the main bedroom was perfect for a baby.

  Sliding back under the covers, she looked over to me as she curled against my side. “You know, you don’t have to wake up every night with me. You need your sleep.”

  Shrugging, I shook my head. “I want to. I hate that I have to miss a few weeks every so often. So when I’m here, it’s a team effort. I’d nurse him if I could, but he likes you better.”

  Susannah smiled softly. “Okay, I just didn’t want you to think I expected it.”

  Because I was that bad when it came to her, I lifted a hand, trailing it down the silky skin of her neck to trace around one of her nipples. Major bonus, her already lush curves were even more full now. I fucking loved every inch of her.

  When her breath hissed, I glanced up, catching her eyes as they darkened. I thanked God for the thousandth time—at least I wasn’t alone in how much I felt for her. Reaching for her, I tugged her into my lap, groaning at the feel of her slick folds over my cock.

  “Wow, you’re ready,” she observed with a giggle.

  “It’s been three weeks too long.” Staring at her, my heart clenched tightly reminding me, yet again, I would do anything for her.

  “Did I forget to tell you I loved you today?”

  She shook her head, a grin teasing at the corners of her mouth.

  “Oh good,” I murmured as I tugged her down to me, catching her lips in a kiss.

  ***

  I hope you enjoyed Hot Mess. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get a free copy of another one of my books!

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  Please enjoy the following excerpt from Burn So Good, the next book in the Into The Fire Series.

  Excerpt: Burn So Good by J.H. Croix; all rights reserved

  Caleb

  The chilly rain pelted against my face as I leapt out of the truck. Dashing across the highway, I hurried around the car lying on its side in the ditch. The driver’s side was crumpled, and I couldn’t get a good look at the driver. “Hello? Say something if you can hear me,” I called.

  Nothing but the sound of the rain drumming on the car answered me.

  With my heart pounding out a staccato beat, I scanned the scene. The ground was muddy and slick. If I was going to have any luck checking on the driver and getting whoever it was out, I’d have to climb on top of the vehicle, which happened to be the passenger side at the moment. Oblivious to the rain, I rounded the wrecked car and pulled myself up. The passenger side window was broken, so I carefully knocked the glass loose to the ground and glanced through.

  “Hey…”

  My words clogged up in my throat, and my heart took off like a rocket. Ella Masters was in a crumpled ball, mostly toward the dashboard. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek. I had to force myself to stay focused. This went from a routine rescue to something far too personal the second I laid eyes on her.

  “Ella, Ella!”

  I tried to keep my voice calm, but I could feel the sense of panic rising inside. When she didn’t reply, I almost did something stupid and started to crawl through the window. A jagged edge of torn metal caught the sleeve of my jacket, nudging me enough to shake free of the panic.

  Pausing, I took stock. Reaching through the window, I rested two fingertips against Ella’s wrist where it lay limply on the steering wheel. I breathed a sigh of relief when I felt her pulse. The nightmarish feeling inside subsided marginally. I still needed to get her out, but at least I knew she was alive.

  Fumbling in my pocket, I yanked my cellphone out, quickly making a call.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “Hey Maisie, it’s Caleb. Accident out on the highway.”

  “Already paging the crew on duty. I’m confirming your location now,” Maisie replied swiftly. “Anything I need to tell them?”

  “Just that it’s Ella Masters. You might want to give Cade a heads up if he’s headed this way,” I said, referring to Ella’s older brother who happened to work with me at Willow Brook Fire & Rescue.

  “Is she okay?” Maisie asked calmly.

  Looking over at Ella’s face, my heart clenched and panic gripped my chest like a vise. Pushing back against it, I swallowed. “She’s got a pulse, but she’s unconscious.” Scanning over her, I absorbed the details. She had a bleeding gash on her forehead and her body was tucked up toward the roof. By some miracle, I didn’t see any other injuries, although I couldn’t see too much. Rain was falling through the broken window. Her face was damp and her skin was turning bluish.

  “You have my location?” I asked Maisie, the ever-reliable dispatcher for our station.

  “Of course. Crew’s about three minutes away. It’s Beck’s team. I’ll give Cade a call to let him know,” she said softly.

  “Okay. I’m gonna go. I think I can get her out of the vehicle. Bye.”

  “Be…”

  I assumed she meant to tell me to be careful, but I didn’t wait to hear it. Stuffing my phone back in my pocket, I took a steadying breath and then carefully stepped back. With my feet on the back door, I managed to open the other door. Moving carefully, I wedged my hips against the door to hold it open and reached in for Ella.

  The moment I curled my hands around both of hers, I nearly lost my balance when she spoke. “Caleb?”

  My eyes whipped to her face. Her wide green eyes met mine, hazy and confused. “Wha
t happened? Why are you here?”

  I was so damn relieved she was conscious, emotion tightened in my chest. “You had an accident. I was driving back from Anchorage and stopped to check. An emergency team is on the way, but I’m trying to see if we can get you out of here first. How do you feel?”

  Ella stared at me, and it felt as if I was spinning back in time to the most terrifying night of my life. With a hard mental shake, I forced myself to focus.

  “I think I’m okay. I must’ve hit my head,” she murmured as she lifted her hand and brushed at the streak of blood on her cheek.

  “Anything else hurt?”

  She started to move, and I tightened my grip on her wrist. “Wait. First let me know how you feel.”

  Her gaze met mine again. If I got through this without having a heart attack, it’d be a damn miracle.

  “I think I’m fine. Let me…”

  “Ella! Take it slow,” I said abruptly when she started to scramble out from where she was pinned.

  “Still bossy, I see,” she said with a wobbly smile.

  I had just about gotten a grip on myself. Hell, I was a hotshot firefighter. Assisting someone in a car accident was easy work for me. Or should’ve been. But this was Ella, and we had history—messy history that included another car accident, one not so minor and one that tore us apart. The moment a tear rolled down her cheek, I was done for.

  “Ella, don’t cry,” I managed over the tightness in my throat. “You’re gonna be fine. Move slowly, and I’ll get you out of here.”

  As if fate was shining a ray on us, the rain lightened up slightly. The next few minutes were a jumble. I managed to help Ella out of the car, right about the time the emergency crew arrived.

  Beck Steele, who I’d known since we were in elementary school, all but shoved me out of the way when he realized who I’d helped out of the car. Beck headed up one of the crews at Willow Brook Fire & Rescue, while I was a foreman on another crew. Ella’s older brother Cade headed up yet another crew. It was a bittersweet reality to work with Ella’s older brother.

  All of that spun through my mind while Beck started directing his crew to deal with Ella’s likely totaled car. “You’re damn lucky she was okay to pull out,” he muttered in my ear after she was escorted over to the ambulance to get checked out by the EMT’s.

  “Fuck off,” I mumbled. “You’d have done the same damn thing. I checked on her first. As you can see, she was safe to get out of the vehicle.”

  Beck rested a hand on his hip, swatting at the rain falling from the sky as if he could make it stop. “I probably would’ve,” he said after a beat. “You know if Maisie called Cade?”

  “She said she would. I’ll…”

  Beck shook his head sharply. “Don’t call him. Let Maisie take care of it. She’ll be online with the EMT’s to give him the latest update. For now, get the hell out of here. You’re not on duty.”

  Watching him walk away, I spun around and strode to the ambulance. Ella was seated on the back edge. Reaching her side, I paused in front of her. “You okay?”

  My heart kicked up a notch just being close to her. It had been five years since I’d seen Ella. She looked up at me through the rain, her green eyes bright in the gray light.

  “I think so. Dana said I just need a few stitches, right?” she asked, her gaze swinging to Dana Halloran, one of the EMT’s on the scene.

  Dana nodded from where she stood, turning back to Ella, her eyes bouncing between us briefly. She squirted disinfectant on a cotton ball, carefully dabbing at the cut on the side of Ella’s forehead. “That looks like all you’ll need. I’ll just clean this up and we’ll get going. They’ll take care of the stitches at the hospital.”

  Ella looked back at me. “See, just a few stitches,” she said.

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” I replied as Dana carefully taped a piece of gauze over the cut.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Ella replied.

  Dana stepped away and spoke to the ambulance driver. I focused on Ella. “I’ll meet you there,” I repeated.

  “Caleb, you don’t have to take care of me. I’m…”

  A flash of anger rose inside. I might not have been thinking too clearly, but for God’s sake. Ella had once meant everything to me. Then, everything went to hell.

  “Ella, you just had a car accident. Is it absolutely necessary to act like we mean nothing to each other?”

  Ella

  Waiting in the cold room, I hugged my arms around my waist, trying to will the chill away. I was tired, so very tired. I was also cold and damp. My emotions were pressing against my skin. I wanted to hold them in, but I was all out of strength. I felt ragged and raw. Of all the things to happen today, I had a stupid car accident. I was so close to home, so anxious to get there, I hadn’t been paying attention to how fast I was going. Again. I took that corner on the highway and skidded out of control on the slick surface of the road, my car tumbling into the ditch.

  And who showed up to rescue me? Caleb Fox. The one and only man I’d never forgotten. What were the chances? To say our history was messy didn’t quite capture it. Today was the second time in my life Caleb had pulled me out of a wrecked car. The last time, the car had been on fire, and I’d almost died. Yet, I’d been lucky. Caleb’s best friend had died in that same accident.

  I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the hot tears rolling down my cheeks. Spinning around, I grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter running along the wall. This room felt so oddly familiar, probably because I’d spent three weeks in the hospital after that last accident. Hospitals had a weird, cold, sterile feeling to them. It was strangely comforting to me.

  My stitches were done, and I was ready to go, but they told me to wait until the nurse returned to clear me for discharge. The tissue balled in my hand, I let myself cry for a few minutes. I was all alone, literally and figuratively.

  Leaning my hips against the table, I sobbed. I was running home, and I’d been so desperate to get here, I’d completely forgotten to consider that Caleb might be around. Sobs wracked my shoulders, and my head ached from whatever I’d banged into when my car rolled into the ditch.

  Get it together, Ella. It’s no biggie. You and Caleb have a past, but that’s all it is. You can face him. After what you’ve been through lately, you can handle this.

  On the heels of a shuddering breath, I wiped my tears away and tossed the tissue in the wastebasket by the door.

  There was a soft knock. Assuming it was the nurse coming to tell me I could finally leave, I called out, “Come in.”

  Instead of the nurse, Caleb stepped through the door. The moment I laid eyes on him, my pulse lunged. Somehow, I’d forgotten how ridiculously handsome he was. He had straight brown hair that he kept cropped close to his head with chocolate brown eyes. My eyes coasted over him, absorbing the sight of his familiar face with its clean lines—a strong, square jaw, full lips, cheekbones that looked sculpted from stone, and a blade of a nose. As if his face wasn’t enough, he had a body of pure muscle. In his faded jeans and damp T-shirt, not much was hidden. The fabric caressed him the way my hands itched to do so.

  “Hey, just stopped by to check on you,” he said, his voice like honeyed whiskey.

  Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes, but I swallowed, forcing the emotion away. I would not fall apart in front of him.

  “Hey,” I croaked.

  The room wasn’t very big, so when he took a few steps, he was right in front of me. Oh geez. I could smell him—that crisp scent of spruce he seemed to carry with him. I took a deep breath, by force of will keeping my eyes on him.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

  Tightening my arms around my waist, I shrugged. “Fine. They stitched me up and said I’d be cleared to go soon. I’m just waiting, but it’s taking forever.”

  He nodded, his eyes scanning me. This was so weird. The last time I’d been in the hospital and Caleb came to see me, we�
�d broken up.

  We stood in silence for a beat. Again, I was only alerted to my tears when I felt them on my cheeks. Then, Caleb was right there, wrapping me in his arms. This time, I cried like I hadn’t cried in years. Burying my face in his chest, I threw my arms around his waist and hung on. This was about so much more than my stupid roll into a ditch. It was years of missing him and wishing I could fix everything I’d messed up before. It was all of that and the fact I finally felt safe for the first time in years.

  He simply held me, one hand tangled in my damp hair and the other circling on my back. He murmured soothing sounds and didn’t stop to ask what was wrong or anything. Thank God because I didn’t think I could handle that. Not just yet.

  After I didn’t know how long, I slowly pulled my face away from his chest and looked up. “I got your shirt wet,” I mumbled.

  Caleb glanced down at me, the corner of his mouth curling up and sending my belly into a few somersaults. “Pretty sure it was already wet.”

  We stared at each other. After a beat, his gaze sobered. “You okay?”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t seem to speak.

  His eyes widened in alarm. “Let me get the nurse.”

  He started to pull away, but I tightened my arms on his waist, shaking my head again. “It’s not that. It’s just been a shitty day...”

  I forced myself to stop talking. I didn’t need Caleb, of all people, to know how much I’d stumbled in life. I’d already sent his life careening sideways once before.

  “What is it?” he asked, his eyes searing into me. “If you need anything, you know all you have to do is ask.”

  I almost burst into tears again. Because that was so Caleb—he was just a solid guy with a heart of gold and I’d fucked it all up. Everything about him and who he was felt so much bigger in this moment. I’d come running home after five years because I’d stumbled into a nightmare.