Falling for a Former Flame: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love)

by Brenna Jacobs

  This can’t end well, Fletcher thought.

  Chapter 2

  Hadley slipped into the side entrance of the fire station and leaned her back against the closed door, blocking out the images of Fletcher Gates in all his stupid, handsome masculinity. She felt a toddler-style fit coming on, complete with pounding fists and stamping feet. How dare he? How dare he wander back into town, back into her safe place with his chiseled jawline and his huge hands that practically covered her whole back when he helped pick her up off the floor?

  And, she thought, how dare he assume she needed his help? Did he think she never got up off a floor without him?

  How dare he find a job—as a fireman, for the love of all that is holy—in her town?

  How dare he look so good?

  How dare he smell so good?

  How dare he wrap his hands around her arms as if he’d never let go all those years ago?

  Hadley knew that when the childishness of her fit passed, she’d realize that she was actually angry at herself: for being clumsy, for letting her body respond to Fletcher’s touch, for holding his gaze a second too long.

  Walking toward the reception area, she kicked a rock that had found its way inside and made a grunting sound; she felt a bit better.

  Savanna stared at her, a sarcastic smile playing on her lips. “You done?” she asked.

  Hadley stood up straight. “Done with what?”

  Savanna’s waving gesture took in everything in Hadley’s general direction. “With whatever that was?”

  She shook her head and wished she could kick the rock again. “Now I’m done.” She shook out her shoulders. “You could have warned me, you know.” Hadley crossed the room and perched on the edge of Savanna’s desk. “You had to know the names of the prospective hires. How many men named Fletcher Gates could have applied for this job? It’s not that common a name.”

  “I know. But warning you would have been no fun at all.” Savanna picked up two pieces of paper and knocked them against her desk to line them up, then slid them into the recycle bin.

  Hadley wanted a fight. Or at least an apology. “You knew he had an interview, and you didn’t even give me a hint?”

  Savanna shook her head. “Be reasonable, Hadley. What would I have said?” She put on a syrupy-sweet voice. “Remember that boy you used to date? He has an interview at the station this afternoon, and unless he throws trash on the chief’s desk and tells the guy his kids are ugly, he’s going to be hired. So, either get over here or stay away?” She shook her head and resumed her normal voice. “I don’t think so. Much better to see you react naturally.”

  Hadley snorted. “Naturally. Right.” She replayed the whole scene in her head. Crashing into the door, falling on the sidewalk, dumping every piece of her carefully organized donation.

  It was all his fault.

  As it always had been.

  She shook her head. Not worth thinking about.

  “So, how much have you gotten in donations?” Hadley asked. Savanna was heading up a charity drive for the town, collecting items for the firemen to take to kids who lose their homes to fire. Every kid got a stuffed animal, a snuggly blanket, and a book. Savanna organized the collection through local businesses, church drives, and good old-fashioned online community shaming.

  She pulled up a document on her computer. “The Green Street Methodists are in the lead. They started strong. When we get your new numbers in there, I’m sure you’ll come up close to the top.”

  “And what do I get when I win?” Hadley asked.

  “When you win? You mean, when you beat out all the other generous souls in town to become the largest contributor to Greensburg Cares for Kids? When you scratch and claw your way to the top of the list of philanthropists in the competition? Is that what you mean?”

  Hadley smirked. “You make my healthy sense of competition sound so tasteless.”

  “Nah,” Savanna said. “Tasteless is your prize: A date with one of Greensburg’s finest.”

  Without missing a beat, Hadley asked, “Do I get to pick him?”

  “I think the choice would be pretty easy,” Savanna said, rolling her eyes. “For you, anyway.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Hadley could feel her cheeks flaming at Savanna’s veiled banter. Could Savanna see how Hadley’s reaction to Fletcher’s appearance, his closeness, his touch, had thrown her? She thought she had hidden it better than that. If Savanna could see it, could Fletcher? Was he even looking?

  Savanna ignored the ringing phone and clicked her computer keyboard. “It’s supposed to mean nothing. Not a thing. Just that you seem to like the alpha-male type, and your options around here are young alpha, middle-aged alpha, and old alpha, any of whom would love to show you the town. Easy choice.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Hadley didn’t want to explore any more specifics with Savanna. If ever there was a person whose personality was at odds with her job, Savanna Deveraux was it—a woman who had no patience for stereotypical manly-men. Hadley wondered for the hundredth time why Savanna kept working for the fire station when she lived in a constant state of annoyance at the clouds of testosterone surrounding her.

  “All right,” Hadley said. “I’m heading back to work. We going to the gym tonight?” On Wednesday evenings Hadley and Savanna met for a group power workout class at the fitness center by the hospital.

  “I’ll be there,” Savanna said. “See you.”

  When Hadley walked out of the station, she avoided walking past the open truck bay so she wouldn’t accidentally run into (or get knocked over by) Fletcher again. Once in her car, though, she drove away with one eye on the rearview mirror. Only to check for cars pulling out into traffic, of course. Not to catch another glimpse of the man who had once been the boy she loved.

  “Loved,” Hadley said aloud, “is an overstatement, anyway.” For the purposes of talking out loud, Hadley loved driving alone, whether across town or for hours at a time. She rarely turned on music. The car was where she got to work through her best ideas. The shower was good, too, but talking to herself in the car helped Hadley see things clearly.

  Things like the return of Fletcher Harris Gates.

  “It’s not like he came back to town just so he could run into me,” she reasoned. Nobody was going to argue with that, particularly because no one else was in the car. “And as long as Savanna isn’t trying to play matchmaker, she can let me know when he’s off shift or out on a call. I can visit her at the station on days he isn’t there. Easy.” Nodding, she caught her reflection in the rearview mirror.

  “You,” she said, shaking her head at herself, “are a crazy person.”

  She managed to swallow her response, because it would only have proven something she was uninterested in proving.

  After a quiet afternoon at work in the bookstore, Hadley was ready for a sweaty workout. Elias, the adorable Swedish trainer at the gym, had never let her down yet. He led a room full of women in a combination of dance moves, weights, and calisthenics; somehow, he made every one of the women feel like he was her personal trainer.

  He was equal parts coach and cheerleader, calling out to them during class by name, praising them or prodding them as they needed. His compression tights showed off slender dancer’s legs with every muscle defined, but it wasn’t his legs that drew the women’s attention. It was his hair. His perfect, shoulder-length, blonde ringlets. It wasn’t masculine. It wasn’t sexy. It was simply and inexplicably fascinating. How did it happen? And how did it stay so perfect through the workouts?

  “Seriously,” Hadley said, “it’s like he’s a cross between Goldilocks and a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance. It’s hard to look away.”

  At the end of the class, Hadley and Savanna toweled off their arms and necks as they waited in line to talk to Elias. Savanna never missed an opportunity to chat with Elias, leading Hadley to ask her if she was interested.

  “In him?” Savanna sounded not only shocked but a little offended at the s
uggestion.

  “Well,” Hadley said, “he’s kind of the opposite of the sexy fireman type, right?”

  “Oh, he’s definitely not the sexy anything type. But I’m even less interested in the type of sexy you find in the Greensburg station. The only truly sexy firemen types are from that Australian firemen-and-pets calendar.”

  Hadley had to admit that the Australian firemen-and-pets calendar was a force to behold. But she wouldn’t accept that the guys at the local station were all bad. “Come on. Nick Baxter?”

  Savanna made an immediate sound of disbelief. “Baxter? What kind of guy do you think I’m into?”

  Hadley shook her head. “Honestly, Sav, I have no idea.”

  Savanna lowered her voice and leaned closer. “If Baxter and Elias were my only options, I’d have to die alone. Just because I’m not a damsel in distress waiting for a big strong fireman to save me from danger,” she said, disdain dripping from every word, “doesn’t mean I automatically find the willowy Scandinavian the next best option.”

  “But the willowy Scandinavian is his own kind of beautiful, you have to admit. And his hair is prettier than any of ours after a workout like that.”

  Savanna laughed. “For sure. How do you think he keeps those curls so perfect? It’s like the hair grew out of his head that way.”

  Hadley made a disgusted face. “Natural beauty is the worst. If his hair is natural, I hate him.”

  “Same.”

  “Ladies,” Elias said, granting them the privilege of his full attention after the crowd thinned. “How do you feel?”

  “Curious,” Hadley said. She felt Savanna’s elbow in her ribs, but she carried on. “Is that your real hair? Because it’s so good I almost don’t believe in it.”

  Elias laughed. “I meant about the workout, but okay,” he said, and leaned over, ear first, toward her. “Go on and give it a tug. It’s the real thing.”

  “Do not touch his hair,” Savanna warned. There was a threat in her tone. One half-second later, shaking her head, she lamented, “And you’re touching it. Seriously.” Turning her attention to the trainer, she said, “Great class today, Elias.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” he said casually, as though having his head stroked was a daily occurrence. Maybe it was.

  In a voice that was half-amused, half-annoyed, Savanna said, “Okay, Hadley. It’s time to stop petting the teacher.”

  “Okay, just one second more,” Hadley said, twisting a perfect, shoulder-length curl around her finger.

  Elias stood still, smiling at the women as Hadley petted him and Savanna looked like she might sprain her eyeballs from rolling them so hard. A few unsubtle head-nods in the direction of “leaving” did not remove Hadley’s hand from Elias’s head.

  Savanna resorted to further directness.

  “Sorry, but I think we really have to go right now.” Savanna pulled Hadley toward the locker room.

  Hadley waved, but Elias was already deep in a conversation with someone else.

  “It’s real,” Hadley said.

  “Yes, I think we’ve established that,” Savanna said, pushing Hadley through the locker room door. “And you are nuts. It’s not like you’ve never felt curls before.” Savanna pointed to Hadley’s head. “Exhibit A. You have curls. All the curls.”

  “Yeah, but comparing mine to his is like comparing Sunny D to orange juice.”

  Savannah looked at Hadley and said nothing before changing out of her gym clothes.

  “This,” Hadley said, gesturing to her head, “is wiry and coarse and brazenly out of control. His hair is like silky gelato. Melted butter.”

  “You going to eat it?” Sav asked, her head reappearing in the neck of her hoodie.

  “It feels like baby bird feathers.”

  “How would you even know that?” Savanna asked.

  This, for reasons she couldn’t have explained, made Hadley start what felt precisely like a laughing fit.

  “Uh-oh.” She looked at Savanna and snorted.

  “Stop it,” Savanna commanded. “Not again.”

  “Looks like yes—again,” she said, doing her best to keep the laughter in control. It didn’t work. Hadley burst into a loud laugh. She tried to stop, but even if she covered her mouth, the laugh kept coming.

  Savanna rolled her eyes. “You,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Hadley’s chest, “are unhinged. Unstable.”

  She pulled her bag out of her locker. “Get me out of here,” Hadley wheezed. “I can’t see.”

  Through Hadley’s usual laughter-induced tears, Savanna muttered about never having to drag her other friends out of buildings because they couldn’t stop giggling. Hadley tried to apologize, but the laugh stole all her breath.

  “You know, I looked this up on Wikipedia once,” Sav said, as if researching Hadley’s inability to stop laughing was a normal activity for a friend to do.

  “What did you find?” Hadley gasped. This seemed so funny that she burst into a new peal of laughter.

  “Usually stems from a traumatic brain injury.”

  Hadley stopped short. “That isn’t funny at all,” she said.

  The two women stared at each other with their mouths open. “It worked,” Savanna said. “You stopped.”

  “All you had to do was tell me something totally unfunny?” Hadley started to ask, but before the words were out of her mouth, she began cracking up again. Savanna laughed too, and the two of them pushed out into the chilly evening, arm in arm, howling at the sky.

  Making their way to the parking lot, Hadley fully leaning on Savanna’s shoulder, Sav said, “We must look like we’re wasted.”

  This, obviously, made Hadley laugh harder. “We’re drunk on workout endorphins.” At least, that was what she tried to say. She didn’t get much past “we’re drunk” when they turned the corner and crashed into a jogger.

  Hadley covered her mouth with both hands, but still tried to help the guy they’d run into get up off the curb.

  “Sorry,” Hadley laughed into one hand, reaching with the other, tears streaming from her eyes. “Sorry.” More snorting. When her hand made contact with the jogger, she stopped short again, all laughing ended.

  Even through her tears, the truth was impossible to miss. The jogger was Fletcher.

  Her laugh stopped as though she’d been punched in the stomach (although Savanna had tried that once and it hadn’t stopped the giggles that time). Dropping Fletcher’s hand as though his touch burned her skin, she jumped back.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Pulling himself off the curb, he gave a half-chuckle, half-sigh. “One of us keeps ending up flat on the sidewalk.”

  Neither woman answered. Savanna took a step back from Fletcher.

  “You both okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.” Hadley’s response held no hint of a laugh now. She turned away.

  “Well,” Savanna said to Fletcher over her shoulder, “looks like you’re useful for something after all.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Savanna said, “You certainly kill a good mood.”

  Hadley felt a tug. She hated to let Savanna have the last word when she acted like this around men; the problem was that Savanna almost always acted like this around guys from the station. Savanna and alpha males repelled each other, and neither looked better for the interaction.

  But even while regretting Savanna’s harshness, Hadley wasn’t about to give Fletcher the pleasure of thinking she was happy to see him. She turned and walked toward her car.

  Savanna followed after her, muttering imprecations about Fletcher that Hadley didn’t need to try too hard to hear. She’d heard them all before.

  Unlocking her car door, Hadley said, “Good news / bad news.”

  Leaving the mutter behind, Savanna said, “Go.”

  “Good news: No more giggles. Bad news: I need ice cream now. By which I mean a great deal of ice cream, and right now.” She threw her workout bag into the back seat. It slid to the floo
r and joined a scattered pile of assorted tin buckets she planned to use to hold flowers in the shop.

  “When you say need, do you actually mean that your half-second interaction with”—Savanna wrinkled up her face as if she’d smelled something sour and pointed back over her shoulder—“that guy has created a void in your digestive system? A void that can only be filled with butterfat and processed sugars?”

  “If I tell the truth and say yes, will you keep on bugging me about my nutritional shortcomings?” Hadley asked. Savanna had more than a usual interest in Hadley’s dietary intake. Probably because Savanna was forever trying a new diet, whereas Hadley subscribed to the “eat what you want when you feel hungry” food plan.

  Savanna’s shrug didn’t convince Hadley this would ever end. “Maybe. Probably. I mean, yes. Definitely.”

  Head shaking, Hadley prepared to argue even as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car. “Eating ice cream is not a sign of weakness,” Hadley said. “And I know it’s true, because somewhere in the shop, there’s a needlepointed pillow that says so.”

  “Eating ice cream and needing ice cream are fundamentally different things,” Savanna said, but Hadley closed her car door and started the engine so she couldn’t hear any more. She kissed the tips of her fingers and flung the kiss at the window to Savanna, who pretended to catch it and stick it in her pocket. No offense meant, and none taken. Hadley pulled out of the parking lot. If she happened to drive by the market and happened to run inside for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (or two—one each for Ben and Jerry so as not to leave anyone out), it didn’t mean she was being reactive.

  But, she reasoned, if she was being reactive, she had a good excuse to be.

  How was it possible to still feel a jolt of electricity when she caught Fletcher’s eye? It had been years. Years of hurt and anger and conscious forgetting. She had worked through her emotions related to Fletcher Gates: with her mom, with her friends, with a reasonably-priced therapist. Her brain knew how to respond to the idea of him. But apparently nobody had told her body how it should respond to the reality of him. The touch of his hand left a tingling in her fingers even now, blocks away. She held her hand to her cheek, allowing herself to remember the feeling of his hands on her face.