The Night Belongs to Fireman

by Jennifer Bernard

  They hopped to it, and in under a minute they were each perched on a stool and had a bowl in front of them. He poured the raisin bran—Jasmine knew perfectly well he didn’t keep Froot Loops in the house—and ignored the groans of complaint.

  “Eat quietly, or no lesson,” he warned.

  They all instantly went silent. As a threat, it worked every time. They loved their jujitsu lessons. In the silence, his phone rang. He took it into the living room and lowered himself carefully onto his couch.

  “Hello?”

  A brisk female voice answered, “Hi Poochie. It’s me.”

  Fred nearly groaned out loud at the horrible nickname. Where had Courtney gotten Poochie? And why had she never asked if he minded? And why was she calling him? “Hi, Courtney. How did your exam go?” Courtney was getting her business degree. After that, she wanted to get married. On their third date, she’d told him that he fit all her criteria for a husband. He hadn’t felt complimented; he’d felt cornered.

  “Killed it.”

  He pictured her aiming a shotgun at her exam book. Courtney almost always got what she went after, as she was fond of boasting. The only thing she hadn’t gotten yet was a commitment from Fred. No matter what Fred told her, she couldn’t quite believe that he didn’t want to link his future with hers.

  But he didn’t. He wasn’t in love with her and was never going to be. As soon as he’d figured that out, he’d begun the breaking-up process.

  “I saw you on TV. You’re a superstar.”

  “Nah, just another day at the office.”

  “They didn’t make it sound that way. And they kept referring to you as a Bachelor Fireman.” She sniffed, which evoked a vivid picture of her. That sniff usually went with a curl of her lip and a twitch of her perfectly highlighted blond ponytail.

  “That’s just a stupid media thing, Court. Sells papers, or ad spots, or whatever.”

  “I’m not complaining about it. It’s a good business opportunity. You’re famous, and we should be profiting from it. I have some ideas for us.”

  Ideas for us. As if they were still together. Would always be together. What part of “I want to break up” had she blocked out? All of it?

  An image flashed through his mind—the crushed interior of the limo, and Rachel’s wide eyes alive in the darkness, like the petals of a violet. Even though she’d fought him like a wildcat and bloodied his nose, he could still feel the supple weight of her in his arms. He’d felt more captivated in those few short moments than he ever had with Courtney.

  Bad, Fred, bad. Why was he thinking of some girl he’d never see again while on the phone with the woman he’d been dating up until two weeks ago? He dragged his attention back to the phone call.

  “Courtney, we broke up, remember? There is no—”

  “Let’s not have this conversation right now,” she interrupted. “Are you trying to upset me?”

  He clenched the phone in his fist, resisting the urge to slam it against the counter. How did she always manage to make him feel like the bad guy, no matter what he did or said?

  In a huge stroke of luck, his other line beeped. For a wild moment, he wondered if it was Rachel. Maybe she was calling him with an apology for the nosebleed. “Gotta go, Court. I have another call coming in.”

  “Call me back, okay? We’re not done.”

  Oh yes, we are, he thought. And one of these days you’ll get it. He clicked over to the other call.

  “Well, hello, hero.” His little sister, Lizzie, greeted him. “Did you know that you’re all over the news?”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to figure that out. Please don’t tell me they showed that girl ditching me.” Just what he needed: the most humiliating rescue operation in San Gabriel history. The hero fireman dumped by his rescuee. He remembered Ella Joy’s threat. You’ll pay for that, Stud. She certainly had the ammunition for it.

  “What are you talking about? All I know is that my friends are calling me and asking for your number.”

  Um . . . what? Fred frowned, wincing as the skin of his nose pulled tight.

  He rubbed his forehead, wondering if that blow to his nose had knocked him into the Twilight Zone. “I’d better check this out. I’ll call you back, Lizzie.”

  He got up and returned to the kitchen, where he’d left the newspaper on the kitchen island. The boys barely looked up from their voracious consumption of raisin bran as he shook open the paper.

  “Dude,” said Tremaine, impressed. “Is that you?”

  The full-color photo splashed across the front page showed Fred striding toward the camera, smiling at the blond girl, Cindy, as he carried her away from the mangled limousine. Her arms were around his neck. Since he didn’t have his proper gear, his whole face was visible, including his smile. The headline read: “Hero in Action.” The caption read: “Local firefighter saves bride after a freak crane accident.”

  At least the picture didn’t show him getting punched out by Rachel. But why was the newspaper making such a big deal out of the extraction? He wouldn’t mind being called a hero if he’d done something heroic. But he was just doing his job. And in the photo, he was just walking, really. Walking while carrying a pretty girl. Not exactly hard work.

  “It wasn’t all me,” he told the boys. “Mulligan was there, and then the whole crew showed up. It wasn’t just me.”

  “You’re the one carrying the girl,” pointed out Jackson. “Nice moves.”

  “It wasn’t a move. It’s my job.”

  “You must like your job. Look at you smiling. I can see your teeth. You ought to floss more.”

  “Hey, maybe you’re on TV!” Tremaine jumped up and ran to grab the remote from the coffee table. He clicked it at the flat-screen on the wall, then punched around the channels until he found one showing the local news.

  Channel Six’s Ella Joy filled the screen. Despite his vow to avoid the news, Fred drew close to see what she had to say.

  She was introducing a story about the accident, with a huge graphic trumpeting the “Miracle on Main.” With a sense of the inevitable, Fred lifted his head to watch. Ella had made her threat, and now she was going to deliver on it. He braced himself for a shot of a wild-haired girl in a silvery dress punching him in the face. Cue the embarrassing public humiliation of Fred Breen, Bachelor Fireman.

  But that’s not what came next. Instead, they ran a shot of him crouched next to the limo. As the camera rolled, he extracted the first girl from the limo, handed her over to the paramedics, then stuck his head back in the limo.

  Nothing spectacular, but the way they shot and edited the footage, it looked as if he was single-handedly saving the day.

  “We’ve gotten used to the heroics of our favorite fire department,” recited Ella Joy dramatically. “But yesterday, the Bachelor Firemen outdid themselves. With a bride’s life at stake, Firefighter Fred Breen, one of the few remaining single Bachelor Firemen, put his own safety on the line to rescue not only Cindy Barstow, but her three bridesmaids. One by one, he pulled them to safety. One by one, he delivered them into the hands of paramedics. One by one, he brought joy into a dire situation.”

  Here they cut to a shot of him cradling Rachel against his chest. It brought the entire experience back to him. He’d been so distracted by how good she felt that he’d forgotten she didn’t tolerate small spaces well. No wonder she’d panicked at the sight of the ambulance. He just wished she’d said something instead of punching him out.

  Ella Joy continued. “Today, the survivors of that terrifying accident are speaking out.”

  The blonde, Cindy, appeared on the screen. Pale but composed, with a small bandage on her head, she sat holding hands with her fiancé. “That fireman is a hero,” she said, shakily. “We have to postpone our wedding a little, but we’re going to dedicate it to him. Without him, it wouldn’t even be happening. And if it’s true that he’s one of the Bachelor Firemen, well”—she managed a smile—“my bet is he won’t be for long. Single girls out there, what are
you waiting for?”

  “That’s it.” With a gesture of defeat, Fred tossed the newspaper over his shoulder. Instead of making him look bad, Ella Joy had made him look good. Too good. First a kitten lover, now this. “I’m doomed.”

  Chapter 4

  Rachel dreamed she was jumping off the tip of a construction crane, but instead of crashing to the ground, she was captured by a soap bubble, like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. It tickled her skin, which made her giggle and shiver. Then the bubble popped, thanks to the annoying sound of a tinny voice. She woke up instantly. Greta was licking her chin and her phone was playing the ring tone she’d assigned to her father: Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” her own private joke.

  She rubbed Greta’s head as she swung her feet over the edge of her four-poster bed, onto the plush pile carpet. When she’d insisted on staying in San Gabriel after college, her father had insisted on buying her the top floor apartment in the most secure building in town. He’d then wired the entire place with motion sensors and hidden cameras. And he’d bought one of the bottom floor apartments for Marsden.

  Yup, that was life as the overprotected only daughter of America’s third wealthiest man.

  Gathering herself together, she plucked her phone off her nightstand. “Yeah, Dad. I’m up.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Rob Kessler’s intense, rat-a-tat voice pulsed through her iPhone as if it was impatient with such a flimsy physical tool. It was like being woken by a jackhammer.

  Right away her hackles rose. “Because I’m fine. My friends are fine too. Cindy has two broken ribs and Liza has a concussion and . . .”

  “And Feather has multiple abrasions, I know. I have my sources at the hospital.”

  “So much for patient confidentiality.”

  Her father let out his trademark harsh bark of a laugh, as if a real laugh would take too much time. Rachel wouldn’t be surprised if her father had hacked into the patient records. When he wanted information, nothing stopped him. As one of the world’s foremost experts on computer security, he knew all the tricks. And he didn’t hesitate to use them when it came to his only child.

  “I figured Marsden would fill you in on everything, so why take up your time with a redundant phone call?”

  “He did. But that’s no excuse for not calling me. An agreement’s an agreement.”

  Ever since her kidnapping—which was basically since she could remember—her father had been almost unbearably hyperprotective. She couldn’t blame him. To be helpless in the face of anonymous kidnappers must have been maddening. And then there was the unsettling fact that Rachel’s kidnapper had never been caught or even identified. It was like living with the proverbial other shoe hanging over your head. She tried to remember that at moments like this.

  “I’m sorry, I should have called. I was with my friends at the hospital and then I came home and conked out. I was going to call you first thing.” She slid out of bed and padded into the living room, which was dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows. They didn’t open, of course, being made of special reinforced glass. The heavy drapes were actually bulletproof.

  She drew one open and looked down at the rest of San Gabriel’s charming suburban landscape. In her opinion, spring was the most beautiful time of year here, when the jacarandas bloomed and the hills held a tender shade of green instead of their usual parched brown. Greta stood next to her, as if enjoying the view along with her. She held her favorite toy in her jaws, a simple length of rope that she loved to chase around the apartment. As a puppy, Greta had been abandoned in a concrete sewer. It was hard to believe she was the same traumatized pup.

  Smiling fondly at her dog, Rachel tugged the rope from her clenched jaws and tossed it across the room. Greta went bounding after it.

  “We might have another problem,” Rob Kessler said. She pictured her father, sitting tailor-style at the special desk where he kept his array of computers. He detested chairs, and always insisted that everyone sit on cushions on the floor.

  “The reporters,” she guessed. “But I was careful to hide my face. That fireman helped me.”

  “Frederick Lancaster Breen from San Gabriel Fire Station 1.”

  She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Fred,” she corrected, to prove she knew something her father didn’t. Besides, she’d developed a real fondness for the name. It was so unpretentious and straightforward. It would always make her think of a helping hand reaching out in comfort.

  “Also known as Stud.”

  So much for knowing more than Rob Kessler. He probably even knew why Fred was called Stud, but she wasn’t about to ask that. “Okay, so you’ve already found out everything there is to know about the poor random firefighter who happened to stumble onto the scene. What’s the big problem?”

  “One of Channel Six’s cameras managed to get a shot of your profile while Breen was carrying you to the ambulance. Somehow I missed that one. I managed to keep everything else off the air.”

  Everything else. He must be referring to her freak-out.

  Greta panted next to her, her moist brown eyes begging for another toss. “You’re insatiable,” Rachel whispered to her.

  “I’ve put in a call to Dr. Stacy.”

  Rachel gave a silent, horrified Noooo that made Greta back away. She’d had enough sessions with Dr. Stacy to last her two lifetimes. Sure, the therapist had probably saved her sanity. But she wasn’t that fragile anymore, no matter what her dad thought.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to talk this over with her. It must have brought back . . . well, you shouldn’t have been stuck in that vehicle.” His voice deepened to a fierce growl. “Someone ought to be fired. Starting with that drunken construction worker.”

  “Dad! Don’t you dare fire anyone.” After her kidnapping, Rob Kessler had fired his entire security staff, and he’d been a little trigger-happy ever since. “It was probably just an accident. Do they know what happened?”

  “Untrained asshole downed too many six-packs, then decided to prove he could move a load of shingles. Charges are being filed, not by me but by his boss. I’m not happy with the limo driver either. He was supposed to keep you safe, that’s why I hired him.”

  Rachel had caught a quick glimpse of the driver’s bloody face after the crash. The poor guy didn’t need her father on his case too.

  “Dad, stop trying to blame someone. It was just an accident. They happen. You can’t control everything. And it turned out okay, didn’t it? None of us are hurt.”

  “But a shot of you might have slipped through. I don’t like it, Rachel. My gut says this is trouble. It’s a sensitive time right now. My congressional testimony is scheduled for later this month and we’ll be beating off the media with a club. I’m sending an extra bodyguard down there.”

  Rachel gripped her phone, feeling another primal scream coming on. She couldn’t let all her efforts to carve out her own life slip away. “No, Dad. No, no, no. I don’t need another bodyguard.” She didn’t mind security, but she hated being shadowed. “You already have Marsden reporting in twice a day. Why don’t you just implant some kind of chip in me so you always know where I am?”

  A short silence followed. Horror washed through her.

  “Dad. Please tell me I don’t have a chip.”

  “You don’t have a chip.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Rachel. I would never do something like that without your permission. But it would give me some peace of mind.”

  “Oh my God.” She clutched at her head, feeling a thudding ache coming on. “I’m going to forget you ever said that. And no bodyguard.”

  Deciding that a large amount of coffee was needed to deal with this conversation, she crossed to the expansive, state-of-the-art kitchen. The coffeemaker was already set, which meant the cleaning crew had been in yesterday. She pressed the button, suddenly longing to be at work, where she actually did things.

  “All right. No extra bodyguard for now. But you have to keep your eyes open. If
anyone recognizes you from the news, you call me. I sent you some links to the footage that aired. You might be hard to identify, but then again, we don’t know who’s watching. Remember what happened your freshman year?”

  “Of course I remember.” A rave at a San Gabriel College frat house, an accidental hit of Ecstasy, and she’d let her real identity slip. Luckily, the guy had accepted her father’s hush money. The experience had put her off partying for good. Except for last night, of course. A wistful smile crossed her face as memories from the City Lights Grill came back. For a short time, she’d actually felt lighthearted and carefree.

  What had ever happened to Fred’s trophy, anyway?

  “I’ll be careful, Dad. I promise. I mean, I already live like a nun, but I’ll try to kick it up a notch to saint.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Rachel ground her teeth.

  “Whatever you do, stay away from Channel Six. They’ll probably be trying to figure out who the crazy missing bridesmaid is.”

  “Good to know I’ve made my mark.”

  “Last resort, we hire another bodyguard.” He hung up before she could protest.

  “Grrrrr.” Conversations with her father often left her in this state of mind, frustration in a tug of war with love. She knew her father would do anything for her, and anything to keep her safe. He’d failed once, and he’d never recovered from it. Neither of them had.

  Standing at the huge picture window with its panoramic, bulletproof view, she stretched her arms overhead. A quick inventory of her various aches and twinges told her nothing was too injured.

  A discreet knock on the door signaled Marsden’s arrival. “Come in.”

  As her longtime security guard walked into the apartment, she realized with a pang that he was showing signs of age. His tight-curled, close-cropped brown hair was dappled with gray, he was getting a little jowly, and he moved with his usual morning stiffness. The man didn’t say much, and he didn’t try to boss her around, which made him the only bodyguard she’d ever felt comfortable with. He was from the South Side of Chicago, his wife had died a few years ago, and his two sons were grown. Other than that, he didn’t say much about himself.