The Night Belongs to Fireman

by Jennifer Bernard

  Fred took a swallow of his beer. “Do you remember your mother?”

  People didn’t ask about her mother much. Maybe because once they knew about Rob Kessler, everything else faded away. He was the sun, blotting out every other celestial body. “I mostly remember the feeling of being with her. You know what I mean?”

  “What was the feeling?”

  Again, something no one had asked. Not even Dr. Stacy, who’d always focused on her time as a hostage. “Lightness. Laughter. Safety.” Three things she hadn’t felt much since her mother’s death.

  “My mother’s more of a tough cookie,” said Fred. “She had to be, raising a rabble like us. She’s from the drill sergeant school of parenting.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Same, except he was often deployed too. I broke the family tradition by going into firefighting. They never let me hear the end of it, believe me.”

  She found the whole picture fascinating. A bunch of big, loud soldiers tromping around the house being ordered around by their mother. “Why didn’t you join up too?”

  Looking embarrassed, he ran a hand across the back of his head. “My brother Jack says I’m too much of a . . . softy. Well, that’s not the word he used, but you get the point.”

  She frowned, trying to understand. “Softy” didn’t exactly describe the man who had dragged them all out of the limo. “It’s not like you went into hairstyling or something.”

  The groove in his cheek deepened as he gave a laugh. “Believe it or not, Trent, my oldest brother, actually does a mean buzz cut. He used to trim the whole family’s hair. Thing is, my brothers have a point. I’m better suited to the fire service. I guess I wanted to protect people without having to shoot anyone. I look up to my brothers, they’re heroes, all of them. But I’ll never be like them.”

  She puzzled over the picture he was painting. It seemed as though Fred thought more highly of his brothers than of himself. Which, considering that he’d saved her life, she didn’t really agree with. “Are you close?”

  Fred shrugged. “Sure. Family, you know. I worry about them when they’re deployed.”

  “They must worry about you too. Firefighting’s a dangerous job, from what I’ve heard.” No need to tell she’d been researching the topic online.

  He munched on a chip with an abstracted frown. “Lizzie might worry. And my mom. But my brothers have enough on their minds without bothering with San Gabriel Station 1. Except . . .” He hesitated.

  “What?” She nudged his leg with her foot, which gave her a little thrill even through her flats and his jeans.

  “Except for lately. They caught wind of this media crap and they’re all over it. I wish they’d go back to forgetting the firehouse exists.” He looked so glum that she had to laugh.

  “Maybe they’re jealous.”

  He shot her an incredulous look. “Believe me, each of my brothers has a couple inches, a lot of pounds, and a few medals on me. No one’s jealous of Fred the Fireman.”

  “Really?” She crinkled her forehead skeptically. “The Bachelor Hero? The one all the girls are going crazy over? I picked up a button the other day, you know. It says ‘Fred’s My Hero.’”

  He carefully put down his paper towel, made a show of dusting off his hands, and leveled a threatening glare at her. “I’m afraid I’m going to need that button, miss. You have five minutes to hand it over.”

  She picked up her purse and shoved it behind her, so it was wedged between her back and the couch. “I don’t think so, Officer. I paid good money for that button. Ninety-nine cents, I think it was.”

  “I’ll give you five bucks for it. Five times the asking price. A hundred times its actual value.”

  “It’s not about the money,” she said virtuously. “I can’t be bought.”

  He left the armchair, took a step toward her, and leaned over, bracing his hands on the back of the couch behind her. A sharp thrill raced across her skin. “Everyone has their price. I’ll get you another bottle of beer.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not a big drinker, as you probably figured out the first night we met.”

  “Good point. An extra slice of pizza, when it finally gets here.”

  He leaned closer. She noticed amber glints in his velvet-brown eyes, the smell of tomato sauce and . . . that mouth again. “Not a chance. I’m trying to cut down on cheese.”

  “First crack at the New York Super Fudge Chunk.”

  “All forms of dairy, in fact.” With each shake of her head, each denial, giggles bubbled to the surface. By now she was plastered against the couch, her purse a hard lump against the small of her back and Fred so close she felt the warmth of his breath fanning her face.

  “Maybe I’ll have to find some other way to persuade you,” he said, low in his throat, his voice a good octave deeper than usual.

  She squeaked out an answer that was little more than a surprised grunt, before he was kissing her, hot and deep. Not like the kiss she’d given him, which had barely qualified for the name. This kiss sent lust streaking through her like a freight train. She forgot about the purse, forgot about her squished position. Arching her body against his hard, eager weight, she kissed him back, just as fiercely as he was kissing her. He made a funny sound and, with one knee on the couch, took her face into his hands and devoured her mouth. His fingers fanned across her jaw, his thumbs stroked along her cheekbones. Her heart raced about a mile a minute.

  When the doorbell rang, they pulled apart with a sharp gasp. Had she made that sound, or had he? Or both? She took in a long, ragged inhale. A few inches away from her face, Fred fought for breath, his eyes dark as midnight.

  “Holy Bomb Squad,” he muttered. “I thought it might have been a fluke, but it wasn’t.”

  That was more words than she could manage. She struggled to sit up, still mute, while he backed away, adjusting his jeans. Her eyes flew to the impressively large bulge at his groin. The thought came to her that she’d done that. She’d turned him on and gotten him all hot and bothered, with nothing but a kiss. Heat flashed through her all over again.

  “Must be the pizza guy. Let’s hope he’s nearsighted,” he said, wincing as he swung off the couch. “Lamb chops,” he chanted under his breath. “Cod liver oil. Creamed spinach. Bugs in my cereal milk.”

  She giggled, which she seemed to do a lot around Fred, when she wasn’t kissing the bejeezus out of him.

  “Just warning you,” he said over his shoulder as he loped uncomfortably toward the door, “if I look at you I’ll lose it again. So don’t take it personally if I avoid looking your way until my . . . um . . . tent pole goes away.”

  She was already thinking of ways to get the tent pole back when she caught sight of the very last person she wanted to see at Fred’s door.

  The person who’d rung the doorbell wasn’t carrying a pizza box. She was carrying a bottle of wine.

  “Hi, Stud,” purred Ella Joy as she prowled toward him. He held up a hand to stop her.

  “This isn’t a good time.”

  “Not yet, it isn’t. If you play your cards right, it could be.”

  “Ella, I’m serious. Whatever you’re up to, I’m not interested.”

  Fred looked nervously over his shoulder, but couldn’t see Rachel or Greta. Maybe she’d found her way to the bathroom. He devoutly hoped that she had. He didn’t want Rachel to get the wrong idea. Ella Joy was a man-eating anaconda, and sure, he’d been bowled over by her the first time she’d had dinner at the firehouse. But that was a long time ago, and he was no longer susceptible to her brand of sleazy ambition.

  She was staring at his crotch. “My, my. Have you been thinking about me?”

  “No. Except to wish you’d leave me alone. You’re taking this too far, Ella.”

  Her gaze was still fixed on his erection. It was starting to go down, thanks to the shock of her appearance, but it had a long way to go. He’d never felt anything like the urgency that had overwhelmed him while kissing Rachel.

&nbs
p; “I’m starting to see the reason for your nickname,” mused Ella. “You never struck me as a ‘stud’ before now. But my, my, my. Little Freddie’s packing some heat.”

  She advanced toward him, handing him the bottle of wine. He backed away in horror. The last thing he wanted was to have Ella touch him, or to accidentally touch her. He was sure it would be like touching a snake.

  “What are you doing here, Ella? I’m busy.”

  “You don’t look busy.”

  “I’m about to meet someone.” If Ella hadn’t seen Rachel, he didn’t want to give away her presence.

  “Someone better than me?” She pouted.

  So much better. It would be like comparing ice cream to a frozen lump of coal. “I didn’t invite you here.” He put some steel into his voice. “You’re one step away from trespassing.”

  “Rawr.” She mimicked a tiger claw. “Oh fine. How about we cut the crap?”

  “Since you’re the only one dishing out the crap, go right ahead.”

  “Tired of your fifteen minutes already, Freddie?”

  Again she tried to move past him, but he barred her way. He couldn’t, absolutely could not, let Ella see Rachel. Rachel was trying to avoid the news cameras, for some reason.

  “If it was just fifteen minutes, I wouldn’t mind. But we’re past a week now, and enough is enough.”

  “Never enough, Stud. Never enough. But don’t worry your pretty little”—again she glanced down his body—“head about it. I’m willing to negotiate.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’d planned to simply seduce you, but you clearly want to make my life difficult. So I’ll make you an offer instead. I’ll lay off the Bachelor Hero stuff, even though it’s great for ratings and my news director will complain, if you do one thing for me.”

  “What?”

  “The missing bridesmaid. I happen to know that you received a thank-you note from her. I’ve been hitting one dead end after another. None of the other bridesmaids will tell me anything.” She pouted. “Women can be so difficult to work with. The limo driver is useless. None of my usual sources will give me anything. My investigative instincts are telling me there’s something interesting going on here. And now you, dearest sweetest Fred, have the only hint of a clue. So, let’s deal.”

  He stared at her. Maybe calling her an anaconda was too kind. “Why do you care about finding someone whose only claim to fame is getting rescued from a crushed limo? You interviewed everyone else, why isn’t that enough?”

  “Because, since you seem to forget, I am a reporter. Something tells me there’s more to this story. Why did she run away? Why is she so hard to identify? Why did my killer footage of her punching you disappear from our news archives? It doesn’t make sense. Think of it this way. If she’s perfectly innocent and has nothing to hide, then it won’t matter if I talk to her. If she isn’t, well . . .” She shrugged. “Then you’ve done nothing wrong by telling me where she is.”

  A niggling seed of doubt entered Fred’s mind. Ella was right. There was something odd going on. Rachel was very secretive and she had run away for no good reason. Something was going on. Something she hadn’t told him.

  But right now, none of that mattered. With a lightning-quick move, he flipped Ella off her feet and over his shoulder in the classic fireman’s carry. Then, as she pounded her fists on his back, he marched her down his front walkway. He deposited her next to her BMW and pointed to the sidewalk.

  “See that line?” He indicated the seam where the sidewalk met his front lawn. “You step one foot over it and I’m calling the police. I’ll file charges of trespassing and invasion of privacy. Not to mention being a total B word.”

  Ella flounced toward the driver’s seat of her little convertible. “You’re in for it now, Stud.”

  “Bring it,” he growled, hands planted on his hips. “Just don’t try any crap like this again.”

  The convertible peeled off in a plume of expensive German exhaust. That made twice in a week that he’d pissed off a woman in a BMW. Hopefully they wouldn’t all form a gang or something. Fred took a moment to catch his breath, then jogged back inside his house.

  Rachel and Greta were gone.

  Chapter 9

  Rachel slipped out the side door and paused at the edge of the lawn long enough to see Fred manhandle Ella Joy into her sports car. She and Greta hopped into her dark blue Saab with its tinted, bulletproof windows. Then she drove home, refusing to think about what she’d witnessed until she was safely inside the cocoon of her own apartment.

  Marsden, of course, was waiting in the foyer of the building. He frowned when he saw her and lumbered to his feet. Greta trotted happily toward him for some cuddling. “Home early, eh?”

  “A reporter showed up at his house,” she said glumly. She’d sworn Marsden to secrecy about her dinner at Fred’s. “Greta and I had to make a quick escape behind his back. Now he probably thinks I’m even weirder than before.”

  Marsden grunted, then fell silent as he walked her to the private elevator that serviced her floor. He turned the key and the cherrywood doors opened silently. All three of them got in. Rachel steeled herself as the doors slid shut, enclosing them in claustrophobic, luxurious privacy, as if preserving them in amber for some future generation.

  A sense of defeat gathered in the pit of Rachel’s stomach as the elevator lifted them upward, away from Fred’s world, into her private, lonely sanctuary. So much for a nice, normal evening with a cute fireman. Why had she even bothered to try? It was impossible. Every time she tried to step out of her own little bubble, something happened to drive her back in. The only saving grace was that her father didn’t know about Fred.

  “You could tell him the truth,” Marsden commented.

  “Tell my dad? There’s no need. I won’t ever see Fred again.”

  “Not your dad. Fred.”

  She whipped her head around, shocked down to her toes. “Tell Fred the truth about what?”

  “Who you are. Why you left.”

  For a moment she was too stunned to say anything. “How can I do that? My father would freak out.”

  “It’s possible,” Marsden acknowledged. The elevator came to a gliding halt at the top floor and the doors whispered open. Rachel stepped out quickly, with her usual sense of relief at being released from a small space.

  Marsden did his routine check of the apartment and the security system while she opened a can of dog food for Greta. The only other people in San Gabriel who knew her real name were her roommates at San Gabriel College. And her father had insisted on vetting them, interrogating them, and asking them to sign confidentiality agreements. It had been humiliating. Sometimes she suspected that the staff members at the Refuge might know, though none of them had ever said so.

  She didn’t want to put Fred through anything like that. But what if she just told him on her own, without bringing her father into it? The thought made her slightly dizzy, as if she’d stepped onto the edge of a cliff.

  If she were smart, she would avoid Fred completely. He was a link to that reporter, Ella Joy. But the truth was, she didn’t want to avoid him. The mulish, headstrong side of her rose up in revolt. Why should she have to avoid someone so great—and such a good kisser—because of something that had happened nearly twenty years ago? It wasn’t fair.

  Marsden entered the kitchen. “All clear.”

  As always. Sometimes she thought he had the most boring job in the world. “He could have sold me out, you know.”

  Marsden just listened, in that stolid, calm way of his.

  “The reporter was looking for the missing bridesmaid, and I was right there. She even tried to bribe him. But he didn’t give an inch. He threatened to charge her with trespassing.” She smiled at the memory. “I don’t think he likes to be pushed around.”

  “Sounds solid.”

  “He’s a good guy.” Somehow, that seemed like an understatement. In the short time she’d known him, Fred the Fireman h
ad rescued her, protected her, and put himself on the line for her. Without any idea of who she was.

  Didn’t she owe him the truth?

  Her stomach growled. She thought of the pizza that had probably been delivered to Fred’s house by now. “Want to order a pizza?” she asked Marsden, who nodded.

  “I could eat.”

  Vader fed the length of four-inch hose toward Fred, who stood on a platform atop the hose tower. “You’re saying she skipped out on you again? Stud, you’re losing your touch.”

  “I thought I didn’t have a touch.”

  “Oh, you have a touch, all right. You’ve got your own fan club now. I saw a story on it.”

  Fred pulled the hose over the top of the tower and straightened it. They’d just finished washing it and now it had to dry. “Let me guess. Ella Joy.”

  “Yeah, dude. I think she’s obsessed with you.”

  Fred groaned. “She’s trying to pressure me. But I’m not giving in. If I ever seem like I might give her an interview, I want you to tie me to this hose tower and stuff a rag in my mouth.”

  “Kinky,” said Vader approvingly. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “What?” Fred shook his head. “What is wrong with you?”

  “The question is what is right with me. Ask Cherie, she’ll tell you.”

  Fred finished adjusting the hose and climbed down from the tower. “No thanks. I don’t need another lecture on the wonders of Vader Brown.”

  Vader sighed happily, his rugged face going soft around the mouth. “I gotta tell you, Freddie, I never thought marriage would be such a good time. You should try it. Not with Courtney,” he added quickly.

  Fred tightened his jaw. Courtney had left three messages on his phone over the past two weeks. He had no interest in calling her back. They hadn’t even dated that long, and they’d never had the kind of sparks he had with Rachel Allen.

  But at least Courtney wasn’t mysterious, like Rachel. The doubts sown by Ella Joy had multiplied in his mind. He’d Googled the name “Rachel Allen” and found about a billion, none of whom seemed to be the Rachel Allen he knew. Or didn’t know.