Backdraft

by Cher Carson

  Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she tried to hold back the flow of tears. “I’ve wanted you for so long. God, I’ve loved you for...”

  “Ever,” he whispered, sliding his thumb across her cheek to capture the falling tear. “I feel the same way, baby. I feel as though I’ve been in love with you forever, ever since I knew what love was.”

  “About Craig…” If he wanted a future with her, she couldn’t base it on a lie about their past. She wanted him to know everything, and she would help him find it in his heart to forgive Craig the same way he’d forgiven her. They could have it all, she had to believe that.

  “I don’t want to talk about Craig,” he said, flattening his index finger against her lips. “I don’t care about that now. All that matters is you and me, and…” He paused. “That’s not true. I walked out last weekend because I couldn’t stand the thought of you making love to another man. That hasn’t changed. You and Chris…”

  She grabbed his wrist, pulling his hand away from her mouth. “Chris is not you,” she whispered. “You’re the man I love, the only man I’ve ever loved.”

  He grinned. “Say it again.”

  “I love you.” She kissed him. “I need you. I want you.”

  He threaded his hands through her hair carefully. “I was a wreck this week. The old man told me to take some time off, and I sat around the house day after day, thinking about you, missing you…”

  She brushed her cheek against his, closing her eyes as she reveled in the scrape of his course whiskers against her soft skin. “I thought about you too, all the time.”

  “When I called Jack today, I was just so desperate to connect with you.”

  She smiled, loving that he was finally willing to be vulnerable with her. She wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to trust her enough to let his guard down again.

  “When he told me you went to Vegas, and that you might get married…” His voice cracked, breaking. “That’s when I knew I couldn’t go on this way. I knew you were moving on without me, and I couldn’t let that happen.” He pulled back to look her in the eye. “I won’t let that happen,” he said fiercely.

  She felt that familiar flutter in her stomach. The same one she used to get when they would talk about the future: anticipation, excitement… contentment. “I didn’t want to let you go,” she said, sliding her hands up the back of his t-shirt. “That’s why I came back to Brant, because I couldn’t let go. I needed to know if there was even the slightest chance…”

  Resting his head against her forehead, he said, “Jesus, baby, we’ve wasted so much time. If I wasn’t such a stupid prick, we’d be married with a couple of kids by now. We’d be…”

  “Ssssh,” she said, kissing him. “I don’t want to waste another minute on frustration or anger. Please, I just want to be thankful for what we have. Can we do that?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, we can do that.” He sighed. “I wish I hadn’t walked out on you last weekend though.” He fisted his hand in her hair. “I hate that he got to make love to you again because of my stupid mistake.”

  Shaking her head, she smiled. “He didn’t.”

  He frowned, pulling back to look at her. “What are you talking about? Are you telling me you didn’t have sex with him this weekend?”

  Her eyes fell to his chest. “No, I couldn’t. I told him it wasn’t the right time for me. He thought I had…”

  He laughed. “Please tell me that’s not true.”

  “No, it’s not. It was a little white lie.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her head on his solid chest. “I just couldn’t bring myself to sleep with him. I mean, I know it wouldn’t be the first time, but since we made love, I couldn’t get you out of my head. I knew I would be thinking about you while we were…”

  “I’m just so glad it didn’t happen,” he said, smiling. “You don’t know what it was doing to me, imagining you with him.” Tipping her chin, he asked, “Did you consider marrying him?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. I knew I wasn’t in love with him. He knew that too. I told him how I felt, but he tried to convince me that my feelings would grow with time. I knew that wasn’t true. I’d already had the real deal, and I didn’t want to settle for less.”

  Sneering, he said, “I can’t believe that loser tried to talk you into falling in love with him. And he had the nerve to call me pathetic?”

  Pressing her hands to his chest, she said, “I don’t want to talk about him anymore, okay?”

  “Hey, that’s fine by me. In fact, I don’t want to talk at all.”

  Chapter Nine

  Dave felt like he was getting a second chance, and he didn’t intend to waste a second of it. “If we don’t move this inside, like now, your neighbors might call the cops,” he said, cupping her ass. He couldn’t wait until his hand was fully healed, so he could love her without having to worry about his injury.

  After slipping her hand into her purse, she held her keys up. “You’re right, let’s take this inside.”

  He followed her, wrapping his arm around her waist and nuzzling her neck as she struggled to unlock the door. Pressing his arousal into her backside, he chuckled. “Are you havin’ a little trouble with that, sweetheart?”

  Cursing, she almost dropped the keys. “If you don’t stop kissing my neck like that, I’m going to fuck you right here on the porch.”

  He threw his head back, laughing. God, he loved everything about this woman: her brain, beauty, compassion, but most of all, her sass. “We’re going to have to figure this thing out,” he said, nibbling on the sexy indent in her collarbone.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, turning into his arms as she walked them, backwards, into the house.

  “If you think I’m going to be happy seeing you a couple of days a week, you’re crazy. I need you every night, in my arms, in my bed.” He kissed her deeply, punctuating his point.

  “We’ll take turns,” she said. “You can stay here when you have a few days off and I can stay in Brant when you don’t have to spend the night at the station.”

  That sounded temporary. He wanted permanence, commitment. Hell, he wanted the life they’d dreamed about. “Maybe we should think about buying a place in Lindsay,” he said, kicking the door closed with the heel of his boot. “It’s only twenty-five minutes for both of us. That way, I won’t have to worry about you driving so far to the hospital.”

  She touched his cheek, smiling. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself? Why don’t we just try dating for a while, see what happens?”

  Scowling, he said, “Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough? We’ve already wasted ten fuckin’ years, Maya. I thought you wanted to be with me. Was I wrong?”

  She reached down, grabbing the hem of his t-shirt and pulling it over his head. She groaned when she revealed his bare chest. Between moist kisses on his pecs, shoulders, and neck, she said, “Can we talk about this later? Right now, I just want to get you out of these clothes so I can have my wicked way with you.”

  He knew she was trying to distract him, and that left him feeling uneasy. He wanted to talk about it now. He needed to know by the next time they made love that she was as committed to him and their future as he was. Cupping her face in his hands, he tilted her head up, forcing her to look at him. “Do you want to be with me or not?”

  “Are you serious? Of course I want to be with you. What kind of question is that?”

  “A fair question, I think. I’m trying to plan for our future, but you seem stuck in the present, or is it the past?”

  Sighing, she flattened her palms against his chest. “We spent a lot of time planning for our future when we were young, and look how that turned out.”

  Frowning, he asked, “Are you telling me that you’re afraid of jinxing it if we talk about it? That’s stupid.”

  She pushed him away and glared at him. “It may seem stupid to you, but I’m scared to death.” She ran up the stairs, forcing him to s
print to catch up.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he spotted her sitting on the window-seat in her bedroom, her knees tucked under her chin. She looked out the window into the darkness, so he couldn’t read her face, but he didn’t have to. He knew what she was feeling, the same things he was: fear and trepidation. This was so new to them, and they were both afraid of saying or doing something to screw it up.

  He sat down on the bed quietly, waiting for her to say something, hoping she would make a move towards him.

  She turned her head, looking at him. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat here, staring out this window, wondering where you were, what you were doing, who you were with?”

  “I’ve wondered about you a lot over the years too.” He smiled. “Too damn much for my piece of mind.”

  “I’d think about you at the craziest times,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d be at the hospital, and some kid would come in with a football injury and it would remind me of how stupid and reckless you were when you played. I’d sit up in those stands… my heart was in my throat half the time. I was so afraid you’d wind up flat on your back, out cold.”

  He laughed. “I prefer to think of it as fierce, not stupid or reckless.” He knew if he was lucky enough to have a son one day, he’d want him to approach everything in life the same way, as though he had nothing to lose, giving it everything he had to give.

  “I loved that about you, but I hated it too. It scared the hell out of me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You were fearless and brave. But sometimes, I got the feeling you didn’t stop to think about your safety or what it might mean to the people who loved you if you got hurt or worse…” She turned her head, looking out the window again.

  He sensed this had little to do with his high school football games. This was bigger, more important than that. His gut told him this had nothing to do with their past, and everything to do with their future, or her reluctance to make plans for the future. He got up and slid in on the bottom of the bench, needing to be close to her. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking? What’s really scaring you, baby?”

  She dropped her head into the circle of her arms. “I’m afraid of losing you again.”

  He reached out to stroke her hair. “That’s never going to happen. I love you, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Looking up, she said, “You run into burning buildings, Dave. That could cost you your life one day.”

  “This is about my job?” He felt as though he was suddenly free-falling off the edge of a cliff. His job was his life, it’s who he was. Was she asking him to give that up? Could he? No, not even for her.

  “You’re in a high-risk profession. People die in your line of work every day,” she said, looking up at him. “You could be next.”

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to find the words to put her mind at ease. “Honey, one of us could get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow. We can’t live our lives in fear of something that might never happen.”

  “But what if it did?” she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. “What if it did and we had a couple of kids, like you said? What if they had to grow up without a daddy because you rushed a burning building to save someone else’s life?”

  He tried to process her words. She was right; he wouldn’t hesitate to put his life at risk tomorrow if he needed to. It came with the territory. Of course, he’d never had anyone depending on him to make it home before. Having a wife and kids would change everything. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said quietly. “Am I supposed to promise you that I won’t put my life at risk? I can’t do that, babe. That’s my job, you know that.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “And I’m proud of you for doing what you do, Dave. I am; I’m just scared, too.”

  He leaned forward, pulling her into his arms. He wished he could say or do something to ease her fear, but he couldn’t. Her fear was legitimate, and he wouldn’t pretend it wasn’t. “I love what I do, hon. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”

  “I know,” she said, burying her face in the crook of his neck. “And I wouldn’t ask you to, but I just need a little more time to get used to all of this, okay?”

  “You need time?” he said, tipping her chin. “What does that mean? How much time are we talking about here?”

  Smiling and sniffling in unison, she said, “You’re the most impatient man I’ve ever met.”

  “When it comes to something I want this much, you’re damn right I’m impatient.” He wouldn’t apologize for that. He intended to be relentless about her, pulling out all the stops until he convinced her to face her fears and take that long walk down the aisle with him.

  “I just want to ease into this, see where we are a year from now.”

  He felt like she’d just drop-kicked him in the gut with six-inch stilettos. “A year? You expect me to wait a year to make you my wife?”

  She smiled, resting her head on his shoulder. “A year’s not that long in the big scheme of things. If we’re in a good place then, we can talk about getting married.”

  He didn’t want to wait a year; he was ready to talk about it now. Hell, he was ready to quit talking about it and do something about it. “You still want the same things you did back then, baby?” he asked, praying she’d say she did. If she didn’t, then they had bigger problems, because the Maya he knew and loved shared his dreams, his vision for the future.

  “You know I do. I want…”

  He shifted, pulling her into the protective circle of his arms, he said, “Tell me what you want. I want details.”

  She pressed her lips to his forearm. “I want to live in our dream home…”

  “Our dream home?”

  “The house on Wells.”

  He chuckled, relieved that making that dream come true would be easy. “I think that could be arranged, but what about the commute to the hospital?”

  “I’ve been thinking it may be time for me to give up emergency medicine,” she said, quietly. “I’ve always planned to be a general practitioner. I could set up a practice in Brant, or maybe even take over for old Doc Murphy. He’s got to be getting ready to pack it in, right?”

  “Yeah, he mentions retiring every time I see him. He and the missus want to spend more time at their place in Florida.”

  Squeezing his arm, she said, “See, it’d be perfect.”

  After kissing the top of her head, he asked, “You sure that’s what you want, sweetheart?” He couldn’t stand the thought of her sacrificing her career for him.

  “It is. I’ve been thinking about making the change for a long time. Besides, working with Chris might be a little awkward now.”

  He knew he was too possessive to be comfortable with her working with a man who was in love with her, someone she’d slept with. “Okay, so what else? You’d want to live in the house on Wells, work as a G.P. in Brant…” Just one thing was missing from the perfect picture she was painting, and for him, that one was a deal breaker.

  Tipping her head back to look at him, she said, “You know how much I want kids. I’ve always wanted a family.”

  He released the breath he’d been holding. “Ten years is a long time; people change. I wasn’t sure you still wanted the same things out of life.”

  She turned to face him. “What about you? What do you want?”

  “You.”

  Smiling, she rolled her eyes. “Aside from me.”

  “I want you, a couple of kids, and a couple of dogs. I want to coach little league, take over for my father as chief.” He shrugged. “I want a simple life with the woman I love by my side.”

  She framed his face with her hands, kissing his lips. “That sounds like the perfect life to me.”

  “Really? You’re sure?” he asked, needing to be certain they were still on the same path.

  “Of course I’m sure.” She sat up on her knees, facing him. “I know this won’t be easy, relationships are hard work, but I
think it’ll be worth it, don’t you?”

  “Definitely.” He’d never wanted anything more.

  Dipping her head, she said, “There’s just one other thing.”

  “Hey,” he said, tipping her chin. “What is it? You can talk to me about anything, you know that.”

  She sighed. “I know what you and Craig have been into lately, the threesomes, and…”

  He touched his fingertip to her lips to silence her. He didn’t want to think, much less talk, about having sex with other women while he was with her. “That’s in the past. I think we need to agree, moving forward, to leave the past where it belongs, don’t you?”

  Gripping his hand, she said, “I want that, more than anything, but how do I know I’ll be enough?”

  “What’re you talking about? How can you even ask me that?”

  She closed her eyes. “Craig told me that you’ve been with two women at once before, and that you’ve had a pretty active sex life for years…”

  He was pissed that she was talking to Craig, her former lover, his best friend, about sex. He was even more pissed that Craig had the audacity to tell her about his kinky sexual escapades. “You’re the only woman I’ll ever need,” he said, quietly. “You don’t ever have to worry about that, sweetheart. From this day forward, I have no interest in taking other women to bed.”

  She ran her hand up and down his biceps. “I want to be everything you need. If there’s something you want to do, or try…”

  He groaned, pulling her into his lap. Talking about sex made him think about it, and all of the things he was dying to do to her, starting now. After pulling her shirt over her head, he placed wet kisses over the swell of her full, round mounds. He pressed the snap on the front of her bra, dipping his head to swirl his tongue around her tight nipple. “God, there’s so much I want to do to you, I don’t even know where to start.” With a wicked gleam in his eye, he asked, “You still like hot fudge sundaes, baby?”