by Teri Wilson
“Forget what the bootie is supposed to look like, and just go with the flow. Sometimes whatever we’re creating doesn’t turn out the way we planned. It might look different from anything we’ve imagined, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good or valuable,” Alice said, and then she stood to go help a customer who’d wandered into the store off Main Street.
Toby’s ears pricked forward as if he was contemplating going after her, but instead, he trotted toward Madison and rested a dainty paw on top of her foot. The sweater he was wearing today was lime green, and when Madison smiled down at him, she noticed a handful of gaping spaces between stitches. She wasn’t sure if they were the result of Toby getting a paw caught in the material or just plain sloppy knitting...knitting like hers.
She sort of hoped it was the latter.
When she looked back up, Sarah winked at her and then turned her knitting around as she reached the end of a row, leaving Madison to wonder if they’d just been talking about knitting or something else entirely.
Chapter Twelve
Dear Editor,
Is Fired Up in Lovestruck a real person, or all those letters I saw on television yesterday just a publicity stunt?
Fingers crossed, he’s real and soon to be revealed to the entire town.
Sincerely,
Curious in Lovestruck
Editor’s Note:
The Lovestruck Bee is a newspaper founded on sound journalistic ethics. Every letter printed in the Bee is true and correct, as received by the Editor-in-Chief, Floyd Grant, including those delivered under the name Fired Up in Lovestruck.
Dear Editor,
Then tell us who he is!
Sincerely,
Curious in Lovestruck
On slow news days—basically every day in Lovestruck—Mr. Grant liked to hold brainstorming sessions in the conference room. Never mind that the “conference room” was actually just a corner of the bullpen, next to the water cooler. And never mind that the conference table wasn’t even an actual piece of office furniture, but a repurposed barn door. Madison was almost used to it by now. She sat and jotted down ideas for her column while the lifestyle reporter waxed poetic all the upcoming festivals in the area. Vermonters loved a good festival.
“Excellent. We’ve got plenty of material for the community page, but I’d like to see a few more news pieces. Maybe even some light investigative reporting.” Mr. Grant glanced around the table. “Any ideas?”
“I have one.” Brett Johnson, one of Madison’s colleagues, raised his hand.
Mr. Grant aimed finger guns at him. “Shoot.”
“Since you mentioned light investigative pieces, maybe we should seriously try to uncover Fired Up in Lovestruck’s identity.” Brett shrugged, and seemed to be avoiding Madison’s gaze.
“What?” She looked up from her list of ludicrous ideas and shook her head. “We can’t do that.”
Brett shrugged. “Why not? That’s what investigative reporters do—they investigate things and report on them.”
Madison managed to refrain from reminding Brett that he wasn’t an actual investigative reporter. His last article had been a play-by-play of the local school board meeting. “It would be wrong. Besides, it’s been a few days since his goodbye letter and we still haven’t heard from him. I think he’s really stopped this time.”
Mr. Grant nodded. “You might be right.”
Madison breathed a little easier. She’d pulled out all the stops the past few days, even writing a story on preschool prom dresses and Fired Up in Lovestruck had remained stoically silent. If she hadn’t hated him so much she would have been impressed by his restraint.
In any event, she had a feeling he’d been telling the truth. It really was over, and soon she could put this whole embarrassing episode behind her.
Mr. Grant, however, wasn’t ready to give up. “But without revealing his identity, there’s no end to the story. We can’t just let it fizzle out. The Good Morning Sunshine producer has been calling me daily, begging for information on Fired Up in Lovestruck so they can bring him to New York for a follow-up segment.”
“Maybe we should hire a private investigator to try and find him,” Nancy suggested. “No offense, Brett.”
“None taken,” Brett said, clearly offended.
“We can’t out him against his will. We just can’t.” Madison wasn’t entirely sure why she was trying to protect a person who’d made her professional life in Lovestruck miserable, but it just didn’t seem fair.
“I agree.” Mr. Grant nodded. “But if we found him, maybe we could try and talk him into coming forward on his own.”
Madison frowned down at her notepad, trying to come up with an argument against this latest idea, but before she could, an ambulance flew past the window with sirens blaring. A few beats later it was followed by a firetruck from Jack’s station. Her heart instantly went into overdrive at the thought of him speeding toward some kind of imminent danger—yet another reason why he’d done her a favor when he’d all but refused to kiss her. She couldn’t handle being in love with a firefighter. It was far too stressful.
Since when do you think you might be in love with him?
She rolled her eyes at herself. Since never. It was only a crush. Hadn’t she already admitted as much to herself? Once she had an offer for a real job in a real city, she could leave everything and everyone in Lovestruck behind and she’d forget all about Jack and his adorable daughters.
That was the plan, anyway. She just couldn’t seem to get fired up about implementing it. Plus, she was having a hard time imagining her morning routine without sipping coffee at Alice’s kitchen table watching her aunt knit dog sweaters while Toby curled into a contented ball in Madison’s lap. She already missed Jack, Ella and Emma like crazy, and she hadn’t even left yet. Even the thought of never seeing Mr. Grant again left her inexplicably wistful.
She glanced at his rolled-up sleeves and furrowed brow. There was just something so endearing about the fact that he tried to run the newsroom at the Bee like it was The Washington Post during the Nixon era.
He threw his hands in the air. “Is someone going to check the scanner in case those emergency vehicles are headed toward a newsworthy situation?”
Every head in the room swiveled in Brett’s direction.
“Oh, right. Yes!” He stood, red-faced, and nodded. “I’m on it!”
Madison bit back a smile.
This isn’t so bad, she thought. Until she could go back to New York, she had a life here in Lovestruck, and it was filled with quirky characters and a homespun charm she’d never known she was missing until those things had become a fixture in her everyday life. Maybe Vermont didn’t hate her, after all. And maybe, just maybe, the feeling was mutual.
So long as she was stuck here, she just needed to try and remember that Jack Cole was not her problem, nor was she in love with him, despite the flutter that coursed through her veins every time she thought about him. It was wholly annoying, and she was ready for it to stop.
So, so ready.
“Mr. Grant, you were right!” Brett ran back to the conference table, practically hurtling over the office chairs and stacks of newspapers in his way. “According to the scanner, there’s been some kind of accident, and one of the firefighters from Engine Co. 24 is en route to the hospital in Burlington.”
“What?” someone shouted, and then Madison realized it had been her.
She flew to her feet, but had to sit back down because she felt faint and dizzy all of a sudden. She couldn’t breathe, and her heart was pounding so hard that she thought it might beat right out of her chest.
What if Jack was hurt?
Don’t think it. She inhaled a shaky breath. Don’t even go there.
“Any idea who it is?” her boss asked.
Brett looked down at something scrawled on the top page of his
notepad. “A Lieutenant Jack Cole, but we can’t release the name until the family’s been notified of his injuries.”
No. It couldn’t be. Just...
No.
“Of course.” Mr. Grant nodded. “We should probably send someone up to the hospital in Burlington to cover it, though. Are you up for it, Brett?”
Brett sprinted back to his desk to get his things together as Madison squeezed her eyes shut tight in an attempt to keep herself from crying. Everyone knew weeping at the office was unacceptable. It was just about the most unprofessional thing a person could do. She’d never even come close to crying at Vogue, but panicked tears were already streaming down her face—wet, sloppy, mortifying tears.
You’re not in love with him, she reminded herself, but it didn’t matter. Not now.
She stood on shaky legs. “Take me with you.”
* * *
Jack’s head hurt like hell, but nothing hurt quite as bad as his pride did.
“Is this really necessary?” He sat up in the hospital bed and gestured toward his flimsy gown, the sheets and the general surroundings of his private room. “I have twins. I need to get home.”
“Lieutenant, you have a concussion with a small nonarterial bleed. You’re not going anywhere.” The nurse patted his pillow and then loomed over him until he relented and rested his head on it.
Ouch.
Lying down hurt. The soft, downy pillow hurt. Everything hurt, but wasn’t a mild concussion really just a glorified headache?
He closed his eyes against the glare of the overhead light. “When can I go home? The girls need me.”
“No, they really don’t.” The nurse’s soft-soled shoes made squishy noises as she padded from one side of his bed to the other. “Your captain spoke to your mother, and she and your dad are staying with the girls. No need to worry.”
Cap had called his mother? Marvelous. That was exactly the sort of drama he’d hoped to avoid.
“Can I call her?” he muttered. At least that was what he meant to say, but his words garbled together into one long slur. “She’sgoingtoworrrrrry.”
“I think it’s best you wait until morning. You’re a little too groggy to convince your mom that you’re fine right now. If she hears you like this, it could just make things worse.”
Why couldn’t he talk? It couldn’t be a side effect of his pain medication, because they refused to give him any. He’d already asked for some...a couple of times. Apparently, it could mask the symptoms of a more serious problem, so his aching head wasn’t going away anytime soon.
“Home?” he asked, because the effort required to string together an entire sentence was more than he could manage.
“The doctor has ordered another CT scan tomorrow morning. So long as there’s no progression of the bleed, you’ll be discharged. Until then, you need to rest, Lieutenant. Got it?” She pressed the call button into his right hand.
He cracked an eye open and smiled, but suspected it looked more like a grimace than any approximation of a pleasant expression. “Got it.”
She jammed her hands on her hips. “I’m serious. Don’t try and stand up on your own. If you need anything, just press this button and someone will come help you.”
He nodded and his headache, which had begun to ease into a dull pain, throbbed to life again.
The nurse’s expression turned sympathetic. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here, Lieutenant. That’s what you get for being a hero. What are your twins’ names?”
“Ella and Ella,” he mumbled. “I mean Emma and Emma.”
Why couldn’t he get it right? Was he really groggy enough that he couldn’t get his infant daughters’ names straight?
“Yep, you’re woozy, all right.” The nurse laughed. “All right, hero. It’s time for lights out. Don’t forget—press the call button if you need anything.”
He held up the button as a gesture of compliance and then let his arm flop back down on the bed. God, he was tired. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been so exhausted in his life. Not even when the twins first came home from the hospital.
The door closed with a soft click as the nurse left the room, and Jack wondered how long he would have to wait for a different, more lenient caretaker to take over her shift. He needed a telephone, damn it.
His cell was probably still on the rig or back in his locker at the station if Wade had remembered to grab it for him. He moved his head gently back and forth, searching the room for a landline, but it was situated on the nightstand, which the nurse had wheeled out of reach.
He closed his eyes and sighed. He trusted his captain to keep his mom and dad calm. Cap was great at that sort of thing, which was one of myriad reasons why he was an exceptional senior officer. Also, the nurse had been right—hearing Jack slur his words would only upset his mom. Sarah Cole was as strong as they came, and she’d had years of being a firefighter’s mother under her belt, but she would probably have strapped the twins into the back of his dad van and headed straight to Burlington if she’d heard him confuse Ella and Emma’s names like he did just a few minutes ago.
His family was safe and sound. The best thing he could do for them was get himself rested up and patched back together so he could go home in one piece. They weren’t the ones he was so anxious to call.
When Wade had stared down at Jack as he was being strapped to a gurney and hauled into the back of an ambulance, he’d asked if there was anyone else they should contact about his accident. Madison’s name had almost tripped right off Jack’s tongue. He’d had to grind his teeth together to keep from saying it.
Getting injured on the job had a way of knocking a firefighter’s priorities immediately into proper alignment. Jack had seen it happen time and time again. He’d witnessed fires put an end to divorce proceedings, family estrangements and long-held grudges of all kinds. That was the unexpected, beautiful truth about fire—at first glance, it was licks of red heat and burning destruction. But deep in its molten yellow center, fire carried the promise of rebirth. Great swaths of forests that burned always grew back stronger and healthier than they’d been before. Jack liked to think it worked that way with other types of fire, too. He knew it did. He’d seen it.
And even thought it hadn’t been an actual fire that had knocked him flat on his back on the sidewalk outside Ethel Monroe’s Lovestruck cottage, he’d felt his own priorities shifting before he’d even opened his eyes. And somewhere beyond the fog of pain, he’d seen Madison’s face, like a dream or a mirage or some kind of angelic vision.
Wade knew. That was why he’d asked Jack if there was anyone else he should call. He’d either seen it written all over Jack’s face, or he still firmly believed fate had brought Madison into Jack’s life for a reason. He probably thought fate had thrown Jack out of the old maple tree and given him his current concussion, but Jack was fairly certain it had been Ethel’s cantankerous Persian. It was a classic Fancy move.
Either way, he didn’t want Wade to call Madison. Jack wanted to do it himself. He had things to say to her—important things...
If only he could get to the blasted phone.
Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a little bit, he’d wake up feeling better. Then he could make his way to the nightstand and dial Madison’s number, except he didn’t know her contact information. Her number was programmed into his cell, which was missing at the moment—at least he thought it was. Everything had gone so blurry around the edges after the fall.
“Madison,” he slurred as sleep began to drag him under.
And then the bleeding in his brain must have caused an auditory hallucination, because he could have sworn he heard her voice, as soothing and lovely as the sweetest lullaby. “Yes?”
He dragged his eyelids open, and there she was, standing at the foot of the bed. Either that or his banged-up mind was playing tricks on him. He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was
that he’d remained stoic during the entire course of the day, even as he’d been hurtling toward the ground and thought he might die right there on the sidewalk, leaving his daughters fatherless as well as motherless, but the sight of Madison Jules in his hospital room—be it real or just a vision—nearly made him weep.
“Are you really here?” he asked, throat thick with emotion.
“I’m here,” she said, and when her voice broke, something inside Jack broke along with it. “I hope it’s okay that I came.”
It’s more than okay, he wanted to say. I need you. I need us. But he didn’t have the right to say those things to her. Not yet—not when there were so many things that had been left unspoken.
“Of course it’s okay.” He attempted a smile.
Madison’s face instantly crumpled, and it was only then that Jack noticed the trails of mascara streaming down her cheeks. She’d been crying...for him...even after the way he’d tried to push her out of his life. Even after she’d tried to kiss him and he’d taken that pathetic backward step away from her. Even after the letters.
She still didn’t know about those, though. Even a concussion couldn’t make Jack forget that very significant fact.
“I just...” She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with a trembling hand. “I was at work and there were sirens and then one of our reporters heard from the scanner that you’d been hurt, and I just had to come. What happened? My God, are you burned?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. It’s just a little bump on the head. I fell out of a tree trying to rescue a cat named Fancy.” He tried to sit up, but only managed to lift himself an inch or two off the pillow before he fell back down.
Madison’s lips quirked into a half grin. Jack wasn’t sure whether his use of an endearment had brought it about or whether she was amused by the reason for his incapacitation. He kind of hoped it was because he’d called her sweetheart.