Flame (Firefighters of Montana Book 5)

by Victoria Purman

  “Thank you, everyone. I’ll take your congratulations and your thanks on behalf of the whole crew—everyone you know in Glacier Creek and Kalispell and all around Flathead Lake. We have an incredible team, led by Captain Sam Gaskill and an awesome support team back at base. Let’s have three cheers for everyone at the Glacier Creek service station.”

  And everyone in the shop obliged, standing to cheer Dex and his colleagues for what felt like hours when it only went on for half a minute. When everyone had turned their attention once again to their coffees and their discussions and their cakes, he turned back to Cady.

  “Dex.” She was next to him, smelling of chocolate and coffee and vanilla. She’d shoved her hands in the front of an apron which had “Cady’s Cakes” printed right across the chest. He looked down at the letters. He saw something else entirely. Something he was desperate for. He wanted everyone in the shop to leave immediately so he could be alone with her.

  “Did you do that?” he said, quietly. “Whip the crowd into a frenzy?”

  Cady looked across the crowded room. Her customers tried not to let her see, but she knew she was being watched. “It wasn’t me. Although, I agree with everything they all said.”

  He heard her deep breath, her weary sigh, the shakiness in her voice, which had dropped to a little whisper. She searched his face, bit her lip. Damn, he wanted to kiss her right now. And make it last forever.

  Cady dropped her gaze, leaned in closer. “I’m trying to be discreet and professional in front of my customers but I really want to jump your bones. Right now. In about eight different kinds of ways.”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m all yours, sweetheart. Eight ways. Ten ways. As many fucking kinds of ways as you want.”

  He saw her chest rise and fall, noticed the flush rise in her cheeks. Then there was a jangle and Cady reached for his hand and pressed something in it. Keys.

  “I close up in forty five minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said.

  *

  Cady ran up the stairs at one minute after five, desperate for Dex, and it was immediately arms and tongues and mouths and bodies crashing into each other, and whispers and moans and ecstasy. Dex held her tight, and she him, while they kissed, him walking her backwards across the living room, and when she pulled back, needing to breathe, Dex lifted her effortlessly and carried her to the bedroom. Then they quickly got naked, shucking off jeans and boots and clog shoes and uniforms and anything else that kept them from being skin on skin.

  When Dex sat on the edge of the bed, he handed her a condom with a grin and Cady grabbed it quickly. She ripped the foil with her teeth, and then teased and stroked his straining cock before she sheathed him, kissing him after he was protected crushing her breasts against him, biting his lower lip with a teasing pull.

  “Cady.” Dex moaned as he pulled her to him, and she climbed into his lap, sitting face-to-face, staring at him, taking in every inch of his mouth, his blue eyes, his jaw and this unruly hair. Cady pressed her body against him, straddling him, barely able to keep herself from sliding on top of him when she felt how ready he was.

  “Don’t make me wait,” she whispered into his ear, and he didn’t.

  He dipped his head to kiss her breasts and she almost exploded right there and then. His tongue twirled one nipple, then the other, sucking, laving, flicking. She threw her head back, moaned his name, and spread her legs further. His arms around her pulled her closer and he thrust into her, so hard, fast, as if he was desperate. Cady knew she was. She’d never wanted any man like this, completely, totally, so frantically. And when she came first, Dex let her ride the wave, holding her while she shuddered, kissing her shoulder while she rode it, and then he thrust again, harder, with a fierce rhythm now, and he called her name when he climaxed.

  After, when they were lying together in bed, she moved against Dex, smoothing her palm over his chest, slipping one leg across his. He pulled her closer against him. The sun was fading away behind the mountains and the room was in early evening darkness. It was quiet in her apartment and Cady felt her heart beating in slow, peaceful calm.

  “I can still smell smoke in your hair,” she murmured, pressing her lips to him.

  “I probably need another shower. You want to help me with that?”

  She chuckled. “You think I can stand after that? You’ve worn me out.”

  His fingers traced a line down her body, from her shoulder blade to her waist and her rounded hip. “You did want me to jump your bones. I’m here to serve.”

  “And you do that exceedingly well, McCoy.” Cady kissed him again. “Wasn’t it amazing what everyone did for you? All the applause and thanks. That must make you feel good.”

  Dex shifted. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Why? It’s true.”

  He stiffened and loosened his grip on her. He turned and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, hunched over, his elbows on his knees.

  “Dex? Did I say something wrong? I think it’s incredible what you guys all do. We’re allowed to be proud of you all, you know.”

  Dex was quiet for a while. Cady didn’t want to rush the conversation. She waited.

  “Things don’t always go right up there,” he started, his voice scratchy and deep. “Sometimes things go wrong. Badly wrong.”

  She blinked and they were eighteen again and Dex had just lost his mother and he was walking sullenly through the hallways at high school and she felt small and powerless to help him, not even able to utter a word of commiseration to the cool guy who probably needed it more than anyone. His mom had just died, for God’s sake, and everyone in the school knew and everyone was avoiding him, not knowing what to say, how to approach the tough guy, not knowing if they’d get punched in the mouth for reminding him about what must have been the worst day of his life.

  Losing her mother had been the worst day of hers. Cady tugged the blankets after her and moved over the bed to sit beside Dex. She covered him and snuggled into his side, finding his hand, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “I want to know what happened. Will you tell me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Dex. If something almost happened to you, I can take it. It can’t be any worse than what I imagined over the four days you were gone. You probably think I’m crazy or a drama queen or something but I was scared out of my wits every moment you were away. I couldn’t sleep. I was so distracted and sleep-deprived that I put the wrong icing on my chocolate cupcakes. I had to cover my butt by pretending I’d invented a new Cady’s Cakes taste sensation.”

  “What was it?”

  “Instead of double chocolate, I used the lemon icing. It didn’t go down well.”

  He chuckled and then turned to face her. His expression changed. “Did you mean it about being shit scared?”

  Cady felt her heart pounding, the feelings from those dreams coming back to shimmy up her spine and give her goose bumps. “You were up there risking your life. Of course I was shit scared.”

  “You don’t need to be, you know. We’re well-trained and—”

  “Oh, my head knows all that. But my heart? My heart doesn’t get it because I…” I love you.

  Dex waited a bet before asking. “Because?”

  “Because my heart has a mind of its own. I won’t be scared away if you tell me. Promise.”

  Dex took a deep breath. “When I was in Missoula, on exchange this past summer, we jumped into a bad fire. We reckoned it was deliberately lit and it took hold right in the middle of an area filled with log cabins, surrounded by forest. You know the kind of place,” he continued quietly, “beautiful views of lakes and mountains and a tinder trap if there’s a fire on.”

  He brought a hand to rest on her thigh and continued. “The winds were fierce and the flames had gotten into the tree tops. It was the toughest action I’d ever seen. And all I could hear was a howling dog. At first I thought I was imagining it over the crackle and the roar of the fire. You can hardly he
ar yourself think when the fire crackles and the wind roars. It’s like being caught in the engine of a fighter jet. But it was there. A golden Labrador. Outside a burnt out cabin. We found two people inside. Still in each other’s arms. The Lab had his feet all burnt up and we put him in the truck, gave him some water. Later, when we found the next of kin, I drove to meet them and handed over the dog.”

  “Oh, Dex.” It was all Cady could manage through the stream of tears falling down her face.

  “And that was the hardest thing about the whole situation, handing over that dog to the couple’s son and his wife and their kids. It was like I was saying, ‘this is all that’s left’.”

  Dex wrapped his arms around Cady when he heard her sobs.

  “How many years ago did you lose your mom?” he asked.

  “Two years ago. It happened when I was away in California. Mom died of a heart attack. I never got to say goodbye.”

  “I did, but it didn’t make it any easier, Cady.”

  “I still miss my mom, and my grandmother. Every day. Some of the things I make in the shop are a tribute to my mom. I make granola muffins because they were her favourite. It’s a way of keeping her alive in my heart, do you know what I mean?”

  “I get it.”

  Cady slipped a hand in his. “Why’d we wait so long, Dex? For this?”

  “Until that time you kissed me, when you were about to leave for California, I didn’t think you’d cross the street to spit on me if I was on fire.”

  “Dex McCoy. Don’t you know that I’ve had a crush on you since high school?”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “It’s true. But what was the point? You moved away right after graduation and almost never came back. I was heading off to California to follow my dreams as soon as I’d saved the tuition. It took a few more years than I thought it was going to, but I got there in the end. When you came back, I was about to leave. Our problem is that our timing was always off.”

  “But you’re back now.”

  I’m back. But are you, Dex? Was he back for good too?

  When Dex covered her body with his, kissed her again, Cady didn’t want to know the answer. Whether he was back for good or just for a little while—before the urge to drift took hold of him again—it didn’t matter. Because Cady realised she was in love with Dex McCoy.

  And the reality of what that meant to her closely guarded heart scared her to death.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The night after Dex was in her bed, Cady had another dream. This time, her mom and her gran were sitting in a porch swing on a beautiful, big old ranch house, swinging back and forth, rhythmically, slowly, peacefully. Her gran was knitting and her mom had a book in her lap. Her mom had always had a book on the go. She’d even read while she was brushing her teeth. And, in Cady’s dream, they looked so happy and content until there was a roaring whoosh and a body landed on the lawn in front of them. Their faces recoiled in horror. Cady’s mom dropped her book. Gran’s knitting went flying into the air. A body in a sand-colored flying suit had dropped with an explosive thud on the freshly mown lawn. Then a parachute drifted down and covered the body and Cady knew it was Dex and she woke screaming silently, her throat aching and raw but no sound coming out.

  She pulled herself to sitting and smeared the sweat from her face, panting, barely able to breathe.

  *

  Her dreams were becoming worse. More vivid. She often dreamed about her mom and her gran, happy dreams, like every good memory she had of them had come back to life in her head. But these middle of the night visions were new—Dex was there in her head in every one, in her subconscious, and she woke so frightened the feelings didn’t leave her the entire day. It was as if her subconscious was gathering together all the people she loved and putting them together to star in her worst nightmare.

  For two years now, she’d coped with being on her own. And just when she was opening her heart to let someone in—someone hot and wonderful and amazing—it seemed another part of her was issuing a warning. The sweat-inducing nightmare of what her reality could be. She’d endured loss and grief. Were her dreams telling her that she was scared of losing him, too?

  Cady sat upright in the dark, her heart pounding. She held a hand on her chest, feeling the thumping, and her cheeks were wet with tears. Were these her choices? Be with Dex and be shit scared of everything? Or be alone and protect her heart from more loss?

  She tossed and turned all night and she still didn’t have an answer.

  *

  After three nights of teeth-clenching nightmares, each one more vivid and horrifying than the rest, Cady was sleep-deprived and exhausted. Each nighttime terror had been about Dex. In each one, he’d died. In the first, he was caught in a raging wildfire. In the second, he’d been killed while making a jump in a clearing on Black Mountain. And in the third, he’d been standing in the forest, white smoke billowing all around him, when a tall, burning tree fell and struck him.

  They were frightening, agonising images, more vivid than an HD movie.

  In her troubled state, a familiar and long buried panic started to eat at Cady, the one that had consumed her after the deaths of her mother and her gran. Her world had shifted, shattered, and she’d precariously straddled that fault line between her old life and her new one for years. She’d never told anyone, but she’d almost flunked out of the culinary institute after they’d died. Consumed by grief and rage, the last thing she’d wanted to do was bake ridiculous and frivolous cakes. What was the point of them? All that sweetness couldn’t bring her family back together, could it?

  But she managed to get through, with the help and guidance of a sympathetic teacher, who understood her pain and loneliness. And, after her loss, those big dreams she’d always had for herself and her career and her shop by the ocean faded. A cafe by the beach didn’t hold much appeal when every memory of those she loved was in Montana. The only dream she had then was to go back home to Glacier Creek and bake.

  Now, she had created a place for herself in which her cupcakes worked their magic. If her creations couldn’t bring back the people she loved, they could sure as hell bring other people together, grease the wheels of social connection in her little town, and make people happy. They helped her surround herself with people all day, six days a week, and that had been a balm to her soul. Her little piece of magic.

  But her cupcakes weren’t going to work their magic on her and Dex, it seemed.

  Nothing she could do would erase the growing doubts in her mind about being with Dex. She had lots to lose if she fell apart again. She was all she had. Sure, she had her dear friends, but at the end of the day, they all had their lives and their careers. Who would pick her up, run the shop if she couldn’t cope? She didn’t have the option of losing it. She had to be strong. She had to rebuild those barricades around her heart to safeguard it, not open it up to a drifter like Dex McCoy.

  No matter which way she looked at it—she and Dex—there was no way through it. So she had to do it now. Before things got more serious, before she’d said the “L” word out loud. Of course she loved him, but it would have to remain forever a little secret she held in her heart, her safeguarded heart.

  And she couldn’t wait one more day to tell him so, after work on a Monday, she drove the half hour to Kalispell and the fire station to tell him it was over.

  Cady found a stoic expression as she took the steps up to the front doors and into the reception area. The last time she’d been here was for Russ Edwards’s memorial service. The thought made her shake, and when she looked across the room to see his parachute hanging there, something like the beginnings of a panic attack shimmered in her chest. When she pushed open the front door, the first person she saw was Jacqui behind the reception desk. Her fingers were flashing over a keyboard and she was staring intently at her computer screen.

  Jacqui looked up. “Hey, Cady. What are you doing here?”

  Cady hadn’t expected to see Jacqui. Cady�
�s bottom lip betrayed her, quivering. She couldn’t talk to anyone else about this just now, couldn’t let on that anything was breaking her heart.

  “I’m looking for Dex,” she managed.

  Jacqui stood slowly, rounded the desk. “You don’t look good. You’re pale. You okay? Has something happened?”

  Cady shook her head, letting her hair fall across her face, unable to speak.

  “Oh, no, Cady.” Jacqui hugged her and Cady couldn’t reciprocate it, knowing if she gave in to what she was feeling, acknowledged her confusion and sadness, she would start crying and maybe never stop.

  “He’s upstairs in the loft,” Jacqui whispered. “I’m right here if you need me.”

  “Thanks, Jac.”

  “And whatever’s happened, you know I’ve got your back. Call me anytime.”

  Cady nodded, took a deep breath, and walked to the stairs to break her own heart.

  She found Dex sitting behind one of the sewing machines positioned in a row over by the far window. He didn’t hear or see her at first, and she watched while he fed a piece of dark fabric through the machine. The high-pitched whirr echoed in the room.

  Then the noise stopped and he looked up and smiled. He always seemed to sense her, even though she hadn’t made a sound or said a word. God, she would miss that. She would miss being that important to someone.

  “Cady?” he called out. “What are you doing here?”

  He stood and Cady walked across the room, her footsteps echoing. When she was by his side, he reached for her but then checked himself, remembering he was in his workplace.

  “I came because we need to talk.”

  The expression on his face told her he knew. We need to talk. Weren’t they the four worst words in the English language, after all?

  “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, his hands on his hips now.

  “I can’t do dinner tonight,” she blurted nervously. And by dinner, she meant what came after. God, she wanted what came after so much, but one more night with Dex would break her, finally and irrevocably.