Just a Cowboy

by Rachel Lee

  “Was that often?”

  “Depends.” This time he emerged with what appeared to be a package of chops and placed it near the vegetables. “The average fire takes a couple of hours to deal with. We have to clean all the equipment, too, to make sure it’s operational and ready for the next call. And then there are other emergencies. So, no, there isn’t a whole lot of free time, but there’s some. We schedule training days and cleaning days, and in between we cook, sleep and shoot the breeze. Anyway, it’s flexible. It’s not like I don’t answer a call because someone has to cook. There are older guys who often stay behind.”

  She noticed that he didn’t use the past tense. So part of him was still on that job, still a fireman. “I couldn’t imagine being a firefighter. Fire terrifies me.”

  “It terrifies most people. Me included.”

  “Then how do you do it?”

  “It’s an essential job. Some of us can swallow the fear enough to do it. Some of us even get a kick out of it.”

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not an adrenaline junky. I used up a lifetime’s worth of adrenaline on that job.”

  “Then what drew you to it?”

  “I…wanted to be useful. Save lives. Do something I could be proud of.”

  “I wish I’d done just one thing in my life that important.”

  “You will. Important things don’t always have a lot of flash, but they’re still important.” He gave her a reassuring smile and turned to start unwrapping the vegetables.

  “I still can’t imagine it,” she said after a few moments. “I don’t think I could go into a burning building for anything.”

  “You’d be surprised how many people do just that because someone they love is still inside. Or maybe a pet.”

  “So many? I mean I’ve heard about it, but I thought it wasn’t very many people who did that.”

  “I lost count of the times we had to hold someone back. People lose their fear sometimes, most especially when someone they love is at risk.”

  “I guess. But what’s your excuse?”

  At that, a crack of laughter escaped him. “Haven’t you heard the old joke? Firefighters are the stupidest people on earth. When everyone else is running out of a burning building, we’re running in.”

  That got a small laugh from her, even as she shook her head. “You’re not stupid at all.”

  “No,” he agreed. He leaned back against the counter, his face tight, and the way he stood suggested to her that he was hurting again and needed a brief break. “No, we’re not stupid. But I do think we’re built differently. We’re missing the survival gene or something. I don’t know. I just know not everyone can do it, and those of us who do don’t really think about what we’re doing when we’re doing it. We rely on training, experience and intuition, and there’s just no room for fear after that first step.”

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. “I don’t know how to explain it exactly, Kelly. It’s like being a cop. You couldn’t pay me to do that job.”

  She nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions, wanting him to talk at his own pace. And no matter how he minimized it, her awe of him was growing.

  “I knew a reporter who could have been a firefighter,” he said after a moment. “That gal was a pistol. She’d hear the call come in and the next thing we knew she’d be in her car riding our bumper right through stoplights.”

  “Now that’s crazy.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t think so. She wanted that story the way we wanted to put out that fire. She even volunteered to go into our training room with us and see what it was like in full gear when the temperatures hit the roof. Gotta give her credit for that, even if we did have to drag her out. The heat weakened her and she wasn’t used to the weight of the equipment. But man, she had fun.”

  Kelly tried to imagine it. “I’m not sure I could do that, even as part of training.”

  “I think you could,” he said firmly. “Quit putting yourself down. Anyway, she gave one of our captains a conniption.”

  “How’d she do that?”

  “We’d been called out to help with a forest fire just outside of town. Big one. So we’re pushing into the fire and coming back out after a specified period of time, working to keep it from jumping a road. And she remarked on the fact that we couldn’t get enough of the smoke. Captain asked her why and she said, ‘Because the first thing all you guys do when you pull off your masks is light a cigarette.’”

  At that Kelly laughed.

  “But then,” Hank continued, “she pointed at the ground around the captain’s feet. The butts must have been an inch deep.”

  Kelly laughed even harder. “That’s so funny. But why did it bother the captain?”

  “Because the chief didn’t want us to be caught smoking in some newspaper photo. Bad for the image.”

  Kelly giggled. “Do you smoke?”

  “I did back then. I quit a while ago.”

  And she could almost see the door slam down, the drawbridge go up, whatever. He’d said all he wanted to say, at least for now. She’d learned from Dean that ignoring such hints could only lead to trouble, and her laughter died.

  Hank sighed, as if he sensed that he’d upset her somehow. “I was trying to make you laugh,” he said.

  “I know. It was funny.”

  “Good.” Then he turned his back and started washing vegetables and slicing them with a big chef’s knife on a cutting board.

  “So you liked this reporter?”

  “We all did. Great sense of humor, and I think she was as crazy as we were.”

  “I can’t imagine you crazy.”

  A snort escaped him. “Everyone is capable of some craziness. No, I just meant that her job gave her the same kind of sense of black humor as we had.”

  “The cat in the tree thing?”

  “Yeah, like that.” But even looking at his backside, she could tell that he had tensed again. What about cats could make him stiffen like that? All she could do was wonder.

  All of a sudden he put down the knife and hobbled over to sit across from her at the table. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For what?”

  “I keep shutting you out. In some ways I’m a walking minefield. But you’ve been open with me, so I guess I should give you the same.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do. Right now you’re trusting me. I’m sure you’d feel a whole lot better about that if I didn’t just suddenly clam up on you. I know I do that. And I know it makes people uneasy.”

  “Hank, you don’t…”

  But he interrupted her. “It’s a simple story. Two years ago I went into a burning building because we had a report there was a woman in there. I knew I was putting my neck on the line. The fire was bad, and the building was no longer structurally sound. But I couldn’t leave someone in there, so I went. And with me went two of my best friends, Allan Kurst and Fran Beacham. The place collapsed on us. I was the only one who survived, and I was pretty well smashed up.”

  Kelly listened speechlessly, her heart squeezing with pain for him.

  “Fran took the brunt, I guess. I hear she was draped over me when they found me. Anyway, it turned out the woman we were trying to rescue had already managed to get out, but none of her friends knew it. So it was stupid, useless and reckless, and I lost my best friend and the woman I was getting ready to ask to marry me. End of story.”

  Somehow she doubted that was anywhere near the end of the story. His gray eyes reflected pain and loss, and undoubtedly the physical pain and limp he still suffered from were the result of being crushed under that building.

  “I was lucky,” he said. “Do you have any idea how tired I am of hearing I was lucky?”

  “Maybe.”

  His eyes widened a shade, and the pain vanished in a short, unexpected laugh. “Maybe you do,” he said. “Maybe you do.”

  Chapter 7

  The washing machine rumbled in the background a
long with thunder as they ate a meal of marinated pork chops, salad and seasoned brown rice.

  They had been quiet ever since Hank had told her his story, and Kelly felt awkward. He’d made it sound so straightforward, but she hadn’t missed the part about losing the woman he wanted to marry and his best friend at the same time. And, equally bad, their act of bravery, the losses, had all turned out to be unnecessary.

  She couldn’t imagine living with that. But maybe he couldn’t imagine living with a killer on his heels. If she hadn’t fought her attacker off, it never would have been real for her. She might have died without ever believing that Dean was capable of such a thing.

  But her entire worldview had changed in the wee hours of one morning when she stood in the muck and the reeds, dizzy from a blow to the head, fighting like a maniac for survival. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Hank must feel like that. The shock of what had happened must still be rippling through his life. It was probably the reason he kept insisting that he was just a cowboy. Because he didn’t want to be constantly reminded.

  As if his limp and what appeared to be unending pain didn’t remind him every time he moved.

  How did you live with that?

  She wanted to ask, but again hesitated. He’d opened up, but maybe he’d said all he could on the subject. Much as she wanted to know how he coped, she didn’t want to wound him by asking.

  For the first time in months, Kelly found herself worrying about someone besides herself. It was a momentous internal shift, and she looked down at her plate, feeling ashamed of how self-absorbed she had become.

  It was understandable enough since she was attacked, but before that? She’d been drowning in self-pity and anger when she was facing nothing that hundreds of thousands of other women didn’t face: a marriage gone bad. Oh, and the loss of so-called friends, most of whom probably felt threatened because she, alone among them, had decided to step out of her gilded cage.

  Yes, she’d been feeling pretty sorry for herself, and, thinking about it now, she squirmed a bit in her chair. “Something wrong?”

  Hank’s calm, deep voice drew her back to the present.

  “Not really. I was just thinking how much I’ve been feeling sorry for myself.”

  “You have cause.”

  “Do I really? Yes, I had a marriage that didn’t work. Whatever the reasons for it, that’s not exactly noteworthy. I decided to leave because he had started to hit me. A lot of women don’t get that choice, or if they do they can’t make it because they have kids to worry about, or no way to support themselves, or maybe they’re too terrified to leave. I left. That put me ahead of the game, not behind. But I was oh-so-sorry for myself. And then I felt even sorrier for myself when my friends told me I was being stupid and pretty much stopped talking to me.”

  “They did that?”

  “Yes. Some friends.”

  “Exactly.” He put his knife and fork down and gave her his full attention. “Small loss, apparently.”

  “Apparently. But that didn’t keep me from feeling wronged and deserted. So I stumbled along for most of a year holding a royal pity party, at least when I wasn’t so angry at Dean that I wanted my lawyer to make him hurt where it counts—in his wallet. It was ugly, Hank. I was ugly.”

  “I think you were probably just reacting normally.” He reached across the table and covered her fisted hand with his big one. Calluses, rough skin, warmth. She liked the way his hand felt. “Divorce can’t be easy, no matter why it happens.”

  “It’s not,” she agreed. “The first thing that hit me was I felt like such a failure because I couldn’t make it work. I mean, I’m one of those types who actually thinks marriage is forever.”

  “I am, too,” he said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t always. You didn’t know what kind of man Dean would turn out to be.”

  “No, I didn’t. But I still felt like a failure. The only reason I didn’t leave the first time he hit me was because I was sure I must have done something to deserve it, sure he wouldn’t do it again, and positive that if I just tried harder, things would get better.”

  “I’d think that’s pretty normal.”

  “Maybe. And I didn’t want my marriage to fail. I mean, that’s what divorce is—a failure. Maybe you’ve done everything you can, maybe you haven’t, but something gets broken, and it’s a failure.”

  “That’s a pretty strong word.”

  “What else would you call it?” She sighed, realizing that her chest was growing tight with a whole welter of emotions she could barely sort out. “One of us failed or both of us failed—what difference does it make? It meant admitting I’d been wrong about a lot of things. Facing the fact that I’d made a poor judgment. That for better or for worse wasn’t a touchstone I could live by.”

  “Hey,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand. “I don’t think that phrase was meant to apply to abuse.”

  “In the past it was.”

  He sighed, squeezed her hand again and let go, leaning back in his chair. “That was then. We’ve since come to the conclusion that no one should have to endure being beaten by a spouse. That it’s as much a crime as if a stranger did it. We do occasionally evolve.”

  The way he said it eased some of the tightness in her chest. “I guess.” She drew a deep breath, trying to let go of the strangling feelings. They eased, but only a bit. “I bounced back and forth a lot about it. Sometimes I hated myself. Sometimes I hated him. I guess some part of me will always wonder if I could have done something different and changed things.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  His tone yanked her out of her self-absorption. His face had once again tightened, and she wanted to kick herself for the inadvertent reminder of what he’d been through. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. I’ve been second-guessing myself for two years now. You know what? It doesn’t change a damn thing. Because no matter how much I question myself I always get the same answer. Believing there was a woman trapped in that building, I would still go into it.”

  She nodded, and now she reached for his hand, to cover it with hers and hold on tightly. “You would have. I can tell. Unless you had some way of knowing something different, you wouldn’t change your decision.”

  “Well, the same goes for you,” he said a trifle harshly. “You were young and in love. The information you had at the time didn’t warn you, did it?”

  She hesitated, bit her lip and shook her head. “No.”

  “Then stop it. Stop wondering if you could have changed anything. If there’s one thing I know for sure, that’s the path to insanity.”

  He rose from the table without another word, and limped quickly from the kitchen.

  Kelly felt about two inches tall. Her problems seemed so petty next to what had happened to him. Well, the ones she had been talking about, anyway. The idea that Dean wanted her dead still loomed pretty large on any scale, but the rest of it?

  Damn! She tossed her napkin on the table and rose, not at all sure what she was going to do, or if she could do anything. By falling back into self-pity mode, she’d opened a can of worms for Hank. She wished she could bite her tongue off.

  But it was too late now.

  Hank stood at the front bay window, watching the trees toss in the storm, listening to the rattle of large raindrops against the windowpane and the increasingly loud booms of thunder.

  His hips were screaming at him, his back was hammering a painful tattoo and even his knees seemed angry at him. A bitter thought drifted to the foreground, bitterness about his current condition. He’d just promised a woman he would protect her, but if he were to be honest, he couldn’t be sure he was physically capable of doing that anymore. The guy who had run into fires to save lives could no longer run across his own lawn with any confidence.

  Some hero. She was looking to him as if he were a lifesaver, sharing things with him she had shared with no one else, trusting him to keep her safe.<
br />
  Two years ago he could have been reasonably certain he could do that. Today he had no right to invite anyone to rely on his protection because, dammit, his body was no longer the reliable machine it had once been. He hated that. He hated that almost as much as he hated having lost Fran and Allan.

  And second-guessing. Hell, he’d done enough of that himself. He supposed he should have been more understanding of what Kelly was saying, but he knew that road she was walking and it didn’t do a damn bit of good.

  Once he had made peace with the fact that he would have gone into that building all over again under the same circumstances, he’d had to make peace with the rest of it. She needed to do the same.

  “Hank? I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He heard her come up beside him, but he wasn’t ready to look at her. Not yet. Not when he felt like such a sham himself.

  But then he felt her arm steal around his waist and give him a hug. He almost held his breath, hoping she didn’t pull away, as a huge rush of warmth ran through him.

  She didn’t pull away. He closed his eyes a moment, amazed at the trust she was showing him after all she’d been through. Maybe she’d moved on better than she realized.

  “You’re right about second-guessing,” she said after a few minutes. “Absolutely right.”

  “We do it anyway.”

  “But after a certain point, it’s a waste of time and energy, isn’t it? Because once you’ve learned what there is to learn, you should let it go.”

  Feeling oddly awkward, he slipped his own arm around her shoulders. It had been way too long since he’d embraced a woman this way, with a feeling of companionship. And it felt so damn good. The idea that he had no right to her trust seemed to be slipping away on a tide of need.

  “Letting go isn’t always easy,” he admitted. “And I had plenty of psychological help afterward. Unfortunately, we can’t go back and change our decisions. Sometimes if we’re honest with ourselves about what we knew when we made them, we know we’d do it all over again.”