by Janice Lynn
She’d checked on the girl’s mother and younger sister, who’d also been checked into the emergency department. Apparently, they’d gotten out of the fire much earlier than Keeley as their injuries had been minor and they’d arrived by private car.
The young mother had been allowed to see Keeley for a few minutes, then the worn-out woman and her toddler daughter had left the hospital with a friend as her businessman husband spent a lot of time working overseas.
Sarah couldn’t imagine what the mother was going through, to have lost her home, her things, and to have almost lost one of her daughters.
The woman had just left and, although Keeley wasn’t allowed visitors, Sarah planned to let Jude see the girl if he was still there.
A firefighter? Who would have believed the sexy man she lived next door to was an everyday hero who risked his life to save others?
Not her that morning, for sure.
Good grief, he could have been killed.
Paul, one of her favorite paramedics, had later brought in a pedestrian who’d been hit by a taxi. He’d gone on and on about his buddy Jude and what a real-life hero he was.
A real-life hero who was apparently as dog-tired as she was.
Stretched out in a chair, his eyes closed, Sarah took advantage of the opportunity to freely look at him.
As much as was possible for someone as unbelievably handsome as he was, he looked awful. His hair was matted to his head. He reeked of smoke and sweat and dirty man. His heavy overcoat was in the chair next to the one he slept in.
He needed a shower.
Which, of course, brought her brain back to that morning when he’d been squeaky clean and wrapped in a towel.
She closed her eyes.
No. No. No.
She did not want that image in her mind. Not now. Not when she looked at him and saw a man who’d risked his life to save a little girl.
Not when she saw someone who might have substance beneath those chiseled abs.
She didn’t want to like him.
He was a playboy.
Then again, maybe he went through so many women because of not wanting to get into a serious relationship due to his high-risk job.
No, she corrected herself again. No. No. No. She was not going to make excuses for his womanizing ways.
Wasn’t going to happen.
Only then he opened his eyes and caught her staring.
The intensity in his baby blues warned she might make lots of excuses for this man.
CHAPTER THREE
“KEELEY,” JUDE SAID, fighting a yawn as he sat up in the waiting-room chair.
Even as hyped up as he’d been from the fire search and rescue, he couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep. Then again, searching a burning building drained a man from the anxiety, the adrenaline, the extreme heat, the sweat. Sometimes after a rescue he’d feel so tired he thought he might sleep a week.
“Is she still alive?” He prayed so. He’d gotten to her as quickly as he could. He knew that. But sometimes as quick as a person could just wasn’t enough.
“Yes, she’s stable,” his neighbor told him from where she stood a few feet away. “It was touch and go for a short bit due to her pulmonary edema, but she responded to the medications and is holding her own.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Looking more than a little tired herself, Sarah sank into the chair opposite him and stared across the few feet separating them.
Which gave him the opportunity to study her face full on.
She really did have amazing eyes. And great cheekbones.
Her lips were full and perfectly bowed. Kissable.
Where had that thought come from?
“Actually, all the thanks go to you. I shudder to think what would have happened if you hadn’t found her.”
He knew what would have happened and that was why he did his job. He loved being a firefighter. Not that he could save every person, but he gave it his best. Always.
“Every firefighter’s nightmare. Not finding someone,” he admitted, raking his fingers through his matted hair. “The kind of stuff that messes with your head.”
Maybe he should have gone home, showered, then come back. He supposed that would have been better than passing out in a private waiting area. Yet he’d not been able to leave. Not until he’d known Keeley was okay.
Sarah’s plump lower lip disappeared between her teeth for a brief second, and then she asked, “Does it mess with your head, Jude?”
Her saying his name for the first time messed with his head.
Big time.
Which made no sense.
As hadn’t the fact he found her lips kissable.
She wasn’t the type of woman he messed around with. He preferred women who knew the score and were okay with that. Dr. Sarah Grayson didn’t seem the one-night-stand kind.
Yet he’d be lying if he didn’t admit there was something about her that appealed to him in a major way.
Must be the day he’d had and that despite the fact he’d chugged a couple of sports drinks, he still felt dry to the bone.
“Some days more than others,” he answered.
Today, for instance, everything was getting to him. The woman sitting across from him had intrigued him that morning.
She intrigued him now.
The in between had been a living hell and maybe she was an angel sent to redeem him.
Lord knew, he needed redeeming.
“Like today?” She read his mind.
He shrugged. “You trying to map out my psyche on the DSM-V, Doc?”
At his question, her brow arched. Then she offered up a small smile and it was as if the sun had come out on a cloudy day.
“I’m not that type of specialist,” she pointed out, the light shining in her eyes saying he wasn’t going to get a further answer to his question. “Do you want to see Keeley?”
“Can I?” He hadn’t expected to get to see the child. Not tonight when she was still so critical. He’d stayed to find out how she was and had then dozed off in exhaustion.
Odd, at the moment he felt oddly refreshed. Which was absolutely crazy because he was starved, dehydrated, and grimy as hell. He probably smelled like he’d been there, too.
Most of the women he knew would have been pinching their noses and ordering him to shower. Then again, most of the women he knew liked the wealthy Davenport side of him more than the real him firefighter side.
His neighbor didn’t currently look bothered by his physical state one way or the other. But that morning, when she’d raked those sea-green eyes over him, she’d been bothered. He’d seen it in the way she’d swallowed hard, in the way her pulse had throbbed at her throat just above her loose scarf, in the way she’d nervously wet her lips.
Sweet heavens, she’d just gulped and licked her lips again.
Which meant what exactly? He wasn’t sure. That she found him physically distracting even when he was a mess?
Why did that possibility make him feel all he-man?
“Isn’t seeing Keeley what you’ve waited for?” She answered his question with one of her own.
“Either that or I just needed a quick nap to regain my strength.”
“Busy night ahead?” Her sarcasm couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d taken out a billboard.
“Aren’t they all?” he answered, gauging her response. That he’d confused her was apparent on her lovely face.
She watched him from narrowed eyes. “If I didn’t already know the answer, I’d ask if you ever take anything seriously. Thanks to this evening, I know you do.”
“I should set the record straight, then. I only joined the fire department to get women.”
Her che
eks turned a bright pink, then she gave him a disgusted, I knew it look. “I figured as much.”
Jude stifled a chuckle at her defensive arm-crossing and chin-lifting. “Are you saying you think I’m shallow, Sarah?”
Cheeks still glowing, she rolled her eyes. “You like to tease, don’t you?”
Not since Nina.
The thought blindsided him and he almost grimaced, but kept from doing so at the last second. No way was he letting thoughts of Nina into his head again today. Not now. Not at the hospital.
Not when his doctor cousin, Charles, could be around.
So, instead of letting his mind go to the past, he focused on the woman sitting across from him, grateful for the fire in her eyes.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to liking how you respond.” He did like her intelligence, her quick wit, that spark in her eyes. He was used to being physically attracted to women. Women were beautiful creatures. But with Sarah the attraction was something more than her gorgeous eyes and amazing cheekbones. The flash in those eyes was what drew him in, made him want to know more about the woman beneath the deceptive outer layer.
A want he hadn’t felt since...nope, he wasn’t going to think of her.
“Why?” Sarah asked, studying him as if he were some gross bug under a magnifying glass.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not one of your women.”
He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. Hadn’t he just been thinking the same thing a few moments before?
His women lived in the moment, were experienced in the ways of the world, and were no more interested in anything beyond immediate pleasure than he was.
Unlike the scowling woman sitting across from him.
The scowling woman whose smile had lit up dark corners of his very being, an addictive feeling he’d like to sample again.
Although some dark corners might be best left in the shadows.
Unable to resist teasing her further, he waggled his brows. “Would you like to be?”
Her jaw dropped. “No!”
He gave a low laugh at her outrage. “That was quick. I think I’m offended. Is it my cologne?”
“Right.” She glared. “Because you’re so easily offended that a woman saying no just breaks your heart.”
She might be saying no, but her eyes were singing an entirely different tune. They were shooting fire of feminine awareness. Interesting.
“Sure you don’t want to think about it?” he teased, enjoying the blush in her cheeks.
“Positive. Some things a girl just knows.”
“Yeah?” He arched his brow. “There’s some things a woman just knows, too.”
Her gaze searched his and her voice cracked a little when she asked, “Such as?”
“How she responds to a man.” There were definitely sparks flying back and forth. He might have had a rough day but he wasn’t hallucinating the energy between them.
Not that he understood the chemistry, but he’d have to be brain dead not to recognize the man-woman pull.
“Don’t go confusing me with one of your bimbos,” she warned, chin notching upward. “I’m not interested in a guy like you.”
“A guy like me? Oh, yeah.” He grinned, refusing to be insulted. “We established that I’m shallow.”
Her gaze narrowed further, but the outraged look wasn’t working. Not when her lips twitched.
“I didn’t call you shallow,” she pointed out.
“You didn’t correct me.”
“Because you weren’t wrong,” she countered.
He arched his brow.
Rather than answer, she jumped up from the chair and gave him an expectant look. “Do you or do you not want to see Keeley with me?”
Standing, he grinned. “I most definitely want to see Keeley with you, Doc.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” He kind of liked the nickname. It fit. Plus, she needed a nickname to lighten her up a bit. “It’s as good a nickname as any.”
“You don’t need a nickname for me.”
“Sure I do, so I can call it out when you’re ninja-ing in and out of your apartment.”
“Ninja-ing?”
“That thing you do where you come and go and hope no one sees.”
“Whereas you hang around in the hallway long enough to make sure everyone sees you in your God-given glory?”
Lord, he loved her sharp wit, that whatever he threw out, she had a quick response. “Does that bother you?”
“Of course not. You can do whatever you want. In your apartment. With your bimbos.”
“They aren’t bimbos.”
“They’re not bright and upstanding citizens.”
“For all you know about them, they could be.”
“I know they spent the night with a man who used them so that checks bright right off their list of attributes.”
“Sex for mutual pleasure isn’t my using them any more than it is their using me.”
“So it’s a case of mutual using and that somehow makes it okay? Keep fooling yourself if you want, but there are some of us smart enough to know better.”
He was standing so close to her now that he was looking straight down into her eyes, was tempted to remove her glasses so he could more fully see into their depths.
“I suppose a really pessimistic, prudish person might see mutual pleasure that way.” He egged her on, liking the spark his words elicited.
“And who are you? Mr. Optimism? Going around spreading happiness and cheer?” she scoffed with an exaggerated eye roll. “More like spreading something else with how many different women I’ve seen come out of your apartment.”
His lips twitched. “You keeping tabs?”
“Hardly, but I’m not blind.”
Arguable with those ugly glasses she wore.
“For the record, I’m not spreading anything.” He wanted the record straight. He wouldn’t let himself delve into why it mattered, but he needed her to know the truth. “I’m a safety kind of guy. Always.”
“Who runs into burning buildings when everyone else is running out? Yeah, try selling me another one.”
“Someone has to do it.”
Her chin tilted upward and her gaze didn’t waver behind the thick glasses. “Good thing there’s you.”
“Yeah, good thing.”
* * *
A bone-weary Sarah ninja-ed down the hallway and stealthily let herself into her apartment, pausing in her open doorway to glance at Jude’s closed door.
So much had happened since that morning when he’d been standing in that doorway.
He’d been flirting with her at the hospital.
She should have checked him for hypoxemia-induced psychosis related to smoke inhalation.
Because no way was he in his right mind.
Or maybe it was her who wasn’t in her right mind.
Maybe she’d accidentally inhaled some anesthesia or hallucinogenic medication that was messing with her head.
Something was messing with her head.
More like someone.
Because Jude’s teasing and hot looks refused to leave her mind even long after he’d left the hospital.
For the rest of her shift and an hour into the next when she’d stayed to help catch up the overload of patients, she’d battled with the facts that Jude was a womanizer, an incurable flirt, heroic when he’d rushed into a burning building to save Keeley, and sweet when he’d waited at the hospital.
Heroic. Sweet. Not adjectives she’d have ever thought she’d attach to the incorrigible towel-wearing man from that morning.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced toward his closed apartme
nt door again. Was he home?
Should she check on him, make sure he was all right, that the smoke truly hadn’t gotten to him, that he’d rehydrated well?
Then again, he might not be alone and the absolute last thing she wanted was to see Jude Davenport with another woman twice in the same day.
Especially after he’d so blatantly flirted with her.
Especially after, despite her best attempts not to, she’d so blatantly liked his flirting.
So, her neighbor had a few redeeming qualities.
That didn’t mean they should become friends or have anything to do with one another.
They shouldn’t.
Best thing she could do was forget today had even happened and stay far, far away from the man at all costs.
Determined that she was going to do exactly that, Sarah quietly closed her apartment door.
She was going to shower, eat whatever she could find and quickly prepare, sleep, and not think about her neighbor.
* * *
After he’d left the hospital, Jude had returned to the fire hall, showered, filled out appropriate paperwork, then come home to make himself something to eat.
He’d had plans with friends, but had opted to cancel, deciding he’d rather have a simple meal at home, a glass of wine, relax, and enjoy his apartment’s amazing view of the city he loved so much.
Jude enjoyed cooking, enjoyed throwing ingredients together that pleased his senses and filled his stomach. He’d never been formally trained, but was pretty good. Even Nina had thought so.
Nina. She’d snuck into his thoughts too often today. Why?
Then again, thinking he could go to the hospital where Charles worked and not think of his cousin’s late wife was foolish. After all, hadn’t Jude introduced the woman he had been in love with to his cousin and she’d fallen head over heels for the emergency room doctor instead?
That Nina had fallen for Charles, rather than Jude, had never sat well, had ruined his friendship with Nina and left him on edge around his cousin. That feeling hadn’t gone away after Nina and Charles had married. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Nina trying to repair the damage to their friendship hadn’t helped. Feeling betrayed, angry, Jude had refused to have anything to do with her. They’d fought and never spoken again.