A Firefighter in Her Stocking

by Janice Lynn

  It was a low blow. Jude knew it was a low blow. He’d like to retract the stupid words, but couldn’t.

  Staring at him in wide-eyed horror, Sarah’s jaw dropped. “Did you really just say that?”

  Yeah, he had. He shouldn’t have. His words had been crass and hateful and stupid.

  What was wrong with him?

  He’d felt like the luckiest man on earth right up until Vanessa had called him. How could going to a party to celebrate Charles’s engagement throw him so far off center?

  Make his head cloudy and old hurt, old fears, abound?

  Or was it how happy he’d been a few hours ago that was getting muddled up with the past that was messing with his head?

  “While you think about what you just said, I’m going to give my congratulations to Charles and Grace.” With that quiet scolding, Sarah gave him another disapproving look, then walked over to hug Grace and kiss Charles on the cheek.

  Jealousy erupted within Jude the likes of which he’d never known. Irrational jealousy because he knew Sarah wasn’t attracted to Charles.

  He also knew that Charles was in love with Grace.

  Yet jealousy blinded him.

  Just as it had before he’d opened his mouth and spewed stupidity.

  Blinded him.

  To rational thought.

  To reason.

  To everything.

  He found himself behaving with even more stupidity, because before he knew it he was at Sarah’s side, wishing his cousin and Grace a mumbled congrats, then guiding Sarah away from the party.

  “We’re leaving.”

  She squared her shoulders and looked ready to insist on staying. She must have seen the finality in his demand because she narrowed her gaze and said, “Fine.”

  The taxi ride to their apartments was silent. Not a silence of gleeful anticipation as it had been the night before, but just stone-cold quiet that dug more and more distance between them.

  Sarah was upset and well within her rights to be.

  He was acting like a jerk, knew it, but couldn’t seem to rein in whatever devil drove his lapse into insanity.

  When they reached their apartment doors, she didn’t look to him in question, just took out her key and let herself into her apartment. She didn’t invite him in, but left the door wide open, so he followed.

  She dropped her coat, bag, and scarf onto the sofa, then turned. “Okay, we’re away from that ‘damn party’. I think it’s time you tell me what is going on between you and your cousin.”

  “What makes you think you have a right to demand anything of me?”

  She flinched and Jude hated his words, hated that he’d hurt her. Again. Hated that he felt the way he did, that his insides were black.

  Could betrayal and guilt eat away a man’s reason?

  “Fine. No arguments from me. I have no rights where you are concerned.” She gestured to the door they’d just walked through. “Leave.”

  Pain ripped through him. He shut his eyes. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t? Are you kidding me? Don’t?” She practically screamed. At least it felt that way. In reality, her voice wasn’t much higher than normal. It was her tone, the hurt, the anger, the seething, the fear and uncertainty, the total disillusionment, all negatives that he’d caused.

  Just as he had with Nina. The argument they’d had rushed through his mind. He’d been a jerk then, too, when Nina had tried to salvage their friendship.

  He wasn’t good at this relationship thing. Maybe that was why he did one-night stands.

  No, he knew why he did one-night stands.

  That had been abundantly clear when he’d seen Charles. He didn’t want to get attached, to care again, ever.

  Because he didn’t want to get hurt, again.

  He used Nina as a shield, a defense, a reminder to never let himself care.

  He’d failed.

  He cared about Sarah.

  He didn’t want an argument to be his last conversation with Sarah as it had been with Nina.

  Which was why he was going to have to admit some things he’d never admitted to anyone, never said out loud.

  “Don’t make me go,” he began. When she looked ready to toss him out anyway, he rushed on. “At least, not without letting me explain.”

  “You owe me no explanations,” she bit out, her gaze shooting daggers. “We’ve already established that.”

  He’d done that, caused her anger, her lashing out, and he deserved her to toss him out rather than hear him.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did, Sarah.”

  “Actually, you should have, because I’d gotten everything all tangled up in my head and thought you actually had feelings for me, that I was different from the female parade coming out of your bedroom. Ha,” she scoffed, pacing across the room and shaking her head in dismay. “What a fool I was.”

  “You weren’t a fool.”

  “I wasn’t smart.”

  He took a deep breath and said what had to be said to break through her ire and disillusionment.

  “I was in love with Charles’s wife.”

  As he’d expected, Sarah’s expression changed, went from hurt and angry to stunned.

  “What?”

  “I loved Nina.” There. He’d said it. Admitted the truth out loud. For the first time ever.

  To Sarah.

  Probably not the best person to admit that particular truth to, but he’d never been tempted to tell anyone else. Besides, how else could he explain his unacceptable behavior at Charles and Grace’s engagement party? To make Sarah understand the dark swirling emotions inside him?

  She stared, wide-eyed and with a mixture of pity and abhorrence. “But that’s...”

  “I introduced Nina to Charles. I brought her to a party with me and was showing her off to my family, thinking our friendship was blossoming into something straight out of a fairy tale. Instead, I got to watch as I introduced my cousin, as she blushed, as she looked at him with an excitement in her eyes that had never shown there when she looked at me. I watched while the woman I was planning to spend the rest of my life with fell all over herself for my cousin, that ‘most excellent man’, as you call him.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown Sarah’s description of Charles at her, but the words spewed from his mouth.

  “I got to watch while she married him, while they shared excitement over their announcement they were going to be parents. I got to grieve in silence when she died giving birth to his children and to fall apart later, in private, when I could let out the pain in my heart. So you’ll understand that seeing my cousin fawn over another woman, betraying Nina’s memory, then listening to you go on about him, well, tonight wasn’t the best of nights.”

  “Why did you say you’d go?” Sarah whispered, dropping against the back of the sofa, as if her legs would no longer support her.

  Good question. Why had he agreed to something so idiotic?

  “Because you wanted me to,” he said truthfully. Maybe he’d also wanted to see Charles and Grace with his own eyes, because he hadn’t quite been able to believe Charles could love again after Nina. Jude’s insides shook more than a little as he continued. “You gave me something precious and I wanted to give you something you wanted. Agreeing to go to that party was the only thing I knew that you wanted from me.”

  * * *

  Jude had felt guilty that he’d taken Sarah’s virginity, had felt obligated to give her something in return, had decided not to make her suffer through another party as the odd man, woman, out.

  Great.

  If Sarah had known how the night would unfold, she’d have begged him not to go.

  Because now so much made sense.

  Jude wasn’t in love with her. She wasn�
�t the one.

  He was in love with a ghost.

  Nina Davenport.

  Sarah remembered the woman, had always understood why Charles had so completely loved her. She’d been beautiful, gracious, kind, intelligent, and had glowed with happiness. Sarah remembered how much joy Nina had shone with at her pregnancy, how she’d vocalized her happiness that she and Charles were going to be parents, how everyone at the hospital had mourned her unexpected death after the twins had been born. How Charles had grieved his loss.

  Somewhere in the privacy of the playboy persona he exuded to the world, Jude had been grieving his loss, too.

  Because he’d been in love with Nina.

  Was still in love with her.

  Sarah could hear it in his voice, in the pain that was still so very raw.

  “I... I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t expect you to say anything.” He raked his fingers through his hair, glancing around her living room without really looking. “I just felt you needed to know why tonight was the way it was.” He closed his eyes. “Why I’m the way I am.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest at the gravity of their conversation, at all the implications of his admission, of all her silly hopes and dreams that had taken life over the past few days and how they’d come crashing back to cold, harsh reality. She’d known better. She had. Stupid, silly her. A lifetime of preaching from her mother and yet a few flirty words from a sexy neighbor and she’d gone all stupid. Had gone from being content with her successful career to thinking maybe she could have more.

  She swallowed her wounded pride and shook her head. “You failed, then, because I don’t understand your behavior any more now than I did then. Nina is gone. Charles has every right to love again. It’s what she would have wanted him to do.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you blame him that he has?”

  He hesitated just long enough that, no matter what words came out, Sarah knew the real answer.

  “It’s obvious you do. Because you can’t move on, you condemn Charles because he has.” She didn’t need a degree to know that she’d hit the nail on the head. Jude was still in love with Nina and seeing Charles happy had undone him. “Maybe you need counseling.”

  “I don’t need counseling.”

  “Having sex with half the females in Manhattan hasn’t cured you.”

  His gaze narrowed. “I don’t need counseling.”

  “You’re grieving another man’s wife. You need something.”

  “She wasn’t his wife when I fell in love with her,” he reminded her, sounding defensive. “She didn’t even know him.”

  “She chose him.”

  “You say that as if you think I don’t know that.” Anger laced his words. “You think I don’t? I lived it every single day. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Sure it does. You’re still living it.” She said the words softly, but they echoed around the room as if she’d screamed them from a speaker phone.

  Jude opened his mouth to say more, but his cellphone rang.

  It wasn’t a normal ring but the specially programmed one that she’d never heard but which he’d warned her about. It meant there was an emergency that required him to get to the fire hall as soon as possible.

  He pulled his phone out, glanced at it as if he considered ignoring the call, which surprised her, but then let out a resigned sigh as he touched the screen to answer.

  Which was just as well.

  There was no reason for him to ignore the call. He was in love with a ghost and Sarah couldn’t compete with a dead woman. Competing with the beauty queens he usually dated had been intimidating enough. Competing with the memory of lovely Nina Davenport, well, that didn’t even tempt.

  Jude loved Nina.

  Those three little words summarized everything. There was nothing else that needed to be said. Or done.

  He hung up his phone. “I’ve got to go, but this conversation isn’t over.”

  He was wrong. It was over.

  They were over.

  He was in love with another woman.

  Maybe that wouldn’t matter to some women, but it mattered to Sarah. She wasn’t going to have sex with a man, have a relationship of any kind with a man, knowing that he loved another woman, that he’d given his heart to a woman who hadn’t even wanted it, and that Sarah would always be second best, if she was even that.

  Maybe when she’d started this she’d had no real expectations from him, but over the past few weeks, expectations had sprouted roots and blossomed. Expectations that, no matter how much she hoped and prayed, could never be met because the man she’d fallen for loved a woman who would never grow old, would never falter or mess up, because she was eternalized in his mind as the perfect woman. Even in real life, Nina had been as close to that as a living breathing woman came.

  Sarah couldn’t compete with that. She wouldn’t.

  Better to cut her losses now and move on before she became so entangled with Jude that she couldn’t function without him, before every warning her mother had ever preached came to be.

  He must have seen that truth in her eyes, because rather than leave he hesitated. “Sarah, I—”

  “Please, don’t.” She stopped him. “There’s no need. We both got what we wanted and there’s nothing more that needs to be said. Not from you and not from me.”

  “I disagree. I—”

  “You need to go,” she reminded him. “Goodbye.”

  They both knew she meant for more than just the moment.

  Still, he hesitated, then seemed to accept the reality of whether it was now or Christmas, as he’d previously suggested, they would be saying goodbye. Apparently he agreed now was as good a time as any, because he nodded.

  “If that’s how you feel. Bye, Sarah.”

  With that, he left. No goodbye kiss, no hug, no “It’s been fun”, nothing. Just bye.

  Sarah stared at the door, waiting for the tears, waiting for the misery to rip at her chest and tear her to bits. It was coming. She could feel it.

  Oh, she’d survive. She’d move on. She’d go back to her rather mundane existence, but on the inside she’d never be quite the same.

  Thinking Manhattan would forever be changed as well, she walked over to her floor-to-ceiling view of the city, meaning to stare out, to draw comfort from what usually filled her with inner peace, but instead her reflection in the glass caught her eye.

  The reflection that was very different from that of the drab woman who’d done her best to blend into the background a mere three weeks ago.

  No, she would not go back to her mundane existence.

  She would live, would embrace life, would embrace the city she loved, and maybe if she got lucky, someday she would find someone who could love her the way Jude loved a woman who’d died years ago.

  If not, she would still embrace the woman reflected back at her. She wouldn’t hide herself away.

  Not because of her mother’s warnings, not because of bad dating experiences, not ever again.

  She couldn’t imagine ever wanting anyone the way she wanted Jude, but they said time healed all wounds. It looked as if she would be testing that theory.

  The first tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t fight it, knew more were to follow, and they would have, except her phone buzzed.

  Was it...? No, it couldn’t be. Neither did she really want it to be. Even if he wanted to continue their affair, she couldn’t. The longer she let this go on, the more difficult recovering would be. She’d done the right thing.

  She walked to her purse, pulled out her phone. The hospital. That only meant one thing.

  With Charles and Grace’s engagement party, a lot of the ER staff were at the party so staffing was tight. Her phone wouldn’t be rin
ging unless she was needed.

  Just as well, a busy night in the emergency room would keep her distracted from her broken heart.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JUDE AND ROGER made their way up a stairwell, one of the few still accessible in the burning apartment complex.

  It wasn’t known yet what had started the fire in the older high-rise, but the fire had quickly escalated and now encompassed several floors.

  More than a hundred people had been evacuated, but there were many more still missing. How many wasn’t even known at this point. Several had called in to 911 and were trapped on a particular level where part of the floor above had caved in.

  A communication center worker had been on the phone with an elderly lady in one of the apartments for about ten minutes prior to losing the connection.

  They’d cleared out known victims on lower floors, getting them to the stairwell, then had been informed of the elderly couple and at least one other who were trapped a few floors above them.

  Command hadn’t ordered them out yet. “Yet” being the key word because it was coming. Roger and Jude had taken off up the stairwell that so far was still passable. Jude prayed it stayed that way, that they could use it to get the rest of the tenants out.

  At least two had died in the fire already. Jude didn’t want there to be a third added to that number and Lord forbid more than that.

  But this building had him on high alert. Not that he wasn’t with every fire, but tonight every instinct told him he shouldn’t be there.

  Probably his stupid heart whining that he’d walked away from Sarah.

  That he’d left with Sarah thinking that he was still in love with Nina.

  He wasn’t.

  He wasn’t in love with Nina.

  How freeing it was to think that. To know that.

  He was no longer in love with a woman he could never have.

  At least, he hoped he wasn’t.

  Because the walls Sarah had been throwing between them tonight sure weren’t reassuring. Far, far from it.

  How quickly she’d thrown their relationship away.

  That bothered him.

  But it was his own fault.

  She believed he was in love with another woman. A woman she couldn’t fight against or even think ill of.