Flames of Love

by Erin Wright

  Dick Schmidt…

  Jaxson turned the name over in his mind. It seemed like he’d heard it somewhere, but damned if he could remember where. He’d met too many new people in the last six weeks to pin the name down.

  What if he’d actually met Dick himself? Jaxson shuddered at the idea. He could’ve shaken the man’s hand and not known who he was, or what he’d done to Sugar. A general feeling of disgust covered him from head to toe, like he’d just taken a bath in a mud bog.

  Sugar began to stir behind him, and Jaxson flipped around, hovering over her, pushing her hair out of her face. He saw then that her eyes were leaking – she’d still been crying, even passed out. His heart twisted with pain.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she wiped at them with the backs of her hands. “Where…what…” she said weakly. She tried to move, so Jaxson helped her sit up, putting a pillow behind her back so she could settle against the armrest of the couch comfortably.

  He knew the moment it all returned to her. Her pliant, warm body became stiff and unyielding, like she’d touched an electrical outlet. “Oh my God,” she cried, staring up at him in horror. “I can’t believe…I’m so sorry…you have to go. Why are you here? Go away!” She began beating at him with her fists, trying to punch and push him out of her life.

  He held his arms loosely around her, trying hard not to smother her, but also not leaving her alone. He wouldn’t move a muscle. Not when she needed him.

  Eventually, she wore herself out, and she sagged against him, defeated and exhausted. Hamlet whined his worry, nudging her leg with his nose, leaning up against the couch with his massive body weight. It was probably a good thing it was already shoved up against the living room wall, or no doubt his weight would’ve pushed it there anyway.

  “I’m here because you need me, and because despite what you think, nothing of what you told me has made me think less of you.”

  Dazed, Sugar stared up at him, winded and defeated. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’m a baby killer. You don’t have to pretend to be nice to me anymore.”

  He chuckled quietly at that. “Sugar, I’ve never pretended to be nice to you, and I’m not pretending now. You’re not a baby killer, darlin’. You were in an impossible relationship with an evil man, and you reacted how almost anyone would, I think.” He stroked her soft, straight brown hair away from her face as he looked down at her, taking in her bloodshot eyes and red nose and stark white cheeks in the dim lighting.

  He’d never seen such a beautiful sight in all his life.

  “Do you remember me telling you about my reaction to Kendra being pregnant?” He paused, waiting for her to respond. He wasn’t going to let that question go by as a rhetorical one. He wanted to make sure she remembered.

  She finally nodded quietly, staring up at him, not saying a word.

  “I didn’t want my boys, Sugar, and if Kendra would’ve lost Frankie at only a month along, I swear to you, I would’ve been glad for it.

  “I love my boys with all of my heart, but I’m not gonna lie and say that having them with Kendra has been easy. A part of me wishes that I could’ve waited to have them with someone more stable. Someone who I could love for the rest of my life.

  “But I can’t change what happened, so I just live with it.”

  “But you love them,” she protested, her voice cracking with pain. “I didn’t love my baby. I wanted it gone.”

  “I didn’t love them a month into Kendra’s pregnancies, though.” Jaxson picked up her hand and held it against him, trying to convey his admiration for her through his touch; by pushing it through his hand and up her arm, and into her heart. Could she feel how impressed and amazed he was by her? Her strength? Her kindness, despite all that had happened to her? The joy with which she looked at the world?

  He’d never met anyone like her, and he had to get her to understand that. He had to.

  “They were nothing but some cells floating around in my wife’s stomach at that point. I didn’t have an emotional attachment to them. I know it seems callous and cold, and maybe to someone who hasn’t been in those shoes, it is callous and cold. But you learn to love someone over time. Their very existence doesn’t guarantee that love. You’d known for sure that you were pregnant all of what, a couple of hours when you lost your baby?”

  She nodded, staring up at him, her eyes so large, they seemed to take up most of her face.

  “You can’t build an emotional bond in a couple of hours, Sugar. It just can’t happen. You felt what any human being would feel – trapped and in pain and worried about what this would mean for your future.”

  She was nibbling on her lower lip, still staring up at him, still not saying a word. He decided to switch tactics.

  “I’ve seen you with Hamlet. I’ve seen you with my boys. And I’ve seen you with me.” She laughed a little at that last nonsensical statement. “You are more loving than ten other women combined together. There’s nothing wrong with you. Tell me straight: Do you want to have kids? Someday in the future?”

  He was holding his breath, waiting for the answer to that question, and he didn’t know why he cared so much, because he sure as hell wasn’t ready to marry her, let alone have kids with her.

  But still, he wanted to know.

  “If someone can look past what I’ve done…I want to. I love children. Not teenagers so much – the mayor can keep his surly son,” Jaxson chuckled at that, “but I do want kids. I’ll just do my best to forgive them for turning into teenagers at some point.”

  Jaxson grinned at her, the first feeling of lightness since this whole debacle had started sweeping over him. “It is a lot to forgive them for,” he said dryly. “I like Aiden at this age. I figure he can just stay six forever.”

  “It would be nice.” Sugar smiled up at him, and he brought her hand to his lips, kissing the back of it, pouring his love into that kiss.

  “There’s nothin’ to forgive, baby,” Jaxson whispered, meaning every word of it. “Unless someone needs to forgive you for having awful taste in men, and actually marrying Dick to begin with. I suppose that’s something pretty difficult to overlook.”

  Instead of making her laugh like he’d been trying to, Sugar’s face shut down again. Like a curtain sweeping forward, her eyes went dark, the light that’d just started to reappear fading away into nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, confused. She shook her head, smiling the most painfully fake smile he’d ever seen in his life.

  “Nothin’,” she said. She leaned forward to pet Hamlet on the head, and the dog’s huge body shook with happiness, licking and nudging her hand, whining with joy that she seemed to be better.

  Better in Hamlet’s eyes, maybe, but not better in Jaxson’s. There was something still wrong. Something she was hiding from him.

  “What is it, Sugar? You’re lying to me, and I don’t know why. You don’t need—”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe enough is enough?” she snapped. Her back was rigid and she was staring at him, anger vibrating out of her. “We’ve talked enough today about Sugar’s messed up past. Can’t we pick another topic, one less painful? Maybe discuss the AIDS epidemic or the state of politics right now?”

  Jaxson snorted involuntarily with laughter at that one.

  “I’m tired, Jaxson,” Sugar said, less defensively this time. “Can we just leave this alone for now?”

  He smiled, trying to show through it alone how much he cared for her. “Of course,” he said softly. “I’m here, whenever you want to talk.”

  “Well, right now, I think we ought to at least let Hamlet out into the backyard. He’s probably in pain by this point.”

  Her loyal dog was simply sitting there, watching them talk, his body half laying against the couch as he took them in. He wouldn’t whine and scratch at the door until the situation was dire, not when Sugar was in distress. Jaxson already knew that about the giant-hearted dog.

  “C’mon, boy, let’s go outside,” Jaxson said, stan
ding and heading for the back door. Hamlet padded along beside him, excited to be able to relieve his bladder. Jaxson heard Sugar running the water in the bathroom as he shut the back door behind him and Hamlet. She was freshening up, which meant she was doing better.

  Which was good.

  Her refusal to tell him what was wrong gnawed at him, but as he watched Hamlet sniff through every snowdrift, looking for just the right one to christen, he told himself that she was right.

  Today had been a lot of pain. Too much pain, probably, for one day. Why hadn’t she gone to a counselor to get help dealing with all this? Why hadn’t she had any family support in leaving Dick’s sorry ass? How was it that Dick controlled all of the money – surely Sugar had worked, right?

  And being the judge’s son – was Dick like Angus? Did he use his father’s position in town to wreak havoc on it? Angus had an excuse – he was a teenager. Teens liked to wreak havoc no matter who their father was. But Dick was way past that stage, at least chronologically even if he wasn’t emotionally.

  He needed to find out more about Dick and the Schmidt family. There was a lot going on in this quiet mountain town that he didn’t know yet, but he planned to find out.

  Chapter 34

  Sugar

  “It’s so good to see you,” Emma whispered in Sugar’s ear as they embraced long and hard. Sugar pulled back and grinned, her eyes shining with tears – tears of joy.

  “It really is,” Sugar admitted. “Why is it that you live all the way over in Colorado again?”

  Emma took her arm and they began wandering down the hallway towards Emma’s bedroom, Hamlet following along behind them. Emma’s parents had left her room alone (except for moving a sewing machine and several hundred yards of fabric into it) when she’d left for college. She still had a place to stay when she came home to visit, all these years later.

  Sugar tried to ignore the comparisons to her own family, although she was hard-pressed to do so, since they were so stark. It started and ended with Emma being loved by her parents, whereas with Sugar…

  Well, she wasn’t. There was no beating around the bush with that one.

  “There isn’t exactly a plethora of architecture jobs here in the valley,” Emma said with a laugh. “Unless you count potato cellars, which I absolutely do not.”

  “Have you even tried to find a job in Franklin?” Sugar persisted, settling down on Emma’s fluorescent orange bedspread. Sugar hated the color with a passion, but since Emma hadn’t exactly put her in charge of choosing her linens back when they were in high school, she’d always kept that particular thought to herself.

  She was just grateful that Emma was using her week’s vacation time to come home and visit, instead of going somewhere exciting, like New York or Paris. Having her home was simply too wonderful for words. Although Sugar loved being around Jaxson, and of course it was fun to hang out with the boys when they came up to visit, they were no replacement for her best friend.

  “Franklin is too small,” Emma said with a wave of her hand. “So, I hear through the grapevine that you’re not madly in love with my brother.” She shot Sugar a pouting look, and Sugar let out a strangled bark of laughter.

  “You are as subtle as a nuclear bomb, you know that?” Sugar said dryly.

  “With just as much tact,” Emma agreed freely. “So who’s this fireman dude giving my brother competition?”

  Sugar held up her hand, ticking off fingers as she talked. “For roughly the 472nd time, your brother and I are never gonna happen. He doesn’t like me that way, and I don’t like him. We’re friends, and only friends. Two, the fireman dude’s name is Jaxson.”

  “Like Jackson Hole?” Emma asked, leaning over the side of the bed and petting Hamlet’s massive head. He’d conveniently kept it in reach, in case anyone wanted to take advantage of all of this free-hand time, and Emma had apparently fallen for his sad puppy-dog eyes that said no one was using their hands for the betterment of the world. At the touch of Emma’s hand, his eyes closed blissfully and his tail began thumping against the hardwood floors.

  Hopefully Chris wasn’t in his bedroom in the basement, listening to that racket. Sugar sent out a silent apology to the teen if he was.

  “Close. J-A-X instead of J-A-C-K,” she told her best friend. “Jaxson Anderson. He was a firefighter for Boise and then moved here to become the new fire chief.”

  “And raise everyone’s taxes in the process,” Emma said with a small chuckle.

  “Damn, you really don’t miss a beat in Denver, do you? Is there a special Gossip Express that instantly sends every bit of Long Valley gossip hurtling across the US?”

  “You only get the secret password when you have the guts to move out of this place,” Emma said, laughing.

  Sugar shook her head in mock-disbelief. This town really was unbelievable.

  “I guess Chief Horvath was volunteer only,” Sugar told her, “he was paid $100 per call-out and paid a couple of hours a month to do paperwork and whatever, but yeah, pretty much just volunteer. So when the city council voted to bring Jaxson in full-time…you should’ve heard some of the customers in the bakery. You’d think Jaxson had gone house to house, robbing people blind just because he hated them.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “I can imagine. To be honest, I’m surprised the Sawyer City Council did it. Are they sick of the job and just want to be booted out of office already?”

  “Jaxson said that the state pushed them to do it; either they hired someone full-time, or started paying huge fines every year. Apparently, Sawyer was the largest town in Idaho to have a volunteer fire chief. Most towns this size had gone to at least a part-time chief well before now.”

  “I have to say, Sugar, I’ve never seen you take such interest in the politics of a small town before.” The words were teasing, but Emma’s tone was not. She was staring at Sugar seriously, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

  Sugar shrugged, staring down at her hands. She only had a high school diploma, and as Dick had reminded her many a-time, she was too dumb to go to college anyway. Not like Emma.

  It was true that it was strange for her to notice city politics at all, but then again, she’d never dated a fire chief before, either. “Well, obviously I’d know this sort of thing,” she protested lightly. “It’s all just information that has to do with Jaxson, you know?”

  “You were married to the judge’s son previously,” Emma pointed out reasonably, “and at that point, I’m not even sure if you could’ve named the mayor, let alone discussed what the state policy is on the employment of fire chiefs.”

  “Jaxson just talks to me when he comes over after work, and I listen. It’s not like I’m some political genius.” It’s not like I’m smart like you are.

  Those words stayed unspoken, hanging in the air between them, pushing the air out of the room. Sugar studied her hands intently, hoping that Emma would leave the topic alone.

  She couldn’t.

  She wouldn’t be Sugar’s best friend if she weren’t just as stubborn as Sugar was.

  “You could go to college now,” Emma said quietly, urging her on. “I know you’d do well. Just because Dick says that you’re too dumb to make it at college doesn’t mean it’s actually true. He said a lot of things that weren’t true.”

  Sugar shook her head, looking up and smiling slightly at her best friend of ten years. “Truthfully, I don’t know what I want to be. You’ve always had these grand ideas and dreams of constructing elaborate bridges and beautiful buildings. I haven’t.” She shrugged. “I’d thought I’d figure out what I wanted to be when I went to college, but of course, that didn’t happen and…I guess I’m just past that stage in my life, you know? I’m happy now. Being with Jaxson, getting to know his sons, working with your brother, walking Hamlet…it’s a quiet life, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fulfilling.”

  Emma screwed up her mouth, not believing her but clearly not wanting to argue any further.

  “What about you?” Sugar asked,
wanting to change the subject. “Your texts have been sorely lacking in male details. Any hotties in Denver?”

  “There was this one guy,” Emma said, a scowl flitting across her face, “and I was just sure he was the one, you know? And then…turns out, he was married.”

  “Bastard!” Sugar yelped, staring at her best friend in horror.

  “Pretty much. He even talked about marrying me. One night, he got all serious and I was sure a proposal was coming, and then he starts telling me about his wife and kids and how he feels so much guilt for cheating on them with me, but if I’ll just hang in there, he was totally planning on divorcing his horrible wife and then he’d marry me.

  “So it was a marriage proposal of sorts, but not exactly the kind I was looking for.”

  “What did you do?” Sugar breathed.

  “Kicked him in the nuts, told him to never call me again, and walked home.”

  Sugar burst out laughing, throwing herself backwards on the bed. “Of course you did,” she said through the laughter, wiping at the tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh Emma…”

  Emma shot her a naughty grin. “But there is this one guy…”

  As Sugar and Emma chatted through the night, only getting up occasionally to let Hamlet out into the backyard or get a snack to eat, Sugar couldn’t help but compare herself to Emma. Emma wouldn’t have put up with Dick’s bullshit; not for one minute. She was bold and brash and didn’t hold back. She wasn’t a people pleaser. She saw what she wanted and she went after it.

  Sugar was never going to be that way, no matter how hard she tried, and that was a fact.

  Chapter 35

  Jaxson

  Jaxson opened the front door to the bakery, letting the smells and warmth wash over him like always. Damn, he loved this place.