by Susan Stoker
Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. She did feel like that. Exactly like that.
“If Chief is that man, hold on tight and don’t let go. So what if he’s bossy. So what if he’s over the top when it comes to your safety. Is that really a bad thing? As long as he doesn’t chain you to a post in his basement and not let you go outside, that is.”
Sophie smiled at her friend through her tears. “Am I wrong to want this s-so badly?” she asked quietly.
“No. Absolutely not,” Quinn said immediately.
“But he’s s-so good looking. What in the world is he doing being interested in m-me? Do you think he’s being honest?”
“Why shouldn’t you get the hot guy? You’re beautiful, Soph. With your blonde hair and blue eyes, you’re like an angel come to Earth.”
“Who can’t talk normally to s-save her life.”
Quinn waved her hand, dismissing her self-deprecating words. “I’m not saying everything will be smooth sailing, but if you want this, grab hold and don’t let go. You deserve to have the most protective, gorgeous, virile man on the planet.”
Sophie smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re right.”
“I know.”
The two women smiled at each other for a beat. “You’re going to find your own protective, gorgeous, virile m-man, Quinn.”
She shrugged. “He’ll have to look past my face first.”
“He will,” Sophie insisted. “Just like you s-said, why s-shouldn’t you get the hottest guy on the planet? S-So you have a birthmark. A big one. Who cares? It doesn’t define you, just as m-my s-stuttering doesn’t define m-me. I think we need to m-make a vow right here and now. Anyone who doesn’t s-see us for who we are—s-strong, intelligent, beautiful women—can fuck off.”
Quinn chuckled. “Done.”
Sophie hugged her friend. “Love you, Quinn.”
“Back atcha. Now go,” Quinn said, pulling back and turning Sophie toward the door. “I have to look at skin cell samples and you need to get on with making miracles happen at the hospital next door.”
“Yes, m-ma’am,” Sophie told her.
“I can’t wait to hear all about dinner on Monday. I’ll be thinking about you.”
“Thanks. I s-suppose I’ll know m-more about what kind of relationship Chief wants after S-Sunday.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her phone vibrated with another text. Sophie looked down, read the words, then grinned. She turned the screen so Quinn could read it.
* * *
Chief: That last text sounded rude. Let me try it again. How about, please let me know you made it to work all right. I worry about you.
* * *
Quinn smiled. Big. “Oh yeah. That’s the kind of protective and bossy I’d kill to have. Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.”
“Later, Quinn.” Sophie pushed open the door to the lab and as she walked down the hall, sent Chief a text letting him know she made it to work with no issues.
* * *
Chief looked down at his phone and smiled at the text he’d just received.
* * *
Sophie: I got here with no issues. Thank you for worrying about me. It feels nice. Headed over to visit Diontray and his mom. He seems better after you talked to him. Thanks. Have a good day. Be safe.
* * *
“That her?” Crash asked as he and Chief prepared breakfast.
Chief put his phone back in his pocket and nodded at his friend. “Yeah. I just sent her a short note. There was that big wreck on the interstate this morning and I wanted to make sure she got to the hospital all right.”
Crash leaned a hip against the counter and smirked at Chief.
“What?”
“You like her.”
“I do. And?” Chief asked, not concerned in the least at the ribbing from Crash.
“Nothing. I’m just pleased.”
Chief paused in stirring the eggs on the stove and faced his friend. “You got something to say, I can tell. Go on.”
“Just that I owe you, man. Everything. You helped Adeline when she needed someone to have her back at that conference, and when her asshole boss went ape-shit crazy. You ever need anything…me to take a shift for you, escort her somewhere if you can’t, double-date, whatever it is…I’m there.”
“Appreciate it.” Chief turned back to the eggs.
“That’s it?” Crash asked with a hint of laughter in his tone.
“Yup. Unless you need me to throw my arms around you and declare my undying love, that’s it.”
Crash no longer stifled his laughter. “I think we’re good.”
Chief nodded.
“One more thing.”
Chief’s lips quirked up.
“Next weekend, I’m having a thing at my place. Adeline is going stir crazy. She’s doing great after the surgery, but she’s been reluctant to go too far from the house because of the horrid headaches she’s been having.”
Chief turned to his friend at that. “She okay? What do the doctors say?”
“It’s all good,” Crash said immediately. “They say it’s a side effect from the surgery. And Adeline says she would much rather have the headaches than the seizures.”
“They gonna stop?”
“Hopefully, yeah. They’ve already decreased in intensity and frequency.”
“Good.” Chief turned his attention to the eggs. “And of course I’ll be there.”
“Think Sophie would want to come?”
Chief’s head came up at that. He pinned his friend with his intense gaze. “I don’t know. I can ask her.”
“Adeline would love to meet her. Apparently, she talked to Beth and heard all about how she helped her the other day when she had her thing.”
Chief took a deep breath. “Beth liked her?”
“Yeah, she did.”
Chief let out his breath slowly. It wasn’t that he was worried…exactly…about the other women liking Sophie. Okay, yeah, he was. He didn’t think Sophie was the kind of person who would be judgmental about others, not with her stutter, but sometimes women just didn’t click. And he really wanted not only his friends, but their women to like Sophie. He wasn’t a very demonstrative man, but he loved his friends and coworkers. He relied on them to have his back when they were at a fire, as they relied on him.
If their women didn’t get along, it would be…hard. Really hard. “I’ll ask her if she wants to go for a while.”
“Cool,” Crash said.
They were quiet as they finished preparing the eggs, bacon, and hash browns for the squad who was working that day. Just before they were going to call their friends in to eat, Crash asked, “It’s scary, isn’t it? Wanting a woman so badly, but having no clue what’s in her head and if she’s going to want the same thing as you?”
Chief nodded. “Terrifying.”
Crash slapped him on the back and told him, “Whatever you do, don’t let misunderstandings stand in the way of what you want.”
“Already figured that shit out,” Chief mumbled.
Crash chucked. “I guess you did. Hang in there. It gets better.”
“It does?”
“Okay, not better. I always worry I’ll say the wrong thing to Adeline and she’ll get upset. Not mad, I can deal with that, but upset. I can’t stand to see her cry.”
Just the thought made Chief’s gut twist.
“I see you’re gonna be the same way,” Crash told his friend.
Chief shrugged and tried to banish the mental image of Sophie looking at him with tears streaming down her face. God. He would much rather she be pissed at him than have her crying because of something he said or did.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” Crash said. “It’s gonna happen, but hopefully not this weekend.”
“Yeah. It better not,” Chief said under his breath. He’d thought about making her dinner, but wasn’t sure what Sophie might want to do after they ate. He’d planned to take it by ear, but the more he thought about
it, the more nervous he got.
He thought back to the short text he’d received from Sophie and tried to relax. She’d thanked him for worrying about her. As if he couldn’t not worry about her. He’d make sure not a day went by that she didn’t know he was thinking about her. Chief knew he wouldn’t have to make much effort to do that either, because when he wasn’t knee deep in a fire or at a scene, he was worrying about her. She deserved to know that she was first and foremost in his mind.
He knew he needed to go in easy though. He didn’t want to seem like a crazy stalker, but after the life he’d led growing up, he wanted Sophie to have no doubts about how important she was to him.
He heard his friends as they woke up and began to get ready for the day at the fire station. Smiling to himself, Chief turned to greet them as they came in for breakfast. He couldn’t wait for Sunday.
Chapter 7
Sophie swung her head around when there was a knock at her door on Sunday evening. “Crap,” she muttered. “Who could that be?” Looking at her watch, she saw that she had about five minutes before she was supposed to be at Chief’s house.
She semi-stomped to the door, ready to get rid of whatever solicitor was out there so she could get on with her date, and froze after she whipped it open.
Chief was standing there. Smiling. With a bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“Uh…hi,” Sophie said.
“Hi,” he returned, and held out the flowers.
Sophie took them and automatically brought them up to her nose and inhaled. The perfumed scent filled her nose and she smiled. Her head tilted to the side and she asked, “What are you doing here? I was about to head over. Not s-sure I’d be able to find it?” She smiled to let him know she was teasing.
“If we didn’t live next door to each other, I would’ve picked you up. I didn’t want this to feel any less than a real date, so here I am.”
Wow. That was nice.
“That’s nice,” she said, voicing the thought running through her head.
Chief shrugged. “You want to put those in water?”
“Oh! Yes. You want to come in?”
Chief stepped inside her house and shut the door behind him as she headed for the kitchen. Sophie hadn’t expected him to be seeing her house, the date was at his place after all, but she wasn’t embarrassed by her space.
There was a small dining room off the kitchen, to the left of the front door. She never really used the area. It had a medium-sized table with four chairs. That was all that was in the room. She’d cleaned off the stuff that had accumulated on it, mostly junk mail, the day before.
Down a short hallway, the house opened up into a large room that included the kitchen, a small nook with a window, where Sophie had placed a two-seater table, and the living area. She had several bookshelves stuffed with books, knickknacks, and photos. The couch held a few pillows, as well as a blanket draped over the back. The coffee table in front of the sofa had a few odds and ends on it and there was a large rug covering the wood floor in front of the television.
Sophie glanced at the space as she headed for the kitchen to find a vase for the beautiful flowers, and noticed a pair of her shoes lying in the middle of the floor, as well as an empty glass on the coffee table.
“I tried to pick up all m-my extra crap lying around. Guess I m-missed a few things.”
Chief shrugged and smiled at her. “It’s no problem. You weren’t expecting me.”
Sophie felt the butterflies in her stomach fluttering. She could hardly believe she was about to spend the evening with Chief. The neighbor she’d had a crush on since he’d moved in. She finished fiddling with the flowers, then walked over to the small nook and put them in the middle of the table. “They look beautiful there. Thank you.”
“You’re beautiful,” Chief responded.
Sophie’s gaze swung to Chief and she caught her breath at the look on his face. She took a moment to check him out. It was obvious he’d gone to quite a bit of effort to look nice. He was wearing a pair of black slacks and a pale green button-up shirt. The first couple of buttons were undone and she could see a hint of chest hair peeking out. He’d rolled up the sleeves to his elbows and somehow that seemed sexier to her than if he’d not been wearing a shirt at all.
His hair was held back in the ever-present ponytail at the nape of his neck, and she could smell his aftershave from where she was standing. Yes, it was official. She definitely had the hots for her neighbor.
“You look very handsome yourself,” she told him with a shy smile.
“Come ’ere,” Chief said softly, holding an arm out, inviting her into his space.
As if in a trance, Sophie took a few steps to get closer to him, and sighed as his hand landed on her hip and he pulled her the rest of the way into him.
His head dropped and he brushed his lips against her temple, then her cheek, then her lips. Moving back just far enough so they no longer were plastered together, he said, “I’ve been looking forward to tonight ever since you said you’d come over.”
“M-Me too,” Sophie admitted.
She felt his hand tighten at her waist then he stepped back and held out his hand to her. “Shall we?”
Smiling, Sophie placed her hand in his and shivered in reaction when he squeezed her fingers. She followed along behind him as he led the way to her front door. Her smile never dimmed as he held out his hand for her keys and locked it. She let him pocket her keys since she was wearing a skirt with nowhere to put them. Chief escorted her down her front walk to the sidewalk in front of both their houses, then to his own walkway, which led to his house.
“Why didn’t we just go across the grass?” Sophie asked.
“Because it’s damp. I didn’t want your beautiful shoes to get messed up,” Chief told her immediately.
“Oh.” Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d bought her “beautiful shoes” at the local discount shoe place. It wouldn’t have mattered if they got a little wet or not. But the way he was taking care of her felt too good for her to ruin the gesture in any way.
Chief arrived at his house and opened the door. Then he stood back and motioned for her to enter in front of him.
She had the brief thought that maybe she was entering the lion’s den, but then laughed it off. This was Chief. She might not have known him very long, but other than when he’d accused her of something that wasn’t true in the bar, he’d been nothing but polite and had made it clear her well-being was important to him.
Taking a deep breath, Sophie smiled at Chief, and stepped into his house.
* * *
Chief was nervous. He hadn’t wanted to impress a woman like he wanted to impress Sophie in a long, long time. Like a lot of men, in his early twenties he hadn’t been very picky about whose bed he slept in. As long as he got off, he was good.
If he admitted it to himself, back then he wasn’t a very good lover…or man. After the act was over, he usually came up with an excuse to leave. The last real girlfriend he’d had was five years ago, and that relationship had only lasted about three months. She’d ended it when he’d refused to invite her to his apartment.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted her in his space…okay, it was that he hadn’t wanted her in his space. His home was his sanctuary. His calm space. And that girlfriend’s apartment had been anything but calm. It was part of the reason he’d wanted to pick Sophie up tonight. He hadn’t lied, he did want to treat her as if this was a real date, because it was a real date, but he’d also needed to see how she lived.
He’d been pleased by what he’d seen. She wasn’t a slob, like that long-ago ex-girlfriend. She had probably cleaned a bit just in case he came over, but it wasn’t spic and span. The shoes on the floor, the empty glass on the coffee table, the junk on the bookshelves, it was all stuff he could deal with.
Mimicking the deep breath Sophie had taken before she’d walked into his house, Chief followed her inside.
Trying to keep his mind off her
reaction, Chief did what he always did when he arrived home. He toed off his shoes and lined them up on the small welcome mat inside the door. Then, in his stocking feet, he padded into the huge great room toward the kitchen. The chicken he’d prepared earlier was in the oven and the smell of spices wafted through the air.
He stopped at the bar that surrounded the kitchen area and leaned against it, trying not to fidget. He watched as Sophie took in his home.
She stood stock still inside his front door and her eyes were wide as she examined the large space. He waited until her gaze had roamed the entire room before he said quietly, “You can come in, you know.”
“I’m afraid to get the floor dirty,” she said softly.
Pushing off the bar, Chief walked up to her. He took her hands in his. “I’m a bit of a neat freak,” he admitted, something that was more than obvious by his house.
“I can s-see that.”
“I just…” Chief paused. There were a lot of reasons for it, but nothing he really wanted to get into at the moment.
As if she could read his mind, Sophie calmly toed off her shoes and placed them next to his on the mat. Then she asked, “What s-smells s-so good?”
More relieved than he knew how to express, Chief smiled at her. They walked together back toward the kitchen. He pulled out one of the bar stools and helped Sophie into it. Then he went behind the bar into the kitchen and turned on the burner under a large pot of water.
“We’re having chicken parmesan. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s m-more than okay. I’m not the best cook. I m-mean, I can hold my own, but I hate cooking for m-myself, s-so I usually just do s-something fast and easy.”
They made small talk as Chief finished their meal. He relaxed as they talked, happy Sophie wasn’t freaking out about his immaculate house. He’d explain later why he lived as he did, but for now he wanted to enjoy her company.
He hadn’t lied earlier. She was beautiful. Sophie was wearing a pale pink skirt, which swirled around her legs and allowed him to see her shapely calves. Her long-sleeved white blouse was fitted, outlining her curvy body. She’d left her hair down and it fell around her shoulders in blonde waves that made him want to shove his hands into it to see if it felt as soft as it looked.