Feeding the Fire: A Rosewood Novel

by Andrea Laurence

  “Well, he did say he wanted me to drive him home and take care of him this weekend. Is that going to be a problem?”

  Blake shrugged. “Mama may squawk, but Grant’s an adult, he can do what he wants. I’ll go break the news while you wait with him. Maybe by the time you pull the car up, my folks will be back on the road to Rosewood.”

  “That would be great, thank you.”

  Blake patted her shoulder and disappeared down the hallway. A few minutes later, the door opened and the orderly rolled Grant out into the hallway. Pepper clutched his papers as they headed downstairs to the loading zone. His family was nowhere to be seen as she pulled up her little SUV and helped load Grant inside.

  She considered her path as they exited the hospital parking lot. They were on the fringe of Birmingham. There were probably a lot more options here than there were back in Rosewood to get what they needed.

  “I thought we would get your prescriptions here in town where they have twenty-four-hour pharmacies, and then we can get you something to eat.”

  “I want a steak,” he announced. “The nurse said I should eat protein.”

  Pepper sighed. “It’s the middle of the night and you’re one-handed for a while. Steak is probably out of the question for a few weeks.”

  “You won’t cut up my meat for me?” he said, looking at her with sad, puppy dog eyes.

  “We’re getting your prescriptions and a hamburger, and then I’m taking you home and putting you to bed.”

  “Hmm . . .” he said thoughtfully with a sneaky grin. “That’s way better than steak.”

  Chapter 15

  It was nearly one in the morning by the time Pepper pulled up outside of the old warehouse where Grant lived. She grabbed the bag of medicine and first-aid supplies she’d gotten at the pharmacy and helped Grant inside and up the stairs to his loft.

  Digging out the keys from his personal effects, she opened the door, revealing the large open space Grant called home. He lived on the third floor of what used to be an old sewing machine factory that had closed in the late seventies. After being abandoned for twenty years, a real estate developer bought the building and had the space on the second and third floors converted to lofts. The ground floor was currently occupied by the local sporting goods store.

  Pepper had never been much for the industrial look when it came to a home, but the moment she stepped inside last Halloween, she knew it suited Grant perfectly. It wasn’t fussy.

  There were a lot of clean lines. Concrete floors and countertops, leather furniture and glass tables. The ductwork in the ceiling was exposed, as was the brick on the outer walls. The space was wide-open except for the bedroom and bathroom, which were walled off near the back of the apartment.

  Pepper headed straight for the bedroom to get Grant settled. Although he’d been quite mouthy and animated earlier, he’d gotten a lot quieter since she fed him. He’d even slept the last twenty minutes or so of the drive home. Pepper wasn’t sure if it was the belly full of a double cheeseburger, the medicine, or the late hour, but he was wiped out.

  “Sit down on the edge of the bed,” she instructed.

  Grant slowly lowered himself onto the edge, wincing slightly as he seemed to do with nearly every movement. “Are you going to undress me now?” he asked with a mischievous smile despite everything that had happened.

  “To a point,” she replied. She crouched down to pull off his shoes and socks, then gently lifted his shirt over his head.

  “Where are your pajamas?” she asked.

  Grant pointed over to the dresser under the window. “I don’t really have pajamas, but I keep some lounging pants in the bottom drawer.”

  That would have to do. He stood up while she unbuttoned and tugged down his pants, then he stepped into the soft, flannel pajama pants she found. Pepper stacked all the pillows behind him, then helped him ease back into bed. She pulled up the blankets and propped his burned arm on a few smaller pillows. Last, she turned off the overhead light, leaving on only the small lamp beside his bed.

  “All comfy?”

  “As comfortable as the Human Torch is going to get.”

  “I’m going to bring you a glass of water and leave it here with your pills, so you have them if you need them.”

  Grant’s brow furrowed at her. “Are you leaving?”

  “No. But I think you need to sleep, so I’m going into the other room.”

  “Don’t. Stay.” Grant patted the empty expanse of mattress beside him. The last time she’d laid in the bed, things had been very different. They’d indulged in hot, sweaty sex all night and she was certain as she left, that she’d never return to the scene of the crime. Yet here she was, back in Grant’s bed, this time, playing her boyfriend’s nursemaid.

  She would stay, but only until he fell asleep. Pepper got his water and medicine situated, and then eased onto the bed so she wouldn’t jostle him. She curled up near his side without touching him. His arm and his head were the most serious injuries, but he was peppered with tiny cuts and abrasions. Every inch of his body had to be sore.

  Looking up at the dark ceiling, she said, “You scared me today, Grant.” She wasn’t good at talking about her feelings, but in the darkened room with a drugged listener, it was easier somehow. Maybe he wouldn’t remember this discussion in the morning. That alone inspired her to be more honest. “What happened out there?”

  He shook his head and put his good arm around her shoulder. “I don’t know. Everything that could go wrong seemed to. Sometimes you just have those days. Fire is unpredictable, and so are the people around you. Anything can happen. This is my first serious injury since I joined Fire and Rescue. All this time I’ve taken care of other people, but today, I was one of the patients. It was weird to wake up in the ambulance and realize what had happened.”

  “I haven’t really thought about the consequences of your job and just how dangerous it can be. It finally hit me today how scary your work is.”

  “Life is dangerous. Sure, being a firefighter has its risks, but what about the guy we rescued today? He was just a guy driving down the highway, minding his own business. He could’ve just as easily been killed today.”

  “It worries me more than I thought it would. I’m afraid . . .” Pepper said, then hesitated. She needed to speak her mind and get this off her chest. “I’m afraid to get attached to you, Grant. Not just because of the work, but for a dozen different reasons. It’s hard. I feel myself falling for you and I’m fighting it.”

  Grant’s finger lifted her chin and turned her head to look at him. “Fight it,” he said, surprising her. “You don’t want to fall in love with me, Pepper. Don’t get me wrong, I want you to. I think you and I are fantastic together. You’ve made me consider things that have never crossed my mind before. I feel myself falling for the first time in my life. And I should be happy, but like you, I’m fighting it.”

  He was falling for her? Pepper was stunned. She felt something building between them, but she hadn’t let herself think of it as something serious. The “L” word was an impossibility, especially considering everything she knew about Logan. “Why are you fighting it?”

  “Because I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be like my father, and it scares me every single day we’re together that I’m going to abuse your trust in me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you I had secrets, too. Mine is that my father is a pig, and I worry I’m doomed to be just like him.”

  Pepper’s eyes widened at his blunt words. “You . . . think you can’t be faithful?”

  Grant shrugged. “I don’t know if I can. I’ve never tried. But I know my father has failed time and time again.”

  Pepper couldn’t stop herself from asking a question since the morphine had loosened his tongue. “What happened with your father? You said something about it at the hospital, too.”

  Grant sighed. “My father was my hero. That’s the way it should be for a little boy, you know? I co
uldn’t wait to grow up and be just like him. I wanted to make him proud so he would notice me. He was so busy and my other siblings demanded so much of his attention, it was hard to feel seen in my house. One day, when I was eleven, I earned the scouting badge that I’d been working on all year. It was one of the big ones. I was so proud to get it, but my dad had to work late and couldn’t come to the ceremony. When our troop meeting was over, my mother was going to take me to Scoops for ice cream to celebrate.

  “We met in the Jaycee’s Building, so I told my mom I wanted to run across the street to show Dad my patch real quick before we got ice cream. She waited there for me, chatting with another mom as I jogged over to his offices. I opened the door, quietly. Anytime we went to Dad’s office, we were trained to be quiet and behave. I think that night I was too quiet. I slipped down the hallway to my dad’s office, where I could see the light on. I figured he was working at his desk. Everyone else had gone home. But when I got near the doorway, I realized something wasn’t right. I heard voices. I heard a woman’s voice.”

  Pepper winced. She already knew how this story would end. It had to be hard to face that at such a young age when your father was your hero.

  “I stopped just outside the doorway. From there, I could see my dad with his pants around his ankles. Some blonde was on his desk with her bare legs wrapped around his waist. She was shouting her head off. I was barely old enough to know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t something he was supposed to be doing with some random woman. So I turned around and walked out.”

  “Did he see you?”

  Grant took a deep breath, her head rising and falling with the gentle movement. The arm that was wrapped around her shoulder tightened just slightly, as though he needed her support to get the words out. “If he did, he never said anything. When I got back to the car, I told my mom that the door was locked, so I’d just show him when he got home. I got a banana split at Scoops that night and made myself sick eating it. To this day, I can’t eat one. And to this day, I’ve never shown my father the patch I earned.”

  “I’m so sorry, Grant.”

  “I’ve never spoken about that night to anyone. I knew it would only hurt my family if they found out the truth, so I kept it to myself. But I swore I’d never lie to anyone else. I’d keep this one secret, but to make up for it, I’d be honest in every other way possible.”

  That explained it. She’d always wondered why he was so dead set on honesty, even to the point of painfulness. Now she understood. He was already being eaten up by someone else’s lie, he didn’t need any others in his life. But could his honesty ever make up for his father’s treachery in his own mind? “Does that help?” she asked.

  “Some days. At the very least, I can convince myself that I’m nothing like him because of it. Other days, I realize there’s nothing I can do to make up for what my father has done to our family and to countless women he’s used over the years. Sometimes I wake in a cold sweat, terrified I’m going to be just like him someday.”

  As Grant finished speaking, Pepper noticed a solemn clarity in his voice. This wasn’t a loose tongue caused by drugs. It might have initially given him the courage to start the story, but the medication had worn off and he finished it all on his own. It was just raw, honest memories being shared after an awful day. It was that infamous intimacy she’d always desired but had rarely achieved.

  “You’re not your father, Grant.” She ran a soothing palm over his bare chest, avoiding his injuries. “You’re better than he is.”

  His response was small, quiet, and unbelievably sad. “You don’t know that.”

  The faint smell of something burning jerked Grant awake. He shot up in bed, his heart racing. Fire.

  Then his fuzzy brain was finally able to detect a hint of maple syrup and bacon mixed in with it. It wasn’t a fire. It was breakfast. Was he hallucinating? Until he looked down and saw the bandage on his arm, he wasn’t entirely sure if he’d imagined the last twenty-four hours or not. He felt like he had the worst hangover of his life with a throbbing head, sore muscles, and more than a few mystery pains. Even his eyeballs seemed to hurt this morning, probably from the smoke.

  None of that held a candle to his arm, though. That was indescribably unpleasant. Like someone had scraped a wire brush over the worst sunburn he’d ever had. He groaned when he shifted his arm and eased against the pillows. He’d sure done it this time. This wasn’t just a bounce-back injury.

  He closed his eyes and started drifting to sleep. Grant was tugged back to consciousness by the sound of a woman humming and cabinets closing in his kitchen. That’s right—he’d smelled breakfast, so someone had to be making it. His memories became clearer and he realized who was in his house: Pepper.

  Sitting up more slowly than he would’ve liked, Grant threw back the covers and placed his bare feet on the concrete floors of his loft. The cold floor was a shock to his system, making him jerk and regret it as every muscle in his body protested. He pushed through it, though, standing up and stumbling out into his kitchen in his flannel pants.

  Pepper was at the stove. Her red hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she was wearing nothing but one of his Fire and Rescue T-shirts. It nearly swallowed her, but she’d never looked sexier. He only wished she was here making breakfast and wearing his shirt under different circumstances.

  “Morning,” he said, with a gravelly, smoky voice.

  Pepper turned to him and smiled. “Good morning. How is my patient feeling today?”

  “Like I spent the evening in hell,” he admitted. “I’m bruised, beaten, and parts of me are slightly well-done. But it got you here to my place, so it’s not all bad.”

  Pepper pulled out one of the chairs at his small dining table and gestured for him to sit down. “If you wanted me to stay the night at your place, you could’ve just asked. No need to set yourself on fire.”

  “I’ll remember that for next time.”

  “Breakfast is almost ready. Once you get some food in you, you can take your pills. That should help.”

  “That would be wonderful.” He could feel every muscle fiber in his body move, mainly because it hurt. Something to take the edge off would be great. “What are we having?”

  Pepper scraped the contents of a skillet onto a plate and placed it on the table in front of him. “I made scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, and pancakes with maple syrup. The bacon is a little on the crispy side, sorry.”

  That was what he’d smelled earlier. Fortunately, he liked his bacon near burned anyway. The pancakes were cut up into tiny pieces on his plate and were already drizzled in syrup and melted butter. She’d thought of everything. Pepper followed the plate with a fork and a tall, cold glass of milk.

  “Milk?” he frowned. The only reason he even had milk in his refrigerator was to add to his coffee. He hadn’t sat down to drink a glass of the stuff since he was about ten and his mother had made him drink it with dinner.

  “You need protein and you need to rest. Milk gives you the protein. Drink up.”

  Her tone was very final, so he stopped arguing. He couldn’t complain about her being a strict nurse when he’d demanded she be the one to care for him. Besides, he’d never had a woman stay the night and cook for him before. He needed to take full advantage of it. Instead of complaining, he took a large sip of his milk and dove into his breakfast. He was starving, for some reason.

  “Did we eat dinner last night?”

  “Yep. I picked up a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger for you on the way home. You devoured it.” He had no recollection. That medicine they gave him was so strong that the entire evening was like a fuzzy dream he couldn’t quite remember. That whack on his head probably hadn’t helped. Pieces came to him in short flashes he wasn’t able to put together. For some reason, thoughts of his old scout meetings came to mind although that made no sense at all. He hadn’t had anything to do with all that since he was in the seventh grade.

  Pepper sat down opposite him after a few minu
tes with her own plate and a handful of medicine bottles. She dosed out a couple of pills and handed them to him. “Take these.”

  He did as he was told, chasing the medicine with more milk and some bacon. About ten minutes later, as he scooped the last bite of eggs into his mouth, he noticed his limbs felt heavier, like his bones had been filled with lead instead of marrow. The aches and pains had faded to a dull annoyance in the back of his mind, but the medication seemed to muffle everything along with the pain.

  “Is your medicine kicking in?”

  Grant looked over at her with eyes that could barely stay open. “I think so. Holy crap, that stuff is strong. How am I supposed to get anything done when they make me feel like this? I can barely hold my fork, much less a fire hose.”

  “You’re not supposed to get anything done. And you’re certainly not hauling around a fire hose anytime soon. You’re supposed to rest and heal. That’s it.”

  That sounded like Grant’s version of hell. He hated just sitting around being idle, but with the way he felt, he had no choice. At least for a day or two. Then, maybe the pain would subside enough that he could cut back on the pain medication and feel normal again.

  “Do you want to lie down?” she asked.

  “I just got up. How about you help me to my recliner?”

  “Sure.” Pepper smiled and helped him up out of his chair.

  They moved together to the area of the loft where he had his big-screen television, leather couch, and strategically placed love seat with dual recliners. He sat down in his favorite seat and pulled the tab on the side to raise his legs. He watched as Pepper moved around, fussing over him. She scooped up a blanket from the couch and threw it over his legs and propped a pillow behind his head. “Do you want me to turn on the television?” she asked.

  “Not right now. Just come sit with me for a while before I fall asleep again.”

  Pepper nodded and walked around the love seat to sit on the other side. She raised the legs on her side, creating a cozy recliner for two.