"I didn't know a sponge bath was on the schedule for tonight," Landon murmured, allowing her to ease him back against the headboard. He watched her hand travel down his chest, skimming between his pecs and stirring the thin material of his gown.
Alex's hand alighted on the erection swelling between his legs, and he groaned. "Did you to bring the sponge?"
"No." Alex gripped him between his legs, and Landon bucked in her hand. When he reached for her, she pushed away his arms gently, maddeningly. "Lie back," she instructed.
Landon did as he was told. She climbed up onto the bed, throwing one leg over him and straddling his waist. When she sank down onto his chest, Landon swore—she didn't push his hands away a second time when he grabbed hold of her thighs.
His fingers dug into her skin, bunching the fabric of her dress, and he watched as the hem climbed a few inches higher. Even through the gown, he could feel the hidden heat between Alex's legs. All he had to do was push that skirt up a bit more to see if he was confirmed in his guess that she wasn't wearing underwear—
"Good evening."
Landon started up out of his fantasy. He hadn't even noticed the door to his room open, and the real Alex enter.
She had her hair tied back from the elegant curve of her neck, and her rose-pink scrubs looked freshly laundered. Fantasy Alex dissipated, scurrying away in a million motes like a dandelion before a strong wind.
He let his hands fall back down to the bed and suppressed a groan.
"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" Alex didn't sound apologetic. Hell, she didn't even sound suspicious of his strange response to her sudden entry. She was obviously just making conversation.
Landon shook his head. "They told me you had the night off," he muttered.
She shrugged one thin shoulder. "One of the other nurses called in with a sick kid. I told the hospital I could cover for her."
She moved to check his vitals, and Landon shifted a bit to hide the beginnings of an all-too-real erection. He shouldn't have let himself get carried away, but it had been a long hospital stay, and he was in desperate need of release.
He watched Alex's movements, taking in her natural sensuality, her grace—and he wet suddenly dry lips. An idea was forming in his head— he just wasn't sure which head he was thinking with at the moment. Maybe his lurid thoughts didn't have to live in his imagination.
He was going to go for it, he decided. Just as soon as Alex turned around—
She turned, and the words caught in Landon's throat. He stared uncomprehending. He knew it was Alex, but for a moment he barely recognized her. He hadn't gotten a good look at her face since she’d entered the room, but . . .
Her complexion was pale, almost ashen, and her eyes were glassy, bloodshot and red-rimmed. Had she been crying? He didn't see any evidence of dried tears on her face, but still . . .
"You sure you weren't just looking for an excuse to see me?" he asked her. He couldn't stand seeing her like this, but he didn't know what was wrong; worse, he didn't know how to ask. Her all-too-evident sorrow threw him, and considering that he had been just about to hit on her for real, he felt deeply ashamed of himself.
No hitch in her shoulders to betray a laugh, no nothing. Usually Alex was game for his flirting, or at least weathered it with gentle exasperation.
Had he crossed a line somewhere? He racked his brains for a moment when he might have come on too strong but came up short. If anything, he had held himself back in her presence up until this point.
Alex gazed at him for a long moment. "How am I supposed to answer that?"
"Honestly," he said. "Unless the answer is 'no.' Then I'd prefer it if you lied."
"Why do you try so hard?" she demanded. She had dropped her voice to a vehement whisper, but her eyes were round and tracking back and forth between his. She wanted a real answer; no more games.
Landon tried to push himself up to meet her, but she held her hand out and pressed against his chest to keep him immobile. Even in the moment, she was looking out for him.
"I mean it, Landon. You're always cracking jokes, but it seems like you're putting in a special effort tonight. Why?"
"Because I love the sound of your laugh. And the look you're wearing now makes me think I'll never hear it again. That's all." He realized, in the aftermath of saying it, that it was the most painfully honest he had been with her.
Alex seemed to sense it, too. She glanced up, pale blue eyes wide, and seemed to really study him for the first time that evening.
If embarrassing himself was how he would cut through the bleak cloud hovering over her, then so be it.
"You . . ." she started to say, but the door opened, and they both glanced quickly at the intruder.
Cherise poked her head in. "Am I interrupting something?" the night nurse inquired.
"You nurses are always afraid you're interrupting something," Landon said. He glanced sidelong at Alex and saw the tail end of a decidedly guilty expression leave her face.
"Not at all, Cherise. I'll be right out."
Cherise withdrew, and Alex rose from his bedside.
Before he could stop himself, Landon reached out and seized hold of her wrist.
Alex stopped, arrested for the moment, and trained her startled expression on him.
"Sorry," he said. "I—sorry." He let his hand fall from her arm. "Don't know what came over me."
Alex's mouth twisted in soft sympathy. The sadness in her eyes was back, dimming their natural brightness. It was almost enough to make him want to look away. Whatever ghost haunted her, they were both eyewitnesses to it. He just wished he knew how to exorcise it.
"Get some sleep. You've had a long day."
"You too," he said. "When you can."
Again, he watched the sad curve of her mouth flex a little. Then she was gone.
Landon sank back into his bed and stared at the fissures in the ceiling panels he had mapped over and over again this past week.
Chapter 4
Alex
Today, Landon was sitting upright when she entered his room.
Alex didn't know why the sight startled her as much as it did. He was set to be discharged soon, after all, and completely off anything stronger than a palmful of ibuprofen. He should be up and at 'em. If he were to sleep any more, he might as well enter into hibernation and rouse himself in time for next summer's fire.
Still, there was something almost . . . formal about the way he had positioned himself today.
"Good morning," Alex said as she crossed to his bedside. She pretended like she hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Maybe the feeling was the product of an overworked mind playing tricks on her. She pulled up her usual chair beside his bed and sat down. "How are you feeling today?"
"Better now," was his automatic response. "And you?"
"Better now," she replied with a twist of a smile. Shouldn't have said that, a voice inside her warned, but Alex ignored it. It was the truth. Seeing Landon had become the highlight of her rounds in recent days, and if the man didn't know it already, he deserved to.
She busied herself organizing the supplies in her lap. His eyes were still on her, but she pretended not to notice. Noticing Landon too closely inspired fluttery feelings in her stomach to take wing.
She wondered what Gabby would have to say about this. Actually, she knew what Gabby would say about it, considering the receptionist had laid it all out for her ten minutes ago in the hallway.
"Watch out for Mr. Brenner," Gabby had warned her in passing.
"Why?" Alex had asked curiously. Usually the front desk staff only told the nurses to 'watch out' when a patient was in a bad mood. She couldn't imagine Landon acting any way that wasn't completely gentlemanly and genial—and if he was in a temper, well. That would be something she'd be interested in seeing.
Gabby's eyes had twinkled. The woman had a way of winking without batting a lash. "I think he has a little crush on you."
It was hard to consider anything abou
t Landon as 'little' when she was sitting beside him now. She unwound his old bandages carefully, thinking that they had gone through twice the usual amount of medical tape since he and his firefighter buddies had started getting themselves into trouble on the outskirts of town. She had never seen so much collective male muscle mass in her entire career as a nurse. Landon's bicep alone required twice as much tape and twice as much gauze to cover.
She recalled her response to Gabby's claim now: She had rolled her eyes. You were always in danger if you immediately protested something like that outright. "I wouldn't even dream of it," she’d dismissed. "Men in uniform are off limits, and that goes double for a firefighter like Landon. Besides, a guy with that face—and that body? He has to know he looks good. I bet he goes through women faster than Usain Bolt tackling the four-hundred-meter sprint."
Gabby had cackled at this, but the receptionist's laughter couldn't save Alex from repeating the other woman's sentiment to herself now. Crush. Crush. Crush.
"You all right there, nurse?"
Alex glanced up again, and found Landon had yet to look away. A feeling deep inside her stomach stirred to life beneath his gaze, an inert magma flow heating up just below the surface. "Fine. Why?"
"You seem preoccupied recently."
"Well, if I'm preoccupied, it's because you're a handful." She laughed as he flexed beneath her touch. "Anyway, looks like you'll be out of my hands soon. Your burns are healing nicely, and they should be treatable with ointment from here on out. We could use the spare room, actually, so the sooner the doctor signs off on your release, the better. I'd say that's good news all around."
"Great news for me. I can finally ask Cherise out."
Alex giggled despite herself. Cherise was the night nurse, and well into her sixties—not to mention, she had been married to the same man for the past forty years. "Good luck with that. Really. I wish the two of you every happiness."
"She's wild, that one. I can tell."
"She'd be too much woman for you," Alex remarked as she turned away again to assess his chart. "Cherise is into all sorts of crazy stuff. She was a child of the seventies, you know. Big disco queen, back in the day."
"That's what I'm aiming for. I thought it was high time I dated a queen." Landon sighed dramatically. When Alex peeked at him over her shoulder, she saw that he was even rolling his eyes in exaggerated defeat. "But you're right, Cherise is totally out of my league. Oh, well. In that case, I'd love to ask you out on a date, instead. Keeping in mind that you were my second choice."
Alex had turned fully around to face him without realizing. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest. Landon's eyes were on her, still kindling that spark of humor in the aftermath of his proposal—but the spark extinguished when he saw her expression.
Oh, God. She had even gone along with his banter. How on earth had she not seen this coming?
"Take you by surprise?" he asked quietly.
Alex wondered whether her face flamed in that moment or bleached of color altogether. She couldn't tell which way her blood was racing when Landon looked at her that way. There was enough circulating to her head, though, to enable her to answer him.
"I'm sorry, Landon. I'm not dating right now."
She watched his expression lift in surprise. She assumed he wasn't a man used to being rejected, but he must have guessed she might shoot him down on principle, considering she was a nurse and he was her patient. Clearly it was her specific answer that startled him.
She could have lied . . . she could have told him she was already seeing somebody. She had done it before, on the rare occasion she’d left the house or hospital long enough to be pursued. She even wore her wedding ring sometimes as a deterrent.
But she didn't want to lie to Landon. Hell, she was lying to herself if she ignored the stab of guilt, the feeling that she had been this close to parting her lips and saying yes.
She wanted to go out with Landon, but she couldn't, and it wasn’t the fact that he was her patient that was holding her back—it was the fact that even thinking about taking him up on his offer made her unfaithful to Henry.
Alex turned away again, ending their conversation abruptly, drawing a swift curtain across her shame. A part of her knew it was ridiculous to think of herself as emotionally cheating on Henry with Landon, which only made things worse. She was a tangle of contradictions, none of them logical, and she couldn't let anyone inside to see until she had it all sorted out.
Henry was gone, and she had to protect his memory. More than that, she had to protect her heart. Another flame would reduce it to a gray, lifeless heap of ash.
And Landon's eyes were too hot on her already.
She knew one thing for certain: She wouldn't survive another burn.
Chapter 5
Landon
"Discharged?" Landon repeated incredulously. "I was just informed this morning that it would be at least another week before I got out of here!"
"I'm sorry, dear." Cherise patted his leg affectionately, and he could see real remorse in the sympathetic lines that crosshatched her face. "The boss man ordered it."
"What did Alex have to say about it?" he demanded.
"Scott is Alex's boss, too. Much as she has every reason to hate it." Cherise's comment struck Landon as odd, but before he could press for more information, she moved on. "Anyway, I don't think she knows about it just yet. She's volunteering in triage today."
"Volunteering?"
Cherise nodded. "Some more patients came in today. That's partly why they want to clear the rooms out."
Landon didn't mind the additional information, but that hadn't been what he was asking about. Why does a day nurse with a paying job have to volunteer to work for the hospital that employs her? Something wasn't adding up, but maybe the equation itself wasn't logical. He wanted to press Cherise more on this new track, but figured it probably wasn't his place. If his last encounter with Alex had taught him anything, it was that the nurses appreciated maintaining boundaries with their patients.
And if he was being honest, Landon was glad for the early release. The sooner he got the hell out of the hospital, the sooner he could get back to the action. Everyone who wasn't him wanted him to stay put, to rest up. He supposed he owed this Scott guy nothing but gratitude for seeing to his early release.
The doctor arrived to give him the down-low on his condition while Cherise changed his bandages. His recovery was pretty far along—his shoulder wouldn't require physical therapy, just the exercises on the sheet of paper the doc gave him in parting, something Alex had already mentioned in an earlier conversation, and his burns could be treated on an outpatient basis.
As soon as his arms were dressed, Landon got dressed himself. He thanked the doctor and Cherise, shook hands, and tried his best not to search for Alex on his way out the hospital doors.
His first breath of freedom stung his lungs with smoke from the distant wildfire, but he sucked it in happily as the red light of the low-hanging sun hit his face. He was a free man once again—a slightly burned, mangled man, but not beaten. Not by any stretch.
Now all he had to do was pass the firefighter medical exam.
* * *
"I failed the firefighter medical exam," Landon said, "and what's more, they're going to throw me out of the house."
"No!" Dyna, the proprietor of Dyna's Diner and Delicatessen, crowed with the exact amalgamation of horror and sympathy he had been looking for. "They threw you out?"
Landon shrugged one shoulder. "A crop of new volunteers came to town while I was down for the count. They already gave my bunk to somebody else. I can't exactly ask for it back, and I sure as shit don't plan to cuddle up with the new guy."
"I should have a word with Hank!" Dyna balled her dishrag and threw it down on the counter. "To think he dragged you all the way down here from Alaska and can't keep a roof over your head!"
"It isn't like that, ma'am. I promise." Though Landon couldn't deny it felt good to have someone on his s
ide.
Hank had told him before he’d left for the diner that they would see to getting him new accommodations. Landon had to count on his chief's connections to his hometown, and hope that someone came to his rescue—preferably by tonight. Otherwise, he wasn't certain where he might wind up.
The diner door opened, and Landon turned, fully expecting to see Hank strolling in to deliver some good news.
What he saw instead was Alex. Her blonde hair hung free from her ponytail in wisps, and the dark outlines of sleepless circles were beginning to form underneath her eyes. Somehow, the tired look suited her, and it seemed to highlight her fragile beauty even more . . . either that, or Landon couldn't see the object of his admiration as anything less than gorgeous.
Her gaze locked with his. For a moment, she looked about to approach—he even noted the tip of her pink tongue dart out to wet her plump bottom lip, as if she was readying herself to say hello. At the last second, she turned to take a booth that was conspicuously located much further away from him.
Landon turned back to his coffee and tried not to feel too disappointed. One of the waitresses passed him to go take Alex's order.
"You know . . ." Dyna mentioned slowly.
"I don't," Landon grunted as he raised his coffee to his lips. "Am I about to?"
"Let's just say I happen to have heard that Alex has a free room," Dyna confided. Then, unable to withhold the full story, "She put my nephew up for a bit last year after his failed acting stint down in L.A."
"Sorry to hear it."
Dyna waved off his polite condolences. "You know, Landon, the more I think about it, the more I think it might be a great idea. Not only is Alex a nurse, but she's studying medicine on the side. She's going to be a doctor one day. Besides, you've already been her patient! She would know exactly what you need in the coming days. Living with her would speed your recovery. I know you must be dyin' to get back out there."
Blazing Hot: Californian Wildfire Fighters Book Two Page 3