Perfecting For Love - A Standalone Novel (A Doctors Romance Love Story) (Burbank Brothers, Book #3)

by Naomi Niles

  We talked about Sean’s life leading up to the point he had come to New York City. He had already shared some of it with me but there was so much more about the boy who became a man that I needed to know. I craved him, like an addiction. I wanted to know everything about him. He seemed to feel the same way.

  He asked me about my mother and what my family had been like growing up. “I suppose, with the exception that we lived in a very big city, it’s pretty much like anyone’s family when you’re growing up. My mother never worked, but stayed home and her job was raising me and looking after my dad. There were many tense times when he was working and we would see or hear about fires and know that his company was responding. My mom used to invent a game when dad was in these situations; she would bring out paper and crayons and encourage me to draw pictures of places and things that I loved. It was her way of reinforcing the positives in the middle of tense and emotional times. At one point, I began writing words beneath the pictures. That was when I first realized that I like to tell stories. When at last my dad would come through the door, I would show him my stories and he would praise me and take me into his arms for a hug.

  “The older I became, the more involved I was with journalism. I didn’t just watch the news; I really watched the reporters and listened to how their reports were constructed. It was well beyond the five W’s; and more importantly, there was an integrity to telling the truth and reserving their personal opinion so as to tell the story in an unbiased manner. To me, that was the mark of a true professional. Nowadays you have bloggers, people who are nothing more than amateur writers who think their opinions count for something. They do no research beyond the Internet itself, so in a sense, the Internet is nothing more than a huge echo chamber of words. I wanted more for myself than that.”

  “I read everything you wrote in that series about the firemen. It was good. Really good.” Sean lavished praise on me. “I knew when I read it that you were doing what you were meant to do. If everyone could make a living doing what they were meant to do, the entire world would be filled with very happy people.”

  “I agree. But that’s a hard thing to find, especially if there are others trying to convince you that what you want for yourself is not good enough. Most people are focused on money. Money doesn’t mean anything except more troubles if you’re not happy.”

  He hugged me, wrapping the blanket from his shoulders around the both of us. “I’m glad we see so much the same. Are you sorry about last night?”

  I waited a moment before answering. “No,” I shook my head slowly. “Not in the way you might think. Being with you was an erotic, sublime experience. I sometimes want to crawl right inside your skin. The only part I’m sorry about is that it took a blizzard and a shutdown of the city to give us the privacy we needed to do that. It seems unthinkable that two adults cannot spend time with one another without consequences. I want to be with you always, Sean. I know I can’t ask you to give up being a firefighter any more than you could ask me to give up my writing. That said, it makes me wonder how our minds work; how we build that hierarchy of the things that we consider most important in our life.”

  I saw him nodding in my periphery. He leaned over, picking up another length of 2 x 4 and adding it to the fire. The pine wood burned quickly and I was glad that it wasn’t treated, or we could not have burned it inside without ventilation. Even as it was, the room was becoming smoky. If it weren’t for the fact that firehouses were built to ventilate smoke that had accumulated on their trucks and equipment, it would’ve been difficult to stay in there. The shape of the building itself formed a sort of chimney, with roof vents that allowed the smoke to escape.

  At that exact moment, the cell phone in my pocket began to buzz. I pulled it out; it was my dad. I knew if I didn’t answer it he would let nothing stop him from coming over and I couldn’t let that drive Sean out into the cold. I motioned to Sean to be quiet and I answered the phone. “Hi, Dad. Is the power out where you are?”

  “Gwyne, are you all right?”

  “I’m just fine, Dad. Naturally, it’s a little chilly in here but I’ve got plenty of clothes and blankets and I’m doing just fine. As long as I keep my door shut and stay in my bed, the room stays decently warm. I had just stocked up on food, so there’s really nothing I need. In fact, I might be in better shape than you are.”

  “Not really. We’ve got a generator running. Would you like me to send one of the men over to pick you up and bring you here?”

  “No, Dad, I’m fine, really. If it gets too miserable, I’ll give you a call and you can send someone over. In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of this to get caught up on my sleep. I even have a spiral notebook and I’m doing some writing. The doors are all locked and I don’t think there are many criminals wandering around in this blizzard anyway. So just take care of the people in your district, Dad, and take care of yourself. I’m just fine, and if I need anything, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m going to turn my phone off to preserve the power that’s left.”

  “That’s a good idea, honey. I just wanted to check on you. Turn your phone off now and promise me you’ll call if you start to feel too chilled.”

  “Got to go now, Dad. I promise.” With that, I disconnected the line and turned off the phone. Sean quickly checked the power remaining on his own and realize his phone still held a full charge. We were probably better off than seventy-five percent of the people in the city. After all, many of them lived stories above the street and not all of them could climb staircases. The elevators wouldn’t run without electricity and so they were trapped in their little boxes above the street. Perhaps this was theme for yet another series of human-interest stories I could write. But for the moment, I was content to just be with Sean where prying eyes could not see and we were not in danger of being discovered. In my opinion, the world couldn’t get much better than that.

  We decided we had better conserve our fuel, saving it for cooking and for the night when the temperature could drop even further. Sean let the fire burn out and eventually we went back upstairs to my apartment and locked ourselves into the bedroom. Sean tacked some extra blankets over the windows to keep out the cold. This also caused the room to be dark and just as I told my father, I crawled into the bed to catch up on some sleep. The only thing he didn’t know was that Sean was sleeping with me.

  Not only was he with me, but he was often in me. Our bodies were like magnets, unable to repel one another. We made love for hours, pausing only long enough to nap until we could gather our strength once again. It was pure bliss. By the end of the afternoon, we gathered some more food from the kitchen, primarily from the refrigerator, knowing that these were perishables. We went back down into the bay and built another fire. Laughing, we pretended we were camping and as I fried bacon and two, small steaks with a side order of fried potatoes, we toasted one another with glasses of milk and began to tell ghost stories around our fire. Looking back, I can honestly say that the night of the great blizzard will always remain the best day and two nights of my entire life.

  Chapter 18

  The return of power woke us up that night. We had forgotten to turn off the lamps and suddenly the apartment was alive with light and sound. It was as if the entire city heaved a huge sigh of relief. A few people were outside, beating pots with heavy spoons in celebration. The storm had passed and a full moon looked down upon us. This was the time when we were in the better place to be; not in the middle of a lonely desert.

  Sean and I finished the night together and then by mutual, yet unspoken, consent, the next morning he returned to his downstairs abode. As I connected to the Internet and began retrieving emails and answering questions, I could hear him downstairs with a hammer and a chop saw. All I could think of was that he was using our firewood. I wanted so badly to run down, to tell him to stop, to turn off the power at the box and let us return to the intimacy of our darkened love nest. Then common sense told me that we couldn’t go there. Yes, we had been safe e
nough when the city was unmoving. But it was only a matter of time before we were found out.

  I dressed warmly, including boots, and set off down the street with my camera. I wanted to write some feature articles about the city and how the storm had affected it. People were huddled together even still as their buildings were slow to heat up once again.

  It wasn’t long, however, before the adrenaline-charged atmosphere of survival lost its strength and the city’s people once again became apathetic and competitive. The streets were still clogged with a heavy snow and plows found it difficult to navigate them. There were stuck cars everywhere and I found it humorous that the only vehicles that managed to get down the streets were the police officers who were writing tickets. The city never missed its chance to make a buck.

  While I wasn’t up to walking that distance, I wondered about the people at the mission. How many of them had been lost over the cold nights? How many of them would never again cross the threshold of the only sanctuary that was available to them? How many had been driven out into the snow, into the cold? In some sense, I thought perhaps they were better equipped to handle the blizzard than those in their Park Avenue apartments. When you learn how to survive on the streets, you became a survivor in every sense of the word.

  Sean and I gradually fell back into the routine upon we had agreed. I worked and brought in the supplies we needed. He built apartments. I had gathered most of the building materials in advance and they had been stored at the rear of the building. Sometimes, when he needed a hand, I worked alongside him, holding a 2 x 4 in place or helping to position the sheet of drywall. There were number of inspections that were going to have to be carried out before we could completely close off the walls. Sean understood enough about wiring code to do the work himself, but eventually the inspectors would be invited in. The fact that this was a former firehouse might even attract my dad to be on hand during the inspection.

  We would have to find somewhere for Sean to go in that interim. I also knew I was going to get interrogated regarding who had done the building and the wiring. Therefore, it was critical that Sean explain to me in great detail everything that he had done. Why did he run the wire the way he did? Why did he put the plumbing pipes in the places he designed? There were so many things to keep in mind, I used my notebook to keep track.

  I would tell the inspectors, as well as my father, that I had hired guys off construction sites who wanted to make a few, extra bucks on the side to help me. I knew that would outrage my dad enough that I would get a lecture and then he would forget about it. I didn’t want to be too prepared, or else he would suspect that something was afoot.

  I decided to head off his curiosity and that’s why, four days after the storm ended and once the streets were relatively cleared, I called for a taxi and went over to visit my dad at the firehouse. Apparently he had stayed there through the crisis rather than going home. I didn’t blame him. There was nothing at home that was more comfortable than being among the men he worked with and being available to the people of the city who needed him. My dad had always been about his duty and I had to respect him for that.

  “Hi, Dad."

  He turned from the cup of coffee he was stirring and a grin broke out across his face. He held out his open arms and I ran toward him, throwing my hands around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I missed you too, honey.”

  “Wow, what a storm, huh?”

  “It certainly was. I think the last time we had one that big was back in ‘89. So how did you fare over there in your great, big firehouse?”

  “Oh, it was cold, but I was better off than a lot of those people in the high-rises. I even managed to build a little fire in that old, clawfoot tub that’s being hauled off.”

  “You mean to tell me you drug that out into the open on your own?”

  “Oh, it was already out, dad. I’ve been hiring workmen from some of the building sites nearby who wanted a little extra money on the weekends. They’ve been building some walls and running wiring and plumbing for me little by little. In fact, it won’t be too long before I’ll be ready to have some inspectors. Now, you’re not going to give me a hard time about this, are you, Dad?”

  “As long as you’re following code, you’re not going to have any problems for me.”

  “Well, I only need the normal city inspections, right?”

  “That’s right. You’ve converted it to housing and you’re complying with that building code, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re all set. If you need me, give me a call, otherwise I’ll stay out of your hair. That seems to work the best for you.”

  I grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “I can see were finally starting to understand one another, Dad. You understand, of course, that the only reason you have so much trouble with me is because I’m a lot like you. I got my stubbornness from the man who raised me.”

  I knew he would take this as flattery. Dad considered anyone who was stubborn as being self-disciplined and highly moral. As long as that explanation work for him, it was fine with me. I wasn’t in any competition with him. I only wanted him out of my hair so that I could maneuver within my life on my own terms.

  “So, how goes the job?” He seemed genuinely interested, although I wasn’t sure if it was because of what I was doing so much as whether I was earning enough money to survive on. It didn’t really matter; the outcome was the same.

  “It’s going just fine, Dad. I’ve had a lot of stories popping up around me. What with the blizzard and so forth…” I let my voice trail off and let his mind fill in the rest.

  “Oh, I was going to tell you. Do you remember Bob? He was that sort of nerdy guy that I knew when I was in college? As I remember, you really didn’t like him too well.”

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. I just didn’t think he had much on the ball and he wasn’t good enough for you. What about him?”

  I took a deep breath. If Dad knew me at all, he would know that when I took a deep breath, that meant I was about to lie to him. It occurred to me then that perhaps he did know this and that anything I said from that point forward was going to be regarded with a good measure of skepticism. “Well, it was the oddest thing. I was at the library doing some research and saw him sitting at one of the tables. I sat down to say hello, and of course we had lots to talk about, but couldn’t do it in the quiet of the library. So, we found a little restaurant nearby and had lunch together. He’s still single. He asked me out to dinner and, to my surprise, I’ve sort of enjoyed myself.”

  “What do you mean you have enjoyed yourself?” Dad always leapt to the most dramatic conclusions.

  “I mean just that: I’ve enjoyed myself. We talked about old times and people we both knew. He told me what was going on in his life and I told him about my job and the series that I’d written about the fire departments. He asked about you and I told him just how you were. We had a good time, Dad. We intend to have dinner more often.”

  “Should I be reading something into this?”

  “Do you have to read something into it, Dad? Can you not just accept the fact that I am going to have friends and we may go to dinner from time to time and that doesn’t mean that anyone’s walking me down the aisle in the next ten days? Can you just be okay with that?” I had to choose my battles when it came to my dad. In this case, I needed to let him know that I was capable of making my own decisions and that his interference wasn’t welcome. It was the best way I had of keeping him out of my hemisphere and keeping Sean’s residence secret.

  He had the good grace to look sheepish. “I know, honey. I can be a pain in the ass from time to time. You’re the only daughter, actually the only family, I have. Of course I’m going to watch over you. That’s what dads do.”

  “I get that, Dad. But, you know what? If you’re always supervising my life, you’ll never know when I’m ready to take care of myself. I have to learn to make my own mistak
es and how to get myself out of them. I know you’re there if I need you, but that won’t be forever. I have to learn how to be independent, and the best way is by trial and error. Do you understand, Dad?”

  I think I had tested his patience about as far as was possible without him getting angry. “I get it.”

  That was a signal that we should change the subject. I asked him a few questions about the station to get his mind off my life. I acted interested in things that I truly didn’t care about, but he had no one to do that for him but me. It was the least I could do as his daughter. I stayed about another fifteen minutes and then told him goodbye. The taxi dropped me off at home and I found Sean doing some plumbing in one of the bathrooms.

  “I just saw my dad,” I told him.

  “And? What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that I survived quite nicely here in the station and that some guys that I had hired had moved the bathtub so that I could build a little fire in it to keep warm. That’s all true, you know. I am sort of hiring you and you did move the bathtub, right?”

  “Technically, yes, that’s true. Somehow I think he may have gotten a little different impression about it.”

  “But I can’t be responsible for his impressions. Then I told him about Bob.”

  Sean stopped his drilling and twisted around to sit flat on the floor and look at me. “What exactly did you tell him about Bob?”

  I leaned against the doorframe and sort of scuffed my foot across the concrete floor. “I told him that I ran into Bob at the library and we wanted to chat, so we found a little restaurant and shared a meal and caught up. Most of that’s absolutely accurate. I told him that Bob and I would be continuing to see one another and have dinner from time to time. Dad wanted to know what that meant, at which point I got a little testy and told him that he needed to let me run my own life so that I could make my own mistakes and learn from them. I pointed out that if he was always riding herd on me, I would be unprepared for the time ahead when he was no longer available to bail me out of things.”