Flame (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 3)

by Rachael Herron

  Samantha didn’t do the future. One day at a time wasn’t a slogan to her, it wasn’t just a motto. It was her life. Tomorrow, she might be gone. She could only bank on today. The only time she thought about the future was when she was planning her training class. When it came to the women she was responsible for, yes, she’d look into the future. But apart from that? She’d made sure to sign a month-to-month lease on her apartment, so she could leave at a moment’s notice. She always bought a pint of half-and-half for her coffee, never a quart. Just in case.

  Coffee. Hank Coffee was making her coffee.

  And heaven help her, she was wishing he’d do that every day for the rest of her life.

  Why did the word love keep sounding in her head like a bell she couldn’t stop hearing? It was a quiet bell, as if she was hearing it from far away, but it was insistent and clear and beautiful.

  Samantha groaned and covered her head with the pillow next to her. That only made it worse, though. It was his pillow and smelled deliciously of him—wood chips and pine and soap. She threw it to the foot of the bed and sat straight up, keeping the sheet over her naked breasts in case Hank walked in.

  And what if he did? He’d pretty much seen all there was to see last night.

  “Here you go, trouble.” Hank was only wearing red checked boxers. His chest was so broad, so well-defined, the muscles that she’d traced last night with her lips disappearing into the top of his shorts…

  It was light with cream, just the way she liked it. How did he know that about her?

  He must have read her quizzical look. “You liked cream in college. I thought maybe you still did.”

  She nodded quickly and took a too-hot sip of the coffee. “Thanks. I’ve always liked it hot.”

  In response, he quirked an eyebrow.

  Hot Coffee.

  She laughed. “Oh, come on.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  In response, he dropped a kiss on her collarbone and moved to sit with his back against the headboard. “Anytime.”

  “You don’t have to work today?” Part of her—okay, a big part—had been hoping he’d slide out of bed and go to work and she could start piecing together this new life, the one she couldn’t make heads or tails of yet.

  “Nope.”

  “I can’t keep track of your schedule.”

  “Two days on, four days off.”

  “That’s a lot of time off,” she said weakly.

  “More time with you.”

  Samantha’s sip of coffee choked her as it went down the wrong way.

  “Need help?”

  She shook her head.

  “Am I scaring you? With this together talk?”

  “Are you always this blunt?” Like last night, when he hadn’t so much talked her into bed as talked her straight at it.

  “Only when I really want something.”

  Her. He wanted her.

  Samantha didn’t get it.

  Hank was the total package, from his sexy surfer-boy hair to the fact that he literally helped little old ladies across the street (she’d seen him do it once after a training session). His job was saving lives. He ran into burning buildings instead of away.

  Samantha didn’t drink anymore. That was her claim to any kind of success. That and Daring Darling, which, yes, was her baby, and she prayed it grew into something really fine, something to be proud of.

  But Hank was Hank. The boy she’d let go, the man she knew she’d never deserve, and instead, he was sitting on the bed with her, watching her as if he wanted more than just to kiss her. Watching her with such…generous, inviting warmth.

  Maybe she had found something too terrifying. Maybe he was the cliff she wouldn’t be brave enough to leap from.

  Maybe safety was the thing she was most scared of.

  “I should go,” she said, splashing coffee on the bedding as she moved too quickly.

  “What’s the hurry?” He glanced at the clock. “You’re not working at the bagel shop today or you would have been there two hours ago.”

  Good grief. She didn’t work today, but that was only luck. When she’d fallen asleep in Hank’s arms, she hadn’t given a single thought to the next day. “I just have some things I have to do…”

  “Okay. Wanna get breakfast first?”

  She did. Oh, how she did. She wanted to borrow a fire department sweatshirt from him and go to Mabel’s Cafe. She wanted to slide into a red booth across from him. She wanted to sneak bacon off his plate and laugh as regulars came up and talked to him just because he was Hank Coffee and everyone in town loved him.

  If only she could do it. If only the security he offered didn’t scare the hell out of her.

  “I’ve got eggs at home. I’ve got to work on a fiscal report thing for the bank—they’re just about ready to put the loan into my name…” Samantha caught her breath. Once her business was in her name and not her sister’s, it made it real.

  It meant she would stay. That she’d have no option of running. Not that she wanted to—she didn’t. But she couldn’t know she wouldn’t want to someday. That wasn’t fair to anyone, not to Grace, not to the man looking at her with such sweet intensity.

  “Anyway,” she went on lamely. “Thanks for the… I’ll see you at the…”

  “Samantha. I’m in love with you.”

  “Whoa, buddy. Back that truck up.” She held up her hand as she clutched the sheet to her chest more tightly. “Um.”

  He laughed, and the world tilted on its axis. The only thing she wanted was to crawl into his lap and stay there forever. Instead, she scanned the room for her clothing. There, over the low chest of drawers, was her bra. Her shirt was on the floor by the closet, and who knew where her jeans had landed?

  Hank leaned forward and cupped her face with one hand. “I’m so in love with you it hurts.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SAMANTHA STUTTERED AS she spoke. “N-no, you’re just… You’re just feeling something from the past. You never recovered from the girl I was, and I’m sorry about that…”

  “I never recovered from you. The woman you were and the woman you are, Sam. I’m in love with you and I figure I’ll just keep telling you that. It’s okay if you don’t believe me today. But it’s the truth. I think it’s always been true. I just didn’t know it until now.” He whispered a kiss against her ear, sending chills down Samantha's back.

  No, no. She couldn’t do this to him. She scooted to the edge of the bed, taking the sheet with her. Swinging her legs to the floor, she said, “It won’t last. I’m not a good bet.” Man, that hurt to say out loud.

  “I know you’re not. But even so, I find myself wanting to risk it all on the dice.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t date gamblers.”

  “Maybe I’m just hoping I’m the lucky type.”

  Samantha couldn’t help smiling. “Well, someone’s glib this morning. Are you always this silver-tongued when you wake up?”

  “Only when my tongue’s been recently limbered up.”

  Samantha felt herself blush.

  Then she pressed the flat of her palm onto his chest. His skin was warm, the muscles taut. Oh, how she wanted to move her hand against him more, to feel… “Hank. Keep your heart safe for someone who deserves it.”

  He caught her hand and pressed it against his skin. “What about your heart?”

  “It’s good. Not broken.” Yet. “Look, I’m just trying to keep us both safe.”

  He laughed and she felt the sound beat inside him. “That’s my job.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Hank leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss against her lips, surprising in its sweetness. How did he taste like that? Like everything Samantha had never known she wanted?

  “I love you,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe. That’s what I want to do.”

  The sadness felt like ice water. “But I don’t need you to.”

  “You do,” he said. “Yo
u’ve been hurt in the past. You deserve someone to take care of you.”

  “Sure, my heart’s been broken—but I lived through it.” Nothing she’d ever gone through would hurt like walking out Hank’s door this morning was going to.

  “But…” Hank paused and threaded his fingers with hers. “The rape. I know you don’t…”

  Samantha didn’t talk about that. “Oh, no.”

  “I get it. I want you to know I’m here for you.” It seemed like his chest broadened as he said the words, as if he thought he could physically shield her from everything that could hurt her.

  But he did not get to bring that topic up to use it for his own gain. “I told the women that. Not you.”

  “You should have told me, though.”

  Samantha felt her heart speed up, pumping with sudden anger. She jerked her hand back. “No. I didn’t have to do a thing. That’s my history. Not yours.”

  “I want it to be ours.” His voice softened. “You should have told me. I wish you had. I wish I could have been there for you, instead of hearing about it for the first time in front of strangers.”

  “But you couldn’t help me.” The rape had been one of the most terrible things that Samantha had ever experienced. It had also been her thing. She’d gotten through it. Maybe she hadn’t handled it in the most healthy way possible, but that was because she hadn’t known then what she knew now—that things didn’t stay buried. That it was better to deal with things head-on before they roiled out of control. That alcohol and pills didn’t help. That men who loved her, as earnest as they were, didn’t help, either.

  Which was exactly why she had to get out of here, before she broke her own heart, and so much worse, his. “Seriously, you couldn’t have helped me back then. I wasn’t very helpable.”

  Hank made a frustrated noise and reached over the edge of the bed to the floor. He jerked a blue fire department T-shirt over his head. “You don’t know that. I want you to feel safe, the way Linda said she did when her husband was alive.”

  That was the whole problem. Linda needed to feel safe by herself. “Linda lost the one person she could rely on. That was a bet she lost. We all lose. You should understand risk better than anyone. You’re a firefighter. You can’t promise to come home to me.” Not that she meant… “To anyone,” she corrected herself.

  Hank tilted his head. “There’s risk, yeah. But I’m the safest one on the crew. I never leap before I look. Protocol is there for a reason, and I follow it—”

  “Rules aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” Samantha said as gently as she could. “You’re too safe. Remember, way back then, when you made me promise you that at least when I was with Vicente that I would always wear a helmet?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Then you rode off into the sunset without one. I watched you go. I was so mad at you for that, Samantha.”

  “But I didn’t die.” She tugged on the sheet he’d pulled from her when he’d reached for his shirt.

  “You could have.”

  “Gah! That’s the point, Hank. I didn’t die. It sounds obvious, but it’s pretty simple: we don’t die from the things that don’t kill us. And the exhilaration we feel from doing the wrong thing can be amazing.” Riding across the Mohave at a hundred miles an hour, the hot wind tearing at her hair—it had been one of the most stupid things she’d ever done, probably. She’d also never forget—or regret—that ride.

  Hank shoved a hand through his messy hair. She’d given him that bedhead, she suddenly realized. Her fingers had done that to his hair last night. And again early that morning.

  “No, we don’t,” he said, “but people die from the stupid, preventable things. An epileptic man forgot to take his medicine and fell into his fireplace last year.”

  Samantha gasped.

  He went on. “What were the odds of that happening? A billion to one? But he could have just chosen to wait to light the fire until his wife got home. That would have saved his life. A woman just last week died of asthma because she’d forgotten her inhaler while she was at the gym. Instead of asking them to call 911, she went to the locker room to catch her breath, and instead, died by herself. Stupid, preventable things.”

  Samantha flexed her fingers in the air as if trying to grasp what she needed. The right words were there, the ones that would make him understand this—she just had to find them. “Then why do you try to prevent things? You’re just proving my point. You might as well do whatever you want. You’re going to die anyway.”

  “Kids die, too. The ones whose parents didn’t put them in the carseat, because they were only going around the block to grandma’s house. A mother of ten-year-old twin girls was killed on her bicycle last year because she fell and hit her head. She wasn’t wearing a helmet. She also wasn’t carrying any ID, so for about eight hours, no one knew who she was. She was a Jane Doe at the hospital morgue.”

  Samantha shook her head, not wanting to hear any more, but he kept talking.

  “I just kept thinking about her daughters and her husband, how long they waited for her to come home before calling the cops to report her missing. The sergeant on the call said they gave up waiting for her for dinner and went to get burgers, but none of them ate anything because they were so scared about her not coming home for the first time ever. How do you plan for that? You don’t. But you know how you prevent it from happening? You take all the precautions you can. Like wearing your damn helmet which would have saved that woman’s twins from growing up without a mother.”

  “Have you ever jumped out of a plane?”

  He shook his head firmly. “No. I never would.”

  “Tempting fate?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “So you’ll never get to know that rush you feel as you fall and fall and then suddenly you’ve fallen past the place where you would normally stop and your body tells you you’re going to die, and then you pull the ripcord, and you’re safe, hanging under the parachute, and the next few minutes of drifting toward mother earth are the sweetest moments of your life.” Except for the moments after making love with the man with the eyes to match his last name.

  “You’re not as daring as you think you are, you know.”

  Oh, if he was looking for a fight? This was the way to have it. Samantha dropped the sheet and slid off the edge of the bed. She glared at him, hands on her hips, too angry to be embarrassed to be naked in front of him. “Where are my jeans?”

  “You’re scared to lose your heart.”

  “I’m serious, Hank.” She pulled her shirt over her head, not bothering with her bra. She’d shove that in her bag. “My jeans?”

  “You’re terrified to love. You’re reckless—sometimes idiotically so—but you won’t take a chance on love. Why is that?”

  Her teeth started to chatter though she wasn’t cold. “I. Need. My. Jeans.”

  “It’s not the rape—rape is about power. It has to have been before that. Your dad?”

  “Are you seriously going to analyze me? Can I put my pants on?”

  He shrugged. “Check under the bed. Were your parents happy?”

  Samantha scowled. “Very.”

  “Is this about your mom?”

  “My mother never got a chance to live.” She wanted to take back the words as soon as she uttered them. But it was too late.

  Hank leaned against the headboard, his posture open, his eyes clear and sweet and strong. What would it feel like to crawl back into bed? To lean on him?

  “And…” he prompted.

  She found her underwear next to the bedside table and pulled them on. “She died of cancer so young—she’d never done anything but get married and have us. Not one other thing.”

  “So you think you have to live for her. I can see that. But is it fair? Is that what she would want?”

  “Of course she would. She regretted everything she’d never done. Her last words…” See it all. Do it all. Samantha had tried to follow her mother’s directive. It was even why she’d initia
lly learned how to fight. Her mother had always wanted to do judo or taekwondo, but her body had never been strong enough. Samantha had studied the moves—even when she wasn’t doing well in her own life, even when she was training through a vodka haze—so she could make her dead mother proud.

  “Would she want you to take a chance on love?”

  If Samantha loved, if she stayed in place, her roots would grow, and maybe she wouldn’t do all the things she needed to do for her mother. Her head felt fuzzy. That was true, right? That’s what she’d believed for so long…

  Hank stayed still as he said, “I’m taking a chance here. With you. I think we could do this, Samantha. I really do.”

  “But you can’t take a chance on anything else.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “No one lives if they don’t risk.”

  “Samantha.” Hank’s voice was scratchy and low. “There’s this quote that says you should jump of the cliff and build your wings on the way down. I’m risking everything. Right now. Can’t you see that? You’ve changed me. I’m jumping off the cliff. Hoping I have wings.”

  Samantha pulled on the jeans she’d finally dragged out from under the bed and dug an elastic out of the pocket. She pulled back her hair viciously and twisted it into a ponytail. “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “Do something dangerous.”

  He frowned, and crossed his arms. “I don’t get it.”

  “Show me you’ve changed. That you can live on the edge.” That you can fly with those wings.

  “Telling you I love you isn’t enough?”

  She wanted it to be. “They’re just words. Do something scary and risky.”

  “You understand that my job, my whole way of life, is about mitigating danger.”

  That was what she was worried about. Samantha tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and raised her chin, wishing for her glasses to hide behind. “I’m danger. How would you mitigate me?”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “You’ll try to. They all do.” She pulled on her jacket and picked up her bag from where she’d flung it in the corner. “Damn, I want a drink.”

  Hank’s eyes went wide. “You don’t.”