“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Why not?”
“I’m really tired. I think I should just go to bed.”
“Wait. Wait a second,” she says looking at me, sizing me up. Please don’t do this right now, Franny. “You like him don’t you?”
“No,” I say.
“You are the world’s worst liar,” she says.
“I’m not lying.”
“Riiiight. I saw you from all the way up here. The way you licked your lips when you were looking at him when he tossed Jason into that pool like he weighed nothing. How much man does it take to do that you ask? Okay, you didn’t, but let me tell you. A lot!”
“I didn’t lick my lips.” I think back. Did I?
“Got ya! But see. You had to think about it. Don’t try and hide secrets from me, girly. I can read you like an open book and on chapter one, page one, opening sentence it says, Sierra likes the surprise guest to her party. The amazing alpha who came, saw, and conquered all in about,” she looks at the Hello Kitty clock I’ve had on the wall way too long now. “About four minutes tops.”
“Four minutes?”
“I’m being generous, but the point is that guy has got alpha, stud, and holy hotness written all over him and if you don’t go for him I most certainly am.”
“He’s old,” I say making up fake excuses to try and play this off.
“The older the better! Are you kidding me? Do you want some guy our age who spends his weekends trying on selvedge denim trying to find the perfect color and fit, therefore making him Vitamin D deficient because he’s a guy in a shopping mall all weekend, or do you want some guy who is literally saving our entire state right now battling blazing infernos, pulling little old ladies out of their houses just before the grasps of these flaming beasts incinerate them into oblivion.”
“Are you done? And what’s up with your word choice? You should be a writer.”
“Writer? I should be a rider, as in riding him all night long if you’re not going to. Get with it girl. And was that LAFD shirt he had on real? I bet it was. He looks, and acts, very legit. That whole…older man hotness thing he’s got going on seemed very cohesive. And I know he doesn’t spend his weekends at the mall…but he sure can spend his weekends inside me all he wants. Weekdays too.”
“Gross!” I say. “Get out.”
“You’re jealous. Told you.”
“I’m not jealous. You’re just…I don’t know what you are.”
“I’m going. That’s what I’m doing. And try not to…you know…please yourself to the thought of him too hard tonight. I’ll be doing the same thing and it’s weird to think we’ll be doing it at the same time…and to the same man.”
“Oh my god! Out!” I say, realizing I’m doing exactly what Asher just did kicking her out.
“Okay. Okay. Just playing with you…kind of.”
Francesca steps out of my room and I hear her bound down the stairs.
“Lock the door!” I yell down to her.
“Told you you were going to get nasty up there,” she says.
“Out!” I yell, but before I get the word out of my mouth I already hear the door latch and her test the lock by turning the handle.
It’s locked all right.
And as much as I hate to admit it she’s right too.
I am going to think about him tonight. As a matter of fact I think about him every night.
That’s my problem. He’s been my secret crush for years now and I’ve been saving myself especially for him.
Him and him alone.
And tonight reminded me of the exact reason why.
And I don’t need a single reason to relive that display of alphaness.
I flip out the light and toss myself into bed and the scene starts to replay in my head as I can’t help but wonder if he’s playing with a different kind of head right now.
I swear he looked at me differently tonight.
And if he’s not going to do anything about it, or act on it, then I’m going to push the envelope so he has no choice but to see out his desires.
And fulfill mine in the process.
CHAPTER 3
Asher
Two days later
“Help us!” the little girl yells. “My doggie!”
I come flying off the engine like a bat outta hell, grabbing the hose and attacking the flames like a wild man.
I watch as the other firemen grab the family and take them to safety as the flames circle me.
“Get outta there Adams!” I hear a voice yell, but I don’t pay it any mind because I’m completely “in the zone” right now.
It’s like my mind is a step ahead of everything and I just know what that damn fire is going to do.
I spray left, then right, then center before running left and spraying forward before the plane flies overhead dropping the retardant. “Aaaah!” I yell at the sky while I unleash the water on those damn flames. Nobody’s taking this girl’s dog from her. Not on my watch.
I move closer to the house and hear the bark of the dog. I see him. He’s trapped under a board. I slide in close, still spraying the flames which are getting closer before scooping up the canine and dashing it back to safety just in time to watch the flames fall back.
“What’s wrong with you, Adams?” the fire captain yells. “You’re acting like a madman out there. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I cough from all the smoke I inhaled as I was running, but I don’t care.
“Had to save that little girl’s dog, sir,” I say remembering the traumatic experience I had as a child when the fire burnt down my orphanage. Rocky was my dog, and my only true friend. I remember trying to break free of the firefighter’s grasp as I ran to save Rocky, but he was too big and too strong. I knew from that day forward I wanted to be a fireman. No ifs, ands, or buts.
And I knew I was going to save anything that needed saving. And I’d stayed true to that promise my eight-year-old self had made all those years ago, but in the process it had earned me the reputation of a bit of a loose canon. I never endangered the lives of the other fireman, but I rarely showed much respect for my own in the process.
But damn if anyone was dying on my watch, and anyone includes that girl’s dog.
I hand her the dog and she hugs my leg and that makes it all worth it. There are no words or combination of insults the chief can throw at me that will take away the high of saving a life. And I know he’s gonna throw a lot of them my way as soon as we’re out of earshot of that child.
He grabs me by the suit and pulls me back around the side of the engine.
“Adams, I know you’re tired of these damn fires. We all are. But we need you out there. Don’t go risking your life. You’re worth more to us alive than dead. You understand me?”
I nod.
“You gotta stop throwing yourself into the flames like that. You did a brave thing saving that kid’s dog, but we’ve lost six firefighters already. Dammit, that’s six too many!
I see the chief’s eyes water and I know that he’s angry because he cares about me.
And then a different feeling hits me. Something I’ve never felt before.
I need to stay safe because this isn’t just about me anymore.
This is about us.
Sierra and I.
Something happened between us the other day. I know it did. There’s no denying it.
And I’m going to follow up on that as soon as I can. I have to.
I crashed so hard when I got home, sleeping for over thirty-six hours straight. I needed that. My body was so exhausted. But today they’re cutting me “back” to a twenty-four hour shift. They know that a tired firefighter means a mistake prone firefighter, and I probably shouldn’t be out here yet, but I couldn’t stay away.
But now it’s her I can’t stay away from.
And I’ve got every reason to swing by her house again. It’s what I promised her parents.
But this time I can’t pro
mise myself I’ll be able to hold back.
I want her as mine and I know once I see her there will be nothing that can stop me.
CHAPTER 4
Sierra
I look over my friend Samantha’s shoulder at the TV in the coffee shop.
I hope to get some sight of Asher, to know he’s okay. I know he’s out there somewhere and it scares the crap out of me.
After what happened the other night my fantasies of him became real thoughts.
Yeah, he’s hot and I’ve known him forever, but what happens if the way he looked at me does turn to something real?
Can I really handle the thought of him being out there, in situations like this once or twice a year, every year, when fires rage out of control?
The gut-wrenching feeling of time moving so slowly as you pace yourself silly, walking back and forth in your house just praying it’s going to be him that walks through the door and not somebody from the government knocking to give bad news.
That’s real. This is real. Very real.
But how do I know I wasn’t just seeing things the other night. I think they called it confirmation bias in my high school psychology class and then I heard it again in biology class.
I still remember the definition…this bias occurs when decision makers seek out evidence that confirms their previously held beliefs, while discounting or diminishing the impact of evidence in support of differing conclusions.
In other words I want him to want me as bad as I want him that I might just be imagining things in my head, but at least I know I might be imagining them.
But I don’t know if that makes this better or worse.
“Earth to Sierra. Hello?” my friend Kai says. “Do you think Kim Kardashian is the most overrated of the sisters?”
“Um. Yeah, I don’t know about that,” I say.
After watching the way Asher handled that situation the other night this just seems so…juvenile. Who cares about other people when all I can think about is one person? And these are people who will never have any meaningful impact on my life and this man could mean everything. I want him to mean everything.
“Okay, go back to watching your TV and don’t pay me any mind,” Kai says.
I practically want to tell him that next time we hang out I’m not going to wait on him to get ready. What is that anyways? How in the world does it take a guy longer to get ready than a girl? What’s happened to the world?
I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that whatever happened definitely doesn't happen with Asher. He’s still all man, unabashedly so.
I imagine him taking no more than a few minutes in the shower to get ready…unless I was in there with him that is.
And it makes me wonder why I’m spending any time with people like this anyways. Why sit around and waste one second on some TV celebrities when there are real heroes like Asher out there that really could use somebody thinking about them and wishing for their safe return.
“Sorry, I have to go,” I say and excuse myself from my friends. I’d rather watch the news at home and hope to get a glimpse of him there. This is nerve wracking and watching it in public, especially when I’m supposed to be in a happy and talkative mood, only makes it worse.
I walk out the front door and literally feel myself twist as I feel someone bump into me.
“Sierra!” the guy says.
“Um…hi?”
“Great party the other night. Sorry it ended early. I wanted to ask if I could get a picture with you, but once that guy came I took off. He was kind of threatening you know.”
I want to tell him that guy had more manliness in his little toe than this guy has in his whole body. He’s kind of weasely seeming and weird in general and I can’t place him. Maybe I had a class with him or something, but I try and imagine who would have invited him to the party. Plus he seems closer to thirty than a college student.
“I’m sorry, but do I know you?” I don’t like that this guy is basically being condescending towards Asher for the very traits he could only wish he had.
He snatches my phone from my hand and grabs me.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask as I try and wrestle out of his grasp but this weasely guy has suddenly turned very strong…and aggressive.
He snaps the picture and stuffs the phone down my top.
“Show that to your boyfriend, bitch,” he says and fumbles his steps before taking off running down the sidewalk.
Oh my god. What just happened?
“Are you all right?”
I turn and jump and see it’s Asher standing there.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I saw that guy from down the block and ran here as fast as I could.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I know you hang out here and I wanted to catch you. Who was that guy? I’m going after him.”
Asher darts towards the direction he went, but suddenly a motorcycle comes speeding out of the alley the guy just ran into…and it’s now headed in the opposite direction, away from us. I watch as Asher’s eyes dart back from the direction he came as he calculates. I know what he’s thinking. No way he can get to his Jeep and catch up with a guy on a motorcycle. Impossible.
“Who was that guy?” he turns and asks me again with a growl.
“I don’t know. Some weirdo.”
“He took a picture. Let me see it.”
I dig in my shirt and untuck my top, letting the phone fall out the bottom.
“Did he touch you?”
“Just my shoulder,” I say.
“I’m gonna kill him,” I hear Asher say under his breath. “He didn’t touch anything else?”
“No.”
“He didn’t try and…grab your breasts did he?”
I look at the rage on Asher’s face and I’m not sure I could tell him even if he did. There’s something about the look in his eye and how much he really cares about me. How I know he’s so angry he really would track that guy down and find him, and tear him apart limb by limb just for so much as touching me.
Now that’s a real man and the kind of protector every woman needs.
“No. I swear,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “He already signed his own death warrant by bothering you like that.”
A strange, but oh so appropriate though enters my mind…
I remember back to an interview with one of my favorite authors, Lee Child, conducted by Robert Bidinotto.
A couple of years ago, I was on tour and stopped in Scottsdale, Arizona, on a Saturday afternoon. I was unsure how many people we would get, because it was like 120 degrees. It ended up the store was absolutely full—120 people, standing room only—and all of them were women. So, instead of doing the regular event, I just said, “Look, I cannot help but notice that you are all women. So, I want to know, why are you here?” It turned into a kind of massive book-club discussion about the appeal of Reacher to women.
They came out with four specific conclusions. One was that women, even now in the twenty-first century, find it difficult to express anger. An angry man is seen as assertive, and an angry woman is seen as shrill. So, they are perpetually conflicted about anger, and they love to read about it on the page, vicariously—they want to see somebody kick somebody else’s butt, because they actually can’t do it themselves.
Point number two was that Reacher responds in an almost feminine way to injustice. I’ve noticed that if you ever hear somebody bang the table in exasperation and say, “It’s just not fair,” it will always be a woman. Men are much more ready to accommodate the gray areas—I don’t know why. But women are capable of getting upset about injustice, and Reacher does the same thing. If Reacher sees something that’s unfair, he doesn’t accommodate it; he reacts to it. And, by the end of the book, it is fair—big time—and he’s made it fair. I think that women love that story arc.
The third reason they gave is that Reacher likes strong, realistic women, and he treats women wi
th respect. Reacher is a post-feminist. He doesn’t cut them any slack, but also he has no negative preconceptions. If you’re a woman, he will be your friend; but if necessary, he will kill you. He doesn’t make any gender distinctions.
And the fourth reason they gave is that he was hot. I think this is something universal. We all want a little bit of variety and adventure. I think everybody, however up-tight you are, is somewhat open to the idea of having a love affair. We don’t, because having love affairs is generally very, very messy. Everything falls apart; you lose your house, you lose the kids, you get divorced; it’s all a mess. So we don’t do it.
Possessive Firefighter: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 69) Page 2