What the heck was going on?
Jamison Hansen didn’t live in Summerville anymore. Naomi had it on good authority—a friend of a friend who was working her way through the police force after dating half the firemen in town—that Jamison had left two years ago to work for a fire department in Atlanta. He wasn’t supposed to be here. This could ruin everything!
Naomi leaned over to whisper in Maddie’s ear. “I thought Jamison moved.”
Maddie pressed her hand to her mouth, but she was giggling too hard to stop. Her eyes were glued to Jamison with a mix of horror, appreciation, and embarrassment that would have made Naomi laugh if she wasn’t suddenly feeling nauseous.
“Forget it.” Naomi settled back in her chair, nibbling on her lip as Jamison reached the end of the catwalk and did a booty-shake dance that was ridiculous enough to be funny, but still sexy enough to have all the ladies making noise.
Jamison was the perfect first man out—gorgeous and friendly, but silly and gregarious enough to put everyone at ease.
Everyone, except Naomi.
As Mitzy started the bidding and women shouted out dollar amounts from different corners of the room, Naomi slid lower and lower in her seat. The chances that Jamison would see her from fifty feet away were slim, but she wasn’t willing to risk it. In fact, she planned to make her escape from this table of frisky old ladies as soon as Jamison disappeared behind the curtains.
This had been a dumb idea. She’d be better off writing Jake a letter, sending him a singing telegram, or maybe having a fruit basket and a month’s worth of venison steak delivered to the Hansen family compound as a peace offering.
Or maybe she would just plan to avoid seeing Jake in person ever again. Considering the firehouse was directly across the street from Icing, her new bakery, that could be difficult, but Naomi would find a way to manage. She was a resourceful woman, especially when it came to avoiding things she’d rather not face head on.
She’d been willing to tackle Jake, but Jake and Jamison were a different kettle of fish.
She seriously doubted Jamison had told Jake what happened Naomi’s last night in Summerville—Jamison would have been in as much hot water as she herself—but it didn’t matter if Jake knew the truth. She knew, and Jamison knew, and that was enough knowing to create some major problems.
Mitzy ended the bidding—awarding Jamison to a gorgeous young blond at a table near the front, who had shelled out eight hundred dollars for the privilege—and Naomi leaned closer to her sister.
“I’m not feeling well,” Naomi whispered as Jamison spun and strutted off the stage to thunderous applause. “I’ll wait in the car. Come out whenever you’re ready. No rush.”
“No, you can’t leave,” Maddie said, gasping for breath as she grabbed Naomi by the wrist, her eyes filled with tears from laughing so hard. “I’m sorry I couldn’t answer before. Jamison moved back a few months ago.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Naomi said, keeping her tone light. She’d never told anyone, not even Maddie, about what had happened with Jamison, so she couldn’t fault her sister for not spilling the beans.
Maddie wiped her eyes. “Sorry. I’ll catch you up on all the gossip later, but you have to stay. This is so much fun. Stay. Have fun with me.”
Naomi hesitated. She hadn’t seen Maddie enjoying herself this much in ages. A part of her wanted to stay and giggle with her sister, but the part of her that was reeling from seeing Jamison again needed out of here—ASAP.
She was getting ready to order Maddie to have fun without her and make a run for the exit, when the curtain parted again and Naomi lost the ability to form words.
There, wearing nothing but black jeans and a black Summerville Fire Department baseball cap, was the man she’d come for. Naomi’s breath caught and a horrible, excited-but-miserable feeling filled her chest. It was same feeling that had overwhelmed her when Jake had turned and walked away from her at the store yesterday, but this time, he didn’t know she was watching. Naomi was able to let her eyes linger, taking in every inch of the stunning man her high school sweetheart had become.
Jake didn’t strut down the catwalk like his little brother; he owned the stage like the captain of a ship, like a Roman commander leading his army into battle. With his tanned, olive skin, broad shoulders, chiseled chest, and deliciously narrow hips, Jake was every bit the beefcake his little brother was. But that wasn’t what made the crowd suck in their breath in appreciation as he reached the end of the catwalk and took off his hat, his tousled brown hair flopping over one eye as he bowed to the ladies on either side of the stage.
No, it wasn’t his muscles, the strong planes of his face, or those dark brown eyes that glittered with intelligence that made it impossible for Naomi to take her eyes off of him. It was the way he held himself, the way he moved like a creature that was completely at home in its body. Jake was a man who walked, talked, and prowled the catwalk with innate confidence. He knew who he was and where he was going. He was a man who worked hard and loved harder, who believed in the value of a man’s word, and never gave a woman a second chance to make a bad impression.
He was never going to let her apologize, let alone forgive her. Jake wasn’t that kind of man. He only let down his guard for a select few. Once his trust was betrayed, an impenetrable wall went up and it was impossible to get through to him. She might as well try begging a block of ice to give her a second chance.
The only shot she had was to appeal to Jake’s sense of honor. If she purchased him fair and square, he would feel obligated to spend the next four Fridays by her side. He would be forced to remain in her presence long enough for her apologies to have a shot of slipping through his defenses.
And that’s why she thrust her auction card into the air—even though she was afraid, even though the logical part of her insisted that having Jamison in the picture meant her plan was doomed from the start.
But sitting there, seeing Jake dazzle the crowd with his smile, Naomi couldn’t resist. She had been dying to see that smile again, ever since the day she’d broken Jake’s heart and walked away from the only person who had ever made her feel completely loved.
Chapter Two
Jake gritted his jaw and kept his smile firmly in place as Mitzy opened the bidding for his month of Fridays at two hundred dollars. He didn’t enjoy walking around shirtless in front of a bunch of giggling women—half of whom were his former teachers, peers from school, or members of his extended family—but Summerville needed a new firehouse yesterday.
The day before yesterday.
Every toilet in the station backed up on a regular basis, the roof was leaking so badly no patch-job stood a chance, and the break room was a pitiful beige nightmare that practically invited men to get into a fistfight just to liven up the joint.
Mitzy Chambers was a force of nature and had a gift for raising money. If she believed this month-long investment of his time would help raise the funds for a new firehouse, then Jake would do his best to fetch a decent auction price. He had no illusions about selling for as much as Jamison—his little brother had always had a way with women, and not a shy bone in his body—but Jake didn’t think he would embarrass the department.
“Go on, Jake,” Mitzy said, after asking the room for a five hundred dollar bid. “Show these ladies the strong arm they’d be hanging on to for the next four Fridays.”
Jake was flexing his bicep—trying not to laugh along with Mrs. Mulligan, an old friend of the family who was giggling hard enough to make her entire chair shake—when an eerily familiar voice called out—
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
The shouts and laughter filling the room gradually gave way to indrawn breaths and shocked murmurs.
Jake lifted his eyes, his gaze honing in on the owner of the voice. There, at the back of the room, with an auction card raised high above her head, her honey-streaked brown hair tumbling around her shoulders and her blue eyes round in her undeniably gorgeous face, stood Naomi Wh
itehouse.
Naomi, the only girl who had ever broken his heart. The girl who told Jake his love wasn’t enough—he wasn’t enough—and ran off to sleep her way through half the world’s male population.
On national television, no less.
Naomi Whitehouse was almost as famous for her string of high-profile affairs as she was her cooking show, At Home with Naomi, and her line of gourmet products. And now she was back in Summerville, playing house with her sister and brother while her parents snow-birded in Florida, thinking she could breeze back into his town, his life, and act like they were nothing but long-lost friends.
Once upon a time, Jake had loved the woman meeting his eyes across the crowded room more than his own family. There was a time when he would have done anything for Naomi—moved to the ends of the earth to be by her side, given his last dime for her comfort, laid down his life for her happiness.
Now, he didn’t want to give her the time of day.
“Do I hear sixteen hundred?” Mitzy asked, a strain in her voice that made Jake acutely aware of the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over the room.
Most of these women knew that he and Naomi had been high school sweethearts before she’d gone on to bigger things, and he had wised up and married a woman who valued him. A sweet, wonderful, loving woman who had been taken away from him too soon, before they could move into the house they were building, or start the family they had dreamed of.
Jenny had died almost two years ago, leaving him alone without even a little boy or girl with her freckled-scattered nose to remember her by. He was ashamed to say he was forgetting the sound of her laughter, and needed to glance at her picture on the dresser to remember where the dimples had popped on her cheeks. He was forgetting what Jenny had smelled like fresh from the shower, when she used to crawl in bed beside him and tuck her cold toes beneath his legs.
He was forgetting the little things about his wife of three years, even as his stupid subconscious clung to memories of Naomi that he wished would disappear. But he couldn’t seem to forget her. He could still remember the way Naomi cried when he told her he loved her for the first time. And if he closed his eyes and took a deep breath of winter air, he could pull up every detail of the last time they’d made love in the tree house behind his dad’s place, from the glow of Naomi’s skin in the moonlight, to the hitch in her voice when she promised never to let him go.
But she had let him go.
She’d left Summerville a week later, leaving nothing behind but a letter telling Jake that it was over, that she needed to get out of Georgia and soak up everything the world had to offer. She’d written that she would never be happy with just one man. She’d said monogamy wasn’t for her, that it wasn’t his fault—she was to blame—and on and on for five, torturous pages, obviously trying to lessen the blow, but all her excuses hadn’t done a thing to ease Jake’s broken heart.
He’d locked up every tender emotion he possessed that day and put away the key until nearly a decade later when his friend Jenny from the gym had slowly become something more. But it had taken years, years for him to forget Naomi and let another woman in.
Maybe someday, years from now, when the loneliness got to be too much, he might find the strength to lower his defenses again, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be for Naomi Whitehouse, no matter how much of her Hollywood money she plunked down. Some things couldn’t be bought, and forgiveness was one of them.
He held her eyes, hoping she’d see the futility of this stunt and back down while she had the chance. But Naomi only took a deep breath and stood up straighter, meeting his challenging gaze with a determined one.
“Sixteen hundred?” Mitzy asked again, but the room stayed as silent as a honky-tonk on Sunday afternoon. “All right. Fifteen hundred going once, going twice, and Jake Hansen is sold to number fifty-eight!”
With one final glare in Naomi’s direction, Jake turned and stomped back down the catwalk, barely able to hear the polite applause or the throbbing bass line of the music over the roar of his own blood rushing in his ears.
He hadn’t been this angry in…
Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry.
By the time he escaped through the curtain to the backstage area, his hands were balled so tight his knuckles were cracking. He wanted to hit something, to slam his fists into the punching bag at the station until his hands were bruised. Instead, he shrugged on his T-shirt and sweater and stalked over to the snack table, pouring himself a cup of soda and doing his best not to squeeze the red Solo cup into plastic splinters as he took a drink.
“You all right?” Jamison asked as he approached, his brother’s tone leaving no doubt he knew exactly who had purchased Jake for the month.
“I’m fine,” Jake said, crunching a piece of ice viciously between his teeth.
“Who was that chick? Do I need to kick her ass for you?” Faith asked, coming to stand next to Jake, propping her hands on her hips in a way that made it clear that if Jake gave the word, she was ready to rumble.
Faith was the lone female member of the SFD and like a little sister to Jake and Jamison. Her uncle and their dad had worked together for years, and both families boasted three straight generations of firefighters.
Faith had grown up at the firehouse, but that hadn’t stopped some of the guys from giving her shit when she first joined the department. Jake had stood up for her from day one, a fact that had earned him Faith’s undying loyalty. There was no doubt in his mind that the spunky blonde with the killer right hook was absolutely serious about smashing Naomi’s face in.
Too bad this was a situation neither of them could solve with their fists.
“No, it’s fine,” Jake said, ignoring the skeptical look Jamison shot his way. “I can handle Naomi.”
“Are you sure? Because I will pound her for you, J. I have no problem with that.” Faith narrowed her brown eyes, managing to look menacing despite the fact she had the kind of face seen on billboards for apple pie and wholesome country living. “Anyone responsible for making another freaking cooking show for my mom to make me watch on Sundays deserves to be roughed up.”
This time, Jake’s smile wasn’t forced. “I’ve never watched her show.”
“Good. Because it’s stupid,” Faith said, grabbing a handful of corn chips from the bowl on the table.
“Are you sure you should eat those?” Jamison asked in his usual teasing voice. “You have to go look sexy in a few minutes. Wouldn’t want to get chip belly.”
Faith turned her glare on Jamison. “I don’t get chip belly.” She shoved a handful of chips into her mouth and crunched as she spoke. “And even if I did, I’d still be hot lady firefighter meat. I’ll probably go for more money than you did.”
Jamison raised a dark brow. “Oh, yeah? You want to bet on that?”
“Yeah, I do,” Faith said, wiping her hands on her jeans as she backed away from the table. “But I told your daddy I wouldn’t encourage your gambling problem, so…” She shrugged and tightened the plaid shirt knotted below her ribs before lifting her hands into the air.
“I don’t have a gambling—” Jamison broke off with a laugh as Faith stuck out her tongue and turned her back on him, sliding into line behind Brandon, a newbie to the department who, at the moment, looked more like he might vomit on the catwalk instead of strut across it.
Normally, Jake would have gone over and tried to put the kid at ease, but right now, he had no ease to spare. The reality of being forced to spend several hours in Naomi Whitehouse’s company every Friday for the next month was settling around his neck like a boa constrictor determined to squeeze the life out of him.
“You could tell Mitzy you can’t do it,” Jamison said.
Jake’s little brother could always tell what he was thinking, no matter how firmly Jake’s defensive walls were in place.
Jake shook his head. “We need the money.”
“We don’t need it that bad,” Jamison said. “The ot
her fundraisers should make up the difference. I mean, things are hard enough for you this time of year.”
Jake clenched his jaw. It was a hard time of year, but Naomi didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about his life since she left, or his recent, painful history. Maybe if she did, she could be convinced to leave him alone. All he would have to do is drop the wall long enough to let her know he wasn’t up for being friends or making nice or whatever it was she wanted from him.
Naomi was as stubborn as hell and had enough determination for three women and a bulldog, but she used to have a well-developed sense of empathy. If he let her see how messed up he was by her sudden return, he could probably convince her to leave him alone. A few minutes of vulnerability is all it would take to spare himself the misery of escorting his ex-girlfriend to a month of high-profile fundraisers.
“So what do you think?” Jamison asked, his eyes on the soda bottles he was arranging in a long, even line at the edge of the table. “Want me to talk to Mitzy? I think she’s got a soft spot for me. I bet I can sweet talk her into telling Naomi you’re off the market.”
“Nah,” Jake said, crunching another chunk of ice. “It’s no big deal. She just surprised me. I’ll be fine.”
Screw vulnerability. He’d rather suffer a year of Fridays in Naomi’s company than let her in his head for a split second. He’d just have to grin and bear it, and hope she got tired of playing small-town pastry chef and split before the Fireman’s Ball.
Dating Naomi he could suffer through, but dancing with her would be pure torture. Just the thought of her in his arms, her curves pressed tight against him and her head on his shoulder, was enough to make him ache. He might hate Naomi, but he also wanted her—always had, always would.
“All right, man, whatever you want,” Jamison said with a heavy sigh, eyes still focused on the soda bottles.
Melt With You (Fire and Icing) Page 2