Mr. Thornton’s question barely registered as sudden awareness burned clear through him. Her skin trembled under his soft touch as he traced his index finger along the edge of hers, sending a charge of knowledge to his core.
Could he truly be falling in love with this woman?
Shaking the thought away, he dropped his hand and moved back a step from her. But his gaze never left her bare face, never lifted from her animated eyes. Deep down in their depths, he swore he saw the answer to his unspoken question, a yes response, a reaction giving him a hint of hope that their brief relationship would work.
But did he want to see a yes?
Mr. Thornton’s booming voice broke into his interior argument, pulling him back into the room. “Adam, I asked you when your father could talk to the sheriff.”
“What?” He looked around at all the faces, the expressions ranging from bemused to slightly uncomfortable to angry. “Oh, I’m not sure. Maybe tonight. I’ll call my dad after the meeting and ask him.” Anger fumed in the face of the beauty standing stiffly in front of him. “What?” he said to her.
The retort sent Jen stepping back into the overturned chair, tripping her a bit before she easily righted her body. He followed her away from the crowd, stopping her in a private alcove at the back of the wide room.
“I asked you what?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Jen said, pushing past him to move back into the crowd. “I didn’t say a word to you.”
“You didn’t have to say a word, beautiful.”
“And stop calling me that.”
He reached over to her and fisted his fingers around her neck, not caring how many interested looks moved from her to him. Ignoring the loud male snorts and feminine giggles on the other side of the room, he said, “I’ll call you anything I feel like calling you, Jen.”
“My mother and Kimberley are the pretty ones in my family.”
Barb huffed out a long disgusted breath, so loud it echoed toward them.
Jen glared at her, but Adam smiled and nodded his agreement with Barb’s unspoken distaste.
“You don’t look anything like your father,” Adam whispered gently. “So that means you must look like your pretty mother and sister.” He brushed his lips gently over her earlobe. “That means I can call you beautiful.”
“I look more like my father than my mother.”
“You two need to leave the room.” A sharp note of displeasure at their personal conversation rose in William’s low voice. “If you have so little regard for Winter Creek and its sponsors, Jen, you should leave and let Barb and I finish the meeting.”
“I’ll take her home.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Adam.”
“Either go home with Adam,” William said, flushing skin betraying his disposition, “or stay quiet until the meeting is over. You have only those two choices.”
“I’ll stay here in the back.”
This wasn’t over for Adam. He needed to find out why she was being so cold toward him, and he planned on finding out tonight. If he had to carry her to his truck, he would do it. “The meeting is over for you, lady.”
“Bull!”
He glared into her fuming eyes. “We’re leaving…now.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she fumed, placing her hands on her hips. “I’m not going anywhere with you, ever. You don’t have any right to ask me to.”
Barb’s suffocated laughter sounded clear behind him, closing in on him as she moved toward them. “Yeah, Adam, you do have the right. She’s been acting bitchy toward you ever since she arrived here tonight.” She placed her hand on Jen’s stiff shoulder. “And you, my friend, need to tell him why.”
“Barb,” Jen whispered. “I can’t tell him about…her.”
What in the hell were these two women talking about now? Who didn’t Jen want to tell him about?
“If you don’t,” Barb continued, “you’re going to lose him.”
Jen looked down at her shoes. “If she’s already been here, in Winter Creek, I’ve already lost him.”
Chapter 16
Adam followed Jen all the way to Helena, tailgating her car with his truck most of the way until she finally turned onto the street leading to her apartment. Pissed, upset, and hurt beyond reason, Jen clamped her hands around the steering wheel before pressing her foot hard to the gas and speeding up the narrow road to the entrance of her building. When she put the car in park and slid from the front seat, he pulled in beside her.
Damn fool, she thought.
The quiet atmosphere settled in her, only being broken up by the loud sounds of a police car’s siren, accompanied by the louder, harsher siren of a fire engine roaring down the street. Maybe she could leap out into the street and flag the officer down before he raced away, and ask for protection from the pain following her.
Her lips curved upward into a smile at the thought.
“Nice.”
She forced the grin from her face. “Well, we’re here.”
“Yeah.” Adam sighed, pulling his gaze off her face long enough to look at the approaching rescue vehicles. “The cops are pulling onto your street.”
“And there’s a fire truck and emergency unit too,” Jen said, staring around her at the entrance to her apartment. In the dim light of the late evening, her eyes slowly focused on the smoky entrance to her home as the sharp scent of the fire broke through her anger. “Oh my God, the fire is coming from my place. My grandfather is in there. I have to get him out,” Jen said, racing toward the building.
“No, Jen.”
Fire licked out of the front window, the kitchen window, as Jen stopped helplessly near the doorway. Smoke poured out of the broken window, billowing curls of it toward her. She coughed once, then again, as she frantically tried to get past the heated air.
“Oh, dear Lord, why didn’t I sense this fire?” Where were her finely tuned senses now? How come she hadn’t picked up on the danger her grandfather was in until it was too late? Even her normal five senses had failed her. “I can’t reach him.”
Adam grabbed at her arm, pulling her out of the path of the fire. He trapped her tight to his side. She let him do it. “How could you have known the place would catch fire, Jen? You can’t go blaming yourself.”
“I should’ve sensed it.” Jerking away from his warm embrace, she ran to the fire-engulfed doorway again. Adam reached her within inches of the fiery entrance. “Let go of me. We need to get him out.”
“Get her away from here, sir.”
Adam turned to the firefighter and nodded. “Her grandfather is inside.”
“We’ll get him out.” The firefighter glanced at Jen. “You need to let us do our job.”
“No,” she said, fighting Adam’s arms which were enclosed hard around her. “He’ll die.”
“Ma’am?”
Jen jerked away from Adam again, trying to make her way to the fiery doorway. Both men reached out to stop her forward motion this time. She fought back, scratching desperately at their hands, tears flooding down her jaw line. Adam gathered her in his arms and wiped the wetness away with a gentle stroke while nodding to the concerned firefighter. “I have her now.”
Jen watched the bulky dressed man move toward the burning apartment, waving for the rest of his crew to bring up the hose. “If anything happened to my grandfather, it’ll be my fault.”
Warmth breezed over the top of her head. “He’ll be okay.”
“I need to—”
“Jen, you need to let the firefighters do their job.”
She tried to fight him, but his arms tightened around her. “Let me go.”
The same firefighter stood in front of both of them again, a frown crinkling the edges of his deep-set eyes. “You need to get your wife out of here.”
Your wife. If only that could be true. Another wash of tears flowed from her, escaping her tightly shut lids.
“Is her grandfather all right?”
Sadness lingered around the
emptiness of the man’s eyes. “My men are going in to find him.”
“He has to be all right.”
“Ma’am,” the man said, leaning closer to her. “My guys know what they’re doing.”
“He has Alzheimer’s.” The words came out before she had a chance to stop them. “He’s very sick. I shouldn’t have left him alone.”
“Hey.” A shout rang out from the entranceway of her apartment. “We have the guy.”
“Granddad,” Jen yelled. A moment later she stood beside the pale man. She brushed a lock of singed hair away from his weak and forlorn looking face. He didn’t respond to her touch. Clothes dark with soot, torn under his arm from when the firefighters had dragged him from the burning building, he moaned in pain, barely conscious of her presence. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Jen,” Adam said. “Maybe you need to stay back.”
“Your husband is right, ma’am.” The robust firefighter touched her gently, pulling her up and into Adam’s front. “You need to let the paramedics work on him.”
“My father’s a doctor,” she said, distress racing hot in her throat. “And my brother, I’ll call them.”
“Yes.” Relief sounded in the man’s voice. “We’ll be taking him to St. Peter’s Hospital on East Broadway.”
Calmness settled in Jen’s mind after she’d dialed the phone, surprised to hear her father’s voice. When she’d picked up her cellphone and searched for a stored number, she had every intention of calling Ed. But instead of calling her brother, she’d dialed her father’s number, without thinking. His voice, warm and filled with concern for both her and her grandfather, startled a deep breath out of her, the tone of it almost as surprised as she’d been at hearing it.
It was nice to hear the concern in her father’s tone.
Yet he was still the same bossy man.
“I’m going to go to the hospital with Granddad in the ambulance, Dad.”
“No,” he said, sharp and final. “I’ll meet him there. You need to wait for Ed at your apartment. From what you told me, the place is unlivable now. I’ll call your brother, and he’ll come help you pack some things. You’ll come and stay with me for a few days.”
“No.”
“Jennifer, don’t be so argumentative.”
Dragging in a long, heated breath, she let it out slowly before saying, “I’m going to go back to Winter Creek. I have a place there to stay.”
“In an RV? I don’t think so.” Her father’s disdain reverberated plain in his voice, covered up with an emotion she rarely heard coming from him. “I won’t have you staying in that crowded vehicle when I have this huge empty house. I want you to stay with me.”
His melancholy pierced in the abrupt stillness of the parking lot. “I like staying in the RV with Barb and Rose.”
“Well, Jennifer,” he said softly. Minutes went by, and all she could hear was the sound of his breathing. “I can’t force you. I could never force you to do anything you were unwilling to do.” He sighed. “If you want to stay with your friends, I’ll let you.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Love rose in her. “You’d like Barb and Rose.”
More silence. “I would like to meet them someday.”
“I’d like that too.”
Movement around the ambulance caught her attention, and she said, “Looks like the paramedics have Granddad stable.” Her finger hovered over the end button on the phone. “I need to go see how he is before they take him away.”
“Wait for your brother, Jennifer.”
“Call me when you find out something,” she said before ending the call.
Adam stood quietly beside the ambulance, staring at her with unreadable eyes. “How’s your dad doing?”
Jen jerked her gaze away from her grandfather’s prone body to the weary cowboy. He tore at the brim of his hat as his long heavy duster whipped in the wind against his jean-clad legs. He stood firm and sure beside her now, but how long would that last? She lifted a cautious hand to his whisker dark face. His lean body tensed with what felt to her like anticipation. Whatever he was hoping for, Jen couldn’t read. But she clearly saw his apprehension.
“Thank you for being here with me.”
“Anytime, honey,” he said with that sweet drawl he liked to use on her, lazy and sexy, meant to send any breathing woman’s heart into overdrive and her body into heat. “Do you need me to take you to the hospital? Or is your brother going to meet the ambulance there?”
“My father will meet him there.”
“Your father?” Disbelief chimed a tenor note in his bass voice. “I got the impression you didn’t get along with your father very well.”
“I don’t.” Incredulously, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not even sure why I called his number instead of Ed’s. I was looking at my brother’s number on my contact list.”
Adam slid the tip of his hat under her chin and pushed her head up gently. “He needed to know.”
* * * *
“You’re going to be all right, Granddad.” Jen patted his wrinkled hand and wrapped her fingers around it. “I called Dad. He’ll be at the hospital waiting for you.”
His fingers squeezed hers lightly before dropping to the white blanket.
Tears threatened to fall from her eyes again, but she pushed them away. No need for her grandfather to see her pain now. “The paramedics will take good care of you.”
“Ma’am,” one of the medics said. “Will you be going with your grandfather to the hospital?”
“No, but my dad will be there to meet him,” she said, placing a light kiss to her grandfather’s chilled cheek. “Dr. Edward Ferguson.”
“A good man, ma’am.”
“Yes, he is.”
Jen didn’t want to leave her grandfather’s side. She backed up until Adam’s firm front stopped her momentum, accepting the arms wrapping around her cold body. Bottled up tears flowed hard over her cheeks as she watched the ambulance pull away.
Time stood still. Chaos reigned as the courageous firefighters battled the last of the kitchen fire. Moments later, the older fireman ambled up to her and told her there was nothing useable left in her kitchen.
“Seems the fire started at the stove,” he said, lifting up his heavy helmet and looking back toward his men. “It’s possible your grandfather had been cooking and forgot to turn the stove off.”
Jen hated to admit it, but she suspected the man was right.
The big, burly men put away the hoses and other equipment inside the truck before tearing off their helmets and unbuckling their fireproof protective gear. Jen stared at the men as if needing to see every single act, to hear every one of their words whether for her ears or not, because she didn’t want to look at the front of her apartment.
Her grandfather could’ve been burned badly in the fire.
If only she’d accepted his need to live in a protected facility, a facility that wouldn’t allow him to use a stove.
“You need to stop blaming yourself,” Adam whispered in her ear.
She turned so quickly she rammed her elbow into his stomach, sending a whoosh of air from his lungs in a loud gasp. “Oh, Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were standing so close to me.”
“No problem.” He groaned. “I’ll live.”
Caressing her hand over his flat stomach, she said, “First my granddad and now you, I’m a dangerous person.”
“Yes,” he said evenly. “But not in the way you think.”
“What?”
He captured her hand and laid it against his chest, placing his other hand around her waist in a gentle way. “Right now it seems like you’re more dangerous to your own self-esteem than to my physical being.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Adam.”
Sliding his hand from her waist to her back, he pressed her front into him. She dragged in a long, deep breath at the abrupt assault to her senses. “You’re not so cold to me now.”
And she remembered
her sister.
Jen tried to push away from him but he only held onto her tighter.
“I’ve got to call my brother.”
“Your father already notified your brother.”
He obviously wasn’t having any of her lies. “How did you know?”
Adam grinned. “Good old-fashioned body language, lady. Sometimes you are so readable.”
What was he talking about? Jen had never known anyone capable of reading her mood, except maybe her sister. Was it how Kimberley knew when Jen thought she was in love with a man? Was her mother right when she insisted her little sister didn’t have a hint of the oddness in her? Was that why her mother seemed more able to accept her precious Kimberley’s freaky ability easier than hers?
“Sir?” The brawny fire chief walked up to them again. Jen hadn’t noticed him stepping away. “Will you and your wife be all right?”
Enough of this misunderstanding. Jen said, “I’m not his wife.”
“Oh, well,” he said, flushing a deep red. “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed the two of you were married. You just look like…”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Adam whispered.
Jen glared behind her, spying a devilish look shining from Adam’s face now. “Tomorrow will always come, cowboy, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get what you wish for.”
“We’ll see.”
His comment even seemed to surprise him.
The fire chief looked from her back to Adam before saying, “I think we have everything under control here. I would advise you to go to a hotel or stay with family for the next few days.”
“Was the fire only in the kitchen area?” Jen asked. “It didn’t spread anywhere else, did it?”
“The kitchen got the worse of it, but the whole apartment is a goner. Going to have to redo the whole area.”
“Damn!”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s bad,” he said. “But at least no one was hurt.”
Sadness deepened in her heart. “No one but my grandfather.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, sis, listen to the man.” Ed’s strong voice followed on the heels of the fire chief’s sentiment. “Man, when Dad called me I didn’t think it was this bad. He didn’t let on the fire had done so much damage.”
Forgotten Memories Page 19