The Fireman Finds a Wife

by Felicia Mason

  Summer wrapped her arms around her waist and leaned forward.

  There was no danger of her falling over the edge from where she sat now, but Cameron automatically reached out to steady her.

  “Cam, I’m fine. Really,” she said. “Well, that’s not really true. Part of me is fine. The other part, the part that has fallen in love with you, is terrified. And I don’t like being afraid. It’s debilitating. It feels...” She shrugged. “It’s scary.”

  “As scary as sitting up on this silo?”

  That earned him an honest smile.

  He scooted over and tugged on one of her hands until he captured it in his. He threaded his fingers with hers.

  “Talk to me, Summer. Don’t shut me out. Please.”

  She swallowed, then took a deep breath. “Loving you is dangerous,” she said.

  He waited.

  “Loving you is dangerous because what you do is dangerous,” Summer said. “And that, well, that’s on me. It’s something that I’ll have to figure out how to deal with.”

  Summer sighed and Cameron held his breath, afraid that she was about to take away the gift of her love just moments after declaring it.

  “There’s something you need to know,” Summer said. “Something about me that’s important.”

  “Okay,” Cameron said.

  Summer gazed into his eyes.

  “Even though you’re the chief, you are first and foremost a firefighter,” she said. “When we first met, well, when we first met, I, of course, was just coming to. But you intrigued me even then.”

  “And that was a bad thing?”

  She smiled. “No, it was a... It was disconcerting. After Garrett died, a part of me died, too. The ability to feel. When I met you, there was feeling again and it scared me.” She held up a hand to ward off any interjection he might make. “Not because of the circumstances, but because a part of me felt like I was being unfaithful to Garrett in even being attracted to another man. And to add insult to injury, that that other man was you—a firefighter—was worse.”

  A surge of jealousy tried to rear its head. But Cameron wanted so desperately for this to work with this woman who had captured his heart and soul. He needed to make sure he was not missing or overlooking any important detail. That she was obviously in turmoil ate at him.

  “So there’s some bad history with you and a firefighter?”

  Summer shook her head. “No. But I—I’m getting to that.”

  He took her hands in his, silently encouraging her to go on while also conveying that he was there with her on the arduous journey of baring her soul to him.

  “In order to make it all right, I told myself—I convinced myself—that a fire chief wasn’t so bad.”

  She winced and he realized that he had unconsciously tightened his grip.

  There it was again. It was always about class and economics with her.

  Summer Darling Spencer was, after all, a daughter, a granddaughter and a widow of wealth.

  As the Cedar Springs fire chief, Cameron made an honest living at a comfortable salary. He was far from rich, but he was doing okay. And, apparently, okay did not make the cut with the country club set.

  “Firefighting is dangerous, but it is honest and honorable work,” he said.

  “What?” Summer blinked, confusion etched on her face.

  “Everybody can’t be a wealthy doctor like your father and your husband, Summer. I had hoped that you were...”

  “Stop! There you go again! That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

  She snatched her hands away from him, then scooted back, farther away from him where she sat cross-legged, the distance between them suddenly more than physical.

  “I’m not articulating this very well,” she said.

  He ran his hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture. “Then help me understand, Summer.”

  “Yes, Garrett was a cardiologist, and we were well-off, very well-off. But money wasn’t the issue. It was the danger. He constantly put himself in harm’s way, and that’s what killed him.”

  “I don’t understand. What danger?”

  Suddenly the words were tumbling from her mouth in a torrent of fear and angst. Tears cascaded down her cheeks and she swiped them away.

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid that if I let myself love you wholeheartedly, unconditionally and unabashedly the way my heart tells me to, that you’ll die, too. You will die in some horribly fiery way just like Garrett did and I don’t think I can take that kind of heartbreak again. I can’t do it,” she said again. “It hurts too much.”

  Cameron’s heart slammed into his chest.

  Die in some horribly fiery way just like Garrett.

  He realized then that he had made a mistake...a terrible, terrible mistake. He’d let his insecurities about the differences in their economic stations cloud both his judgment and his ability to understand that Summer’s anxiety and hesitancy had nothing to do with his social class or bank account balance. He had completely misread her and the situation.

  With his thumb, he wiped away the tears that fell from her eyes. Cameron reached for her hands, tugging them from around her knees and pulled her into his embrace.

  “Summer, honey, it’s okay. I’m here.”

  Cameron had badly misjudged her, letting his own insecurities overshadow the truth his heart had known from the moment he met this special woman.

  On the top of the silo at her family’s old farm, he rocked her until the tears subsided. Then, lowering his head, he pressed his lips to hers, the kiss one of healing and apology, of love and his silent plea for her forgiveness.

  For a long quiet moment they just sat on the silo, each drawing comfort and strength from the other as the sun began to set and dusk fell across the North Carolina sky. But her words still echoed in Cameron’s head.

  “Summer, tell me what happened to Garrett.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Summer wiped at her eyes and scolded herself for being such an emotional wreck.

  She hated that there was so much unspent emotion bottled up inside of her. When Garrett died she thought she had cried enough tears to last at least a dozen years. But here she was, crying all over Cameron like she didn’t know how to turn off the waterworks.

  “Garrett died in a car wreck,” she said, finally answering his request to know what happened.

  Cameron stroked her arm, providing solace but not interrupting. Summer was grateful for the space.

  “Yes, he was a doctor, like Daddy. But unlike my father, who spent his free time doing church work or taking us out on weekend getaways, Garrett liked danger. Saving lives didn’t give him the satisfaction that he craved. To this day I think that had he been a trauma surgeon in an emergency room, the thrill he needed, the adrenaline that got him pumped up, would have been fulfilled, especially if he worked in a large metropolitan hospital in a city like Atlanta or Charlotte. But Garrett was a specialist, and a top-tier specialist at that.”

  She glanced up at Cameron to see how her words were being received. He simply waited. He offered no commentary. He simply waited for her to tell the story in her own time and way.

  Summer sighed.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “He worked hard, really hard. And he liked to play as hard as he worked. We didn’t have kids so the time and money he put into his little hobby wasn’t an issue. It was the danger that concerned me. But Garrett always laughed it off.”

  She cast her blue eyes at him in one last, maybe desperate plea to just leave the past where it lay. But Summer knew she owed Cameron this explanation. He deserved to know the root of her anxieties, the reason she remained single despite both her mother’s efforts and the efforts of many gentlemen who admired both her beauty and her bank accounts. And the r
eason behind her collapse at her front door the day they’d met.

  “Garrett raced cars in his free time,” she finally said. “And I don’t mean drag racing in a parking lot. He raced, as in stock car racing, NASCAR level. Two hundred miles an hour on professional courses. He was good, good enough to have actually qualified had medicine not been his first gig. He talked about giving up his practice to race. He even sponsored a couple of NASCAR drivers before eventually buying some shares in one of the teams.”

  “What happened?” Cameron asked softly.

  “Garrett had a recklessness in him. It was something we argued about on the few occasions when we actually had fights. I think it was born of the fact that he didn’t get to choose his destiny. Before he was born, his parents knew he would be a doctor just like they were and his grandparents before him. Race car driving was his secret passion.”

  She fell silent again, thinking about Garrett. “He was a good man,” she said, her voice quiet, almost wistful. “And he was a good son. He made his parents proud. ”

  Cameron nodded.

  “One afternoon at the racetrack, something went wrong coming out of a turn. His car clipped another and somehow went airborne, flipping several times before crashing and bursting into flames. His fire suit...” She shook her head. “There was nothing they could do. By the time they got the fire out enough to get him out of the car, he was gone and I wasn’t even there. It was the most horrible day of my life.”

  Cameron held her close, but Summer was done with the tears.

  “When I started falling for you,” she said, “I thought God was playing a trick on me. Putting in my life yet another man who flirted with danger. But I convinced myself that as fire chief, you were an administrator, someone who worked behind a desk doing paperwork, nothing dangerous like actually fighting fires.”

  “Oh, Summer.”

  “And then I found out that you go out on calls,” she said, her voice a plaintive moan. “Instead of heading to safety, you run into burning buildings to save people, to be heroic. You and Garrett are like two sides of the same coin, but at least in Garrett’s case, it was just the weekends when I had to fret and worry about him. With you, every single day you go to the fire station there’s the potential that a blaze somewhere or some other emergency that has life-and-death consequences will be the one that kills you. That is just...” Summer shook her head. “It’s just too much for me, Cameron.”

  She bowed her head and he knew that she had finally said her piece.

  “Summer, I...”

  “And then today, of all days,” she interrupted. “That horrible fire I saw on the news. It was like God was saying, ‘See, this is what I plan for you—endless heartache.’”

  Cameron needed to know without any hesitancy or misunderstanding just what she was going through.

  “Sweetheart, what do you mean by today of all days?”

  She stared down at her hands for a long time, then rubbed her bare ring finger. Cameron noticed the gesture and realized it was where her wedding ring and probably an engagement ring once circled her finger.

  His chest suddenly felt as if an elephant were taking a nap on it. Today held some major significance for her. And if he were a betting man, he would lay down money that it had to something to do with Dr. Garrett Spencer.

  “Summer?”

  She cast pain-filled eyes up at him and he knew what she was going to say.

  “It was two years ago today,” she said, on barely a whisper. “I was coping fairly well. As well as could be expected. Just a little melancholy. Nothing like last year when Spring, Winter, Autumn and my mother all descended on my house in Macon because they knew I would be a mess.”

  Summer shook her head. “No, today I was doing okay with it, you know? I got up, prayed, read some Scripture.”

  “Which ones?”

  She smiled.

  “Garrett’s favorite, which was Isaiah 40:31. ‘They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ He had it professionally printed, matted and framed with a photograph of a soaring bald eagle, and that hung in his office at home. That’s one of the few things that I kept and brought with me to Cedar Springs. You may have seen it when you did the house inspection.”

  “In the room over the garage. I remember thinking how spectacular it was and admired that you were a woman who professed her faith with such a dynamic display.”

  “That’s the one that I’ve always found inspiring and liberating, as well.” She then glanced at him and gave a wry smile. “There were many, many moments after the accident when I knew God had simply forsaken me. I was mad at Garrett for putting himself in such danger. I was mad at God for taking Garrett. And I was angry with myself for a whole cadre of grievances both real and imagined. But—” she shrugged “—time is a great healer. I couldn’t, of course, see that, believe it or even hope it in those dark days after the crash, but in time it didn’t hurt so much. And then, well, then I moved home to Cedar Springs to start my life over, or at least I should say start a new chapter of my life.”

  “What did you do after reading the Bible this morning?”

  “Oh, there was more,” Summer told him. “I turned to Song of Solomon because I wanted to read about love.”

  Cameron’s head snapped up. “What was that?”

  She smiled. “You heard me. I was marveling at the newness of life and love and the time of singing—how that whole thing about a closed door and an open window was really true. I was actually patting myself on the back for being calm but not maudlin and reflective instead of weepy on the anniversary of Garrett’s death. Since I didn’t know what my emotional state might be, I wasn’t on the schedule to work at Manna, so the day was mine.”

  She made a vague hand gesture in the air, encompassing the two of them. “This thing between us,” she finally settled on, “I’ve just been...”

  “Human and hurting?”

  The edge of her mouth quirked up. “Yes, I suppose that does sum it up. So I gardened a bit today, flipped through a magazine and then turned on the television, bouncing around. Then I caught the end of the midday news. A big fire. Likely arson. Several fire companies called out. Two firefighters injured. The flames...” she said, shuddering, her voice again ragged and hurting. “The flames were shooting up like an inferno. And the news reporter at the scene never said who was injured, just that two local firefighters were rushed to the hospital. I didn’t know if you were all right. And then I knew, I just knew, that you probably weren’t. I called several times.”

  She burst into tears again. Cameron pulled her into his arms. He murmured soothing words to her. “I’m okay, Summer. I am right here, beside you. Safe and sound.”

  She hiccupped. “You have to remember that it was all like the time before. Like when you first showed up at my door with those two firefighters. All I saw was the uniform and it looked like...”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know,” Cameron said.

  When she calmed, he held her hands and stared into her eyes.

  “I am sorry, Summer, I am so very, very sorry that you had to go through that stress today. Yes, my job is dangerous. But I’m okay.”

  “Now,” she wailed. “You’re okay now. But what about next time?”

  He was silent for a moment.

  Lord, give me the words to explain to her what You’ve called me to do.

  A split second later, a peace descended on Cameron and he knew what he needed to tell her and just how to do it.

  “Summer, you know how you have those favorite Scriptures? Well, I have one, too. It is a verse that the Lord put on my heart when I was a teenager.” He dug in his back pocket, pulled out a small card from his wallet and read to her:

  “‘When you pas
s through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. Do not be afraid, for I am with you.’

  “Those words,” Cameron said tucking the card back in his wallet, “that assurance... It seemed to speak to me on a lot of levels back then and I adopted it as my personal mantra. The promise that the Lord is with me every step of the way is an incredible comfort. I am well trained, Summer, and I make it my business to make sure that everyone who works for me or with me is equally well trained and prepared. I am a professional at what I do and I know that it is the calling that the Lord put on me.”

  “But you could die,” Summer said.

  “We’re all going to die, honey.”

  “That isn’t what I mean,” she said. “It...it’s just the thought that freaks me out. The thought of the fire, the flames. When Garrett died...” Summer shuddered as if taken by a chill, though the early evening air remained balmy.

  He rubbed her arms, warming her. “Summer, I cannot promise you that I won’t die while fighting a fire, but I can promise you that I will be careful.”

  Cameron knew that Summer Darling Spencer was in his life for a reason. Over the course of just a few short weeks, he had fallen in love with her—despite their different backgrounds, despite the differences in their class and wealth, and despite this newly revealed fear she harbored, he was absolutely, positively, head over heels in love with her.

  Did that make him an impossible dreamer?

  No, he thought. It made him a man who knew and trusted that the Lord would give him the partner He meant for him to have—the woman who would be his help mate, his equal and his wife in holy matrimony.

  Here he was thinking about wedding rings and picket fences and Summer was struggling with an issue that could be a deal breaker.

  I need some help here, Lord.

  “The guys who were injured, the ones the TV reporter said were injured? How are they? Did they make it?” she asked.