by Cathie Linz
“So you wanted to be a firefighter because of your adopted father?”
“It started earlier than that.”
Something in his voice made her say, “If you don’t want to talk about it...”
Jack shrugged and took a sip of his imported ale before speaking. “I told you my parents died in a car accident. It was a head-on collision. I was in the car with them.”
“Oh, Jack...”
He cut through her sympathy like a knife. “The firefighters on the scene had to use the Jaws of Life to get them out. They tried to save them, but...” His voice trailed off, and he shrugged and took another drink before continuing. “Still, I was impressed by their, I don’t know, their bravery I guess.” Another shrug. “Even now, after all these years, I still hate it when we’re called in to a car accident and we have to use the Jaws.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Yeah, well...” He shifted in the plastic kitchen chair, clearly uncomfortable with what he’d said. “I didn’t mean to get so sappy about stuff.”
“You weren’t. I’m glad you told me.” It was yet another piece in the complicated puzzle that was Jack Elliott.
“Are you feeling better about staying here tonight?” he asked her.
“I guess so. I mean, it’s not as if we were planning on fooling around all night or anything,” Kayla began nervously.
Jack interrupted her to teasingly say, “Not all night maybe.”
She wrinkled her nose at him as embarrassment colored her cheeks. “I put that badly.”
“You don’t do anything badly...not that I can think of.”
“You don’t know me that well.”
“Not yet, but I hope to.”
“We’ll have to see about that.”
Their eyes met again, but this time Kayla knew better than to allow herself get caught up in the magic of his gaze. “Tell me more about the work you do.”
“I fight fires.”
“I gathered that much,” she said in exasperation. “What do they do with a firefighter who’s broken his leg?”
“Shoot him and put him out of his misery,” Jack retorted.
She laughed.
Jack smiled. He loved the sound of her laughter. It was so...he didn’t know how to describe it. Full of life. Heartwarming. Husky. Sexy. All that and more.
“You miss it, don’t you.” Her softly spoken words were more observation than question.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Tell me more about your work. What’s a normal day like?”
“There is no such thing.” Seeing that she wasn’t going to accept that answer, he went on to add, “But I can give you a rough idea. I’m on duty twenty-four hours then off for forty-eight. My shift begins at 8:00 a.m. and includes physical training like weight lifting....”
That explained his magnificent chest, Kayla thought to herself.
“But no training on how to get around on these,” he grumbled with a mocking look at his crutches.
“You’re doing better at that,” she said.
“Maybe. Anyway, like I said, a day is never normal because we drop everything whenever we get a call, and you don’t know when or how often that will be. We respond to fires, gas leaks, chemical spills, medical emergencies, all kinds of stuff. When we’re not doing that, we’re doing drills or checking and maintaining the equipment and vehicles. You know, siren, lights, fuel, oxygen, air pressure in the SCBA...”
“The what?”
“Self-contained breathing apparatus. You need to make sure the masks are clean and the regulators functioning. Basically you’re trying to make sure everything is ready to go, that’s why you check and recheck.”
She nodded her understanding and looked at him expectantly, clearly waiting to hear more.
“Lunch is at noon, and we take turns doing the cooking and cleaning up, every shift does its own. There are floors to be washed, axes to be sharpened, hoses to be rolled and tested. And then there’s plenty of brass to be polished. I’m a pro at polishing,” Jack noted, giving her a devilish head-to-toe look. “You have anything that needs polishing or rubbing, I’m your man.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied, her voice on the breathless side due to the steamy images he’d just conjured up, polishing and rubbing her skin instead of brass.
“Yeah, well like I said, we do a lot of training, drilling on ladders, working with saws, smoke ejectors, extinguishers or other equipment, tying knots backward and forward, with our eyes closed if need be. I’m also a pro with knots.”
“Knots? What are those for?”
“We use rope to move people and equipment. And when you use rope you’ve got to have special knots.”
Which sounded very plain and practical. So why, Kayla wondered, did she get this sudden erotic image of Jack using silken ropes and special knots to bind her to a brass headboard draped like a decadent harem? Blinking away her heated fantasy, she tried to refocus her attention on what he was saying.
“We study firefighting manuals, preplan attack strategies for various buildings and classes of fire. This comes in mighty handy, because if you’re fighting a Class C fire you better know that means an electrical fire. If the electricity is still on and you try dousing it with water, you could end up electrocuting yourself. So it’s a good idea to pay attention to these things. It’s not a job for wimps. My boots alone weigh ten pounds and by the time I’m in full gear I’m dragging around eighty-some pounds of equipment with me into a burning building most sane people would be running out of, not into.”
“So why do you do it?”
“I never claimed to be sane.”
There he was again, she silently noted, using humor to wiggle out of answering.
“I didn’t mean to drone on and on about my work like that,” he noted wryly. “But sometimes the public thinks we do nothing but sit around the firehouse all day goofing off.”
“You didn’t drone on and on,” Kayla said. “I liked hearing about it.” She also just plain liked the sound of his voice. He’d never talked for such an extended period before. It was clear to her how much he loved his work, how much he missed it while he was recovering. “Tell me more.”
“There’s not much more to tell except that in my book, high-rise fires are the worst. You never know what you’re getting into and it’s a hell of a job getting back out. This building only has four stories, and you notice I’m on the second floor. That’s because I hate high-rises.”
“Me, too,” she agreed. “I just never felt comfortable so far from the front door.”
“So you don’t live in a high-rise, then?”
“No. I’m renting a small house at the moment.” But it was just that—a house, not a home. Oh, she’d fixed up Ashley’s room so that it was any little girl’s dream, and the rest of the place was clean and orderly, but just not home. It was just someplace to stay until she could find something better.
“At the moment?” Jack repeated.
“Someday I’d like a place of my own,” Kayla wistfully confessed. “Bruce and I were living in an apartment near the hospital when we got divorced and that’s when I moved to this house three years ago. It’s very small, but that makes it easy to clean. I sure wish it had more closet space, though,” she muttered. Looking around the big kitchen, she added, “This building seems nice.”
The brick building was in the shape of a U with a center courtyard that someone had had the foresight to plant a few evergreens in years ago. Since Jack was in an end unit, he had windows in both the living room and the kitchen.
“You’re lucky to have a window over your kitchen sink,” she noted. Her house didn’t have that, so she’d been forced to put a poster there or go nuts from staring at a blank wall while doing the dishes. “At least you’ve got a view of sorts.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “you can see across the courtyard to the apartment over there. Last summer, there were some female college exchange students from Sweden living there a
nd the guys brought over binoculars—”
“You spied on them with binoculars?”
“I wasn’t spying.”
“What were you doing? Trying to read the name brand on their smoke detectors?”
He grinned. “I’ll have to try that line sometime.”
She shook her head at his clearly unrepentant expression. “Someday, some woman is going to bring you to your knees and make you sorry for all the stuff you’ve done to the female gender over the years. I just hope I’m around to see it.”
“You might not just be around,” Jack replied in a husky voice. “You might be the woman to do it.”
“Oh no, it would take a braver woman than me.”
“You don’t seem like the faint-hearted kind to me.”
“As I said before, you don’t know me very well.”
“Yet,” he reminded her. “Look at all the things I’ve learned tonight.”
“And what have you learned tonight?”
“That you hog all the mushrooms on a pizza while avoiding the green peppers.”
“I did not hog the mushrooms!” Kayla protested.
“And you aim your pinkie in the air like a duchess or something when you’re drinking, even if it’s from the bottle.”
“You don’t have any decent glasses.”
“Don’t have any indecent ones left, either. I got a set for Christmas from Sam, shaped like a woman’s...ah, maybe I’d better not share that story.”
“Maybe you’d better not,” she agreed before adding, “Sam and your other friends seemed very nice.”
“The guys are great. We’ve worked together for a long time now. We work the same shift, and spend time together all in one place, sleeping, eating, drilling... Well, all I can say is that it lets you see the true character of a guy. It’s more than team spirit, more than a buddy system. We count on each other, watch each other’s backs and save each other’s hides. Day in, day out. If I ever get in trouble, they’re there for me. And I’m there for them. No matter what happens, I know I can depend on them.”
His quiet words touched her deeply. “And here I was thinking you were the kind to avoid commitment. But it sounds as if you and your friends are very committed to each other.”
“I’ve often said we should be committed,” was Jack’s teasing reply. “To the funny farm.”
She refused to let him off the hook. She knew Jack well enough to know that he used humor to wiggle out of any possibly emotional situation. “You don’t think that kind of commitment, your being able to depend on someone, can happen outside the firehouse?”
“Sure it happens, I guess. Aside from my adoptive parents, it never has happened to me. Besides, that kind of commitment, the emotional kind, can eat a man alive. That wasn’t what I was talking about.”
She had her answer. It didn’t make her happy, though.
Needing a distraction, she got up to get a can of soda from the fridge. It was down on the bottom shelf so she had to bend and reach way into the back to get it. Once she had the soda in hand, she straightened and bumped into Jack, who’d stood to join her...or seduce her.
She could read the look in his eyes as clearly as a headline. He definitely had seduction on his mind.
The refrigerator door closed behind her, and she scooted backward, away from the temptation of his smiling mouth.
The man was on crutches, she reminded herself, what could he do? She soon found out.
Five
This time Jack didn’t make his move suddenly. Instead he took things very slowly, heightening her awareness of what was to come. She was vaguely aware of him bracing one of his crutches against the kitchen counter. Then he removed the soda can from her right hand.
She was prepared for him to kiss her, had all her defenses in place, when he shattered them by lifting her hand and kissing it instead of her mouth, nibbling on her trembling fingers as if she were the greatest delicacy. His enticingly stealthy approach caught her by complete surprise.
Kayla shivered with pleasure at the delicate touch of his tongue on the ultrasensitive web of skin between her thumb and index finger. She could feel the texture of his lips, the slight abrasion of his unshaven skin. Parting her lips in anticipation, she breathlessly waited to see what he’d do next.
Separating her index finger from the others, he leisurely drew her fingertip into his mouth, laving the tender pad with the very tip of his tongue. More shock waves of delight hit her nervous system when he moved her finger from his mouth to hers. She could taste him on her skin.
Kayla was stunned by how incredibly erotic the gesture was. There are plenty of times when slower is better, he’d once told her. Now she knew what he meant. The buildup was incredible!
Warm puffs of his breath ricocheted off her cheek as he leaned closer. But still he didn’t kiss her lips. Instead he brushed his mouth across her cheek before honing in on her ear, lifting her hair out of his way and nuzzling his way into new territory.
Kayla got goose bumps. She never got goose bumps, unless it was below zero outside. But it was the heat, not the cold that was getting to her now. The heat radiating from his body to hers, and the fire he was spreading with his masterful touch.
Spearing his fingers through her hair, he swirled his tongue around the shell-like curve of her ear.
Had that breathless little gasp come from her? Yes. She couldn’t help it, she gasped again as she was bombarded with sensations created by the slow seduction of his caressing hand, the warmth of his mouth, the feel of his beating heart beneath her hand—a hand she’d put out to draw him even closer.
The refrigerator was at her back, humming against her. Radiant excitement was humming through her system, thrumming through her bloodstream, pumping into her heart.
Kayla’s eyes drifted shut. Now she was even more dependent on her other senses, aware of the tiniest thing like the rapid cadence of her breathing and his. His mouth oh, so slowly, drifted over her cheek to the corner of her lips. Her heart was racing and her knees were shaking and Jack had yet to kiss her.
The anticipation was at a fever pitch. She could feel him near, could almost taste him.
Kayla opened her eyes to see what was making him wait. He was so close she couldn’t focus on him. But she could focus on his lips.
“Beautiful,” he whispered against her mouth, tasting and testing the fullness of her lower lip.
Her breath caught at the seductive action. He captured her tiny moan of pleasure and incorporated it into their kiss, covering her parted lips with his at long last. Dipping his tongue into the warm depths of her mouth, he displayed a sensual creativity that made her knees even weaker.
She leaned against the fridge, Jack leaned against her. She was tightly sandwiched between the humming appliance at her back and Jack’s throbbing arousal at her front.
Making good use of his one free hand, Jack shifted his hold on her, sliding his splayed fingers into her hair and bracing his palm at her nape, preparing her for the increasing intensity of his kiss. This had been worth waiting for. This was total consumption, total absorption, total elation.
The electrifying thrust of his hips was darkly tempting. She was on fire, blindly compelled by passion to meet the driving motion of his mouth and body with the same heated urgency until she lost all track of time and place.
Suddenly the refrigerator made a giant nose, shuddering as if it were in the midst of a death throe and startling her.
“What was that?” she shakenly asked.
“The refrigerator,” he muttered against her mouth. “Ignore it.”
But Kayla couldn’t do that. Now that she’d been literally jarred out of her sensual haze, reality had taken hold. What had she been thinking of? Her daughter was asleep in the other room. What kind of mother was she to be making out in the kitchen with a man like Jack?
A sexy, passionate, incredible man like Jack, a wayward corner of her mind whispered. Her ex-husband paled in comparison to Jack. Bruce may have been good
-looking and outwardly happy-go-lucky, but underneath that slick exterior was a man devoid of true emotion, self-serving and lacking real passion unless it concerned his work. Caring only for himself. Not caring for her or her daughter, unless it suited him.
The memory gave her strength. “Let me go.”
Sighing and muttering under his breath, Jack reluctantly loosened his hold on her before deftly grabbing the one crutch he’d set aside. “We do seem to be making a habit of this,” he grumbled in a voice rough with male aggravation. “Of having appliances interrupting us making out. First Ernie on the intercom and now this.”
“It has to stop.”
“I agree,” he murmured, fighting the powerful urge to take her in his arms again. If it weren’t for his stupid broken leg, he’d sweep her in arms and carry her to his bed where he’d make love to her until daylight. “Next time, we won’t let anything stop us....”
“No, I mean the kissing. It has to stop.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
Kayla’s return to that prim tone of voice spurred his anger. “I’m not a three-year-old,” he growled. “That answer’s not gonna carry any weight with me. Because why? Because you liked it too much?”
“Yes.”
Her honesty surprised him. “So what’s wrong with that?”
“Everything. We’re looking for different things. You want a quick roll in the hay and I want...”
“You want me,” he inserted.
Her blue eyes flashed at him. “You’re not the first man I’ve wanted.”
“I never thought I was. I mean, you’ve got a daughter, after all. You were married. You must have felt something for the guy.”
“I loved him with all my heart.”
Kayla’s words cut him unexpectedly, like a rope that slid through your hands if you weren’t paying attention. “So what happened?”