The Firefighter's Secret Obsession: Secret Alpha Billionaire Romance: Bronx (Rosesson Brothers Book 3)

by Lisa Ladew

  Wade waited for Dr. Parker to disappear out the doorway, then he walked towards the bed Bronx was on, his face grim. "She's ... difficult. It's best to just nod and agree with her."

  Bronx searched Wade's face. He remembered the order he was given and ignored the night before, and the thought of it made a light anxiety ripple through him. Was he in trouble? Fired even? Nerves fired under his skin and a dozen jokes shot into his head. He bit them all back, not wanting to make the situation worse.

  Wade stopped at his bedside. "How's your back?"

  "Good. It hurts a little, but not too bad."

  Wade screwed up his face like he didn't want to go on. "I told you not to move last night. On the radio. Did you hear me?"

  Bronx held his breath. He wanted to protect himself. He loved his job. He couldn't imagine losing it already. But Wade was big on firefighter safety and following orders. Wade had been in the military. Isaacs too. They both considered an order from above like an order from God. He wanted badly to lie. But he couldn't.

  Bronx dropped his eyes. "I heard you."

  Wade stood silent for a long time. Bronx felt the tension in the air and knew he was in trouble. He just didn't know how much. He wanted to justify his actions, explain to Wade exactly how it had been, but he had a gut feeling that would make things worse. Wade wasn't stupid. He knew the stakes.

  Wade shifted his weight heavily, his voice sounding worn out, like he'd been up all night. Bronx was sure he had. "I would have done the same thing."

  Bronx lifted his eyes.

  Wade's expression hardened. "I'm not saying it's ok, Bronx. I haven't lost a firefighter yet, and I don't plan to. You have got to listen to the officer in charge."

  Bronx nodded hard, easing off when pain shot down the skin of his neck. "Yes sir, sorry sir."

  Wade held out his hand and Bronx lifted his shakily. "You did a good job, Bronx. You saved a life, and a family. The girl's name is Annabelle and her mother wants to put you in for sainthood."

  Wade finally cracked a smile and Bronx felt relief flood through him. He wasn't in trouble. But he still couldn't go back to work for three weeks? "What's light duty?"

  "Yeah, that means you go behind a desk for a while. Statistics. Training. That kind of thing, usually." Bronx frowned. Exactly the kind of job he never wanted to do in his life. "But Curry's out for a while, so we are going to send you to the chemical training instead of him. You start tomorrow."

  Bronx's heart stopped for a long second as he digested Wade's words. "What do you mean out? What happened to him?"

  "Dislocated femur, maybe a break too. Doc didn't stop to tell me much. He's just out of surgery but as long as everything heals right, he should be able to come back to work in a few months."

  Bronx leaned against the bed, ignoring the pain in his back. Two steps to the left and that would have been him instead. But he knew the risks of the job when he took it ...

  He looked at Wade again, releasing those thoughts easily. There was somewhere else his mind wanted to go. "Can I start class today?"

  Wade frowned. "You don't want to get some sleep?"

  "I slept. Five hours. I feel good."

  Wade spoke slowly, his eyes locked on the far wall. "I guess you could go today. But probably not till after lunch. I'd have to check with a doctor and make sure it's cool, then get you a uniform, maybe run a razor through your hair..." Wade made a motion over his head prompting Bronx to reach up and feel his hair again, that strange waxy texture. Wade nodded. "It was burnt in the back. You really got lucky."

  Bronx ran his hand over his skull and nodded.

  He had. He knew he had.

  Chapter 13

  Eme

  Eme sat in her office and chewed listlessly on her turkey sandwich, the adjoining classroom empty for a few more minutes before lunch was over and her students came wandering back. Her eyes flitted to the windows and open door of that large room, then behind her, to the shadows that passed the gap between the floor and her office door. She recorded every noise, every movement, the passing of every person in the hallway, measuring voices and strides for emotions, tensing if she sensed anyone throwing off the emotion of anger.

  She hated spending her entire day as an emotional tuning fork, but she couldn't help it. She'd escaped Dusan over two years ago, but his shadow still touched her every minute of her life.

  Her computer beeped. She flicked the mouse lazily to bring up the email. The subject read replacement student. She read through the email quickly and made a note of the name. Bronx Rosesson. She opened her personnel program to familiarize herself with the guy and froze when she saw the picture. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Hint of a smile she might describe as cocky. The recruit from the graduation ceremony who had stared at her for so long, and who she'd been uncharacteristically harsh with, for no reason she'd ever figured out. His friend from the incident, the cute and sassy woman who talked too much, was already in the class, but had been on her best behavior so far.

  Eme's eyes narrowed as someone swept into her classroom. She knew before she looked up it was her assistant, Ronald Baker, by the faint smell of cigarettes he pushed in before him.

  "Hey," he said, flopping down in the chair at the desk next to her.

  "Hey," she said back, opening a drawer and pulling out the forms she'd given to all the students on the first day.

  Baker lifted his chin at her computer screen. "What're you looking up Rosesson for?"

  "He's a late addition to the class. Replacing Curry."

  Baker snorted. "Great," he said under his breath.

  Eme turned to him. "What? You don't like him?"

  "Let's just say you better pass him, or his daddy might get mad, throw some weight around."

  Eme squared her hips in the chair and turned her head slightly, looking at Baker out of the corner of her eye. "What are you saying?" She liked Baker, but she didn't like his habit of couching his opinions in euphemisms, analogies, and circumlocution. She preferred straight talk.

  He huffed. "I'm saying he should have spoiled rich boy tattooed on his back, or better yet, his forehead."

  Eme let that sink in. If there was one thing she had an innate fear of, rich men was it. She preferred hard-working men, salt-of-the-earth men. Men who had only two emotional states—content and pissed—because you always knew which one they were in by the way their face looked.

  Rich men, powerful men, men who had made their way to the top of the ladder with strict control in all things, scared her to her very core. They could say something with a smile on their face and not a drop of malice in their voice, and not mean it for a second. They could lure you into a false sense of everything's cool as ice, then backhand you across the face the second they had you alone, the reassuring smile never slipping from their lips. They could lie to police officials so convincingly that you looked like a hysterical nutcase and then slip that same official a wad of money as big as the man's head, without their conscience ever slipping into gear.

  She knew in her head that all rich men weren't necessarily that way, but her heart would never be convinced.

  She looked away from Baker as the first of her students began to drift back into the classroom. "Oh," she said lightly, since he was still staring at her like she should say something.

  Too bad, she thought, putting Bronx Rosesson in the mental categories of no way, no how, and never.

  ***

  Bronx

  Bronx walked through the hallways of the SFFD administration building not sure exactly where he was going, his back burning all over again. He'd taken four ibuprofen, but they weren't quite strong enough to hold back the pain. He gritted his teeth and ignored it.

  Wade had taken him to the station and gotten him some clean clothes to change into, then shaved his head with a pair of clippers from under the upstairs sink. Bronx had stared at his thick hair falling away and wondered what in the hell had gotten into him, but Wade had done a good job. To his own eyes he looked a little more hardcore no
w, a little less styled. A little more like everyone else. Maybe he would let Wade cut his hair from now on.

  His right hand raised to rub over the new 'do but he winced and decided it wasn't worth it as pain spread through his back. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw he was five minutes late. Crud. He didn't want to walk into the classroom late and get off on the wrong foot already, but he hadn't been able to get loose from Station 66. He'd talked the hospital into not contacting any of his family in the middle of the night to come down and see him, because it wasn't like he was dying or anything, but they'd found out anyway. Apparently the fire was plastered all over the news and the reporters just loved to name names.

  Knox, Talon, and Daxton had tracked him down and refused to let him leave the station until they had all hugged him a dozen times, being careful with his back. Knox had tried very hard not to lecture him like a mother would, but he'd failed miserably. Bronx hadn't minded at all. Knox had earned the right to lecture a long time ago.

  Bronx took a left and another left, until finally he came to a reception desk and had to admit to the woman sitting there that he was hopelessly lost. She gave him directions to the classroom and he trotted there, realizing he was even later, and knowing there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

  When he finally arrived at the door, it was shut, and he could see rows of desks with firefighters in blue, each bent over a piece of paper. Fuck.

  He cracked open the door and of course everyone looked at him. His eyes scanned the room and he felt strangely like he was back in high school. Jazzy waved to him from her seat in the front row and he smiled at the friendly face, then his eyes found the office at the front of the room. He felt an unfolding in his chest as he saw Lieutenant Avalon. She was as lovely as he remembered her. What he wouldn't give to see her smile, but no, she was frowning. She motioned for him to come forward without actually looking at him.

  "Rosesson. You're late."

  "Sorry Lieutenant," he mumbled, unable to look away from her. But at least he could talk this time. And at least she seemed to have expected him. She handed him a stack of papers, looking anywhere but right at him. "Catch up with these on your own time." She handed him another paper. "Look over these terms now. We'll be talking about them in a few minutes."

  He took both sheets of paper and stepped out of the office quickly, before he could make a fool out of himself.

  He walked to an empty seat in the back of the classroom and sat down, too aware of her presence at the head of the room. He tried to keep his eyes on the paper in front of him, and not continue to sneak looks at her. God, what was his problem, anyway? He didn't remember ever having felt like this about a woman in his life.

  The Lieutenant entered the room and began to speak about the differences between wet and dry chemical agents. Bronx tried to pay attention, but his mind couldn't remove the message from the woman. The harder he tried, the more he found himself focusing on her, and not what she was saying. He loved being able to look at her—stare at her, without there being anything wrong with it. His eye traveled across her features and her body, noting, filing, detailing, but the structure of what she was actually saying was completely lost to him.

  She was tall, curvy in every single right place, and strong-looking, with muscles that showed under her blue shirt sleeves. She wore no makeup. Bronx placed her age at somewhere under thirty, but only by a bit. She had a lot of wisdom in her eyes, and a little bit of heartache in her stare, a nervous edge that made him think she'd been around, lived a little too much, seen things that she should never have had to.

  Under the harsh fluorescents, her hair looked more light brown, than the dark blonde it had seemed outside, although he thought it could go either way. Her neat ponytail brushed her shoulders when she turned her head, and wisps of hairs tangled in the chain around her neck.

  Her hands went to the chain often, finding the jewel that slid freely on it, and holding it, then tucking it inside her shirt again. Bronx became fixated on the jewel, trying to see what it was. It looked nothing like normal jewelry he was used to seeing on women. It was green, catching the light differently in some places than others, a rough gem with ragged edges, and a swirl of silver wrapped around it, fixing it to the chain. Bronx knew half a dozen gems that were green in color, tourmaline, peridot, tsavorite, others, having helped both Knox and Talon shop for their engagement rings, but he'd bet all the money he had in his wallet that what lay just behind the seam of Lieutenant Avalon's shirt was an emerald. An emerald that meant something to her.

  Bronx watched her left hand help her talk and her right hand fiddle with the emerald at her neck, as her voice washed over him. He listened hard, trying to pick up the accent that was in it, but only on certain words. She spoke slowly, pronouncing her sentences with care. Most of the time, she sounded perfectly normal, though definitely not born in California. Her speech was too clipped, her tone too guarded.

  Bronx sat straight up in his chair, leaning forward, wondering if he'd actually seen what he thought he saw. She turned and walked to the front of the room, writing something on the white board, then coming back. She asked a question, then pointed to a man in the first row for an answer. When her head moved exactly right he could see it again, shining under the lights. A scar on her neck. A neat, but thick slice right over her jugular. It was two inches long and made Bronx's stomach twist. What could it possibly be from.

  He frowned and sat back in his chair, wishing he knew where she was from, or anything else about her, other than the fact that she kept to herself, she was beautiful in a sweet-but-still-strong kind of way, and she had a scar on her neck.

  When class ended at three, Bronx realized although he'd been listening with everything he had, he hadn't actually heard a word she'd said, because his mind had been so filled with Emerald Avalon, the woman, there had been no room for anything else.

  Chapter 14

  Jazzy

  Jazzy strolled out into the parking lot after class, enjoying hanging out with Bronx again. She would never go for him in that way. He was too earnest, too sweet, too silly, for her to be attracted to him, but she sure did love having him around. He was a man who knew how to treat women right, and after meeting most of his family at graduation, she figured his future wife could thank big-brother Knox for that.

  Just because she liked him, didn't mean she wasn't going to mess with him. In fact, it meant she was going to mess with him more.

  "Damn, Bronx," she fired over her shoulder at him. "You are a waste of testosterone, you know that? It's been two damn weeks and you're still hung up on Lt. Popsicle Pants but you ain't said boo to her!"

  "Take it easy, Jazzy," Bronx hissed, running to catch up with her. "And keep your voice down. What was I supposed to do, hack into the phone database for her number and ask her out?" His voice deepened as he parodied himself. "Ah, yeah, Lieutenant, we only met once, and I was kind of an idiot, but hey, will you go out with me?"

  Jazzy raised an eyebrow and nailed him with her stare. "She's not in the book?" Bronx looked everywhere but her face and Jazzy laughed. "You looked her up. She's not, is she?"

  "No."

  Jazzy walked around her tiny Nissan Cube and looked back at Bronx. "Where's your truck?"

  "My brother took it home. My captain didn't want me driving. Can you give me a ride back to my place?"

  "Sure can." Jazzy popped the locks and got in, then watched Bronx fold himself gently into the tiny passenger seat.

  He looked at her, his face hopeful. "Can you catch me up on class too?"

  She started the car and raised a hand. "We didn't do much yesterday. Just read the sheet she gave you. Everything's on there."

  His eyes fell, but just for a moment. "Any chance you took notes on what she covered this afternoon?"

  Jazzy had been backing out of her parking stall but she hit the brakes and stared at him, hard. "You didn't pay a lick of attention, did you?"

  He shook his head.

  "What t
he hell B? I am not your personal tutor, so if you want to read my notes, you have to at least focus. Especially since you and tests don't generally get along too well."

  His face fell farther and Jazzy felt bad, but it was the truth and he needed to admit it. Bronx Rosesson was smarter than the devil in all kinds of ways, but anything that came out of a book? In a classroom setting where they weren't getting their hands dirty and moving around while it was being taught? In one ear and out the other. That shit never had a chance of sticking.

  She sighed. "Looks like we're back on nightly study sessions."

  Bronx grinned and Jazzy couldn't help but grin back. He wasn't just an open book, he was the whole damn library during open house.

  "Thanks Jazz."

  She held up a finger. "On one condition."

  "What?"

  "We do it at your house and you invite your brother over. He hasn't called me but once."

  "I'm surprised you're waiting for him to call you."

  Jazzy took her foot off the brake and looked behind her, then pulled out of the stall and the parking lot, headed towards Bronx's condo. " I've called him but he's always too busy to hook up. I feel like he's interested but there's something else going on with him, something he's not telling me, you know?"

  Bronx stared out the side window and didn't say anything for a long moment. "He was hurt pretty bad by someone. Maybe he's not ready."

  Jazzy nodded. That made all kinds of sense to her. Well, she'd just have to work on him. Daxton Rosesson was a peach of a man, one she wouldn't mind getting to have a bit of fun with, just to pass the time.

  She downshifted and forced her tiny car up the steep San Francisco street, her mind half on her dream of becoming the first black female chief of the SFFD. She wouldn't let marriage and kids get in the way of that, for sure, but that didn't mean she couldn't take a distressed hottie like Dax and get him showroom-ready again. Make him forget about whatever past bitch was still hitching his giddyup.