by A. L. Cook
“I’m going to go and let you get some sleep,” she told him when they separated.
Cam kissed her again, before taking a step back and yawning hugely. “That’s probably a good idea,” he chuckled. “I’ll walk you out.”
Erin stuck her head back into the dining room and called her goodbyes, waving off the thanks sent her way and collecting her coat as she left. She let Cameron help her shrug into it, and made sure she buttoned it securely against the bitter wind. As she reached into her pocket for her gloves and beanie she spoke, not meeting Cam’s eyes.
“If your offer still stands,” she told him, “I’d like to come home with you for Christmas.”
It was said all in a rush, so it took Cam a moment to comprehend what she’d said. When he did, a cautious smile crept across his face. “Of course it still stands,” he told her. “I’m really glad you agreed to come.”
She finally looked at him, a tiny smile of her own just starting. “Me too,” she told him. “And I’m sorry it took so long to give you an answer.”
“That’s perfectly okay,” he told her, and was pleasantly surprised when she stepped closer and kissed him, the first real public kiss they’d shared. “I’ll call you later?”
“Yes, please,” she told him, and kissed him again before saying goodbye and striding off into the watery light of sunrise.
Cam grinned as he tucked his hands under his arms and watched her leave. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen over the holidays, but he was excited to share it with her. But first, he needed sleep. With another big smile he headed back into the station to do just that.
Eight
Dusting her hands off on her apron where she was standing in kitchen of the bakery, Erin answered her phone and put it on speaker. “Hey Cam,” she smiled. “Did you get some sleep?”
“I did, thanks to a very full belly,” he told her, his tone buoyant.
“I’m glad,” Erin told him, smoothing her hands over the cake she had just covered in fondant. “What’s up?” she asked, trimming the excess fondant at the bottom of the cake with a very sharp knife so it was uniform and neat.
“I need to make travel arrangements,” he told her, and she could hear his fingers on a keyboard. “So I was calling to see what your holiday schedule is like.”
That made Erin pause. “Travel arrangements?” she asked suspiciously. “Where, exactly, does your mom live?”
“Sitka,” Cam replied. “Uh, is that okay?”
Erin laughed. “Sure,” she replied. “Just the way you said ‘travel arrangements’ sounded like a bigger undertaking than just to Sitka.”
“Ah.” Erin could hear the grin in his voice “Sorry, I should have mentioned that.”
“It’s okay.” She leaned back on her stool at the counter until she could see the holiday roster drawn up on a whiteboard on the wall. “Um, it’s the nineteenth today, so I’m working today, tomorrow, and the next day until midday.”
“What about after Christmas?”
“I start back on the thirty first.”
“Plane or ferry?”
“I’ve haven’t been to Sitka, what would you recommend?”
“For your first trip there, why don’t we take the ferry, and fly back?” he suggested. “That way you get to see the islands and the scenery, but we get home faster, so there’s no need to cut the trip short. The only thing to consider is that the ferry leaves at one a.m., and the trip is about ten hours.”
“That’s fine,” Erin told him, picking up some sprigs of sugarpaste mistletoe she had made and let dry, positioning them on the cake.
“All right, I’ll book that then,” Cam told her, fingers still tapping his keyboard. “Want me to book a room on the ferry?” he asked, his voice low and warm.
Erin laughed, repositioning some of the mistletoe and eyeing it critically. “I don’t think beds in ferries are designed for what you have in mind.”
“Sleeping?” Cam asked, his tone entirely too innocent.
“Uh huh,” she snorted. “Is there anything special I need to bring?”
“Well, Sitka’s classified as temperate rainforest, so it’s warmer there than Juneau,” he told her.
“Define warmer,” she snorted.
“Low forties,” he laughed. “So you should definitely pack shorts.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.” Finally happy with the placement, she began poking the florist wire the mistletoe was affixed to into the cake. “I’m bringing cake for dessert,” she told him, “but is there a particular wine or something your mom likes that I can bring as a thank you?”
“You don’t need to do that,” Cam told her firmly. “If you’re a friend of one of her kids, you’re family as far as she’s concerned.”
“It’s still polite,” she told him, turning the cake and continuing to work.
“Well, the only wine I’ve ever seen her drink is a Taylor Fladgate 20 year reserve port, or a 2005 De Bortoli Semillon called ‘Noble One’, I think. It’s Australian, from memory.”
Erin grabbed a pen and wrote both of the wines down on a magnetic notepad on the fridge, making a mental note to see if she could get it online and shipped in time for it to arrive before they left. “I’ll see what I can dig up,” she told him as she tore the note off and stuck it in her back pocket.
“Can I ask what it was that changed your mind?” Cam asked suddenly.
Erin paused what she was doing and stared at the phone. How did she begin to explain the grieving process, let alone the resolution to let go of her anger, fear and pain? How did she tell her new- what, boyfriend?- that it was her love for the memory of her husband that encouraged her to open her heart again, despite the risks involved? What she did know was that it definitely wasn’t a conversation to be had over the phone.
“It was a combination of things, really,” she told him slowly. “Maybe once we get to your mom’s I can explain it to you?”
“Any time you want to talk, I’m all ears,” Cam agreed easily, and Erin smiled. He was an incredible man, and she knew how fortunate she was to have found him. Despite everything else. “I live closest to the ferry terminal, so do you want to spend the night before we go at my place? Saves us having to be awake any earlier than we need to,” he suggested.
“Sounds good,” Erin agreed. When do you finish up at the station?”
“The twenty-first, so I’ll probably just go home and crash for a few hours, then give you a call and come pick you up?”
“Perfect,” Erin confirmed. “We can get takeout for dinner on the way, if that works for you? Saves us having to cook.”
“Done,” Cam agreed. “Takeout, a movie, and a midnight alarm. Sounds perfect.”
His distaste at that last made Erin smile. “I’m looking forward to this, Cam,” she told him. “Getting to spend time with you, meeting your family, getting away from work for a while. All of it.”
“Me too,” he replied gently. “Look, I have to get back to work- we’re doing ladder training today to practice in the rain. If I don’t see you before then, I’ll call you on the twenty-second and come get you.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”
“Bye, beautiful.”
Erin ended the call, a soft smile on her face. Every time she spoke to Cam, he reinforced the rightness of her decision to actually make a proper go of a relationship with him. There was a lightness in her now that hadn’t been there a week ago, and was actually starting to look forward to making plans and putting ideas in place for the future. She was a little nervous about meeting Cameron’s family, but her reasoning was that they had raised him to be the amazing person he was, so they couldn’t be all bad.
As the rain grew heavier, she finished the cake she had been working on and began the next, this one needing a spray of golden airbrushed stars on the side, and a little Santa figurine with his arm around Rudolph on top. As she set up the airbrush machine and went looking for the colours for it, she thought about Cam’s question, what changed
your mind? She had spent a long time running over in her mind the fact that Cam was a firefighter, and just what a risk that posed to his life, let alone their relationship. She was still incredibly frightened by how risky his career was, and what that could mean for them, but she had taken the chance before, and she had come out the other side.
There were cracks that hadn’t been there before, and a cynicism that she wished she could dispel, but she was mostly intact. She was cautiously optimistic that she could do it again if she absolutely had to, but had decided to hope that she wouldn’t be faced with another situation like the one she had been with Daniel. She had to hope, or the alternative was to grow bitter and closed off, and she didn’t want to be that person.
With her newfound determination to be optimistic came its own challenges- nervousness at the depth of her affection for Cameron, determination not to succumb to her fears, desire to be happy and allow herself to love fully and unreservedly again. Erin did feel as though she was out of practice loving anyone but the memory of Daniel, but she knew her capacity to love was enormous, and she wanted that. Wanted to have her love returned.
So she had taken a deep mental breath and just… let it all go. It was all still there of course, the emotions that had crippled her for so long, but the hold they had had on her she simply released. It wasn’t until she made the decision to do it that she realised she had been gripping them just as tightly.
Erin had two more cakes to decorate, both similar in design with snowmen toppers. She had made them from sugarpaste-covered Styrofoam balls to reduce the weight of them, and they were adorned in festive scarves and hats. One of the cakes was dusted with a sparkly white lustre dust, the other airbrushed with a graduated dark blue to silver paint on the sides.
She thought about the fleecy navy scarf and matching leather gloves she had bought Cam for Christmas, with the thought of them complimenting his eyes and colouring in mind. He was so gorgeous, that man, and he did it for her in the most primal of ways. She shivered a little at the thought of their nights spent together, the memory of his fingers trailing along her skin enough to raise goosebumps on their phantom path.
Erin mentally shook herself, finishing the blue and silver cake and moving into the last. She pressed a series of snowflake-shaped stamps into the fondant, leaving embossed prints that she then copied over with thin and precisely piped royal icing. The end result would be perfect little snowflakes bordering the cake with a snowman on top. She sat back, satisfied with the night’s work, and placed all the cakes she had completed into a glass case to be kept until pickup over the next few days. She had a half dozen more cakes like these- small, template-type event cakes- to finish before she left, but she could have those finished in a matter of a few hours and then she was done.
She began packing up her work area, making sure everything was neat, clean and easily accessible for the next day’s work, before switching off all the lights but those highlighting the sign in the front window, and letting herself out the back door, locking it before heading upstairs to her apartment.
As she took a container of frozen leftovers out to reheat in the microwave, she began mentally packing for her trip with Cam. Along with the usual clothes, toiletries and perhaps a book or two, she considered shopping for some sexy lingerie, just as a surprise for the holidays. She smiled at the mental image of surprising Cam with a sheer red and white fur teddy, wondering if he’d get much of a kick from it, given that he’d seen her entirely naked on many, many occasions.
Erin entered the bathroom and turned on the shower, stripping off and having a quick shower to remove the flour, gel food colouring, and splashed coffee from her day in the bakery. She’d been working ridiculous hours, lately, not that she minded. She was supposed to do five a.m. to two p.m. but often stayed later, and then there were the hours she put in finishing cakes. Part of the employment deal she and Maggie had worked out meant trading her expertise as a custom cake decorator with all her own equipment for use of the bakery after hours. It had saved Erin having to rent a place that had extra space for her to dedicate to her livelihood, and Maggie had added an extra service the bakery hadn’t previously offered. The last six months had proven to be beneficial for both of them.
Rapidly towelling off and dressing again in a hurry to avoid getting cold, Erin took her leftover spaghetti bolognaise from the microwave, stirred it, and put it in for another two minutes. She leaned against the bench as she waited and fiddled with the rings on her necklace. Cam had never asked about them, though she had caught him looking at them on more than one occasion. She would tell him everything at Christmas, though, she decided. If he wanted to be involved with her, seriously and maybe even permanently, he needed to know exactly what he was getting into. She owed him that.
The microwave pinged and she took her bowl out, using a tea towel to carry it and a fork to the lounge room, letting it sit on the coffee table while it cooled. She turned on the television to watch the news and pulled her laptop over from the end of the couch, opening it and doing an internet search for online wine retailers. She found a place that guaranteed next-day deliveries on expedited shipping to her zipcode, and went and retrieved the paper she’d stuck in her pocket when she had been talking to Cam earlier. She found the reserve port Cam had mentioned and bought two bottles, finalising the purchase with expedited delivery and then, just for a laugh, started browsing online lingerie catalogues while she ate. She had intended to be more amused by the Christmas-themed ‘naughty Mrs Claus’ type of underwear, but an unrelated black and white image caught her eye.
There was practically nothing to it- a transparent black silk bra and knickers set held together with the thinnest of black straps, but the intricate lace detailing on the full racer-back style of the bra and the waistband of the undies was spectacular. It hid nothing whatsoever on any part of the body, and was the most blatantly erotic thing she could imagine wearing. So she bought it, and expedited that, too.
That done, she set the laptop aside and finished her dinner, watching the weather forecast for the next few days on the news as it finished. Hopefully the rain would let up to save it from being too-wet a holiday, not that the rain ever really bothered her.
She was surprised by how excited she was becoming for their time away together. Meeting his entire family at Christmas was a daunting thought, but seeing Cam in his native habitat, being able to spend so much time with him without the interruptions of work and the daily commitments of life was a novel concept. She hoped Cam was feeling the same way.
*
Cam was furious. He paced back and forth in the hospital waiting room to hear how Ben and Anna were doing, ignoring the speculative glances being thrown his way by other patients and their families who were also waiting.
They had been called out to a small house fire on the outskirts of town. There had been no reports of there being any persons on the premises, but when they got there they had been confronted by an increasingly distressed woman who had begged them to ‘save her babies’. Ben and Anna had been the forward force, letting themselves into the house and searching room by room. They checked everywhere with no luck, contacting Cam via their helmet mics to confirm that the woman’s children were actually in the house.
When asked about the children, the woman had looked confused, before guilt crept over her face and she admitted she had been talking about her cats. Cam relayed that information, and just as they had begun to leave the house, part of the roof had collapsed in on them, knocking Ben out and giving Anna a concussion. She had managed to disentangle Ben from the smouldering lumber and dragged him out of the house in quick order, only to turn and vomit on the grass once they were clear.
Cam had sent them both to the hospital, which had left him short for a while, and it had been several more hours before he could get to the hospital to check on them himself, as he had been unable to get any information over the phone.
He never had a problem with saving pets, but they were not his first
priority. And it made him incredibly angry that his life and the lives of his crew could be so easily endangered because people refused to give clear and concise information.
He stopped the frustrated pacing he was doing across the linoleum floor, unclenched his fists and inhaled deeply, holding it for a count of five before he exhaled. He could empathise, given the room to calm down and put things in perspective. People panicked, he knew that. Just because he was trained in how to deal with emergencies calmly and rationally didn’t mean that the average Joe Blow did, and he always tried to remember that in situations like this that pushed his tolerance to the brink. So long as Anna and Ben were okay there was no harm done.
He dropped into a hard plastic seat and tipped his head back until it rested on the backrest. He needed to sleep; he hadn’t had nearly enough in the last few weeks between Erin and twenty-hour hour shifts, and he was starting to really feel it. This mini break over Christmas was coming at just the right time.