Her Protector: A Firefighter Secret Baby Romance

by Ashlee Price

  Brandy sniffled and wiped her eyes. “You know what? Fine! I can’t believe I let you suck me back into this relationship when you’re so suffocating and don’t care about me pursuing my dreams. How could you get so hung up on my photographer sending you a proof from my shoot before it goes to print!”

  “The shoot was for Christmas sweaters, and that ain’t Rudolph he showed me. How did he even get my number? What’s wrong with you?!? No, nothing, forget that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Brandy. You show me day in and day out who you really are, and I keep choosing it. But not anymore, I’m done.”

  The look on Brandy’s face as she gazed around at the patrons of the bar was a mixture of embarrassment and sadness. Jenna’s eyes glanced to Tanner, and for that brief moment, she wanted to go to him. She wanted to comfort him, but that wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. They were barely friends at this point.

  “Yikes.” Hannah’s voice trickled into her thoughts. “Yeah, that’s what happens. And then next week they’ll be right back together again.”

  “That’s so toxic.” Jenna shook her head. “I can’t believe he keeps going back to someone like her.”

  “What? You think he should be with someone like you?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Jenna rolled her eyes.

  “You sure about that? I would completely understand if you still had a thing for Tanner. He’s hot. And technically he did belong to you first.”

  “No one belongs to anybody. People don’t own people.”

  “Clearly you’re neglecting a huge part of human history.”

  “Hannah, stop it!” Jenna giggled. “I loved him. I’ll always want what’s best for him. I do for all of my exes.”

  “Oh yeah? What about Mike?”

  “Gag! He can fall into a pit of broken glass. But I’ll still wish him a speedy recovery,” she joked. Mike had cheated on her while her life was imploding. An ex barely worth mentioning, but Hannah had made her point.

  So Jenna stole one last look at Tanner, who’d separated himself from everyone else, before getting back to work. It was getting late and people were starting to leave. The atmosphere was winding down once again as Jenna walked around cleaning tables. Hannah looked exhausted as she sat at the bar with her arms folded and her eyes trying desperately to stay open.

  “This is why I told you to take it easy on the Shirley Temples,” Jenna joked.

  Hannah sniffed in a gust of air before waking herself up. “Sheesh. I had no idea how old I was that I can’t even stay awake until one in the morning anymore.”

  “Well, you had work today, but thank you for coming. I love you so much for tonight. I don’t know how I would have made it through without you. You want to grab lunch tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely!” she said, glancing over to Tanner, who was still sitting at a table by himself. “Tell me how that works out for you.”

  “Nothing to tell because I’m not doing anything but putting him in a cab and sending him home!”

  “Alright, I guess lunch tomorrow then. Tell your dad I said good night.”

  “Will do, and say hi to your folks for me.”

  Hannah simply gave her a two-fingered salute before grabbing her bag and walking out of the bar.

  Jenna took her time cleaning up and shutting things down. It wasn’t until her father emerged from the office that she remembered he was there. Excited to show him how much money she’d made for the night, she emptied out the register and hurried over to him.

  “Dad, look! Oh, and Mr. Hannity gave me this,” she said, handing him the envelope.

  “You spoke to him?” her father asked with a concerned look in his eyes.

  “Well, of course I did. It was only brief, bu—”

  He cut her off. “I don’t want you speaking to him. You hear me? I told him that, and that’s the way it’s going to be!”

  “Okay, Dad,” Jenna said, not wanting to fight. “But just so you know, he’s kicking in an extra two grand a month for that room to be exclusive to him and his guests.”

  “That’s not the deal. Why did you change the deal?! This one was working fine!”

  “He already agreed to it, Dad, and I was just trying to help. If we start taking advantage of these situations we can really turn this place around. We have to start making smarter business decisions, and renting out that back room for way less than it’s worth isn’t good business! We have to—”

  Paul cut her off again, throwing his hands up. “Just stop! We don’t have to do a damn thing! This is my bar! Mine! I don’t need your help, and I don’t need your rowdy friends creating a spectacle out of this place. Keep them out of here! All they’re doing is bringing a bad crowd and unnecessary attention to the bar!”

  “That’s the complete opposite of good business, Dad! I made us four grand tonight with Mr. Hannity’s raised prices. You are not seriously saying that you’d rather it go back to being quiet and you making a measly twenty-six hundred a month versus thousands of dollars, are you? This place has so much potential and I have so many ideas! I think we should really grab the bull by the horns here. We should paint the walls a nice off-white, clean up the tables, reupholster the chairs and barstools. If we raise enough money we can even redo these horrible floors!” Jenna’s excitement had her running off on a tangent before she realized how upset her father was getting.

  Then he exploded. “No!”

  He was shaking, and his face was turning a deeper shade of red every second as he stood there in front of Jenna with tears welling up.

  “No!” he said again. “You’re not going to change a damn thing! Stop trying to erase my wife!”

  “Daddy, I promise I’m not,” Jenna said, now fighting back her own tears. “I just thought that if we changed things around that business would be better and this place could stay afloat. Isn’t that the best way of honoring her memory? To keep this business running? You’re just being so stubborn!”

  “Stop! I don’t care what you have to say right now! This place doesn’t belong to you!”

  “Well, it won’t belong to you, either, if you keep letting your emotions run it!”

  “Just get out! I can’t do this with you, not right now, Jenna, please,” he sniffled. “I’ll close up and make sure Mr. Hannity is out and gets home safe. Just go and get your drunk friend out of here too!”

  Paul stormed off, refusing to listen to anything else she had to say. Jenna had started crying while her father wiped away his own tears. Strolling up to Tanner, she tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Sorry you had to hear all of that, but it’s time for us to lock up. Can you drive home? Do you need me to call you a cab?”

  “I’m not drunk,” Tanner said, gulping down the last sip of his beer. “Besides, it’s only right that I got to see your blow up with your father after I embarrassed myself with Brandy.”

  “Oh, you didn’t embarrass yourself,” she smiled. “Come on, let’s get you some air.”

  Tanner wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t exactly sober either. He stumbled a bit getting up from the table.

  “Yeah, definitely calling you a cab,” she chuckled, pulling his arm around her neck. Hoisting him up, using her shoulder as a crutch, she helped Tanner make his way outside.

  The stars over Doveport were always spectacular for anyone who took the time to look at them. Jenna wished she could gaze at them on her first night back, but trying to hold Tanner up while he kept trying to go back inside the bar was exhausting.

  “I don’t need a cab. I can walk,” Tanner said, pulling himself away from Jenna.

  “At least let me walk with you, then.”

  “It’s a free country,” he said, throwing his arms open wide.

  Jenna walked away from the bar with the mildly drunk Tanner in silence, wondering what to say to him. Every time they looked at each other, they’d simply smile but they wouldn’t speak.

  It wasn’t until Tanner stopped walking that he finall
y said something. “Thank you for walking with me. I’m sure I could have managed on my own. You don’t have to come the rest of the way. It’s another few blocks from here.”

  “Wow, that was the crappiest expression of gratitude I’ve ever gotten. No, wait, it’s a tie between you and my dad! You two sure know how to make a girl feel appreciated.”

  “Listen, Jen, I’m not in the mood for any of your tantrums tonight,” he told her bluntly.

  “My tantrums? You say that like—” she stopped herself. “Never mind. Let’s not argue. We’re both pretty fired up from this evening, and the last thing I want is for my last memory of tonight to be fighting with you. I don’t want any lasting memory of you to be of us fighting.”

  Tanner paused. “What is your last memory of me?”

  Jenna wasn’t really ready to take that stroll down memory lane, but he had asked, and she felt compelled to answer him. “The last good memory is the week after the funeral. You never left my side. The entire semester that I took off from school, you kept me encouraged and motivated. Even though it was mostly text messages, it was still good.”

  “And the last bad one?” He turned to face her. It was a very sobering look in his eyes.

  Jenna swallowed hard. “I don’t think you want to know.”

  “I do,” he said, grabbing her hands. He held them gently, and somehow it felt like they had never broken up. “I just want a little bit of clarity.”

  “Okay.” She let out a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this. Even Hannah doesn’t know about it, but it was that time I was headed back to school and we ran into each other. I thought that you reaching out to me was more than what it was. That was my fault. I own that. But when I told you I was heading back, you didn’t ask me to stay like you did before. You actually told me that you wouldn’t be calling or texting much at all. You were going for a promotion and your girlfriend was uncomfortable with our friendship. But hey, the worst memory award is actually a draw between that and the night before I left the first time, where you fake proposed.”

  “I meant that,” Tanner said wearily. “I loved you when I loved you, Jenna.”

  “And I loved you, but I wasn’t ready to be married. Not at 17. Tanner, there’s way too much history here,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to rehash it all on your doorstep.”

  “Let’s go back to the bar and rehash it there, then,” he smiled. Turning around, they started walking back toward The Wheel. Jenna simply glanced at him, walking down the street in his bright yellow uniform, dirty with soot and ash, suspenders hanging at his sides, his black T-shirt clinging to his muscular frame.

  “I don’t want to do that, but I do want to hear about this fire you guys fought tonight, and your life outside of our past and whatever emotional wreckage you’re trying to pull yourself away from,” she smirked.

  “Still sensitive, I see,” he mocked her. “And what is going on with you and your dad? I don’t remember Mr. F letting anything get to him the way you just did.”

  “He’s just taking too long to grieve,” Jenna said icily.

  “Damn, if you were any colder I’d swear it was January out here! Is that an actual thing? I didn’t think that was something that ever stopped. Maybe you should take it easy on him. Just because you’re not a blubbering mess doesn’t mean he isn’t. He lost his wife, his soul mate… I know exactly how that feels.”

  Chapter 4

  Jenna didn’t want to believe that Tanner was talking about her, but as they made their way back toward the bar, she couldn’t help but ask him. “You really think we were soul mates?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “So what happened? When I came back, that would have been the perfect time, right?”

  “Oh yeah, hit on my ex-girlfriend at her mother’s funeral, perfect timing,” he scoffed. “The timing was only right the night before we left.”

  “I didn’t want to stay in Doveport,” she admitted. “That’s why I said no.”

  “I know that, and I never asked you to stay,” Tanner told her.

  “You asking me to marry you was asking me to stay. Were you going to follow me through my college career? What if I did one of those study abroad programs? Would you have followed me to a different country? It would have been so selfish of me to say yes and then go traipsing around the world trying to find myself. I had to say no.”

  “Wait a minute, before you paint this picture of you doing me a favor by breaking my heart, tell me this: If I would have taken things further between us after the funeral, would you have been ready for that?”

  “I would have been open to it,” Jenna shrugged.

  “Wait! And didn’t you have a boyfriend who wasn’t there for you at the time too?” Tanner stared at her.

  “No, once you cheat on me we’re no longer in a relationship,” Jenna said adamantly.

  “Okay, but you didn’t find out he was cheating until when?”

  “I had my suspicions before my mom passed, but it wasn’t until I was about to go back to school that I found out for sure. I wanted to only take the bereavement time they gave me, but after finding out what Mike did, I was crushed. I knew he was graduating, so burning a semester at home seemed like the best option. And honestly it was. I never would have been able to get back into my classes and do what needed to be done to pass. I spent those weeks crying my heart out. There were even a few therapy sessions in there.”

  “Good, I’m glad you took that time. Maybe Mr. F needs to do the same thing. Has he had any time away from everything and everyone to just grieve?”

  “I don’t think so. He kind of buried himself in here trying to pay off the medical bills and keep the bar open. And he made it happen. I don’t know how, but he did. He was great.”

  “So why are you hard on him about changing the bar? You see how upset he got. Why don’t you try to slow things down with him?” Tanner suggested.

  “Hannah told me the same thing. Yeah, I get kind of tunnel visioned at times. But yeah, you guys are right, I definitely need to slow things down.”

  They kept walking, taking a random turn that led them past a vacant lot. Tanner stopped walking just to stare at it. It took Jenna a while to realize where they were, and when she finally did, her eyes lit up.

  The vacant lot had formerly housed a movie theater. It had only had three screens, and most of the time they were showing old black-and-white films. Every once in a while she and Tanner would cut class to come hang out in the old theater. They’d had some very interesting times there in the darkness of the back rows. All of those memories washed over Jenna, making her feel warm and even a bit moist.

  Shifting uncomfortably, she waited for the feeling to pass. Tanner was even sexier than he’d been in high school. The more she looked at him, the harder it was for her to believe she had let him go.

  “You remember this place, right?” he asked, glancing over toward her.

  “I do,” she nodded.

  Tanner couldn’t help but take her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. “We used to walk in there like this, what? Every Tuesday afternoon? I don’t even know how we got away with that.”

  “We didn’t,” she laughed. “You remember when my dad and your mom showed up while we were making out. I don’t even remember what movie was playing.”

  “Was it ever about the movie that was playing?” he chuckled, running his fingers through his hair. Jenna secretly swooned, wishing that his hair was wrapped around her hands.

  “I guess it wasn’t,” she smirked. “We were so young and so dumb.”

  “Young, definitely. Dumb? Not so much. We both knew exactly what we wanted, and granted life has certainly happened along the way, but we stuck to our goals. You graduated college and I’m a firefighter.”

  “Right, so when did your goals include dating a woman like Brandy?” Jenna tossed the question out there fully expecting him to shut down, but it was the opposite.
Tanner was completely honest.

  “You saw her, Jen. She’s a babe. I let a lot of things go just because of the way she looks. And don’t give me that ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ face. It wasn’t all bad, and it didn’t start off crazy. We clicked. I met her at the gym because I was training kind of hard for the annual physical, and that was that. Even though I think that’s all we had in common. Well, the gym and… you know.”

  “Please spare me the details of my ex and his ex-girlfriend flopping around on a mattress together,” Jenna laughed.

  “Oh stop, I never flop. You should remember that,” he said with a wink and seductive grin spreading across his face.

  It sent chills down her spine, chills that landed right between her thighs. While her cheeks grew hot, she wasn’t sure if he could see how hard she was blushing. “I remember a lot of things about us. You remember when we used to say we’d move to Philadelphia and be city folks?”

  “Ha! That’s right,” he smiled brightly, “and we’d raise our two kids. One boy and one girl, with a nanny?”

  “That was crazy, right? I thought we were going to be together forever. I thought you were going to be the first and only guy I’d ever love.”

  “I felt the same about you, but life has a funny way of teaching you things about yourself. I’m sorry about the proposal, Jenna,” he sighed.

  “What? I thought it was real?” She glanced to him but turned away almost as quickly.

  He wouldn’t allow her to avoid his gaze. Turning her to face him, he spoke sincerely. “It was. But you told me what you wanted to do, and I knew in my heart that getting married wasn’t a part of the plan. I didn’t respect that. I was being selfish.”

  Jenna was surprised, to say the least. “Wow. Thanks, Tanner. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I’m surprised you’re still so open, honest, sweet. A woman like Brandy can ruin a guy like you.”

  “Trust me, I’m the only person who can ruin me. I’m perfectly okay with acknowledging when I’m the cause of a problem, and my problem with Brandy was just that… my problem. I never thought I’d fall for her. It was supposed to be a fling, but we just kept ending up together. No matter how hard we fought, we kept coming back.”