“I have to get to work, but I can stay for a few minutes,” she said.
So coats came off. Scarves came off. Boots came off, and somehow in the pulling off of boots, they bumped into each other, hip to hip. It was natural as anything for him to take her by the waist and steady her.
He felt the taut curve of her stomach beneath his hand, felt the way she tensed. But instead of pulling away, she stepped closer. Faced him a little more.
I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought.
And Jack made what he considered a valiant effort not to pull her tight against him. Not to put both hands on her tiny waist, so small that he could almost encircle it completely. To ignore the way her face tilted up, inviting him to kiss her.
But when Elizabeth slipped her hands around his neck and gazed up at him, the innocence-yet-knowing … the openness … the welcome kindness in her eyes was too much for Jack to resist. So, too, was the snow-bitten pink of her soft lips.
Like gravity pulling two heavenly bodies together, Jack met her lips. It was a moment of sweet exploration, warm and natural and right. Although the kiss started gently, he couldn’t help pulling her tighter, almost cradling her small body against his, not wanting to break what was precious inside her.
What was going on? What was happening here, that he felt so moved by this woman he’d only just met?
The fact was, he’d worried about her for years.
You know she’s been hurt. You know she’s suffered. And you can make it all go away. You can protect her, treat her well, the way she deserves. Be her happy ending.
More than that, she felt right in his arms, like it was where she was meant to be.
But the last thing Jack wanted to be with her was careless. Elizabeth deserved the greatest of care, and so he moved from her mouth, intending to kiss her forehead and then her cheek—respectful, respectful—but her insistent hands wove their way through his hair, and she pulled his lips to hers again.
The second kiss was different.
When Elizabeth took his bottom lip between her teeth, and then as their tongues entwined, Jack knew there was no use pretending. Hot desire pounded through his body as he kissed her back, a kiss that was insistent and demanding and all the things he’d told himself not to be with Elizabeth. He felt the strength of her heartbeat as she pressed herself against him, and the idea flashed through his head of her soft breasts against his naked chest.
By the quickness of Elizabeth’s breath and the way she tilted her hips against him, Jack knew there was no hiding the fact of his arousal, either.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, powerless against the pull of her lovely lips. He longed for her as he’d never longed for anything in his life. “So wonderful.”
“I think you’re wonderful, too,” she murmured back, issuing pillowy-soft kisses to his jaw before moving to his neck.
It was like being kissed by a butterfly, and Jack felt drunk with lust. Knowing he needed to slow down before things went too far, he pulled back. There was a playful sparkle in her eyes, and it was utterly charming.
Who are you, Elizabeth? he wondered. And why have you appeared in my life? She felt like a gift, but on the other hand, maybe she was his punishment for the role he’d played in her father’s imprisonment. Perhaps she was there to tantalize him but to always be just out of reach—because out of reach she would inevitably run if she ever learned the truth about what Jack’s dad had done to her family, and the role he, himself, had played by remaining silent.
Jack pulled back from Elizabeth, but he couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off her waist. He might know the circumstances of her father’s imprisonment, but he wanted to know more about her. What did she want from life? What made her laugh? Did she cry at corny commercials and scream at scary movies? What were her hopes, dreams, and fears? Who was she beneath her fragile-tough exterior? He felt a promise of intimacy in the heated air between them, and despite knowing that he shouldn’t, Jack chased it, not wanting to let Elizabeth go.
He was about to suggest that they sit by the crackling fire and continue what had been a near-perfect afternoon. They could order a pizza, share a glass of cognac, and eat the divine-looking brownies that he’d spied on the kitchen counter. But who was he kidding? Jack knew that if Elizabeth stayed much longer, he might bed her—worse, he might fall in love with her.
And if he did either of those things, he’d only end up hurting her.
As if reading his mind, Elizabeth said, “Jack, I should go.”
He removed his hands from her waist and stepped away. “Oh. Right. Of course.” He shifted awkwardly. “I guess you took your coat off for nothing. Sorry about that.”
“That didn’t feel like nothing to me,” she said, her smile tender.
“No, of course not,” Jack said quickly. “I didn’t mean it was nothing. I meant—” He stopped himself from continuing. The connection, the passion, between them felt like everything, and that was the problem.
“It’s just that I have to get to work,” Elizabeth said. “I’m probably late as it is, and Mark, my manager, isn’t the nicest guy in the world.” She took her parka off the hanger. “Help me with my coat?”
She turned her back to him so he could help her on with her coat. There is was again, that intoxicating smell of sugarplum.
“Have you, uh … have you got a scarf?”
“Right at your feet, Jack.”
He stooped to pick it up, feeling flustered, and reached for her knit hat, too. He’d much rather be undressing her than getting her all layered up, but he doubted that would ever happen. As she finished dressing to go back outside, he threw on his coat and boots so he could escort her to her car.
“It this your car?” he asked, not having seen it parked at her house the other day. “Oh, wait, it’s April’s right? I think I’ve seen it in their driveway.”
“That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “She’s a good friend. My oldest friend, too.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before climbing into her vehicle. Jack made sure she was buckled in safely and that the car started.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, he thought as he watched her drive away.
10
Elizabeth told herself she wasn’t in love.
In the winter gloom of the next morning, the glittering, earth-shattering certainty of her future with Jack felt much less certain.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t want a great love with Jack. In fact, she wanted it so much it hurt. The previous evening when she returned April’s car and while April gave her a ride to work, she’d been unable to stop herself from smiling. April had noticed and asked her what was up, but Elizabeth had just said, “Nothing, just feeling happy.” She didn’t think she’d quite fooled her friend.
Her customers at the Sled Dog had noticed, too. She’d felt extra friendly, floating on a cloud of happiness, and her tips had been exceptional. What nobody else knew was that even as she’d poured pints and mixed cocktails, her mind had been back in the foyer of Jack’s house. She’d been in his arms, feeling the electricity zip through her veins. Remembering his lips, his hands, the hard strength of his tall body against hers.
After work, when she crawled into bed, she’d been unable to fall asleep for hours. Instead, she stared up at the stained white popcorn ceiling, watching the shadows, and had an overwhelming sense that everything was different now. That kiss with Jack, that moment she’d fallen in the snow … something inside her softened. Uncoiled. Felt right for the first time ever. It was as if her entire life had just been marking time until Jack.
In the morning, though, Elizabeth felt something else. In addition to the still-reverberating frisson of desire for Jack and the deep intuition that he might be her one great love was a much stronger and more familiar presence: fear. Just as this chance was dangled in front of her, with Elizabeth’s luck something would happen to snatch it all away again.
She wasn’t a romantic. Not an id
ealist. Not someone given to flighty impulses like falling in love just because a handsome man glanced her way.
She gave an eager Rugby his food and then started a pot of coffee brewing for herself and Emmett, hoping the smell would rouse him. She shivered in her flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers, and while she waited for the coffee—and for the house’s sluggish furnace to kick on—she grabbed an old coat as an additional layer.
“Morning,” Emmett said from the kitchen doorway.
Elizabeth looked over. Her brother had two full garbage bags in his hands.
Rugby looked up from his food bowl and barked once.
“Good morning,” Elizabeth said. “What’s all that?”
“It’s time for me to get rid of my baggage. Literally and figuratively.”
She smiled at him. It was unexpected, and unusual lately, to see Emmett take the initiative. And he’s not hungover, she realized, seeing his eyes without their typical red cast or dark shadows.
“That’s a great idea,” she said. “It’s time for me, too.”
“Thanks for making coffee. I’m going to take this stuff out and keep at it.”
“I’ll make you breakfast, too, if you want.”
As Elizabeth sipped her hot coffee, hands wrapped around the mug for warmth, she felt a little more invigorated.
I’m not in love, she told herself again. Men like Jack don’t fall for women like me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start acting like a woman with a future.
She’d been stagnant before—it was so obvious now—and secretly dreading the coming reunion with her father, not because she didn’t love him and want him to be released from prison, but because she barely had a grip on her precarious life as it was. There was Emmett. The house. Her lack of momentum. Lack of a career.
She’d always thought bartending would be a stop-gap job, a placeholder, a way to pay the bills while building toward a future with more meaningful work, and yet she’d been bartending for four years. There were no excuses, really, she saw that now. She should have been taking classes at the community college all along instead of allowing herself to lurch from one personal crisis to another, willingly turning over any extra money she had to pay for her dad’s lawyer and to take annual trips to visit him down at the federal prison in Oregon, and, in recent months, bailing Emmett out of one scrape or another.
Today that would all change. The possibility of love had infected her, and life would be better.
She would be better.
She and Emmett had an appointment with Theresa Harmon later that morning to get an update on any repercussions from the accident. Theresa had requested the meeting, which made Elizabeth nervous, but once they got there, seated in the old armchairs that faced Theresa’s desk, the lawyer had only good news.
Since Jack Barnes had made it his professional opinion that Elizabeth wasn’t the driver, and since Elizabeth had done the right thing and not given any statements to the police at the scene, and since they weren’t going to report the vehicle’s damage to the insurance company, and since there was no record anywhere of what alcohol or drugs were or weren’t in Emmett and Elizabeth’s systems, it appeared as if they’d gotten exceptionally lucky.
“This could have ended much differently,” Theresa said in her usual no-nonsense voice. “It could have ended with Emmett in jail at the very same time your dad’s being released from prison. I can’t help but think how disappointed he would have been.”
“Sorry, but he’s given up the right to be disappointed in me,” Emmett said.
Theresa had known them a long time, through the years of Nate’s arrest and trial and parole hearings, through Emmett’s legal claim to become Elizabeth’s guardian when their mom up and left, and she’d sometimes served as the only reasonable adult in their lives. Theresa always played it straight with them, and as such, she wasn’t afraid to challenge them when she felt it was warranted.
“Well, then, I’m disappointed in you,” she said to Emmett. “You’re supposed to rise above your circumstances in life, not succumb to them. That’s what separates the weak from the strong.”
“He is,” Elizabeth said, defending her brother. “We both are. Onward and upward from this point forward.”
Upon leaving Theresa’s downtown office, they walked to the North Star Café for hot chocolate. It was a small treat that Emmett had used to do for Elizabeth when she was a kid and thought there were no problems that cocoa couldn’t solve.
“It’s going to be hard,” Elizabeth said, referring to Nate’s upcoming release, deciding to address the situation head-on. “I’m worried he’s going to mess things up for us here when he gets released, aren’t you?”
Emmett took a deep drink of cocoa as he looked out the window onto snowy Main Street.
“It’s going to be brutal, him coming back,” he said. “You don’t remember what a pariah he was, but things were nasty for a really long time when he first was arrested.”
“I remember enough,” she said.
She’d long worried about how Nate’s release would affect her life, but now she had a new worry—namely, would his sudden appearance mess up her fledgling relationship with Jack? Jack was so upstanding. Would he even be willing to be associated with a convicted felon like Nate? Would the name Armstrong scare him off when it was splashed all over the news again in a negative light, reminding the entire town what Nate had done?
“Onward and upward, right?” Emmett said. “If we need to move from Golden Falls to start fresh—to get rid of our baggage—then that’s what we’ll do.”
“I think that’s a great idea for you and Dad,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m not moving.”
Emmett looked surprised.“Why not?”
“Because I just might have a reason to stay.” She took a sip of her hot chocolate and refused to tell Emmett anything more.
11
“So there’s this woman,” Jack said to Tom Steele, his best friend and fellow fire captain.
Tom’s dark eyebrows shot up.
They were at the crowded Sled Dog Brewing Company, near the tail end of a night of drinking with a few other guys from the station—Sean Kelly, Troy Garrett, and Josh, who’d brought along Hayley. Jack almost never joined in on such nights. He threw barbecues and Super Bowl parties and poker nights regularly at his house, where he was comfortable playing host and enjoyed making sure the guys had a good time.
But barhopping wasn’t his thing. He was older than most of the other guys, and while it could be fun in one’s twenties, as a man of thirty-six, it had gotten old for Jack years ago. These days he preferred a glass of wine at home, or occasionally meeting up with Tom for a cigar and an expensive brandy at the Pioneer Hotel, where they would talk about the larger world outside Golden Falls and brainstorm their next international travels.
“There’s a woman?” Tom asked. “And she’s here, in Golden Falls? Man, I never thought I’d see the day.”
Jack couldn’t blame Tom for his incredulity. On the rare occasion Jack talked about why he was still single, he blamed it on the lack of unattached, interesting, attractive, of-the-right-age women in their rather small city. More than once he’d said there was no one for him here.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “She’s here. More specifically, she’s right there. Behind the bar.”
Tom craned his head to see.
“Don’t be so obvious,” Jack said, thankful Elizabeth hadn’t seemed to notice.
Tom laughed. “If you’re talking about the woman bartender, she looks too busy to notice us talking about her. But yeah, she’s attractive. On the scrawny side, maybe, but definitely pretty. Striking, actually. What’s the story with her?”
The story. Despite their many years of friendship, Jack had yet to confide in Tom about the whole shameful mess with his father and Nate Armstrong. He didn’t want anyone else to have to bear the weight of knowledge of the crime, for one thing, but if Jack was honest with himself, it was also because he didn’t want Tom to think less o
f him.
But how to explain why he couldn’t date Elizabeth? The secret history roiled inside of Jack—maybe it was the alcohol or maybe the fact that he’d told Doc Bauer and the world had continued to turn, but Jack thought he might be able to tell Tom, after all.
“Her name’s Elizabeth,” Jack said, his eyes not leaving her slight, feminine figure. “And it’s a long story, but she’s off-limits.”
Just as he said it, Elizabeth’s eyes scanned the bar for him, as they’d done several times already that night. Her gaze connected with Jack’s, and it was like a thunderbolt striking his heart. He longed to touch her. To slide his fingers through her soft blonde hair. To feel her velvety lips open for him once more.
“Who’s off-limits?”
It wasn’t Tom who said it. Jack’s attention snapped to the figure who’d lurched over to their bar-height table. It was Troy Garrett, the ladder firefighter on Tom’s crew who was temporarily filling in for Rick “Maddog” Madsen who was currently deployed in Afghanistan with his Special Forces reserve unit.
Jack wasn’t alone in counting down the days until Rick got home. Rat-faced Troy Garrett was the worst buddy-fucker on the fire department, the kind who tried to make himself look good to his superiors by reporting the most minor of infractions by other firefighters. Fortunately, Garrett wasn’t in a position of authority, but Jack felt sorry for Tom having to deal with him on his crew.
Garrett put his elbows on their table and leaned in. “Jack, dude, do you have your eye on a married woman or something? Because let me tell you from experience, that’s not a deal-breaker.”
“No, I don’t, and actually, it is a deal-breaker for anyone with a working set of morals,” Jack said.
Garrett laughed. “Lighten up, man. A fuck is just a fuck. And I bet there are plenty of desperate unmarried chicks here. Hell, I’ll be your wingman.”
Jack’s flare of annoyance grew hotter.
From The Ashes (Golden Falls Fire Book 3) Page 7