by C. C. Coburn
The one night he needed a good night’s sleep, he’d blown it by staying out way too late. He’d be in no condition for the hearing. Was this some self-fulfilling prophecy? Had he deliberately sabotaged himself?
He tried to push the demons aside. Think of Carly, his internal voice chanted. Think only of Carly.
He forced his breathing to slow as he lay back, hands pillowed behind his head, and pictured her. Strange how relaxed that made him feel. Then her touch… No, not good, he decided as his heart rate increased.
If he was honest with himself, Carly was his teenage fantasy come to life. Pity he hadn’t met her back then.
Adam wondered what it would be like to kiss her. Make love to her. He’d had his share of lovers. Women who didn’t want to probe too much, women who cared more about his body and how he could pleasure them than about Adam O’Malley, the man.
That was how Carly was different. She probed and she nagged and didn’t give up until she’d made him feel. Until she got him so mad at her that he’d lashed out, acted as if it was all her fault that he’d lost his composure. When he knew it was quite the opposite.
He punched the pillow and tried to find a more comfortable position. He had to stop thinking about Carly or he wouldn’t get any sleep. But he wanted her. More than he’d ever wanted any woman in his life.
Adam longed to throw back the covers and stride over to the stables—barefoot in the snow, if necessary—and tell her he wanted to kiss her, tell her he needed to feel her touch again.
He scraped a hand through his hair. He’d messed up so badly, in so many aspects of his life. He was damaged goods. Carly had enough to deal with; she didn’t need his baggage added to her responsibilities. It would be best if she stayed a teen fantasy, rather than an adult reality.
But try as he might, he couldn’t get her, or his need for her, out of his mind.
He rolled over and stared at the digital clock on the nightstand. Tomorrow already. Great. In a few hours he’d know his future. Either he still had a job or he’d lost his career altogether and would have to start over. How could he ever honor Rory’s memory then? How could he ever win Carly’s heart?
ON MONDAY CARLY WOKE before dawn. She hadn’t slept well worrying about Adam and the outcome of today’s hearing.
By the time she’d got the children dressed for breakfast—while they all chattered about what they’d be doing during their week off school—and herded them over to the ranch house, Adam was already walking out the front door to his vehicle.
She’d hoped to have a private moment to talk to him before he headed out this morning, but that wasn’t going to happen now. Not with her kids hanging on every word.
Adam was wearing his dress uniform. How incredibly handsome and downright sexy he looked, Carly mused, recognizing how appropriate Adam’s career was for someone of such strength and fluid grace. He was born to be a firefighter.
He got to his vehicle and pulled open the door. Look at me, she begged silently, and was surprised when he glanced across the yard at her.
She raised her hand to wave at him and smiled. He didn’t smile back, just nodded his head as if he felt he had to acknowledge her, then climbed into his vehicle and started it.
Carly couldn’t let him go like this, without saying something, offering a word of support. “Go into the house, kids,” she said, handing Charlie to Alex. She cut across the snow-covered yard to Adam, praying he wouldn’t drive off and leave her there.
His dark eyes held hers as she neared his vehicle. He lowered the window.
“Hi,” she said, feeling suddenly awkward. Ultimately she was the cause of Adam’s predicament. If she hadn’t left her children with an unfamiliar babysitter, if she’d been home when the fire started, she’d have gotten all her kids out and Adam wouldn’t have had to risk his life saving Charlie. He’d have had more time to rescue Molly, without having to disobey his chief’s orders when the fire became too intense.
“Hi,” he said back.
Carly could read the pain in his eyes. Something far worse than today’s hearing was tearing at his guts. She wanted to comfort him, to impart her own strength.
She lifted her hand and touched his cheek. He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and gazed into hers. What agony she could see in their depths. When she stroked his cheek, Adam opened his mouth and caught the base of her thumb between his lips. Carly wanted to weep. He was reaching out to her at last.
“Whatever the outcome today, Adam,” she murmured, “I want you to know you’re the bravest, most selfless person I’ve ever met.”
Close to tears, she stood on tiptoe, leaned in and kissed his lips.
“MATT, WHAT CAN I DO to help Adam?” Carly asked when she put a call through to him after breakfast.
“Not a lot, I’m afraid. It’s up to Adam to present his case, explain what he did and why. Particularly why he ignored orders.”
“It won’t go well, then?”
She could hear his sigh. “I’m afraid not.”
“Would…would I be permitted to attend?”
“I don’t see why not. Things like this are a matter of public record.”
“Then I have an idea. Would you help me please, Matt?”
ADAM HAD STRICTLY FORBIDDEN any of his family from attending the hearing. Sarah had told Carly this over breakfast. The poor woman had been in tears.
Carly figured she wasn’t family, so Adam’s edicts didn’t apply to her.
After Will had collected the older children for a day out and dropped off his daughter, Lily, with his mom, Carly told Sarah what she planned and asked her to look after Charlie until she returned. Sarah was only too happy to agree.
“Good luck, Carly. And God bless you,” she said as she saw her off five minutes later. Sarah and Mac were lending her one of the ranch vehicles, an almost-new minivan.
“I’ll do my best,” Carly assured her, wondering if she’d be thrown out of the hearing. If not by the panel, then by Adam.
Matt met her outside the town hall. They soon found the room the hearing was being held in.
Her heart in her throat, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. Matt followed her and sat beside Carly, five rows from the front. The only people present were the members of the board, numbering seven, who sat above the rest of the room’s occupants. Adam was standing at a lectern facing them.
He looked so alone. Carly wished she’d notified the paper about the hearing, have some citizens who’d support Adam turn up. But he was so intensely private, Carly knew he would’ve hated anyone else in the town knowing about the hearing—no matter which way it went.
The disciplinary board consisted of six men and one woman. Carly didn’t spend too long pondering the sexual bias of the board; she only hoped each and every one of them had a heart a tenth the size of Adam’s. If they did, then she had a chance.
Correction: Adam had a chance.
She recognized several officials from the night of the fire. Another man, wearing a robe with an ermine-lined collar and a huge chain of office around his neck, Carly guessed to be the mayor—the owner of the pig she’d seen at the fire and who’d had her photo in the paper, kissing Adam. She smiled at the memory and hoped his pig’s affection for Adam would sway the mayor in his favor. But the mayor was obviously eccentric, so who knew how he’d react?
The lone woman looked seriously scary in a dark gray suit, glasses perched on the end of her nose and lips thinned as she listened to Adam.
Then she spoke and Carly’s blood froze at her words. “We keep coming back to the same point, Mr. O’Malley. You deliberately disobeyed a direct order from your commanding officer. You could have put others’ lives at risk—”
“But I didn’t,” Adam interrupted, perhaps a little injudiciously, Carly thought.<
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If it was possible, the woman’s lips thinned even more, but Adam continued before she could speak again. “I don’t know how many times you want me to agree that yes, I did disobey an order. And I’m sorry about that. But as I keep telling you, I knew none of the other firefighters would disobey the chief by following me in.”
“You sound very sure of that,” she said. “Too sure and too reckless. I don’t think these are the qualities we need in a firefighter in this town. Or anywhere in the state of Colorado, for that matter.”
Several other heads nodded in assent.
Carly was terrified. This wasn’t looking good at all. She wanted to leap to her feet and say something in Adam’s defense, but was afraid she’d only make the situation worse.
Matt’s hand clasped hers. Should she speak now? Carly wondered.
The mayor cleared his throat. “Are we all finished questioning Mr. O’Malley?”
All seven heads nodded.
“Then if no one else has anything further to say, I think we should vote on whether Mr. O’Malley is stripped of his temporary position with the Spruce Lake fire department.”
Carly leaped to her feet before she could think better of it. “I’d like to speak, if I may?”
Adam spun around and glared at her. Then he spotted Matt and glared even more fiercely.
Undaunted, Carly stepped forward. “May I approach the bench? I don’t feel comfortable yelling from back here.”
The mayor inclined his head. The woman’s lips seemed to disappear altogether and she pulled herself up to sit taller, as if that would intimidate Carly.
Carly stood beside Adam and said, “You probably don’t know me, but my name is Carly Spencer. My four children and I lost our home in the fire last Friday.
“If not for the courage of—” she felt her voice breaking but pressed on “—Mr. O’Malley, I would now be a mother of three children. What he did that day was nothing short of heroic. I owe my youngest child’s life to him.”
The woman made shooing motions with her hands. “That’s all very well, but Mr. O’Malley isn’t being disciplined for saving any human lives in that fire. He disobeyed orders to save a dog.” She said this as if it was the most distasteful word she’d ever been forced to utter.
“I’m sorry—” Carly squinted to read the woman’s name “—Ms. Wilkinson, I’m aware of the purpose of this hearing, but I wanted to point out that had Mr. O’Malley not gone to rescue Molly, my oldest son, Alex, would have.
“He would’ve found a way to get around all the personnel there and gone into that burning building to search for her. And I’m sure you’d agree, an eleven-year-old boy would have absolutely no chance of either finding the dog—Molly is her name, by the way,” Carly said, hoping that by giving the dog’s name, she might appeal to their more humanitarian sides, “or surviving the fire.”
Carly shivered at the memory of Alex trying to run into that building, but she also noticed that a couple of other board members nodded in agreement.
“Molly is very dear to Alex, to all my children. I don’t know about you, but the thought of an innocent animal perishing in a fire tears my heart out.
“If Mr. O’Malley hadn’t ignored his chief’s orders and gone to find Molly, then my children would be having nightmares for many months, perhaps years, imagining Molly’s final moments.”
She cleared her throat and said, “Thanks to Mr. O’Malley’s bravery, my children dream of a happy, healthy Molly. He saved not only the life of my youngest child that day, but also the life of my eldest son and Molly. His selflessness, instead of being censured, should be praised—”
“This is all very emotional, Mrs. Spencer. But I’ll remind you again, this is a disciplinary hearing,” Ms. Wilkinson said.
“Yes, I realize it’s all very emotional, but that’s what life is. I won’t go into the details of how difficult things have been since my husband—also a firefighter—died in a warehouse fire in San Diego. But I will tell you it’s been incredibly traumatic for my children. By risking his life and saving a helpless animal, Mr. O’Malley has restored my children’s faith in the human race and demonstrated that it’s possible to salvage something precious from a fire.
“My children and I…” Again Carly had to steel herself against the tears that burned behind her eyes and bit at the back of her throat. “We lost everything we own in Spruce Lake in that fire. But what we gained in return is this. We learned that the willingness to sacrifice is part of the best of being human.”
This time, everyone on the board, minus Ms. Wilkinson, nodded.
“Mr. O’Malley is a dedicated firefighter and I’ve since learned from his brother Matt—” she turned to smile at Matt “—that Mr. O’Malley has saved a number of lives during his career as a firefighter and been commended for it. Are you willing to risk the lives of future fire victims by not having someone of his caliber and outstanding bravery on your team?”
Carly had finished what she had to say, but she wasn’t sure what to do next. Take a seat and wait for the verdict? Run from the building before she let her emotions surface and burst into tears? Grab Adam and kiss him soundly to apologize for possibly ruining his chances of keeping the job?
She was saved from making any immediate decisions by the mayor, who addressed her directly. “Thank you, Mrs. Spencer. I must say, I admire your passion and your desire to speak up for Mr. O’Malley.”
He looked at her and said, “I also have to give credit to you for bringing the situation from a victim’s viewpoint to our attention. I think some of us have overlooked how important that is.”
Carly heard a hiss of disapproval from Ms. Wilkinson.
“If no one has anything further to add, I’d like to adjourn this hearing so the board can discuss the matter,” he said, and rose from his seat, effectively ending the session.
CARLY ARRIVED BACK AT Two Elk just as her first client of the day drove up. Kandy Mason was an energetic sixty-something woman who’d been a friend of Sarah’s for many years. They’d met at watercolor classes and, along with several other women in the group, met regularly for coffee and a chat. Sometimes they also hiked into the mountains during the summer to paint.
“I was so delighted when Sarah called the other day to ask if I was interested in a treatment. She knows I love to be pampered!” the other woman told her as Carly set up her table.
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t do anything except massage,” Carly said, worried that Kandy might think she also offered other spa treatments like facials and manicures.
“Oh, I understand, dear. I love massage. If I had the healing touch, I probably would’ve studied it myself.”
Carly was starting to hope the other woman wouldn’t talk this much during her massage. She was feeling a little too raw after the hearing to deal with idle chitchat.
However, five minutes into the massage, Kandy was snoring softly. Carly smiled. Funny how some people were like Energizer Bunnies, talking constantly, and yet, once they were given a chance to relax, they slept like babes!
FIFTY MINUTES LATER, Carly had to gently wake Kandy. “That was the best sleep I’ve had in ages.” She stretched her arms above her head.
“I have to apologize,” Carly said. “You were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to wake you for the other side, so I just continued on your back and legs. We could do the rest some other time if you’d like.”
Carly slipped behind a screen she’d set up between the kitchenette and the living room where she did the massages, so Kandy had privacy to dress.
“That would be wonderful. Can I make another appointment for tomorrow?”
“So soon?” Carly asked as she poured her a refreshing cup of herbal tea. “Do you feel you got any benefit from the massage, since you were fast asleep?”
“I feel great!” Kandy came around the screen and joined Carly in the apartment kitchenette. “I promise to try to stay awake next time.” She proffered a wad of notes and said with a smile, “Keep the change, Carly. It was wonderful.”
“Thank you,” Carly said. “I’ve made you some herbal tea.” She indicated that Kandy should take a seat at the table and sat down with her own cup.
“Don’t you have another customer waiting?” Kandy asked.
“I try to leave fifteen minutes between appointments so clients can relax and rehydrate.”
“That’s a nice touch,” Kandy told her. “Not like the big clinics where you’re lucky to get forty-five minutes of a so-so massage and then you’re shoved out the door, barely dressed!”
Carly laughed and sipped her tea. She liked Kandy; the woman was forthright and it was easy to understand why she and Sarah had been friends for so long.
“Now, what time can you take me tomorrow?”
Carly flipped through her appointment book. “How about the same time? Would that work? I’m afraid it’s the only slot I have left.”
“Perfect!” Kandy said, standing. “I’ll see you then. And I’ll be sure to spread the word. Sarah mentioned you had a mobile massage business. Will you be doing that again? I’m asking because I was thinking some of the ladies at the Twilight Years would enjoy it.”
“That’s the retirement home?” Carly asked.
“Yes, my mom’s in there. They have a hairdresser and a beauty therapist who comes once a week. She’s brilliant at pedicures and the like but can’t do massages.”
“That’s a good idea, Mrs. Mason. But I won’t be starting up my mobile business again until my oldest three children are back at school next week and I’ve got a permanent and reliable sitter for Charlie. I don’t want to impose on Sarah any more than I already am.”