by Caro Carson
There was a rip of foil, a shifting of position, and then Zach was saying her name again, “Brooklyn, Brooklyn, look at me.”
She opened her eyes, and he pushed inside her without wasting the time to further undress her. She watched his face as the exquisite first slide of their bodies overcame him, forcing him to close his eyes against the pleasure so great it was nearly pain.
He set the pace, stroking into her with purpose, keeping their rhythm as he lifted himself onto one arm. He studied her face with each stroke, and she was helpless to hide her reactions as he changed the nuances of angle and depth until that primal groan escaped from her again.
He grabbed her dress and bra strap, both, and pulled them off one shoulder to expose her breast. With another groan and another stroke, he bent his head and kissed her there, openmouthed, wet and warm.
It was too much. It wasn’t enough. She moved under him, needing more Zach. Everything was Zach, everything she could taste and see and touch. She wanted him so badly, so mindlessly, that she didn’t know who reached their peak first, only that there was an unbearable moment of blinding white pleasure, and then she was slowly returning to herself. Her bedroom. She was on her bed, and her arms were around Zach Bishop.
He was catching his breath, his face buried in that space between her neck and shoulder, his body heavy on hers after their release.
She found some small reserve of energy, just enough to lift her hand and lay it on the nape of his neck. She stroked his hair with her fingertips, a bit dazed.
She’d been reckless, giving herself wholly to the man who’d needed her. She’d stayed in the moment, alive and aware. Knowing he was taking pleasure in her had driven her as much as the sensations of her own body.
“I’ve never had sex like that before,” she whispered.
Zach lifted his head and smiled down at her with sleepy-lidded eyes. “No one’s ever had sex like that. That was ours. It could only happen between us.”
He settled onto the pillow next to her, tucking her into his side, giving her a feeling of security and rightness that was at once familiar and new.
She kissed his cheek as they lay entwined, and felt happy.
“If I had a nickel every time I felt this good,” she whispered into his ear, “I’d have five cents.”
Chapter Eight
It took Zach two weeks to realize he was in trouble.
The two weeks since he’d asked Brooke out for a drink that actually had yet to happen had been, simply put, bliss. That first night, after they’d finally ditched her dress, they’d ordered pizza in and gotten to know one another. Thoroughly.
He still got a grin on his face when he thought about it.
The next morning, he’d started a twenty-four-hour shift, but when it ended, he’d grabbed the go bag most emergency responders kept packed with clothes and a spare shaving kit, and he’d headed back to her place. They both had two consecutive days off. For forty-eight hours, it had been as if they’d just invented sex, and they had to try it in every possible position to see which ones they liked the most. Over, under, standing. In a chair, in the shower, in the car—because he’d insisted they go out to dinner like decent folk the second night—until he was simply drunk on the pleasure of her body. For two weeks, the sex had been fulfilling.
That hadn’t worried him. That was no trouble at all.
It was the in-between times he should have been afraid of. The text messages when one or both were working should have raised a red flag. The way she warmed the arch of her bare foot on his leg while they shared the couch was too cozy, too easy, as he watched baseball and she read medical journals. The way she’d lost it and dissolved into giggles at the nurses’ station when he’d stopped to whisper a line in her ear had made him too damned happy.
He knew now that she was ticklish behind her ear, and since they were lovers, he’d gotten much, much closer to deliver his line that day. He’d practically nibbled on her ear—Hello, angel. What time are they expecting you back in Heaven?—and she’d ducked to get away from the tickle. She’d stifled her giggle almost instantly, but her blush had charmed him for long minutes. Later, she’d made him solemnly promise never to do that again.
He hadn’t done it again. He had too much respect for her position at the hospital. The gossip mill had already done its job, and he didn’t need to demonstrate that they were an item. The nurses flirted with him less outrageously, and no other men asked Brooke out—except that idiot doctor with the ballet tickets, who’d needed a confrontation to get the point.
Toward the end of their first week together, Brooke had laughingly complained during a phone call that she’d spent the better part of her morning dodging the persistent Dr. Bamber. Something in her voice made Zach suspect it wasn’t actually funny to her, so he’d stopped by a deli and brought lunch to the ER’s kitchen. Bamber had walked in to find Zach, not Brooke.
Without preamble, Zach had laid the cards on the table. “If Dr. Brown wants to go to the ballet, I’ll take her.”
“You?” Dr. Bamber had sneered. “What do you know about the ballet?”
“Not much, except Brooke likes it, and I like Brooke.”
The doctor had put up more of a front than Zach had expected. “And you think that makes you the right man for her? Can you even name a ballet, or is The Nutcracker your idea of high art?”
“The Nutcracker? It opens with a Christmas party, right?”
Bamber managed to nod, one distinct downward motion of the nose he’d stuck in the air.
Zach laid on the Texas drawl. “The first half of The Nutcracker is boring as hell, but the second act is like some kind of a classical music greatest hits album. I’ll give her something better to do for the first half, and we’ll show up at intermission to enjoy the rest of the show. Got it?”
“If you’re still around in December.”
“I’ll be around.”
Bamber had left the room and Brooke had entered a minute later. She’d enjoyed the sandwich he’d brought her—her favorite was pastrami on rye, as if she’d been raised in Brooklyn and not just named after it—and he’d enjoyed the silent satisfaction of knowing Bamber would stay in his radiology office in the basement from now on.
That instinct to claim her should have scared him. That assertion that he’d still be seeing her in December should have warned him.
But after two weeks of moments like those, it was a simple ride in Engine Thirty-Seven that had opened his eyes to just how much trouble he was in.
He was working a half shift, just twelve hours overnight, providing extra fire coverage for the city of Austin on a Saturday night, when the good citizens seemed the most prone to light fireworks or wreck their cars. It was a good shift, rarely boring, and he and Chief and Murphy were joined by a Texas Rescue volunteer, Luke Waterson, who’d been on Zach’s football team in high school. Zach knew that when the shift was over, he’d find Brooke at his house, in his bed on Sunday morning, so that made the shift as perfect as work could be.
He’d been thinking of Brooke when Engine Thirty-Seven had rolled past a church on its way back to the station after fueling up. He wished he could blame it on that. In the late sun of on early Saturday evening, a bride and groom had stood on the church steps, smiling for a photographer and dozens of their friends and families.
Brooke will look beautiful in a wedding gown.
Red flag. Finally, he’d seen the red flag. But it was a fact: Brooke would look beautiful in a wedding gown. Any man would think so if he saw her.
Any man.
The idea of Brooke wearing a white gown for any man other than him had caused a red-hot pain in his heart, and Zach had finally realized, after two weeks, he was in trouble.
He was falling in love with Brooke Brown, imagining forever in a white wedding gown. He’d done that once be
fore, on a tropical island with a blonde angel. Charisse Johnson, with a beautiful soul as well as a beautiful face, had held his heart in her two perfect hands for one perfect week. Love at first sight had been followed by seven days and nights of bliss, until he’d learned the “beautiful soul” part was utter bull.
Zachary Taylor Bishop, I would marry you on a beach. My gown would be simple, almost like a nightgown, blowing in the ocean breeze. I’d be barefoot and wear flowers in my hair, if I married you.
There’s no if, Charisse. We’re getting married, I promise you. You’re going to be the most beautiful bride I ever saw.
She had been a beautiful bride, too. One week later, Charisse Johnson had gotten married in a church, with shoes on her delicate feet and a goddamned diamond tiara in her golden hair.
She hadn’t been marrying him.
Zach had spent that same week frantically tracking her down, desperate to know what had made his angel slip out of his bed and sneak off the island without any explanation. He’d found her in her hometown in Alabama, just in time to stand outside a church and watch her enter on her father’s arm.
Never again.
Then, if not you, some other man will marry Brooklyn Brown.
Despite the pain that fact caused in the vicinity of Zach’s heart, he couldn’t be in love with Brooke. It had only been two weeks, and he couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to fall so hard, so fast. Not twice in his life. Not after learning his lesson the worst way possible.
Therefore, it wasn’t love. He could control what he felt for Brooke. Contain it. That’s what firemen did. Like any other nuisance fire, he’d just keep a watchful eye on it, and let it burn itself out.
* * *
Brooke was not sleeping in his bed when Zach pulled into his drive. She was sitting on the wooden steps of his porch, clutching a cup of coffee. Although she’d changed into jeans, her hair was still pulled back tightly from her shift. If his heart sped up a tick at the sight of her, he told himself it was simply because she was a beautiful woman.
Zach got out of his truck, tossed the keys on the front seat and shut the door. He lived just a short distance from Austin’s city limits, but one didn’t have to go far to be in the country. At this rural address, he didn’t worry about his truck getting stolen from his own drive. His house was really more of a bachelor’s hunting and fishing cabin on a few acres of undeveloped land, but Brooke seemed to like it. They spent as much time here as they did at her place.
He stopped at the bottom step. Judging by the look on her face, Brooke didn’t like anything right about now.
“Bad shift, huh?”
She didn’t answer him. Her gaze didn’t waver from some distant point. He noticed her feet were bare, although there was still a definite chill in the air in the April morning.
“How bad, Brooke? Talk to me.”
“It wasn’t your engine, then, that cut them out of the car?”
He shook his head. Any shift that he didn’t have to operate the Jaws of Life tool was a good shift. She obviously hadn’t been so lucky.
He’d spent the past twelve hours telling himself he wasn’t in love with her, but now, seeing her so shell-shocked, he sure felt something. He wanted to comfort her.
I’ll keep a watch on it. It won’t burn out of control.
“Why don’t we go in?” he suggested. “It’s almost chilly enough to start a fire. Would you like me to?”
“It was a child.”
He winced at her words. “That’s hard. I’m sorry.” He climbed a few steps to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. The coffee mug she held was empty. Her hands had to be cold. Her hands, her feet, the expression on her face.
She must have been the one to tell the next of kin. Something about notifying the family of the ninety-six-year-old man had gotten to her two weeks ago; to have to do the same for a child’s family must be a hundred times worse.
There wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
“I’m sorry you lost a patient, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t lose. I won.”
“You did?”
“You bet I did.” She gripped the handle of the mug with one hand and began slamming it into the palm of her other hand rhythmically. “I stopped that bleeding. I restored that airway. I stabilized her, and I got her up to the OR in record time. She made it. I won.”
The rock that had settled in his chest crumbled away. “That’s fantastic. You should be—”
“I just—I just—I hate kids! You know that pediatric specialty hospital? I wish they’d take every last child there. If there were some kind of adults-only ER, I’d work there in a heartbeat.” She stopped pummeling her palm with the coffee cup, but she didn’t seem to know what to do with it, as if she’d suddenly become aware it was in her hand and had no place to set it down.
“Throw the mug. I don’t care.”
“I hate kids.” She plunked the cup on the step to punctuate her sentence.
Zach moved up one more step to sit above her. He pulled out the elastic band in her hair, dropped it into the coffee cup and started combing his fingers through her hair, the way she’d done herself, standing in front of her apartment building when she’d been stressed out by the ninety-six-year-old patient. It didn’t seem to have any effect on her rigid bearing, but he kept at it.
“The patient was five,” she said. “Car accident. My sister Chelsea was four when she got hit by a car.”
He let all the hair in his hands slip through his fingers. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I don’t. She didn’t win.”
He wrapped his arms around her stiff figure and pulled her back to his chest. She didn’t soften or lean against him. He kissed the top of her head and her temple, but not her ticklish ear.
“I didn’t know.” He said it like an apology. It was one. He’d been feasting on her body and relishing her company for two solid weeks, and he should have known she had this terrible scar.
“It’s not the kind of thing that you tell people.” She reached for the coffee cup instead of him. “Hi, I’m Brooke, I’m a doctor, I live in Austin and I have a dead little sister. It just doesn’t come up.”
He closed his eyes. “That patient must have been hell for you today.”
“Not at all. I’m fine in the heat of the moment. I have no problem thinking clearly. I get right to work.”
“I’m sure you do. And afterward? Like now?”
“I’m just angry. Not sad.” She didn’t shake him off, but she didn’t relax into him, either. He would have thought she was frozen in place, except her hand was on the coffee cup, rocking it back and forth on the wooden step, turning it in her white-knuckled grip. He let go of her and went back to stroking her hair, gathering it up, using his hand instead of the elastic band to keep it all together.
“Afterward,” she said, “I can’t stand the thought of what could have gone wrong. So many things could go wrong. Kids are so damned vulnerable. Twice as vulnerable as an adult.”
He stopped what he was doing and let her hair fall loose. “Throw the coffee cup, Brooke.”
“I don’t want to.” She sounded as angry as a petulant child.
“Then I will.” He picked up the mug, stood, and hurled it at a tree about fifteen yards away. It hit the trunk and broke into a few big shards that rained down to the ground. “There. That’s better.”
“That was so unnecessary.”
He looked down at her, hoping she was no longer staring straight ahead. She wasn’t. Instead, her eyes were closed, dry lashes resting on flawless skin. Without the coffee cup, her hands were clasped neatly around her knee, the serene pose of a woman who insisted she was not sad.
Her knuckles were white, betraying the force it required to keep herself together.
“Brooke, darlin’.” He bent and grasped her upper arms and pulled her to her feet. He cupped her head in one hand and kissed her brow.
“Why are you being so nice to me when I’m telling you these awful things about myself?” she whispered.
“Because, I—”
Because I love you. And damn it, one week or two weeks or not, it sure as hell felt like love, even though he knew from experience that it couldn’t be real.
“Because I’m your friend as well as your lover.”
Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her into the house. As the morning sun woke the rest of the world, the two of them needed to sleep after long nights at work. He kept her warm in his bed, wrapped in his arms while he felt her breathing slow as she drifted off, and the powerful feeling in his chest where her cheek rested felt very, very real.
When the nightmare woke her, he put her back to sleep by stroking her hair, I love you and I love you in each silent caress.
Chapter Nine
Brooke had the next day off. The annual Firefighter’s Community Day was always held the first Saturday in May. One of the parking lots of West Central Texas Hospital was transformed for the main event. Tents and food vendors lined the edges. In the center, a three-story tower had been constructed from two sets of metal staircases topped by a platform.
Zach was about to run up those stairs. For fun.
Brooke looked around at the array of firefighters in full gear, their baggy pants and bulky overcoats and hard helmets all various shades of beige or black, orange or yellow, depending on their city’s chosen color scheme. Zach was in beige, she knew, but she honestly couldn’t tell which man in beige was him.
Like athletes before a sporting event, the firefighters were stretching, running in place, or testing out the first flight of stairs. Referees in black-and-white shirts gestured toward the digital timer at the finish line.
Then one man in beige threw back his head and laughed, and she knew that was Zach. He was representing Texas Rescue for this race. She was here to cheer him on.