by Jenna Gunn
A car honks and I jump, startled. The stoplight in front of me has turned green. I press down on the accelerator, grumbling to myself. Only fifteen minutes into my drive and I’ve already drifted into a monologue.
I turn on the radio to try and center my thoughts, but each song is some love song. Each one is reminiscent of love lost, of yearning, of betrayal; in each singer I hear the ring of feelings unrequited, or of hearts broken; all symptoms of loving a modern man or woman, of falling for someone who treats love and sex as fleeting transactions rather than lifelong commitments, who treats their partners as things to be discarded rather than cherished -
An ad blares abruptly over the ending of a song. I grip the steering wheel harder and sigh to myself. One of these days, I’m going to get into a wreck.
Trisha’s office is busier than usual, meaning there’s exactly one person sitting in the cramped waiting room. I check myself in at the receptionist and settle onto one of the scratchy chairs. I try not to look at the other occupant, who is holding a leash attached to an actual goat.
Trisha comes out of the back and gives me a tired, apologetic smile. She beckons the goat-owner to the back with her. I grab one of the years-old magazines in a wooden rack and prepare myself for at least a half hour of taking in outdated celebrity gossip.
Carmen starts to meow incessantly; hearing her, Monroe takes to yowling, desperately trying to get to her to soothe her. I sigh and pull Carmen out of her crate to give her a bottle. She doesn’t seem hungry, however - she attempts to wriggle out of my grasp and bats her paws on my face.
“You want to play, huh?” I ask her quietly. She squeaks in reply; Monroe quiets down. He knows the squeak means she’s fine.
I put Carmen face-up on my lap and tickle her belly while she attacks my hand, which is, so far, her favorite game. I smile down at her. However modern Alex is, it was good of him to realize he has no business taking care of a kitten, especially one as young as Carmen. She shouldn’t even be weaned from her mother yet. She probably won’t be ready for solid foods for another week, and I still have to rub beneath her tail with a tissue to get her to use the bathroom.
Again, I wonder at how Alex, the Rude, Cat-hating Fireman, could have taken care of a newborn kitten. He didn’t even like Monroe at first, but somehow he got up every other hour to syringe-feed this kitten enough so that she’s grown up healthy?
“Raina!” Trisha calls.
I look up; the goat owner has emerged, leading their goat out of the vet’s office, its hooves clacking against the floor. I get to my feet as Trisha bounds over to me.
“Is this her?” she squeals excitedly, plucking Carmen from my hands.
“No, I have two calico kittens with masks,” I say dryly as I grab Monroe’s crate.
“Don’t be a smartass.” Trisha plants a kiss on Carmen’s head, earning herself a few claws to the chin. She laughs and cradles Carmen close to her chest. “Come on back.
“So how’d you end up with a kitten?” she asks as we enter the exam room and shuts the door behind us. She sets Carmen on the exam table and busies herself with her typical vet business.
I sigh, sit myself on the counter, and launch into the story - but she interrupts me constantly.
“Alex?”
“Oh my God, the Rude Fireman?”
“Sex?! Raina, you had sex with this man? So he is hot!”
“He just showed up with her?”
“I will never get through this if you don’t shut up,” I snap, and Trisha laughs. She mimes zipping her lips and goes back to examining Carmen. I glare at her warningly before continuing. “Yeah, he just showed up. He brought her to me because he couldn’t take care of her, and I’m the only person he could think of that would know how to care for such a young kitten.”
“The only person?” Trisha interjects, and I glare at her again. “Sorry - quiet now.”
“Apparently none of the other firemen could take her; they already had a kitten each from her litter. So he brought her to me, and I invited him in for tea, and...we kissed.”
Trisha gasps but doesn’t say anything.
“And then I kicked him out.”
“Raina!” she snaps, so loudly that Monroe begins yowling in his crate. “Sorry. Raina - why?”
“He’s not what I’m looking for.” I fold my arms. And I was scared, I think, but I don’t say that out loud.
“Oh, right. Your Victorian knight, or whatever.”
“There weren’t proper knights in the Victorian era.”
She rolls her eyes. “So, let me get this straight - this guy is rude and standoffish, but rescues your cat from a tree, then a neighbor’s roof. Then he brings you a kitten that he can’t take care of but knows you can, and rescues your cat again from a tree, this time completely off duty.”
“Yeah?”
She shrugs. “Rude, kinda proud, does heroic things anyway? Sounds like a romance hero to me.”
A rage so white-hot fills my chest that for several moments, I don’t know what to say. I feel the heat climbing up my neck and to my cheeks. “How - how dare - ” I splutter nonsensically, my hands flapping and gesturing wildly with no real purpose.
“He is not like those men!” I burst out, finally. “They always have a deep and complicated past, an actual reason they behave the way they do!”
“You don’t know that this guy doesn’t,” Trisha interjects, but I ignore her.
“Alex had no qualms about having sex with me - ”
“It takes two to tango.”
“ - he’s so modern - ”
“Which means literally nothing, by the way.”
“He doesn’t even like cats!”
“Yet he took care of a newborn kitten who is, by the way, perfectly healthy and done with her shots now!” Trisha grins and strips off her gloves. “What a good girl! You can hardly tell she wasn’t with her mother all this time.”
I slide off the counter and grab Carmen, forcing myself to be gentle despite my anger, to put her back into her crate. “Thanks. I’ll be going now.”
“Oh, so you’re mad at me now for telling you the truth?” She’s still smiling at me as I hurriedly grab both crates.
I don’t respond; both hands full, I wait until Trisha opens the exam room door, then trudge down the hallway toward the waiting room. Trisha glides behind me on a cloud of smug satisfaction.
“You know I’m right,” she crows. “And you can’t get away from me - I can follow you all the way out to your car.”
She does just that, still spouting the same sentiments as I furiously ignore her and load the cats into my car. She follows me to the driver’s side and stays even when I shut my car door, raising her voice so I can hear her through the closed window, which I don’t roll down despite the heat. I crank my car’s engine and rev it to drown her out.
She grins and waves, then yells to me, “You’ll want to start her on meat in about a week!”
“THANKS!” I shout grumpily.
She laughs as I peel out. I grip the steering wheel as I drive speedily away, doing my best not to think of just how true her words sounded.
Chapter 13
“Uh-uh,” I say, using the side of my foot to push Monroe away from the front door. He meows pathetically at me as I snap the door shut. “You’re not getting out any more. At all.”
Irritated, he slinks away, and I follow him through the living room while opening the package I just accepted from the mailman; I found a very cute collar for Carmen online.
It’s been a little over two weeks since Carmen came into our lives, and she’s grown into a healthy five-week-old kitten. She’s using her own little litterbox now - no more tissue-rubbing - and nibbling on wet food like a champ. Even her eyes are starting to show a little pigmentation, but only in one of them; she might end up heterochromatic, with one brown eye and one blue.
Monroe meows at me when he hears me opening the package. “It’s not food,” I assure him. I pull the collar out of the box and g
lance around for Carmen. It’s a tiny pink one with a flower print, with a little bell that hangs off it.
Carmen emerges from under the couch when she hears Monroe meowing. She’s started getting a bit of a meow herself. I’m going to miss her cute little squeaks.
As I sit down and fasten Carmen’s first collar around her fuzzy little neck, half my brain is on my book. I’m so close to being done. More and more ideas for my next historical romance flood into my head every day. The cork-board above my desk is now fully covered with layers of scrap paper bearing barely-legible notes; when I finish with Carmen’s collar, I scoop her up and head into my office to examine it.
I like revisiting my notes on my new ideas before finishing up my current books; it helps me avoid accidentally incorporating them into the material that’s almost done. I have traits for the male love interest pinned all over the board, and even on some sticky notes just stuck to the wall. Tall, one reads simply. Willing to put himself in danger, reads another. One slip of paper contains an entire paragraph in cramped writing detailing a scene that I’m expecting to put straight into the book itself. I lean in to squint at that one - and end up pursing my lips in irritation as I read it.
It reads eerily similar to the first time I met Alex.
I look over at the list of names I’m considering for the love interest and feel my irritation grow stronger. They’re all names that begin with, if not A, at least a vowel - Arthur, August, Anthony, Oliver. The name Allen is underlined twice, and there’s a hastily-drawn star next to the name Alvin.
I find the papers listing the male character’s physical traits; tall, broad-shouldered, high cheekbones, strong jawline, dark eyes, full lips. All splashed onto separate scraps of paper and scattered around the board. Every single one of them apply to Alex.
In fact, every trait I’ve written applies to Alex in some way. He’s a firefighter, so he’s obviously willing to put himself in danger. He’s standoffish at first but then quickly falls for the protagonist to the point of almost irritating her. The whole damn plot, I realize, is her thinking for most of the book that he’s not right for her, then realizing at the end that he’s what she’s been needing all along.
I put Carmen down and run my hands through my hair. What the hell? What am I doing? Is this the way I feel about Alex? Do I actually like him so much that the love interest in this book is just a copy of him?
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head to clear it. It can’t just be a coincidence, can it?
Carmen meows at my feet and attacks my foot, hooking her claws into my sock, her new bell jingling with every movement. I glance down at her. She’s adorable.
I bend down to gently unhook her before heading into the kitchen to fix myself some lunch. I shouldn’t be thinking of all this Alex stuff, anyway. He’s not right for me. He’s not what I want in a man. He’s not chivalrous.
He rescued Monroe three times, a little voice in my head pipes up.
He’s sarcastic.
So are most Jane Austen characters, the voice reminds me, which is annoyingly starting to sound a bit like Trisha.
Carmen tumbles along at my heels as I make myself a sandwich. Every pinch of her claws reminds me of Alex - he gave her to me, after all. That’s not her fault, of course; I’d love her whether she came from him or not.
Maybe I should scrap the book, or at least the male love interest. Maybe I could rebuild a totally different man. Perhaps someone who, instead of being a soldier, is a medic, and therefore puts himself into danger to help people -
Like a firefighter? chimes the voice in my head.
Irritated, I abandon my sandwich momentarily to grab a sticky note and scrawl Alexander across it, then slap it onto the fridge. I might as well name the character after him if I’m just going to keep thinking of him this way.
I snatch my plate up and head back toward my computer, Carmen wobbling along in my wake. I can’t keep dwelling on this. I have a book to write, and then it’s off to bed early for a meeting with my agent in the morning.
I wake up gasping from a nightmare in which I’m drowning only to find that Monroe has curled up to sleep right on my chest.
“Monroe,” I grumble sleepily, pushing him. He chirps indignantly and shifts a little, moving more toward my stomach. “Where’s Carmen?”
He chirps in reply and settles back down to sleep, putting his tail over his face. I turn my head. Carmen sits on my nightstand with her front paws on the windowsill behind it, her white fur illuminated by dancing light.
“Carmen, come to bed,” I mumble, but she just keeps staring attentively through the window. Orange light flickers across her, making her look as though she’s made of fire.
Where’s that light coming from?
I sit up, dislodging Monroe from me completely; he lets out an irritated trill as he jumps off the bed and stalks out of the room. I lean toward the window and pull aside the curtain, looking for the source of the light.
My bedroom window looks out into the Logans’s yard. Usually, at night, I can see their living room window flickering with light from their television, or their chimney bathed in moonlight, or even the occasional deer flitting by toward the woods.
Tonight, all I see are flames.
Fear seizes my heart as I rocket out of bed and grab my cell phone. I’m already throwing on my robe as I dial 911; I practically fly out of my house, kicking the door shut behind me.
One entire side of the Logans’s house is engulfed in flames. I rush toward their yard, the phone ringing in my ear -
“911, what’s you’re emergency?” asks a calm voice.
“I need to report a fire!” I yell into the mic, probably deafening the poor woman. “I’m on Marina Road!”
“Do you have the exact address?”
I rattle it off as I hurry over the Logan’s gravel driveway. Pebbles dig into the flesh of my feet. I spot Ms. Lynn standing in her yard in fleece pajamas, staring in wide-eyed horror up at her house.
“Ms. Lynn!” I yell, even though I’m close enough to not need to. She jumps and turns to me, her eyes wide and teary.
“Jimmy’s in there!” she chokes out.
“Someone’s still inside the house!” I bark at the poor call-taker having to deal with my panic.
“Is that 911?” Ms. Lynn asks; I nod.
“Help is on the way,” the woman says soothingly. “Are you able to stay on the line?”
“Yes,” I reply breathlessly. Ms. Lynn stares intensely at me, clutching a crocheted shawl around her shoulders. “How soon can they be here?”
“They’re coming now, okay? Who else is with you?”
I grab Ms. Lynn’s arm and pull her toward me, bending so she can put her ear to my phone to listen. “I’ve got Mrs. Logan, the owner of the house. Mr. Logan’s still inside.”
“And the building is on fire?”
“Yes!” I shout; I know I sound insane, panicked. My throat is raspy. The air smells entirely of smoke. Down the road, a few people exit their houses to stand with unhinged jaws in the safety of their own yards.
I perk up as I hear sirens approaching, see the glow of red lights tinge the needles of the pine trees. “They’re coming, I think,” I say, more to Ms. Lynn than the 911 lady.
“Stay on until you’re sure,” the woman replies calmly.
So I do. I stay on the phone, clutching Ms. Lynn to me, until the firetruck comes screaming down the road.
I hope it’s not too late.
Chapter 14
I glance at the clock. It’s near midnight; I’m on the night shift this week. I hate the night shift. Everything seems so much slower. Time slips by at a glacial pace when there’s nothing to do, and any calls we get are usually drunk drivers.
I toss a tennis ball up into the air and catch it one-handed, the same thing I’ve been doing for hours. A late-night talk show drones quietly on the television, but I haven’t been paying attention since the beginning monologue revealed that it’s a rerun; I heard these j
okes, saw these celebrity interviews, last night.
Chief Moore’s office door opens; I turn my head as he walks into the room. He yawns widely as he heads for the kitchen.
“Thought you were in bed, Chief,” I say as he mechanically opens the fridge. “You’re on day shift this week.”
He yawns again. “Yeah,” he mutters through his thick mustache. “Had some paperwork, though.” He glances around. “Ben’s not up with you?”
I toss the ball again. “Little boys’ room.”
Chief Moore grunts. He pulls out a massive water bottle full of what looks to be sweet tea, turns it up over his mouth, and drains half the bottle in several large, noisy gulps.
“Thirsty?” I want to ask, but the chief’s got a temper when he’s tired; to keep myself from getting in trouble, I drift over to one of the windows and slide it open.
It’s a beautiful night. The air is still and cool. The sky is a deep, velvety blue, with stars like sequins scattered over it. Not a cloud in sight.
I hear the toilet flush, interrupting the nice moment I’m having with nature; I turn as Ben comes into the living room.
“Ugh - do not go in - Chief!” Ben jumps, snapping to a haphazard sort of attention.
“I’m just leaving, boys,” the chief grunts, snapping his water bottle shut.
Just then, the radio sparks to life, and the night-shift dispatcher’s voice comes drifting out, her tone urgent and clipped. The three of us freeze to listen. She’s speaking in jargon, but we all know how to decode it.
House fire. Someone’s trapped inside.
Marina Road.
I shoot a glance at Chief Moore and Ben, who don’t pay me any mind; they’re listening intently. My heart beats harder than a drummer in a rock band as the dispatcher rattles off the address, and it’s only then that the two of them look toward me.
“Wake the boys,” the chief says grimly.