Burned by Lovel (Firefighters 0f Long Valley Book 4)

by Erin Wright

  She laughed bitterly.

  “I thought I’d made lifelong friends in California – true BFFs. But those relationships couldn’t handle the strain of what I was going through. No one wanted to discuss the differences between the various bedpans on the market and the updates that manufacturers should put into place. I can’t begin to imagine why,” she said sarcastically, and then heaved a deep sigh. “We were all just kids, really, but the difference was, they got to act like it. I didn’t.”

  She shrugged, one thin shoulder movement with the twist of her mouth, and then, “My mom had been declared cancer free once, and then it came roaring back with a vengeance, so the second time the doctors said she was free and clear, neither of us believed them. It had been so pervasive, so overwhelming, that the idea that it was really gone just didn’t seem real. But she went in for her six-month check-up, and it was still gone. She’d started to gain her strength back, and the better she felt, the worse she became as a patient. We came to the mutual understanding that if I didn’t move out of her house, she was going to kill me in my sleep, and I would deserve it.”

  This time, she laughed for real, and Troy’s heart caught in his chest. He wondered for a moment if she knew how gorgeous she was; how distractingly beautiful her smile was. It made it hard for him to fully concentrate on what she was saying, but he forced his brain to anyway.

  “But you didn’t leave Franklin,” he pointed out, a little confused. “Why not?”

  She cut off a bite of her enchilada and chewed, giving herself a moment to think through her answer.

  “Because,” she said finally, “I didn’t believe the doctors. I kept thinking that there was no way that my mother was actually okay, you know? Not after how sick she’d been. I took care of her for four years. Four years. You just don’t believe good news at that point. I expected her to pass away; that’s what the doctors kept telling me. ‘She’s hanging in there for now – she’s a fighter. But the chances of her being alive for another year is only 5%.’ Things like that. Apparently, my mother is some sort of medical miracle. I keep telling her that she needs to start playing the lottery, since Lady Luck is obviously on her side. Anyway,” she said, waving her fork dismissively, “I’ve been hanging around even after I moved out and into my own apartment, just in case she had a relapse. I got the job at the newspaper so I could have some money to pay my bills, and to give myself something to do other than call my mother every day and badger her about how she’s feeling. Not that she’d tell me anyway, so usually I end up driving over and checking on her in person.”

  She took a drink and then pointed her fork at him seriously. “Otherwise, she’ll tell me how amazing she’s feeling, hang up the phone, and go right back to throwing up again. I watched her do that again and again with her friends over the four years that I took care of her. She is a phenomenal liar over the phone. I would almost believe her, and I knew the truth! But, the longer she’s been doing okay, the more I have started to think that maybe I really can take a chance, and move back to civilization. I’d need to make a deal with some of her friends that they go over and physically check on her, not just call her to find out how she’s doing, but I almost have faith that I can actually leave this one-horse town and get on with my life. So, I just need to find the right job, and then I’m out of here.”

  Troy nodded, keeping his face carefully schooled in a blank, neutral expression. Of course she was gonna leave. She’d told him that from hour one of meeting her. She hadn’t hidden this from him. She hadn’t tried to fool him into thinking she’d be there for the long term. She’d been crystal clear from the get-go.

  He shouldn’t have asked her out on this date. He shouldn’t have blurted out the question of whether she’d go out with him.

  He didn’t blurt things out.

  He didn’t date casually.

  He was never going to leave Sawyer.

  She was never going to stay.

  Yup, he was dumb all right. They didn’t make ‘em much dumber than Troy Samuel Horvath.

  Chapter 6

  Penny

  They walked out of the restaurant and into the cool of the summer night air. A shiver ran down her spine at the shock of the temperature change, and then another ran through her when Troy pulled her to his side, sliding his arm around her to protect her from the chilly breeze. “Thanks,” she said through gritted teeth, determined not to let them chatter from the cold. It wasn’t actually that cold – it was more that the temperature change from inside of the restaurant to outside had been so abrupt.

  She looked up at him, the glow from the street lamp hiding almost as much as it revealed. Much like it had been to talk to him, actually. She’d always been pretty open and free – You could out-talk an auctioneer at a fire sale, as her mother was fond of saying – but there was something about being around Troy that made her feel safe. Like she could tell him anything…even the truth. The truth about how hard it’d been to be her mother’s keeper for four years. The truth about losing all of her friends because of it. The truth about feeling like life had passed her by while she’d been stuck in the slow lane.

  So talk to him she did, but she’d also tried to get him to talk too, honest she had. But somehow, no matter what question she asked him, the topic was always turned back towards her. She felt a little guilty about that, looking back on it. She hadn’t meant to monopolize the conversation so thoroughly.

  She opened her mouth to ask him a question – to really get him to say something to her – when he opened up the passenger side of his truck and helped her inside, closing the door behind her like a true gentleman. The smooth-as-butter leather seats were a joy to touch, and so she decided that once he got in on his side, she’d ask him about his truck. Every guy liked to talk about their baby, right?

  “You mentioned needing to find the ‘right job,’” Troy said, sliding into the driver’s seat and cutting her off without even meaning to. “What would that be?”

  She hesitated. Dammit. Not answering a direct question seemed rude, but so did continuing to dominate the conversation.

  Okay, fine, she’d answer this question and then ask him about his truck.

  “I love art,” she said as he pulled out of the restaurant parking lot and began driving in the general direction of her apartment. “I’m just really, really bad at it. I’m not saying that because I’m hoping you’ll tell me, ‘Oh no, I’m sure you’re great – don’t ever give up your dream!’ but rather because it’s the truth, plain and simple. Like that Ivy McLain chick you went to school with – she has true talent. Give me a pencil or a paintbrush, and I’ll be lucky if I can draw a decent stick figure for you. But then I discovered Photoshop, and I realized that I could be an artist with my mouse instead. So I got my degree in graphic arts, which basically just means that I’m wanting a job at an ad agency, at a print shop, at a magazine – anywhere that I can use my talent for layouts and space and fun fonts to create exactly the right image for a client. I may not be able to draw worth a hill of beans, but I have a good eye for how to use white space, how to combine fonts together, that sort of thing. It’s not nearly as impressive as being able to draw or paint, but surprisingly, it’s a lot more lucrative. What Ivy is doing – making money as an artist – is terribly difficult to do, and I’m impressed as hell that she can do it. I’m lucky that I enjoy creating ads and logos to help small businesses take it to the next level. Most people aren’t lucky enough to be passionate about a career that also happens to make money.”

  Troy chuckled. “Too true. My uncle has always said that the mill pays the bills, but isn’t much for feeding the soul. Well anyway, we’re here.”

  Shocked, Penny looked through the front windshield to realize that they were parked in front of her apartment complex. “Wow!” she exclaimed, and laughed. “I guess I wasn’t paying any attention at all.”

  And she hadn’t asked him a damn thing about his truck. She’d done it again – yapped the whole time and didn’t let him ge
t a word in edgewise.

  Before she could blurt out a question about his truck – When did you buy it? What’s your favorite feature? TELL ME SOMETHING SO I DON’T FEEL SO AWFUL ABOUT TALKING SO MUCH! – he was already slipping out of the truck to come around and help her down. She was too late. If she randomly asked him a question now, it would be awkwardly obvious and weird.

  She hadn’t been like this around other guys. Why was she so off balance around Troy? Not helping one little bit, her nerves went into overdrive as she watched the handsome fireman walk around to her side of the truck. She wanted to kiss him. Did he want to kiss her? Was it going to be a peck on the cheek? Or a full kiss on the mouth? How far would she let him go? How far did she want him to go?

  She felt like her insides had been tangled up into one giant knot, but before she could get them to calm down, before she could catch her breath and get her nerves to stop dancing, he was opening the door and holding out his hands to help her out of the oversized truck and then she was sliding down the front of him to the asphalt parking lot.

  She hadn’t meant to. She was innately graceful. She didn’t tend to trip over her own feet or stumble while walking or…

  …Or slide down the front of a guy, feeling every inch of his body, until she was standing directly in front of him.

  Every. Single. Inch.

  He sucked in a breath, his normally pale green eyes dark and unreadable in the moonlight, and then he was kissing her, burying his hands in her hair, tilting her head to the side as he plundered her mouth with his tongue. There was a tinge of desperation to the kiss, and even as she moaned and raised up on her tiptoes to give as good as she got, she couldn’t ignore the worry building up in her. There was something wrong here. Something—

  He broke away.

  “Goodnight,” he said, and then he slipped out of her arms, slid into his idling truck, and disappeared down the dark city street, his tail lights disappearing into the night. She watched him go, her hand pressed to her mouth, as the last of the happy alcohol haze that’d been warming her from the inside out disappeared along with him.

  Why did that feel like a goodbye to her? Not just a goodbye for tonight, but a goodbye for forever? He wasn’t actually going to walk away after that, right? Not after a kiss that poets would be writing about for years to come?

  She turned and headed up the walkway and over to her fourplex, feeling off-kilter, off-balance, out of sorts. She didn’t want to date a Sawyer boy. She didn’t want to stay in Idaho. She wanted to leave, and the sooner the better. So why would Troy’s walking away tonight affect her? She wanted him to. She wasn’t in a place where she could be tied down by a relationship, and especially not if that place she was being tied to was Idaho.

  So why was she upset? She got what she wanted, right? An evening out with a handsome man, but nothing more than that.

  She slipped into her house, leaving the lights turned off, and curled up at the end of the couch in the darkness, hugging a pillow to her stomach as she stared at her unlit fireplace.

  Stupid Penny. I never should’ve gone over to the mill with that damn newspaper. I knew better. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted out of life, but I did it anyway.

  Stupid, stupid Penny.

  Chapter 7

  Troy

  “Well, you have to do something about it!” his aunt snapped, her patience with this well-worn topic clearly showing through.

  Not that his aunt was particularly famous for her extensive amounts of patience to begin with.

  “That mill has been in the Horvath family for generations,” his uncle said stubbornly. “Even if that worthless fire chief let it practically burn to the ground back in January doesn’t mean that we oughta just up and tear it down to placate a bunch of bureaucrats. Damn people need to keep their nose out of it.”

  “Those darn people,” Aunt Horvath said pertly, correcting his swearing without directly scolding her husband, “are the city councilmen. This is their business. They don’t want to see a pile of burned bricks on Main Street any more than we do. You can’t blame them for wanting to make the town look nice.”

  “If they’d worry about something worth worryin’ about, instead of just focusing on looks, we’d have a lot less problems in this town,” Uncle Horvath grumbled. “They’re a bunch of shallow fools, and they focus on stupid shit that don’t mean a damn thing, instead of on what really matters. Just like when they hired that upstart from Boise who don’t know how to run a firehose, instead of James. They oughta be sending that new fire chief those nasty letters instead of me, since he’s the reason why my family’s history has been destroyed.” He slammed his hand down on the old scarred breakfast table to make his point.

  Ah. Breakfast at the Horvath household. Always such a…

  He looked at his arguing aunt and uncle, who’d move on to “discuss” whether or not they should become snowbirds that winter or stay in Long Valley. More like arguing full-throatedly, but his aunt liked to pretend that she never argued with her husband, so if asked, she’d declare it a simple discussion.

  …Always such a contentious affair.

  Without interrupting them, Troy stood and pressed a dutiful kiss to his aunt’s cheek, carried his dishes to the sink, and slipped out the back door to head to his house, set up on the back forty of the property, leaving them to hash things out between them. Sparky, who’d stayed out on the porch while he was inside, padded along beside him.

  Despite the fact that he literally once listened to them…*ahem* discuss the color of the sky in quite heated tones, he knew that they loved each other and if push came to shove, they’d lay their lives down for the other person.

  But while they were both topside of the soil, there was no reason to agree unnecessarily. That just might entail admitting that the other person was right, and Troy had seen them both twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid making such an admission.

  He walked into the cool of his home and sucked in a deep breath of calm and peace. Although he loved his aunt and uncle dearly, and they’d been there for him when he truly needed them, it wasn’t a stretch to admit that being around them could be taxing at times. For the sake of his sanity, he should probably quit eating breakfast with them every morning, but just the idea of telling his aunt that he didn’t want to eat with her anymore made his blood run cold. She would be heartbroken, to say the least, and she would lament at length about how she didn’t know what she did wrong to drive him away like this.

  “At length” meaning at least the next ten years or so. If she really got butthurt over it, he could count on it being brought up for the next fifteen years.

  No, eating breakfast with them was the least he could do, after all they’d done for him.

  He slipped into his work clothes – Dickie jeans, a uniform shirt with his name embroidered over the breast pocket, boots – and clipped his emergency radio to his belt like always. Somebody had to answer every call, and make sure that the people of Sawyer were kept safe. He wasn’t the fire chief, but he was a Horvath. Taking care of the town was what he was born to do. He may’ve been born in Boise but Sawyer was his home, and always would be.

  As he drove to the new mill, Sparky in the bed of the truck, he mulled over the problem of what to do with the old mill. His aunt was right – they had to do something about it. Blackened bricks, windows broken, the sign proudly proclaiming Horvath Mill – Where You Come For All Of Your Milling Needs hanging drunkenly on one nail (his ancestors were industrious people, not creative ones)…well, it sure wasn’t the badge of honor that it used to be.

  At one time, it’d been the biggest and the most technologically advanced mill in the Pacific Northwest. They ground wheat, oats, barley, and every other cereal crop; enough to feed the planet, it seemed.

  But technology changed and the mill was no longer on the cutting edge. Then there was the fact that the mill was right there on Main Street, smack dab in the middle of summer tourist traffic and high school kids trying to get to schoo
l. It just wasn’t ideal, and his uncle had made the business decision to build a second mill, one further out in the country, making it easier for tractor-trailers and farm trucks to get in to drop off and pick up loads. No more worrying about what the schedule was from the school district for that year, or when the hordes of tourists were going to start showing up.

  Being a business decision – and a smart one at that – didn’t make it any easier for his uncle, though. There was so much family and local history in the old mill. Tearing it down seemed almost sacrilege.

  He looked through the windshield of his truck, surprised and yet not, to see the old mill in front of him. He was supposed to be going to work, not gawking over old family history, but…well, he was already there, right? Might as well look around for a minute and then get on to work.

  He slid out of his truck, Sparky jumping out of the bed and happily sniffing around in the warm June sunshine. It was already a pleasant mid-70s at eight in the morning, which meant it was gonna be a scorcher today, no doubt about it. He really ought to get to work so he could start cleaning out the boiler room – always a hot and tedious job best done in the cool of the day – but found himself walking forward instead, studying the intricate brick work in front of him. There were large sliding doors on tracks that led into the interior, allowing trucks and semis to drive through, but above the blackened, weathered, broken wooden doors was an intricate pattern that the bricklayer had built into the mill.

  This had always fascinated him – it was a mill. It was industrial. It was built for function, not beauty.