How to Tame a Wild Fireman (31 page)

Lara felt a deep blush sweep across her face. She took a long drink of her milk, hoping the carton would block her embarrassment. “Well,” she said, “I’m happy to help the family in any way I can. I’ll be back in San Diego, but I’ll make sure you have my cell number. Big Dog may forget that we had a temporary truce, but I won’t.”

Candy gave her a knowing smile. “Of course you won’t. Brave, like I said.”

“Honestly, Mrs. Callahan, I think you’re pretty brave yourself.”

“Comes in handy when you’re with a Callahan man.” She gave a quick wink, as evanescent as a snowflake.

Before leaving the
hospital, Lara snuck into Patrick’s room. He was deeply asleep, his face peppered with cuts, including a big gash on his cheek. His legs were tangled in a white sheet; it looked as if he’d been fighting with it. She checked the nurses’ notations on the board, then gingerly lay down next to him, relaxing into the heat radiating from his body. She put her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall.

“Biggest heart in the world,” she whispered. “How did I never see it before?”

He answered with a soft snore.

“Thank you for getting out alive. I couldn’t have . . . borne it if you hadn’t. And sorry about that whole marriage thing in front of Big Dog. I don’t know what came over me. I couldn’t stand how he was talking to you. But I’ve explained to your mother that we aren’t actually getting married. You’d better not feel obligated. Maybe I should leave you a note about it.”

Tracing her finger along his hard chest muscles, she tried to imagine what such a note would say.
Please forgive my heat-­of-­the-­moment craziness. Pretend the word “married” never came out of my mouth, though to be perfectly honest, the idea doesn’t seem so crazy now. I’m sorry that I scoffed at it. I’d be honored and happy to marry you, but don’t take that as any sort of obligation, despite what I blurted out in front of your father. He probably won’t remember anyway.
She broke off that train of thought before it got too ridiculous.

“I can’t believe how mixed-­up everything has gotten. When I came to Loveless, I was so sure I wouldn’t let the chaos get to me.” She snorted. “Guess I’m no match for two fires, a missing brother, a former governor losing his marbles, and a bunch of hippie goddesses . . . not to mention the llama. I have to go back to San Diego. If I’m not back at work on Monday, they might fire me. And then where would I be?”

No mystery there. Any hope of order and control in her life would be gone. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to go home.

Oh, but it hurt to leave Patrick. How was she going to do without him? She breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of him through the overlay of antiseptic and bandages. “Please get better really soon. Here’s a huge secret, Patrick. I said the part about getting married to shock Big Dog, but the rest of it is true. I really do love you. Crazy, isn’t it? I wonder if there’s some kind of cure.”

She let out a long sigh and hugged him as tightly as she could without endangering his cracked ribs. “Please get better soon. I want my wild, daredevil Patrick back. All right?”

A soft wheeze made her go still. Had he been awake that whole time? Carefully, she extracted herself from his side. Whew. He was still asleep. His dark eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, his mouth slightly open. She longed to press her lips against his one more time, to taste that quintessential Patrick Callahan flavor.

But if she did that, she might never be able to leave. Instead, she ran from the hospital room without looking back.

Patrick woke up
from the most bizarre dreams of his life. He was carrying an elephant, on which rode his entire family. Lara was leading the way, dancing with a series of transparent veils and whispering things he couldn’t hear. When he finally opened his eyes, his heart was pounding and his entire body ached.

Bit by bit his world rebuilt itself around him. The fire. The explosion in the barn. Megan. Big Dog’s harsh accusations. Lara’s shocker of an announcement. The hospital. His mother. Where was everyone? How long had he been asleep? He raised himself into a sitting position, his ribs groaning in protest. A plastic dish filled with the contents of his pockets sat on the tray table to the side. He pulled it over and fished out his cell phone.

Five-­thirty in the morning. Two days later. He’d been asleep for
two days?
Did that qualify as a coma? He hadn’t even had a concussion; he’d been perfectly alert in the ambulance and during the doctor’s exams. Maybe they’d given him some kind of drug to make him sleep.

Amazingly, he felt great, considering he’d wedged his body between a cracked beam and the old tractor for what had felt like hours. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea, but it was all he could think of at the time. And hell—­he was fine and everyone had survived. He’d done his job, no matter what his father said.

Honestly, it barely bothered him anymore. Lara’s defense of him made it all worth it.

Two messages on his cell. Might as well listen to them, since it seemed far too early to wake up the nurses and ask for breakfast.

The first message was from Lara. “I’m on my way back to San Diego. If I’m lucky I’ll still have a job. Don’t worry about . . . well, what I said to your father. I was just trying to freak him out. It seemed to work. Anyway, we’ll talk soon. Call me when you’re conscious and feeling up to it. I . . . Get better soon! Oh—­the Hulk is in the parking garage and the keys are under the mat. Talk to you soon.”

He nearly threw the cell phone across the room. What kind of a message was that? It sounded like a blow-­off.

Then the captain called.

“Psycho, it’s Brody. I need you in San Gabriel as soon as possible. Melissa went off to some island for a goddamn story and I need to go after her. That leaves the station short-­handed unless you get your ass back here. Call me as soon as you get this.”

Chapter Thirty

T
he firefighters of San Gabriel Fire Station 1 barely had time to clap Patrick on the shoulder and tease him about the state of his face before he was back in the thick of things. Captain Brody had already taken off. Apparently Melissa had gone to Santa Lucia Island to interview a scandal-­ridden senator who was holing up at an exclusive estate. A storm had struck the island hard, cutting off ferry ser­vice. More storms were in the forecast, and Brody wasn’t waiting around another moment. He’d already taken off, leaving an SOD captain in charge.

A fire at a pizza joint, three freeway accidents, and a heart attack kept Patrick busy his first shift back. No stranger to pain on the job, he kept his ribs tightly wrapped as he worked. It only hurt when he bumped into something, and even then the pain didn’t bother him. It felt strange to be back—­familiar, yet distant, as if everything happening in San Gabriel was a pale shadow of what really mattered. He kept wondering how Megan was adjusting to her crutches, and if his father had seen the neurologist yet, and if Lara ever thought about him. These were things he couldn’t text them about while lying awake in the middle of the night.

He probably could text Lara—­she worked crazy hours too. But he didn’t. It hurt him that she’d left before he woke up. What kind of way was that to treat a guy? Announce that you were marrying him, then take off? It wasn’t right. Especially after that guy had spilled his guts and told her he loved her.

Of course, that happened in the heat of the moment, when he thought he might die. And quite possibly she hadn’t even heard him. But he’d said “I love you” with all the sincerity in his heart, with the knowledge that those could very well be his last words, since the barn was threatening to collapse.

She should have at least stuck around long enough for him to repeat the words in a quiet, flame-­free environment.

The other guys noticed his moodiness. After his second twenty-­four-­hour shift, he met Ryan and Vader at Lucio’s, the restaurant now owned by former Chief Roman. Ryan was taking care of Danielle, Brody’s five-­year-­old, while Brody chased after Melissa. Danielle immediately ran into the kitchen to flirt with Roman, with whom she’d conceived an instant infatuation the first time he’d swung her onto his gigantic, sky-­high shoulders.

As they tucked into plates of veal piccata, Vader pointed his fork at Patrick. “Your head isn’t in the game, dude. Something happened to you in Nevada.”

“Yeah, I cracked two ribs and got my pretty face cut to ribbons.”

Vader shook his head and spoke through a mouthful of meat. “No, it’s something deeper than abrasions.”

“Right, I forgot you’re Mr. Sensitive now. They do fine work, the Haven Goddesses.”

Ryan squinted back and forth between the two of them. “You guys speaking in some kind of code? Did I hear ‘Vader’ and ‘sensitive’ in the same sentence?”

“Yo, I can outsensitive Psycho any day,” Vader boasted, flexing his pecs. “I’ve been trained by the best.”

Patrick flicked his chest. “What do your pecs have to do with your massive new sensitivity?”

“What do you mean?”

“You did that thing with your pecs.”

Vader planted his elbows on the table and fixed Patrick with a penetrating look. “I see what’s going on here. You’ve decided that mocking me will distract me so I won’t notice that something changed while you were in Nevada. You might as well just cut the crap and share your feelings.”

Patrick blinked, shook his head, blinked again. But Vader was still giving him that earnest,
sensitive
look. “Only if you bring back the old Vader.”

“Fine.” Vader made his pecs jump again. “Now talk.”

Patrick drew in a deep breath. It occurred to him that he’d spent enough time in exile fighting battles with himself, by himself. These guys were his brothers in every way except by blood. He could trust them. He counted off, as if he was about to launch off a chopper, then spoke.

“I might have brought up the idea of marriage with Lara. She laughed in my face, more or less. But then later she told my father that we were getting married. Unfortunately, I was about to get shoved into an ambulance at the time and didn’t get a chance to nail her down. Then I passed out for two days and when I woke up she was gone. And Brody wanted me back. So I’m here. Fighting fires. She’s in San Diego doctoring ­people. End of story.”

“End of story?” Ryan shook red pepper flakes over his plate of food. “If that’s the end, it’s not much of a story. Why don’t you go see her?”

“I can’t. I’ve been taking a lot of time off work.”

“Then call her.”

“So she can dump me over the phone?”

“Dude.” Vader shook his head sadly. “She told your father you were getting married. Chicks don’t do that if they don’t mean it on some level.”

Patrick gave Ryan a
Who the hell is this guy?
look. Ryan, who looked like he was about to crack up, shrugged. “Vader makes a good point. Maybe she’s embarrassed because she said that to your father. Now she’s waiting for you to make your move.”

“Waiting for me?”

“You
are
the man, even if you are acting like a sulky little girl.” Vader stabbed a chunk of veal onto his fork.

“He doesn’t mean that,” said Ryan quickly, before Patrick could take offense. “He means that sometimes, when it comes to women, you just have to eat your pride and lay it all on the line.”

Patrick slumped back in his chair. Lay it all on the line. He hadn’t done that, had he? He’d danced around the idea of marriage, not really proposing, not really saying anything. And he’d left out the most important part of the whole thing, that little detail called love. “What if I’ve already irredeemably fucked it up?”

“That’s what I love about you, Psycho.” Ryan play-­punched him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a killer vocabulary. Irredeemably? I bet she eats that up. She’s a doctor, right?”

“Yes. A great doctor. She’s smart and gutsy and says what she thinks. She cares, you know? No one’s more loyal or standup than Lara Nelson.”

“You left out her hotness,” said Vader. “She’s got knockout—­”

Like lightning, Patrick reached out and grabbed him by the throat. “Watch it, bud.”

“Eyelashes, I was going to say,” Vader squeaked, rubbing his throat after Patrick released him. “It’s like they’ve been dipped in gold.”

Ryan snorted. “Seems like you better do something about this, Psycho. Someone else could be checking out her eyelashes down there in San Diego. Besides, who says you have to stay in San Gabriel? San Diego’s a great place to live. You could pick up surfing.”

Patrick winced. “Pass on that one. But you have a point. I’ve been thinking about joining a hotshot crew. I bet there’s one based in San Diego. But . . .” He trailed off, not wanting to say what he feared most, that she didn’t want him in San Diego, that she was perfectly fine with her condo and her job at the hospital and her chief resident “friend.”

For ten years you figured your family was perfectly fine without you
, some part of him whispered.
You decided they didn’t want you, and were better off that way. You abandoned Liam. Just walked away.

“Screw it.” He balled up his napkin and tossed it on the table. “If she thinks she doesn’t want me, I’ll just have to change her mind. I know how to wear ­people down. I know how to get under ­people’s skin until they either give in or want to shoot me.”

“Hell yeah, you do,” Vader agreed, a little too vigorously, Patrick thought—­but he let it slide.

“I’ve got four days off coming up. Four days to talk her into giving me a chance.”

“It won’t take you more than four minutes, my man. You’re the Mighty Psycho, dude! And the Goddesses all say she’s head over heels for you.”

Patrick gave Vader a hard stare. “You couldn’t have mentioned that before?”

“You don’t need external validation, dude. You need to believe it in your heart.” He thumped his chest.

Ryan choked with laughter, while Patrick just shook his head and tossed some bills on the table.

As he was leaving, Roman emerged from the kitchen, with Danielle swinging from one of his arms as if it were a tree branch.

“Great meal, Chief,” said Patrick with a mock salute. “Wish I could stay for dessert, but I have a girl to win over.”

Roman stuck out his hand. “Going up against the curse? Good luck to you. Hope you make it back in time for the wedding. Mine,” he added, when Patrick started to explain that his marriage plans weren’t exactly a sure thing.

A few hours later he was on a plane to San Diego.

“Are you sure
about this?” The clinic administrator didn’t seem to believe anything Lara was telling him.

Of course she wasn’t sure. In fact, she was terrified. But it had taken only one day back in her familiar, lonely, orderly routine in San Diego to realize she’d already made the choice.

It had taken her overly stubborn brain a while to catch up with her heart.

“Absolutely. I really appreciate the opportunity, but I have things I need to take care of back home.”

“In Loveless, Nevada.”

“In Loveless, Nevada. Twenty-­three thousand ­people without a women’s health clinic, imagine that. It cries out for an enterprising young doctor who happens to own her own building, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

Adam had an even more skeptical reaction when she gave him the news during a pharmaceutical luncheon. As the sales rep droned on about a new fertility drug, he whispered, “
Live
in Loveless? Have you really thought this through?”

“I’ll take my boards in Nevada instead of California. I even have a built-­in staff.”

“Those what-­did-­you-­call-­them? The Goddesses?”

“Yeah. Romaine wants to help out, and so does Janey. I don’t see why a clinic can’t also offer healing massage and maybe a few workshops on emotional and mental health topics.”

Adam pretended to scrawl some notes on the sales rep’s pitch. No one else even bothered. “You said you hated Loveless.”

“My family’s there.” Her heart warmed as she said the words out loud for the first time. “And it’s not such a bad place. The town has finally warmed up to me.”

“And that psychotic maniac has nothing to do with this?”

She hesitated, then decided there was no reason to hide the truth, no matter what happened next with Patrick. “Well, yes. I’m in love with him.”

“In love!” Heads swiveled, and the sales rep on the stage glared at them. “I didn’t know that was on the agenda.”

“It wasn’t, believe me. Not in the plan, not on the radar, and I have no idea what’s going to come of it. I don’t even know what I
want
to come of it. Except . . .”

She hesitated. Into the gap came the voice of the sales rep. “With our product’s fewer side effects and lower cost profile, more ­couples will be able to afford to make their dream of having children come true.”

“Children.” A lightbulb went off, suddenly illuminating her entire world. The same thought had surfaced briefly during her bout of stomach flu in Mexico. Now the full truth shone with a bright, steady light. Why else had she gone into family medicine? Why else did she cherish the time she spent with her youngest patients? Why else had she taken Liam under her wing? “I want a family. I want children. Wild ones, the kind who ride dirt bikes and howl at the moon. The kind who watch out for each other and love their families so much they stay inside burning buildings to save their sisters. Or brothers.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You aren’t very close to your family, are you?”

“Sure. I see them every Christmas. That’s close enough for me.”

“Well, I wasn’t even sure I had a family until I went back to Loveless. It turns out that I have two. One of them just doesn’t know it yet. But I think they’ll come around.”

Even Big Dog would, if she was stubborn enough about it. And she would be.

But Adam was now eyeing a fresh-­faced intern who was taking nearly as many notes as he was pretending to. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Thanks for being such a good friend.”

When Lara got
home, the dark silhouette of a man leaning against her patio railing gave her a fright, until she caught the faint scent of smoke and the indefinable essence of Patrick. She pushed aside a dangling vine to flick on the outdoor light. It was Patrick, all right. The cuts on his face, along with the tension in his body, made him look more dangerous than ever.

She took a deep breath of sweet jasmine-­scented air. “How are you feeling? You aren’t in pain, are you?”

He ignored the part about pain. “I’m feeling confused.”

“Oh.” She swallowed.

“Yeah. One minute I’m getting the good news that I’m engaged to be married, the next I’m on my ass in a hospital bed and my alleged fiancée is nowhere around. Makes it hard for a guy to know where he stands.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The muscles of his forearms rippled in the most distracting way.

Three steps separated her from him. She took the first step. Her skin tingled. She felt light-­headed, as if she might float the rest of the way. “Where does a guy want to stand?”

He stilled. His electric blue gaze locked onto her. It seemed to pull her forward like a tractor beam.

She took the next step up.

“I can’t speak for other guys, but this one wants to be standing as close as possible to you.”

The third step must have vanished, because suddenly he was so close the heat of his body reached out and embraced her. She felt surrounded by blue fire—­the true blue flame that burned deep in Patrick’s soul. She couldn’t speak, just moved next to him, to the spot that felt like destiny.

“I want to stand by you, stand up for you, stand next to you, in whatever way you want.” His low voice ricocheted through her heart. “If you’re not ready to stand in front of some judge yet and make it official, I’ll wait. But I want that too. I want you, Lara. It doesn’t matter where, or when, or who doesn’t like it. We’re meant to be together. If you don’t see that as clearly as I do, I’ll just have to move down here and wear you down,” he cupped her cheek, “kiss by kiss, stroke by stroke, touch by touch . . .”