It Had to Be You (27 page)

T
wo weeks later, Ali picked up a tray of tea and coffee with hands that weren’t quite steady. “I’m so nervous.”

Luke, still wearing a sling but getting more and more movement back every day, leaned in and kissed her. “You’ll nail this.”

“Like she did you,” Leah quipped. She picked up the second tray, filled with the pastry goodies she’d made for the grand opening of the new flower shop.

Ali’s Blooms
.

She’d signed the lease and was officially in the space next to the bakery again.

It was all she’d ever wanted.

Half the town was here for the opening party, and the other half was on their way.

“She can nail me any time,” Luke said, and snatched a custard puff from Leah’s tray and stuffed it in his mouth. He gave Ali one more quick kiss, tasting like vanilla.

She hummed her pleasure. Just looking up in his warm, blue eyes quelled her nerves. He was her rock.

And she was his, she marveled. He believed in her, trusted her, needed her. Wanted her.

He’d gone to San Francisco for the Reyes review, but he was still on medical leave, so he’d come right back to Lucky Harbor. Sawyer had offered him a job, and he was going to take it. Ali was over the moon that he was staying here in Lucky Harbor.

Catching her looking at him, he gestured for her to set the tray down, then nudged her closer with his good arm. Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “I’m never going to get tired of finding you looking at me that way. Like you have to have me right now.”

She laughed, then looked around to make sure Leah wasn’t too close. “I just had you,” she whispered. Right before they arrived here, in fact. “And I wasn’t looking at you like that. If you must know, I was thinking I can’t believe you’re mine.”

“Believe it.” He pulled back to look into her eyes. “I belong to you, heart and soul and…” He pressed up against her, making her laugh when she felt him, hard at her belly so that the “and” was clear.

“Tired of me already?” he asked with a smile in his voice.

“Not quite yet. You?”

His eyes darkened, and he kissed her again. “Never.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Never is a long time,” she said.

His voice was low, fierce. And very sure. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

D
angling from a third-story window ledge wasn’t a good thing. Dangling from a third-story window ledge by the tips of his fingers, with fire blazing all around him was even worse, and though Jake Rawlins had been in tougher situations, at the moment he couldn’t remember one.

“Go away!” cried the young teen, trembling on the very corner of the flaming roof above him. “Go away!”

Jake adjusted his precarious perch, and eyed the kid. “I’m a firefighter, I’m here to help you. Just don’t—”

The boy scrambled out of Jake’s reach.

“—move.” Damn it. Apparently nothing about this call would be easy tonight. So far, he had a mansion of a house on fire in the dead of the night; occupants caught unawares on a rural street, with the fire hydrant just far enough away to create a sea of hoses at his crew’s feet, all on hilly, uneven land in the outskirts of San Diego county. Oh, and a terrified teen sitting above the inferno, on a roof, holding one arm against his chest as if he’d injured it.

The winds whipped right at Jake, stirred by the fire itself, trying to tear him from the house. It’d only been two minutes since the ladder engine had malfunctioned, trapping him up there, but it felt like a lifetime. He had at least eight minutes before another ladder engine would arrive. Only problem, the roof wasn’t going to last another eight minutes.

“Billy! Somebody get my Billy!” screamed the kid’s mother from three stories below. Her terror stabbed at Jake, and fueled him on. Adjusting his grip on the ledge, he reached for the rain gutter, which was thankfully anchored to the house, and began to climb.

The house itself was nothing but a bright ball of flame around him. No one could get through the inferno to get inside, not until they tamed the fire, which his crew was working on from below. Long streams of forced water flew through the air toward the flames, which only seemed to enrage them all the more.

“Mom!”
Above Jake, Billy’s voice sounded weak and smoke-ravaged.

Jake got high enough to see him again, and his heart nearly stopped. Shaking in terror, Billy sat about three feet back from the ledge, completely surrounded by flames, cradling his arm and screaming.
“Mom!”

“She can’t hear you from there, buddy.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, I didn’t!”

Had he started the fire? At the moment it didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that as captain of the malfunctioned engine, Jake was usually on the ground, strategizing and organizing the crew, not straddling a rickety rain gutter thirty feet above ground. Christ, he hated heights. “Hang on, now.” Jake kept his face averted from the heat and flames blasting toward him, but then the kid shifted to bolt away.

The roof was a goner. A wrong move now, and he could fall through. With no ladder and nothing to brace his foot on, Jake had to use sheer strength to pull himself up, and he felt every one of his hundred and eighty pounds, not to mention the additional sixty-five pounds of gear.

The kid stared at the flames engulfing the roof, flinching as areas began to cave in.
“Mom!”

“Your mom’s safe. Let’s do the same for us.” With the flames leaping far too close for comfort, Jake reached out for him.

“No!” Whimpering, Billy crawled backward, out of Jake’s reach and straight into the danger zone. “I don’t wanna go over the edge!”

Jake could hear more sirens coming closer now. He could feel the mist of the spray his crew were frantically sending around them, trying to keep them safe. “Billy, we need to go.”

“I want to go through the attic door, the way I came!” Dropping to his knees, Billy scooted away from Jake and the feared edge, and directly toward the flames.

Jake understood the height issue, and sympathized more than the kid could know, but there was no help for that. They had to get off the roof, and fast, and they had to go the way Jake had come—via the ledge.

From far below, new swirling lights joined the others, and he knew the other ladder engine had arrived. Relief was cut short by a thundering crash directly on his left. Whipping around, he watched a good part of the roof cave in, including the attic door and stairs.

Billy stared at the gaping hole in horror. Flames immediately filled it, but unbelievably, the kid took a step toward it.

“No.” Jake reached out, and got a hold of Billy’s shoe, which promptly came off.
Shit.
With his other hand, he caught the kid’s ankle, but lost in his fear, Billy thrashed around.

“It’s okay,” Jake tried to soothe. “I’ve got you—” He took a well-placed kick to his chest, which nearly sent them both over the edge of the three-story house.

“I want to get down!”

“Yeah, but not the way the stairs and attic door just went, okay?”

Another crash, and only three feet away this time, and more of the roof vanished. Jake’s stomach dropped to his toes. It was now or never. With the hot, unforgiving wind whipping his face and the smoke clogging his lungs, he got a better grip on Billy, trying to be careful with the injured arm. “Hold it tight to you.” Jake spread a protective hand over the limb as best he could. “The ladder’s here.”

“We’re going down on a fire engine ladder?”

“Yep.” Holding on to Billy, Jake leaned slightly over the edge to take a look. Indeed, the malfunctioned engine had been moved, and the new one was in position, the ladder inching its way up.

It felt like slow motion. Another roaring boom came directly behind them, and Billy cried out, clinging to Jake.

Jake’s gaze met Steve’s, the firefighter on the end of the ladder. The silent urgency passed between them as more of the roof dissolved around them. They were running out of time.

Steve reached out but was still too far away. It was going to be too damn late. Jake could feel the immense heat beneath him, all around him. He figured he had less than a minute to get them down before there wasn’t a square foot to stand on.

The ladder bumped the building, and Steve reached for Billy, whose one good thin arm was wrapped so tightly around Jake’s neck that he could hardly breathe. “Billy, Steve’s going to take you down.”

“I want you to do it!”

Again Jake’s gaze met Steve’s. They didn’t have time to switch positions, not with fire raining down over them, the ladder slick from the hose. Jake pulled free of Billy’s grip and shoved him at Steve.

An ominous rumble came from beneath Jake’s feet. Steve was still right there with Billy, trying to get out of the way for Jake, but the flames whipped up from below, taking over the ledge, forcing Jake back another step, separating him from Steve and Billy by a wall of fire.

Who would miss him? came the inane thought. His mother? Nope. His brother? Double nope. Cici, the beautiful brunette he’d seen twice and who’d been so hot just last night? Yeah, maybe
she’d
miss him—

The roof gave beneath his feet, and he fell.

And fell.

Jake opened his eyes to find himself still in the hospital, where he’d been for two days. He lay there and listened to his pretty little nurse kick some serious reporter ass.

“No, you can’t talk to him,” she said furiously into the telephone by his bed. Candy—or was it Cindy?—was the quintessential California girl—blond, tanned, five foot two tops, with a sweet curvy little bod that Jake watched quiver indignantly.

“I have no idea how you people got this room number but you have to stop calling,” she said. “Firefighter Rawlins doesn’t want to talk to the
Times,
the
Gazette, People,
or
US Weekly.
Nobody. Got that?” She slammed down the phone, gave an incensed little huff, then shot Jake a smile of pure gold as she blew her too-long bangs out of her eyes. “There. That should buy you five minutes of peace. Want me to take the phone out of here?”

“Nah, they’ll give up eventually.”

“I doubt that.” Moving to his IV, she skimmed a consoling hand up his arm before she shot him up with the morphine he’d required since his reconstructive shoulder surgery the day before. Amazingly enough, other than his crushed shoulder, he had only a concussion and a few second-degree burns on his back. Not bad, considering. The euphoria from the drugs kicked in, and he began floating happily. In and out…

He came to sometime later, apparently in the middle of a conversation with his good friend, fire inspector Joe Walker. He was leaning over Jake’s hospital bed with a look in his eyes that Jake hadn’t seen since they’d lost Danny in that horrific building fire six months ago. “I’m not dead,” Jake said quickly, craning his neck to catch the welcome sight of his monitors, and the equally welcome movement on the screen indicating he was indeed breathing.

A shadow of a smile crossed Joe’s face. “No. Apparently you have nine lives.”

“Well then, stop looking at me like that.”

Joe’s expression didn’t change, and Jake’s heart started a heavy drumming. Ah, shit. What was the matter? What hadn’t they told him? What had he missed while in la-la land? He could see his toes, could even wriggle them—

“Look, Jake. I know firefighting is everything to you.” Joe’s eyes looked suspiciously shiny. “Jesus, how can I not know that? I’ve watched you risk life and limb on this job for years. I saw how you hated being injured last year, having to work on the hiring board instead of fighting fires, but…”

Jake closed his eyes to the torment in Joe’s voice. Now all he could hear was the steady bleep bleep of his monitors, no longer assuring because maybe whatever was wrong was something he couldn’t see. He wouldn’t have a clue, as another extremely cute little nurse had just slipped some more excellent drugs into his IV. “Just tell me what you’re dancing around.”

“They think you’re done firefighting.”

No. He wasn’t done, he couldn’t be.
But what if he was?
Maybe he couldn’t feel anything because they’d had to cut off his arm—Flailing out with his left hand he slapped at his right shoulder. White hot pain stabbed at him, and he sagged back, gasping. Nope. Arm still there, just numb from the neck block he’d required on top of the anesthesia. “I’ll heal.” He grimaced and breathed through the pain. “I’ll heal and get back to work.”

The sympathy in Joe’s gaze was far scarier than a thirty-foot fall through hell had been. “You’ll need time,” he said. “Lots of it and preferably away from here and the media.”

Ah, yes, the media. Turned out little Billy
had
broken his arm. Joe and the other inspector on the case suspected that it’d been broken while Billy had been lighting his own house on fire, but the kid claimed Jake had been rough with him, breaking the limb while grabbing and shaking Billy on the roof.

To add insult to injury, Billy’s mother was threatening to file a suit against the city, the fire department, and Jake himself, a situation made worse when Jake had groggily picked up the phone an hour after his surgery, telling some reporter that the kid must be on crack as well as being a pyromaniac if he thought Jake would do that.

The press had had a field day with that comment, and Billy’s mother had decided to add a civil suit against Jake for defaming her boy in the press, all of which had warranted Jake more publicity than he’d ever wanted.

Joe was surveying the room, and all the flowers Jake had received. “Fan club?”

“Better than the stack of ugly faxes waiting for me at the nurses’ station.” His words slurred a little, thanks to the drugs. “There’s a whole bunch of people who actually believe I hurt that kid, and want to kick my ass.”

“And there’s a whole bunch of women who just want to kiss it.” He flicked a note attached to a basket of roses:
Roses are red, violets are blue, call me when you’re better, and our
last rendezvous we’ll redo.
“Call her,” he suggested. “Let her be a slave to your every whim and need for a while.”

It was a running joke at the station that Jake could date a different woman every night for a year and not have to repeat unless he chose to. But none of them would be interested in him at the moment, not a one. Sad to admit, but for all the years that he’d been there for others, most of them complete strangers, he had few true connections. So here he was now, needing a little help to disappear, maybe a little TLC to go with that help, and he couldn’t think of anyone to call.

Not a single soul.

Three weeks later Jake stared up at the weights he was trying to pull down to his chest at the orders of his physical therapist, feeling one hundred and two instead of thirty-two. Both mentally and physically exhausted, he’d begun to despair of his shoulder, and how he hadn’t bounced back as he’d thought. They’d warned him after the surgery that a reconstructed shoulder wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but he hadn’t believed it.

He couldn’t believe a number of things, including how hard it was dodging the curious reporters at his house on the Del Mar bluffs, or how antsy he felt not working, not doing anything but getting tired of daytime TV.

“Take a cruise,” Joe suggested from his perch on the next bench over. He came to Jake’s physical therapy as often as he could, offering support and dirty jokes as needed.

But a cruise wasn’t feasible. Firefighters weren’t exactly rolling in dough, and Jake sank every last penny he had into a down payment on his house last year, and was now the proud owner of a mortgage up to his eyeballs.

“Family reunion?” Joe suggested.

“Nah.” Jake’s mother was currently enjoying conning her sixth or seventh husband out of his retirement, and wouldn’t welcome him. Jake’s father—husband number two—had died two years ago. Richard Rawlins had left Jake his guest ranch, the Blue Flame, a place out in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona, where people worked like a dog, camped out on rocky ground, and paid for the pleasure. As a city guy who didn’t feel the draw of the great Wild West, Jake had pretty much left it to run itself.

It was thirty acres surrounded by three thousand more of open land in the Dragoon Mountains National Forest, reputedly one of the most beautiful areas in Arizona, which might have been exciting for the value factor, if it had value. But the truth was, the place barely broke even most months, and there’d been several where it hadn’t even done that. “Maybe I could go to the Blue Flame.”