“I didn’t say that.”
He prodded the truck into a forward motion again. “Then stop lying to me.”
She slumped against the seat. “I can’t help it.”
“Is it me? Is it because you don’t trust me?”
Lucy almost shook her head, but thought better of it. “No, that’s not it.”
Johnny touched a remote control on his visor. A garage door began to open, and a light automatically came on by the inside door. His pickup barely fit—there were boxes stuffed into the other bay of the double-car garage, the majority of which had writing on them. Lucy could read the date on some of them, and her heart went out to the man helping her. They were dated from eight years ago, from his divorce.
Johnny killed the engine. “Don’t get out. Wait for me to come around and get you.”
“What am I? An invalid?” Lucy muttered as he slammed his door. She tossed aside the blanket and opened her door. The ice pack was no longer cold, so she left it. She couldn’t understand why Johnny started running around the front of the truck as she slid off the seat.
When he reached her, he grabbed her around her waist and clutched her to his body. “I told you to wait for me.”
His obviously angry tone set Lucy off. Her temper flared. “I’ve been getting along for a very long time without you. I think I can get out of a truck by myself.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted the scornful way she’d said them.
He let her go and stepped back. “Okay,” Johnny said with a softened voice. Turning, he walked ahead and hit the garage remote on the wall before going through the doorway into the apartment, leaving Lucy to follow.
What was wrong with her? Lucy’s emotions fluxed into anxiety and peaked into anger so suddenly and without explanation, she had to deliberately employ her seldom-used calming techniques she had learned in her tai chi classes.
She got to the door and caught it before it closed—and then noticed her strength had somehow stayed inside the pickup. Her knees decided to go on strike, and Lucy had no other choice but to lean against the door jam, sit on the floor, and try to keep the door from banging into her shin.
“Lucy—” Johnny pushed the door away and stepped over her legs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” He knelt down beside her. “Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Lucy—”
“I mean it,” Lucy said as she grabbed the front of his shirt, ashamed at showing weakness. “I’m just—my legs felt like marshmallows.” He took out his penlight, lifted her chin, and examined her eyes carefully.
“Can you feel your toes?”
“Huh?”
He slid the penlight into his pocket before he lifted her foot and pulled off the boot. Her sock came off next. “Do you feel any numbness?”
Lucy hadn’t noticed how tired her feet were until Johnny began to massage her toes. She didn’t answer his question right away, knowing that if she said she could feel his strong fingers melting away the tension in the muscles, he would stop. She closed her eyes and let the pleasing sensation wash over her, sighing softly when he pushed his thumb slowly along the arch. However long he continued to examine her foot for numbness, Lucy didn’t know. All she knew was that it didn’t last nearly long enough. When he stopped, she said, “Maybe you should check my other foot—just in case.”
She might have believed he was annoyed if it hadn’t been for the surreptitious smile he wore on his lips. He repeated the same procedure with her other foot, maybe a little slower, a little more deliberately. Lucy accepted the kindness with her eyes closed, moaned every time he moved his fingers to a new spot.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Johnny said.
“I’m not,” Lucy said quietly. “I can’t lay my head back, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” He set her foot down and leaned closer. “How are you feeling now?”
Her head didn’t bother her as much with Johnny’s touch to concentrate on, but now Lucy thought her headache would leak out her ears. “My head hurts.”
“Do you want to try to stand up?”
Lucy ran her hand up Johnny’s shoulder and sank her fingers into his shirt. “Okay.” With his arm around her waist, she stood on her own two relaxed feet. “I’m good.”
“Do you want me to let you go?”
“I think I can make it to your couch.” Lucy peeked around the doorway into the living room where the light was on. “Really, I think I’m okay.”
Johnny released her, stepping back only an arms length away. He stayed next to her as she walked unsteadily through the small kitchen and into the living room. The white walls were bare save for a clock in the shape of a fire hydrant. “Cute,” she whispered. A couch was pushed up against the longest wall, with an over-stuffed recliner near the end of it and a coffee table in front. On the opposite end of the room was a large flat-screened TV on a low-rise cabinet. A couple of mismatched lamps rounded out the sparse décor. Very basic. Very male.
Lucy sat on the sofa, lifted her handbag off over her head, and set it down on the table in front of her. Johnny had disappeared again. Looking around, she didn’t find a throw pillow or anything else to lie on. She hoped he didn’t expect her to sit up for hours. At least the remote control sat on the coffee table, well within reach. She could find something on the History channel and keep her mind occupied.
“Here, put these on,” Johnny said when he came back out. He had clothes in his hand, along with a couple of pillows and a blanket.
“What are these for?” Lucy took the dark blue t-shirt from his hand and a pair of pajama bottoms with tiny red fire engines covering the entire soft fabric. He tossed the pillows and blanket on the end of the couch before kneeling down in front of her.
“I want you to be comfortable,” he said with a grin. “And these tight jeans, as beautiful as they look on you, are just too restrictive to sleep in.” Johnny reached around her waist and he deftly removed her holster and gun from the waistband. He set them on the coffee table next to the handbag. “Now, I’m going to change out of my uniform and take a shower. That should give you plenty of time to change your clothes in privacy. Then I’ll make some dinner.”
Feeling overwhelmed at blatantly being told what to do, Lucy said, “I told you I’m not hungry.”
“Well, I am.” He went into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
The room felt cold, and her head hurt. Lucy didn’t want to change into someone else’s pajamas; she wanted her own nightshirt. She wanted to go to sleep, even if it happened to be in her hotel’s bed where a thousand other strangers had slept before her. As she closed her eyes, Lucy lifted her bare feet and curled up on the bedding stacked next to her, letting the crashing surge of sleep finally overtake her.
~*~
She should’ve waited for the water to warm up some. It had been eons since Lucy had gone swimming in the Pacific Ocean, but she couldn’t remember the last time it had been so terribly cold. She couldn’t stop shivering. Terror seized her chest—she couldn’t breathe.
“Wake up!”
She pushed at the person holding her down in the water—trying to drown her—then she opened her eyes. Johnny was holding her under the icy cold stream of the shower. She was shaking, soaked through to the skin. He had an iron grip around her body, holding her upright.
“What are you doing?” Lucy screamed, her heart racing.
He hit the water off, and the only sounds left were of the water dripping off their clothes and their combined heavy breathing. Lucy had been frightened, but her emotion spun into anger at being drenched. He abruptly released her, stepped out of the shower, and grabbed a large towel before returning to her.
“I
told
you not to fall asleep,” Johnny snapped as he wrapped the towel around her shoulders.
“Why d-didn’t you j-just wake me up?” Lucy yelled, too stunned to move on her own. He pulled her out of the stall onto a cotton bath rug. “You d-didn’t have to try to drown m-me!”
Rubbing her arms vigorously with the dry parts of the towel, Johnny dropped his voice, but not his sharp tone. “I tried to, but I
couldn’t
.”
“What do you mean?” He let her go, stripped off his wet t-shirt, and threw it on the floor.
Grabbing a fresh towel, Johnny began to dry off his chest. “I tried for five minutes to wake you up.” He nodded toward the stall. “If a cold shower hadn’t worked …” He dropped down heavily onto the commode, shaking his head. “I would have called for an ambulance.” He caught her gaze and said, “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought you had slipped into a—”
She couldn’t take a breath. Lucy’s rage fell away into dread. “A what?” The word momentarily caught in her throat. “A—coma?” He didn’t answer her, but he stared at her in contemplation. She knew the look. It was a true reflection of herself. Before he could speak, she adamantly said, “Don’t lie to me.” His dark brows betrayed his thoughts when they rose fractionally at her demand.
Johnny got up, snatched another towel from a shelf, and wrapped an additional layer of terrycloth around her shoulders, pulling it tightly closed. “I won’t ever lie to you, Lucy,” he said as he pulled her into his arms.
“Then answer me,” she whispered into his neck.
“I’m sorry I got your hair all wet,” he said as he pushed her hair back away from her face.
She laid her cheek against his shoulder and leaned into his body. “You aren’t going to answer me, are you?”
“There’s no point. You’re … fine.”
The borrowed pajamas, while slightly too big, were more comfortable than Lucy thought they would be. Either they were very soft and broken in, or it could’ve been that her near-death experience had adjusted her attitude.
She sat wrapped in the blanket on the couch, sipping hot jasmine tea and watching Johnny work in the kitchen. She’d never learned how to cook. Never had the opportunity to even try, considering she lived out of hotels. Before that, Lucy had lived in a dorm room with only an illegal hotplate to work with. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anybody to cook for anyway.
Watching Johnny pound out his frustrations chopping green onion and mushrooms seemed like a fine idea to Lucy. She had angered him when she fell asleep. Over the next thirty minutes, the small apartment went from cold and frustrating to warm and heavenly scented. He didn’t bother telling her what he had on the stove, but the aroma actually made Lucy’s stomach growl from hunger. It smelled familiar. When he brought two bowls filled with soup and set them on the coffee table, she discovered why she recognized the scent.
“Johnny,” Lucy asked, setting her empty cup down next to the bowl of golden liquid, “is this—”
“Egg flower soup,” he finished for her. “I remember you said you wanted some.”
“You made this for me?” A familiar stirring filled Lucy’s chest. As angry and as disappointed as Johnny had been, he still went out of his way to make something special for her. She searched his dark eyes for any evidence of his remaining bad mood but found nothing more than concern for her. Her heart swelled.
“Yeah,” he said. “And for me. I told you I was hungry.” He turned and retrieved a plate of yeast rolls from the counter. He sat down on the couch next to Lucy but didn’t wait for her to start eating before he tore apart a roll and lifted a spoonful of soup.
A strong emotional urge pushed aside Lucy’s hunger for food. She had an overpowering need to fulfill it before she could satisfy her stomach. When Johnny dipped his spoon into the bowl again, she leaned closer to him, turned his curious face toward her with a gentle touch of her hand, and kissed his warm lips. It lasted for a brief moment. “Thank you,” Lucy whispered, her lips drifting above his, “for taking care of me.”
Johnny swallowed hard, and said quietly, “You’re welcome.”
She noticed he didn’t resume eating again as quickly as he might have if she hadn’t interrupted him. He watched as she relished the delicious homemade soup. “This is perfect. You’re a great cook.” She glanced at him picking up his bread again. “I guess, living alone, you learn to do a lot of things, huh?”
He dipped the roll in his soup. “I didn’t learn to cook at home.”
Lucy kept sipping her dinner and waited for him to tell her his secret—before she told him hers.
“Spending twenty-four hours at a time in a fire station with a dozen other men kind of forced all of us to learn to be domestic.” Johnny grinned. “We had to do our own cleaning and cooking in between training and going on calls, and after a while we started trying to one-up each other.”
“Huh?”
He lifted his spoon. “Our meals started out simple. We used recipes we got out of books, or from our mothers, sisters, and girlfriends. Over time, like any men with healthy egos, we competed with each other to be the best.”
Lucy closed her eyes and deliberately savored a spoonful of soup in her mouth, letting it swirl slowly around her tongue where each taste bud could reap the flavor of the seasonings before she swallowed. “You must be the best.” As she dipped her spoon into the bowl, Johnny turned her face toward him, leaned in, and kissed her.
It lasted much longer than a moment.
His strong lips coaxed her heart into a faster pace as he held her face close, and she felt the stirrings deepen throughout her body. Johnny moved away marginally, and as he gazed into her eyes, he said, “Thank you for trusting me.”