Single Dad FILF: Fireman I'd like to.... (HotShots Book 3) Read online

  Christ. Now I’m the one flushing. I don’t have the delicate skin that Lainie has and I’m not one of those, what do they call them, metrosexual dudes that moisturizes. That goes in my favor at least, meaning my hot flush isn’t apparent beneath my stubble. I don’t want her getting on my case again for getting an eyeful of her body, taking advantage.

  “You’re still here?”

  Never was a nurse’s timing better, bustling into the room and jolting Lainie and I out of an almost hostile eyelock.

  “Just leaving.”

  “This young lady needs some sleep. She’ll be going home in the morning.”

  “Home? Are you sure she’s ready?”

  “Doctor says so.”

  “But her home is in cinders.” I say, knowing it wouldn’t be healthy for her there even if it were possible to co-habit with blackened soaking wet furnishings and hacked down doors. “Lainie do you have a place to go?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I have friends. I’m not like you. Billy-No-Buds.”

  Ouch.

  That’s what you get for opening up to a stranger.

  “Okay, you take care of yourself.” I say.

  Shit that sounded lame, but what was I supposed to say? Give me a call? Let me know if you need anything?

  “Yeah you too.” She says with a dismissive tone, like I’m out of her life already and she doesn’t give a damn.

  “I’m sure he’s just being considerate about your wellbeing.” I hear the nurse lightly scold Lainie as I leave the room.

  I get back to my truck but instead of driving back to my place, I take a lurching right turn at the street that will take me to Lainie’s place. I pull up in front of the house and there’s already two other vehicles parked - the Fire Marshall’s and a cop car.

  I try to extract Jersey from my coat where I’d forgotten he was hiding. His warm little body and the rhythmic rise and fall against my chest of his breathing in sleep was a calming influence. When I attempt to scoop him out though, he wriggles around and burrows down as though adamant that he’s coming with me. It’s like the damn little thing has a mind of his own and knows where we are. He seems intent on being my sidekick. I grin and shake my head in defeat.

  “Okay you win.” I tell him, tugging playfully on his pricked ear. “But behave yourself. If it’s not too much to ask.”

  The windows on the top floor, Lainie’s attic studio, are blackened at the top edges from flame. As I climb the stairs I cannot help but remember the last time I used them, with Lainie’s body cleaved to my chest, wrapping me in her softness. A small flare goes off inside that chest, something I haven’t felt in a long time. So long, I can’t really place the feeling. It can’t be lust because that would be grossly unprofessional and it’s just not me. But what? Her body is perfect but it’s not like I don’t see a number of attractive women in my business. And plenty of them come on to me as I haul them out of terrifying situations, or from locking themselves in the john of some bar they then can’t get out of.

  I never thought of myself as having a rescuer complex but Lainie herself teased me about it. Perhaps I don’t know myself or what I want in any way. The door to Lainie’s is half missing and what remains is charred through. No way she could stay here as it isn’t secure and less so when I step inside.

  “Hey Ryder, what are you doing here? It’s meant to be the arsonist who returns to the scene.”

  “You think it was arson?” I say, not believing he’s going to say yes.

  The Marshall is a bit of a dickwad in my opinion. Always making jokes to cover his nervousness that fall close to the edge of grossly inappropriate and definitely not funny.

  “I know it was. It wasn’t even covered up.”

  “Hey Rich, take a look.” A call comes from the other room, more of an alcove really.

  The cop must be in the tiny room where I found Lainie passed out. I follow the Marshall toward the burned out area and Jersey starts going ballistic. He’s yapping and writhing so hard I have to pull down the zipper and this time scoop him up. He squirms out of my palm and to the ground where he runs over to where the cop is pulling a tin box from what used to be the closet. The clothes are all gone and only the remains of blackened wire hangers are left on the metal bar. It’s the same guy I saw in the hallway at the hospital. He has the soot covered box open, the lock charred, and has extracted a large plastic bag of the white stuff.

  “Shit.” I hear myself mutter

  Chapter 7

  Lainie

  I wake up cold.

  Wake up isn’t quite the right word as I never really sleep. I close my eyes and exist in that state of half-dozing with one eye still open, alert to danger all around.

  “You’ll end up in jail or living under a bridge.”

  Those were pretty much the last words I heard my mother say to me when she threw me out of her house. Which was really my father’s house but he was gone and that made it hers. Something much worse than being thrown out of my home happened that day. You can never get it out of your head - the things your mother tells you about yourself form a pattern that creates your life if you don’t get in there and erase it. But to do that you have to know the pattern is there, running the show. Your show - the one chance you have to live a real life.

  “You’re a little slut who will always be a honeypot for men.” She said. When she found out her boyfriend had touched me in places he had no business going.

  She was right about the living under a bridge but not about the slut part. I never took men home from the bar. Just as now I keep away from the other homeless people, mostly men, living under the train-track bridge.

  I keep my distance but remain close enough to discourage any lone wolf types from attacking me. Although I don’t have any delusion that those other homeless men would come to my aid, it’s security in numbers or something like that. Perhaps with the rest of the tribe of outcasts living at fifty feet distance I don’t feel quite so alone. A road bisects their camp and mine, rarely used aside from the odd drug deal.

  “You a junkie?”

  A cop shook me out of half sleep a couple of nights ago. I shook my head no but he shoved up the sleeves of my dirty sweater to check for needle marks.

  “You a whore?” He asked with a tone that made me flare into rage.

  “You think any man wants to sleep with this filthy bitch?” I snarled.

  He stepped away, changing his mind. Fucking cops are the worst. He’d have had no problem pulling me into the back of the car and climbing on top of me. It might even have been worth it for a few minutes of warmth.

  I thought he was the one from the hospital but he wasn’t. Though if he’d taken the time to look closer he might have recognized me from the posters strung up in gas stations and dime stores. Wanted posters. For arson. I haven’t been in a store for weeks but as I trawl through a garbage can looking for something to eat - it’s amazing the amount of food people toss - I extract an almond joy wrapper and my stomach leaps into begging. There’s not a crumb of chocolate left but the aroma is still inside the paper and I can’t get it out of my mind. It burns and prods until I can’t think of anything but how badly I need an Almond Joy. I actually am like a junkie in my craving for a taste of that sweet candy coating on my tongue.

  “You gonna buy anything?” The old guy at the cash asks me.

  From the moment I stepped into the store. I know he’s been watching me in the security footage as I finger the candy bars lined up on the shelves. I can’t buy anything and I won’t steal so I’m just staying here to be warm for another minute. My poster is still tacked to the board beside the magazines but it’s mostly covered over with requests for barely veiled hookups and car ads. A Christmas bazaar at the church hall.

  “Is it nearly Christmas?”

  “What?” The cashier says. “Look lady if you aren’t shopping you need to go. This isn’t the soup kitchen.”

  “Screw you.” I say. I’d hoped he didn’t notice how unwashed I am.
r />   “Go now or I’m calling the cops.”

  So much for holiday spirit. I see now that he’s put a Merry Christmas sign in the window, one of the tacky plastic ones covered in glitter that falls all over the place. That’s the extent of his seasonal decor.

  “Out.” He barks.

  I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t and that his nastiness doesn’t justify what I do next but my stomach has taken over. I’m starving for sweetness. I grab an almond joy and make a run for the door.

  “Hey, get back here and pay for that. I saw you.”

  He’s shouting threats at me but I’m almost there. Almost at the exit and then he’ll never catch me. I just want the chocolate, my dad used to bring me an almond joy on a Friday. It means more to me than just sugar.

  The cashier’s still shouting and I lose my balance just a little so a line of pot noodles go tumbling to the floor. But I’m ten feet, five feet, from escaping. I glance back to see whether he’s calling the cops, desperately calculating how much time I have and praying that he doesn’t have a shotgun behind the cash. Eyes front, running, too late I realize the door has opened. I slam headlong into a solid wall.

  I’m sent bouncing back off the wall so I go tumbling onto my ass on the floor.

  “Idiot.” I mutter to myself. When I see the wall is a great hulk of man filling the space, it’s at him too. “Don’t you look where you’re going?”

  “I think it’s you that ran into me.” He says as he bends down and takes me by the arms.

  He picks me up off the ground like a tossed candy wrapper and sets me right on the floor. I know that freaking voice, like a thousand bees in a hive. I can’t bear for it to be him and I struggle against him, cussing him for being a macho idiot. When I snatch one arm away from his solid grasp, again I lose my balance.

  Before I topple right into a precarious stack of toilet paper on half price special, the fireman whose name I don’t recall grips me again. His large palms encircle my waist so I feel his fingertips pressing in my lower back and sparks ignite beneath them deep inside me, deep and low. I haven’t been touched by a man in a very long time. And never by a man like Ryder. Oh look, I do recall his name from out of my brain fog.

  “Careful.” He says, his voice even more husky than I recall. “Wiping out in toilet roll isn’t a good look.”

  “Ha ha, what a comedian.” I snap.

  “What’s the rush.”

  “Don’t you mean where’s the fire?”

  “I hate to break up this chatty reunion but she stole a candy bar and she’s been loitering around in my store for an hour.”

  “Liar.” I snarl. “Who could bear to stay in this miserable dump that long?”

  “I’m the liar? So you’re saying you weren’t making a run for it with that Almond Joy in your hand?”

  He’s got a point that I can’t back chat him on. And the big block of flesh is not only barricading the exit, he still has his hands encircling my waist like a steel trap. And he’s got a twinkle in his eye and a twitch at the corner of his lips that says he’s trying not to smile.

  “What’s so funny?” I snap.

  “I guess I saved you from committing a crime.” He quips.

  “Being a big lunk who doesn’t look where he’s going adds to your rescuer complex now?”

  “Let me pay for that.” He says to the shop owner, with an authoritative tone that doesn’t allow for any disagreement. He reaches for his wallet and steps to the counter.

  “I don’t need you buying me candy.” I say with a complete lack of gratitude and can’t resist adding, “You aren’t my Daddy.”

  He raises his eyebrows slightly with a frown. This guy thinks he’s some kind of savior, always popping up when he’s least expected to do the right thing. I’m not a fucking charity case for his do-gooder personality. But as I make a second bolt for the door, he grabs me by the wrist and pulls me along with him to the cash. I struggle a little because the shopkeeper still looks doubtful, like he’d prefer to call it in and I really do not need that. I decide to play nice long enough to get out of here.

  The cashier gives me the side-eye and I look down, just in case he remembers that wanted poster attached to his pin-board. I’m tired and maybe I should give in. A jail cell would be nice and warm. Okay, warm anyway. And maybe there’d be Christmas food, at least there’d be food. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.

  Ryder pays for the candy as well as a six pack and some juice, and other stuff I wouldn’t have imagined him eating, like skittles and Oreo cookies. A solid physique like his, you wouldn’t think he’d be munching a bunch of sweet stuff.

  He collects his change and we turn to leave.

  “Thanks for the great service.” I snip at the clerk.

  Ryder’s hand comes into the small of my back and he firmly hustles me out of the store.

  “You too, Daddy.” I say and pull myself away from his hold.

  I’m considering making a bolt at the door and maybe Ryder picks up on that because he reaches out and grabs my wrist, then slides down and curls his powerful fingers around mine. With the clerk’s gaze burning into my back, he leads me out of the store with my hand trapped safe in his.

  “What’s with the Daddy stuff, Lainie?” He says when we get outside.

  The shock of the cold hits me after the extended warmth inside the store, that I’m not used to. I start to tremble and I guess he feels it in his hand, which is also very warm I notice now.

  “You’re cold.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing a coat?”

  He starts to take off his jacket. He’s so good at ignoring my barbs at him. I don’t know why I speak to him the way I do. I’ve never spoken like this to any other man. I never would have dared. I’d have been slapped across the room for way less. It’s like I’ve been unleashed from fear but am taking it too far.

  Ryder puts my arms inside the sleeves of his coat which are big as train tunnels on my skinny arms. Then he pulls the corners of the zipper to do it up. You could fit two more of me inside. I pull the coat around me to huddle into the overlap.

  “I didn’t think you knew me.” I whimper with chattering teeth.

  I don’t add that I’m filthy and my hair’s all matted since the last time he saw me and god knows I looked bad enough back then.

  “Why wouldn’t I know you?” He says. Okay I guess I deserved that. “Can I drive you home?”

  “No.” I snap, so quickly his eyes search into mine.

  “Where are you living now?”

  I open my lips to say back at my old place but he probably knows that’s a lie.

  “Here and there.” I say.

  His eyes are fixed on my mouth and slowly trawl up my face to gather mine up. I can feel the flush follow his gaze up my cheeks. I’m not used to lying. Nor having a man like Ryder look at me like that. I can see the hunger in his eyes but I can also see how’s he’s burying it, not letting it sit there with the expectancy of a wolf, waiting for me to surrender.

  “Where, Lainie?”

  “Okay, under a fucking bridge if you must know. It’s none of your business.”

  I walk away, certain he won’t follow.

  I’m across the store’s parking lot and across the street in front. Don’t look back. Do not look back, I tell myself right before I go flying up in the air and come down to land on the safest shoulder I know.

  Chapter 8

  Ryder

  I feel the fight go out of her body, lying over my shoulder and draped across my chest and bicep. She’s light as air, she weighs less than the items in the bag I just bought from the store. She looks thin but not addict thin. She looks grubby and worn but underneath she’s still the girl I haven’t stopped thinking about for almost two months. Seven weeks, four days and a couple of hours to be exact.

  I had a dream about rescuing a woman from a fire. That happens a lot, apparently it’s the brain working out the stuff we do on the job
, all the tough stuff we see. But I’ve never woken up stiff as iron and burning up like when I woke up from a dream of Lainie. I didn’t see her face in the dream that I recall. I guess my dumbass brain knew enough to erase that part, but the perfect body was unmistakable. I forced myself not to think about her perky curved ass in the lace thong, which only made me dream about her more.

  I’ve been searching for her everywhere since I went back to the hospital and they told me she was gone. But I’m not about to tell her that. It never for a second occurred to me that she was homeless and living on the streets. I’d never have stopped looking until I’d found her if I’d known the truth.

  I carry her back across the lot, unlock the passenger door and lay her onto the seat like I’m setting down a piece of porcelain.

  “You aren’t going to run again are you?”

  She shakes her head no so I close the door and walk around to the other side.

  When I climb in I see she’s torn the wrapper of her candy bar she’s been gripping tightly all this time and bitten a tiny corner off. Her lips around the bar throw images into my head that I have to beat back like flame.

  “I thought you’d be eating that with more passion, after going to the risk of stealing it.”

  “I want to savor it. I might not get another for a while.” She says bluntly, without any hint of self pity.

  I know that any of the guys at the firehouse would tell me I’m insane. That I should drop this chick off at the police station where she belongs. But I can’t. I can’t do it to her. Something tells me she doesn’t deserve it.

  “You know where the train crosses the river? Over on the other side of town. You can drop me there.”

  I know that place. It’s no place for a woman. Its definitely no place for Lainie. Is she living there? For seven weeks, four days and a couple of hours? In the middle of winter?

  “Why did you bolt from the hospital?”

  “You went back to check up on me? Again?” She laughs.