Burning Love
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Burning Love
Copyright © 2014 by Cassandra Carr
ISBN: 978-1-61333-625-0
Cover art by Mina Carter
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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The Calendar Men Stories
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Seducing Helena
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Shockwave
The Other Brother
The Letter
Burning Love
A Model Hero
Falling for Her Navy Seal
Thankful for You
Snow Angels
Burning Love
The Calendar Men Series
By
Cassandra Carr
~Dedication~
For firefighters everywhere—thank you for your dedication to service
.
“Dammit!”
Jude Fisher’s leg collapsed underneath him again, and he nearly took a header down the small flight of stairs in his physical therapist’s office.
“Try again,” his PT, Stacey, encouraged him.
He shot her a dark look, which she ignored. Jude figured she got similar looks all the time, especially since this place catered to first responders and sports-related injuries, including the two professional sports teams in the area.
For about the millionth time, he wished he hadn’t gotten disoriented in that burning multifamily home. If he had turned left instead of right, he wouldn’t have been trapped underneath the fallen beam, and his leg would still be in one piece.
Yeah, and if wishes were rainbows, I’d have filled the freaking sky
.
“How about I try something else? I’m sick of going up and down these stupid stairs. I know the stairs are part of the reentry test, but I’m bored and getting annoyed.”
“You know as well as I do that the stairs are important for stability in general, and yes, for the reentry test. But if you want to come back to them, that’s fine with me. What else haven’t you done?”
“The bike.” Jude made a face. He hated the bike, too. He hated this whole place.
“Why don’t you do a half hour on the bike—taking it easy—and do another set of these?”
“Slave driver.”
He had to direct his anger somewhere. Life didn’t care how he felt. A month ago he’d been riding high. The chief had named him a lieutenant a few weeks before, and he’d just gotten settled into his new role when this happened. Now he didn’t know when or even
if
he could go back to work. His chances would be a lot better if his stupid knee would stop buckling.
Climbing onto the bike, Jude dutifully set the resistance down. Lately he’d been trying to push it by upping the resistance and had ended up with a swollen knee. Stacey had been exasperated that he hadn’t listened to her advice about how to handle his injury and now watched him like a hawk whenever he did the bike or weights. How could he get better if he didn’t challenge himself, though?
A half hour later, he dismounted, happy when his leg held up. Stacey told him to do another set of stairs and he groaned. The stairs were a necessary evil to rehab his injury, but he had the most trouble on them and therefore hated doing them. What guy wanted to be constantly reminded of his body’s betrayal? Jude was a good firefighter. If he couldn’t do that, he had no plan B.
Jude walked with a limp he tried his damndest to hide toward a treatment table when he finally finished his tasks for the day. If he didn’t, Stacey would notice and say something about him overdoing it again, and he feared he might lash out at the poor woman if she did. She was no pushover, and only trying to do her job, but he could only handle so much ego-swallowing in one day.
Stacey brought over the TENS machine and strapped it to his knee. “Fifteen minutes, and then we’ll ice it.”
He lay back as the rhythmic pulses worked over his muscles. These PT sessions kicked his ass. Before he’d been hurt, he’d been in top physical condition, but now, since he couldn’t use his leg for any harder cardio than the bike at light resistance, his stamina was tapped. Thank God he could still do upper-body stuff, but even that was a challenge since the beam had hit him on the shoulder on the way down to destroying his knee. But the shoulder only gave him occasional twinges, luckily.
Pulling out his cell, he decided to check e-mail and any messages on Facebook. Nothing, as if he’d dropped off the face of the Earth. For a few days after his injury, the guys had contacted him, but their lives got busy and now he hardly heard from them at all. Jude knew self-pity when he saw it, but it stung that a group of guys he’d been with over two years seemed to have forgotten he existed.
Once Stacey dismissed him, he picked his way through the puddles to his truck. After climbing inside, he slammed the door, then glanced out the window. The stormy gray sky matched his mood perfectly. His stomach grumbled. It was past lunchtime and he hadn’t eaten, but hated the idea of eating fast food yet again, or choking down another frozen meal. He wanted real food.
Jude drove to a grocery store and grabbed a cart, not sure what he was even looking for and telling himself he needed the cart for the food, not because he could lean his weight on it so his knee would stop screaming. Making his way to the meat section, he picked up about a half-dozen cuts, putting each back before getting disgusted with his inability to make a decision. Jude put a London broil steak in his cart just to move on and turned toward the produce, selecting a large potato to bake. The process of buying two simple things had taken nearly a half hour between his indecisiveness, dodging the crazy mothers barreling their way through the store, and willing his knee to keep him upright.
After paying, he drove home and put the steak in a large bag with some teriyaki sauce to marinate while his potato cooked and he took a shower. When he’d dried off, he threw on a pair of sweat shorts and a T-shirt and went out to his garage to fire up the grill. He hadn’t counted on said grill being jammed into a corner of his too-small garage, unused since his injury. It took much swearing and his knee giving out again to wrestle the stupid thing out. Finally, he got the grill preheating and sat on the steps leading from the foyer to the garage to wait for it to be ready.
His kneecap had been shattered from the force of the beam landing on it and was now the source of many of his continuing problems. The steel plate they’d added for stability either wasn’t doing its job or wasn’t up to the task. A wide swath of puckered, discolored skin on his leg was a permanent reminder of where the flaming beam had reached right through his firepants to kiss his skin as he lay there, unconscious. If he hadn’t woken up as quickly as he had, he might’ve died. But even regaining consciousness within a moment or two and immediately using every ounce of strength available to him to push the beam off hadn’t let him escape injury.
The question that made his head pound day and night gnawed at him. Would he ever be the same again?
Standing and wincing at the additional twinge of pain, he went back for the steak. He took it off the grill, added the potato to his plate, and sat at his kitchen table. As he ate, the thing that stuck out most to him, besides the ever-present twinges in his knee, was the quiet. He’d never noticed the silence as he’d rushed through his hectic life before the accident, but now—now it overwhelmed him. He’d taken to leaving the TV on all day just to hear the background noise. The only things loud right now were the voices inside his head.
What are you going to do if you can’t fight fires?
Jude had no answer to that question.
With lunch done, he sat on his recliner, put his knee on a cushion, plopped ice on top of it for the second time that day, and began flipping through channels. A few minutes later, his phone rang, and Jude snorted at his own excitement when the caller ID showed someone from the station calling.
“Hey man,” his friend Lyle Anderson greeted him. A few years older than him, Lyle had made captain several months before Jude’s injury.
“What’s up?” Jude tried to modulate his voice so he wouldn’t sound overeager, but hell, this was the first time in nearly a week he’d heard from one of the guys.
“Don’t hate me.”
“What did you do?” Immediately on his guard, Jude flashed through different scenarios. Had they already replaced him?
“I volunteered you for something.”
Jude made a disbelieving noise. “Why the hell did you do that? You know I’m not cleared for duty.”
And won’t be for a while, based on my current progress
. Just thinking about the reentry test made him queasy, and he wished he hadn’t eaten quite as big a lunch.
“This doesn’t have to do with the station. Well, not directly, anyway.”
“Spit it out, dude.”
“It’s like this. You remember my buddy Leo from the marines? We’ve gone out for beers with him.”
“Yeah….”
“He’s in charge of a charity calendar—”
“No freaking way am I posing for some nudie calendar.”
Lyle laughed. “This is in honor of his dead brother, man, so hear me out. He died in Afghanistan, and Leo made a foundation or something in his name. There’s not gonna be any nudity. Besides, who’d want to see your ugly ass anyway?” The phone line clicked. “I’ve got you on speaker.”
“I’m going to regret asking why you’re calling
me
about this, aren’t I?”
“Don’t be such a girl,” one of the other guys said.
More voices chimed in with similar thoughts until Lyle said, “Would you guys shut up? I didn’t put him on speaker to get harassed.”
“Why
am
I on speaker?”
“Because I wanted the guys to help me convince you to pose for this calendar. You can hear how good an idea it is. Look, bud, you’ll be wearing at least part of your gear. I promise you won’t be naked.”
“Wearing my gear?” Jude shifted in his chair, and the ice started to slide off his knee. With a muffled curse, he righted it. “Sorry, I missed that. What did you say?”
“I said there would be guys representing all kinds of professions. So hey, at least you won’t have to wear a silly construction outfit like that dude in the Village People.”
Jude frowned. “Why are you calling me about this? There are other guys around there who could do it.”
“For one thing, no one’s prettier than you are.” Lyle chuckled when Jude growled. “And also, it’s in two days, and we’ve got that training thing.”
“So since I’m not working, I’m the only person free. Awesome.”
“Think of the people you’ll help. The proceeds will go to—hang on, I’ve got the name written down somewhere here—The Hero Family Fund. Leo’s brother died, man. Won’t you at least let some dude take a bunch of pictures of you?”
“That was a low blow, Anderson.”
“You’ll do it?”
“I don’t even have gear right now. It was destroyed, remember?”
“Yes, you do. We ordered new stuff so it’d be here when you got back. It’s sitting in your locker, waiting for you.” Lyle clicked off speaker. “Do you need me to drop it off to you?”
“No, I can drive.” But Jude thought better of it. He didn’t want to limp into the station and have everybody feel sorry for him. “Actually, could you, if you’re headed out this way?”
“Of course. I’ll bring everything so you’re prepared no matter what they want you to wear.”
“Or not wear.”
“Thanks, man. I’m sure Leo would thank you himself, if he could. And the kids and families that the association helps, too.”
“Yeah, yeah. Layin’ it on a little thick, aren’t you?”
“Seriously. This’ll be good for you. Get you out of the house. Pump up the ego a little when the ladies swamp you after it releases. Sex is always good for a mood lifter.”
