Feeding the Fire (16 page)

Blake put his arm around Pepper’s back and escorted her through the doors and down the hallway to the emergency room suites.

“Have you seen him yet?”

“Yeah,” Blake said. “Ivy and I were the first to get here. We followed Mack. He’s in a lot better shape now, after getting the medicine and having the wounds bandaged. It was pretty rough when he first arrived.”

“He was in a lot of pain?”

Blake nodded, stopping outside room D, which was draped with a closed curtain. “They said that it could be worse. Most of his nerve endings are dead where he was burned. Now he’s just high as a kite. You’ve been warned. I’ll wait out here.” He pulled back the curtain for her to walk in.

Grant was lying in the bed wearing a pale blue hospital gown. His arm was bandaged from his wrist up to his elbow. There was another bandage across his forehead and what seemed like a hundred tiny abrasions all over the rest of the skin she could see. She could feel tears welling in her eyes at the sight of him.

“Hey, Pep,” he said with a weary smile. “Sorry I stood you up for our dinner date.”

“You have a good excuse.” Pepper sat down on the edge of the bed and shook her head. “You look awful. What happened?”

“Apparently I forgot to stop, drop, and roll.” He raised up his arm. “You forget that stuff when you’re knocked unconscious by a Smart car steering wheel flying through the air like a Frisbee. But I saved the dog. That’s the important part, right?”

Pepper scooped up his good hand and gently held it in her lap. “When you use this story to pick up chicks later, you be sure to lead with that. The women will melt.”

Grant frowned at her. “You’re stupid,” he said bluntly.

“Pardon me?”

“Why are you talking about me picking up women? I thought you were my girlfriend. I’m not supposed to pick up women. Unless you’re dumping me. Are you dumping me? It’s a really shitty time to pick, if you are.”

“I’m not dumping you,” Pepper replied, wondering why a part of her was determined to think of this relationship as temporary.

“Good. I want you to take care of me. It would make it more awkward if we broke up first.”

Pepper’s brows went up in surprise. “Me? I figured they’d haul you away to the family mansion and saddle you with a private nurse.”

“That’s probably what they’re wanting to do, but I’m a grown man. I don’t want my mommy hovering over me. I want to go home and I want you to stay with me. Please.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to override your father’s decree. He looked at me like a peasant in the waiting room.”

“He looks at everyone that wa-y-y,” Grant said dismissively with a slight slur to his words. “He’s a big, old, stuck-up snob just like Maddie is. But you want to know something funny?”

“What’s that?”

“As high-and-mighty as he acts, when he cheats on my mother, it’s always with the women he turns his nose up at publicly.”

Pepper’s eyes grew wide at Grant’s morphine-fueled proclamation. Had he really just said what she thought he said? She knew Norman was unfaithful and rumors abounded in the salon, but she always thought he was smart enough to hide it from his family. Was he so arrogant that he’d flaunt it in front of his own children? Torture his wife with his blatant infidelity? Perhaps her mother was lucky to get away from Norman while she could.

“He’s a real bastard,” he muttered.

“Honey, you may want to stop talking until the medicine wears off.”

He shrugged, unconcerned about his loose lips. “You’re not the only one with secrets, Pepper. But I can tell you. You’re my girlfriend. That’s like being my lawyer, right? Relationship privilege.”

“Okay, but try to think before you speak when you get around the rest of your family.”

“I’ve kept that secret for twelve years. I’ll keep it for another twelve. Wait . . .” he stopped and looked at her with a frown drawing his brows together. “Except I just told
you
. Shoot.” His eyes glazed over a little as he studied her face. “You’re pretty,” he said with a dopey smile.

Before Pepper could reply, the nurse came in with his discharge papers. “Are you going to be caring for him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Pepper said. She hadn’t really given it much thought, but she didn’t normally work on the weekends unless someone needed to come in on a Saturday, so she could dedicate the next few days to helping him recover, just as he’d dedicated his time to helping with her house.

The nurse explained the care of Grant’s burns and stitches to her, how to watch for signs of infection, and handed over a couple prescriptions for antibiotics and pain.

“The pills might make him a little queasy, so make sure he eats before he takes them. And he needs as many calories, mostly from protein, that he can get. It will help his body by providing the building blocks it needs to regenerate that new skin.” The nurse turned to Grant. “Now, they told me your brother brought in some clothes for you to wear since yours are currently in the trash heap. We’ll have the orderly help you get dressed and roll you out to the car.”

An orderly came in with a wheelchair. Pepper took the paperwork and Grant’s bag of belongings, and stepped out of the room to wait with Blake while the man helped Grant dress.

“How is he? The medicine hit him pretty hard earlier.”

“He’s okay. Maybe a little more honest than he should be, but nothing exciting.”

“Honest, huh?” Blake turned toward the curtain with a curious expression. “I thought Grant was always honest. At least, he never holds back on his opinions and thoughts with me. I guess he’s been glossing over more than I thought.”

“Well, he did say he wanted me to drive him home and take care of him this weekend. Is that going to be a problem?”

Blake shrugged. “Mama may squawk, but Grant’s an adult, he can do what he wants. I’ll go break the news while you wait with him. Maybe by the time you pull the car up, my folks will be back on the road to Rosewood.”

“That would be great, thank you.”

Blake patted her shoulder and disappeared down the hallway. A few minutes later, the door opened and the orderly rolled Grant out into the hallway. Pepper clutched his papers as they headed downstairs to the loading zone. His family was nowhere to be seen as she pulled up her little SUV and helped load Grant inside.

She considered her path as they exited the hospital parking lot. They were on the fringe of Birmingham. There were probably a lot more options here than there were back in Rosewood to get what they needed. “I thought we would get your prescriptions here in town where they have twenty-four-hour pharmacies, and then we can get you something to eat.”

“I want a steak,” he announced. “The nurse said I should eat protein.”

Pepper sighed. “It’s the middle of the night and you’re one-handed for a while. Steak is probably out of the question for a few weeks.”

“You won’t cut up my meat for me?” he said, looking at her with sad, puppy dog eyes.

“We’re getting your prescriptions and a hamburger, and then I’m taking you home and putting you to bed.”

“Hmm . . .” he said thoughtfully with a sneaky grin. “That’s way better than steak.”

Chapter Fifteen

It was nearly one in the morning by the time Pepper pulled up outside of the old warehouse where Grant lived. She grabbed the bag of medicine and first-aid supplies she’d gotten at the pharmacy and helped Grant inside and up the stairs to his loft.

Digging out the keys from his personal effects, she opened the door, revealing the large open space Grant called home. He lived on the third floor of what used to be an old sewing machine factory that had closed in the late seventies. After being abandoned for twenty years, a real estate developer bought the building and had the space on the second and third floors converted to lofts. The ground floor was currently occupied by the local sporting goods store.

Pepper had never been much for the industrial look when it came to a home, but the moment she stepped inside last Halloween, she knew it suited Grant perfectly. It wasn’t fussy. There were a lot of clean lines. Concrete floors and countertops, leather furniture and glass tables. The ductwork in the ceiling was exposed, as was the brick on the outer walls. The space was wide-open except for the bedroom and bathroom, which were walled off near the back of the apartment.

Pepper headed straight for the bedroom to get Grant settled. Although he’d been quite mouthy and animated earlier, he’d gotten a lot quieter since she fed him. He’d even slept the last twenty minutes or so of the drive home. Pepper wasn’t sure if it was the belly full of a double cheeseburger, the medicine, or the late hour, but he was wiped out.

“Sit down on the edge of the bed,” she instructed.

Grant slowly lowered himself onto the edge, wincing slightly as he seemed to do with nearly every movement. “Are you going to undress me now?” he asked with a mischievous smile despite everything that had happened.

“To a point,” she replied. She crouched down to pull off his shoes and socks, then gently lifted his shirt over his head. “Where are your pajamas?” she asked.

Grant pointed over to the dresser under the window. “I don’t really have pajamas, but I keep some lounging pants in the bottom drawer.”

That would have to do. He stood up while she unbuttoned and tugged down his pants, then he stepped into the soft, flannel pajama pants she found. Pepper stacked all the pillows behind him, then helped him ease back into bed. She pulled up the blankets and propped his burned arm on a few smaller pillows. Last, she turned off the overhead light, leaving on only the small lamp beside his bed. “All comfy?”

“As comfortable as the Human Torch is going to get.”

“I’m going to bring you a glass of water and leave it here with your pills, so you have them if you need them.”

Grant’s brow furrowed at her. “Are you leaving?”

“No. But I think you need to sleep, so I’m going into the other room.”

“Don’t. Stay.” Grant patted the empty expanse of mattress beside him. The last time she’d laid in the bed, things had been very different. They’d indulged in hot, sweaty sex all night and she was certain as she left, that she’d never return to the scene of the crime. Yet here she was, back in Grant’s bed, this time, playing her boyfriend’s nursemaid.

She would stay, but only until he fell asleep. Pepper got his water and medicine situated, and then eased onto the bed so she wouldn’t jostle him. She curled up near his side without touching him. His arm and his head were the most serious injuries, but he was peppered with tiny cuts and abrasions. Every inch of his body had to be sore.

Looking up at the dark ceiling, she said, “You scared me today, Grant.” She wasn’t good at talking about her feelings, but in the darkened room with a drugged listener, it was easier somehow. Maybe he wouldn’t remember this discussion in the morning. That alone inspired her to be more honest. “What happened out there?”

He shook his head and put his good arm around her shoulder. “I don’t know. Everything that could go wrong seemed to. Sometimes you just have those days. Fire is unpredictable, and so are the people around you. Anything can happen. This is my first serious injury since I joined Fire and Rescue. All this time I’ve taken care of other people, but today, I was one of the patients. It was weird to wake up in the ambulance and realize what had happened.”

“I haven’t really thought about the consequences of your job and just how dangerous it can be. It finally hit me today how scary your work is.”

“Life is dangerous. Sure, being a firefighter has its risks, but what about the guy we rescued today? He was just a guy driving down the highway, minding his own business. He could’ve just as easily been killed today.”

“It worries me more than I thought it would. I’m afraid . . .” Pepper said, then hesitated. She needed to speak her mind and get this off her chest. “I’m afraid to get attached to you, Grant. Not just because of the work, but for a dozen different reasons. It’s hard. I feel myself falling for you and I’m fighting it.”

Grant’s finger lifted her chin and turned her head to look at him. “Fight it,” he said, surprising her. “You don’t want to fall in love with me, Pepper. Don’t get me wrong, I want you to. I think you and I are fantastic together. You’ve made me consider things that have never crossed my mind before. I feel myself falling for the first time in my life. And I should be happy, but like you, I’m fighting it.”

He was falling for her? Pepper was stunned. She felt something building between them, but she hadn’t let herself think of it as something serious. The “L” word was an impossibility, especially considering everything she knew about Logan. “Why are you fighting it?”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be like my father, and it scares me every single day we’re together that I’m going to abuse your trust in me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you I had secrets, too. Mine is that my father is a pig, and I worry I’m doomed to be just like him.”

Pepper’s eyes widened at his blunt words. “You . . . think you can’t be faithful?”

Grant shrugged. “I don’t know if I can. I’ve never tried. But I know my father has failed time and time again.”

Pepper couldn’t stop herself from asking a question since the morphine had loosened his tongue. “What happened with your father? You said something about it at the hospital, too.”

Grant sighed. “My father was my hero. That’s the way it should be for a little boy, you know? I couldn’t wait to grow up and be just like him. I wanted to make him proud so he would notice me. He was so busy and my other siblings demanded so much of his attention, it was hard to feel seen in my house. One day, when I was eleven, I earned the scouting badge that I’d been working on all year. It was one of the big ones. I was so proud to get it, but my dad had to work late and couldn’t come to the ceremony. When our troop meeting was over, my mother was going to take me to Scoops for ice cream to celebrate.

“We met in the Jaycee’s Building, so I told my mom I wanted to run across the street to show Dad my patch real quick before we got ice cream. She waited there for me, chatting with another mom as I jogged over to his offices. I opened the door, quietly. Anytime we went to Dad’s office, we were trained to be quiet and behave. I think that night I was too quiet. I slipped down the hallway to my dad’s office, where I could see the light on. I figured he was working at his desk. Everyone else had gone home. But when I got near the doorway, I realized something wasn’t right. I heard voices. I heard a woman’s voice.”

Pepper winced. She already knew how this story would end. It had to be hard to face that at such a young age when your father was your hero.

“I stopped just outside the doorway. From there, I could see my dad with his pants around his ankles. Some blonde was on his desk with her bare legs wrapped around his waist. She was shouting her head off. I was barely old enough to know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t something he was supposed to be doing with some random woman. So I turned around and walked out.”

“Did he see you?”

Grant took a deep breath, her head rising and falling with the gentle movement. The arm that was wrapped around her shoulder tightened just slightly, as though he needed her support to get the words out. “If he did, he never said anything. When I got back to the car, I told my mom that the door was locked, so I’d just show him when he got home. I got a banana split at Scoops that night and made myself sick eating it. To this day, I can’t eat one. And to this day, I’ve never shown my father the patch I earned.”

“I’m so sorry, Grant.”

“I’ve never spoken about that night to anyone. I knew it would only hurt my family if they found out the truth, so I kept it to myself. But I swore I’d never lie to anyone else. I’d keep this one secret, but to make up for it, I’d be honest in every other way possible.”

That explained it. She’d always wondered why he was so dead set on honesty, even to the point of painfulness. Now she understood. He was already being eaten up by someone else’s lie, he didn’t need any others in his life. But could his honesty ever make up for his father’s treachery in his own mind? “Does that help?” she asked.

“Some days. At the very least, I can convince myself that I’m nothing like him because of it. Other days, I realize there’s nothing I can do to make up for what my father has done to our family and to countless women he’s used over the years. Sometimes I wake in a cold sweat, terrified I’m going to be just like him someday.”

As Grant finished speaking, Pepper noticed a solemn clarity in his voice. This wasn’t a loose tongue caused by drugs. It might have initially given him the courage to start the story, but the medication had worn off and he finished it all on his own. It was just raw, honest memories being shared after an awful day. It was that infamous intimacy she’d always desired but had rarely achieved.

“You’re not your father, Grant.” She ran a soothing palm over his bare chest, avoiding his injuries. “You’re better than he is.”

His response was small, quiet, and unbelievably sad. “You don’t know that.”

The faint smell of something burning jerked Grant awake. He shot up in bed, his heart racing. Fire.

Then his fuzzy brain was finally able to detect a hint of maple syrup and bacon mixed in with it. It wasn’t a fire. It was breakfast. Was he hallucinating? Until he looked down and saw the bandage on his arm, he wasn’t entirely sure if he’d imagined the last twenty-four hours or not. He felt like he had the worst hangover of his life with a throbbing head, sore muscles, and more than a few mystery pains. Even his eyeballs seemed to hurt this morning, probably from the smoke.

None of that held a candle to his arm, though. That was indescribably unpleasant. Like someone had scraped a wire brush over the worst sunburn he’d ever had. He groaned when he shifted his arm and eased against the pillows. He’d sure done it this time. This wasn’t just a bounce-back injury.

He closed his eyes and started drifting to sleep. Grant was tugged back to consciousness by the sound of a woman humming and cabinets closing in his kitchen. That’s right—he’d smelled breakfast, so someone had to be making it. His memories became clearer and he realized who was in his house: Pepper.

Sitting up more slowly than he would’ve liked, Grant threw back the covers and placed his bare feet on the concrete floors of his loft. The cold floor was a shock to his system, making him jerk and regret it as every muscle in his body protested. He pushed through it, though, standing up and stumbling out into his kitchen in his flannel pants.

Pepper was at the stove. Her red hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she was wearing nothing but one of his Fire and Rescue T-shirts. It nearly swallowed her, but she’d never looked sexier. He only wished she was here making breakfast and wearing his shirt under different circumstances.

“Morning,” he said, with a gravelly, smoky voice.

Pepper turned to him and smiled. “Good morning. How is my patient feeling today?”

“Like I spent the evening in hell,” he admitted. “I’m bruised, beaten, and parts of me are slightly well-done. But it got you here to my place, so it’s not all bad.”

Pepper pulled out one of the chairs at his small dining table and gestured for him to sit down. “If you wanted me to stay the night at your place, you could’ve just asked. No need to set yourself on fire.”

“I’ll remember that for next time.”

“Breakfast is almost ready. Once you get some food in you, you can take your pills. That should help.”

“That would be wonderful.” He could feel every muscle fiber in his body move, mainly because it hurt. Something to take the edge off would be great. “What are we having?”

Pepper scraped the contents of a skillet onto a plate and placed it on the table in front of him. “I made scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, and pancakes with maple syrup. The bacon is a little on the crispy side, sorry.”

That was what he’d smelled earlier. Fortunately, he liked his bacon near burned anyway. The pancakes were cut up into tiny pieces on his plate and were already drizzled in syrup and melted butter. She’d thought of everything. Pepper followed the plate with a fork and a tall, cold glass of milk.

“Milk?” he frowned. The only reason he even had milk in his refrigerator was to add to his coffee. He hadn’t sat down to drink a glass of the stuff since he was about ten and his mother had made him drink it with dinner.