Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay (16 page)

“I guess this means your prayers work.”

“They don’t.”

Samantha stayed quiet. It was his moment to speak. She’d had her moment, when she’d closed his bedroom door. She’d said all she needed to say by not looking at him every time they worked with her students, when she was the only one in class who didn’t touch him. She couldn’t. She’d been using Wally to demonstrate the moves, and if he wasn’t there, she’d been describing them verbally, praying her students didn’t notice the way her knees shook when Hank got too close to her.

Hank continued, “If my prayers worked, you never would have gotten on the back of Vicente’s motorcycle that night. If my prayers were any good, I would have figured out the words to make you stay with me, where you belonged.”

Where she belonged…
How could the words feel so right? And yet…

“If my prayers worked,” he said, “you would have been in my bed every night all these years. You wouldn’t have hurt yourself with the things you did, and I wouldn’t have wasted so much time looking for a woman who was anything like you. Trouble, there’s no one like you anywhere in the whole world. I could hire a flock of monks or a battalion of priests to pray around the clock, and I’d never run across someone I loved the way I love you.”

“Oh.” The word was a breath.

“You can’t be with me because you don’t want to give up your dreams. If you give up your dreams, you let down your mother, do I have that right?”

It sounded small, almost silly, when he put it so simply. But it wasn’t small or simple at all. It was who she was. She had to
do
more than just exist.

He dug in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out an envelope. “Water bill,” he said. “It’ll do. Hey, Bonnie! You got a pen?”

The medic looked up from where she was bandaging a little girl’s arm. She gave a long-arm toss and threw Hank the pen that was in her shirt front pocket.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the pen and paper at her. “Write them down.”

“What?”

“Your dreams. All of them. Write ‘em down for me.”

“Hank…” But something started to grow inside her, a green tendril of hope uncurling, slowly.

“Write.”

She made a list. She handed the folded envelope to him.

He read it, tiny wrinkles creasing at the corners of his eyes. “Okay. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. Yes.” He nodded with each word.

“What? You think all of that’s possible?”

Looking at the paper, Hank said, “Climbing the side of a volcano? Bungee-jumping in New Zealand? Riding the Trans-Siberian railway? You think we
can’t
do all this? Have I mentioned that not only do I get four days off a week, but I have two months of vacation a year and I can get trades for up to four more months? And they pay me well for this gig, not sure if you knew that. I’ll order my passport online as soon as I get home and pull these bandages off.”

“What about the other things?” Samantha's heart beat so hard she was sure he would hear it, even over the chaos around them.

She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “
Have a baby.
That one I can’t quite manage on my own.” He looked directly into her eyes, and the warm coffee of them melted her heart. “Maybe you’d be able to help me with that someday.”

“Someday, maybe,” she said, breathless. “That’s a someday-maybe list.”

He nodded, looking back down at the envelope. “I like the getting married one, too. Again, I’d need help with that.”

“I’m actually kind of good with helping people,” Samantha said. “Not as good as you are, but…”

“I need to know this, though.”

Samantha nodded, the green tendril of hope inside her quaking.

“Are you brave enough to choose someone safe?”

That was the question. That was what she’d been trying to answer, and she hadn’t even known how to put it into words.

Safety.

It was the most dangerous thing of all. To risk her heart on someone who was steady. In place. Someone who wasn’t going anywhere, or at least, not going anywhere without her.

Samantha had never been so terrified in all her life.

But she knew the answer.

“Yes. I think I’m exactly that brave.”

The paper fluttered out of his hands, and he was kissing her then, his mouth firm and hot on hers, and Samantha was kissing him back. She tasted salt and ash, and she didn’t know whose tears were in her mouth—it just mattered that his arms were around her, and she could finally,
finally
come home. And stay there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE ATTACKER BARRELED out of a side door, his prey the small, bird-like woman who perched nervously in the folding chair. She screamed when he knocked her to the ground, and the group watching the attack gasped collectively.

Samantha, watching closely, couldn’t help noticing that the people in the audience who were having the hardest time weren’t the family members of the women who were graduating, but the ten firefighters who’d come to watch Hank demonstrate what he did on his days off. Each one of them was wound so tight that Samantha wouldn’t risk touching any of them—they might explode like that gas line had last month. When Wally had tested Kelly, they’d started the fight with her pinned against the wall in exactly the position she’d been pinned when she was raped in the bathroom of her bar. Pre-scripted, he said the same ugly words to her that the man had said then. Standing in the audience, Kelly’s sisters bounced on the balls of their toes as if they wanted to elbow their way in and fight for her. But they understood that Kelly had to fight her own way out.

The firefighters might have understood that mentally, but physically, at a base level, it was obvious they hated this. To a man, they were twitching. One had let out an outraged bellow when the first student had been knocked over by her attacker. Tox had his hands balled at his sides, and Coin kept moving toward the mat, only drawing back when his girlfriend Lexie took his hand. These were men who ran toward the problem. They were men who, when something blew up, turned around and hurled their bodies at the fire to put it out instead of running away like average people. When someone was threatened, they moved to help without even thinking, and watching women have to fight their way out of an attack, alone, was almost killing them. Samantha had already seen a couple brush away angry, emotional tears.

Tears were normal during a graduation. Emotions were high, for everyone involved.

Especially for Linda McCracken, who hadn’t managed yet to win a fight. In all cases, Hank or Wally had to stop because she gave up, curling into a ball on the floor, refusing to fight back. Samantha was going to let her graduate with the rest of the class tonight because she deserved it, but she’d keep working with her after this until Linda had successfully used the power of her body to stop a full-strength attack.

Hank didn’t hold back, even though just that morning, he’d confessed to Samantha that he could barely bear to fight her anymore. “It’s like beating up a child. I’m not sure I can be that guy anymore. Even though she’s paying you, and you’re paying me.”

“Maybe if you would cash a single check I’ve made out to you, you could make that complaint. But until you do…”

He’d smiled but persisted. “Tonight will be the last time I fight her. If she doesn’t win, then she’ll have to train with Wally. I can’t take it anymore.”

“You’re helping her,” reminded Samantha.

He’d shaken his head. “I know that, mentally. But physically, I can’t do it to her anymore. Tonight’s the last time.”

Now, Samantha could tell that Hank wasn’t holding back on the mat. He had Linda pinned to the ground, and she was stuck. She was thrashing too much—how many times had Samantha gone over that with her? Linda was wasting her precious physical and mental energy fighting that way and she was getting nowhere.

Fight smart, not hard.
Samantha willed Linda to remember.
Smart, not hard.

Then Linda stilled, gathering herself. A head butt—a hard one, followed by an elbow jab, thrown from the ground. Then Linda burst into a flurry of short, very sharp kicks, kicks that would have broken Hank’s leg if he weren’t wearing the suit. Hank must have known it too, because he slowed.

Her teeth bared, Linda screamed the most important two words Samantha taught: “
Stop. No!
” Linda scrambled to her feet, but so did Hank. He caught her arm roughly, yanking her to him, but Linda—without seeming to think—drew her knee up, hitting him in the groin. With a groan that was probably pretty real, Hank dropped. Linda raced to stand at his head, something she’d never been able to do before.

“No means
no!
” she yelled.

All around her, the audience roared, “Down and
out!
”

Hank was down, Linda was out, running off the mat, toward Samantha.

Samantha wrapped her arms around the small, shaking woman. “You did it. You really
did
it.”

Linda hiccupped a sob and nodded. “I did. I
did.
”

Hank took off his helmet and came toward them. Linda launched herself at him, but this time in a hug. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said.

Samantha heard more sniffling from the crowd and knew hers weren’t the only tears flowing.

From next to her, a woman said, “Yeah, well, he did pretty good, too.”

Maureen, Hank’s grandmother, had sidled up next to Samantha. She stood knitting in place, a striped green sock dangling from two circular needles.

“He did,” agreed Samantha.

“I never taught him to attack women.”

“I think you taught him the opposite.”

“So this—” Maureen flapped the sock at the crowd. “This is what you do now? Instead of drinking?”

“This is my addiction.”
This and Hank.

“Huh. I used to smoke before I took up knitting. Maybe sometimes we just have to switch a bad one for a good one. My first husband was no good so I got a better one, just for one example.”

“I like your style.”

Hank came up behind them. Maureen threw a fake jab with her elbow backward. “I can take you, young man.”

“You know I can teach you, too, if you want to learn,” said Samantha.

“I’d be scared of that. Gramma doesn’t need help in beating anyone up. She never has.” Hank caught Maureen's elbow lightly and then slipped an arm around them both. “How are my two favorite women?”

Maureen peeked her head around Hank’s chest at Samantha. “I’d say we’re tolerable.”

“Yeah,” said Samantha, feeling that by-now familiar kick of joy in her chest. “Tolerable’s just about right.” She looked around the room—her sister Grace was laughing with Tox at the doorway. Earlier, during Gina’s fight, Grace had grabbed Samantha’s hand and whispered in her ear, “Mom would be as proud of you as I am.”

If she hadn’t been so focused on Gina, Samantha would have wept.

Now Linda was talking earnestly with Gus near the water dispenser, and a cluster of firefighters were reading Samantha’s brochure, talking about which of their wives should take the class first.

Samantha had built this. In one place, with her two hands and the scrap of an idea, Samantha had built this for herself.

And when it came to love? Samantha had leaped off the cliff, unfurling the wings she hadn’t known she had.

So yeah, things were tolerable if that meant being in love with the sexiest, sweetest, strongest man in the whole wide world. If tolerable meant finding the exact right place to land

If it meant setting out for adventure with a soulmate at her side.

Hank dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re my favorite kind of trouble.” Then he whispered something in her ear that made her cheeks go red.

Tolerable, indeed.

ABOUT LILA ASHE

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. . . or keep reading for an excerpt of
Fire at Sunset.

When Lila Ashe isn’t working at the firehouse, she’s writing the hot firefighters she knows so well. She's lived in the big city long enough to know she craves the stars at night, and living on the rugged northern coast of California is just right. Fans of Kristan Higgins, Bella Andre, and Barbara Freethy will settle right into California’s Darling Bay and Florida’s Cupid Island. Lila is happily married and addicted to all things romantic, including surprise getaways to San Francisco for clam chowder or overnight trips to Napa for wine, but she's also found that being romantic at home can be even more exciting. 

DID YOU ENJOY
FIRE AT DUSK
?

Read the rest of The Firefighters of Darling Bay series:

Fire at Twilight

Fire at Dawn

Everyday Hero: A Darling Bay Short

Fire at Sunset, coming from Lila Ashe in March, 2014! (Make sure you’re
subscribed
to be alerted the moment it’s out!)

And come visit Cupid Island, where romance is tropical and sweet:

Kitty’s Song: A Cupid Island Novella

Keep reading for a sneak peek of
Fire at Twilight,
where Darling Bay began…

FIRE AT TWILIGHT EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

Everything was fine until the air conditioner caught on fire.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Grace, blowing at the tendril of smoke that rose from the plastic cover. “Don’t get up.”

Steve Swanson, who had been reclining with his needles in, popped his chair forward. His eyes bulged behind his thick glasses. “Kind of looks like a big deal to me.”

Mrs. Little—who was anything but—also sat forward, adjusting her bosom as she went. “It smells like my toaster when the bread gets stuck. You sure it’s not on fire in there?”

Eliza Cross, ninety years old if a day, didn’t even open her eyes. “Just let me know if we need to evacuate. Till then, I’m napping.” The
hush
was implied in the retired librarian’s tone.