His Heart Aflame (Beach Haven Book 2) (9 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty.”

Sean grunted in the general direction of the familiar voice. Every part of his body hurt, and waking up was definitely
not
on his list of things he wanted to do right now. He just wanted to be allowed to go back to sleep until he felt better.

Something tugged at his memory. Something urgent that he really needed to ask, something that he just had to find out.

He blinked around at the white walls and ceiling and grunted again. That was odd, because the walls in his bedroom were blue.

The hospital. He was waking up in a hospital room. He was suddenly, abruptly wide-awake as memories flooded back to him.

Maggie.

“Easy, Sean.” Ethan smiled down at him, looking immensely relieved. “Your mom is going to be furious. She’s been sitting here all night, so of course you woke up the second she and Griswold stepped out for some air.”

“Maggie?”

The smile faded. “She’s gone, Sean.”

“Gone?”

“No, not like that!” Ethan looked stricken as he realized what he’d said. “No, she’s fine! Recovering just great, in better shape than you, in fact. No, she’s gone back to Chicago. Devon Rock had her flown to some fancy-ass hospital in the city. Good riddance, I say. They just held a big press conference this morning to say the wedding has been rescheduled for next week.”

Sean closed his eyes for a moment, breathing heavily. Maggie was gone. Back to Chicago with her actor-fiancé and producers and all the fame and money she apparently wanted so badly. Charges against him had been dropped, and she had made her choice to marry Devon Rock. Obviously, she didn’t want anything to do with Sean.

He was just going to have to forget the words she had whispered in his ear when she was afraid of dying in the fire.

Another thought occurred to him. “What-- what about Tim?”

“He’ll recover, thanks to you.”

“But I didn’t get him out of there.”

“No, but you went back in after him. Griswold says they never would have found him if you hadn’t dragged him part-way out of there.  Honestly, I don’t know whether he’s going to give you a medal for bravery or kick your ass for stupidity.”

“Probably both.” Gingerly, Sean touched his own face and flinched.

His friend watched him closely. “Yeah, you’re not looking very pretty right now. Tim really did a number on your face. Doc says nothing’s broken, but you sure look like hell.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“I have. His picture is all over the news.  Trust me, you look worse. Listen . . . this is as good a time as any. Griswold wanted me to talk to you,” Ethan said, all traces of laughter gone from his voice. “He got a call about that interview you went on last week. They’ve decided not to offer you the job because of all of the publicity around you right now.  He’s been fighting for you, told them everything was a big misunderstanding, but they just can’t have you join the department at this time. He says you may still stand a shot in a bigger city, like Detroit.”

“I see.”

“Not like you could have told your oldest and closest friend that you were thinking about moving away or anything.”

“I would have told you eventually.”

“Like you told me about Maggie?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“No, I’m a lot nicer than she is right now.  The woman is pissed off at you.”  Ethan grinned at him for a moment, but the troubled look quickly returned to his handsome features.  “What’s up with all the secrets, dude?  Why didn’t you talk to me about what was going on in your life?  We’ve always been able to talk to each other.”

Sean shrugged, instantly regretting the movement. 

“I’m worried about you.  We’re all worried about you.  Hell, Tara’s making you a big double batch of her famous peanut-butter no-bakes, and she doesn’t even make those for
me
unless we’ve have a really big fight.” 

He smiled but said nothing.  There really wasn’t anything he could say at that moment.

Ethan suddenly swore. “The worst part of all of this,” he said, “is that
she’s
just going to go on with her life without any thought about the damage she’s done.”

“You mean Maggie.”

“Maggie, Maeve, Morticia, whatever she’s calling herself this week. She’s destroyed your career, made you look like some kind of a maniac, and even your mom is . . . never mind.”

“My mom is
what?”

“Nothing.”

“No, you can’t bring a guy’s mother into the conversation and then say ‘never mind’. What about my mom?”

“She’s worried about the business, Sean. People have been giving her a pretty rough time. Sure, all the charges against you have been dropped, but public opinion doesn’t care about the facts. People think you’re a kidnapper and a rapist, or a car thief at the very least. Who’s going to bring their car to a garage run by a man who may have helped steal a half-million-dollar sports car? She’s losing customers over this.”

Sean closed his eyes again. His mother had spent most of her adult life building up Jackson Auto Repair and keeping it running after her husband’s death, and she made it clear that the business was every bit as much her child as Sean was. He couldn’t bear the thought of her losing it because of his own involvement with Maggie.

“Of course, your mom may have other things going on right now,” Ethan was muttering.

“What do you mean?

His friend looked uncomfortable.  “It’s been a long time since your dad died, right?  And your mom is . . . well, she’s been single for a long time, hasn’t she?  So you’d be okay if she started seeing someone.”

“My mom is seeing someone?”

“I . . . think so.”

“Who?

Now Ethan looked
really
uncomfortable.  “Griswold sat in here with her all night long.  They kept looking at each other, you know, like deep into each other’s eyes and not speaking.  It was kind of creepy, actually – what are you doing?”

“Looking for a call button for the nurse.”

“Are you in pain? Why do you need a nurse?” Ethan was on his feet in an instant, reaching for the call button.

“I’m going to need some kind of pain meds if you’re going to keep talking about my mother dating my chief.”

“Shut up, Idiot.”

# # #

Maggie refused to be a part of the press conference, no matter how hard Lindsay tried to persuade her. She’d been horrified enough to learn about the pictures that had been “leaked” of Devon at her bedside while she slept, and was furious about the way she’d been yanked out of Beach Haven without a chance to speak to Sean again.

There really hadn’t been any reason for her to stay at the hospital. Lindsay arranged for Maggie to be brought directly to her office upon her release, and there was nothing for Maggie to do but read the stack of morning newspapers while she waited for the other woman to reappear when the conference was over.

There were plenty of pictures. The photos of her and Sean on the beach seemed to be the most popular, although there was a cringe-worthy side-by-side comparison of her in the wedding promo beside a shot of her being loaded into the ambulance at the barn fire. Someone had obviously done some digging to find the picture of Sean in his dress uniform; even after everything that had happened between them, Maggie felt her heart speed up at the sight of his smile.

He may have looked delicious in the picture, but the tabloid articles painted a far less attractive picture of the man. Some hinted at a plot between him and Maggie that involved stealing the car and swindling the reality show out of some sort of fortune, although the details were notably vague. The worst tabloids suggested that he was a crazed stalker who had abducted Maggie, plucking her from the church on her wedding day and hiding her out at a remote inn in the tiny resort town.

The office door opened. Lindsay Newman strode in, wearing a satisfied smile. “That went well,” she purred.

“I’m
not
marrying Devon Rock.”

“Of course you’re not.”

Maggie stared.

“In a few weeks, we’ll have a big, live reunion show with all of the contestants from
Battle of the Brides
.  Devon is going to announce that he loves you enough to postpone the wedding indefinitely and give you time to recover from your ordeal. There will be lots of tears, of course, and you’ll be ever-so-grateful in front of the cameras. Then you’ll collect your check and go.”

“Then why did you just--”

“Because I won’t allow you to make Devon look bad. People are trying to turn your fireman into some kind of hero for running into a burning barn after you. We can’t have that.”

“Sean
is
a hero.”

Lindsay snorted. “He’s a moron. He bought everything you said, without ever questioning you. I have to say, you’re an excellent liar.”

“I just want to go home,” Maggie said quietly, trying to ignore the sudden warmth in her cheeks. “I want all of this to be over and done with so I can get on with my life. Do you need me to sign something, or is there some other reason you had me brought here?”

The producer shuffled through the stack of papers on her desk and made a point of ignoring Maggie. Just when she was about to stand up and walk out, the other woman found what she was looking for. “I’ve asked the show’s lawyers to draw up this agreement for you to sign,” she said. “It’s an addendum to the basic confidentiality agreement you already signed at the beginning of the competition. This states that you agree not to tell anyone about what you say you saw take place between Devon and me at the church, and that you will not resume your relationship with the fireman.”

“Why do you care whether I see him again or not?”

“Because, my dear, if you and the fireman get together, it will look as though you left Devon for him. It will make Devon look bad, and I won’t allow that.”

“What if I refuse to sign?”

“You won’t see a penny from this show.”

Maggie skimmed over the document.  It was a lot of money, provided she signed the agreement and accepted the payment for her time on the show. It would be enough money to keep her comfortable for the next several months until she figured out her next career move.

It was a lot of money. All she had to do was sign the agreement, go along with the plan, and take the money.

All she had to do was sign the agreement.

Instead, she handed the pen and paper back to Lindsay and rose from her chair. “I think we’re done here,” she said firmly. “Do whatever you want, Lindsay. I don’t need your money that badly.”

“But what about your fireman?”

“What about him?”

Lindsay
tsked
. “It would be a shame if people suddenly started to remember seeing him hanging around while we were filming,” she said. “Our film crews might even be able to ‘discover’ random shots of him on set, watching you. The world already thinks he stalked and kidnaped you, so it wouldn’t take much to exploit that belief.”

“But -- but you said the charges against him had all been dropped!”

“So I did. But there’s a big difference between actual charges and public opinion, Maggie. Whether he’s being charged or not, the public will never quite believe he is innocent. His family could even lose their little business.”

Maggie sank back into the chair.

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” she murmured. “He’s a good guy, Linds. He doesn’t deserve to be destroyed because of something I did. Don’t hurt him like that.”

Lindsay just smiled.

“If-if I sign, what happens to Sean?”

“If you sign this, I will issue a formal statement thanking him for all of his help taking care of you while you were lost and confused due to a head injury. We’ll sing his praises so loudly that he just might get some kind of a medal from that podunk little town. He really will be a goddamn hero by the time we’re done with him.”

Maggie bit her lip.

“If you really care about him, don’t you want what’s best for him?”

If you really care about him.

Maggie thought back to those moments during the fire, when she thought Tim was going to kill them both. She’d hit the rookie as hard as she could with that stupid board between her bound hands, wondering if she was already too late, if she could hit him hard enough to make him let go of Sean. And then, when Sean rolled to his feet and reached for her, she just
knew
. It hit her so hard that it took away what was left of her breath.

She loved him.

Now, sitting in Lindsay Newman’s office, she still knew it. She was in love with Sean Jackson. And the only way to protect him was to stay the hell away from him. Forever. She reached for the pen.

“Where do I sign?”

Chapter Eighteen

Life slowly returned to normal in Beach Haven. With Maggie gone and Sean refusing to answer any questions, the photographers and tabloid reporters soon left in search of new scandals, and Sean’s silence about Maggie quickly convinced others to stop asking questions. Business lagged a bit at Jackson Auto Repair, but he and Suzanne had faith that things would pick back up as the tourist season got into full swing.

He did his best not to think about Maggie. He told everyone that he wasn’t going to watch the
Battle of the Brides
“reunion” episode that brought back all of the contestants a few weeks after Maggie returned to Chicago, but the truth was that he really did watch it, just to see how he could have missed spotting that Maggie and Maeve were the same person. There were several clips of her, but Maggie herself was notably absent from the live broadcast; Devon Rock was there to give a tearful reading of a statement from her, thanking everyone for their support while she recovered from her “ordeal.”

“So, Devon,” the host asked, “is the wedding still on, or isn’t it? The world is dying to know!”

Sean didn’t know about the rest of the world, but he was trying very hard not to hold his breath while waiting for Rock’s answer.

“For the time being, the wedding is off,” Devon answered, his voice breaking dramatically. The women all went
awwww
and Sean had to fight an impulse to punch the television screen. “Maeve is confused and frightened after everything that happened to her, and I love her enough to give her some space right now. We’re still very much a part of each other’s lives moving forward from here.”

There it was. Maggie and Devon were still “very much a part of each other’s lives.” In other words, there was no place in Maggie’s life for the small-town firefighter whose career and reputation she had nearly destroyed.

Sean turned off the TV.

In Chicago, Maggie turned hers off at exactly the same moment.

“Hey, I was watching that!”

Maggie smiled at her new roommate and tossed the remote control in her general direction. Amanda was a nice enough girl, she supposed; she just
really
liked her reality TV. She was constantly after Maggie to reveal the secrets about
Battle of the Brides
, despite Maggie’s insistence that she was under a “gag order” not to talk about the show.

Taking in a roommate was part of the new direction Maggie was trying to take with her life. She was going to make the money last as long as possible and work her way up to restaurant ownership with no more shortcuts. No more looking for the easy way out.

She’d started by returning to
Chez Martine
, the last restaurant she had left before signing up for the reality show. It wasn’t much of a job, but it was as good a place as any to start. Lots of dicing and slicing and cleaning up with no real creating, she thought with a sigh as her roommate turned the TV back on. As her father was fond of telling her, “nobody starts at the top.” She was just going to have to accept that starting at the bottom was her only real choice at this point in her career.

Maggie took a quick glance at her watch. She had taken tonight off because she’d been feeling a bit off for the past few days, but there was just no way she was going to stick around the apartment and watch Devon Rock make an ass of himself on live TV. Well, she may not have much freedom in the kitchen at work, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t experiment here at home. She’d been dying to try out a new idea she’d had for a sausage cacciatore dish with a Caribbean flair, and this seemed like the perfect time to run to the grocery store for the ingredients, even though the thought of actually eating the cacciatore made her feel nauseous all over again.

In all honesty, it seemed like the perfect time to run
anywhere
that didn’t involve listening to Devon Rock or eating spicy food.

She grabbed her purse and keys and opened the apartment door -- and was surprised to see Alexa Hale standing there with one hand upraised, ready to knock. Alex looked just as surprised as Maggie felt.

“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked.

Alex quickly regained her composure. “I came here to talk to you about Sean,” she stated, crossing her arms across her chest.

Maggie glanced over her shoulder at her roommate, who didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was listening to every word that was said. She gestured at Alex to take a step back, followed her out into the hallway’ and pulled the door shut behind her.

“What about Sean?” she wanted to know. “Is he all right?”

“As ‘all right’ as he can be.”

Maggie looked down, willing her heart to slow back down to normal.

“You really messed him up, Maggie. Or should I call you Maeve?”

“No, it’s Maggie,” she said quietly. “Look, there’s a coffee shop not far from here. Would you like to go get a cup of coffee and talk there?”

Alex nodded, and the two women walked in uncomfortable silence to the little coffee shop. Maggie wasn’t surprised to see that the Assistant Fire Chief ordered a plain black coffee, but that didn’t stop her from ordering her usual raspberry latte for herself. Her quest for simplicity in recipes didn’t extend to her taste in caffeinated drinks, she thought, pointing at a secluded table.

“So, you want to talk to me about Sean?” she finally asked.

Hale nodded. “He’s a hot mess, Maggie. Did you know he had applied for a full-time position as a professional firefighter? No? Well, it doesn’t matter now, thanks to you.”

Maggie said nothing.

“Firefighters are held to a higher standard. People have to know that they can trust us in their homes, with their lives. Some departments even have morals clauses. Did you know that?”

She shook her head.

“The garage lost a lot of business because of you,” Alex continued. “Nobody trusts a man with their car once they think he might be a crook. Even though Sean was cleared, his reputation still took a beating.”

“Is this why you drove all the way to Chicago?” Maggie burst out. “To tell me I’m a horrible person and remind me of just how much damage I did to Sean’s career? If so, then you wasted a trip because I already know all of that. If I could go back and undo any of this, I would.”

“There’s more.” Alex’s voice was so low that Maggie wasn’t sure she had even spoken.

She waited.

“Sean’s a good kid,” she finally said. “I’ve known him his whole life. I may have gone through the academy a little later in life, but he and I joined the department at about the same time, and I’ve always made a point of looking out for him. He has a tendency to make up his mind about things and never back down.  He holds grudges and doesn’t forgive easily. I’m always worried about him. And Maggie, you really hurt him.”

“I know,” Maggie whispered.

“Do you?” Alex stopped for a sip of her hot coffee. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you
do
know. Sean’s always been a real ladies’ man. Drives his mom crazy. Dated a lot of girls, but never really seemed to care enough about any of them to get his heart broken. Until you came along, anyway.”

Maggie hardly dared to take a breath.

“Since you left, he doesn’t go out. He goes to work, answers fire calls, and goes home. I even tried to fix him up with my niece, which he’s been begging me to do for over a year now, and he still said no. You did a real number on his heart, Maggie.”

“I never meant to hurt him,” she said.

“Whether you meant to or not, you
did
. Did you even care about him at all?”

“Oh, Alex, you have no idea!” Maggie pressed a hand over her heart. “Of course I cared! I still care! But I can’t--”

“Can’t what?”

“What do you want from me, Alex? What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go back to Michigan and tell the boy you’re sorry. Let him go. Give him closure, or whatever it is your generation calls it. Say your goodbyes so he can get on with his life. Otherwise, he’s going to run. He’s turned in his resignation again and says he’s moving to Detroit to take a job as a full-time firefighter.”

“He’s leaving Beach Haven?”

“You’ve got to talk to him, Maggie. You’re the only one who can stop him.”

Maggie nodded dumbly. A moment later, she shook her head and instantly regretted it. The latte was not sitting well in her stomach, and the headache that had been threatening all day had settled in with a vengeance. “I can’t see him,” she whispered. “I just
can’t
. Please, you have to understand.”

The other woman stared at her for a long moment. Understanding came over her face. “You agreed not to see him, didn’t you?” she asked, sounding disgusted. “They wouldn’t pay you unless you agreed to stay away from him.”

Maggie nodded again and mentally scolded herself. She was feeling decidedly nauseous every time she moved her head, so it seemed like the logical response would be to stop moving her head. But still, the movement and resulting nausea were preferable to actually speaking right now.

Alex Hale leaned closer, looking as though she couldn’t decide whether to be angry or sad. “Don’t you get it?” she asked softly, “He’s fallen in love with you.”

That did it. Maggie leaped from her chair and bolted to the rest room, praying that she wouldn’t lose the raspberry latte before she got there.

When she finally emerged from the rest room, she was surprised to see that Alex was still at their table, watching her closely. “I’m going home,” she muttered, reaching for her purse. “I’m sorry you drove all this way for nothing, Alex, but I’m not going back to Michigan. I won’t hurt Sean any more than I already have. Please, just go back and tell him to forget all about me.”

“Been throwing up a lot lately?”

“A few times.”

“How late are you?”

“What are you talking about?”

A smile spread slowly across the Assistant Chief’s face as she reached out to take Maggie’s hands in her own. “I’ve got three kids, Maggie, and I know a pregnant woman when I see one.”