Let It Burn (A BBW Paranormal Erotic Romance) (12 page)

She knew she must sound like a lunatic as she gave her address, and babbled out that the Fire Chief had set her building on fire.  The operator spoke soothingly, urging her to get out of the building, and Jo let the phone fall unheeded to the floor as she reached the door.

She grabbed the knob, hissing as the hot metal seared her palms.  She’d seen
Backdraft
.  She knew it wasn’t safe to open a door that was this hot.  She didn’t see what choice she had, though.  She was on the second floor, and the windows were covered by beautiful black wrought iron even if it hadn’t been too high to jump.  The scalding knob turned easily enough, but the door wouldn’t budge.  It felt as if something was wedged against it, preventing it from swinging outward. 

She collapsed to the floor, staying as close to the ground as possible.  Dimly she could hear the operator calling for her, but she was coughing to hard to answer.  She crawled toward the bathroom with some vague idea of running the shower and trying to keep from burning.  She wasn’t making sense, she realized.  Didn’t know where the fire was even located, but smoke was filling the room, making her dizzy and confused and sick. 

Kevin
, she thought as her vision began to blur. 
God, don’t let him blame himself for this.
That was her last thought before the smoke made the world go black.                          

*****

Kevin was off the truck before it had stopped rolling, ignoring Travis’ rough shout and diving into Joanna’s studio.  It was like plunging into a nightmare.

It was just past sunset, and the room should have been dark and quiet, but it was not.  Instead sick red shadows undulated over the walls and malevolent specters made up of black smoke danced through the open space.

The fire monster roared, drowning out every other sound except the screaming in his head, the wracking coughs of Kimmy and his father.  He’d entered the building without his breathing apparatus, without any backup. 

Fool. 
Fucking fool.
  Kimmy wasn’t here, or his father; but JoJo was, and he wouldn’t let her down.  Even though in his panic he’d crippled himself.

He dropped low and began the torturous crawl up the stairs.  The entire first floor was lit with demonic flames as her paints and canvases eagerly embraced the blaze.  Poor Jo.  Still more losses.  He thought, somewhat incoherently, that now she would have to give up the Fire mural, like the Chief kept suggesting.  He imagined that if he got her out of here she’d never want to see another flame again – even one she’d painted herself.

He reached the landing outside the door and froze for a moment in blank shock as he saw the board wedged against the door.

“Joanna!”  He didn’t recognize his own voice as he began kicking at the board, slamming his booted foot into it until his leg burned with the effort, until the board splintered and fell loose.

He could hear her coughing from inside, the painful retching barely discernable above the roar of the fire.  He ducked low, drew a breath of smoke-congested air, and lunged into the apartment.  Ragged strips of smoke drifted in the air like gauzy draperies.  He followed the sound of Jo’s weakening coughing to the bathroom, where he found her crumpled on the floor by the tub.

“Aw, baby,” he rasped, gathering her in one arm and reaching out with his free hand to grab a towel.  He quickly doused the cloth in the tub, squeezed out the excess water, and wrapped it over her nose and mouth, creating a primitive smoke mask.

Her coughing quieted, but he didn’t kid himself that she was okay.  Her breath was quick and shallow, her face stark and pale.  She didn’t regain consciousness even as he hoisted her into a fireman’s carry and began to rush through the smoky apartment.

He was so intent on their escape that he nearly plowed into the man standing in her doorway like a giant yellow-coated alien.

Chief Caldwell, just like on that nightmare night, rushing to Kevin’s rescue.  The Chief was wearing his breathing apparatus, and Kevin paused, expecting the man to offer him a hit of much needed oxygen so that they could get the fuck out before the monster got restless.

Instead the Chief gestured for Kevin to hand over Joanna.

“I’ve got her,” he rasped out, coughing, strangely reluctant to let his mentor even touch her.  “If you’ll give me a hit off your breath mask, we can get the fuck out of Dodge.”

“Give her to me,” the older man insisted.  “You can’t carry her in that shape.”

“I’ve
got
her,” Kevin insisted, moving to step around the Chief.  If the bastard wasn’t going to help, he could get the fuck out of the way.

“Dammit, boy.”  The Chief’s words were distorted by his mask and the roar of the fire, so the blow to the backs of his knees took him by surprise. 

He twisted, trying to spare Joanna the impact.  He had a vague moment of terror when he realized that even this violent jostling hadn’t woken her from her smoke induced stupor.  Then he focused all his attention on Chief Caldwell.

The man who’d been like a father to him was almost unrecognizable.  His open, affable face was twisted with rage and some sort of sick regret.  His hazel eyes were wild and mad.

Caldwell had grabbed Joanna, dragging at the hem of her ragged jeans, trying to pull her out of Kevin’s grasp.

“You have to leave her here, son,” the man was muttering.  “Can’t let her finish the mural.  Can’t let her tell.”  He looked up at Kevin with a stomach churning expression of regret and affection.  “You’ll be fine without her, boy.  We’ll all be fine.  We just have to leave her here.”

Kevin tightened his grip on Joanna’s limp form, his horror growing.  Chief Caldwell, a man he trusted with his life, a man who’d
saved
his life, wanted to give Joanna to the Hell monster.

“No,” he rasped, then louder, “
No,
” when the older man didn’t let her loose.  He was weak, dizzy from the smoke, but he was determined.  He would not lose someone else he loved to the monster.  He would not live out his life without Joanna.  He. Would. Not.

Kicking out with one booted foot, he caught
Caldwell in the chest, sending the other man tumbling back into the smoke filled apartment.  Kevin struggled to his feet, swinging Jo back over his shoulder and charging down the stairs.

The fire had grown, devouring the entire first level of the building by the time he’
d cleared the stairwell.  Draping the damp towel over Joanna’s face and hair, he ducked his head and made a run for it, dodging falling embers and gusts of flame as the wind from the heat exploded windows sent shifting currents through the space.

“
Kevin, no
!”  Caldwell’s voice rose above the roar of the fire as Kevin closed in on the open door, the waiting rescue workers.  He caught sight of Jimmy and Earl, fighting the hose as they directed the sharp flow of water through the open windows.  Travis was hooking a second hose into a hydrant half a block down.

“
Kevin!
” The Chief started down the stairs, and was that a fucking
gun
in his hand?

“Shit!”  Kevin started to turn, to block Jo’s body with his own, when the world fell into slow motion.

With a tremendous groan of agony, the stairs fell away beneath the Chief.  Showers of sparks shot up around the collapsing wood, and Caldwell seemed to float through them as he tumbled toward the ground some twenty feet beneath him.

“Oh, Christ.” The words were a curse, a prayer, as the man who’d been like a father to him for nearly twenty years was buried under heaps of burning timber.

Kevin dove through the door, laying Joanna gently on a tarp one of the rescue workers had spread on the ground.  He stroked her cheek and, miraculously, her eyes fluttered opened.

“The Chief.” Her words were soundless.  The smoke had stolen her voice.

“I know, baby,” he choked back.  “He’s inside.”  He tipped his head toward the burning building.

“Go get him,” she mouthed, and her generosity floored him.

Bending to press a quick, hard kiss to her pale lips, he shrugged off the EMT trying to slap an oxygen mask on his face and ran to the truck.  Once there he snatched up a breathing apparatus and an ax and headed back inside fire’s red Hell.

              Jo fussed irritably with the oxygen tube running under her nose, and fretted with the neckline of the dreadful hospital gown as she stared at the purple sky just outside her window.  She wanted nothing more than to go home, use her own shower and then sleep in her own bed.  It was a little shock when she remembered that nothing of her own existed anymore.

             
Inevitably her fidgeting woke Kevin, who’d taken the hospital by storm the previous night.  He’d swept through the Emergency Room in full fire gear and, when the resident on duty hadn’t been quick enough to tell him where Joanna was, he’d started a room to room search.

             
Sometime after they’d moved her to a private room he’d managed to wash up in the bathroom.  Then he’d scooped her into his arms, oxygen mask and all, and settled into the bed with her.  She’d fallen asleep to the steady beat of his heart and the low music of the oxygen hissing.  It was near dawn now, and Mother Nature was gearing up to paint the sky with the red and gold of breaking day.

             
She tipped her head back, letting her eyes meet his, and gave him a little smile.  Last night he’d been filled with grief and rage.  He’d been nowhere near ready to talk.  Now the rage was dying down to confusion, and while he might not want to talk, she knew he needed to in order to heal.

             
“My hero,” she whispered.  It would be a while before her throat recovered enough from the smoke for her to talk easily.

             
“I’m no hero,” he responded in an equally ragged voice.  “Chief Caldwell is dead. A beam from the ceiling landed on him, crushing his ribcage.”  He shut his eyes briefly, a spasm of pain contorting his beautiful features.  “He set the fires.”  It wasn’t a question.  He’d seen and heard enough to piece things together.  “I just don’t understand why.”

             
Quietly Joanna told Kevin the story of the Great Fire, of Chief Caldwell’s culpability and his father’s actions to save his son.

             
“I don’t think he was entirely sane, toward the end,” she added thoughtfully.  “He seemed more concerned with his father’s reputation than his own.  And his anger felt odd, impersonal.”

             
Kevin shook his head, resting his hand over her heart.  “Sane or not, I almost lost you to him.”  He gave her a sad, crooked smile.  “My first impulse is to blame myself, you know.”  She felt her eyes widen, and opened her mouth to argue, but he placed a finger over her lips and continued.  “Maybe if I’d listened to you sooner we’d have figured things out.  Maybe, if I’d paid more attention, I’d have realized something was wrong with the Chief.”  His smile grew, just a little.  “But this remarkable woman I know taught me you can’t live your life punishing yourself for all the maybe’s you might have missed.”

             
Jo felt her own lips begin to tip into a smile.

             
“A remarkable woman, huh?”

             
“Remarkable.  Strong.  Miraculous, even,” he assured her.  “Maybe even brave enough to be with me.”

             
She met his gaze with her own, searching the glittering depths for the proof of what she was sensing from him.  True, there was pain.  So much pain, both old and new.  But stronger by far, there was hope.  And joy.

             
“Oh,” she murmured, “I think she’d have to be braver to be without you.”

             
“You think?”  He brushed a light kiss on her lips, ducking his head to avoid the oxygen tube.  Running his finger along the bit of plastic he sobered.  “I wanted you from that first moment you answered your door all warm and sleepy.  Couldn’t stay away, even though I tried.”  He buried his nose in the snarl of curls by her ear.  “But, Joanna, it’s so much more than just wanting.  You showed me it was okay to heal.  Okay to want a future.”  He licked teasingly at the delicate skin behind her ear and she tried to wriggle even deeper into his arms.  “I want that future to be with you.”  He lifted his head to meet her gaze, eye to eye, breath to breath.  “I love you, Joanna Balentine.”

             
She felt the smile burst through her in shades of magenta and gold, like sunrise.  “I should probably warn you,” she rasped against his lips, “that I want babies.”  His eyes glowed like gemstones, and his smile matched hers.

             
“At least two,” he agreed.

             
“And I want them to have your eyes,” she continued.

             
“And your hair,” he elaborated.

             
“And all our love,” she concluded on a sigh.  “Kevin, I love you so much. You’re like a fire inside of me, heat and light and comfort, and I’d do anything for it to never go out.”

             
“If our love is a fire, baby, let it burn.”