Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (19 page)
Read Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 Online
Authors: Lila Ashe
Tags: #love, #danger, #sweet, #darling bay, #Romance, #fire man, #hazmat, #firefighter, #vacation, #hot, #safety, #gambling, #911, #explosion, #fireman, #musician, #holistic, #pacific, #sexy, #dispatcher, #singer, #judo, #martial arts
The tones pealed through the station as the lights flashed and the doors rolled up. Lexie’s voice rolled out through the station speakers, “Engine One, Rescue One, medical, female down.”
“
Crap.
” Caz gripped her hands tightly for one more second, then let go. “I guess I’m getting naked in the ambulance.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the fire service, there was driving code three—going as fast as you could possibly go—and then there was the unofficial code-three-and-a-half, which was driving just a little bit faster than that. When Lexie gave the update, saying an elderly female had been found down in her house, alone and bleeding, Bonnie stepped it up to the latter.
“It’s Ava!” she yelled over her shoulder. Behind her, Caz was sitting on the gurney and had his tux trousers off, but it looked as if he’d forgotten to take off his cowboy boots first.
“Who?” He yanked harder on the pants.
Bonnie tried desperately not to ogle his red briefs. “You know, I broke her toilet!”
“She’s never really hurt,” said Caz, tugging at his left boot. “She probably needs her coffee pot cleaned or something. You should slow down if you want me to be decent by the time we get there…” But his voice was worried, too. The call hadn’t come in from a medical alarm—according to dispatch, it had come from a neighbor.
The house, in disrepair last time, looked even worse on the inside this time. There were dishes piled in the sink that might have been there for weeks, and Ava, lying on the floor of the washroom just off the kitchen, looked so thin Bonnie’s heart hurt.
“Oh, dear,” Ava said, grasping for glasses she wasn’t wearing. “They sent me the handsome one again, didn’t they? And me without my lips on.”
Caz smiled and kneeled next to her. “You’ve got quite a bump on your noggin there, don’t you?”
Bonnie reached for the gauze and butterfly strips. They’d clean out the head wound, but she was going to need stitches at the hospital. “Do you know when you fell, Mrs. Simon?” The bleeding was barely a trickle—it had to have been hours before.
Ava Simon blinked at her. “Who’s Mrs. Simon?”
Bonnie felt even more concern. “I’m sorry, I—”
The older woman laughed. “I’m just teasing. I have all my faculties, more’s the pity, or I could have had a lot more fun hallucinating down here for hours. I fell last night, when I was getting supper ready.”
Bonnie glanced at the counter behind her and saw the can of black beans, halfway opened, the can opener next to it.
“I like beans,” said Ava with a little flip of her hand. “You’d be surprised at how little you can get by on when you’re my age. I made a single bag of walnuts last three months.”
Bonnie gasped.
Ava laughed. “Got you again!” But then she grimaced, her laugh collapsing, as Caz touched her side. “Ooof. It’s bad, huh?”
Her left hip was broken, Bonnie could tell by the way she was folded up on herself.
It was only going to get worse for Ava Simon. How many times had Bonnie seen exactly this? An elderly person in good health, taken down by a hip, and never released from the hospital again. Ava was already frail. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
Caz said to Ava, “You’re going to be fine.”
Bonnie stared at him.
Ava’s eyes brightened. “You think so?”
“I know so. You’re going to be just fine.”
Ava looked at Bonnie, searching her face. “You think I can trust this young man?”
Caz followed Ava’s gaze. Both of them waited for Bonnie’s answer.
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “I think you can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
At the hospital, after making sure Ava Simon was tucked in and full of meds that made her flirt woozily with every orderly that wandered by, Bonnie and Caz stood in the hallway leaning on the same wall.
They were inches away from each other. Around them, nurses bustled, family members hurried, doctors ambled. But to Bonnie, there was no one else in the hall. He was so close to her she could feel the heat from his shoulder, smell the scent of wood shavings and soap.
Her pinky finger touched his, and it felt like a burn. Or a kiss.
She didn’t move her hand away.
He didn’t, either.
“Did you mean that?” Caz asked, his voice as soft as it had been when they’d been in bed together, as soft as it had been that night when he’d told her how she felt in his arms. “What you said back there about trusting me?”
Bonnie paused before answering. Her heart did that weird fluttery thing again. “If I say yes, will you tell me what you were doing in the app bay? On the stage, in your tux?”
“I was just hoping.”
Her breath hitched in her chest. “For what?”
“For you to forgive me for what I said.”
“What you said to me was crap.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
Bonnie counted the beeps of a heart monitor she could hear in the next room. When she got to thirty, she said, “But what I said about your dad… and what I couldn’t tell you…I should have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” he said, turning to face her. His crystalline-blue eyes warmed. “I was the one who made all the mistakes. I was furious with you, with what you could do to me without even trying. You made my dad feel better, and that’s like winning the lottery for him. And me. That same night, you made me feel like I could touch the sky. Then, I not only shut you out, but I kept you out, and then I told you we had nothing together.” He paused, and touched her cheek so lightly she wondered if she imagined it. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.
That’s
what I was doing on the stage. I was trying to change the outcome, to make it right.”
Something joyful tugged inside her. “So…”
“So. I’m asking if we can move forward.”
Yes
. Bonnie’s heart said yes. Her brain stalled, though, and her mouth said, “Where?”
“Wherever you are. I don’t care where that is. That’s where I want to be.”
“Huh.” It seemed as if she’d lost all the other words she’d ever known. She wanted to—longed to—lean forward and wrap her fingers around the collar of his work shirt, but she stayed still. “Huh.”
“I know you can’t tell me how you feel.”
Bonnie opened and shut her mouth. She
wanted
to.
Caz reached forward and tugged on the pocket of her sweatshirt. She swayed toward him. “I can say it for both of us. I love you.”
The words he said were huge and yellow—enormous balloons of delight that soared away, taking the stopper in her throat with it. “I love you, too,” said Bonnie.
Caz looked both shocked and delighted, as if someone had just handed him the thing he wanted the most, the thing he thought he’d never find. “You what?”
Bonnie laughed. “I love you.” The words tasted of salt. Nothing about them felt normal, but they felt right. Her truth. Her whole truth. “I’m in love with you, Caswell Lloyd.”
“Holy—” He broke off and gave a ranch-hand whoop. “You’re telling me how you feel.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” she realized. “I’m telling you what I know.” That was the difference. Feelings changed, emotions swayed. That was why they couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be believed.
Knowing was something else.
Bonnie knew her parents loved her, and she knew she loved them back. She knew Darling Bay was where she was meant to be, she knew she had the best job in the world, and she knew it just as surely as she knew how to whistle.
Most of all, though, she knew she loved the man in front of her, the one whose eyes said he knew it, too.
“One question. No, wait. Two.”
Caz grinned. “As many as you want.”
“Kiss me?”
He did, thoroughly. And she kissed him back. His lips were as hot as his fingertips were cool, and if they hadn’t been standing in the middle of the emergency room hallway, Bonnie might have gone looking for the briefs she’d seen in the rig. A nurse yelled, “Get a room!”
Bonnie pulled back, but stayed firmly where she was, in his arms. “That wasn’t the first question. The first one is will you take me to your cabin?”
“It’s pretty empty. Only if you help me fill it with things we love.”
She lost her breath as happiness filled her like helium. She took a few seconds to find it again and then asked, “Will you carve me a bicycle someday?”
Caz laughed.
Then he pulled a tiny block of wood from his pocket and showed her the minuscule pedals.
THE END
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When Lila Ashe isn’t working at the firehouse answering 911 and giving medical instructions, 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.
Don’t miss The Firefighters of Darling Bay series:
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And check out Cupid Island, where romance is tropical and sweet:
Also from HGA PUBLISHING:
If you like small-town romance with the sound of the ocean roaring in the background, you might also enjoy
Fiona’s Flame: A Cypress Hollow Yar
n
Keep reading for a sneak peek!
Excerpt from Fiona’s Flame, available everywhere August 1, 2014:
CHAPTER ONE
Knitting warms a body twice. – Eliza Carpenter
Fiona leaned back and crossed her black cowboy boots over each other. If anyone had to make their way down the aisle, she’d draw her legs back, but right now this was the best seat in the house. No one in the City Hall council chambers was going anywhere.
She should have brought popcorn.
On the stage, Mayor Finley’s face was turning a deep purple, a stark contrast to her perennial all-yellow outfit. She spluttered, “Elbert Romo, this shouldn’t even
be
an issue. Nudity is something one indulges in on the way from one’s bedroom to the shower. Not at the corner of Main and Third.”
Elbert Romo, his face as creased as his overalls, said, “You’re right, Mayor. But it’s the damn tourists.”
Old ranchers like Elbert didn’t ever say the word
tourists
without prefacing it with
damn
. Fiona figured it was probably something they learned in the back room at Tillie’s, where they hung out most mornings drinking coffee and gossiping.
The mayor said, “The tourists aren’t the problem here. What we’re talking about is outlawing public nudity on our public beaches.”
Elbert clapped his hands together. “But they’re the ones that
started
this. They come, they decide Pirate’s Cove is the best place around to drop their skivvies. Then they put it on the internet! On those, you know, those
websites.
”
Fiona watched the mayor take a deep breath and push the errant gray strands of hair back from her temples. “Make your point, Elbert.”
“Once it went online, we got famous. Those sites even tell you where to park, did you know that? And they tell where the rope to climb to the bottom is hidden. You kidding me? That rope used to be a Cypress Hollow secret. You could get horse-whipped for givin’ that info to the wrong person. Now we got nudies comin’ from all over the state, just to get our sand stuck in their cheeks. And I ain’t talking about the ones on your face.”
“We already know all this. That’s why we’re discussing the ban tonight.”