Flaming Desire - Part 1 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (8 page)
Read Flaming Desire - Part 1 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Online
Authors: Helen Grey
“Patrick Swanson, meet Matt Drake.”
It was too awkward due to the seating for the two men to shake hands, so they offered friendly nods to one another and then the unit was on the go, siren wailing. Sean paused at the end of the driveway a moment to make sure he could enter traffic safely, and then we were off. My heart was pounding with excitement. I glanced at Matt. He seemed calm as he stared out the front window, leaning slightly forward in his jump seat, but I could see the vein in his neck pounding with excitement.
I didn’t want to say that I felt an adrenaline rush, because chances were there was something awful waiting for us. Whether it was a car accident, a fire, a child hit by a car, it was always a scene of initial chaos surrounded by lookie-loos as well as friends or loved ones of the injured parties. Emergency scenes were often an emotional maelstrom, even more so at times than we saw in the emergency room.
I didn’t yet understand all the codes and abbreviations that the firefighters used in response to an accident, but I did catch that this one was a fire. While Sean drove, Patrick keyed the address into the GPS system mounted on the dash.
“Gimme that address again,” he asked Sean.
“Five-seven-three Mesquite, cross street Arroyo.”
I frowned. The address sounded familiar, or at least the cross streets did. I lived not far from that area. As the paramedic vehicle raced down the street, sirens blaring, Sean occasionally leaned on his horn to encourage drivers to pull over to the right. I realized where we were going. It was a house situated on a corner. It was a small, white, clapboard house situated on a small postage-stamp sized piece of property surrounded by a white-painted wrought iron fence. I had often seen children’s toys in the front yard; a swing set, a Big Wheel, and balls. My heart began to thump. I usually waved at the woman who I often saw sitting out in the front watching the children as I turned that corner and headed home. I’d never met her, and I wasn’t sure if the three or four children I typically saw in the yard were hers or she babysat, but I guess it didn’t matter.
I turned to Matt. “I think I know the people who live in that house,” I said.
He frowned, but what could he say? Like him, I leaned forward to look between the front seats, as if leaning forward could propel the paramedic van to go faster. Behind us, I heard the lower-pitched siren of the fire engine, but I couldn’t tell how far they were behind us. My view of Sean’s side mirror wasn’t adequate to see how far behind the fire engine actually was.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of blaring horns; one long blast from the fire engine itself. Once you’ve heard such a blare, you never forget it. Then I heard the sound of screeching tires, then seconds later, the crunch of metal on metal. Both Patrick and Sean looked through their side view mirrors.
“Shit!” Sean called out. “Some asshole just t-boned the engine!” He began to step on the brakes, but his partner shook his head, grabbing for the radio. “Let’s head to the site. They’ll send another backup engine.”
With Sean muttering under his breath and Patrick trying to keep sight of the disabled engine fading into the distance behind us, he turned to me. “It looked like they caught the back side of the engine, so everyone should be okay.”
I nodded, although my heart was really pounding now, my hands trembling slightly. I knew all the guys at the station, maybe not well, but I knew them. The thought of any of them getting hurt scared the crap out of me. They were good guys.
The paramedic van took a sharp turn, and then we headed down a relatively deserted street. I knew the landmarks and also knew that we would soon be approaching the site of the potential house fire. I leaned forward further into my jump seat, my knees nearly touching Matt’s now. I reached out a hand and braced myself on his knee. He said nothing, perhaps sensing my impatience.
To my horror, the house on the corner was indeed the one on fire. I was right. Smoke billowed from windows that had shattered with heat. The front windows had bars over them, painted white like the rest of the house. I hated those damn things. The next-door neighbor on one side tried to do what he could to help with his garden hose, but the single stream of water did nothing to help the old shingle roof, nor stem the curling whitish gray smoke that floated along its surface, as if seeking hold. The smoke roiling from the windows was darker, as it consumed wood, drywall, paint and God knew what else. I caught my breath when I saw the flicker of orange-red flames inside. By the time the paramedic van screeched to a halt in front of the house, flames were shooting through the roof along the back.
We all scrambled out of the paramedic van as quickly as possible. Patrick and Sean moved to the side of their truck and began to unlock various bins that held their supplies. Patrick reached for his shoulder mic and asked for the ETA of the backup engine.
“They’ll be here in four minutes!”
Matt and I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the house. I saw the toys, the swing set, and then I saw the woman. She stood huddled with her neighbors, her face streaked with soot and tears. She was screaming, pointing to the house. There was so much noise; the crackling and popping of the fire, the woman screaming, and the sound of children crying and the sound of police and fire engines wailing in the distance. The woman, standing in a sleeveless white knee length nightgown, clutched two small black-haired children on either side of her, her grip on them probably painful although they certainly didn’t seem to mind. They stared at the burning house with wide, terrified eyes, tears streaking down their faces.
My heart went out to them. I understood that feeling; that sense of horror, the sense that you were living a nightmare and it would all be over when you woke up. Behind me, I heard Matt speaking.
“We’ll go take a look at the kids.”
As he passed by me, he placed a hand on my shoulder and gently guided me toward the woman and the two children. I glanced at him, confused. “But there’s more,” I said.
“More what?”
“More children!” I said, my voice rising in alarm. “Every time I drive by here, there’s at least three or four of them in the yard.”
“Does she babysit?”
“I don’t know!” I replied as I hurried forward.
The moment the woman saw us rushing toward her in our hospital scrubs, she began to sob. Matt caught her just as she sank to her knees.
“My baby! My baby’s in there!”
She lifted a trembling arm, finger pointing. I saw a side door standing slightly ajar, probably the door through which the woman and the children had exited the house. I quickly glanced at the paramedics, who couldn’t really do much of anything until the engine arrived to put out the flames. They looked in our direction, and then, grabbing several tackle-like boxes, began to make their way through the growing crowd of onlookers toward us. I knew they’d look over the woman and the kids.
“Please… please get my baby,” the woman wailed.
Matt spoke quietly to the woman, trying to reassure the children as well. Above the sounds of crying, the sounds of the cackle and roar of the growing flames, I heard it.
“Did you hear that?” I looked at Matt. He looked back at me and shook his head.
“Heard what?”
I stood, half crouched, my hand on the shoulder of one of the children, my head turned toward the house, my eyes riveted on the side door. “The baby!”
Without hesitating, my heart pounding, and with adrenaline surging through my veins, I sprinted toward the side door. I heard the baby cry! The baby was trapped inside!
“Jesse!” Matt shouted “Jesse, wait!”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. In seconds, I was at the side door, covering my nose and mouth with one hand while I slowly pushed the door open and disappeared inside. It was unbearably hot. I stood in the kitchen, as yet untouched by fire, but a cloud of smoke hovered near the ceiling, probably three to four feet thick already and slowly filling the room. I quickly hurried through the kitchen and into a small dining room, and then, with my eyes burning from the acrid smoke, I banged into a wall. I bounced off of it, then fell to the floor, landing on linoleum. I scrambled to my knees and felt my way along the wall until I emerged into the living room. The wailing grew louder.
Holding the top of my scrub shirt over my nose and mouth, I gradually made my way to the living room, bumping into furniture in the increasing smoky darkness that filled the room. Then, I saw it. The crib. In the corner. I began to stand, prepared to reach down into the crib for the screaming baby, but just then, an explosion shook the house and sent me back to my knees as a blast of heat roared toward me. I felt the heat singe my eyebrows, my eyelashes, and my skin. So hot. Incredibly hot. I inhaled ash and smoke. Coughing, I grasped onto the crib, determined to get to the baby, but the lack of oxygen hampered my efforts.
No, no, no, no!
I have to save the baby! This will not happen again!
End of Part 1
To Be Continued in Part 2…
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Helen Grey is the author of the hot alpha military romance series "Serving the Soldier".
Her passion is to write steamy erotic romance and she loves hot billionaire bad boys. Lucky for her, these two go perfectly together... Find out how in her books!
This book was a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Helen Grey
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