How to Seduce a Fireman: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance (13 page)

Someone pounding on Quinn’s door wrenched his mind from replaying the continual loop of the gruesome details from the disastrous night in Chile. Furball wove in and out between his feet, meowing to be fed. What time was it? The room had darkened. His forefinger depressed the Indiglo light on his wristwatch—eleven-twenty. He released his firm grasp on the wooden frame of the window and straightened, rotating his head and neck to work out the kinks from his previous tense posture.

“Cassie?” Except for the ceaseless racket at the door, the apartment seemed eerily quiet. How long had he vanished into his own world?

The knocking continued, and Quinn scooped Furball into his arms. Had Cassie gone out for something to eat and couldn’t get back in? He turned on a few lights as he strode out of the hallway, flipped the lock and opened the door. “Sweetheart, did you—” The sight before him froze his thoughts before they had a chance to form into words.

Milt, his downstairs neighbor, in all his scrawny maleness, face creased into a scowl and fists cocked, bounced into Quinn’s foyer, weaving and bobbing, wearing purple shorts, white tube socks and black sandals. “Put ʼem up, you miserable lout.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Quinn set the cat down on the sofa and backed up, palms outstretched to show he wasn’t going to fight the old man. “What the hell’s got your drawers in a twist?”

“You destroyed that sweet woman. Sent her off without a care for her heart. Had sex with her and then bragged about how much you loved someone else, that you gathered flowers for her bathwater and how she woke you every morning with a song.” Milt swung a couple wild punches. “My God, man, where the hell did you learn how to treat a woman? Assholes-R-Us?”

Hell, had he said that stuff to Cassie? He’d shared working for the State Department and his assignment in Chile, but, beyond that, their conversation was a blur. “Where is she?” He started to charge around the combatant man.

Milt swung at him a couple of times, never making contact, but halting him in his steps nonetheless.

“Good thing Killer’s got excellent hearing. He heard Cassie crying in the vestibule and alerted me. When I opened the door, she all but collapsed into my arms. I took her in to try to calm her.” He shook his head. “Ain’t seen a woman bawl like that since my wife lost our first baby. Poor little thing cried her heart out until she asked to use the bathroom to freshen up.”

A chill skittered through Quinn’s body. Surely she hadn’t resorted to cutting. “How long was she in the bathroom?” He started to pass Milt. “Dammit, man, is she still in there?”

Tears filled Milt’s eyes. “No. When she came out she was dazed and bleeding down both arms.”

Fuck, no. What have I done to her?

“And you didn’t think to come get me?” Anger curled Quinn’s fingers into fists, not with Milt, but with his own thoughtless treatment of Cassie. Disgust with himself made his stomach drop and shame extend its sticky antennae to catch it.

He had to reach her, talk some sense into her and reassure her how important she was to him. God help his angel, he’d driven her back to cutting. Of all the people in the world he never wanted to hurt, Cassie was at the top of the list, his mom second and this irascible old coot in front of him was third.

“I used her cell to call her brother, the big one. Wolf.” Milt collapsed onto a chair. “I did my best to stop the bleeding. It was coming from her chest and down her arms. When her brother got there, he took one look at her, cursed a blue streak and carried her to his truck.” Milt wiped his eyes. “He mentioned the hospital, if you care enough to go.”

“If I care enough—hell, man, I love that woman.” Quinn grabbed his wallet off the bar at the kitchen and glanced at his feet. “Need shoes.”

“Might do with a pair of pants and a shirt too. You get dressed proper and meet me at my apartment. I’ll throw on a shirt, let Killer out to water the grass and drive us to the hospital. You’re not fit to be behind the wheel of a car. You don’t seem too steady on your feet. What all went on up here? You been smokin’ weed, son?”

“Weed? Hell, no! I had a flashback. I don’t even recall all of what I said to Cassie.”

“Flashbacks? Holy shit. My baby brother had them after he got back from ʼNam. Ranted about killing Charlie and went into a world of his own, wild-eyed, almost feral. Is that what you’ve been living with, son? Is that why you’re okay some days and moody as hell on the others?”

Quinn scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “Yeah.” He pushed the word from a throat rusted shut with regret. Whatever he’d said to Cassie had driven her to cut herself again. Damn his worthless life to hell.

Milt eased out of the chair as if every bone in his body ached. “Meet me in ten minutes.” He turned and ambled out. His gnarled fingers grasped the edge of the door, and he stopped. “I never saw anyone disintegrate like that. Cassie is always the sweetest blend of sugar and vinegar. Lord, you never know what that girl’s gonna say next, but her heart is pure gold. To see her bleed like that…” The old man shook his head, exhaled a long, pained sigh and closed the door behind him.

What the hell did I say to her to push her over the edge?

Quinn tried his best to replay their earlier conversation as he hurried into his bedroom, but all he could focus on was her cutting. He snagged his jeans off the floor and stepped into them. Grabbed a clean t-shirt from his packed duffle bag and jerked it over his head. When he sat on the edge of his bed to yank on his sneakers, something golden sparkled under the light—Cassie’s angel necklace.

She loved that piece of jewelry. Why would she take it off? He picked it up; was the clasp broken? He rested his elbows on his thighs and fingered the chain. What had he said to her to make her take it off?

He’d told her about college, his job at the State Department, volunteering for the assignment in Chile. Milt’s words socked him in the solar plexus. You “had sex with her and then bragged about how much you loved another woman, that you gathered flowers for her bathwater and how she woke you every morning with a song.”

Fuck me blind. I have got to be the world’s biggest asshole.

He palmed the necklace into his pocket and strode through the hallway, grabbing his keys and ball cap off the bar between the kitchen and the living area. He sat Furball’s automatic feeders and water container on the kitchen floor before charging out the door.

Milt was waiting for him in the building’s vestibule. Quinn tossed him his keys. “Here. You drive my Jeep.”

The old man tossed them right back. “Don’t need ʼem, son, my car’s got a V-8. Don’t make engines like that anymore. Got a little duct tape here and there but, other than that, she’s in prime condition.”

The back bumper was duct-taped to the body of the orange vehicle that was probably once red. From the four-inch height of the landau roof, Milt evidently had been adding a layer of duct tape twice a year over the vinyl top since Reagan was elected president.

“Can’t this piece of shit go any faster?” Hell, Quinn could run to the hospital quicker than Milt was driving.
I need to see Cassie. I need to apologize.

“Watch it now. This is a classic seventy-six Cutlass Supreme.”

“Yeah, well, looks like the supreme part wore out. Can’t this heap pick up some speed? Or are you afraid the duct tape won’t hold under the wind velocity?”
I have to get to Cassie.

“Speed limit’s thirty-five. Besides, this baby hasn’t gone over the speed limit since ninety-eight when I was late for my proctologist exam. Driving at a sensible speed saves wear and tear on the engine.” The narrow-shouldered man, hunched over the steering wheel, braked for a red light.

“Name me one person who drives the damn speed limit.” Quinn’s nerves jittered so badly he was ready to crawl out of his skin. He had to see Cassie, had to find out if she was all right. She must have bled something fierce if Milt had all that blood on his shirt.

“Yeah, well, douchebag.” Milt aimed a disgusted expression Quinn’s way. “Name me one man who screws a woman and then brags about how much he loves another. Never known you to bring a woman to your place, except for Cassie.”

Quinn never had. Going to the woman’s place kept things on a more impersonal level and made it easier to go home once the itch was scratched for both of them. Saved him the embarrassment of having one of them showing up on his doorstep whenever Cassie was there. His home was for him and her; it was their place to hang out, even though nothing sexual ever happened until yesterday.

God, he had to see her, make sure she was okay. “How damn long is this freaking light going to stay red?” He wanted to punch his fist against Milt’s dash in frustration.

“Stay calm, son. Everything happens in its own time.” Finally, the light turned green and the old man stomped a sandaled foot on the accelerator. The car sputtered forward on a cloud of blue smoke and Milt farted some noxious fumes of his own.

“Hell man, what crawled up your ass and died?” Quinn depressed the window button for some fresh air, but it didn’t open.

“Those automatic window-operating buttons stopped working in oh-one.”

“And you never paid to get them fixed? Cheap bastard.” He tried to turn the old-style window crank, and the chrome handle snapped off in his hand. In a fit of desperation, he flung it over his shoulder onto the back seat. “If you don’t soon get me to the hospital, you stingy-assed old coot, medical personnel will have to pry my hands from your throat.”

“No need to keep bitching at me. We both know it’s you you’re damned mad at.”

Quinn grunted and tugged the bib of his ball cap lower.

“Years back, when my wife and I owned our house, she asked me to replace a few basement steps she claimed were getting weak. I was drinking pretty heavily back then. Stopping at the corner bar after work, staying too long. Was just too tired and drunk to fix the steps once I got home.”

Milt turned a corner at five freakin’ miles an hour while Quinn gnashed his back molars together.
What the hell do I care about your damn steps? I need to see Cassie. Don’t you get it?

“I kept putting her off. Then one day, when she was carrying a basket of dirty laundry down the steps, one of the boards snapped in two and she fell. Broke her leg. Messed her other ankle up pretty bad. ‘An accident,’ they called it. But I knew deep in my soul that I’d caused it. I loved that woman to pieces, but I loved the taste of liquor too. Even to an idiot like me, it was clear I had to make a choice. While she was in the hospital, I took my self-hate out on those basement steps, beat them to hell and back. Sometimes a man needs a physical outlet to get his pain out.”

“I don’t think there are enough things for me to tear apart to ease the way I’m feeling right now.”

Milt eased the old car into the hospital’s parking lot. “I had to decide which I loved more—my woman or the booze. You gotta do the same thing. Which means the most to you? Cassie or the memory of that woman from your past?”

“Hell, that’s an easy decision to make. Cassie.”

“Glad to hear that, son. I hope you got a strong apology lined up. One that will win her heart back. And I hope you get a chance to spit it out before her brother tears you apart. You gotta be expecting that.”

“I can handle whatever Wolf dishes out.” Quinn deserved every cuss word, every threat, every punch Cassie’s protective oldest brother threw at him. My God, what had he been thinking to tell Cassie about Renata? As soon as the car came to a stop, he tried to unlatch his seatbelt. It wouldn’t release. Quinn shot the old man a murderous look while he pulled and tugged and cursed.

“Ain’t no use carrying on like that. Seatbelt hasn’t worked since oh-four.”

Quinn jammed his fingers into a pocket of his jeans, coiling them around his Huskie emergency knife he’d been using earlier to cut packing rope. He snapped open the largest blade and began sawing away at the seatbelt. Sweat beaded on his face from the combination of his efforts and frantic nerves. If he didn’t soon see Cassie, he’d lose his damn mind. “How in the fucking hell does this deathtrap pass inspection? You wanna tell me that? Huh?” His knife finally cut through the tight weave of the seatbelt.

Milt grinned. “I’ve got this cousin…”

“Well, damn your cousin to hell and back.” When Quinn pulled on the door handle, Milt coughed and farted. Quinn slowly turned his head to scowl at the old man. “So help me God, if you tell me this goddamn door doesn’t work, I will rip off the handle and jam it up your skinny, flatulent ass.”

Milt farted again. “No need to get so testy, son. Life is full of little inconveniences. You’ll have to get out on my side. The passenger door stopped opening from the inside in oh-seven. Still opens great from the outside though.”

Quinn shifted in his seat and, with one solid kick, forced open the door. “Well, I just gave your cousin some more fuckin’ work.” He took off running for the emergency room entrance. Milt wheezed behind him, his sandals slapping on the pavement.

Once Quinn inquired about Cassie Wolford, the receptionist pointed them in the direction of the waiting area on the fringes of the emergency room. Cassie’s older twin sisters, April and Jenna, were there. So was Jace—one of her brothers and Quinn’s friend and fellow firefighter— who sat with his arm around his wife, Wendy Anne. Her baby bump was growing bigger every time Quinn saw her. Not sure whom to address, he simply asked how Cassie was doing.

Becca, who walked into the waiting area with a cardboard container full of coffee cups and a couple bottles of juice, evidently overheard his question. “Wolf’s in the examining room with her. She’s had a few stitches. They’ve called in the psychiatrist she hasn’t seen in several years, to talk to her. I’d think it’s safe to say the three of them are battling it out now.”

Quinn’s gaze swept to the curtained cubicles. “But she’s all right. I mean…hell, she’s
not
all right, is she?”

“Take a deep breath, son. You’ve been on an emotional tear since I told you what happened to her.” Milt wrapped his gnarled hand around Quinn’s bicep.