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“I see.” In spite of herself, she smiled back at Gables, chancing a more direct look. She’d handled flirtatious men before. For the most part they were harmless—but not the kind of man she preferred. Tall, dark and a little aloof was more her style. Though in recent years she’d rarely had time to date, much less develop a relationship.
Two other men crowded forward to introduce themselves, Ben and Bill, equally good-looking but without the flirtatious glint in their eyes. She noted their curious looks, the way they checked out her scarf, but they didn’t appear to dwell on what she was hiding. Maybe they didn’t care.
They were quite solicitous of Jay, however. Eyeing him carefully. Asking how he was feeling. Any news from the doctor.
He shrugged off all their questions.
Another man who’d lingered at the back of the crowd finally spoke up. “Are you going to give the lady a tour of the place, Tolliver, or let these guys keep on ogling your girl?”
“I’m not—” she sputtered.
“Ignore Strong,” Mike told her. “Logan’s just bucking for a promotion.”
“Are you guys ogling?” Jay asked, his forehead furrowed in what had to be mock anger.
“Naw, not us,” they chorused.
“We just don’t know what a good-lookin’ lady like Kim would be doing here with an ugly-butt guy like you,” Mike said.
“Now just wait one darn minute.” Kim drew herself up to her full five feet three inches, tickled in spite of herself at the way the firefighters kidded each other. “I’ll have you know I’ve judged butt contests for KPRX-TV’s day at the beach and Jay’s would rate—” With an exaggerated effort, she took a look at Jay’s rear end encased in tight fitting jeans. Definitely a ten. “At least a nine.”
The guys hooted and hollered.
“Aw, come on,” Jay complained, but he was grinning too, the squint lines at the corners of his eyes visible beneath his dark glasses. “Gimme at least a nine and a half.”
“If you’re very nice to me, maybe I’ll let you appeal the ruling of the judges.”
The entire conversation deteriorated from that point on. Keeping a straight face was next to impossible, Kim’s self-consciousness about her scars slipping away under the sheer pressure of the firefighters’ camaraderie.
And then suddenly, a high-pitched tone sounded, ear-splitting. Before it had stopped, the men standing around Kim scattered, running to their fire engines, slipping their feet into boots parked beside the trucks, pulling up heavy pants, hooking suspenders over their shoulders and grabbing turnout coats. Even the dog scampered off, leaping into the cab of one of the engines. It all happened like a well-choreographed ballet to the sound of a squawking radio that dispatched the helmeted dancers.
Jay took her arm. “We need to get out of the way.”
He didn’t hesitate but knew exactly the direction they should go to avoid being run over by the trucks that had already started their engines. They waited by a wall while the fire trucks rolled out of the station, one by one, sirens wailing.
When they were gone, Jay lowered his head. His shoulders shook and she saw his chin quiver. In a futile effort, he whipped off his glasses and wiped at his eyes, forgetting the patches were in the way.
“Jay?”
He shook his head.
“Let it out, Jay. It’s okay.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tried to swallow. “God, I miss that.”
Her heart aching for him, Kim did the only thing she knew how to do. There were no words to comfort Jay in his grief, so she simply took him in her arms and held him …as he had once held her when she was trapped beneath a pile of rubble. She hoped somehow she could give to him the strength and courage he had once shared with her.
Chapter Three
Jay stiffened and jerked back. Not that he didn’t like having Kim’s arms around him, her exquisite breasts pillowing against his chest, the floral scent of her hair tantalizing his senses.
He did.
But he hated like hell for her to see his weakness. To pity him.
Grasping her slender shoulders, he shifted her away, and immediately missed her closeness, the heat of her body blending with his. He shuddered as if a cold blast of air had swept between them.
“So,” he said, trying to cover his sense of loss. “You want a tour of the place?”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
He heard an unfamiliar chill in her voice—a voice normally so warm and arousing, sexy as hell—and he silently chided himself for hurting her feelings. The fact that he didn’t want her help didn’t make her offer any less generous.
“No bother,” he said softly. “We’re all pretty proud of the place.”
“Fine then, if that’s what you’d like to do.”
Taking a moment to regain his bearings, mentally recalling where the door to the offices was located, trying not to make it obvious, he ran his hand along the wall until he came to the doorjamb. He shoved the door open and ushered her inside.
Except for the sound of the chief’s secretary talking on the phone, the interior hallway was quiet now that the station was empty of firefighters. No laughing. No bantering voices. The things he loved most about being on the job.
“Where was the fire?” she asked, sliding her arm through his. “I couldn’t understand what they were saying over the loudspeaker.”
“An apartment fire on Toledo. Second floor.”
“I hope it’s not too bad.”
“This time of day?” He shrugged. “Probably a grease fire in the kitchen.” It was nights when things could get hairy, where fires burned undetected and were already out of control when the trucks arrived.
“Why did you decide to become a firefighter?” Kim asked.
“You mean besides wanting to rescue damsels in distress?”
“I suspect there’s more to it than that.”
He paused in the hallway to give her the easy answer, the one they used for school kids touring the station. “For the cheap thrills. Every time that tone sounds, you’ve got a chance for a trip to Six Flags.”
“You’re an adrenaline junkie?”
He couldn’t leave it at that, letting Kim think he was that shallow. “I grew up in the house where I’m living now. As a kid, every time I’d hear the fire trucks roll, I wanted to be there with them putting out fires, rescuing people, wearing that cool helmet. But the real question is why any sane person would stay on the job and risk his neck every day for strangers after you get past the adrenaline high and the excitement.”
“And?”
He turned to her, picturing her blue-violet eyes looking at him, wishing he could touch her. Run his fingers through her hair. Weigh the silken blond strands in his palm.
“It’s the brotherhood on the job. We may fight like brothers here at the station and give each other a hard time every chance we get, but we’re there for each other when it counts.” He rubbed his hand over his face, forgetting for the moment about the glasses and knocking them askew. He hadn’t done a very good job of shaving that morning and there were patches of stubble on his jaw. He couldn’t do anything about the press of tears at the back of his eyes, caught there behind those damn patches that kept him from being a whole man. “That’s what I miss the most about being off the job. They need me and I can’t be there for them.”
“You will be, Jay. A few weeks, and then you’ll be back on the job.”
“Yeah.” God, he hoped so. Otherwise he’d go crazy. He hated pretending everything was okay; hated swallowing the fear that rose up in the night to grab him. The dreams he was unable to halt, the explosion happening again and again.
Shaking off the feeling, he continued down the hallway, Kim at his side, her heels making those feminine clicking noises on the hardwood floor. Her scent faint. Seductive. Something that good dreams were made of.
“I’ve lost track of how many steps I’ve taken,” he admitted, distracted by her nearness and his own fantasies. “The dispatch office—”
“Is right here. You want us to go in?”
“Yeah. No tour of the station is complete without meeting Emma Jean Witkowsky, our dispatcher and resident psychic.”
“Psychic?” Kim frowned at the comment. “You mean she predicts fires before she gets a 911 call?”
“That’s what she says…about two minutes after a call comes in. Says it’s her gypsy blood.”
Kim nodded, chuckling, though she wasn’t sure she quite understood.
Jay shoved open the door marked Dispatch and Kim entered. Certainly the woman sitting in front of a U-shaped console of computer keyboards and screens could be a gypsy. Her dark hair was in wild disarray as though she had just finished a fiery dance to the music of violins and a concertina, and large silver hoops dangled from her ears.
“Hey, Jay, I knew you’d be coming in today. How are you, hon?”
Jay nudged Kim with his elbow. “Now she knows I was going to show up, but a half hour ago? Not likely.” To the dispatcher he said, “Doing fine, Emma Jean. I’d like you to meet Kim Lydell. I’m giving her a tour.”
“Hey, hon, I know you.” Her dark eyes flashed with recognition. “You’re that TV person. Haven’t seen you on the air for a while.”
Kim tensed, feeling the now-familiar self-consciousness wash over her when she met someone new. Automatically, she tugged her scarf more tightly around her face.
“I’m on a sabbatical.” There wasn’t much call for news anchors who look like macabre clowns.
The dispatcher gave her a closer look, her gaze uncomfortably penetrating. “Don’t worry about a thing, hon. I’m getting good vibes about your future.”
Although Kim wasn’t a great believer in psychics, she said, “Thanks. I’ll hold that thought.”
“You do that, hon.”
Kim noticed a plate of what looked to be homemade oatmeal cookies covered with plastic wrap on the counter that separated the computer area from the rest of the room. “Those look good. Are you the cookie maker?” she asked Emma Jean.
“No, not me, but help yourself. Mrs. Anderson brought them over for the guys and they’re going a little slow.”
“Thank you.” Tempted, she reached for—
Blindly, Jay grabbed for her wrist just as her hand closed around a cookie. “Don’t touch those. They’ll kill you.”
Her head snapped around. “What?”
“Evie Anderson is the world’s worst cook.”
“The city councilwoman?”
“The same,” Emma Jean said. “She’s also got a mad crush on the chief. Thinks the way to his heart is through his stomach.”
“A stomach pump is what you need when you eat any of her cooking.”
“Oh, they can’t be that bad.” Gingerly, Kim bit off a tiny bite of the cookie she’d snatched, chewed and choked, desperately wishing she could spit it out. “Eeew, yuk.”
“Told you so,” Jay chided.
“She must have dumped a whole box of salt in there. They’re terrible.”
“She fell a couple of years ago and suffered a concussion,” Jay explained. “I think she lost her sense of taste.”
“But she’s a very nice lady,” Emma Jean said, defending the councilwoman. “And I predict—”
“Don’t!” Jay held up his hand. “If the chief and that woman get together, there’ll be mass resignations from the department. That’s my prediction.”
Kim couldn’t help but laugh. Councilwoman Anderson was an attractive woman in her early sixties, practically an institution in Paseo del Real, if a little conservative for Kim’s taste. She and the widowed fire chief would make a good-looking couple—assuming he had an iron stomach, she thought as she dropped the remains of the cookie in a nearby waste-basket.
“Say,” Emma Jean said. “I bet you’d like to come to the station’s pancake breakfast this weekend.” She whipped out a pre-printed pad of tickets. “Only five bucks a crack. It’s for a good cause.”
Kim glanced at Jay in the hope of an explanation.
“We’re restoring a vintage fire truck to ride in the Founder’s Day parade next September,” he offered. “Whoever sells the most tickets gets to drive. I figure I’m a shoo-in.”
“In that case, maybe I ought to buy my ticket from Emma Jean.”
“What kind of loyalty is that?” he complained. “Wasn’t I the one who brought you to the dance?”
The dispatcher grinned at her. “A girl after my own heart. Don’t let these guys and their egos get ahead of you. How many, hon?” She started tearing off tickets. “You got a boyfriend you could bring? A good-lookin’ brother about my age?”
Kim shook her head. “Maybe my parents would come,” she said impulsively. Both professors at the local university, they did try to support the community in a variety of ways. And even if they didn’t want to come, Kim’s investment wouldn’t be large, only ten extra dollars….and it was for a good cause, as Emma Jean had said. That amount of money wasn’t about to break her, particularly since KPRX was still paying her salary. Her boss, Alex Woodward, had told her to “take all the time she needed” for her recovery, although his generosity wasn’t likely to last indefinitely.
She dug into the small purse she carried and passed over the money in exchange for three tickets.
A moment later, Emma Jean had to answer a call, so Kim and Jay excused themselves.
“Some friend you are,” he grumbled, but she knew he was kidding.
Surreptitiously using his hand on the wall to guide him, he took her upstairs to the living quarters. Instead of a dormitory as she had expected, each firefighter had a separate bedroom that he shared with the men on alternate shifts, although each man had his own private locker. Then Jay demonstrated how to change the men’s room into a women’s restroom with the simple flip of the sign on the door.
“I think my preference would be for a lock,” Kim said, a little suspiciously. “On the inside.”
“We firefighters are the last true gentlemen in America,” Jay assured her piously. “We’d never violate that sign. Unless we were invited to, of course. Or, in my case, if I didn’t see the sign, which would be a darn good excuse.”
She laughed. How he could joke about his blindness and at the same time be so stubborn about accepting help was beyond her.
They were in the third-floor TV room with its rows of recliners lined up in front of the big screen when the fire trucks returned. A loudspeaker announced, “Engine 61 in quarters.”
“Let’s go see how the guys did.”
She followed Jay across the room where he opened what looked like a closet door. Her eyes widened. She screamed and snared him by his T-shirt, pulling him back. “That’s not the way out.”
“Sure it is.”
“No, Jay! It’s a big hole! You’ll kill yourself.” And this was a man who didn’t think he needed help? She’d been right when she’d called him a lunatic.
“Not hole, sweetheart.” He laughed. “It’s our pole. Quickest way to get downstairs.”
She peered past him. There was a pole in the center of the closet, all right, about six inches in diameter, but it looked like a hole to her—a deep one all the way from the third floor to the ground level.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll slide down first, you follow me and I’ll catch you.”
She bristled. “I’m not going to do any such thing.”
“What’s the matter? Are you chicken?”
“Certainly not.” Although she did have a certain fear of heights.
“You’re not afraid I’ll look up your skirt, are you? I promise I’ll keep my eyes closed, if that’s the problem.”
She whacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. “It’s just that I’ve…I’ve got heels on.”
“I know. I’ve been listening to them when you walk.” He waggled his eyebrows above his dark glasses. “Very sexy.”
The heat of a blush rose up her neck. She hadn’t been aware he was paying that much attention to the details about her, fully scrutinizing her in the same way she was noticing his attributes, all of them thoroughly masculine. And sexy. Like his full lips, especially when he was holding back a smile. Kissable lips.
“You get downstairs any way you like,” she told him, whirling away from both Jay and her reckless thoughts. “I’m going to use the stairs.”
His teasing laughter followed her out of the room as did his footsteps. She was intensely aware that he was “seeing” her in ways only a blind man could and very likely with more clarity than most sighted men would. She could only be grateful her disfigurement wasn’t as apparent to him as the style of shoes she was wearing. Any man with reasonable vision would turn away from her, repelled by the scars that had healed so poorly.
At least any man she’d consider having an intimate relationship with—and that errant thought rocked her back on her mental heels.
THEY’D BROUGHT back the acrid smell of smoke to the firehouse and it hung in the air amid the sounds of his buddies checking out the equipment, readying everything for the next run they’d get.
Jay had never felt quite so left out, not even in high school when he hadn’t had time to be a part of any clique. Or had the money to ask out the girl he wanted, he recalled, aware that Kim was standing beside him. What irony that she would be here now when he was in no position to do anything except enjoy the smoky sound of her voice and remember the face that had been a frequent visitor to his adolescent dreams.
The thing he hated the most—feared the most—his blindness, had brought her to him. Temporarily.
But it didn’t change the fact that under other circumstances she’d be far out of his reach. Unattainable. And he’d still be one of the guys sitting in the stands, Kim his favorite fantasy.
He silently cursed the fact that though years had passed, their relative positions had remained pretty much the same—she was still the beauty queen, a local celebrity, and he was just a working stiff with ambitions above himself. A blind man who was only too likely to bash into a wall or trip over a crack in the sidewalk.
Buttons licked his hand in greeting, pulling Jay back to the action in the station house. In gratitude, he petted the dog and scratched him between the ears.
“How’d it go?” he called out to the men he couldn’t see.
“Looked like the lady of the house was playing a little hanky-panky in the bedroom with her boyfriend,” Gables replied. “She forgot about the lamb chops in the broiler and they turned into crispy critters with flames shooting up the vent.”
“I figured it for a stove fire this time of day.”
“Yep. Fun part was the lady’s husband came home to check on what was happening. The boyfriend was hard-pressed to explain where he’d left his clothes.”
“Oh, my,” Kim gasped, a quick giggle escaping.
“Not a pretty sight,” Gables added and the rest of the crew joined in with their laughter.
“Sometimes we need a degree in social work in addition to fire-suppression courses,” Jay told Kim, still petting Buttons.
“Yes, I can see that.” She touched his arm lightly, sending an arc of desire through him. “Look, I think I’d better be going. Would you walk me back to my car?”
For a panicky moment, he searched for an excuse to keep her around—a few minutes longer. An hour. He’d settle for whatever he could get. He didn’t want her to leave. And he didn’t have any right to ask her to stay.
“Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” he said, knowing he was being a fool.
“Why does that make me feel like I ought to be running for cover?” Skepticism laced her voice as though she’d just announced some heavy-handed politician had promised never to take a campaign contribution from his favorite lobbying group.
“Kim, sweetheart, you’ve got to learn to be more trusting of men.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I just figured—since you were so worried about me—that you’d like to help me train Buttons to be my Seeing Eye dog.”
“Your what?” she gasped.
“You were the one who suggested I get a dog. Buttons will be great, won’t you fella?” With exaggerated affection, he scratched the dalmatian’s coat.
“I thought you were going to harness your cat.”
“I promise Cat won’t feel displaced. I’ll make it up to him by giving him some extra Cheerios in the morning.”
Kim sputtered a laugh. The man was absolutely impossible, and more than a little endearing. “Just how do you propose training Buttons to be your guide dog?”
“He’s got a leash around here someplace.” As if he could actually see, he glanced around the large garage that housed the fire trucks. “Hey, Gables, can you get me Buttons’s leash?”
“Sure.” Mike jogged to the back of the building and returned a moment later with a leather leash. “Here you go.” He flashed Kim a questioning look.
She shrugged, mouthing, “Don’t ask.”
Jay bent down and snapped the leash onto Buttons’s collar. “Okay, we’ll think of this as a trial run. Buttons, heel.”
The dog immediately complied with the order.
“Good dog.” Jay grinned and rose to his feet. “Buttons, forward.”
Jay and the dog began striding toward the open bay doors, and Kim was pushed to keep up with them, forced to hurry in her high heels. Darned if it didn’t look like this experiment might—
“Jay, stop!”
He halted, turned back, frowning. “What’s wrong now?”
She caught up with him. “I think it would be safer if you walked on the sidewalk instead of in the middle of the street.”
“Good point.” He didn’t seem at all contrite about another near miss that had sent a passing car swerving around him. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re being led around by an amateur guide dog.”
Not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the man’s antics, she slipped her arm through his. “Until Buttons gets the hang of things, why don’t we do this together?”
“Perfect,” he murmured, and she wondered if the ridiculous idea of Buttons guiding him hadn’t been a ploy to spend a little more time with her. Whatever the reason, he was a hard man to resist, particularly for a woman who hadn’t yet gotten over her adolescent crush on him.
In spite of herself, a little thrill of feminine pleasure shot through her. Before the earthquake, a good many men had been interested in dating her. But most, it seemed, were attracted by her physical appearance, or by what they thought she could do for them in the entertainment business. Jay didn’t have any such agenda.
The air had cooled considerably since the sun had slipped behind the coastal range of mountains, leaving Paseo del Real in shadows, and Kim shivered. She should have thought to bring a sweater with her.
“You cold?” he asked.
“Hmm, a little.”
In an easy gesture, he looped his arm around her shoulders. Immediately she felt warmer, his touch rekindling a long-banked fire within her.
To casual passersby they’d appear to be a couple out taking their dog for an early-evening walk. Except Jay’s dark glasses were neither a fashion statement nor an effort to shade his eyes. He couldn’t see her, didn’t know she’d changed from the woman he’d seen on television as well as the girl he remembered from high school. That she was now ugly, a woman few men would want to have on their arm.
If she didn’t tell him that unpleasant truth, she was an impostor, a fake who didn’t deserve to be in the same room with a man as courageous as Jay.
She stopped on the sidewalk. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Oh, damn, don’t tell me Buttons has gotten us lost.”
“No, we’re on the right track. It’s just that…”
“I knew it. I couldn’t be that lucky. You’ve already got a boyfriend.”
“No, not that either.” She smiled, the movement of her lips tugging on the scar tissue that marred her face, and instinctively she ducked her head. “After the earthquake, the doctors did everything they could to rebuild the left side of my face. It didn’t heal right. It probably never will.”
Frowning, he gazed at her with unseeing eyes. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m ugly, Jay. That side of my face is—”
He let go of the dog’s leash and framed her face between his big, gentle hands. The scarf was in his way, so he carefully slid it back and then with his fingertips traced every bit of her face. Her eyebrows, the shape of her nose. The cheekbone that had been shattered and the one that was whole. His fingertips skimmed across her lips, following the outline and sketching the seam. With infinite care, he measured the shape of her jaw. And the dreadful, jagged scar.