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Jase. No one had called him that since…well, since her, and he laughed, his first in a good long time. “Ready to roll?” “Yeah. Listen—” She broke off to glance over his shoulder, at the window above the sink, and her entire body went tense. “Move!” she cried, adding a shove packed with surprising strength for a little thing, taking them both down to the tile floor with a bone-jarring thud.
Above them the kitchen window shattered, spraying in glass and wind and water, all of which rained down over the top of them.
Jason managed not to bash his head on the floor as he circled his arms around Lizzy, trying to cushion her fall but not quite succeeding. Lying there flat on his back with her sprawled over the top of him, he tightened his grip when she gasped and wriggled. “Don’t move,” he demanded. “The glass.” He slid his fingers into her hair and stared up at her, searching her face. “Are you okay?”
She craned her neck to look behind them, where he’d been standing, where the majority of the glass had hit. Rain was flying in freely now, pushed by the brutal wind. The branch that had broken the window shimmied and danced in the opening. “That almost got you,” she breathed.
“Well, it didn’t, thanks to you.” He turned her head back to his. “And do you ever answer a question?”
“I’m fine. And you’re not,” she said, pointing to where blood was blooming through the material of his shirt from a slice on his upper arm. She started to push herself up but her grimace tipped him off and he held her still, reaching for her hand, which was also cut.
He sat up, which meant that she was sitting, too, straddling him. In the back of his mind he registered the fact that it was a very nice position to be in as he ran his gaze over her carefully, looking for—“Damn.” Another cut. Gently he ran a finger over her cheekbone, which was beginning to bleed. “Just a nick, though.”
“I’m okay.” Using nothing but thigh muscles, she stood, then reached down with her uninjured hand to pull him up. Very carefully she brushed the glass from him, until he grabbed her wrist and moved them both from the shattered window, back into the living room. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the couch, going for his first-aid kit from his bag.
“I will if you will.”
“So you’re still stubborn,” he noted, amused at both of them.
“As a mule. And I’m the nurse, remember?” She grabbed the first-aid kit from him as he sat next to her.
“I’m a trained medic.” He grabbed it back, holding it over her head.
“So, what, brute strength trumps brains?”
“Look at you,” he murmured. “You’ve grown claws. I’m so proud.”
“I call it a backbone.”
His smile faded. “Ah, Lizzy. You always had that.”
And while she stared at him in surprise, he got to work cleaning, gauzing and wrapping up her palm with medical tape. He swiped her cheek with antiseptic, then let her repeat the favor on him.
“If we’re done playing doctor…” she murmured when she’d finished.
He had no idea what it said about him that he loved this new version of her, all tough and no longer so reserved. Once upon a time she’d stirred protectiveness and affection within him, and definitely the normal horniness of a teenage boy. All of which he’d hidden.
The woman she’d grown into stirred a hell of a lot more. But what shocked him was that he didn’t feel like hiding from any of it.
“What are you grinning about?” she asked.
Other than he had his first hard-on in eight weeks? “I like this Lizzy.”
“You don’t know this Lizzy.”
True. But as he looked out the window into the sheer destruction of the day, he had a feeling he was going to get to know her pretty quickly. “I knew you once.”
“For a minute.”
“Longer than that,” he chided gently. “We were friends.”
She laughed. “Friends? We weren’t friends, Jason. I did your English papers, and you…”
“I…?”
“You were a jerk.”
“Not all the time.”
“All the time.”
“Come on. What about the day I taught you to kiss after that idiot Paul Drucker said you kissed like a poodle?”
“I try not to remember that day,” she said bitterly.
“I don’t know. It was a pretty good day for me.”
She turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“About which, the fact that we kissed behind the bleachers until you had it right? Or how afterward, you—”
She sent him a glacial glance over her shoulder. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.” She paused, then let out a sigh. “But thanks for teaching me how to kiss.”
“You are most welcome.”
“You know…” She narrowed her eyes. “Now that I think about it, the whole teaching process took a lot longer than it should have.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “You kissed like heaven, Lizzy, from the get-go. Paul was an idiot and an ass.”
“So you only pretended I needed kissing tutoring? Why?”
“Hello, I was seventeen.”
With an annoyed sound, she walked away.
Yeah, he’d been an ass, but only because of what had happened next, the thing she didn’t want to talk about, and for the first time in all these years, he remembered, and felt regret. “Lizzy—”
“I’m going.”
“We’ve been through this. If you go, I go.”
“I’m sure you had other plans today.”
“Yeah,” he agreed readily enough. “I had a whole list—sleep, food and sex.” He smiled tightly. “Not that I was going to get any of that. There’s nothing good to eat here, and as it’s just me, sex wouldn’t be much fun.”
She looked at him. “Is this what you do in the Guard?” she asked. “Rescue people?”
“A lot, yeah.” Or in the case of Matt, not.
“Are you going back to it?”
“That seems to be the million-dollar question.”
She let out a half smile, full of sympathy. “Still decompressing?”
“Yeah.” More than she could possibly know, and it was a reminder, a cold slap of hard reality that he had decisions to make for a future he didn’t want to face. So it was him who turned away this time, needing to break eye contact, needing to not let her in his head.
She was quiet as he bent to put on his shoes. “When we had the big fires here last year, I worked four straight days without much more than a few catnaps. My entire life was the E.R., treating the firefighters, the victims, and when I finally got off duty and out into the parking lot where I’d left my car, I had the weirdest thing happen.”
He straightened. “What?”
“I broke down.” She lifted a shoulder. “I just sat on the curb and cried like a baby for half an hour. I have no idea why.”
He could picture it. Hell, he’d lived it. “That was sheer exhaustion, Lizzy.”
“Yes. After only four days of hell.”
Knowing where she was going with this, he shook his head. “Don’t.”
She walked toward him. “I have to.” Her gaze touched over each of his features, feeling like a caress. “I felt that way after only four days of adrenaline and fear and craziness, so I can only imagine what it’s like for you after years.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Very fine.”
Her words made him want to smile but he held back because she didn’t stop moving until they were toe to toe, until she’d once again put a hand on his chest.
Clearly she wasn’t finished with hacking at his hard-earned self-control.
“I’m sure there’s a transition period,” she said very quietly, giving him something he hadn’t had any of and didn’t want because it ripped at that control more than anything else could—sympathy. “Between what you’ve been doing, and being here…” Her hand slid over his chest until she laid her palm right over his heart, which was not nearly as steady as he’d have liked. “I imagine there’s a disconnect. A gap.”
She had no idea. “The size of the equator,” he agreed, not thrilled that his voice came out low and hoarse.
She was quiet another moment, then reached for his hand. “Don’t worry, Jase, I’m sure it’ll come to you, what you want to do.”
Well, he was glad she was sure. Because he wasn’t.
The moment broken, she dropped her hands from him and turned away.
He slipped into his rain gear while she did the same. He put two first-aids kits inside his backpack and shouldered it.
“Two?” she asked.
“Who knows what we’ll need.”
“There’s only a couple of inches so far.”
“Yeah, but even one inch in the wrong place can cause flash flooding, which can bring walls of water ten to twenty feet high. Trust me, there’s a whole town out there thinking this is no big deal, but it can turn into one in seconds. Plus, if we find Cece and she’s in labor—”
“When.” Her voice was unyielding as she corrected him. “When we find her.”
“If she’s out there,” he promised, “we’ll find her.”
“Yeah.” She broke eye contact, getting busy with adjusting her rain poncho.
Reaching out, he lifted her chin, ran the pad of his thumb over the cut on her cheek. “We’ll find her.”
She nodded, hugging herself in all those layers. He had to work hard not to add his arms to the mix. He’d come here wanting to feel nothing, but look at him, feeling emotions all over the place. Shaking his head at himself, he opened the door and, as the wind and rain drafted in, reached for her hand.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Thank you.”
He took in the craziness of the storm. Power lines down. Trees doubled over. Several inches of rain sloshing at the curbs. A flash of Matt’s face came to him, and his gut tightened. “Don’t thank me yet.”
Chapter Four
CECE MANN PACED THROUGH the contraction. Miraculously, it was her first real pain, meaning it was the first one to make her want to twist some guy’s nuts off.
Actually, make that every guy’s nuts off.
Not so miraculously, she didn’t like this whole labor business, not one little bit. “Okay,” she said to her belly, rubbing the insidious tightness swirling through her gut. “I need you to give me a little more time. Can you do that, hold on for your momma? Please?”
The pain actually faded, and she let out a breath. “Thank you. Because I promised your aunt Lizzy we weren’t in labor yet, so let’s just keep that promise, okay?”
She’d read in one of the hundred books that Lizzy had brought her that even once her water broke she still had twenty-four hours before things went wrong.
That hadn’t happened yet so that was good. “Real good,” she whispered, with no idea if she was talking to herself or the baby, but she thought, hoped, if she said it out loud, it would make it so.
She moved to the window of the second floor of the small condo she’d rented a few months ago—her first true sign of independence. Every day the place gave her a sense of panic—the expenses were a weight about as heavy as the baby—and also a glorious, heady sense of pride. She was making it, on her own…
She looked out into the wildest weather she’d ever seen, and had a moment before she reverted and wished her sister was here. Lizzy would know what to do. She always knew what to do. She was Cece’s lifeline, and had been nearly all her life.
She’d come, Cece knew, assuring herself, even though she’d told her not to. Lizzy would come when she got off work, and being as bossy as she was, she’d probably demand they go straight to the hospital.
Which might actually be a good idea. She had a feeling it was time. All she needed was a ride. If she had a neighbor she trusted, that’d be one thing. But she’d never been good with trust. Unless it was a gorgeous guy. Those she’d trusted too easily, and look where that had gotten her.
The next pain hit her unawares and left her reeling. “Oh, shit,” she whispered. This was going to suck golf balls, and forget being a grown-up, she wanted Lizzy. She tried calling her again, to admit that maybe she was in labor, but her damn cell phone went dead.
And she had no electricity to charge it.
Oh, God.
Screw not trusting a neighbor, she needed one. Problem was, the condo on her right was empty and for sale. She’d known someone had just bought the condo on her left, but she hadn’t yet seen any sign of life. She imagined waddling over there, knocking, then greeting whoever answered with, “Hi, there. Ever delivered a baby before?”
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