Off Duty (Off #7) (8 page)

In other words, it
was a major fucking mess.

The good news is
that we got the fire contained pretty quickly, although it took the
better part of half a day to get all the hot spots fully
extinguished. The bad news is that I am so tired as I enter the last
day of my three-day shift that I can’t even muster up the
strength to call Holly to check in.

Instead, I pull out
my phone and send her a quick text.
Just got back from major fire.
Going to get shower and some shut eye. Will call later.

I set my phone on my
rack while I sit down to take my boots off. She usually responds back
pretty quickly when she’s not working, and I know she’s
off today. We had briefly talked yesterday afternoon when she got a
small break at work. The conversation hadn’t gone the way I
wanted it to, mainly because I was sitting in the break room of the
station house surrounded by four other guys that were watching a
baseball game on TV. What I really wanted to do was tell her how much
I missed her.

Her smile.

Her laugh.

Her green eyes.

Fucking that
gorgeous body.

But that’s so
not appropriate in a room full of firemen.

Instead, I let her
update me on her job hunt, which had proven to be futile so far. This
had been the subject of many of our conversations, and Holly was
getting more dejected by the lack of prospects with every phone call
we had together. I tried to buck up her spirits, but that was hard
because I was fucking dejected right along with her.

But when we talked
yesterday, while she still had no good news, she didn’t seem
quite as bummed. Instead, she seemed a little chipper, teasing me
about wanting to give me some dirty phone sex talk but she knew
couldn’t since I was at the firehouse. I grinned into the
phone, my eyes cutting around the room at the other guys seemingly
interested in the TV, but also knowing they kept one ear on my
conversation. I had been quite vocal upon my return from vacation
about the amazing woman in my life, and they were always razzing me
about her.

Sadly, our call
yesterday was cut short by the station speakers crackling to life and
alerting us to another fire in progress. I was only able to give her
a quick, “I miss you. Talk later,” and then I was running
toward the front bay to get suited up.

Holly doesn’t
text me back, which has me frowning slightly. The pure exhaustion I
was feeling a minute ago is replaced now by an even more desperate
need to hear her voice. I flip to my favorites and tap on her name,
deciding that I did have time for a quick conversation.

The phone rings four
times before going to her voice mail.

Well, fuck.

I set the phone down
on the small, square wooden table beside my rack and lay back on the
mattress. Shower forgotten, I put my hands behind my head and stare
at the ceiling, listening to the soft snores of a few of the guys who
already crashed.

I think longingly
about the day that Holly will be here, and we can finally start our
life together.

“Hey Davis,”
I hear from the doorway to our sleeping quarters.

Lifting my head up,
I see Butch Heywood, one of my teammates, standing there. “What’s
up?”

“You got a
visitor out front,” he says and starts to turn away.

“Who is it?”
I ask, without any real actual interest, but suspecting it might be
this woman, Tashia, I had gone out with on and off over the past
year. It wasn’t serious, and we would go weeks without seeing
each other, but she would sometimes drop by if she was in the area to
check up on me. I haven’t seen her in probably over a month,
and of course, there’s no real commitment there, so it’s
not like I ever thought to call her and tell her that we couldn’t
see each other anymore.

“No clue,”
he says as he turns back briefly. “Flynn caught me on my way
back to the head and told me to tell you.”

“Thanks, man,”
I say and sit up, swinging my legs over the edge of my rack. I stick
my feet back in my boots and swiftly lace them.

As I walk toward the
front bay, I start mentally constructing what I need to tell Tashia.
She won’t be upset or put out, but I still want to be nice and
gentle about it.

I push through the
swinging door that leads into the bay where we hold the three engines
that belong to our company. A quick sweep of the area and I don’t
see anyone, but I hear muffled voices coming from the far side of the
bay behind one of the trucks.

Walking that way, I
hear Flynn’s voice become clearer. “Tim’s a stud.
Oh, the things I could tell you about him,” he says with a
laugh, and I groan internally.

I do not need him
building me up any further to Tashia, especially when I’m
getting ready to cut things off. And why the fuck would he do that?
He knows how I feel about Holly. Other than Denise, Flynn is the only
one that knows what truly went down between us and the entirety of
our history. I filled him in on it when I got back from vacation over
beer and wings one night after we got off shift.

Rounding the front
of the engine, I say before I even see Flynn and Tashia, “Now,
quit filling her head with those lies.”

I see Flynn first,
his back to me, blocking my line of sight to Tashia. His head turns
toward me, and he gives me an evil grin. I glare at him.

Flynn steps to the
side, and I turn my face toward Tashia.

Except, it’s
not Tashia.

It’s Holly,
and my heart almost bursts out of my chest from the sudden explosion
of joy with in me.

“Hey baby,”
she says softly with a smile.

Two long steps are
all I need before my hands are on her face and I’ve got her
mouth crushed to mine. I kissed her ravenously… starved for
her touch and her taste.

“Geez…
get a room,” Flynn says, but then I hear his footsteps receding
away from us.

Holly’s hands
come up to my wrists, giving them a slight squeeze before she pulls
her lips away from mine. I don’t let her withdraw too much
though, pinning her with my eyes.

“What are you
doing here?”

“Surprise,”
she says with a grin.

Too fucking much.

I pull her back to
me and kiss her again, this time turning her and backing her right
into the side of the engine. Holly purrs into my mouth, and lust
shoots through me.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I pull away from her
quickly, because I cannot be going there with my mind or my cock. I’m
on duty, a fact that makes me hate my job right this very minute.

Giving her a soft
kiss on her nose, I release her face and take her hands. “Baby…
what in the hell are you doing here? And why the hell didn’t
you tell me you were coming?”

Her grin gets
bigger. “It would sort of defeat the purpose of a surprise,
right?”

Deep, hot kissing is
out but hugging isn’t. My arms shoot around her waist, and I
pull her into me hard. Putting my face in her neck, I breathe out,
“God, I love you.”

Holly’s body
jerks in surprise but immediately melts into me further. Her arms
grip me tighter… her voice is thick with emotion. “I
love you, too.”

It’s the first
time we’ve said those exact words since we were eighteen years
old, and I realize the power of them is magnified immensely just by
sheer virtue of everything we’ve been through to get us to this
point in our lives.

I don’t feel a
need, though, to make a big deal out of those words. They simply are
the truth. Something we’ve both known in our hearts.

Instead, I pull back
from her and ask her one more time. “What are you doing here?
And how long can you stay?”

“How about
forever?” she asks, her eyes shining bright.

“What?”
I ask carefully, my breath caught in my chest. Afraid to hope.

“I just had a
job interview at St. Joseph’s on Long Island that went
amazingly well. So amazing, in fact, that they offered it to me. I
start in three weeks.”

My knees almost
buckle from the complete euphoria coursing through me. “Please
tell me you’re not kidding.”

“I’m not
kidding,” she says as she leans back into me.

“But how? How
did this happen so fast? We just talked yesterday, and you didn’t
say a word.”

She’s quiet…
her hands rubbing my lower back. I can sense hesitation in her, so I
prompt her, “Holly?”

“My father
helped me,” she says quietly.

I pull back from
her, taking her by her elbows and leaning back to look at her.
“What?”

“He pulled
some strings. Got me the interview. I just found out about it two
days ago. I didn’t tell you yesterday because I wanted to
surprise you with a visit, regardless of how the interview went.”

“Your father
helped you,” I murmur in wonder. Clearing my throat, I ask, “He
just helped you out of the blue?”

“No,”
she says with a wince. “I called my mom and asked her if he
would, and apparently, he did. I haven’t talked to him, but she
called me with the details and told me they wanted to meet with me
right away. I hopped a plane here this morning and just finished the
interview about an hour ago. They offered me the job on the spot.”

Shaking my head, my
lips curve upward. “This is just unbelievable.”

“I know,”
she says with an excited grin. “Three weeks and we can be
together again.”

“We’ll
need to move out to Long Island. It will be easier on you to be
closer to the hospital. I can commute into Brooklyn.”

“You want to
move in together?” she whispers, her eyes wide.

“Yeah, don’t
you?”

“Well…
yeah, but—”

“Sam thinks
it’s a good idea, and so do I,” I tell her quickly.

“Sam thinks
it’s a good idea?” she asks with a grin.

“Yup, and I’m
expecting he’s going to demand we get a house with a fenced-in
yard so he can have a dog.”

Holly laughs, wraps
her arms around me, and pulls me back down for a kiss. When she
releases my lips, she says, “I think we should get the kid a
dog for sure.”

I kiss her again…
swiftly, because I hear the swinging door bang open and the voices of
a few of the guys coming through.

Sobering a bit, I
ask her hesitantly, “Are you going to talk to your dad?”

“Yeah,”
she says with no hesitation. “It needs to be done. I need to
thank him at least, and I don’t know… maybe talk to
him.”

“Want to go
over there tomorrow when I get off duty?”

She shakes her head.
“No, I only have one more day here and I don’t want to
spend it with anyone other than you. But I do have an idea of how I
want this to go down.”

I look at her in
question, but she doesn’t give me anything else. Instead, she
steps back into my arms and hugs me with a sigh of contentment.

My life just got
very fucking good.

The Grande Ballroom
of the Plaza Hotel is overflowing with people, flowers, and
champagne. It’s an auspicious occasion, where New York’s
medical finest are lauded for their groundbreaking work.

My father, of
course, was the main honoree, being the recipient of the Franklin R.
Murray award, which is voted on by his peers. I had to look it up,
not being overly familiar with how things are done in New York
anymore, but I saw on the website that the award goes to a physician
who best uses his or her talents and skills to improve the lives of
his or her patients through actual practice, teaching, and charitable
works.

The award is really
quite impressive and when my father took the stage to accept it, I
found myself clapping with actual respect for him. Tim, decked out in
the most gorgeous tuxedo I’ve ever seen, was clapping right
alongside me.

We make our way
through the throng of people. Now that dinner has been concluded, the
band is playing and people are taking to the dance floor. My father
knows I’m here, as I got word through my mother that I would
attend. What he doesn’t know is that Tim will be with me.

I’m not sure
if I’m doing this for the shock factor, or if… once
again… I just want to rip the Band-Aid off.

I moved to New York
this past weekend. Tim and I are still looking for a house we can buy
together, but for now, I’m staying in his small apartment. I
start work next week, and I’m terribly excited because I’ll
be doing work on the pediatric trauma services.

I haven’t seen
my mother or father yet, and it’s been difficult to put off
their invitations to get together. But I didn’t want to succumb
to the possibility of something more with them until I could show
them just what they’d be getting if they wanted me back in
their lives.

I needed to show
them that Tim is a part of my life.

The biggest part of
my life, actually.

Spotting my father
and mother ahead, Tim takes the hand he had on my waist and laces his
fingers with mine. With a reassuring squeeze, we make our way toward
them and the group of doctors they’re talking to.

As we approach, my
mom spots us first, and she tugs gently on the coat of my dad’s
tux. He looks down at her, and she nods our way. His head swivels and
he looks at me, a warm smile curving his face. His eyes flick to Tim,
causing me to step in just a little closer to him in solidarity, and
oddly… the smile on my father’s face doesn’t dim
in the slightest.

His head inclines
toward the other men in his group, and I can tell he’s excusing
himself from their presence. Then he and my mom are walking toward
us.

“Easy, baby,”
Tim breathes out beside me. He can feel the tension in the grip of my
hand.

My father reaches
us, beaming down at me. My mom gives Tim a warm smile, and then gives
me an equally bright beam. “You made it.”

“I made it,”
I agree, and then immediately rip the Band-Aid off. “Mom…
Dad… you remember Tim Davis, right?”