The Best Man in Texas (14 page)

B
ROOKE TRIED TO TREAT HERSELF
on Sunday, sleeping in late and fixing herself fresh waffles with strawberries
and powdered sugar. But nothing she did alone was going to be as rewarding as what she and Jake had shared last night. Besides, she couldn’t dredge up enough of an appetite to enjoy the waffles.

Last night had been such a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows. Jake made her feel far too much. Too uncertain about herself and her goals, too angry, too scared, too turned on. It was disconcerting.

But did that mean she was willing to give him up, especially now that Giff had implied they had his blessing? She was free to follow where her heart might lead. If only she were brave enough to give up her death grip on the compass, the map and the GPS.

When her phone rang, she jumped. Could it be Jake? Whatever else she had yet to decide, there was no question that she wanted to hear his voice.

But it was Kresley. “Are you watching the local news?”

“No, why?” Brooke reached for her remote.

“I don’t suppose you know if Jake’s working today?”

Brooke’s breath caught as her television flickered to life and orange flames filled the screen. A reporter’s voice-over was explaining that a fire had started in the early-morning hours in one of the units of the Mesquite Bend Apartments, a much older complex than the one where Brooke lived. Because of the lack of rain this year, the woods behind Mesquite Bend had quickly ignited, too.

Action shots showed firefighters in uniform battling the blaze with water and other materials. It was
impossible to tell beneath the many pounds of gear who any of them were.

“He should be off duty,” she heard herself say. “He might have been scheduled to go in later, but he wasn’t working this morning.”

He’d wanted to wake up with her this morning, in that hotel bed where she’d had the best sex of her life. If she’d stayed, she might
know
at this exact moment that he was safe instead of staring at her TV and merely praying that he was.

“Do you think they called in extra help?” Kresley asked cautiously. “It looks like they could use it.”

True. And he was trained for this. Was it selfish that she was hoping he was miles away from the scene, instead of hoping that he was on site saving as many lives as possible? Jake challenged her to be brave, but he didn’t seem to realize how much he was asking.

Any relationship carried with it risk of being hurt. But to fall for a guy who did
this
for a living? It was like painting a large bull’s-eye right over her heart.

“Do we have someone covering the scene?” Brooke asked.

“Yeah, Whalen’s down there.”

“I want to go meet up with him.” Even if Jake wasn’t there, she felt compelled to take a closer look at what it was he did, who he was.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kresley asked gently. “It’s not like you’ll be able to help. They’ve got the crowd roped off. And the last thing you want is to distract him if he is there!”

“I won’t,” Brooke promised. “You know me. I’m not
going to cause some big scene, I just want to stand back and watch. It will make me feel closer to him.”

“Okay. Call my cell if you learn anything more.”

“Same here.”

Brooke was still blocks away from the apartment complex when smoke began to tickle the back of her throat and her eyes burned. A black plume was snaking toward the sky, so sinister-looking that Brooke could swear it was a living thing, bent on malevolence. Even though, rationally, she could tell that the fire was smaller than it had been during the newscast she’d seen, it was far scarier in person than on her television.

Whalen was waiting for her at the perimeter of the crowd. “Kresley said you were on your way. They think some faulty wiring may have caused this, but aren’t sure. The fire chief said it’s now classified as under control.”

She stared openmouthed at the inferno that had once been people’s homes. “
That’s
under control?”

“Well, it’s not spreading anymore. It’s still going to take a lot of work to put out, but they seem to have it contained.”

Generations of evolutionary instinct were prompting her to get as far from here as possible. “Can we get closer?”

Announcing that they were with the press, Whalen shouldered a path through the gathered witnesses, some of whom had no doubt lived here. Even from a comparatively safe distance, Brooke could feel the brutal heat against her skin. She squinted against the smoke on the wind.

“Oh, God, I think I know him.” She couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure but she thought that the young guy who’d just removed his helmet and was talking to a city official was Ben Hoskins, the cute young fireman who’d flirted with her when she came to visit—

“Brooke?” It wasn’t Hoskins who noticed her behind the tape, but Jake, who was also on her side of the safety line.

Thank you, God.
“You’re okay!” She wanted to run to him, but settled for muttering apologies and “excuse me” as she threaded her way past other people and reached his side. There, she threw her arms around him and covered his face in kisses. “Oh, Lord, I’m glad to see you. I saw this on the news and I—”

“I’m fine,” he promised her, cupping her cheeks and kissing her squarely on the mouth. “But you shouldn’t sprint to the fire scene every time one breaks out. I wouldn’t be able to work effectively, worrying about you.”

“But you’re not working now?”

“I came by on my way home to see if they needed help. I have to get my gear, but then I’ll come back. It’s going to take a while to put this down for good. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll call you tonight?”

She didn’t want to be at her place, cooped up and scared for his safety. Knowing it was a bizarre request but hoping he wouldn’t mind, she asked, “Could I wait at the fire station?”

He regarded her thoughtfully. “I have a compromise. What if you waited at my place? Unless you think that’s
too weird. I know you’ve never even seen my house before, but—”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully as they made their way back to where they’d each had to park on the opposite side of the road. “I can’t explain why being there will make me feel better about your safety, but it will.”

He gave her a key, quick directions and a laughing admonishment not to rifle through his nightstand unless she was prepared to be shocked. She knew he was only making absurd jokes to try to take her mind off of being scared for him. It didn’t work, but she wished it had. She was sick and tired of being scared.

J
AKE WASN’T REALLY SURE
what to expect when he walked through his front door. He’d been shocked to find Brooke at the scene of the fire this morning and even more surprised that she’d preferred to wait here instead of in the comfort of her own place. Last night she’d practically fled after they’d made love. Maybe he’d judged her too harshly and she really had needed just some time alone to think over everything. But he couldn’t help wondering, would she have tracked him down on her own like this without the fire? He didn’t want her showing up in his life voluntarily only when she was concerned about him.

“Hello?”

“In the kitchen,” she called back.

His house was so small, it was a matter of feet to cut through the living room into the kitchen. Brooke was scowling into the open pantry, a copper teapot was burbling on the stove and several pieces of legal paper were
crumpled into yellow balls atop his yard-sale-find table. And just like that, his chest swelled with the absolute contented peace of
home
. Hell, if concern was what it took to have Brooke come to him, he could work with that. He fought fires for a living, didn’t he?

As she turned in his direction, pure happiness to see him washed away her frown. “I’m so glad you’re okay. And thank you for calling me from the station.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

She gestured toward the pantry. “I had this grand idea about making you dinner after a rough day, but I’m missing at least two key ingredients for every recipe I’ve come up with so far.”

“I’d settle for a hug after a rough day,” he suggested.

Immediately the contents of his pantry were forgotten. “I didn’t know big, strong guys needed hugs,” she told him, folding into his embrace.

“We do when it means getting closer to a beautiful woman.”

She tipped her face up and kissed him so sweetly that Jake found himself yearning for a future of this—walking through a door and knowing that this, that
she,
awaited him on the other side. Their kiss graduated from tender to playful to outright sexy and just as he was considering carrying her to the couch in the next room, she pulled away.

“You’ve got to be tired after today,” she said shyly.

Not
that
tired.

“Want to sit down? I was making tea. I could pour you a cup.”

“Sure.” Maybe their disconnects so far hadn’t been
all
about her running away; maybe he needed to stop coming on so strong. If fussing over him and taking a minute helped her feel more comfortable with their relationship—nothing in the world would convince him that this was only lust, not after the wealth of relief he’d seen in her eyes today—then why deny her? He could keep from pouncing on her long enough to let
her
come to
him.
Probably.

“So what’s all this?” he asked, glancing from what looked like a dog-eared legal pad, full of writing, to the wadded up pages that apparently hadn’t made the cut.

“I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t have my laptop with me and saw the pad by the phone. I could buy you a new one.”

He laughed. “Can’t we just work out some kind of trade?”

“Maybe.” She blushed as she said it, but her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Anyway, I just had some ideas I wanted to write down before I forgot them, and then I got caught up in it. Helped me pass the time.”

He reached for the pad. “So can I read it?”

“No!” She cleared her throat. “I mean, some day, when it’s actually in some sort of articulate form, yes. Right now it’s a hodgepodge of shorthand notes and ideas. I like my job at the paper. I know that most of the wedding write-ups I do aren’t Pulitzer material, but there’s a lot to enjoy, including great coworkers and the occasional opportunity to cover a story that’s special. Like the one on you.” Now
he
felt like blushing. He knew people were
reading it, because several people had mentioned it to him, seeming genuinely interested in his travels and asking questions about places he would recommend and places he would want to visit again after he’d seen all fifty states. “Thank you.”

She set a cup down in front of him, then took the seat next to him, curling her legs beneath her and looking more like an eager high school senior on career day than a thirty-year-old woman. “So I don’t want to quit, but I’ve been thinking…. I can keep my job and try other things, right? Nothing’s stopping me from writing in my spare time. I might get rejections, but the day job will keep paying my bills. And also pay for the occasional medicinal margarita.”

He laughed. “I think that sounds like a great idea.”

“I was hoping you would say that because you remember how we talked about that travel writing?” When he nodded, she asked, “How would you feel about letting me tag along on your trip to Hawaii?”

Jake was too startled to respond. What happened to her needing time and space?

“I wouldn’t be writing about you this time,” she clarified nervously. “And I certainly wouldn’t expect a free ride. I—”

“Brooke. I am okay. I was not in mortal danger today, I wasn’t even injured. You don’t have to cross an ocean with me just because you’re relieved.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “I was being too pushy, huh?”

“That’s not it. Push as much you want. I guess, the important part is make sure
you
want it. Last night, for
instance, I thought we were on the same page—until you ran out the door so fast you left a trail of smoke behind.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I don’t have much experience in that area, certainly none like that, and I wasn’t sure how to act. I definitely hadn’t planned to say I love you, and there didn’t seem like a graceful way to take it back. But I did a lot of thinking today.”

“Because of the fire?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, but just because sometimes it takes an outside event to trigger an epiphany doesn’t make the epiphany less true. When I was driving to the Mesquite Bend apartments, I was obviously really worried for you, but I also realized I was really glad that I’d blurted out my real feelings for you last night. If you
had
been hurt today…” She shuddered when she said it, and he reached across the table to squeeze her hand comfortingly.

Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “Life is uncertain. You told me once that anyone who tries to act otherwise is either in denial or a coward.”

He flinched, hearing his words repeated like that. It made his opinion of her sound far too harsh. “Brooke—”

“No, you were right. I’m not saying we should all give up and just live in anarchy,” she stipulated, “but I have to accept that my feelings are not always going to be predictable and regimented and that not all my relationships are going to follow terms and conditions I dreamed up when I was twelve because I thought it would keep me safer.”

“You really were a very goal-oriented child.”

She laughed. “Anyway, things happen to people, even people who don’t fight fires for a living. And I don’t want to think that if I’m hit by a meteor tomorrow that I’ll leave behind people who never really knew how I felt because I was too scared to let myself express it. To let myself feel it in the first place. I do love you. It sounds insane when I hear it out loud—we’re pretty different, aren’t we?—but I think I’ve tried to be sane too hard for too long.”

I am the luckiest SOB on the face of the earth.
Pure joy expanded inside him, making his chest tight. “I think I can help with that.”

She slid out of her chair, and he pulled her into his lap. “I love you, too,” he said. “But we can take it slow if this starts to freak you out.”