The Last of The Red Hot Firefighters (Red Hot Reunions Book 1) (17 page)

“We have to talk first,” Jamison said, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to face it, and I didn’t want to piss you off, but… This has to happen. Now.”

“All right,” Jake said, forgetting the cookies and napkins. “Let’s step outside.”

Jamison nodded before leading the way to a side door not far from the refreshment table. Jake cast one look over his shoulder—spotting Naomi still in line for the coat check, in deep conversation with Aria March—before following Jamison out into the brisk winter air, ignoring the anxious feeling tickling the back of his neck.

No matter what Jamison wanted to talk about, it wasn’t going to change anything. Jake was in love, he was going to ask the woman he loved to marry him tonight, and he was going to start really living for the first time in years.

But as Jamison turned to face him with a miserable expression unlike anything Jake had ever seen on his brother’s face, uncertainty drifted through Jake, as cold as winter air seeping through a coat riddled with holes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Faith

Faith watched Jamison and Jake step outside with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Great
. Just when she needed a little brotherly support, her surrogate siblings decided to take a walk. Why they were going outside when it was barely above freezing Faith had no idea—they didn’t smoke and it wasn’t
that
loud in the ballroom yet—but it was just her luck lately.

“Are you sure you want another cookie?” Neil asked, glancing dubiously at her midsection, making Faith see red as bright as his cheesy bow tie.

Faith had rock hard abs, had run seven miles that morning, and more than earned a couple of cookies. But even if she hadn’t, it wasn’t Neil’s place to police her food intake. Her body was
hers
, and she didn’t appreciate Neil or any other man thinking he had the right to tell her what to do with it. Even Jamison got on her nerves when he teased her about having chip belly, and she knew he was totally kidding. But she was sensitive when it came to stuff like that. She’d grown up watching her mom give men power over every aspect of her life—tying herself in knots to please the man of the moment—and Faith refused to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

She was her own person, and she liked that person. She was happier alone than her mother had ever been with her string of losers, and Faith’s dates with Neil had only solidified her intentions to stay that way. Alone. Happy. And safe from the kind of blood-pressure-spiking antics of guys who thought it was okay to tell you your triceps were “too big for a girl’s” when your job necessitated upper body strength to
save lives.

Saving lives,
blockhead—
because there are more important things than being weak and fragile so that insecure jerks like you won’t feel threatened.

“I mean, that cider probably had two hundred calories,” Neil continued, oblivious to that fact that Faith’s hands were curling into fists at her sides. “You don’t want to carb load on top of that.”

What she
wanted
was to aim one of her fists at Neil’s eye and see if she could blacken it in one blow; instead she forced a smile and said, “It’s a special occasion. I think the food police should take a night off.” Faith pointed a finger at the refreshment table. “I want one of the chocolate chip ones with walnuts.”

“But I’m allergic to walnuts,” Neil said.

“Then it’s a good thing you won’t be the one eating the cookie, isn’t it?” Faith asked in a syrupy voice, pushing on before Neil could offer any more of his irritating opinions. “I’m going to run out to the car and get my purse. Be back in a few.”

Faith aimed herself at the door Jamison and Jake had exited a few minutes before. She hadn’t brought a purse—purses were a pain in the ass, and she only carried one when she absolutely had to—but she figured that was as good an alibi as any to explain her disappearance while she went hunting for the boys.

She needed out of here—ASAP.

She was never going to make it through a single dance with Neil, let alone the three she’d promised herself she would. Nine hundred dollars on the line or not, she couldn’t stomach another night in that dip-wad’s company. If he wanted to complain and his gram wanted to demand a refund, then they could go right ahead and do it. Faith was stick-a-fork-in-her-and-call-her-ready-for-Christmas-dinner done.

With any luck, Jamison would be feeling the same way, and she could sweet talk him into leaving now. If all went well, she’d be back at her apartment in her flannel pajamas, with her cat, Captain Snugglepants, cuddled in her lap before the clock struck eight.

Faith emerged into the frigid air and immediately crossed her arms, huddling against the cold, cursing women’s fashion. The guys got cozy tuxedo jackets; the women got sleeveless gowns. It was ridiculous, and yet another item on Faith’s long list of “Reasons it Would Suck Less to Be a Dude”

“Jamison? Jake?”” she called out, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness before picking her way along the paving stones to the single gaslight burning at the center of the garden. She kept going past the pool of warm yellow light to an arbor covered with dormant grape vines curling up its sides, but there was still no sign of the Hansen brothers.

“Shit,” Faith muttered, shivering under the arbor. It blocked the wind, but it was still freezing out here. She couldn’t stay outside for long.

The boys must have decided on a longer walk, or circled back around to the front door to rejoin the festivities. Either way, she’d missed them, and now she was going to have to go back inside and make nice with Neil for another ten or twenty minutes.

Rationally, Faith knew that wasn’t long, but the irrational, Neil-chafed part of her rebelled at the thought of another second in Mr. Simpson’s company.

And so she was still shivering under the arbor, torn between longing for the comforting warmth of the ballroom, and gratitude for the comforting lack of Neil out in the cold, when a decidedly masculine shadow emerged from the ballroom to step out onto the garden path.

Faith knew immediately that the man wasn’t Neil—the shadow had broad shoulders, but a clearly defined neck, whereas Neil looked like his fat head had been fused directly onto his body. The shadow also had narrow hips, long, strong-looking legs, and a hint of a swagger. Neil didn’t swagger. Neil waddled like a cranky bulldog. This man walked like a professional athlete, someone with such confidence in his body’s ability to perform that he glided through life, oozing sex and high self-esteem.

As the man started down the path toward her, awareness flickered through Faith, warming her chilled skin, and surprising the hell out of her in the process.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been attracted to a guy, but it had to have been more than a year. She’d broken up with her first and only boyfriend, Eli, at a Halloween party the year before and hadn’t dated anyone since.

She had high standards—impossibly high to hear her mom talk—and refused to compromise them. Faith knew what she wanted in a man and wasn’t willing to settle for anything less. She understood that meant she might spend the rest of her life alone, but she was fine with that. Almost as fine as she pretended to be around Jake and Jamison…

She had urges like everyone else, but she wasn’t the type to get silly over a guy just because he had broad shoulders, or a nice body, or a confident strut. Or all three. Especially before she’d even gotten a look at the broad-shouldered, nice-bodied, confident-strutting man’s face.

Faith warned her libido that the guy coming toward her could have chewing tobacco sores in his mouth or a butt picking habit. He could be a creepy mouth breather, or a sociopath, or a cocky jerk every bit as obnoxious as Neil. But the mental simmer-down talk did nothing to cool Faith’s flushed cheeks. She was still warm all over and buzzing in places that hadn’t buzzed in ages, when the man stepped into the gaslight’s glow and the shadows concealing his features faded away.

“Mick Whitehouse?” His name burst from her lips in a tone every bit as incredulous as she felt. Faith slapped a hand over her mouth, mortified by her outburst, but it was too late. Mick’s gaze had already shifted her way.

“Faith Miller. There you are.” He laughed—a little uncomfortably Faith thought—before ambling toward the arbor “My sister saw you head out here and asked me to come check on you. You okay?”

Was she okay?

No, she was not okay!
She’d just been feeling frisky feelings about a guy she’d known since she was in kindergarten, a boy she used to pound on in second grade when she was going through hell at home and he was the only person in her class smaller than she was. These days, Faith was a respectable five eight and one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of pure muscle, but back in elementary school she’d been the runt of the litter.

Except for Mick Whitehouse, the shortest boy in class, all the way until graduation five years ago.

Mick Whitehouse, who had obviously done quite a bit of developing and lifting of heavy things since then, who had grown into his big, goofy grin and whose smile now made things low in Faith’s body flutter.

But Faith knew she couldn’t say any of those things.
Ever.

“I’m fine,” she said, doing her best to keep her teeth from chattering. “I’m just hiding from Neil.”

“Ah, I see.” Mick nodded, casting a glance back at the ballroom as he stopped in front of her, close enough for her to smell the sugar cookie and clove scent clinging to his tux. It was a homey smell and shouldn’t have made Faith’s flutters any worse, but it did, ramping up her awareness of the man Mick had become, proving her body was in a state of full-out rebellion.

“Naomi told me about Neil,” Mick said, sending another zing of awareness coursing through her as his big blue eyes met hers. “He sounds like a hairy asshole.”

“The hairiest asshole ever,” Faith said, laughing as she wrapped her arms tighter around her body, determined to get a hold on herself. “Actually, he’s more like a dingle berry clinging to the hairy asshole. Wouldn’t want to give him too much credit.”

Mick laughed, a sexy rumble that did nothing to help Faith with the “getting hold of herself” thing. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

Faith shrugged and exhaled a puff of crystalline fog, wondering why the question hurt a little. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

“Here, take my coat,” Mick said, shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket and swinging it around her shoulders before she could insist that she didn’t need it. “You’re turning blue around the edges.”

“Thanks.” She paused, looking up at Mick, still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she had to look
up
at Mick Whitehouse. Senior year, he’d barely come to the bottom of her chin.

“You certainly have changed, though,” she continued, motioning up and down with one hand before she tucked her arm back inside his coat. “When did you do this whole…turning into a giant thing?”

Mick smiled. “Freshman year of college. I grew six inches in ten months. I was a human string bean. Took me all of sophomore year to eat and exercise enough to put any muscle on, but I finally managed.”

Boy had he managed…

“Well, it looks good on you,” Faith said, careful to keep her tone friendly, just a casual compliment from the girl who used to shove him off the monkey bars in elementary school.

Which reminded her…

“Sorry for pounding on you back when we were kids,” Faith said. “I don’t think I ever apologized for that, and I should have.”

“Afraid I’m going to take my revenge now that I’m the bigger, stronger one?” he asked, stepping closer, a teasing twinkle in his eye that made Faith smile no matter how hard she tried not to.

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes, acutely aware that Mick had joined her under the arbor and was now standing less than a foot away. “I just wanted you to know I’m sorry. I was going through some crappy stuff back then and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t right. So maybe I’ve been too hard on Neil. Maybe
I’m
the asshole.”

“You’re not the asshole,” Mick said softly, brushing a hair the wind had whipped into her lip gloss back over her shoulder, making Faith’s heart lurch and her throat feel tighter than it did before.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I was just thinking that I could probably still take you down if I had to. Even if you do have fifty pounds on me.”

Mick’s eyebrows lifted, and his smile grew wider. “I’d say more like sixty or seventy. I weigh in at two ten on a good lifting week. Even with those gorgeous arms, you can’t be more than a hundred and fifty.”

“It’s not good manners to talk about a woman’s weight,” Faith said, the “gorgeous” part of his comment flustering her more than she would have liked.

“It is when you’re trying to convince her she’s not in the same weight class you are.” Mick braced one hand on the arbor above Faith’s head, his face so close to hers she could smell the mulled cider on his breath. “And that she shouldn’t start something she can’t finish.”

“Oh, I could finish it,” Faith said, lips tingling from the electricity crackling in the air between them. “Don’t underestimate me, Whitehouse.”

“Never. I’ve heard all about you, Miller.”