To Protect & Serve (25 page)

Jeff’s movement slowed to a halt. He knew that Dustin never left a party early, and his leaving could only mean that the time for them to leave as well was upon them. “Already?”

“Already? It’s after one,” Dustin said with a check of his watch. “I’ve got work tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Still caught in the haze of her, Jeff extended his hand. “Take care out there.”

“Yeah, you too,” Dustin said with a smile that said that comment didn’t just mean work. “Call me.”

Jeff nodded, and his friends stepped away from them. Regretting that he had to, he looked at Lisa, who was more beautiful now than she had been seven hours before. “Well, I guess it’s time to call it a night.”

For a second he wasn’t sure she had even heard the comment. Then a gentle pleading look traced through her eyes. “One more dance?”

Like a thousand racehorses at the gun, his heart leaped forward as he smiled. “But I don’t dance.”

Her smile held no irony. “I know.”

Once again she was in his arms, and his only wish was that she would be forever.

At her apartment door Lisa wondered when she had stumbled into this unbelievable dream. Life swirled around her—arching in no definite patterns so that she felt like she might fall right off of it at any moment. The one and only thing keeping her upright was his arm, tucked securely around her waist, holding her lest she fall.

“So, you going to be hungry tomorrow night?” he asked softly as his other arm slid around her to join its partner at her back.

His heartbeat drifted over her again.

“Yeah, and the next night, and the next night, and the night after that,” she said, floating away on the words as his lips found hers. It was by far the most amazing moment she had ever occupied.

“I tried to call you last night,” Dustin said when they were six sentences into the conversation on Tuesday afternoon. “What’d you do, go AWOL on me?”

In a heap Jeff sat down on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table. “No, I was at Lisa’s trying to find a way to make office supplies sound interesting.”

“Office supplies?”

“Yeah, she got a new account on Monday. She was kind of freaking out.”

“O
nly about Monday?” Dustin asked.

One foot slipped off and the other followed as Jeff sat up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dustin laughed softly. “Like you don’t know. Oh, by the way, Eve’s wondering if we should plan on a winter wedding or late summer. She needs some new shoes.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“No, I don’t think she was kidding.”

Jeff shook his head. It never ended. They were never satisfied. “Well, I think she’s going to have to ask someone other than me.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“I don’t know, whoever decided I could handle all this in the first place.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Lisa is so great, and I’m so…”

“Hopeless?”

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Dustin said with no trace of laughter. “But, listen, I’ve got to be honest with you, I really don’t think she cares how hopeless you are.”

“I don’t know why not.” The statement vaulted Jeff off the couch, and he took two steps one way and reversed course. “Every other one has.”

“Okay,” Dustin said slowly, “maybe you haven’t noticed this, but she’s not like every other one.”

“But why not? What makes her so different?” Jeff asked in frustration as he collapsed onto a barstool.

“Well, for one thing, she’s in love with you.”

“In… love?” The word smashed through him as his head snapped up. “Oh, I don’t…”

“And you’re in love with her,” Dustin continued gently. “Trust me on this one, Jeffrey, when that gets right, everything else is moot.” There was a pause as Dustin let that sink in, and Jeff frantically searched for a way to refute it. “So, have you told your mom about her yet?”

That question exploded through the middle of all the others as Jeff closed his eyes to squeeze it out. “No.”

“Why not?”

There were ten thousand why nots lined up at the mere question. “Well, for one thing, I haven’t talked to her since November…”

“She’d want to know,” Dustin said. “She still cares about you, Jeff. She wouldn’t have come that day if she didn’t.”

Slowly Jeff sighed. “I wouldn’t even know what to say to her anymore… not that I ever did.”

“So your solution is to not say anything at all?”

Yes!
screamed through him. Definitely yes. Life would be much safer that way. “She doesn’t want to hear from me. I can’t put her through that again.”

“And one day when a building does fall on you, and you’re taken away too—you think she won’t hurt just the same?”

The top of the counter pulled Jeff’s head down to it, and he knocked it three times on the hard Formica. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“Whether you believe it or not, you deserve to have her in your life. Maybe this time she’ll come around.”

His hand pressed hard against his forehead, pushing to get the very thought out of his head. “And what if you’re wrong?”

A pause and only that. “What if I’m not?”

For two solid weeks, Jeff tiptoed around the wisdom of his friend’s words. Thankfully Lisa hadn’t been privy to that conversation. It was enough that he could hear the deeper questions she didn’t ask every time they talked about his work. If she knew the rest of the story… He pushed that away as he arched his body up off of the weight bench and let it down again.

How could he explain the unexplainable? Like the incomprehensible fact that it had been he who was left when the smoke had cleared, or that the one person he had never been able to connect with would be the only one left in his small, small world. How could he explain all the nights spent listening for any hint of trouble, a door squeak, a faraway wail, a crack, a pop, the slightest off-kilter sound? How could he tell her about all the nights he had gotten up three and four times to check the hot water heater when he thought he’d smelled something strange in the air?

No, no one knew about those nights. And no one ever would. It was his silent vigil, the one he had signed on for the moment he hadn’t thought past where he’d thrown those rags…

“Stop it, Taylor,” he commanded himself as he pulled the barbell off the floor. “You’re going to make yourself crazy.” Once, twice, he pulled the weight up. “It’s in the past. Let it stay there.” Numbers flowed over numbers until he lost count of them all. “It has nothing to do with now. Nothing. Don’t let it start again. Please, don’t let it start again.”

When the clock wound around to seven and he hadn’t called, Lisa’s worry system jumped to attention. Trying not to think about the reasons he wouldn’t have called, she dialed the phone and tapped the pencil twelve times before her panic was assuaged.

“Hello?”

“Well, I was afraid you’d dropped off the edge,” she said, laughing at her own melodramatic imagination.

“Nope, not quite. Just doing some reps. I’ve been slacking too much recently.”

“Bringing supper to poor, malnourished souls instead of working out? What were you thinking?” She leaned back in her chair and kicked her shoes off under the desk, liking the fact that she had the whole office to herself. “You really need to get your priorities straight, you know that?”

It was at that moment that she heard the unmistakable snap of the front door. Strange, she thought sitting up, Sherie usually locked that on her way out.

“You make it hard to keep anything straight,” Jeff said lightly although Lisa barely heard the statement over the pounding of her heart.

“Yeah,” she said, breathing the word as she strained to hear into the outer office. The first rap on her door sent a gasp right through her as she scrambled for her shoes and her jacket simultaneously.

“Lisa?” the voice said on the other side of the door. “Are you here?”

“Umm, yeah, just a minute,” she called, pulling, buttoning, and fixing as fast as her shaking hands would possibly move.

“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked in her ear.

“Somebody’s here,” Lisa said as the door creaked open, and the black hole of helplessness opened up at her feet. “Tucker. Hi.”

“I thought that was your light,” Tucker said smoothly as he stood right in the middle of her one and only way out.

“Tucker? What’s he doing there?” Jeff asked. “It’s almost seven o’clock.”

“Listen,” she said into the phone, forcing her voice to remain calm. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

“Are you…?”

“I’ve got to go. Bye.” And she hung up.

It took Jeff less than two seconds to make the decision, grab a shirt and his keys, and be out the door. The fact that he was still in his sweats didn’t register. Tucker Cordell didn’t take no for an answer, and sooner or later she was going to run out of excuses to put him off. Unless… “God, I’m going to need some wings here.”

Lisa cleared her throat and sat up straighter as she worked the last button closed on her jacket. “Our office closed at five,” she said, “and Sherie didn’t mention you were coming.”

“Sherie didn’t know,” Tucker said, closing the door behind him.

“Oh,” Lisa said, fighting to decide if he was indeed here for the reason that kept creeping through her mind or if his visit was somehow innocuous, and overreacting would do nothing more than humiliate her.

“You mind if I…?” Tucker indicated the chair.

She barely nodded as she folded her hands on the desk. “Is there… Is there something I can help you with?”

“I thought you should know that Grandfather’s not doing well,” Tucker said, ducking his head on the statement. “He had a slight heart attack last night.”

The understanding that she was in fact the stupidest person on the earth cascaded on her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is he… Is everything all right?”

“They think he’s going to be all right, but while he’s recuperating, the board has decided that the officers are going to have to take a more active role in running the business.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Yeah, well, I was put in charge of this whole conference idea,” Tucker said, and the tone in his voice shifted slightly. “Look, I’ll be straight with you:  I was never a big fan of the plan in the first place. I mean a leadership conference for non-leaders? Doesn’t make much sense to me. You know?”

The world stopped as Lisa forced air into her lungs. “I thought it made a lot of sense.”

“Well, unfortunately what you think doesn’t matter all that much.”

Fear snaked through her. “What are you saying?”

Tucker shrugged as though the whole question was of no consequence to him. “Just that I don’t see the point of committing valuable time and resources to a project that I don’t think is in the best interest of the company to begin with.”

“Valuable…?” Rationality was scattering. “But I waved all but a small deposit to get this account, and I’ve put hours and hours into this thing already…”

“I know. It’s unfortunate timing, but some things just can’t be helped.”

Breath and sanity failed her. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can, and I am. So unless you can say something to change my mind…” The sentence drifted into nothingness as she tried to force words that weren’t screaming obscenities to get all the way to her lips. Finally Tucker nodded. “That’s what I thought. I think I’ve heard all I needed to hear.” He swung up
and out of the chair.

“Is this because I won’t go out with you?” she finally asked, searching the injustice surrounding her for the answer she already knew.

Tucker turned back and shrugged as if the whole thing meant nothing to him. “You made a decision,” he said, and his voice was as cold as ice. “And now I’m making mine.”

“And if I would’ve gone along with your little idea? That would’ve made a difference?”

His gaze slid through her like the serpent in the garden. “Everything makes a difference, Lisa. Don’t you know that by now?”

Before she really heard the first sound, Jeff was standing in the middle of her doorway, gasping and panting. “Oh, man. I’m sorry I’m so late. Those stairs are a killer.”

The surprise in her eyes was no match for that in Tucker’s.

“I got caught in traffic. You know, I really hate downtown sometimes,” Jeff said in one continuous stream of words. He recovered with remarkable speed. Then he seemed to notice Tucker whose smooth exterior had shattered with the astonishment. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met. Jeff Taylor.”

Gaping, Tucker shook Jeff’s hand. “Tucker Cordell.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tucker. Lisa’s so excited about that whole leadership thing. It’s all she talks about. Morning, noon, and night.” Somehow Jeff managed to wind his way past Tucker and around to her side of the desk. In the next heartbeat his arm was around her shoulders. “Isn’t that right, Sweetheart?”

“Umm, oh, uh, yeah,” she said, her own gaze registering the thought that he must have fallen and hit his head on something very hard. “All the time.”

“Well, Tucker,” Jeff continued, unabated. “I hate to break this up, but Lisa and I have a date with a couple of hot dogs.”

“H…ot dogs?” Tucker asked as if he’d never heard of such a thing.

“Extra mustard,” Lisa said, finally catching hold of her sanity long enough to get her bearings. She scrunched her nose. “It’s a fireman thing.”

“Oh, so you’re with the department?” Tucker asked slowly.

Jeff nodded. “Yeah, it gets kind of old sometimes, lugging those hundred pound hoses up and down all those extension ladders, but it’s a paycheck, you know?”

Lisa didn’t miss the slide Tucker’s gaze did across the expanse of Jeff’s mostly uncovered chest muscles, and it was clear the message hit dead center of its mark.

“I can imagine.” Tucker was backing away, away from the desk, away from her. She could feel it. “Umm, well, I’d better let you get to your… hot dogs then.”

“Yeah, you’d better,” Lisa said barely stifling the laugh that jumped to the middle of her.

Clearly shaken,
Tucker walked to the door and then stopped. When he turned, there was only regret and understanding in his eyes. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Lisa. We’ll talk. I’m sure we can work something out.”

She smiled sweetly. “I look forward to it.”

With the slightest of nods, he opened the door and walked out. It wasn’t until the outside door clicked closed that Lisa started breathing again. However, she held up her hand to keep Jeff from saying a single word. Quickly she went out to the front office and threw the lock herself as Jeff, wild-eyed, stepped from her door.

“What was that about?” Jeff asked.

“
That
was one of those really bad ones,” she said simply. “I hope you’re buying because I’m starved.”

“You should’ve told me, I would’ve worn my running shoes,” Lisa said when they had reached street level.

“I didn’t know you owned running shoes,” Jeff said, liking how her hand felt in his, but still not beyond the overwhelming adrenaline rush of the flight to her office.

Lisa scrutinized his profile carefully. “By the way, I thought you were working out tonight.”

He shrugged as half his smile slipped onto his face. “Some things are more important than working out.”

The gaze she leveled on him was a mix of teasing and mischief. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like trying to prove these lights can be beaten.” He looked up at the sign and then over at her. Love. In one breath, he knew that was undeniably what he felt.

“Go!” she yelled, and when she bounded from the curb, she took not only his hand but his heart with her as well.

Jeff knew he had to find a way to say it or he would go stark raving mad. As he and Gabe sat watching the late comedy show that neither of them was really paying attention to on Saturday night, he knew he needed some advice. The only problem was he wasn’t sure that advice could even help where this was concerned.

“So, you’re married?” Jeff asked
like he hadn't been rehearsing this conversation in his mind for four days. The stand-ups babbled on screen, completely forgotten.

“Six years.
” Gabe reached for the remote and turned the television down.

“Must be hard, being married and being with the department and all.”

Gabe shrugged. “Neither was an option for me, so I wouldn’t know.”

That Jeff understood. “She must be pretty special, your wife.”

“Ashley? Yeah, she’s the best.”

“And she doesn’t mind all the long hours and stuff?”

“I wouldn’t say that she doesn’t mind. She’s just accepted that this is what I want to do, and the rest… well, we figure we’ll let God take care of that.”

Jeff sat, searching for a way to phrase the next question. “So, how’d you know she was the one?”

“Ah,” Gabe said, lifting his goateed chin knowingly. “I see where this is going.”

“Where?”

“I knew when you and Lisa went to the Fireman’s Ball this would be coming sooner or later.”

“What…? I didn’t say…”

However, the end of that statement was cut in half by the blare of the station alarm. “Mutual assistance requested at 1601 Richland Avenue.”

“Oops, hang on to that
thought,” Gabe said as they both jumped to their feet and headed for the pole. “Duty calls.”

The scene was semi-organized chaos when their truck joined the others already surrounding the apartment complex that loomed in the night sky over them. Firefighters, police, and paramedics rushed in all directions at once around the base of the building. Tanks on and masks in hand, they each left their ID tag on the dash as they jumped out. A rumble sounded above them accompanied in the next second by the sound of shattering glass. Running even as he looked up, Jeff saw the flames shoot out ten or so stories up. The tinkling of the glass clinked down against the sidewalk around him.

“Bagby Station reporting,” Gabe said for the six of them as they approached the command center.