To Protect & Serve (39 page)

“You know I’m not supposed to go,” she told the empty car around her as her fingernail tapped out a fast beat on the steering wheel. “You know that, right?”

“Yep, just like I know you’re going anyway,” came the reply from her heart, and she smiled as she turned the corner.

“Yep, just like I know I’m going anyway.”

Three houses had been lost. The charred shell of the middle one was hardly recognizable in the fading light. The other two could be rebuilt, but the middle one would never again stand as it had before that day. It was ashes now. Lost forever. Jeff wondered about the people who had lived there. How would their lives change because of that one moment in time? He sent up a prayer for all those whose lives that single moment would touch, all those now and all those in the future who couldn’t even see this moment as it passed into the night.

As he pulled the once-white cotton hose, now grimy black, from the rubble, he wondered if anyone had prayed for him that night so long ago. They must have for it wasn’t without a whole lot of help that he had gotten to this point. He thought about that kid who had sat alone on that lawn late into the nights that followed the fire, and in his heart, he wrapped an arm around him and told him that although Friday seemed all around him, there was a Sunday in his future. All was not lost as it
had seemed to be in that moment. All was never lost—if you were willing to hold on until Sunday.

The pavement at Lisa’s feet seemed as inconsequential as air. It flowed by her strides in great lengths of black-blue hardly noticed but for the slap of her strapped sandals on it. Fear had nothing to do with it—only a desire to see him so overwhelming that nothing could stand in her way. At the scene boundary, she slipped around a bush and past the edge of the perimeter as if it wasn’t even there. Across the carefully manicured lawns, still green despite the season and the growing darkness falling on them, she ran. Her spirit flew before her, pulling her forward until she felt like she was soaring. When she finally broke through to the trucks, it took only one glance at the fireman standing on the asphalt feeding hose up onto the truck to know beyond a doubt that everything he had said was true. He was with her always, and she only had to trust enough to recognize that.

“Jeff,” she said as she stepped from the curb. When he looked over to her, it was a mix of surprise and concern that flashed through his eyes.

“Lisa?” He stepped over the hose as she flew the last three steps into his arms. Holding her, the strength in his arms flowed into her spirit as the world around them dropped away.

All she wanted to do was hold him, to let him know that at every step from here on out she would be right there at his side. She asked no more from life. No one gets a guarantee, her heart said, and despite the hard shell of his fire suit, she pulled him closer to her as a stream of tears slid down her face.
You have this moment and only this moment. What you do with it is your choice.

As those thoughts poured through her, she pulled back from him and ran her hands over his grime-covered, soot-stained face, and no face had ever held so much promise. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she gazed right into his eyes. “I wasted so much time.”

“No,” he said, smiling softly. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“I love you,” she said, the emotions choking out the words, “and more than anything in the world, I want to be the one you spend your life with.”

Confusion and then slow understanding slipped over his features. “Does that mean…?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding until her head could have tumbled right off her shoulders for the motion. “It means yes.”

His eyes closed in disbelief at the words, and in the next breath she was once again in his arms—jumping through the point of no return like it was a simple mirage. A moment or a hundred thousand. Whatever God gave them, she would stand right at Jeff Taylor’s side. Then in the moment when God called one of them home, she would look back with no regrets for she would have spent all the time from that moment to this loving with complete trust. And that was the only measure of love that ever truly mattered.

Kids milled about all across the hard concrete floor of the Civic Center. The Second-Annual Cordell Enterprises Youth Leadership Conference with 750 kids in attendance had been a resounding success. Even better than the first one the year before, and that understanding brought a smile to Lisa’s heart.

A whole year had come and gone since they had stood on that street and held each other. Yet it seemed a lifetime. Lisa’s hand slid across the top of her growing stomach as she drifted away from Mr. Cordell who was already talking about who they should contact for speaking at the conference the next year. She slipped over to the little group gathered at the side of the stage and took her place by Jeff’s side. It was a given, if he was in the room, that’s where she wanted to be. As close as one body could get to another. Spirit-to-spirit they were one, and in four months they would be three. Her heart filled at the thought.

“Well, you did it again, Lisa,” Dante said as she lifted Jeff’s arm and slid under it. It had been far easier to talk the station into sending its three top firefighters in place of a solo captain this year. Dante, now a trainer; Gabe, the station’s newest lieutenant, and Jeff, the latest firefighter to be promoted to driver. She couldn’t imagine life without them.

“Yeah, thanks to you guys and a mountain of great help,” she said with a smile. “I could never have pulled this off by myself.”

“Modesty,” Eve said with a nod to Jeff from where she stood two steps up
on the small set leading to the stage. “I knew there was a reason you hooked up with her.”

“Yeah,” he agreed as his gaze found Lisa’s. “Not to mention the fact that she’s beautiful and strong and brilliant and…” His lips found the edges of the skin at her neck, and she laughed in embarrassment.

“Would you behave yourself?” she asked as her hand pushed him back.

“I don’t know,” he said, pulling back to look into her eyes seriously. “That’s a pretty tall order with you around.”

“And you said he was shy,” Lisa said to Eve.

“Hey, I’m not taking any responsibility for that one,” Eve said with a raise of her perfectly-
manicured hands. “He was when I met him.”

“And that was before or after his brain transplant?” Dante asked from his position at Eve’s side.

“Before,” Eve said, nodding. “Definitely before.”

“Umm, excuse me,” a voice said from behind Lisa, and when they turned, Jeff’s hold on her shoulders broke free.

The young face, so familiar and yet indistinguishable from the hundreds of others Jeff had seen that weekend, gazed at him, expectant and yet hesitant.

“Can we help you?” Lisa asked as the wheels of Jeff’s head struggled to put that face with a time and a place.

“Yes.” The gaze behind the dark glasses fell. “Well, kind of. Umm, I just wanted to come and say thanks.” The kid held out his hand to Jeff. “I never got a chance to that day on the bridge.”

A breath and all the pieces fell into place. “Parker?”

The young man nodded as Jeff shook his hand. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you up there today. I’ve been trying to find you for a year now to say thanks, but I guess there are a lot of firefighters in Houston.”

“A few,” Jeff said with a smile. Then he noticed the close presence of a friend at his elbow, and he turned to look at the man who had looked much older now than when he had first run up on the bridge that day. “Hey, Parker, you remember, A.J., don’t you? He was the paramedic that day.”

“Yeah,” Parker said as he realized who the man standing next to Jeff was. No hat and looking decades instead of a simple year older, A.J. held out a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”

“That’s okay,” A.J. said with a soft smile. “I’m just glad you made it.” The two shook hands. “So, you came to the youth conference?”

Parker nodded. “They said the emergency teams would be talking, and since that’s what I’m wanting to go into when I get out next year, I thought it’d be a good idea to come check it out.”

“Go into?” Jeff asked, tilting his head to the side curiously.

Parker’s gaze fell to the floor. “Well, I haven’t exactly decided yet—fire, police, rescue. Something like that.”

The edge of Lisa’s hand touched Jeff’s arm, and he knew her thoughts without her speaking them.

“That’s great, Parker,” Jeff said sincerely. “It really is, but do it for you okay? It’s too tough to do it for someone else.”

A question and then understanding slid through Parker’s eyes as he smiled at Jeff. “I’ll remember that.”

“Hey, Parker!” someone called from the auditorium edge.

Parker’s gaze jerked to the side, and he turned back to them hurriedly. “My ride’s leaving. I’d better go.”

Jeff pointed to the program in Parker’s hand. “Any time you’ve got questions about the field, give me a call. If I can’t answer it, I’ll find someone who can.”

“I appreciate that,” Parker said, holding out his hand again. “And thanks… for everything.”

When Jeff shook the hand, he once again felt the potential in its warmth. “You’re more than welcome,” Jeff said with a nod.

Parker turned back for his group,
and Jeff had to take a breath of thanks himself. A life pulled back, one of the ones that made the job a calling to be heeded rather than a nightmare to evade. A life. A single life, and suddenly it all seemed worth it.

“So, what do you say, anybody up for some dinner?” Gabe asked still standing on the
stage steps next to Dante and Eve.

“Who’s paying?” Jeff asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You are of course,” Dante said teasingly, and he wrapped an arm over Eve’s shoulder and smirked at her. “Don’t you think the ones who talked us into this thing should pay?”

“Cool,” Eve said, laughing. “Dinner’s on Jeff and Lisa.”

Lisa looked at Jeff with teasing concern. “I hope you brought your wallet.”

“I hope you brought your dish gloves,” he said.

“Typical man,” Eve said, shaking her head. “They conveniently forget their wallets every single time.”

“It’s okay,” Lisa said as she ducked under the arm Jeff held out. “I didn’t marry him for his money.”

“Good thing,” Dante said.

Jeff turned and smiled at her. “Yeah, good thing.”

Her eyes beamed at him with the promise of forever. At that moment his vow in life shifted from a promise to protect and serve others—to a new pledge: for as long as he lived, he would protect and serve the woman who had stood by him in the midst of life’s greatest turmoil. Not because he owed her, but just because his love would let him do nothing less.

As the others started out in front of them, Jeff held Lisa back gently. His grasp around her shoulders tightened. “Hey, you did good today.”

Softly she looked up at him, belief in all their future held shining in her eyes. “No, we did good.”

“You’re right,” he said, pulling her to him heart, body, and soul. “We did good.”

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“This place makes the best potato skins in the world,” Dante Ramirez said from his position next to Eve Knox in the over-crowded booth. Six were stuffed into room for five, but Eve wasn’t complaining. It had been months since she’d laughed this much, and laughing felt good for a change.

“Well, for as long as they made us wait, they’d better be,” Gabe Teague said in annoyance from the other side of Eve. His deep bass shook the air around him. “I just want you to know, if Ashley kills me, I’m sending you the bill.”

“And it’ll be stamped NSF just like all the rest of the bills I pay,” Dante said.

“NSF? I thought you had some secret trust fund,” Jeff Taylor said from beside his wife Lisa.

“Yeah, it’s so secret I don’t even know about it,” Dante said with a shake of his head, and the gel-slicked, black hair caught the light like a reflector.

“Darn,” Gabe said. “You mean we can’t off you for your millions?”

“Millions of bills or millions of creditors?”

Jeff looked at Gabe skeptically. “Maybe offing him wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Uh, you think?” Gabe asked.

“You forget, he’s a fireman,” Lisa said, punching her husband in the ribs. “He makes what you make.”

Jeff shook his head. “Ugh. Definitely not worth it.”

“Definitely,” Gabe said and then looked around the restaurant. “So is anybody going to take our order or is that going to take another two hours?”

“Friday night,” Dante said. “It’s always like this. Oh, I’m sorry. I forget you’re out of commission.”

“Married,” Gabe said. “They call it married.”

Even as she laughed, Eve’s gaze fell to the table. She remembered married.

“So, A.J.,” Lisa said, addressing one of the two non-conversational occupants at the table, “were you less nervous this year?”

A.J., the one person at the table that Eve hadn’t been around at every excuse Jeff and Lisa could come up with—Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, every major holiday and three or four non-major ones they had managed to include her in as well. If she hadn’t been so tired of looking at her apartment walls, she might have come up with a few more excuses to get out of their well-meaning excursions. However, the reality was she hated that apartment and all the memories that went with it.

“At least I didn’t throw up this year.” A.J. ducked so that the light bounced off his light brown hair streaked with soft blond tones. Soft. It was a good word to describe A.J. Knight. Features, light brown eyes, manner, tone—they all fell right into the soft category.

“That’s a definite improvement,” Jeff said, laughing. “We almost had to call the other paramedics to come stitch up that gash you got when you fainted off the stage last year.”

“He did not,” Eve said with instant concern.

“No.” A.J. glanced at her defensively, but instantly his gaze dropped back to the table. “I just missed a step.”

“Yeah. Ca-thung. Ca-thung. Ca-thung,” Jeff said, spinning his hands over and over themselves teasingly.

“You’re one to talk.” Lisa punched Jeff again as she came to A.J.’s defense. “Who was it that needed a paper bag this morning before he went on?”

Jeff shrugged. “For my lunch.”

“Yeah, those ham sandwiches can just take your breath right away.”

Eve laughed at them. Jeff and Lisa. Such a sweet couple, now looking forward to their first child. It wasn’t hard to see how much Jeff worshiped Lisa, nor was it difficult to see the love in Lisa’s eyes when she looked at her husband. As she put her head down, Eve remembered feeling that look in her own heart. That time seemed so long ago as to have been another lifetime.

“So, Eve,” Dante, the one guy she always seemed to get paired up with at every social function she was trapped into attending, said as he laid an arm the color of brown sugar over the booth behind her, “how’d Lisa con you into this speaking thing anyway?”

With a smile Eve looked across the table at the woman who had become her best friend over the last year. “She asked.”

Lisa smiled back. Together. Two women in a sea of men, and because of the other, they were holding their own.

“No arm twisting or hair pulling?” Dante asked far too into the whole cat fight scenario for her.

“Nope. None of that.”

“Darn,” Dante said. “I would’ve paid to see that.”

“Hey,” Jeff said, leveling an index finger and a warning gaze at Dante. “That’s my wife you’re talking about there.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m just saying she’s hot.”

“That’s not any better,” Jeff said darkly.

Lisa patted his leg. “It’s okay. I’m five months pregnant, and I feel like a blimp already. If the man wants to say I’m hot, don’t complain.”

Jeff’s gaze went to his wife’s face and frame, and it was clear he had no complaints.

“Is somebody going to take our order or not?” Gabe asked in frustration.

“I think they forgot about us,” A.J. said quietly.

“Well, get somebody’s attention, Jeff,” Gabe commanded.

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you’re on the end, and because this was your idea, and because as your commanding officer, I told you to,” Gabe said.

“Oh,” Jeff said, nodding. “Well, since you put it that way.” He looked around, put a hand in the air, and snagged the first waitress’s attention who happened by. “Umm, could we get some menus over here?”

Amazing, Eve thought as she watched the scene. When she had met him two years before, she would never have believed that Jeff could get so many words in a row out, in public nonetheless. However, it was abundantly clear that he had grown—in confidence and in stature since the night Dustin had first brought home his newest friend from the academy. Part of it was the job. Leading others in to fight fires had to inspire a certain amount of poise and confidence, but it was more than that. He had a woman by his side now who believed in him, who trusted him implicitly, who looked to him for guidance, and it showed in every movement he made.

In seconds the waitress was back with the menus. Each took one, and Gabe looked at his watch. “Order something that doesn’t take long to cook.”

“Like what? Kid’s grilled cheese?” Dante asked.

“You should’ve invited Ashley,” Lisa said.

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Why didn’t you?”

“She had to work. Besides she’s heard me speak, and she wasn’t impressed.”

“I, Gabe, take you, Ashley,” Dante said serious and teasing all at the same time. “I can see why.”

Eve socked Dante’s arm. “Hey, that wasn’t funny.”

In surprise Dante looked over to Jeff who was trying not to laugh. “It was too. Wasn’t it, Taylor?”

“Like I’m stupid enough to get in the middle of that one,” Jeff said as he buried his gaze into the menu.

The waitress walked up at that moment to take their order, and when she was gone, Dante turned back to Eve. “You know that Van Gogh Exhibit is coming to the Museum of Fine Arts the first of November. Didn’t you say you wanted to go to that?”

“Is it that time already?” She sighed. “I was hoping I’d be through the spring buying by then.”

“Well, I’m free,” Dante said, hinting in his tone, “if you wanted me to get us some tickets, I could.”

He was being nice. Dante had been nothing but nice since the first time Jeff and Lisa had dragged them out on what no one dared to call a double date. Still every time Eve thought about going out with him, her heart jerked in the other direction. Slowly she shook her head. “I’m not sure I can get off.”

“It’s a Saturday,” he said as though the others weren’t sitting there listening to them. “Even firefighters don’t work all the time, you know.” He tapped her on the shoulder playfully, trying to get her to look up. However, her heart just couldn’t look at him.

Wishing it wouldn’t, Eve’s gaze traveled down the table and caught Lisa’s. The pity in Lisa’s eyes told her too much. Her friends felt sorry for her. They wanted her to find someone. What they didn’t know was that there would never be another someone in her life. She’d had a someone once. Now he was gone, and she had no desire to find another one.

“A museum exhibit?” Gabe asked incredulously. “Ugh. Ashley roped me into one of those once. Can you say, ‘Torture City’?”

Across from Eve, A.J. laughed although none of the other occupants seemed to think it was all that funny. She ducked to keep the laugh in her own chest from finding her own throat.

“I just thought it might be fun,” Dante said softly, and suddenly he didn’t look nearly so confident or so sure of the offer.

Knowing there was really no good reason to turn him down, Eve smiled over at him although to be honest, she didn’t see him at all. “It sounds like fun.”

On the other side of the table, A.J. felt the annoyed gazes of his hosts find his face, and his eyes widened as if to say, “What did I say?” Neither Jeff nor Lisa looked happy with him. He hadn’t been around them all that much, but Eve didn’t seem like someone who would be hanging out in museums all day—the mall looked more her style. But as much as she didn’t, Dante seemed even less the type. Strong, take charge, get it done so you can go have fun—that was Dante. Someone more likely to make fun of people who went to museums than someone lining up for tickets.

However, it was perfectly clear from where A.J. sat that getting in the way of Dante and Eve invited a fate worse than death. He understood that, of course. He had been there at the graveyard the day she had buried her husband. He had sat in the church and listened to Jeff’s heartfelt words about the friend he had lost, but more than that, he had been there that awful night when her husband had taken that final ambulance ride.

Yes, she had lost more than he would probably ever have, so he was smart enough to back off even when Gabe continued.

“Doesn’t make any sense to me,” Gabe said. “You meet someone, you go out with them, you try to make yourself be someone else the whole time, then you get married and boom. Who are you again?”

“I’m sure Ashley was thrilled when she figured out who you were,” Jeff said, and A.J. could tell he was trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Ashley?” Gabe asked incredulously. “What about me? The first time I saw her with that awful green mask thing on, I thought I’d pass out.”

“She was trying to be beautiful for you,” Lisa said.

Gabe scrunched up his face. “She didn’t have to try that hard.”

The waitress arrived with their drinks and a dish of potato skins. A plate at a time Lisa passed them around the table. “I am starving.”

“Here,” Jeff said, dishing one potato skin onto a plate for her.

“Hey!” Dante said. “Who ordered these?”

“If you’re pregnant, you argue.” Jeff leveled the fork in Dante’s direction. “If not, get out of the way.” He put some sauce on the plate and handed it to Lisa. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” she said, ducking in embarrassment.

A.J. watched as the others dished up their own appetizers. Jeff was always taking care of Lisa, always making sure she was all right before he worried about himself. That was how love should be, A.J. thought. Not that he’d ever been around that many people who had found it. No, finding that kind of love took a heap of luck, and to this point he hadn’t had much in that department.

“So, A.J.,” Gabe said, skewering him with a glance. “Who are you taking to museums these days?”

Slowly A.J. shrugged, and the potato skin on his fork nearly slid right off into his lap. “No museums for me.” Then he looked across and caught the displeasure in Lisa’s gaze. “Not that there’s anything wrong with museums of course. I just…” He was drowning, fighting for the surface. “Well, there’s Melody, but she’s more of just a friend really.”

“A friend? Oh, boy. You’ve got to watch those friends,” Gabe said with a serious shake of his head. “That’s what I told everybody about Ash for a year.”

“Until she knocked you over the head with a frying pan?” Jeff asked.

“Something like that. I swear, I think you ladies have something figured out that you should really clue us guys in about,” Gabe said.

“We try to be subtle,” Lisa said. “Not our fault it takes a brick.”

“I’m telling you,” Gabe said, leaning over to A.J. although his volume was loud enough for the whole table to hear. “Watch out for those friends. They’re trouble waiting to happen.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

By eight o’clock the gathering was breaking up. Jeff said he had to get Lisa home. Gabe slipped out as soon as the checks arrived, saying Ashley might never let him out of her sight again. A.J. had offered to walk Gabe to his car although Eve thought that if trouble happened, Gabe looked far more likely to be the defender than A.J. did. And so, when everyone else was gone, she and Dante were left to walk to the parking lot together.

Subtle, she thought. So terribly, terribly subtle. As they pushed out into the cool October, Houston city night, her hand brushed Dante’s, and in the next breath his hand slipped around hers. Not once in all the time they had spent together had he taken her hand, and the instant hers was in his, Eve wanted to run the other direction.