A Firefighter In Her Stocking
Janice Lynn
A gift impossible to resist!When a firefighter rushes a child into her ER, Dr Sarah Grayson is stunned that the ash-covered, exhausted hero is her incorrigible playboy neighbour, Jude Davenport!Sarah is wary of such men, but when gorgeous Jude suggests a Christmas fling, she can’t resist. Yet their relationship deepens, and Sarah sees behind the playboy is a man who has loved and lost. He might try to keep his emotions on ice, but Sarah begins to wonder – could she be the one to heal his damaged heart?Christmas in ManhattanAll the drama of the ER, all the magic of Christmas!
A gift impossible to resist!
When a firefighter rushes a child into her ER, Dr. Sarah Grayson is stunned that the ash-covered, exhausted hero is her incorrigible playboy neighbor, Jude Davenport!
Sarah is wary of such men, but when gorgeous Jude suggests a Christmas fling, she can’t resist. Yet their relationship deepens, and Sarah sees behind the playboy is a man who has loved and lost. He might try to keep his emotions on ice, but Sarah begins to wonder—could she be the one to heal his damaged heart?
Christmas in Manhattan
All the drama of the ER, all the magic of Christmas!
A festive welcome to Manhattan Mercy ER, a stone’s throw from Central Park in the heart of New York City. Its reputation for top-notch health care is eclipsed only by the reputation of the illustrious, wealthy Davenport family and the other dedicated staff who work there!
With snow about to blanket New York over Christmas, ER chief Charles Davenport makes sure his team is ready for the drama and the challenge...but when it comes to love, a storm is coming as they’ve never seen before!
Available now:
Sleigh Ride with the Single Dad (http://ads.harpercollins.com/hqnboba?isbn=9781488020766&oisbn=9781488020773) by Alison Roberts
Dr. Grace Forbes is reunited with old flame Charles Davenport—but will the brooding father and his adorable twins make her Christmas dreams come true?
A Firefighter in Her Stocking by Janice Lynn
Dr. Sarah Grayson can’t resist a festive fling with her playboy neighbor, hunky firefighter Jude Davenport, even if she knows she’s playing with fire...
And coming soon:
The Spanish Duke’s Holiday Proposal (http://ads.harpercollins.com/hqnboba?isbn=9781488020827&oisbn=9781488020773) by Robin Gianna The Rescue Doc’s Christmas Miracle (http://ads.harpercollins.com/hqnboba?isbn=9781488020834&oisbn=9781488020773) by Amalie Berlin Christmas with the Best Man (http://ads.harpercollins.com/hqnboba?isbn=9781488020889&oisbn=9781488020773) by Susan Carlisle Navy Doc on Her Christmas List (http://ads.harpercollins.com/hqnboba?isbn=9781488020896&oisbn=9781488020773) by Amy Ruttan
Dear Reader (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f),
Firefighter heroes are new territory for me. But creating Jude was so much fun! I will be revisiting his heroic profession again in future stories.
Having grown up poor and, having been burned by love more than once, Dr Sarah Grayson is focused on her career and not much more. Especially not her gorgeous neighbour. That is until he comes rushing into the ER with a little girl he’s saved from a fire and she realises there’s more to him than a pretty face.
Having loved and lost, firefighter Jude Davenport takes risks with everything except his heart. How can he risk something he gave away long ago? But there’s something about his Plain Jane neighbour he just can’t resist, and maybe—just maybe—with her help he can finally let go of the past...
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Jude and Sarah. My email is Janice@janicelynn.net or you can message me on Facebook.
Happy reading!
Janice
A Firefighter In Her Stocking
Janice Lynn
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JANICE LYNN has a Masters in Nursing from Vanderbilt University, and works as a nurse practitioner in a family practice. She lives in the southern United States with her husband, their four children, their Jack Russell—appropriately named Trouble—and a lot of unnamed dust bunnies that have moved in since she started her writing career. To find out more about Janice and her writing visit janicelynn.com (http://www.janicelynn.com).
Books by Janice Lynn
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
Flirting with the Doc of Her Dreams
New York Doc to Blushing Bride
Winter Wedding in Vegas
Sizzling Nights with Dr Off-Limits
It Started at Christmas...
The Nurse’s Baby Secret
The Doctor’s Secret Son
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.Harlequin.com) for more titles.
Janice won the National Readers’ Choice Award for her first book The Doctor’s Pregnancy Bombshell
To James Mills, FDNY EMS Battalion 8, and to Andrew Floied, Manchester Fire Rescue. Thank you for your invaluable insight and for being real-life heroes!!
Any mistakes are my own.
Praise for Janice Lynn (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f)
“Fun, witty and sexy... A heartfelt, sensual and compelling read.”
—Goodreads on NYC Angels: Heiress’s Baby Scandal
Contents
Cover (#u60773100-d61b-5329-bab2-ef917b111b50)
Back Cover Text (#u46ebb37b-e7c2-5d18-9114-10060faae7c8)
Introduction (#ub048325d-5f85-5888-9488-eb677ee033e2)
Dear Reader (#ubf6d888f-7930-5d26-886a-b602d5c83191)
Title Page (#u97ce1919-14cc-56bf-9d6a-1b76b4191a1d)
Booklist (#u4354ed02-68fd-5738-8b7f-fcdd19883303)
Dedication (#u6d15ca28-df0f-5dae-baf1-2e4525a59fe7)
Praise (#uc4410a9d-cf23-5f80-9a7c-bfdca37eb2e8)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua240be75-2185-50f4-adc8-eb29e5429b09)
CHAPTER TWO (#ud626abe5-c83b-5813-aea4-77e5a61b79ee)
CHAPTER THREE (#uaafa1750-2502-5c6b-88cb-61eaa6b237e3)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u2dbe25b5-12f1-5088-9c09-31b06bf2f778)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f)
IT WASN’T EVERY morning that Dr. Sarah Grayson stepped out of her apartment and saw a couple making out.
It had happened, though.
Same man, different woman.
Nausea churned in Sarah’s belly. She ordered her eyes away, but since a nice, but somewhat bland apartment building corridor offered nothing to snag her attention, her gaze stayed put.
Making out in her hallway might be a bit of a stretch. Still, the couple stood in her rather hunky neighbor’s apartment doorway, sharing a far from innocent kiss.
Even if the kiss had been a mere lip peck, her neighbor’s lean hips wrapped in only a towel knocked innocent right out of the ball park. Home run.
Grand slam.
Sarah ran her gaze over his chiseled torso. He rated pin-up-worthy—centerfold, for sure. Part of her couldn’t blame the busty brunette for clinging to his broad shoulders. Or for totally ignoring the fact Sarah had stepped into the hallway. Common decency said they should pull apart and look a little embarrassed, right?
When Sarah’s gaze collided with piercing blue ones, her breath caught. No embarrassment in those magnificent eyes. Just pure unadulterated sexual temptation.
Good grief. He probably was a grand slam.
What eyes. A color so intense they pulled you in and made you feel as if you were drowning, made you want to drown in everything promised in the enticing blue depths.
Not Sarah, of course.
She was immune to playboys like this guy. She’d built up her defenses years ago while listening to her mother harp about the blight of good-looking, fast-talking men.
Adulthood had fortified her defenses.
Still, she wasn’t blind. Her neighbor was hot. She knew it and so did he.
Even as his lips lingered on the brunette’s, those eyes crinkled with bad-boy amusement. Probably laughing at the fact Sarah had taken up full-fledged voyeurism.
Gaze locked with hers, he pulled back from the kiss.
“Baby,” the brunette protested, still not noticing Sarah as she tugged downward on her cocktail dress skirt.
Good, the skimpy material barely covered her perfectly shaped bottom. A sticking plaster would cover more than the clingy sparkling spandex. Then again, if Sarah had curves like the brunette maybe she’d wear shrink-wrapped clothes, too.
She doubted it, but who knew? Sarah dressed to avoid drawing attention so she could focus on more important things than meaningless ogling. Either way, she’d never know because her stick-straight slender body lacked the brunette’s hourglass shape.
“Brandy, we have company,” her neighbor said, much in the way a parent would to a petulant child.
The brunette turned, flashing big almond eyes, raked her gaze over Sarah’s shapeless body beneath her heavy jacket, scarf, and hat. She dismissed Sarah’s importance and quickly turned back to towel boy.
He was better to look at than a ready-to-face-the-chill-of-a-Manhattan-November-early-morning Sarah.
Or Sarah on any morning, really.
“Jude,” the woman practically cooed.
So that was his name. Jude.
He’d tried talking to her a few times when they’d bumped into each other in the hallway, but she’d ignored him. What would be the point? She wasn’t interested in going through his revolving front door and he didn’t seem the type to want to just be friends with a woman. Plus, he made her feel uncomfortable. Not a creepy uncomfortable, just a very aware of how male he was uncomfortable.
Realizing she was standing in the apartment hallway, gawking still, Sarah turned from the couple, locked her deadbolt, and pretended she couldn’t hear Brandy begging to do anything he’d like her to do. Had the woman no pride?
Go home, girl. He used you.
Too bad Brandy’s mother hadn’t warned about men like him as Sarah’s mother had repeatedly done.
At the woman’s next words, Sarah’s cheeks caught fire. Nope, no pride whatsoever.
Sarah turned and her gaze collided with Jude’s amazing blue one again. She’d swear those eyes could see straight into her very being, knew her thoughts. Maybe they even had some type of superpower because her stomach fluttered as if it had grown thousands of tiny wings.
Nausea, she told herself. Men like him made her sick. Out all hours of the night, never seeming to work, always with a different woman. Sick. Sick. Sick.
Maybe he was a gigolo or some kind of male escort.
Her nose curled in disgust to go along with her flaming cheeks.
“I think you’ve embarrassed my neighbor.”
His voice was full of humor, which truly did embarrass Sarah. What was wrong with her? Standing in her hallway, as if frozen in place, ogling the man as if she’d never seen a bare chest.
She’d never seen one like his outside magazines and television, but that was beside the point.
She needed to get her voyeuristic self to work.
She couldn’t make out most of what Brandy replied but caught the words “prude” and “dumpy”. Ouch.
Refusing to look that way again, Sarah dropped her keys into the oversized bag she carried to work, and got out of Dodge before she had to listen to Jude’s reply.
She hurried down the stairs, through the apartment complex foyer, and out onto the sidewalk to walk the few blocks to the hospital. The cold November wind bit at her face, but her jacket shielded her from the worst.
Too bad she’d not had a shield against what she’d just witnessed. That image was going to be hard to erase.
No doubt her neighbor had dismissed her as unimportant just as the brunette had. Sarah didn’t care what he thought. Or what any man thought. She knew her strengths, her weaknesses. She preferred to be known for her brain and her heart rather than for outward appearances.
She was quite proud of who Sarah Grayson’s brain and heart was. A dedicated emergency room doctor whom she believed made a difference in her patients’ lives.
She wouldn’t let her revolving bedroom door neighbor make her feel badly about herself. After all, what did he do?
He never seemed to do anything.
Except beautiful women.
On that, the man was an over-achiever.
A neighbor from the floor below said she thought he came from old money. Either Sarah was onto something with her paid male escort theory, or he was nothing more than a carefree, lecherous playboy using his family to fund his depraved lifestyle.
Maybe she would get lucky and he’d move.
* * *
Adrenaline drove firefighter Jude Davenport as he pushed his way through the flame-filled building. Or maybe it was the heat that kept him moving. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck and his ears burned beneath his Nomex hood.
First checking temperature with his thermal imaging camera, Jude opened a door and thick black smoke billowed out, banking low.
“Engine Seven to command. We are entering structure and making a left-hand search.”
“Command copies Engine Seven is entering structure, making a left-hand search.”
As lead man, Jude crawled to the left-hand wall and, staying in contact with him, his partner made his way around the room, using his axe to search. Visibility was next to nil thanks to the rolling black smoke.
They had to find her.
A four-year-old little girl was trapped in this hellish inferno.
Somewhere.
Along with more than a dozen tenants, they’d already rescued her mother and sister. Jude did not want to have to look that woman in the eyes and say he’d not been able to find her daughter.
He knew first-hand the pain of losing someone you loved and that drove him as he crawled toward a closed door he could barely make out.
A child was in there, was alive. Every instinct said she was.
He just had to get there, get to her, and pray that when he did find her, that she was still alive and he’d be able to get himself and her out of the fire.
Finally, he reached the door.
Then what he’d been dreading happened, what he’d known was coming because of how long they’d been searching in the burning building.
The air horn on the truck blew.
Once. Twice. Three long times.
“Command to all units. Evacuate the building. Repeat, evacuate the building.”
He hadn’t needed the sound of the horn or command coming over the radio speakers in his air pack to know things were bad and the building was lost.
Things were bad.
Somewhere in this hellhole was a terrified four-year-old.
“Command says part of the stairs has collapsed,” his partner, Roger Woods, yelled. “We gotta go.”
Jude had to check the room. They were too close to turn back without doing so.
“Seriously, Davenport,” his partner called from behind Jude. “Don’t make me drag your butt out.”
“As if you could.”
Roger was one of his best friends and Jude trusted the man implicitly. There was a reason Roger was his partner. Because they had similar life philosophies. They valued others’ lives much more than their own. Roger wouldn’t turn back any more than Jude would. Not when they were so close to where the girl was supposed to be.
Finally Jude got to the door. Using the back of his wrist and his thermal imaging camera, he checked the door for heat.
Hot, but not unbearable.
He reached up, grabbed the handle with his gloved hand, and opened the door.
The room wasn’t quite as smoke-filled as the one he was leaving, but visibility was still barely above zero.
Reaching again for the camera hooked to the strap of his breathing apparatus, Jude scanned the room. The left and right walls glowed white, indicating that there was fire on both sides of the room. Jude was pretty sure the wall not lighting up, the opposite wall from him, was an exterior wall, which was good, because he was also pretty sure they weren’t going out the way they’d come in.
Then, with the aid of the TIC cutting through the smoke and steam, the image of a little body not moving made his heart pound.
“Davenport? Do you hear me? Get out now,” Command screamed in his ear.
It wasn’t the first time Command had screamed at him.
He prayed it wasn’t the last.
He didn’t answer his boss. What was the point? He wasn’t going anywhere. Not without the girl. He wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t walk out of a burning building when the child’s thermal image was in his sight. Reality was that Command wouldn’t want him to. None of their crew would exit when a fire victim was within sight.
“There she is.”
“Thank God,” Roger called from behind him.
“Engine Seven to Command—we need a ladder to fourth division A-side window for rescue.” God, he hoped there was a window on the exterior wall because he couldn’t see a thing. “We have one victim.”
Command acknowledged, repeating the call.
“Keeley?” Jude yelled, hoping the girl could hear him above the fire’s loud roar. Hoping that she’d answer, that she’d move.
She didn’t.
Please, don’t let us be too late.
He couldn’t see her with his bare eyes, but used the camera to guide himself toward her. The room was a sweltering hot box.
Then the thermal image on his TIC moved and Jude wanted to cry out in relief. She was alive. Who knew how much smoke she’d inhaled, what kind of burns she might have endured, but she’d moved so there was hope.
“Keeley,” he called again, crawling toward her. “We’re here to get you out of this place.”
He had no idea if she could hear him over the deafening sound of the fire destroying the building. If she could, he wanted her to know he was on his way.
Finally, he reached the far corner of the room where she was huddled beneath her mother’s bed.
Coughing, the little girl stared at him with watery eyes, but didn’t make any move toward him or respond to his motioning for her to come to him. Was she asphyxiated?
In his gear, he couldn’t fit under the huge low-rise bed she was hidden beneath and wasn’t quite sure how he’d move the massive bed with her beneath it without risking hurting her, but he had to get to her fast. They had to get out of the building pronto.
“Keeley, we have to go.” He tried again, tugging on the corner post of the solid wood monstrosity without any success. Was the thing nailed down? “Come to me, honey. Let me carry you out of this place.”
“Don’t leave me.”
He could barely make out her words. Maybe he even lip-read them more than heard them, but they rang loudly through his very soul.
As did the terror in her big puffy eyes as she coughed again.
“I won’t leave you, Keeley. I promise. Crawl to me, Keeley.” He purposely said her name over and over, hoping to get through to her, to let her know to come to him. He stretched his arms as far beneath the bed as he could. “Just move close enough that I can pull you to safety, Keeley, so we can get out of this building.”
He heard a crash and knew another section of the structure had given way.
Any moment the building could come collapsing down.
They had to go now.
“Keeley, come to me,” he pleaded, pushing against the bedpost again to see if it would move. Nope. The piece was solid, low to the floor, and heavy as hell.
He and Roger could stand, use their weight against the frame to see if they could shift it, and pray Keeley got out of the way if they did manage to move the massive piece of furniture.
She was crying, but she scooted forward a little, then back to where she’d been against the exterior wall.
Precious seconds were ticking by. Despite his protective gear, Jude could feel the worsening heat.
Instincts kicking in that said bad was about to get a whole lot worse if he didn’t get her and get her now.
“I know it’s scary, Keeley, but you’re going to have to crawl to me so I can pull you to safety.”
That was when she moved.
Finally.
“Just a little closer, Keeley.” He reached as far as he could beneath the bed. “Just a little closer.”
Then her hand touched his glove.
“That’s it, Keeley. Just a little more.”
His hand closed around her wrist and he pulled her to him.
“I’ve got her.”
He wrapped his arms around her, just as a window burst out on the exterior wall.
Thank God. An exit.
No doubt the aerial truck platform was just outside the window and some of his guys were waiting to pull Roger, Keeley, and him through to safety.
Thank God.
“Don’t leave me,” the girl repeated, clinging tightly to him and then going limp in his arms.
“Never,” he promised again, praying he’d not been too late.
* * *
Just as it had every day since the brown-out a couple of weeks before, the emergency room was hopping and had been all day. Sarah had run from one patient to the next with very little down time. Everything from having slipped due to ice to a gunshot wound had come through the doors.
Currently, she was examining a fifty-seven-year-old white male with chest pain and a history of triple bypass three years previously. The man admitted to smoking a pack a day for the past thirty years, drinking a pint a day, wasn’t bothering to take his prescribed blood pressure and cholesterol medications, and was a good hundred pounds overweight. He had been a heart attack waiting to happen.
“Has your chest pain eased up, Mr. Brown?” she asked the clammy-looking man as she scanned back over the notes the nurse had made upon his arrival. He should have come by ambulance, but he’d walked into the emergency room.
“It has some,” he said, squinting at her as if the light bothered his eyes. “But it’s been hurting off and on for two days. This evening it got a lot worse and I couldn’t catch my breath. This may just be another off spell.”
His cardiac enzymes were running stat in the lab and his telemetry was showing a slight T-wave abnormality. She’d started him on a nitroglycerin drip and had called to have the cardiac cath lab readied.
“Has the shortness of breath gotten better since you started on the IV meds and oxygen?”
Although he still looked sweaty and pale, he nodded. “I am breathing easier.”
If that labored mess was easier, she’d been right to call Cardiology. If the guy wasn’t having a myocardial infarction, he was on the verge of a major cardiac event. She was sure of it.
“Hey, Sarah, we have incoming. House fire. Multiple victims. Most minor. One serious.”
She cut her gaze toward the nurse who’d leaned into the emergency room bay. “Thanks, Shelley.”
Sarah fought wincing. Burns, smoke inhalation, and asphyxiation were all patients who gave Sarah nightmares. A few times during residency she’d gone home and wept at the absolute horribleness she’d witnessed. And she was seeing burn victims after the paramedics had done some clean-up.
She took a deep breath and turned back to her patient. “Mr. Brown, Dr. Andrews is on his way. He’s going to take you to the cardiac lab to check your heart further by doing an arteriogram. I don’t like how your EKG looks.”
The man grimaced. “I had one of those a few years ago, after my bypass. They found some more blockages.”
Not surprised, Sarah nodded, then turned as, on cue, Dr. Andrews stepped into the bay.
“Mr. Brown, this is Dr. Andrews.” She heard a commotion outside the bay and knew the incoming fire victims had arrived. She nodded at the cardiologist, then at her patient. “I’m leaving you in capable hands.”
With that she rushed to help, but came to an abrupt stop at what she saw when she stepped outside the bay.
The paramedics were rushing in a stretcher with an unconscious child wearing a facemask delivering oxygen. Keeping up with the stretcher, his dark brown hair matted to his head from sweat, dirt, and who knew what, was none other than her neighbor, talking to the little girl as if she were awake and hearing every word while he held onto her arm with his grimy hand.
He wore an NYFD uniform and looked like he’d just stepped out of a quick trip to hell.
CHAPTER TWO (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f)
SARAH’S CAREFREE, WOMANIZING, towel-wearing neighbor worked for the fire department?
So much for her male escort theory.
Mentally willing her paralysis away, she rushed to where the paramedics were rolling the unconscious girl and took a quick report.
“She was conscious when NYFD got to her, but went out just before they got her out of the building,” the paramedic, Paul, informed while they rolled the girl into a bay. “She got a twenty-cc bolus of normal saline via her intraosseous line, and then at one hundred and fifty cc per hour.”
He’d given the precise amount infused thus far, as knowing exact fluid replacement was crucial in a burn victim—especially a pediatric one.
“Also, morphine for pain at point four cc per kilogram.” Paul grimaced. “Although lower than normal, her oxygen saturation has remained steady, going at one hundred percent, and there aren’t any face burns, so maybe she won’t need intubation, but we both know how quickly that can change.”
Intubating a child if she didn’t really need to was never something Sarah wanted to do. However, waiting until an urgent need arose wasn’t either. Edema from the smoke and toxins inhaled could make getting the tube into the airway almost impossible. If the girl’s lungs were swelling, the quicker she got intubated, the easier the feat would be accomplished.
Looking at the child, Sarah knew she’d be intubating.
“Gag reflex still present?”
“As of two minutes ago, yes,” Paul answered.
“Get a warming blanket on her stat,” Sarah told a nurse, disinfecting her hands and gloving up as she did so. “Were you able to get all her clothing removed?”
“Had to wet down the area on her right side, but otherwise her clothes came off fairly easily. Most of the burns are superficial, except that one and her hands.”
Sarah nodded, and lifted the thin sheet to run her gaze over the girl’s body. First-and second-degree burns on her arms and neck. A third-degree on her right torso and hands.
Sarah’s heart squeezed.
Injured children were her least favorite aspect of her job. Every protective instinct inside her cried out at the injustice of a hurt child.
“Sorry, man, but you’re going to have to step back,” Paul told her neighbor as the paramedic bumped into him on the opposite side of the stretcher from Sarah.
Her neighbor didn’t budge. “I told you, I promised Keeley I wouldn’t leave her and I’m not going to.”
His tone said they’d have to call Security to have him forcibly removed. He’d let go of the girl’s arm when Sarah had inspected her burns, had been holding onto one of the few areas on the girl’s arms that hadn’t had burns, but he’d quickly taken hold again, as if he needed to be touching the child to let her know he was still there. Was the child someone he knew?
Sarah didn’t want to deal with a commotion that might slow down Keeley’s care. Plus, the thought of her neighbor being dragged out of her emergency department didn’t sit well.
“I may need to ask him something about her injuries.” Doubtful, but it sounded better than admitting she didn’t want him forced to leave. “Let him stay.”
Which was when Jude turned that blue gaze to her, really noticing her for the first time since entering the emergency room. Recognition immediately shone in his red-rimmed eyes.
Sarah’s heart slammed against her ribcage like a ball bouncing around in a pinball machine, lights and bells going off all through her insides.
The absolute difference in Jude’s appearance from the carefree, towel-wrapped sex god standing in his apartment doorway early that morning to this concerned, dirty, smelly firefighter determined to stay by a child’s side messed with her mind. Could she have been so wrong? Was it even possible there was more to her sexy neighbor than met the eye?
Had recognition not lit in those amazing blue eyes of his she’d have sworn he must be a twin.
Part of her felt she should say something, to acknowledge him in some way during that millisecond moment of recognition. Instead, she returned her attention to where it belonged, on the unconscious girl.
The weird flutter in her stomach was back and on high speed.
Indigestion, she told herself. It’s just indigestion.
* * *
Although she’d lived next to his apartment for several months, Jude hadn’t paid a lot of attention to his next-door neighbor.
She kept to herself and barely acknowledged him, even when he’d tried talking to her a couple of times when she’d first moved in.
Honestly, until that morning, when he’d really looked at her for the first time, he’d have guessed her to be a lot older than the thirty or so she was.
She dressed much older, acted much older, and had never even glanced his way, much less made eye contact before today.
Not that she necessarily was dressed older now, more just dressed to hide whatever was beneath.
She wore hospital-issue scrubs in a faded gray color that hung on her body much as sackcloth would, leaving her shapeless, plain, and, at first look, a bit drab.
Interesting, because, as he’d noticed that morning, she had really great eyes behind those hideous monstrosities posing as glasses. She should seriously consider investing in contact lenses.
She had good skin and amazing cheekbones, too. He’d dated models who’d gone under the knife for cheekbones that weren’t nearly as impressive.
Not that his neighbor did a thing to accent them. Mainly, it seemed her goal was to hide every God-given physical attribute she’d been blessed with. Why? Why would a young, healthy woman underplay herself?
Because she was a doctor and wanted to be taken seriously? Or had something happened in her past that had made her not want men to notice her physically?
Why did it even matter how she dressed and what had made her choose to do so?
All that flashed through his mind in the half-second his gaze connected with hers and recognition hit.
Some other emotion punched him in the gut, too, but he figured that was exhaustion, worry, and adrenaline battling around for dominance.
“Thank you,” he told her for giving him the okay to stay, not that he’d been going to leave.
Short of interfering with Keeley’s care, he’d have stuck by her side.
Just as he had after he’d made it out of the building and back to the ground, Jude had ignored the exhaustion in his own body, ignored his boss’s insistence that he get himself checked out and tended to, and had stayed with the child.
Just as he’d stayed with her in the ambulance.
Had Paul not been the paramedic in charge that might not have flown, but fortunately his friend had been.
If only he could have found Keeley a few minutes quicker.
Thank God they’d gotten out when they had because his instincts hadn’t been wrong.
Within seconds of their clearing the building, one of the outer walls and the remainder of the roof had caved in.
Had they not already been outside the inferno, they wouldn’t ever have been.
A sobering thought.
“Jude, man, step back,” Paul said, grabbing Jude’s arm. “Let the doctor check her patient.”
“Seriously, he can stay,” his neighbor repeated, then began examining Keeley while the paramedic gave her further run-down on what had happened and the girl’s objective findings and care while in the ambulance.
Without pausing in her examination, his neighbor gave the nurse more orders. Then, without turning to Jude, she asked him, “You are who saved her from a burning building?”
He tried not to let her incredulousness as she’d said “you”, as if she didn’t believe him capable of anything of the sort, get to him.
Watching as she parted Keeley’s eyelids and shone a light into her eyes, checking her pupil reflexes, he shrugged. “Just did my job.”
Although not as well as he should have because he should have found her sooner. If he had, her little body might not be marred from burns from who knew what she’d done prior to hiding underneath her mother’s bed. She wouldn’t be unconscious, wouldn’t have needed the trip to the emergency room by ambulance. If only they could have gotten her out when they’d gotten the other tenants of the building, when they’d gotten her mother and sister out.
“Ha, don’t let him fool you.” Paul spoke up, gesturing to Jude and not stopping, despite Jude’s shake of his head in hopes of silencing his friend.
“He should have been wearing a cape today, because everyone had already been ordered out of the building. He just didn’t listen. Never does.” Paul shook his head. “First one in, last one out.”
“An adrenaline junkie, eh?” his neighbor asked, still not looking his way. She checked Keeley’s gag reflex and continued with her assessment.
The weight of his uniform suddenly pulled at his shoulders as he went to shrug again, making the movement require a lot more effort than it should have. He was tired. So tired.
“Or someone who couldn’t live with himself if he left a kid in a burning building,” he heard himself admit.
Besides, there was no one waiting on him to come home to prevent him from taking risks. He purposely kept his relationships simple. Had never been tempted to do otherwise.
Not since Nina.
His neighbor’s gaze lifted to his and something shifted in her blue-green eyes, giving them the effect of shimmering sea water behind her glasses.
Oh, hell.
Maybe he’d inhaled too many fumes, too.
Or maybe it was because he’d just thought of Nina.
Whatever the cause, his head spun and he felt off kilter.
Way off kilter.
Like he might have to sit down.
He probably did need to rehydrate and replenish electrolytes. He’d sweated a bucket in that inferno and his uniform clung to him like a second skin, as did his sweat-smashed helmet hair.
That’s why he felt dizzy.
Not because of whatever the odd emotion in—he glanced at her name badge—Dr. Sarah Grayson’s eyes had been.
Rather than say anything further to him, she gave more orders to the nurse, ordering tests and treatments and things that were vaguely familiar but went far beyond Jude’s basic first-aid skills.
“I need to intubate stat,” she told the nurse. “She has internal swelling that’s going to get worse. We need to act now before her airway becomes too swollen to get the tube down.”
She said what size intubation tube she wanted and what anesthetic she’d like Keeley to be given to ease the discomfort of having the line introduced down her throat and into her lungs. If the girl regained consciousness, she wouldn’t want it to be due to discomfort while being intubated.
As if she’d predicted what was about to happen, Keeley’s oxygen saturation dropped several points and the monitor alarm sounded.
Everyone hurried, setting up trays, responding to whatever Sarah told them to do. A nurse asked Jude to step back and he did so, knowing he was in the way while holding Keeley’s arm.
Letting the girl’s wrist go left him feeling bereft. As long as he’d been feeling the warmth of her skin, he could tell himself she was going to be okay, that he hadn’t been too late.
* * *
Exhausted, but running on adrenaline, Sarah went to the private waiting area where she’d had a nurse bring Jude hours ago.
The emergency room had calmed down just enough for Sarah to take a much-needed break. She’d suspected her neighbor would still be in the small private lounge, waiting until he was allowed to see the girl in the pediatric intensive care unit where Sarah had transferred her to once she’d established an airway and stabilized the girl.
Thank God she’d gotten the line in on the first try. Keeley’s lung tissue had already swollen and Sarah had felt the extra resistance.
She’d checked on the girl’s mother and younger sister, who’d also been checked into the emergency department. Apparently, they’d gotten out of the fire much earlier than Keeley as their injuries had been minor and they’d arrived by private car.
The young mother had been allowed to see Keeley for a few minutes, then the worn-out woman and her toddler daughter had left the hospital with a friend as her businessman husband spent a lot of time working overseas.
Sarah couldn’t imagine what the mother was going through, to have lost her home, her things, and to have almost lost one of her daughters.
The woman had just left and, although Keeley wasn’t allowed visitors, Sarah planned to let Jude see the girl if he was still there.
A firefighter? Who would have believed the sexy man she lived next door to was an everyday hero who risked his life to save others?
Not her that morning, for sure.
Good grief, he could have been killed.
Paul, one of her favorite paramedics, had later brought in a pedestrian who’d been hit by a taxi. He’d gone on and on about his buddy Jude and what a real-life hero he was.
A real-life hero who was apparently as dog-tired as she was.
Stretched out in a chair, his eyes closed, Sarah took advantage of the opportunity to freely look at him.
As much as was possible for someone as unbelievably handsome as he was, he looked awful. His hair was matted to his head. He reeked of smoke and sweat and dirty man. His heavy overcoat was in the chair next to the one he slept in.
He needed a shower.
Which, of course, brought her brain back to that morning when he’d been squeaky clean and wrapped in a towel.
She closed her eyes.
No. No. No.
She did not want that image in her mind. Not now. Not when she looked at him and saw a man who’d risked his life to save a little girl.
Not when she saw someone who might have substance beneath those chiseled abs.
She didn’t want to like him.
He was a playboy.
Then again, maybe he went through so many women because of not wanting to get into a serious relationship due to his high-risk job.
No, she corrected herself again. No. No. No. She was not going to make excuses for his womanizing ways.
Wasn’t going to happen.
Only then he opened his eyes and caught her staring.
The intensity in his baby blues warned she might make lots of excuses for this man.
CHAPTER THREE (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f)
“KEELEY,” JUDE SAID, fighting a yawn as he sat up in the waiting-room chair.
Even as hyped up as he’d been from the fire search and rescue, he couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep. Then again, searching a burning building drained a man from the anxiety, the adrenaline, the extreme heat, the sweat. Sometimes after a rescue he’d feel so tired he thought he might sleep a week.
“Is she still alive?” He prayed so. He’d gotten to her as quickly as he could. He knew that. But sometimes as quick as a person could just wasn’t enough.
“Yes, she’s stable,” his neighbor told him from where she stood a few feet away. “It was touch and go for a short bit due to her pulmonary edema, but she responded to the medications and is holding her own.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Looking more than a little tired herself, Sarah sank into the chair opposite him and stared across the few feet separating them.
Which gave him the opportunity to study her face full on.
She really did have amazing eyes. And great cheekbones.
Her lips were full and perfectly bowed. Kissable.
Where had that thought come from?
“Actually, all the thanks go to you. I shudder to think what would have happened if you hadn’t found her.”
He knew what would have happened and that was why he did his job. He loved being a firefighter. Not that he could save every person, but he gave it his best. Always.
“Every firefighter’s nightmare. Not finding someone,” he admitted, raking his fingers through his matted hair. “The kind of stuff that messes with your head.”
Maybe he should have gone home, showered, then come back. He supposed that would have been better than passing out in a private waiting area. Yet he’d not been able to leave. Not until he’d known Keeley was okay.
Sarah’s plump lower lip disappeared between her teeth for a brief second, and then she asked, “Does it mess with your head, Jude?”
Her saying his name for the first time messed with his head.
Big time.
Which made no sense.
As hadn’t the fact he found her lips kissable.
She wasn’t the type of woman he messed around with. He preferred women who knew the score and were okay with that. Dr. Sarah Grayson didn’t seem the one-night-stand kind.
Yet he’d be lying if he didn’t admit there was something about her that appealed to him in a major way.
Must be the day he’d had and that despite the fact he’d chugged a couple of sports drinks, he still felt dry to the bone.
“Some days more than others,” he answered.
Today, for instance, everything was getting to him. The woman sitting across from him had intrigued him that morning.
She intrigued him now.
The in between had been a living hell and maybe she was an angel sent to redeem him.
Lord knew, he needed redeeming.
“Like today?” She read his mind.
He shrugged. “You trying to map out my psyche on the DSM-V, Doc?”
At his question, her brow arched. Then she offered up a small smile and it was as if the sun had come out on a cloudy day.
“I’m not that type of specialist,” she pointed out, the light shining in her eyes saying he wasn’t going to get a further answer to his question. “Do you want to see Keeley?”
“Can I?” He hadn’t expected to get to see the child. Not tonight when she was still so critical. He’d stayed to find out how she was and had then dozed off in exhaustion.
Odd, at the moment he felt oddly refreshed. Which was absolutely crazy because he was starved, dehydrated, and grimy as hell. He probably smelled like he’d been there, too.
Most of the women he knew would have been pinching their noses and ordering him to shower. Then again, most of the women he knew liked the wealthy Davenport side of him more than the real him firefighter side.
His neighbor didn’t currently look bothered by his physical state one way or the other. But that morning, when she’d raked those sea-green eyes over him, she’d been bothered. He’d seen it in the way she’d swallowed hard, in the way her pulse had throbbed at her throat just above her loose scarf, in the way she’d nervously wet her lips.
Sweet heavens, she’d just gulped and licked her lips again.
Which meant what exactly? He wasn’t sure. That she found him physically distracting even when he was a mess?
Why did that possibility make him feel all he-man?
“Isn’t seeing Keeley what you’ve waited for?” She answered his question with one of her own.
“Either that or I just needed a quick nap to regain my strength.”
“Busy night ahead?” Her sarcasm couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d taken out a billboard.
“Aren’t they all?” he answered, gauging her response. That he’d confused her was apparent on her lovely face.
She watched him from narrowed eyes. “If I didn’t already know the answer, I’d ask if you ever take anything seriously. Thanks to this evening, I know you do.”
“I should set the record straight, then. I only joined the fire department to get women.”
Her cheeks turned a bright pink, then she gave him a disgusted, I knew it look. “I figured as much.”
Jude stifled a chuckle at her defensive arm-crossing and chin-lifting. “Are you saying you think I’m shallow, Sarah?”
Cheeks still glowing, she rolled her eyes. “You like to tease, don’t you?”
Not since Nina.
The thought blindsided him and he almost grimaced, but kept from doing so at the last second. No way was he letting thoughts of Nina into his head again today. Not now. Not at the hospital.
Not when his doctor cousin, Charles, could be around.
So, instead of letting his mind go to the past, he focused on the woman sitting across from him, grateful for the fire in her eyes.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to liking how you respond.” He did like her intelligence, her quick wit, that spark in her eyes. He was used to being physically attracted to women. Women were beautiful creatures. But with Sarah the attraction was something more than her gorgeous eyes and amazing cheekbones. The flash in those eyes was what drew him in, made him want to know more about the woman beneath the deceptive outer layer.
A want he hadn’t felt since...nope, he wasn’t going to think of her.
“Why?” Sarah asked, studying him as if he were some gross bug under a magnifying glass.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not one of your women.”
He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. Hadn’t he just been thinking the same thing a few moments before?
His women lived in the moment, were experienced in the ways of the world, and were no more interested in anything beyond immediate pleasure than he was.
Unlike the scowling woman sitting across from him.
The scowling woman whose smile had lit up dark corners of his very being, an addictive feeling he’d like to sample again.
Although some dark corners might be best left in the shadows.
Unable to resist teasing her further, he waggled his brows. “Would you like to be?”
Her jaw dropped. “No!”
He gave a low laugh at her outrage. “That was quick. I think I’m offended. Is it my cologne?”
“Right.” She glared. “Because you’re so easily offended that a woman saying no just breaks your heart.”
She might be saying no, but her eyes were singing an entirely different tune. They were shooting fire of feminine awareness. Interesting.
“Sure you don’t want to think about it?” he teased, enjoying the blush in her cheeks.
“Positive. Some things a girl just knows.”
“Yeah?” He arched his brow. “There’s some things a woman just knows, too.”
Her gaze searched his and her voice cracked a little when she asked, “Such as?”
“How she responds to a man.” There were definitely sparks flying back and forth. He might have had a rough day but he wasn’t hallucinating the energy between them.
Not that he understood the chemistry, but he’d have to be brain dead not to recognize the man-woman pull.
“Don’t go confusing me with one of your bimbos,” she warned, chin notching upward. “I’m not interested in a guy like you.”
“A guy like me? Oh, yeah.” He grinned, refusing to be insulted. “We established that I’m shallow.”
Her gaze narrowed further, but the outraged look wasn’t working. Not when her lips twitched.
“I didn’t call you shallow,” she pointed out.
“You didn’t correct me.”
“Because you weren’t wrong,” she countered.
He arched his brow.
Rather than answer, she jumped up from the chair and gave him an expectant look. “Do you or do you not want to see Keeley with me?”
Standing, he grinned. “I most definitely want to see Keeley with you, Doc.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” He kind of liked the nickname. It fit. Plus, she needed a nickname to lighten her up a bit. “It’s as good a nickname as any.”
“You don’t need a nickname for me.”
“Sure I do, so I can call it out when you’re ninja-ing in and out of your apartment.”
“Ninja-ing?”
“That thing you do where you come and go and hope no one sees.”
“Whereas you hang around in the hallway long enough to make sure everyone sees you in your God-given glory?”
Lord, he loved her sharp wit, that whatever he threw out, she had a quick response. “Does that bother you?”
“Of course not. You can do whatever you want. In your apartment. With your bimbos.”
“They aren’t bimbos.”
“They’re not bright and upstanding citizens.”
“For all you know about them, they could be.”
“I know they spent the night with a man who used them so that checks bright right off their list of attributes.”
“Sex for mutual pleasure isn’t my using them any more than it is their using me.”
“So it’s a case of mutual using and that somehow makes it okay? Keep fooling yourself if you want, but there are some of us smart enough to know better.”
He was standing so close to her now that he was looking straight down into her eyes, was tempted to remove her glasses so he could more fully see into their depths.
“I suppose a really pessimistic, prudish person might see mutual pleasure that way.” He egged her on, liking the spark his words elicited.
“And who are you? Mr. Optimism? Going around spreading happiness and cheer?” she scoffed with an exaggerated eye roll. “More like spreading something else with how many different women I’ve seen come out of your apartment.”
His lips twitched. “You keeping tabs?”
“Hardly, but I’m not blind.”
Arguable with those ugly glasses she wore.
“For the record, I’m not spreading anything.” He wanted the record straight. He wouldn’t let himself delve into why it mattered, but he needed her to know the truth. “I’m a safety kind of guy. Always.”
“Who runs into burning buildings when everyone else is running out? Yeah, try selling me another one.”
“Someone has to do it.”
Her chin tilted upward and her gaze didn’t waver behind the thick glasses. “Good thing there’s you.”
“Yeah, good thing.”
* * *
A bone-weary Sarah ninja-ed down the hallway and stealthily let herself into her apartment, pausing in her open doorway to glance at Jude’s closed door.
So much had happened since that morning when he’d been standing in that doorway.
He’d been flirting with her at the hospital.
She should have checked him for hypoxemia-induced psychosis related to smoke inhalation.
Because no way was he in his right mind.
Or maybe it was her who wasn’t in her right mind.
Maybe she’d accidentally inhaled some anesthesia or hallucinogenic medication that was messing with her head.
Something was messing with her head.
More like someone.
Because Jude’s teasing and hot looks refused to leave her mind even long after he’d left the hospital.
For the rest of her shift and an hour into the next when she’d stayed to help catch up the overload of patients, she’d battled with the facts that Jude was a womanizer, an incurable flirt, heroic when he’d rushed into a burning building to save Keeley, and sweet when he’d waited at the hospital.
Heroic. Sweet. Not adjectives she’d have ever thought she’d attach to the incorrigible towel-wearing man from that morning.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced toward his closed apartment door again. Was he home?
Should she check on him, make sure he was all right, that the smoke truly hadn’t gotten to him, that he’d rehydrated well?
Then again, he might not be alone and the absolute last thing she wanted was to see Jude Davenport with another woman twice in the same day.
Especially after he’d so blatantly flirted with her.
Especially after, despite her best attempts not to, she’d so blatantly liked his flirting.
So, her neighbor had a few redeeming qualities.
That didn’t mean they should become friends or have anything to do with one another.
They shouldn’t.
Best thing she could do was forget today had even happened and stay far, far away from the man at all costs.
Determined that she was going to do exactly that, Sarah quietly closed her apartment door.
She was going to shower, eat whatever she could find and quickly prepare, sleep, and not think about her neighbor.
* * *
After he’d left the hospital, Jude had returned to the fire hall, showered, filled out appropriate paperwork, then come home to make himself something to eat.
He’d had plans with friends, but had opted to cancel, deciding he’d rather have a simple meal at home, a glass of wine, relax, and enjoy his apartment’s amazing view of the city he loved so much.
Jude enjoyed cooking, enjoyed throwing ingredients together that pleased his senses and filled his stomach. He’d never been formally trained, but was pretty good. Even Nina had thought so.
Nina. She’d snuck into his thoughts too often today. Why?
Then again, thinking he could go to the hospital where Charles worked and not think of his cousin’s late wife was foolish. After all, hadn’t Jude introduced the woman he had been in love with to his cousin and she’d fallen head over heels for the emergency room doctor instead?
That Nina had fallen for Charles, rather than Jude, had never sat well, had ruined his friendship with Nina and left him on edge around his cousin. That feeling hadn’t gone away after Nina and Charles had married. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Nina trying to repair the damage to their friendship hadn’t helped. Feeling betrayed, angry, Jude had refused to have anything to do with her. They’d fought and never spoken again.
Nina’s heartbreaking death due to complications from giving birth to twins had left an inconsolable hole in Jude’s heart that bled anew every time he saw Charles so he avoided him. Grief, guilt, anger, so many emotions ran rampant when his past collided with the present. Thankfully, he’d not bumped into his cousin during the hours he’d been at the hospital waiting on news of Keeley.
Which brought his mind back to who he had bumped into at the hospital.
His uptight neighbor.
Confusing, plain Jane Sarah Grayson who wasn’t really so plain beneath her attempts to appear to be.
An emergency room doctor.
Like Charles.
Pulling the baking dish out of his oven with a potholder, Jude lifted the lid and made a small slice into the chicken. Almost done. Another fifteen minutes or so and it would be perfect.
Restless from thoughts of Nina, of his intriguing neighbor, from life, Jude walked into his living room, meaning to stand at his floor-to-ceiling glass windows to stare out at the New York City skyline.
Instead, he frowned and strained to figure out what the noise was that he could barely make out.
Then it hit him.
A smoke alarm was going off in the unit next to his.
Sarah’s apartment.
CHAPTER FOUR (#uebdf7d15-23be-52b7-83fb-28bb98cd898f)
HOW COULD AN intelligent woman who could save lives not cook a simple piece of toast without burning it?
Okay, Sarah didn’t usually burn her food, but this wasn’t the first time. But she didn’t recall ever doing so to the point that her alarm went crazy.
How did she get the thing to go off?
Pulling the plug on the toaster oven, she closed the door, rushed to where the alarm blared over the doorway. The baggy sleeve of her way oversized sweatshirt flopped as she fanned a dishtowel back and forth, hoping it would clear the smoke and shut the thing up.
“Stop that,” she ordered the shrill bell, dancing around beneath it as she waved the towel with gusto and thought about how much she detested cooking. Almost as much as she detested this horrible alarm. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”
Was she going to have to call Maintenance? Or maybe they just automatically showed up when one of the apartment’s smoke alarms went off?
A loud knock pounded at her apartment door.
Well, that answered that. Maintenance had just shown up.
Which was a good thing since her fanning wasn’t working.
Only when, flustered, she flung her front door open, Maintenance wasn’t who stood there.
The man she’d been thinking about not thinking about stood there, wearing jeans, a plain white V-necked T-shirt, and nothing on his feet.
Good grief. He’d metamorphosed back into a sexy beast.
Not that he hadn’t been sexy at the hospital.
Clearly, he had, because he’d twitterpated her to the point of burning her toast and filling her kitchen with smoke.
His blue gaze raked over her, obviously satisfying any doubts as to whether or not she was okay, and then he grinned. “Miss me?”
Pretending all was fine, that there wasn’t a loud shrill screaming behind her, she wrinkled her nose at him, wishing she had on her glasses to shield herself from his probing gaze. “No.”
Why on earth would he think she had? Before that morning, they’d never even made eye contact, much less spoken to each other.
His eyes danced with humor. “You sure about that?”
Wishing the stupid ear-piercing alarm would go silent so it would quit rattling her brain, she lifted her chin and stared straight into his eyes, thinking it very unfair that a man had his stunning eyes and long lashes. “Positive. Go away.”
He laughed. “That’s not the sound of your smoke alarm beckoning your friendly neighborhood firefighter your way?”
Oh. That’s what he’d meant?
“No.” If she looked sure enough, haughty enough, despite the obvious alarm blasting in the background, he’d take the hint and leave, right?
Nope.
Looking way too comfortable in his perfectly fitting jeans and just right chest-hugging T-shirt, he arched a thick masculine brow.
“Yes,” she corrected, because, really, it wasn’t as if he didn’t recognize that annoying sound. Pretending otherwise just made her look foolish. “It is my smoke alarm, but it’s not supposed to beckon you. Go home.”
He shrugged as if it was no big deal, then asked, “You don’t want me to turn off your alarm?”
“Could you, please?” she heard herself say, moving aside to let him into her apartment as if his words had been some secret magic phrase to grant entrance. “I can’t get the thing to shut up.”
His lips twitched. “If you ask nicely.”
What? Her mouth fell open. Was he kidding her? But before she could come back with some retort, he came into her apartment and was following the smoke signals and noise to her kitchen.
When her gaze dropped to his jeans-clad butt that could sell millions of pairs of pants if someone would stick an ad up on a Times Square billboard, Sarah blamed the noise for interfering with her brain waves. No way would she have otherwise visually ogled the man’s bottom, lit-up-billboard-worthy or not.
Within seconds, he’d pulled over a chair and climbed onto it. Looking like some sexy god up on his perch, he reset her smoke alarm.
Despite how much he annoyed her, the silence had her wanting to wrap her arms around him in gratitude.
“Bless you!” she praised. “That thing was driving me crazy.”
Turning, he stepped down from the chair and carried it back to where he’d grabbed it from. “No problem.”
“How did you know?”
Facing her, hands on his narrow hips, he grinned. “Told you. I succumbed to the sound of your mating call.”
She shook her head. Maybe in denial of his claim. Maybe in denial of memories of those hips wrapped in a towel and nothing more. Maybe in denial of the fact that for the first time in her life she was an ogler. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Mating call. As if.
“I didn’t lure you here,” she choked out of her dry mouth. Seriously, her vocal cords felt like they’d been put through a dehydration machine.
His amusement apparent, he cocked a brow. “Really? You expect me to believe your smoke alarm accidentally set itself off on the same day you learned I’m a firefighter?”
It did sound fairly incredible.
“Admit it,” he continued, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You wanted to see me and issued an invitation you knew I wouldn’t refuse.”
“I...” She grimaced. He made a good point. One that made any argument she issued lack credibility, even though she hadn’t intentionally set off her smoke alarm. Neither had she wanted to see him.
Quite the opposite.
She’d seen him too much that day already.
Seen and liked. Even the dirty, worn-out endearing hospital version. Unfortunately.
Wincing, he took in the smoke still escaping from her toaster oven. “You didn’t have to really set fire to anything, Sarah. A simple knock on my door and a verbal invitation would have done.” He shrugged. “Or, if you wanted something more dramatic, a match next to that sensitive baby there would have had it screaming for me.”
“I didn’t...” She paused, flustered by his teasing, by how her heart pounded that he was there, inside her apartment, talking directly to her, that he was using the teasing flirty tone as he had at the hospital.
“Need rescuing?” He finished her sentence for her. He walked over to the toaster oven, opened the door, grimaced at the burned mess inside. “Sure you did. In more ways than one. What was that?”
“Toast.”
His eyes widened. “That was toast?”
At his question, something inside Sarah snapped.
“Yes, it was. Toast. Toast that was going to be my dinner, because I was hungry and tired and... Don’t you judge me...you...you...” She searched for a derogatory name, sure there were thousands just on the tip of her tongue. Unfortunately, none sprang forth.
That’s when the day’s events took their toll and she did something totally out of character.
She watered up and fought tears.
Uh-uh. No way.
She was not going to cry in front of him.
Not now. Not ever.
She was not going to cry period.
She did not cry and most certainly if she ever did it wouldn’t be over burnt toast.
“Sarah?” His tone was no longer teasing, but showed concern. “Are you okay?”
Embarrassed, exhausted, ready to call it a night, she took a deep breath. “I’m tired and hungry and my dinner is chunks of charcoal and you annoy me. No big deal.”
He eyed her way too closely for comfort.
“You were really going to have toast for dinner?” he asked, ignoring the rest of her comment.
“I was going to spread hummus on it,” she defended. She’d showered, thrown on the baggy sweats, and had planned to eat a quick bite and crash. She did the same thing quite frequently on the days she worked the emergency room and got held up beyond her normal twelve-hour shift.
His nose curled again. “Hummus and toast. No, thank you.”
“For your information, I like hummus and toast.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Your hummus and toast must be better than any I’ve ever had.”
“It’s good. Stick around and you can taste for yourself.” Sarah heard herself say the words, but had no clue where they came from. Not in a million years would she invite her neighbor who started his days with a different woman every day of the week to stay for dinner.
Good grief. What would he think?
He had come to turn off her alarm, so she couldn’t really retract her invitation, could she? Not without seeming ungrateful and rude.
“Tempting,” he ventured, not sounding anything of the sort. “But I have a better offer.”
Of course he did. Women probably lined up to cook gourmet meals for him. And she’d heard first-hand that morning what else they offered.
“Why don’t you come to my place and let me cook for you?”
Surprised, she opened her mouth to refuse, but he continued speaking before she could.
“Before you say no, the food is already in the oven, the wine is chilled, and I have a view that’s even more amazing than yours.”
He’d noticed her view? He had food in the oven? Why did he have wine chilling?
Then it hit her.
“I pulled you away from company, didn’t I?”
He frowned. “No. Why would you think that?”
Because his apartment door was like a model runway exit, always with some beautiful woman walking through it.
But his look said he’d been alone.
“You’re cooking for just yourself?”
“I like to eat.”
Wondering at his apartment view, at what he’d cooked and how edible it was, she eyed him suspiciously. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Just offering to share my dinner.” He glanced toward the burned remains of her toast. “And looking out for my own interests of having an uninterrupted meal, of course. I don’t want you attempting more toast and setting your alarm off again.”
“Ha-ha. Real funny. The only reason my toast caught fire is because I was so tired.” And had been distracted by thoughts of him, but she wasn’t telling him that part.
“Fine. You can take a cat nap on my sofa while I finish up dinner.”
As if.
“What are you serving?” she ventured out of curiosity, but with no intention of even entertaining the possibility of actually agreeing to have dinner with him. “I might prefer burnt toast.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You won’t. We’re having Chicken Marsala served on a bed of angel-hair pasta, steamed asparagus with a light butter sauce, and a red wine because I prefer red to white.”
Of course he did. Red stood for passion and white was just bland, right? Jude was a red kind of guy.
She blinked. “Are you for real?”
“You could pinch me and find out.”
His eyes twinkled with that sparkle that had her heart doing funny floppy things in her chest.
“You wish.”
* * *
Jude did wish.
As crazy as the thought was, he wanted Sarah to pinch him.
Not to see if he was real, but to wake him up because he was moving in some type of haze.
What was he thinking, inviting her to dinner? Not about how beautiful she was without her thick glasses blocking her face.
She was, but he was being a good neighbor.
That was it.
He wasn’t inviting her to his place for anything more.
Even if she did have gorgeous eyes, amazing cheekbones, and full, pink, kissable lips.
“Is that how you lure women to your apartment? With promises of feeding them?”
“Something like that,” he answered, wondering why she thought the worst of him when it came to women.
Maybe through her eyes, there were too many women, and maybe, if he was honest, he’d admit to it as well.
But he never deceived any of them or made promises he had no intention of keeping. They all knew the score. He was a one-night-stand kind of guy and the women he invited to his apartment came for one reason.
It wasn’t so Jude could cook for them.
Sarah wasn’t like the women he brought to his apartment for sex.
“I’m not interested in being lured to your apartment.”
Suddenly feeling weary, restless, and as if maybe Sarah was right not to want to come to his apartment, he sighed. “I’m inviting you to my apartment to eat dinner.” He put emphasis on the word. “You’re tired. I’m tired. We’ve both had a long day. I want a good meal, to relax, and a good night’s rest, Sarah. Nothing more. My invitation to feed you is with no strings attached and no hidden motives to trick you into my bed.”
He’d never had any need to trick women into his bed. There was always one ready and willing to fill the empty spot in his life.
Tonight he’d just wanted to be alone.
Which didn’t quite jibe with his burning desire for Sarah to say yes.
“Because I’m not your type?” she questioned, confirming his earlier thoughts.
“You’re not my type.” He meant to say more, to elaborate on the reasons why, to elaborate on the fact that she intrigued him and he’d like to let down her hair, see her smile, hear her laughter so he’d know what it sounded like, but her sigh of relief had him holding his tongue.
“Fine.” She didn’t sound or look happy about agreeing so the smile and laughter might not be forthcoming anytime soon. “In that case, I’ll eat with you, but I’m eating, checking out this view you bragged about, and then I’m leaving, capisce?”
* * *
Sarah had bought her beloved apartment for three main reasons. Its walking distance proximity to Manhattan Mercy, it fitting within her budget, barely, and the spectacular view.
Just like the man, Jude’s view really did blow her away.
As did his apartment.
At some point, someone had taken two, maybe three, apartments and converted them into one luxurious one. His living room dwarfed hers, as did the floor-to-ceiling views of the twinkling New York City nightlife. Just wow.
Forget needing food. She’d just sit here, sip on the glass of wine he’d given her to keep her occupied while he finished up their meal, stare out at the skyline, and soak up the energy of the busy city she adored, to revive her exhausted soul.
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