don’t have to eat it if you don’t want,” he said, shrugging as he held the plate up to her. “I just...” He shrugged again. “It’s your first day and all.”
He’d made breakfast for her.
Her precious, precious angel boy had made her breakfast.
Because it was her first day...and all.
They were going to be okay. She knew for certain now that Reese knew about her. She hadn’t received a call telling her not to come into work. Which meant she was still employed.
The rest—her plan, Elliott’s future—would all fall into place now.
When she could speak without tears clogging her throat, she thanked her son, careful not to let too much emotion spill onto him and make him withdraw. Taking the sandwich with her as they left the apartment, she ate every single bite.
SLEEP MIGHT HAVE been good. But it wasn’t the first time he’d shown up at work without it. Wouldn’t be the last.
When a fire was raging out of control and there weren’t enough fighters with the necessary training, sleep wasn’t an option.
Today Reese had a personal fire raging and he wasn’t going to rest until he’d put it out. Faye Walker was not going to have a first day of work. Not one second to settle in. He wanted her out.
He was waiting in the station when he saw her get out of an older, light gray, four-door sedan and head toward him.
Mark, who was in the middle of forty-eight hours on, walked past with a cup of coffee. Reese had sent Brandt home. He didn’t need his second caught in the cross fire that could very well happen after he’d had his moment with the woman who’d invaded his den.
“Send the new hire to my office as soon as she gets here,” he told Mark and strode in that direction himself, sure that his employee was staring after him. If he’d waited thirty more seconds, he could have told her himself.
If her aim was to force him to keep her on, or threaten to sue for wrongful termination if he didn’t, then let her bring it on. He wasn’t going to fire her in front of witnesses.
She wasn’t staying.
One thing didn’t make sense. If she’d meant to trap him, she wouldn’t have assumed he knew about her hire. But that phone call thing...why would she expect him to call? Unless she thought he didn’t have the balls to fire her face-to-face.
He’d gone home long enough to shower and shave, run a comb through his hair. It was shorter now than when she’d known him. He’d shaved his mustache since she’d last seen him, too. Tabitha had hated it. Said it poked her when he kissed her.
He’d had one clean uniform left. Technically Mondays were his day off. Laundry day, among other things. Instead, he was planning a trip to LA just as soon as he’d finished with the business at hand.
That was all Faye Walker was to him. Business.
And he was a master at handling his job. Which was why, at twenty-nine, he’d already made fire chief.
The knock came as expected. Sharp. Short. No hesitation.
I have to break up with you, Reese. I’m sorry.
She’d left a damned text message. Four years together, plans for a lifetime and he didn’t even warrant an in-person breakup?
Or a phone call?
He’d texted back: Okay, why?
Nine years before, that had meant pushing number buttons on a flip phone for corresponding letters. No quick task for a guy with big hands.
That had been shaking.
There’s someone else...
He hadn’t responded to that. There’d been no point.
“Come in,” he called now. He stood a few feet from the door, blocking the chairs in front of his desk, hands in his pockets.
There was no need for her to sit. She wasn’t staying.
“Reese, Mark said you wanted to see me...”
Her eyes were as blue as he remembered. And seemed to have all kinds of things to say to him.
He remembered that about her, too. It had been the promises she’d made with those eyes, as much as any words she’d ever given him, that had held him captive.
There’d been only one night he hadn’t been there for her. A night after he’d almost been hurt in a fire. He’d been facing death for the first time. Asking himself if there was more he might want out of life before he died...
“You’re going to fire me,” she said before he got a word out of his mouth.
Damn her. Reading his mind when she was his girlfriend was one thing. But now...there had to be something illegal about that. Invading a person’s mind against their will.
“I am.” She’d broken up with him in a few words. He could fire her the same way.
At least he’d given her the respect of doing it in person.
He could have texted her. Told her not to bother coming in.
“I’m going to beg you not to do so,” she said, standing there with her hands at her sides. Not at all challenging.
And yet he felt...pushed.
Reese didn’t like feeling pushed. Most particularly not by a five-foot-three-inch woman with a cute ass and a cheating heart.
“Beg all you want,” he said, meaning to hand her the paperwork he’d already filled out.
As he turned to pick up the page lying on his desk, she said, “Please, Reese, I need this job.” The pleading in her voice did his injured heart good.
He picked up the sheet and turned back to her. But he didn’t immediately hand it over.
Turned out, he wanted her to ask him again. To prolong the moment. He’d had no idea he was such a sick bastard.
But he also couldn’t believe that Faye Browning had just walked back into his life expecting to work for him as though they’d never loved each other to distraction.
Probably because she hadn’t loved him that way.
“It’s not just for me, although, of course, I need the money, but this job, here in particular...it’s...important, Reese. Truly important.”
She was looking him right in the eye. Not fidgeting. Not even blinking.
The woman was honestly and sincerely begging him.
It kind of threw him for a loop and he had to remind himself that she’d
