shoved her hair out of her face, which still looked far too pale, even a little green, although that didn’t take away from her beauty. Once upon a time she’d been a gorgeous study of sexy, frou-frou feminine mystery to him.
Some things never changed.
As if she felt his gaze, she looked up, and from fifty feet, between which were other firefighters, equipment and general chaos, she found him.
Between them the air seemed to snap, crackle, pop.
Six years ago, the thought of a long-distance relationship had been as alien to him as a close-distance relationship, and he’d told himself he had no choice but to break things off, even though that had really just been an excuse.
He’d broken things off because she’d scared him, she’d scared him deep. And apparently, given the hard kick his heart gave his ribs, she still did.
She’d been able to get inside him, make him feel things that hadn’t been welcome, and, yeah, he’d run like a little girl.
He felt like running now.
But this time it was Kenzie who turned away. Dustin unfolded a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, while Brooke checked her pupils, then dabbed at the various cuts on her face.
Kenzie sat still, eyes closed now, looking starkly pale but alive.
Alive was good.
She huddled beneath the blanket, cradling a wrist, nodding to something Brooke asked her. Aidan knew that Brooke and Dustin, both close friends, would take good care of her. They took good care of everyone, which meant that Kenzie was in the very best hands.
Still in the thick of the organized chaos around him, Aidan took a second to let his gaze sweep over her. She really did seem as okay as he could hope for, and he told himself to turn away.
He was good at that. After all, he’d learned to do so at a young age from his own family, who’d shuffled him around more than a deck of cards on poker night. Yeah, he was good at walking a way. Or at least good at pretending he didn’t care when others walked away from him.
And after all, he’d done the same to her.
God, he’d been cruel to her all those years ago. Not that he’d meant to be. Going through the academy had been a life lesson for him. He could belong to a “family.” He could make long-lasting friends. He could love someone with all his heart.
But loving his fellow firefighters like the brothers they’d become was one thing.
Loving Kenzie had been another entirely.
Since she’d left, he’d seen her only on TV. As a rule, he didn’t watch soaps. He didn’t watch much TV at all, actually. If he wasn’t working, he was renovating the fixer-upper house he’d bought last year, emphasis on fixer-upper. If he wasn’t doing that, he was playing basketball, or something else that didn’t cost any money because the fixer-upper had eaten his savings.
But there’d been the occasional night where he’d sat himself in front of a game and caught a promo for Kenzie’s soap. There’d also been the few times at the station where one of the guys had flipped on the TV during her show.
Three times exactly—and yeah, he remembered each and every one. The first had been five years ago, and she’d been wearing the teeniest, tiniest, blackest, stringiest bikini in the history of teeny-tiny black string bikinis, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head with a few wild curls escaping, looking outrageously sexy as she’d seduced her on-screen lover. It’d taken him a few attempts to get the channel changed, and even then it hadn’t mattered. That bikini had stuck with him for a good long while.
The second time had been a few Christmases back. She’d been wearing a siren-red, slinky evening dress designed to drive men absolutely wild. She’d been standing beneath some mistletoe, looking up at some “stud of the month.” Aidan hadn’t been any quicker with the remote that time, and had watched the entire, agonizing kiss.
The third time had been for the daytime Emmys. She’d accepted her award, thanking Blake for always believing in her, and then had thanked some guy named Chad.
Chad.
What kind of a name was Chad?
And where was Chad now, huh? Certainly not hauling her off a burning boat and saving her cute little ass. Guys named Chad probably only swam when playing water polo.
In the ambulance, Dustin said something to Kenzie, and she opened her eyes, flashing a very brief smile, but it was enough.
She was okay.
Aidan forced himself to move, to get back to the job at hand, and it was a big one. The explosions had caught the boats on either side of Blake’s Girl, escalating the danger and damages. They had the dock evacuated, and as the sun streaked the sky, they were working past containment, working to get the flames one-hundred-percent out.
With one last look at Kenzie, Aidan entered the fray.
IT TOOK HOURS.
Aidan and his crew piled into their rigs just as the lunch crowd began to clutter the streets of Santa Rey. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the imprint of Kenzie in his arms. He’d held onto her for what, three minutes tops? And yet she’d filled his head and his senses, and for those one-hundred-and-eighty seconds, time had slipped away, making him feel like that twenty-four-year-old punk he’d once been.
He’d been with Kenzie for one glorious summer, and she’d wanted to stay with him, which should have been flattering. She’d wanted to wear his ring and have a house and a white picket fence.
And his children.
But it hadn’t been flatteringat all.It’d been terrifying.
So he’d acted like a stupid, shortsighted guy. There was no prettying that up, or changing the memory. Fact was fact. He’d gotten a great job, and he’d had the world at his feet, including, he’d discovered, lots of women who found his chosen profession incredibly sexy.
He’d not been mature enough to realize what he already had; he’d been a first-class asshole. He’d sent Kenzie away, pretended not to look back and had filled his life with firefighting, women, basketball, wood-working, more women…
A hand clasped his shoulder. “Hey, Mr. 2008. Home sweet home.”
“Shutup.”They’d pulled into the station. He hopped out of the rig and went straight to Dustin, who was cleaning out the ambulance.“ The victim? How is she?”
Cristina poked her head out from the station kitchen. “Hey, guys, there’s food—” At the sight of Dustin, who she’d gone out with several times before unceremoniously discarding him without explanation, she broke off. “Oh. You’re here.”
Dustin looked at her drily. “What, is the food only for the staff that you haven’t slept with and dumped?”
Aidan winced at the awkward silence, and if he wasn’t in such a desperate hurry to hear about Kenzie, he might have refereed for the two of them, because if anyone needed refereeing, it was these two. “The vic,” he
