Chapter 2
The next day, Nate made it almost three hours lying to himself after his shift ended at seven a.m. Telling himself he wasn’t going to check on the woman he’d helped out of the fire. Pretending he could get those brown eyes out of his mind.
Sophie Alexander. Age thirty-one. Owner of Green Systems Inc. That was the lump sum of the info he’d managed to glean between the time the crew had returned to the station after the fire and now. Not nearly enough. He was compelled to find out everything about her.
Dude, you sound like a psychopath or a stalker. Rein it in.
He entered the main door of the hospital instead of going through the ER department he was much more familiar with.
No reason to call attention to the fact that he was visiting a woman he didn’t know.
Sure, he’d heard of guys following up on the victims they rescued, but…
He was afraid maybe he was too interested in seeing Sophie again.
Nothing going on inside of him felt normal or acceptable.
The need to see her again made no sense, at least not to the extent he felt it, and it meant one of two things: either he was acting like an overenthusiastic rookie about his first rescue, which wasn’t cool at all, especially for a guy who’d been fighting fires for fourteen years, or he had half a raging crush on a woman he’d never even had a conversation with before, which was, well … weird.
At the info desk, Nate whipped out his badge and flashed it at the fragile-looking but eager volunteer manning it, a woman who looked to be in her eighties. “I rescued a young woman from a fire last night and was wondering if you could give me her room number so I can check on her.”
The woman grinned warmly, as he’d expected. “I certainly can. Her name?”
Once he had the information he needed, he headed up to the third floor, wondering how many of Sophie’s family members and friends he’d have to reckon with. If her room was crowded, he’d just poke his head in, reassure himself that Sophie was okay, and get the hell out.
He needn’t have worried about it. Sophie’s room was empty of visitors.
He was momentarily stunned by that revelation, and it took him a good three seconds to focus on Sophie’s face and realize she was out cold.
He backed out of the room, alarmed. Had she lost consciousness and failed to come to yet?
He hadn’t had a clear view of her at the scene, only of the people surrounding her, working on her.
How serious was her condition? Smoke inhalation could be damn serious, but he’d assumed her case wasn’t critical based on the sole fact that she’d been conscious when he’d gotten her out of the building.
Moronic assumption on his part.
When he was nearly to the nurse’s station to inquire, he stopped.
Dumb ass. If she weren’t conscious, she’d likely be in ICU.
The lone nurse at the station, a brunette wearing scrubs with cartoon frogs all over them, looked up at him and smiled. “Hellooo,” she purred. “Something I can help you with?”
Nate flashed a smile and shook his head, then backed away. He returned to Sophie’s room, more confident that she was only napping.
He stopped a couple of feet from her bed and stared, finally taking in the sight of her, the details he’d missed when he’d flipped out before.
The bed dwarfed her, and the white sheets somehow made her skin look even paler.
She was connected to oxygen and monitors and hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d barged into her room the first time, as far as he could tell.
Her head was propped up about thirty degrees, and the blankets hit her mid-chest, revealing a stiff-looking mint-green hospital gown that did nothing for her complexion. Sophie’s dark, shoulder-length hair was a mess, sticking every which way on her head, fanning out on the pillow.
And yet his heart pounded.
He shook his head against the reaction. Sauntered toward the large window that would likely show a distant view of San Amaro Island if there weren’t layers of buildings in the way. It was only a half thought, though, as his mind and his gaze veered back to Sophie Alexander.
She hadn’t stirred, and he should probably get the hell out of here, give her some privacy.
Get some sleep himself, as he’d been up for going on thirty hours now, with the exception of finally drifting off about thirty minutes before he’d had to wake up at the station this morning.
Maybe sleep would cure the fucked-up compulsion in him to touch this woman, to pull her into his chest and protect her from further harm.
Fucked. Up.
He turned to walk out. Made it almost to the door but then stopped, the need to check one more time whether her eyes were open too overwhelming to ignore.
They weren’t.
The modest-sized room swallowed her up, and Nate couldn’t stand the idea of her waking up all alone. He picked up a wood-framed vinyl chair from the wall, set it down at the foot of her bed, and settled into it to wait.
Awareness licked at Sophie’s mind. Pain. Her head ached, and her throat burned like it was on fire.
Fire. The memory bounced around her brain, expanding to take up all the space. An acrid bitterness filled her mouth, her nostrils. Seemed to permeate all the way down to every organ inside of her.
She’d been in a fire. Could’ve died in a fire. An image of thick smoke made her heart lurch in fear.
Panicking, she forced her weighted eyelids open and, without moving her head — because shit, it hurt — she drank in details, urging her brain to work.
No smoke. Only a memory. White ceiling above intersecting with a pale yellow wall opposite her.
A sleek, flat-screen TV was bolted up high, angled downward toward her bed.
Something tickled her upper lip, and when she tried to scratch it, her fingers ran into a tube. Oxygen, she remembered.
She tried to breathe in to comfort herself, but air in her throat … it hurt like someone was scraping her windpipe with needles all the way down.
“Sophie?” A deep, soothing, baritone voice from near her feet startled her. As she turned her head toward it, a face popped into her blurry-edged vision.
His face. The one who’d helped her.
Hazel eyes, almost amber-colored, peered down at her beneath creases of worry on his forehead. His short hair was the color of pecans — not blond, not quite brown, with a hint of auburn around the edges — and his facial scruff was long enough to appear soft instead of bristly.
She felt discombobulated, as if she were living in a slow-motion cartoon. Everything was fuzzy, her senses sending weak signals, but she remembered this man had saved her life.
“How you feeling, Sophie?”
She clung to the smoothness of his voice, like warm, melty caramel spreading around her, comforting her. Giving her empty mind something solid to hold on to.
Her attempt to speak failed. She opened her mouth to request a drink, but no sound came out.
Swallowing around the desert-dry rawness in her throat made her eyes water at the stab of red-hot pain, and she vowed not to do that again.
She pressed a hand to her neck, expecting to feel exterior damage, so painful was the inside passageway, but her fingers found only smooth, clammy flesh.
Clearing her throat would likely make speaking possible, but hell no, she wasn’t about to try that — not when air rubbed like broken glass through it.
“Water,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain that came with the attempt.
“I’ll get you a drink,” the man said, and gratitude became a tangible warmth in her chest.
She heard his footsteps, three of them. When the footsteps brought him back to her side, she opened her eyes and found him holding a powder-blue plastic cup with a straw sticking out. She tried to sit up.
“You don’t need to move,” he said, directing the straw to her mouth, the cup to the side of her head. “I’ve got it. Just drink.”
She sucked the room-temperature liquid into her mouth and let it wash over the parched tissue inside, swishing it gently around until every last cell was damp.
Then she clamped her eyes shut again and gripped a wad of the bedsheet as she willed the water down her raw throat.
She thought she remembered a red-haired nurse telling her to call if the pain meds wore off, but she had no idea whether this level of pain was with or without medical relief. All she knew was it hurt.
“Bet that hurts like crazy,” the man said, and she focused on the hint of a Texas drawl in his voice, trying to distract herself from the pain.
Sophie nodded slowly and took the straw in her mouth because the water also soothed.
Five slow swallows was her limit, and when the guy offered her more, she shook her head. He set the cup to the side and returned his attention to her face.
“Thanks,” Sophie managed. The sound that came out was low and hoarse. Rough like sharp gravel.
“Don’t talk right now, Sophie.”
She nodded, frustrated by her inability to let him know her gratitude.
He’d dragged his chair close to her shoulders as he’d held the water, and now he braced one hand on her mattress as he watched her. Sophie touched the back of his hand, trying to convey her thanks. He took her hand in his, his fingers warm and calloused. Gentle.
“Sleep some more,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “It’s gonna hurt for some time. Best to sleep it off if you can. Help your body heal.”
“Are you…” She cringed at the burn in her throat. “Staying?”
“I’ll be here for a while. Close your eyes.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, so heavy, her mind too tired to make sense of anything. Content to hold on to the picture of this man as his finger caressed back and forth over her hand. Soothing. Lulling.
As her brain flitted between consciousness and blessed sleep, she became aware of him shifting, his grip on her hand tightening slightly.
Eyes still closed, she felt him leaning closer, and then his warm, moist lips brushed against her forehead.
She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t allow herself to question his touch or to feel awkward.
Instead, she succumbed to relief and gratitude and let herself get swept away in the comfort of being … not alone.