Melting for the Firefighter (Heroes of Whispering Pines #6)

1. Cora

Cora

The rosemary is leaning left again. At this point, it feels kind of personal.

I tuck the silvery sprig between two white roses and turn the vase. The rosemary slips back into the same crooked position, stubbornly refusing to become beautiful just because I need it to.

Grandma used to say flowers bend toward the light.

I bend toward whoever needs me.

My phone lies facedown beside the register, hiding the transfer confirmation for eight hundred dollars. The cooler needs servicing. The electric bill is due next week. Founder’s Day is four days away, and my supply list is long enough to qualify as light reading.

Mom needed rent.

She always needs something.

This time, there were tears, a threatening landlord, and a check that would clear tomorrow.

The check does not exist. I know this because Mom has been waiting for imaginary checks for as long as I can remember.

I also know I will answer the next time she calls.

Some foolish, bruised part of me is still waiting for the conversation that begins with How are you, Cora? instead of I need a favor.

Maybe there is an exact dollar amount that turns me into a daughter worth keeping.

I have not reached it yet.

The bell above the front door rings.

I smooth my palms over my green floral dress and find the smile Grandma taught me to wear for customers.

“Welcome to Grandma’s Garden.”

Then Lance Renner steps inside, and my smile forgets how to behave.

He fills the doorway in a faded Whispering Pines Fire Department shirt and worn jeans. Tall. Broad. Rugged enough to look out of place among the lace ribbons, glass vases, and delicate blooms.

Dark stubble shadows his jaw. Brown hair falls across his forehead as though he shoved a hand through it on the walk over.

I have spent two years wanting to push it back for him.

His gaze finds me, and the shop feels smaller.

“Cora.”

My name comes from him low and rough.

Heat moves across my skin, sinking into my breasts and gathering deep in my belly.

Very unprofessional.

Grandma would recommend prayer.

My gaze catches on the tattoo disappearing beneath his left sleeve, then drops to the pale round scars scattered across his forearms.

I have wondered about those scars since the day he walked into my shop. Wondered what happened. Wondered who hurt him.

Wondered whether he would let me touch them.

Wondered several other things that would make Grandma reach for her church directory.

His eyes travel over my curls, pause at the neckline of my dress, then settle on my waist.

My ex used to pinch the softness there and ask whether I really needed dessert.

Lance looks at the same place as though he wants both hands on it.

My pulse trips over itself.

His attention shifts to the white roses and rosemary on my worktable.

“Making mine already?”

The arrangement was supposed to become a display piece, but it contains the exact flowers he orders every year.

Apparently, my hands remember him as well as the rest of me does.

“It can be yours,” I say. “The rosemary and I are having creative differences.”

The corner of his mouth shifts.

Lance rarely smiles. Every almost-smile feels like something I have earned.

“Same as last year?” I ask.

His gaze returns to mine. “You remember?”

“White roses. Rosemary for remembrance.” I reach for a stem of blue delphinium. “And these, because your mother grew them along the back fence and let them take over.”

He goes still.

The silence between us changes.

The first time Lance came into my shop was two years ago, three weeks after Grandma died. He stood at this counter and asked me to choose flowers for the anniversary of his mother’s death.

When I asked what she had loved, he told me about the delphinium.

He also told me she sang while washing dishes.

Lance does not give away many pieces of himself.

I kept the ones he gave me.

“You said she was a terrible singer,” I add.

“She was.” His expression softens. “Never stopped her.”

“I think I would have liked her.”

His eyes hold mine.

“She would’ve liked you.”

The certainty in his voice reaches into the lonely place inside me and presses.

I turn to the flowers before he can watch me come apart over six quiet words.

“Then I had better fix her rosemary.”

I remove the offending sprig, replace it with one that understands cooperation, and add the delphinium.

Lance stays near the counter while I work.

His silence settles around me. Comfortable. Steady. It quiets the worry that has been clawing at the inside of my chest since I sent Mom the money.

The old flower cooler ruins everything with a metallic rattle.

Lance’s head turns sharply.

“How long has it done that?”

“A few days.”

“Cora.”

My name sounds different when he is annoyed.

Lower.

Bossier.

Unfortunately, my body is a fan.

“A week,” I admit. “The repairman is coming Tuesday.”

He crosses the shop and braces one large hand against the cooler.

Behind the glass are buckets of blush peonies for a vow renewal, white roses for two memorial orders, blue hydrangeas, and most of my Founder’s Day stock.

Basically, every dollar I have left.

“Come here.”

My body considers that an excellent idea.

My pride makes me hesitate for almost two seconds.

I step beside him.

Lance takes my hand.

All coherent thought leaves the building.

He presses my palm against the metal and covers it with his. His skin is rough and warm. His chest is close enough that I can smell soap, sun-warmed cotton, and the faint trace of smoke that always seems to cling to him.

“Feel that shudder?” he asks.

I feel his fingers between mine.

I feel the heat of his arm against my shoulder.

I feel an ache gathering low in my stomach that has very little to do with refrigeration.

“Yes.”

My voice comes out embarrassingly soft.

“Could be the motor. Could be the wiring.”

His thumb moves once across my knuckles.

The touch is small.

It still sends heat racing up my arm.

“Shut it down tonight,” he says.

“I’ll lose half my stock.”

“Move the delicate flowers into water. Put whatever you can in your bathtub.”

“My hydrangeas have always wanted a spa day.”

His mouth twitches again, but his attention stays on the cooler.

“I’ll bring ice from the station.”

I tilt my head back to look at him. “You do not have to do that.”

“Didn’t say I had to.”

The answer is gruff, almost impatient, as though helping me has already been decided and my opinion is an unnecessary delay.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

I pull my hand away before I do something foolish, like turn it over and lace our fingers together.

I reach for the phone and flip it faceup. Mom’s message lights the screen.

You saved me again. Knew I could count on my sweet girl.

Lance’s attention shifts to my phone. “Everything okay?”

“Just fine.”

The lie comes too quickly.

He folds his arms. The movement pulls his shirt tighter across his chest.

My brain, which has already proven unreliable around him, stops working completely.

“Cora,” he says, his voice roughening.

“It is only family stuff.” I tie a cream ribbon around the vase. “My mother needed some help.”

Something hard enters his expression.

He knows enough about my mother to understand.

Whispering Pines is small, and Grandma never learned how to soften the story of the woman who left her baby on a porch with a diaper bag and a note, visits once every year or two when guilt or boredom brings her through town, and calls whenever she needs money, rescuing, or someone to clean up the latest disaster.

“You keep giving her pieces of yourself,” he says. “One day she’s going to take too much.”

The words land beneath my ribs.

I have thought them before.

Late at night. Alone in bed. Watching the balance in my savings account shrink while I wonder whether this will be the favor that finally makes Mom stay.

I have never heard anyone else say them.

I have certainly never heard anyone sound angry on my behalf.

“She’s my mother.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

I focus on the bow.

Loops. Cross. Pull.

Things I know how to fix.

“I’m fine.”

His gaze moves over my face. “You say that a lot.”

“So do half the women in town. It is practically our municipal slogan.”

“Cora.”

“Your flowers are ready.”

Coward.

I slide the vase toward him.

His fingers brush mine as he takes it.

The contact is brief.

Heat races up my arm and settles between my thighs anyway.

My breath catches.

His does too.

Lance’s gaze drops to my mouth.

Everything inside me goes still.

He is close enough to kiss me.

Close enough that I can see the flecks of green and gold in his hazel eyes. Close enough that one small movement would put his mouth on mine.

I have imagined that mouth doing wonderful, sinful things.

Most of them require locked doors.

“Fire department booth is across from yours on Saturday,” he says.

My brain takes a moment to return to the building.

“Founder’s Day.”

“I’ll be there.”

“In case my bunting becomes dangerous?”

“In case you need me.”

My heart gives one hard, hopeful beat.

Lance lifts the vase and turns toward the door.

Before he leaves, he looks back.

“Unplug the cooler.”

“Bossy.”

His eyes travel over me once more, lingering long enough to leave a trail of heat.

“You seem to like it.”

The bell chimes behind him before I can produce a convincing denial.

I stare at the door.

“I do not,” I tell the rosemary.

It leans farther left.

Traitor.

Lance returns just before eight with enough ice to preserve a small fishing boat.

He carries the bags into the workroom, refuses the money I offer him, and checks the cooler twice before leaving.

“Unplug it,” he reminds me at the door.

“I will.”

Then he leaves me standing beneath the bell with my pulse misbehaving and a smile I cannot quite suppress.

By nine, the peonies and roses are settled in buckets packed with the ice he brought. The hydrangeas fill my bathtub, turning the tiny room into a pond with plumbing.

I unplug the cooler.

Its metallic rattle dies.

Silence settles over the shop.

Real silence.

The kind I have missed all week.

My apartment sits directly behind Grandma’s Garden, a tiny one-bedroom connected through the workroom. Grandma raised me here, where every meal smelled faintly of flowers and damp earth.

The scent used to cling to my clothes.

As a teenager, I hated it.

Now I would bottle it if I could.

After Grandma died two years ago, I stayed because the building is my home, my livelihood, and the last place I ever felt completely wanted.

I check the locks twice.

Then I carry Grandma’s flower journal to bed.

The cover is soft from thirty years of use. Her handwriting fills every page, looping around sketches, recipes, flower meanings, and notes written in whatever space she could find.

Water before sunrise during the summer.

Never crowd the roots.

Cora prefers the yellow roses, even when she claims she has outgrown them.

I trace my name in the faded ink.

Grandma had recorded a thousand small things about me.

Mom has never remembered my birthday without being reminded.

I place the journal beside my pillow and close my eyes.

The alarm jerks me awake.

Smoke curls across the ceiling.

For one confused heartbeat, I think it is fog.

Then the bitter smell of burned plastic fills my lungs.

Fire.

I grab my phone and call 911.

“Whispering Pines emergency dispatch. What is your location?”

I recognize Tessa Nguyen immediately. She buys yellow daisies every Monday because the dispatch room has no windows.

“Tessa.” My voice breaks. “It’s Cora. Grandma’s Garden is on fire.”

Her tone sharpens. “I have your address. Are you in the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Stay low. Move to the rear exit. Crews are on the way.”

I drop to my hands and knees.

Smoke stings my eyes as I crawl toward the alley door. I grab the handle and pull.

The door opens two inches.

Then it jams in the warped frame.

I pull harder.

Nothing.

“It’s blocked.”

“Can you reach another exit?”

“Only through the shop.”

Heat pours from the connecting door before I touch the handle.

I jerk my hand back.

“Leave it closed,” Tessa says. “Go to the bedroom window.”

I crawl toward it.

The narrow window is painted shut.

Grandma planned to replace it before chemo.

After she died, funeral bills, property taxes, a leaking roof, and Mom’s endless emergencies kept pushing it to next month.

Next month arrives with smoke.

I wrap my arm in the sheet, grab the lamp, and swing.

The glass shatters.

Fresh air rushes through the broken pane.

I knock the remaining shards from the frame. One slices into my palm, but the pain barely registers beneath the alarms screaming through the building.

I drag a chair toward the window.

Something crashes inside the shop.

The shared wall shudders.

Grandma’s journal slides from the bed.

An ember slips beneath the connecting door and lands on the worn cover.

“No.”

“Cora, stay at the window,” Tessa orders.

Thirty years of Grandma’s handwriting are inside that journal.

Her flower meanings.

Her recipes.

Her notes about me.

I lunge for it and slap out the ember.

A second crash shakes the room.

The connecting door slams open as part of the frame tears loose.

Heat punches through the apartment.

I scream and throw up an arm.

A narrow shelving unit beside the door tips before I can move. Wood slams across my hip, driving me to the floor and trapping the skirt of my nightgown beneath it.

Smoke rolls over me in a thick black wave.

I pull at the fabric.

It will not tear.

My bleeding hand slips.

“Tessa.”

“I’m here. Cora, listen to me. Crews are on the way.”

The phone lies somewhere beyond the shelf.

“Tessa.”

“I’m here.”

The room turns gray. Minutes pass. My lungs burn.

Then a man shouts through the roar.

“Cora!”

Lance.

Relief hits so hard it hurts.

The man who runs toward fire has come for me.

Heavy boots strike the floor.

A dark shape pushes through the smoke. He reaches me, lifts the shelf, and throws it aside as though it weighs nothing.

Then he drops to his knees.

Behind his mask, his hazel eyes are fierce with a fear I have never seen there.

Fear for me.

One arm slides beneath my knees. The other circles my back, pulling me tight against his chest.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

Rough.

Absolute.

My fingers close around his coat.

The room is burning around us, but Lance holds me as though nothing in this world will take me from him.

My body loosens against his.

I am getting out.

He has me.

The darkness takes me before we reach the door.