A Firefighter in Her Stocking

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 apartme

nt 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.