A Firefighter in Her Stocking

She would come to him.

She didn’t want gifts. She wanted...him.

She closed her watery eyes, took a deep breath, then pulled out her phone to text him a “thank you, but not necessary” note. She’d barely hit send when her phone rang with his number showing on the screen.

“Sorry I wasn’t there to give them to you in person. I’d like to have watched you open them,” he said by way of greeting. “Tell me you were smiling.”

“I was smiling,” she admitted. “They are lovely, Jude, but I have clothes and if I needed new ones I can afford to go shopping.” Not on the scale of what he’d sent her, but she did make a decent living. “Like I said in my text, buying me gifts wasn’t necessary.”

Unless he had wanted her dressed a certain way, up to a certain social standard in case they ran into friends? She couldn’t convince herself of that from a man who hung out in a fire hall, who hadn’t cared who’d seen him dirty and smelly at the hospital. He didn’t come across as a social snob, but she supposed anything was possible.

“I didn’t think it necessary,” he countered over the phone. “I wanted to give them to you.”

Sarah fought sucking in a deep breath.

“I want tomorrow night, my taking you to your first Broadway show, to be everything you ever dreamed, to make up for the last time you thought you were going.”

She bit the inside of her lower lip and squeezed the phone a little tighter in hope of steadying her hand. “You don’t need to make up for another man’s wrongs, Jude.”

Which was the first time she’d ever admitted out loud that Kenny had done something wrong. Even to him, she’d accepted his explanation that he’d forgotten, made other plans, but that she understood, right? Because he and Sarah were just going as friends anyway, right?

“No,” Jude agreed. “But I want to.”

&nbs

p; She closed her eyes, told her heartbeat to slow down before it pounded out of her chest. “You always do what you want?”

“Not always.”

“Most of the time?”

“Yes.”

Did that mean he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her the night before? She’d thought...no, she’d known that’s what he’d wanted. He’d just been tired. She’d been tired. He’d promised he wouldn’t trick her into his bed if she came to dinner and he’d kept his promise.

Not that he would have had to trick her. All he’d had to do was crook his finger and she’d have followed wherever he led.

Just like Brandy. Ugh.

“Should I remind you that I’m not like the women you usually date?” She definitely needed to remind herself of the women he usually dated.

“No reason to. I already know you’re not like the women I usually date.”

She’d swear she could hear amusement in his voice, but what he found funny, she wasn’t sure. Regardless, his light-hearted tone eased some of her tension. Some, but not all.

“You giving expensive gifts makes me uncomfortable.”

“You shouldn’t be uncomfortable, Sarah,” he assured her in a more serious voice. “I don’t want you to think the gifts came with strings attached. They didn’t. I gave them to you because I wanted you to have them, because giving them to you gave me pleasure, and my only regret is that I wasn’t there to watch your face while you opened them.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. She had no reason to. Then again, she had no reason not to other than her mother’s voice blaring through her head.

“Okay,” she ventured, leaning back on the sofa and staring at her presents. “Thank you. They are lovely.”

“So are you. Did the dress fit?”

He thought she was lovely? Good grief, why was a man’s compliments and excitement flabbergasting her so? She was logical, reasonable, too smart to be swayed by pretty words.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, swayed by his pretty words because she was smiling that goofy smile again and no matter how she tried to wipe it off her face, she couldn’t. So much for logic and reason. “I haven’t tried it on.”