Into the Fire (First Responders 3)

“I’ve got to go. I’m going to be late.”

“We should talk about this,” he said, beginning to move forward, but she took the opportunity to slide behind the wheel. He had his hands on the top of the door so she could hardly shut it, could she?

“No, we shouldn’t. I have enough to worry about right now.”

“And I’m an added worry?”

She wished he’d move his damned hands. “To be honest, yes, you are. I need to think clearly, and you’re not helping. And right now I need to be helping sell cupcakes and apple pie and Mabel VanOord’s Cinnamon Raisin Bread. So let me go, Chris. Please.”

She looked through the windshield and saw that Moose had dug a hole near Chris’s garage during their little interlude. “Moose is digging. You should go.”

He took his hands off the window as he turned to look and Ally took the opportunity to pull the door closed.

She couldn’t come back here again. Both times she had, she’d fallen into his arms without any fight at all.

She hadn’t really stopped caring about him, had she? Not just the sexual chemistry part. But liking him. That was the whole problem. It would be better if they just kept their polite distance. But that had changed the moment he’d put his arm around her waist, stopping her from going back inside as her dream burned to the ground.

She put the keys in the ignition and turned it over. Nothing.

“Come on,” she whispered, her heart leaping around in her chest. Of all the times for her car to conk out… Why couldn’t a girl have one dramatic exit when she needed it?

She tried it again, heaving a sigh of relief when the engine roared to life. She faked a smile at Chris and began backing out of the driveway.

At the bottom, she looked up and saw Chris holding on to Moose’s collar. There was a pause as she shifted from reverse to drive in which she considered not leaving. Considered seeing where this would go. A curiosity about what it would be like to make love with him, and a certainty that it would be as good as she remembered.

It was only the knowledge that nothing had really changed from that day until now that kept her going. And the stark realization that something had to change somehow, because she couldn’t go on this way, stuck in the past and repeating the same patterns.

Chapter Four

The last thing Chris wanted to do was go up and knock on the Gallants’ door. Ally’s parents had been very supportive of them as a couple when they’d gotten engaged, and he didn’t quite know what Ally had told them after the wedding was called off only a few months after he’d proposed. But he knew Ernie Gallant gave him the stink-eye around town and that Judy wasn’t much better, except she gave him this baleful, sad look that made him feel about two inches tall.

Ally wouldn’t have put the blame on him. He was certain of that. She was the one who’d changed her mind and she was the most honest woman he knew. She would have told them that she broke it off.

But that didn’t mean her parents didn’t blame him somehow anyway.

And now he was standing on their front step, his hand poised to knock, nervous as hell about facing them and about the news he had for Ally.

Funny. He’d prefer suiting up and walking into a burning building ahead of stepping across the Gallants’ threshold.

He squared his shoulders and knocked. Might as well get this over with.

Judy answered the door. “Oh, my. Chris. What a surprise.” Her hand fluttered to her hair and back down again and she looked at him uncertainly.

“Hi, Mrs. Gallant. Is Ally in?”

“Let me check.” She gave him a watery smile, reminding him of a stunned bird who’d run into a glass door. He’d always thought her a little flighty and wondered if she were a nervous sort. It had been a rhetorical question, after all. Ally’s car was in the driveway.

She came back to the door and opened it wider. “Won’t you come in? Ally will be right out.”

He ran a finger around the collar of his work shirt. God, this was worse than showing up for a date in high school. He should be glad that Ernie didn’t appear to be home. The last thing he needed was a father grilling him on…whatever. He already felt about sixteen.

“Chris?”

Ally stepped carefully into the kitchen. She looked beautiful tonight. She was wearing a skirt that came just above her knee and black boots to match, sexy as hell. The shirt she wore had see-through sleeves, and came to a suggestive dip in the front, the pattern a mix of red and black and charcoal. It was classy and sexy and he suddenly realized he’d been standing there staring for far too long.

“Wow. You look…wow.”

Her cheeks colored prettily. “I have an appointment with a career counsellor this evening. I was hoping to make a good impression.”