“Rat Girl?” Kyle said, frowning. “That weird science-geek chick who always wore hats to school?”
Ryan winced at the nickname. He still felt like a jerk for blurting it out to her in the examining room. But he had much bigger things to be ashamed of. After they’d had sex, he’d spent the rest of the year pretending she didn’t exist, unwilling as he’d been to admit he was attracted to her.
“Yes,” he said, his tone a little testy. “That’s her. She was my doctor today.”
“No kidding? I’ve never seen her around here.”
“She said she just moved back into town. I gotta tell you, she doesn’t look so weird anymore. She was pretty damn hot.”
“No way. I remember one time, she came to school smelling horrible, like she hadn’t bathed in weeks, with blood all over her clothes. When our homeroom teacher demanded to know what had happened, she said she’d found a dead dog on the side of the road and carried it around looking for its owners.”
Ryan said nothing. His thoughts went back to adolescence, when he hadn’t had the balls to publicly lust after a girl like Lorelei. All the kids in school had known she was brilliant, but that had only made her stand out even more as an oddball. It hadn’t helped that she’d been so much younger than the other kids in their graduating class.
He hated that he’d been one of the jerks who’d made her feel like an outcast. Sure, he’d been thrilled when they were assigned as lab partners senior year, but only because he knew it guaranteed him an A. The fact that she’d apparently developed a crush on him and thought he’d be interested in being more than lab partners had been lost on his eighteen-year-old self-that is, until she’d thrown herself at him the last night they’d worked together and he’d callously accepted her offer of sex without considering at all what it might mean to her.
He’d only let himself consider later that her complete awkwardness as they’d fumbled with each other’s bodies, and the pain he’d caused when he entered her, might have meant that she’d been a virgin. Which had only made him retreat even more from facing her, because it meant he was an even bigger jerk than he’d wanted to admit.
He’d been immature back then, and only officially interested in girls with shiny hair and hot bodies. He’d never even told any of his friends that he’d slept with Lorelei.
Ryan wished he could make it up to her for the following days and weeks after they’d had sex, when he wouldn’t talk to her or even look her in the eye.
She must have absolutely hated him.
She had every right to.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kyle said.
“Oh, nothing,” Ryan lied. “I was just thinking about how being a doctor’s a lot like being a firefighter-saving lives, working under pressure, making a difference for people-”
“Dude, you and your bleeding heart might want to go on home now and take a rest. Maybe curl up with your favorite teddy bear and watch a chick flick.”
Ryan gave Kyle a friendly shove. “Screw you.”
“The chief said you should go home for the day. I’ll drive you back to your place if you want.”
“I should go get my car from the station.”
“You sure you’re clear to drive?”
“She didn’t say I couldn’t.”
They both climbed into Kyle’s truck and started off toward the fire station.
“You going anywhere for the holidays?” Kyle asked.
“Nope. I’ll be working. My parents are at my aunt’s in Arizona, so there won’t be a family get-together.”
“Hey, I’d have you join me, but I’ve got vacation time and I’m heading south to visit family.”
“That’s all right,” Ryan mumbled, distracted as he stared out the window.
His head still ached from getting bonked, and Christmas was the last thing on his mind right now. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lorelei. Did it make him a shallow jerk that now that she was hot, he felt bad for having been an ass to her?
Yeah, it pretty much did. He cringed at himself. Except, well, she’d probably always been this hot. It had just taken him growing up and seeing her through mature eyes to understand it.
It wasn’t just that she was pretty in a more conventional way now. He hadn’t really thought much about her in all these years, but what he did remember about her was all good. She’d been so smart and quirky back then, he hadn’t had the good taste to recognize what a cool person she was. But now he knew better…
And yeah, okay, she was hot.
That didn’t hurt.
He had to do something to say he was sorry for his asshole behavior all those years ago. He owed her big-time. Maybe take her to lunch, or bring her some flowers or…
Or what? He didn’t even know if she was married, or had a boyfriend or if she still even liked guys.
Well, hmm, he was almost positive he hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. He had a second-nature habit of scanning women for one. But maybe what he owed her most was to leave her alone.
Still…
At the very least, he needed to apologize to her. But would that just remind her of something she’d rather not think about? Would she even remember now what a jerk he’d been? Was he just crediting himself with too much significance in her life?
No, he needed to just leave her alone. If their paths ever crossed again, he’d take that as a sign and find a proper way to apologize, but until then, there wasn’t really anything to be done.
The moment he thought it though, he found himself wishing “until then” would happen right away. Like today, or tomorrow, or…no later than the day after that.
3
LORELEI could feel the heat from the fire, but she didn’t smell smoke. The foot of her bed was on fire, flames licking the air and singeing the heirloom quilt her grandmother had made. She tried to pull the quilt away from the fire, but it was too late. Ruined.
Only when she saw that she couldn’t save the quilt did she think of saving herself. Terror seized her as she scrambled off the side of the bed. The flames were spreading across the floor now, engulfing the entire bed and half the room-blocking her way to the door.
She tried to cry out, but no sound came from her throat. And then, as if she’d been heard anyway, someone burst in the door.
Across the flames, she saw Ryan Quinn. He aimed his hose at the bed and fired a blast of water that instantly put out all the flames.
With the fire extinguished, she could see that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, only his fireman’s pants and boots, and a red hat that looked oddly like the flimsy plastic kind she saw kids wearing when they played fireman. His chest was all sculpted muscle and smooth tanned skin. God, he was gorgeous.
Was that just a costume he was wearing?
“You got here fast,” she said.
He tossed aside the fire hose and crossed the room, then took her into his arms Rhett Butler-style.
“I thought you’d never call,” he said in a breathless voice.
Then they were both on the bed, naked, kissing and caressing in such a frenzy that Lorelei couldn’t tell where she stopped and Ryan began. She was sixteen again, acting out her wildest adolescent fantasies. In fact, when she looked down at herself, she saw that she wasn’t entirely naked. She was wearing nothing but a pair of pink striped knee socks she hadn’t worn since high school.
Weird.
But then, the sensation of Ryan’s mouth on her neck erased all thoughts, and she could feel a relentless need building within her, a sweet, delicious ache that demanded he be inside her.
She grasped his hips and pulled him hard against her, spreading her legs wide and as he found her wet, hot center with his erection. She moaned, arched her back, and begged him, “Please, I need you now.”
And then he was there, right where she needed him. Inside her, filling her up, creating an even more delicious ache that was building fast, fast, so fast.
He moved inside her, and then her inner muscles were contracting around him, and she was gasping, crying out, as her body was overcome by climax.