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  FIREFIGHTER CHRISTMAS

  By Nella Tyler

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Nella Tyler

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  Chapter One – Blaze – Mid-December

  I picked at my food, finding it hard to force down another bite. Lacey kept going on and on about something that had happened earlier at one of the gyms where she worked, her laughter slowly driving me up the wall. My skin was crawling just listening to her talking about work like everything between us was normal. Meanwhile, the pressure was building inside my head until it felt ready to explode.

  “Is there anything important you want to tell me?” I asked, just cutting right into whatever the hell she’d been saying. I hadn’t really been listening. I put my fork down and stared across the table at her, lifting my eyebrows and trying my best to keep my face as blank as possible.

  We were in my apartment eating Chinese takeout that Lacey picked up on the way over here. She ate pretty unhealthy for a physical trainer if you asked me, but she worked out a lot, too. I usually spent most of our time together admiring the toned, tanned, solid look of her but, tonight, I was finding it hard just to meet her eyes.

  She blinked, taken aback for a second before her lips curled into a deeper grin that reminded me of the Cheshire cat and made my skin crawl even more than it already was.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, widening her dark brown eyes at me. “I was in the middle of telling you about my day before you interrupted me.” She didn’t sound mad, but I could tell she was annoyed with me.

  “I don’t know.” It was pissing me off that she wasn’t just coming out with it. “Anything important you might have to tell me.”

  She giggled her tinkling laugh, her bare shoulders moving with that fluid grace she had from years of dancing on top of so much working out. She didn’t have an ounce of fat on her besides her breasts and the muscly curve of her ass. She’d come straight over here from the gym, dressed in multicolored spandex shorts and the bright, loose-fitting tank top she wore on the street to cover up a spandex sports bra that matched her shorts and zipped up in the middle. She always left it unzipped enough to show off the curved tops of her breasts.

  “You’re so weird sometimes, Blaze.” She dropped her eyes to her food, shoveling another dainty forkful of fried rice into her mouth before going on about her last client, some overweight guy in his forties who’d been asking her out for weeks. She just laughed it off, but I was simmering in my chair. I couldn’t care less about the forty-something guy — I knew for sure he wasn’t a threat, as Lacey would never go for anyone that out of shape — but everything else was pushing me over the edge. I was just sick and tired of it.

  The greasy food was turning my stomach. I hadn’t eaten much — some fried rice, a piece or two of bourbon chicken, half an eggroll, and one of the crab rangoons — but if I took another bite, I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t spray my dinner all over the fucking tablecloth. That just might be enough to get Lacey to shut up about her day a minute so I could think.

  I pushed my plate away from me and sat back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. I just watched her eating and talking, looking for any sign that she was as uneasy as I felt. She finished the food on her plate and dug into the takeout containers for more, shooting that show-stopping smile up at me, her dark eyes gleaming. She’d let her wavy brown hair down — she always wore it in a tight bun when she was working to keep it out of her way — and it flowed past her shoulders, messy and beautiful. She was a good-looking woman and goddamn, did she know it.

  “Aren’t you hungry, baby?” she asked. Finally, I thought. I’d only been picking at my food since we sat down at the table a half hour ago.

  “Not really.”

  She shrugged that off, not asking after it any further, and launched right into an involved story about another client from the gym.

  “Lacey, I can’t do this right now,” I said, cutting her off again. I could barely sit still in my seat. I was tired of waiting for her to tell me what I wanted to know when I could just come right out with it and save us both a lot of trouble.

  She blinked again, this time keeping her dark eyes narrowed, her amused expression cooling considerably. “You can’t do what? Eat dinner?”

  “This,” I replied, gesturing back and forth between us.

  “What are you talking about?” She was still smiling, but had drawn her thin eyebrows together, giving me the critical look I’d gotten used to in the last year and a half we’d been together.

  “Are you cheating on me?”

  This time, she didn’t even blink, just set her fork down on her plate and stared at me, the look in her eyes bold but not concerned.

  “What would make you ask me something like that, Blaze?” she asked, perfectly calm.

  I wanted to say something to knock the serene expression right off of her face. I was boiling in my chair, the greasy food churning in my stomach and threatening to creep up the back of my throat. This was all that had been on my mind for days, since the last time I’d stayed overnight at her apartment. And, I couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t yet denied it.

  “The other day at your place, I went to wash some clothes while I was waiting for you to come home from the gym,” I said, not breaking eye contact with her, searching her face for any trace of guilt. “I found some men’s clothes that didn’t belong to me in your dryer. What the hell is that about, Lacey?”

  She lifted a perfectly plucked eyebrow, but didn’t say a word, not even to tell me how crazy I was for doubting her faithfulness. I went on, laying out the evidence and waiting for her to deny it. Maybe there was a good reason for all of this. I’d never know if I didn’t ask her, though it was bothering the hell out of me that she wasn’t even trying to explain away any of this.

  “And, you’ve been acting weird as hell over the last few weeks. Ever since I proposed.” Her hands were folded on the table, so I could see the ring I’d given her sparkling in the light of my tiny dining room.

  It had taken me weeks to settle on that ring. I even sent a picture to my mother to ask her advice. She hadn’t seemed too excited at the prospect of me marrying Lacey. Mom didn’t like how showy she was with her body or how dismissive she could be when I brought something up that she didn’t care about, but was happy that I seemed happy, or so she said. And, she used it as another opportunity to tell me how much she wanted grandchildren.

  “You hardly ever answer when I call. You go out every night I’m at the station and never tell me where you’re going. One of the guys said he saw you out at the club a couple weeks ago dancing with someone else.”

  Lacey sat back in her own chair, just listening to me, a tranquil expression on her pretty face. She’d turned the key on whatever was going on in her head, locking me out of it completely. I’d spent so much time trying to guess at what she was thinking, but I still had no goddamned idea one way or the other. She said she could read me like a book and was probably right. But to me, she was a closed book written in another language entirely, so even if I managed a peek at one of the pages, I wouldn’t understand it.

  “So, tell me w
hat’s going on,” I said. “Are you cheating on me? Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she replied, face staying serene as her eyes gleamed with a challenging light.

  Now it was my turn to blink at her. The grease in my stomach churned harder and, for a second, I thought I really was going to throw up every single bite I’d managed to choke down. It took a minute for me to swallow back the nausea enough to speak.

  “What the fuck, Lacey?” I snapped. “How many times has this happened?”

  She smiled prettily, her dark eyes sparkling more than the diamond I’d put on her finger. “Once or twice with a few different guys.” She said it easily, like we were chatting about how many clients she’d seen that day.

  I gaped at her, just so utterly surprised that I couldn’t even grab hold of my own anger. “Since we’ve been together or since we’ve been engaged?”

  “Both,” she said, still smiling that sexy grin, the one that always worked to get me going. And not just me. Plenty of other guys appeared to like it, as well.

  I rubbed a hand over my forehead, trying to get the thoughts swarming inside my skull to lie still long enough for me to put them in some kind of coherent order. She was cheating. Not just once or twice. And, since we’d gotten engaged.

  “Why would you do something like that?” I asked, my low voice trembling with the rage I felt building. The blood in my veins was hot. I wanted to blow my fucking top, but that wouldn’t affect her, either.

  She liked me jealous. She liked when I chased after her, when I beat my chest like some kind of sex-crazed animal. It was fun at first, letting her turn me a little insane, but it got old fast. We were adults. I wanted to spend my life with her. I wanted to start a family and grow old with each other. This kind of high school bullshit had no place in those plans.

  “Look, you knew the type of woman I was when you asked me out,” she said, turning up the sex factor in her grin and leaning onto her elbows on the table so I could see her cleavage more clearly. “I’m a sexual being. I crave that attention.” She swallowed most of her grin, but her eyes were glittering and there was still a slight curve to her shapely lips. “That’s what attracted you to me to begin with. You love how into sex I am, how much I need it.”

  And, she did need it. I loved getting in between her toned thighs as often as I could, but she was impossible to satisfy, wanting it two or three times a day. I thought she’d calm down after a few months of dating, but she’d only needed more. It was wearing me the fuck out.

  “I love how into sex you are with me!” I said. “I didn’t think you were busy fucking other guys all over Seattle at the same time.”

  She shrugged a bare shoulder, those dark eyes gleaming at me as she tossed her wavy hair onto her back. “I don’t see what the big deal is, Blaze. I always come home to you.”

  “I gave you a ring. That’s the big deal. We’re supposed to be engaged. That means no fucking other people. I can’t believe I even have to tell you that.”

  “Like you’ve never stepped out one me?” she said, lifting her brows, a knowing smirk on her lips and a look in her eye like maybe this would turn her on.

  “No, I haven’t, Lacey. The last time I slept with another woman was before we started dating.” I shook my head. I was too stunned by her openness to even stay angry at her. She wasn’t even trying to hide a damned thing. She had a pair of balls on her, I had to give her that. If this was anyone else’s girlfriend besides mine, I’d be clapping her on the back for her brazenness while I laughed at the poor sap she was making a fool of.

  She pouted a little, batting her long eyelashes at me from across the table and pressing her boobs together to try to draw my eye. We ended a lot of arguments with hard, fast makeup sex. But that was out of the question tonight.

  “Don’t start that cutesy crap, Lacey,” I barked. “Either we’re in a relationship together or we’re not. That means committing to each other.” I drew in a deep breath, keeping my eyes on her and trying to stoke the anger underneath all that shock.

  But I was just too tired. I’d come off of a 48 hour shift that morning. I didn’t have the energy for this kind of bullshit. “Are you willing to commit to me and cut out all this other shit?”

  She didn’t answer right away, which was its own kind of answer, but I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt and waited to hear what she was going to say.

  “Blaze, this is silly. We’re both adults. You know how I feel about you.”

  “Yeah, I thought I did — until I found out you’ve been cheating on me the entire time we’ve been together.”

  She didn’t have an answer for that. She just kept watching me, the look in her eyes secretive.

  I held up my hands in the universal sign of giving up. “You know what? I’m done with this shit. If you want to be with other guys, you go do that. Consider this the end of our engagement.”

  That wiped the smug satisfaction right off her face. Her eyes burned hot, like I was the one cheating on her, not the other way around. She jumped up from her seat, nearly knocking the chair over, and shooting fire at me the whole time.

  “You’re acting like a child,” she snapped. “Adults sleep around, Blaze. It’s perfectly normal. Grow up.”

  “Get the fuck out of my apartment, Lacey,” I said, staring up at her wearily. I’d had a long day and just wanted this night to be over.

  “Good luck trying to find a woman half as good as me who will even give you the time of day.” She grinned sharply, her eyes blazing. “You’ll be begging to have me back by the end of the week.” She turned and stormed off before I could reply. The front door to my apartment slammed loudly, shaking the walls.

  I dragged myself out of my chair and went over to the fridge. I needed a goddamned drink. I tugged the door open and leaned down to see what I had. One beer. Shit. That wasn’t nearly enough booze for the day I was having. I needed at least three more. Or, better, some hard liquor.

  I grabbed my wallet and keys and walked out of my apartment, just leaving the mess behind me on the dining room table to clean up later.

  Chapter Two – Sami – Mid-December

  I walked ahead of the Davidsons, pasting a smile onto my face before turning to show them the kitchen upgrades.

  “As you can see,” I said, motioning to the gleaming surfaces, “the kitchen has been completely renovated with a tile floor and backsplash, new stainless steel appliances, oak cabinets, and granite countertops.”

  Mrs. Davidson didn’t seem impressed, which didn’t surprise me. She’d hated the rest of the townhouse, too. Mr. Davidson wasn’t much better. He hadn’t asked any questions, choosing instead to complain loudly about every room we’d seen while ignoring every word I had to say in response. This was one of the better townhouses in the area and had just been put on the market in the last two days. If they didn’t buy it, someone else would snatch it up before too long.

  “It’s small,” Mrs. Davidson said, her broad face scrunching into a deeper frown. She’d been poo-pooing everything since we arrived. It was a struggle to keep a pleasant look on my face, but, somehow, I managed.

  “Nothing like the kitchen we had back in Oregon,” Mr. Davidson chimed in, bushy brows pulled down sharply.

  “Seattle is a very competitive market,” I said for at least the tenth time that day as I widened my smile. “But this house is in a great location, and the renovations alone make it-”

  Mr. Davidson cut me off. “If we’re going to spend this kind of money, we need at least another thousand feet of living space.”

  I looked at him, my cheeks sore from so much concentrated smiling, but I kept it going. “That just isn’t feasible in this market, Mr. Davidson.”

  “We had double the space at our old house for half the price,” he countered, staring hard at me in a harsh, challenging way I was caring for less and less as the day went on. “I don’t want to spend more money for less living space.”

  “I can appreciate that, sir,” I said. “But the markets in
rural Oregon and inside the city limits of Seattle are very different. This townhome just went on the market with an extremely competitive asking price. I can show you something else in this price range, but not with this many square feet and in this same school district. If you don’t make an offer today, someone else will.”

  “I don’t like how pushy you are,” Mrs. Davidson snapped. “We’re not going to be forced into buying something we don’t like just so you can get a fat commission check.”

  My weary, weatherworn smile finally dropped from my face as my shoulders slumped. I’d been showing these people around for hours, listening to them bitch and complain about every single property we’d seen. Nothing pleased them. They were dead set on finding the exact same rural farmhouse in the middle of Seattle that they’d had in the countryside in Oregon. No matter how often I told them it just wasn’t going to happen, they refused to believe me. They’d started out disagreeable and had slowly become blatantly combative as the hours passed.

  “Ma’am, I would never pressure a client into a purchase they didn’t want to make.” I chose my words carefully, making sure to say them kindly when all I wanted to do was scream at these people. It had become more than evident after visiting the first property on our list that they weren’t going to make an offer on anything. “But it is part of my job to make sure you understand the market.”

  “How dare you talk to us that way?” Mr. Davidson turned a fiery gaze on me that was somewhat muted by the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses.

  I blinked at him, stunned, as though he’d reached out and slapped me across the face. “Mr. Davidson, I didn’t mean to offend you. I only wanted to explain how the Seattle real estate market worked and assist you in making an informed decision concerning the purchase of your new home.”

  “Let’s go, Wanda,” he said, ignoring me completely — as he had for the better part of the day.

  “I don’t want to look at another house as long as I live,” she wailed.