Page 2 of Up In Smoke

Reaching up, she looped her arms around the firefighter’s neck and held on for dear life. He turned his head, and only as he looked at her square on, was she able to see through the clear face covering.

Luke Hernandez was quiet but competent on the job. Around town, he had a reputation for being a bit of a wild card. He didn’t grin at her now the way he did when he came into the library. Now there was no charm, only a disturbingly relieved expression that she was awake and looking at him.

Had she almost died?

Though his bold good looks and his disturbingly disarming smiles had always made her stomach twist, Ivy knew better than to read it as anything more than the slimmest of flatteries. Luke did that with every woman he met. She’d been there when he slid his laminated card across the desk with a grin as though he were gifting her diamonds … only to turn and offer an even sexier smile and a sweeter compliment to Mrs. Diamond—a widower who was eighty if she was a day.

Ivy turned away from Luke’s obvious but confusing relief and looked down the street at the neighbors watching her rescue. They were cheering as she felt her face crack into a smile … or maybe almost-sobs. By force of will, she held it together.

She’d built this new life for herself from scratch. She hadn’t lost it today. Taking another deep gulp of fresh night air, she realized none of that mattered if it was all burning up behind her.

“Ivy? Ivy?”

He was not … no, he wasn’t. Luke Hernandez wasn't asking her out. He was simply doing his job.

“I’m going to put you down now. You’re a safe distance from the fire.”

The fire. Notyour house.

He set her onto the cold grass, peeled his face mask, and began an assessment. Still far too serious to offer her that Hernandez charm that he and all his brothers possessed in spades and spread like ones at a strip club.

She was pushing his hands away, about to tell him that she was fine, when two other firefighters showed up. Ronan Kelly had his kit in hand, and his father Patrick—also on the crew—was hastily strapping an oxygen mask on her face, preventing her from saying anything.

“You're not fine, Ivy,” Luke told her. “You were just in a serious house fire. You have smoke inhalation and probably burns. I’m just so grateful that you were in that back room.”

The other two looked at him oddly as though they, too, felt his heartfelt declaration was a little over the top.The guy was just doing his job, right?

Luke explained, “She was smart and put multiple doors between her and the origin point.”

He talked over her head as if she wasn't even there.

She pulled the mask down again to say, “I'm fine,” when she remembered her manners. “Thank you.”

She sighed. “I wish I was as smart as you’re giving me credit for. I was just working in the back office and fell asleep.” She didn’t mention why she’d been in her office so late and hoped her computer had turned the screen off before he got there.

A hand fell on her shoulder, jolting her thoughts.

“Damn, Ivy. I'd hug you, but I'm filthy.”

Ivy jumped up and hugged her best friend Jo anyway. She was already a mess and despite being blond and small and always dressed like a librarian, she didn't care about dirt. Over Jo's shoulder, she looked back to see smoke billowing out from every window of her home. Firefighters with hoses turned on to it and some aimed for the neighbor's houses, wetting them down so that her burn didn't turn into theirs.

As she watched it all get eaten by flames, Ivy felt like she was going to vomit. That was everything.Everything. There was no backup plan.

She’d bought the house at the higher end of her ability, thinking she only had to make it three or four years with no major disasters. She hadn’t made it one year.

The only good thing was that she’d absolutely forbidden herself from buying a house she couldn’t afford to lose. She never invested in anything she couldn’t afford to lose. But this came close, so painfully close. Fixing this would hurt hard and take every bit of the cushion she had. She’d be back at zero and zero had been a shitty place.

She had no family to stay with and only her own savings as a cushion. This was definitely going to be a hard fall.

She held on to Jo far too tightly until Jo had to extract herself explaining, “I'm so sorry Ivy. I've got to go finish the job.”

Jo was trying to save her house. But Ivy could see it was a lost cause along with everything in it. Black inky smoke billowed out, stealing everything. Orange flames licked at her new living room furniture, taunting her as they ate her prized possessions.

Grasping for something, for anything that made sense, she said, “I don't think I left anything on. Did something short circuit?”

She'd had the house thoroughly inspected before she bought it—exactly so that she wouldn’t have a disaster in the first few years. Had her inspector not been competent?

She was chasing these odd thoughts to keep from going crazy as Luke crowded her, his bare fingers now pressing softly on her wrist. For whatever reason she hadn't felt them before, but now the human contact jolted through her.

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