Page 17 of Slow Burn

She needed to fix that. As soon as her brain caught up.

“Y-you live here now?”

He nodded once, his eyes never veering from hers.

“You work for them?” She gestured to the truck.

“With them. Yes.”

“What about your home? The island? Your condo?”

“I still have it. I’m going to rent it out to tourists when we’re not there visiting. Zo? You’re killing me.”

She wasn’t sure she understood the details, but she understood enough. He’d moved here. For her.

“Yes, Cooper,” she finally said, the words spilling out on a stream of giddy laughter. “I’ll marry you. Yes!”

He rose in a flash and picked her up in a bear hug, spinning her around. “Thank God,” he mumbled. “You can’t imagine what it took to get these guys to go along with this.”

That was when she tuned in to the applause from the firefighters, the hoots and hollers and cheers, the calls of “way to go, Flannagan!”

Zoe, her feet still dangling above the ground, held on for dear life and breathed in the familiar smell of Cooper mixed with that of the stiff coat. She let it sink in that he was really here. In Colorado. With a ring.

“Let me see that thing,” she said, lowering herself to the ground as best she could with Cooper’s hold on her. “My ring. Please?”

Cooper laughed and steadied her, then took the ring out of the delicate box. He grasped her left hand and, his fingers still shaking, slid the ring onto her ring finger.

“I love it,” she said, blinking away the tears that nearly blinded her. “It’s perfect, Cooper.” She turned her attention to his face. “I love you.”

His laugh was a roar as he pulled her into his arms again. “I love you too, Zo Zo. I was going crazy without you.”

“Me too,” she said into his shoulder.

“If you’d said no, I would’ve never heard the end of it from my new colleagues. They think I’m batshit crazy as it is.”

Zoe laughed. “You kind of are. In a good way. A very good way.”

She opened her eyes finally, and that’s when she noticed the beginnings of a crowd, attracted, no doubt, to the firetruck and trying to figure out what was going on. Her neighbors. The people she’d known for most of her life. And they were laughing and cheering along with the firefighters. She waved at them over Cooper’s shoulder.

“Way to go, Zoe!” Mr. Finlay from down the block hollered, making her laugh again.

The firefighters who’d been by the truck were making their way to the porch to congratulate them.

“Nice work, Flannagan,” the one who held Cooper’s helmet said as Cooper turned to face them all, pulling Zoe securely into his side.

“Told you she’s a keeper,” Cooper said as he shook their hands, one by one.

At that moment, an incessant beeping came from behind them, inside the house. Zoe recognized the sound in an instant.

“No! My dinner!” she said in alarm. She opened the door and could see a blanket of smoke near the ceiling, crawling its way into the living room from the kitchen. “I left my stir-fry cooking!”

She tried to run inside, but Cooper held on to her. “They’ve got it handled,” he said, laughing, as three of the firefighters rushed inside her house.

“I just need to turn it off,” she protested, slightly mortified that strangers had burst into her smoke-filled house.

“They’ve got it. You’re staying right here with me. I’m not done with you yet,” Cooper said with another gravelly laugh. She managed to forget about the alarm and the smoke as Cooper gazed into her eyes with so much love it just about knocked her over.

He pulled her close again and kissed her slowly, with such exquisite tenderness that she forgot where they were two seconds in. And then she registered the applause and the whistles and remembered they were in front of her house with a not-so-small audience. Laughing, she broke the contact of their lips and shook her head. “Enough. We’re putting on a show.”

Cooper laughed, too, and glanced over his shoulder at the gathering masses, who were coming closer. She expected him to lead her down the single step and out into the yard to meet them in the middle. Instead, he surprised her by spinning her into an old-fashioned dip and leaning over her to kiss her again.

Zoe let out what was embarrassingly close to a squeal at the suddenness of his big move and the fear that he might drop her. He held tightly though, and she gave in to the kiss for a few seconds.

“Okay,” she said, laughing, trying to straighten but losing the battle. “You have to let me up. My kitchen’s on fire, and my entire neighborhood is closing in on us.”

“Zoe, my love, I just got you back. I don’t care if the whole neighborhood burns down. I’m not letting you go.”

He did, however, help her straighten. He tightened his arm around her waist as they both turned to her beloved neighbors, who were wishing them well. As she and Cooper went down the step toward them, she said, so only he could hear, “Is that a promise?”

“Biggest and best promise I ever made.”

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