Page 12 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

“What are you talking about? All I know is that my friends are calling me and asking for your number.”

Um … what? Fred frowned, wincing as the skin of his nose pulled tight.

He rubbed his forehead, wondering if that blow to his nose had knocked him into the Twilight Zone. “I’d better check this out. I’ll call you back, Lizzie.”

He got up and returned to the kitchen, where he’d left the newspaper on the kitchen island. The boys barely looked up from their voracious consumption of raisin bran as he shook open the paper.

“Dude,” said Tremaine, impressed. “Is that you?”

The full-color photo splashed across the front page showed Fred striding toward the camera, smiling at the blond girl, Cindy, as he carried her away from the mangled limousine. Her arms were around his neck. Since he didn’t have his proper gear, his whole face was visible, including his smile. The headline read: “Hero in Action.” The caption read: “Local firefighter saves bride after a freak crane accident.”

At least the picture didn’t show him getting punched out by Rachel. But why was the newspaper making such a big deal out of the extraction? He wouldn’t mind being called a hero if he’d done something heroic. But he was just doing his job. And in the photo, he was just walking, really. Walking while carrying a pretty girl. Not exactly hard work.

“It wasn’t all me,” he told the boys. “Mulligan was there, and then the whole crew showed up. It wasn’t just me.”

“You’re the one carrying the girl,” pointed out Jackson. “Nice moves.”

“It wasn’t a move. It’s my job.”

“You must like your job. Look at you smiling. I can see your teeth. You ought to floss more.”

“Hey, maybe you’re on TV!” Tremaine jumped up and ran to grab the remote from the coffee table. He clicked it at the flat-screen on the wall, then punched around the channels until he found one showing the local news.

Channel Six’s Ella Joy filled the screen. Despite his vow to avoid the news, Fred drew close to see what she had to say.

She was introducing a story about the accident, with a huge graphic trumpeting the “Miracle on Main.” With a sense of the inevitable, Fred lifted his head to watch. Ella had made her threat, and now she was going to deliver on it. He braced himself for a shot of a wild-haired girl in a silvery dress punching him in the face. Cue the embarrassing public humiliation of Fred Breen, Bachelor Fireman.

But that’s not what came next. Instead, they ran a shot of him crouched next to the limo. As the camera rolled, he extracted the first girl from the limo, handed her over to the paramedics, then stuck his head back in the limo.

Nothing spectacular, but the way they shot and edited the footage, it looked as if he was single-handedly saving the day.

“We’ve gotten used to the heroics of our favorite fire department,” recited Ella Joy dramatically. “But yesterday, the Bachelor Firemen outdid themselves. With a bride’s life at stake, Firefighter Fred Breen, one of the few remaining single Bachelor Firemen, put his own safety on the line to rescue not only Cindy Barstow, but her three bridesmaids. One by one, he pulled them to safety. One by one, he delivered them into the hands of paramedics. One by one, he brought joy into a dire situation.”

Here they cut to a shot of him cradling Rachel against his chest. It brought the entire experience back to him. He’d been so distracted by how good she felt that he’d forgotten she didn’t tolerate small spaces well. No wonder she’d panicked at the sight of the ambulance. He just wished she’d said something instead of punching him out.

Ella Joy continued. “Today, the survivors of that terrifying accident are speaking out.”

The blonde, Cindy, appeared on the screen. Pale but composed, with a small bandage on her head, she sat holding hands with her fiancé. “That fireman is a hero,” she said, shakily. “We have to postpone our wedding a little, but we’re going to dedicate it to him. Without him, it wouldn’t even be happening. And if it’s true that he’s one of the Bachelor Firemen, well”—she managed a smile—“my bet is he won’t be for long. Single girls out there, what are you waiting for?”

“That’s it.” With a gesture of defeat, Fred tossed the newspaper over his shoulder. Instead of making him look bad, Ella Joy had made him look good. Too good. First a kitten lover, now this. “I’m doomed.”

Chapter 4

Rachel dreamed she was jumping off the tip of a construction crane, but instead of crashing to the ground, she was captured by a soap bubble, like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. It tickled her skin, which made her giggle and shiver. Then the bubble popped, thanks to the annoying sound of a tinny voice. She woke up instantly. Greta was licking her chin and her phone was playing the ring tone she’d assigned to her father: Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” her own private joke.

She rubbed Greta’s head as she swung her feet over the edge of her four-poster bed, onto the plush pile carpet. When she’d insisted on staying in San Gabriel after college, her father had insisted on buying her the top floor apartment in the most secure building in town. He’d then wired the entire place with motion sensors and hidden cameras. And he’d bought one of the bottom floor apartments for Marsden.

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