Page 50 of Burning with Desire (Forbidden Heat 1)

She smiled and leaned against me, resting her head on my chest. “I love the way you hav

e so much confidence in me. I didn’t always get a lot of that growing up. My mother was too busy, and my father was just too stern to really pay much attention to me.”

I could see something in her eyes just then. A twinge of sadness. It was only a flash, but it was something. “What? What are you thinking?”

She sighed and lowered her gaze. When she looked back up, there was pain. “I should have told you this sooner. I just didn’t think it mattered, and I didn’t want you to have pity on my folks when you met them. That only would have made my father that much angrier. He would have seen it a mile away.”

“Ok,” I said. “What is it?”

“There is a reason my father changed the way he did, the reason he had the affair, the reason he became so controlling and angry at the world. About a year before my parents split up, my mother miscarried. I was going to have a little brother or sister. My parents were both devastated, but my father took it especially hard. He’s always been a religious man and after that happened, he started hitting the bottle pretty hard and almost renounced his religion for a while. He couldn’t understand how God could do this to him. He became embittered and it just got worse. Even to this day, I think he is just broken and angry. It took away his ability to hold on and care for the people who are still in his life. He does care, but now it’s done from a position of fear and paranoia. He controls because he loves. He is afraid to let go of it because he could not control his unborn child and he saw what happened there.”

Julie wiped a tear from her eye. I held her close to me. “Honey, I’m so sorry. Being a father, I can imagine that level of grief a parent might feel in that situation. I understand why your father acts the way he does, but I don’t excuse it. He is still operating of his own will.”

“I know,” Julie said. “I just felt bad keeping it from you. I didn’t tell you earlier because it happened so long ago that I don’t even think about it much anymore. Does that make me a bad person? I’ve always felt sad about it, but I never felt that overwhelming feeling of tragedy. I was excited to have a new brother or sister, but I never knew them.”

“I understand,” I said. “No. It doesn’t make you a bad person honey. You were a kid when this happened. Sometimes kids bury things deeply and those feelings never get fully expressed. Sometimes I think they just let go. I appreciate you sharing that with me.”

I held her closely and kissed her on the forehead enjoying the warmth being shared between us. The silence was nice, both of us wrapped up in our own thoughts and reactions to the conversation that we’d just had. I loved quiet evenings with Julie. It was the only thing that often got me through a hard day sometimes, knowing I had my wonderful little girl and the love of this amazing woman to come home to. Julie had more or less moved in, unofficially of course.

As we held each other, I wondered if Julie would apply to art school again. While they were idiotic to reject her immense talent before, it was probably a blessing in disguise. I didn’t see how you could teach someone to be an artist. You either had a creative vision and talent or you didn’t.

And though it was a bit selfish on my part, I didn’t want to risk Julie being accepted to art school now and leaving me for months at a time. I wasn’t sure I could handle that. We’d just found each other and life was starting to turn around. I was happy, finally.

And it terrified me to think that there was a chance I might lose that.

Chapter Twenty

Julie

“Well, you are the toast of the evening,” Ricky whispered in my ear as I grabbed another glass of champagne from the bar. I turned to him slowly and smiled just in time to see his eyes scanning my figure in the dress I was wearing. The dress was sleek, black, and conformed perfectly to my shape. I felt sexy and I knew that I looked it.

“What would make you say that?” I asked.

“Because, everyone has been staring at you all night and every single conversation I’ve had this evening, you have been at the center of the group. I’ve hardly had to say two words. It’s been wonderful.”

“I do aim to please,” I said.

“And you do that just right,” Ricky whispered before kissing me softly.

Ricky had talked me into going to his annual Firefighters banquet which he’d skipped going for the past few years. He casually mentioned it the other night at dinner and I picked up on the hint that he wanted to go. He tried to downplay it as me looking too much into things, but I could tell that it would mean a lot to him if I went. It sounded like fun.

When we arrived, I was surprised to see how many great friends Ricky had in the department. Everyone was glad to see him. And of course they wanted to know more about me. I’ve never really been the life of the party, but it was easy with these men and women. They just invited us over to their tables and we all started hanging out during the cocktail hour.

“Where have you been hiding this beauty?” Dustin Taylor, who I learned was one of the veterans, asked us the moment we walked in. He draped a big arm around Ricky and patted him twice. I blushed slightly at the mention of being called a beauty. It never gets old hearing sweet compliments. I could tell right away that Dustin was an old charmer. He was about fifty-five with mostly grey hair and a wide, cheeky grin that just said he was up to no good. His wife was by his side and she was obviously very comfortable with his flirty ways. I’d noticed a lot of older men seemed to have that quality. Was it because they knew there was no way in hell that they would ever stray from their marital bed? Or was it something else that went wrong in their head wiring?

“Oh, I haven’t been hiding,” Ricky said. “She’s been keeping me all to herself. This is the first night she has let me out to play in a long time.”

I loved it when Ricky got into his outgoing, joking mode. It didn’t happen that often. He could be very serious and reserved in social situations, but once you got him going he was the most interesting guy around. It wasn’t that he couldn’t turn on the charm at a whim, either. He absolutely could. But he chose to keep it under wraps most of the time. That was one of the things I liked most about Ricky. He had that quiet confidence where he didn’t care if other people liked him or not. Because of this, he didn’t feel the need to be on all the time.

“There you go telling lies again,” I said hitting Ricky playfully on the arm.

“Oh, she is a ballbuster!” Dustin shouted. The table erupted with laughter.

The thing I noticed first about the banquet was how closely knit this group of men and women were. They had all been through a lot together, and they fought alongside each other against a terrible adversary every single day. They saved lives together. They were all heroes, every single one of them.

Next, Ricky and I joined the table of Margaret Watson and her boyfriend Chip. They were all apparently seeing who could drink the most before the food even arrived. Occasionally, one person from their table would stand up and dance around to the music. At one point, Rob Bealson hopped up on his chair and pretended he was going to do a strip tease until he started to get a few disapproving looks from the chief.

It was a great party and I was having even more fun than I thought I would. It was nice, and in some way it felt like this was solidifying our relationship to the public, to Ricky’s peers, and I was being brought into some kind of an initiation. This team was more like a family and it extended to their significant others as well. The emotional support that these brave warriors received from those closest to them in their lives was of the utmost importance. I was glad to now be included in that.

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