Love Happens Anyway Read online

  At a firehouse you pitched in, you played to your strengths and that made a difference. I couldn’t see the point in Derek wasting his talent if he could use it.

  A knock on his door pulled us apart, just as I’d been staring at Derek’s lips again, waiting for him to talk so I could see how they moved, and whether I could steal another kiss. The first one had stolen rational thought and I really believed he should’ve experienced more kisses like it.

  And me.

  I’d like a kiss, for me.

  “Hey boss,” a perky woman in a scarlet floor-length dress stepped into the room. “You ready?” She added a quiet hi on the end for me, and I replied in the same. I guess there would be more time for introductions later.

  “I’ll be there in two,” Derek said, and walked to a small mirror on the wall, checking out his hair and face, and then his suit. The mirror was tiny, not big enough to get a real look, and I gently eased him to face me.

  I focused maybe longer than was polite on his gorgeous eyes, his kissable lips, the pulse at the base of his throat, his hands, his thighs. This man was beautiful on the surface, even if he was a mess of contradictions on the inside.

  I brushed his shoulders and straightened his tie, just as my sister had done for me.

  “Looking good, boyfriend,” I announced, and couldn’t fail to see the flush of red on his cheeks. He was embarrassed. Maybe being that gorgeous meant that people thought a person knew they looked good. Maybe Derek needed telling during the time I was hired by him.

  “And you,” he slipped his hand into mine.

  I guess I wasn’t supposed to assume the position just behind and to the side of him, guess we were walking into this event holding hands.

  Cool.

  Derek

  Looking good, boyfriend.

  Did Luke actually say that?

  I couldn’t think about that now. We were about to stand in a room and wait for the guests, senior management and our biggest clients. Including Austin Lister from AbbaLister who would want an update on the raisins account.

  The update that consisted of pretty much nothing at all. Luckily, Austin was one of the last to arrive and by the time he had, I’d managed to down a brandy on an empty stomach and the edges of worry had dulled a little.

  I’d already dealt with the Js; all there with their wives, and looking smug. They loved this event, or so my dad explained, it was all about exclusivity and the fact that their staff weren’t allowed. Nope, it was all senior level management, and Moira, whom I’d sneaked in with the excuse that she was running her own account team now.

  And thank God she was there; she was becoming the center of attention. Everyone wanted to talk to her, about ideas, and the economy, and their cars, and she’d found instant camaraderie with Ester Mackey from Mackey Condoms. I made a note of it, because I thought they would be a good fit to work together on the next Mackey designs.

  Of course that would piss off Julian, being as that was his account, but what Julian didn’t know was that Ester had contacted me to say she’d been imagining her company with another ad firm due to recent inconsistencies with Julian’s representation.

  The sooner Julian left, and John, and Jim, the better. Then maybe Henderson McCormack could move on.

  “For you,” Luke said from my left, and handed me a glass of wine, and a small plate of nibbles. He leaned close and bussed my cheekbone, and whispered, “Eat first, then drink.”

  I couldn’t even resent his words, he was being thoughtful and doing exactly what a boyfriend would do. Or so I guessed. Previous boyfriends of mine would not have attended this stuffy event.

  “Henderson,” Austin Lister shook my hand.

  “Mr. Lister.”

  “Call me Austin, Mr. Lister is my dad.”

  “And I’m Derek,” I said. “Can I introduce Marcus, my partner.”

  Luke and Austin shook hands, and Austin smiled at him. “Nice to finally meet this Marcus we’ve heard so much about,” he said.

  I groaned. During our last meeting he’d asked me for advice about his daughter who had just come out, and how he wanted the best for her in the way of a girlfriend. I’d blathered on about Marcus, and fuck kittens… I’d covered a lot about the kittens.

  “And you,” Luke said.

  “So Derek, we’re excited to see the presentation. Are you all ready?”

  “Absolutely.” Liar, liar.

  He regarded me steadily and I could feel myself getting hot under the collar; how much of my lie had sounded convincing?

  “Can you give me a hint,” he asked.

  I could’ve played it two ways, I could’ve laughed it off, or given Austin a short concept overview.

  “You know the reason the presentation is Christmas Eve is because you wanted it as close to Christmas as possible so you had the spirit of the season, Austin,” I used my best teasing voice, and he half pouted, if serious businessmen actually pouted, that was.

  Crisis averted, Austin was whisked away by John and Jim, who double-teamed him to the drinks table. They did that a lot, ganging up on poor, unsuspecting clients. He didn’t seem fazed by it but I made a mental note.

  The evening went well, people laughed, they talked, a couple of new campaigns were touched on, and two glasses of wine in, on top of the brandy, and I was mellow. The room was empty by midnight, Moira, the last person to leave before me and Luke. Cleaners would be there in the morning to finish off, and all it took was for me to tell security we were leaving and then I could drive home.

  Wait. No I couldn’t.

  Luke would have to drive me home, which sounded like a really good idea.

  “Can you drive me home?” I asked, and he smiled at me.

  “Yep.” He gripped the handrail as he went down the stairs one at a time. I was hyper, fueled by alcohol and my first successful solo event, and for every step he took I was up a step, down a step, and then hovering by his side.

  “We should have taken the elevator,” I said, for the fifth time as we reached the bottom floor.

  “Maybe.” Luke stretched his leg out. Would he be able to drive? Although it was his left knee, right? And the Daimler was an automatic. He’ll be fine.

  I felt lighter than air, swirling in the snow as it flurried around us. Somehow since we’d gone inside, the snow was thicker, and we had to scrape the car where the trunk stuck out from the cover of the building. Everything was peaceful, the snow muffling sound, and a shot of something like Christmas spirit made me poke my tongue out to catch flakes.

  “Get in the car,” Luke ground out, and I laughed. He sounded cross with me, and he couldn’t be cross with me, not when I was paying him.

  “You can’t be cross with me,” I said. “I pay you to be nice to me.”

  He grumbled something and started the car, backing out of the space and then slamming the brakes on so that we were half in and half out of the space. He did that thing again, where he took me by surprise, cradling my face with cold hands and kissing me, and I desperately attempted to get out of my seatbelt. God, I wanted to be in his lap, grinding on him, kissing him, and coming in my pants. I needed an orgasm that involved another man and not just my right hand.

  But he was easing me away.

  “Don’t do that again,” he growled.

  I made to move closer but he pushed me back in my seat and straightened the belt I hadn't managed to undo.

  “What?” I asked, not aware of having done anything in particular. I mean, it was Luke that started the kiss right?

  “Don’t stand in the snow and poke your tongue out and dance around like you want me to kiss you.”

  He reversed out and was on the road before I could think of a rational reply. I could say that I didn’t want him to kiss me, but actually I did, not to mention wanting to come in my pants.

  That was going to stay in my head.

  So, like the coward I am, with my head full of spinning thoughts, I wisely said nothing. He drove carefully in the snow and I was lulle
d into silence by the dancing flakes outside of the window. When the car skittered to a halt and Luke swore, I was snapped out of my daydreams.

  “Shit, did you see that?” Luke asked. “Stay here. Call 911.”

  He turned off the engine and darted out of the car, well more stumbled, but he was fast. I couldn’t undo the freaking belt and tugged at it until finally I coordinated myself to the point I could get out. Then I saw what he’d seen and hell, it looked bad.

  A car had met a streetlight head-on. The front of it was rapidly turning white with the snow but even I could see it was bad. I called 911 and made a report, completely sober and not at all stuck in my own head.

  Luke was trying to open the door, using his body weight as a lever, but the door wasn’t budging. I slid to a stop beside him and he tried to move it again.

  “I need to smash the window, she’s bleeding out. Get the tools out of your trunk.”

  I didn’t stop to argue, I didn’t even know I had tools in my trunk and when I opened it I couldn’t see anything.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Lift the carpet, bottom left,” Luke shouted back. I found what he meant and grabbed the bag, nearly falling on my ass twice as I hurried to his side.

  “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

  The woman inside turned her head. She was saying something, and I couldn’t see what it was, but clearly it was enough for Luke. He tapped at the glass, the spiders web of cracks growing. With two more taps, the glass shattered into a million tiny pieces, lost in the snow on the car and inside, onto her lap. Luke reached in, and unlocked the door, at last able to yank it loose enough to push himself in. He leaned over the driver, his hand on her neck. All I could see was that her eyes had closed and he looked absolutely calm and focused.

  I couldn’t hear sirens. Shouldn’t there have been sirens by now?

  “Stay with me,” he was saying, talking to her loudly. Blood covered his hands, until he moved his fingers and abruptly the bleeding stopped.

  “Come on now, stay with me. What’s your name? Stay with me.”

  Finally, there was the sound of sirens and the glow of lights, as cars stopped, and a rush of firefighter and paramedics. I was pushed to the back, and right in the center of the mess was Luke.

  “Let go, sir,” the paramedics said to him, and they did a complicated maneuver that I couldn’t even watch, as Luke stumbled back and away into a firefighter, who caught him. They exchanged words, the firefighter shook his hand, and then the second paramedics on scene guided him to sit on the step of their ambulance. I edged closer, the cold biting the tips of my nose and ears.

  “I’m okay, nothing hurts,” I heard Luke saying, but the paramedic wasn’t letting him go so easily.

  “Once a firefighter, always a firefighter,” she teased.

  “Always.”

  “That your Daimler?” she asked Luke and his eyes flickered to me.

  “No.” He looked right at me when he spoke. “My boyfriend’s.”

  That gave me the right to step forward and try to get a grip on what the hell had happened so far.

  “I’m okay, I need to get us home,” Luke said. The blood was gone, or at least I couldn’t see much trace of it in that light.

  The paramedic clapped his shoulder. “Good work.”

  Good work? Why were they not congratulating him for being a freaking hero? Where were the journalists, the cameras, the news? Instead, Luke stood, reaching for me to steady himself on his leg, and we made our way to the car.

  I wanted to ask him who he was. How did he know what to do?

  “Miss you at the house, man,” some big guy said, clapping a meaty hand on Luke’s shoulder.

  “I don’t miss your cooking,” Luke joked back.

  “This your boyfriend?” Big Guy asked.

  Luke looked as if he’d rather have been anywhere than there.

  I thrust out my hand. “Derek.”

  “Ian. Nice to meet you, Derek. Didn’t see you at the ceremony last month.”

  I didn’t even want to know what ‘the ceremony’ was.

  “We’re kinda new,” Luke said, and edged away from Ian. Something he didn’t want to talk about, I guess.

  Ian wasn’t letting this go. “One of the best firefighters I ever met,” he said, and pulled Luke in for a hug. I heard his voice muffled against Luke’s neck. “Miss you man.”

  This was surreal. This was snow, and the smell of metal, and people, and water, and then the silence in my car.

  Luke was an actual firefighter. Or at least he’d had been. He hadn't said a word.

  Did I actually ask him? I just assumed he worked full-time doing the whole fake partner thing.

  Luke got in the driver’s side, pressed something into his phone, started the car and drove me the rest of the way home. I never even thought of the logistics of him driving me. How would he get to the bar and his home from my place? He lived in the middle of the Financial District, for God’s sake.

  “Leave me here and take my car,” I encouraged, when he stopped outside my place.

  “Where do you suppose I would park it?” He wasn’t being nasty, merely stating facts. “It’s okay, I called a cab.” He shook his phone and I felt something cut into me; disappointment.

  A car pulled up in front of us and beeped its horn.

  “That’s my ride.” He opened his door. I hurried around to him, and took the keys he held out.

  “Tonight, what you did, that was—”

  “Goodnight.” He climbed into the cab, and then I watched the car disappear into the snow.

  “I think I’m in shock,” I said to the snow. “What the hell just happened?”

  Weirdly enough, the snow didn’t have an answer.

  Luke

  I expected Derek to call me, or something. After all, he’d found out that I was a firefighter for real, which had to have made him think something.

  Anything.

  But nope. All I got was a generic email from him asking after my health and confirming the overnight stay at a place called the Bear Mountain Inn. This was a high-priced hotel complex with cabins, just over an hour from the city. Apparently, Derek and his college friends met there for one night every Christmas season.

  I wondered why it was important he had a boyfriend at this event, but of course I wouldn’t ask him, it was none of my business. And that is all it was, business. Nothing more. Otherwise he would have asked more in this email. Personal things about me, wanting to know what the real deal was, what the truth was, and why I hadn't told him about being a firefighter before now.

  No, he was more interested in telling me that there would be a secret Santa, but he’d dealt with that for me. I had a list of clothes to bring, from jeans to a coat.

  Everything felt cold and clinical. Nothing like the heat of the kisses we’d shared, or the way he’d looked at me after I’d jumped out of the car to help that trapped woman.

  I clicked the link to the accommodation, a four-bedroom stone, rustic mountain cabin, complete with a cozy front porch and a huge sunken living room with added wood-burning fireplace. Each room had a queen-size bed and I checked out the hike we’d need to get to it from the main hotel.

  My leg was still not well after last night’s drama. My knee was sore and swollen, and I was laid back on my sofa, ice on my thigh, and Sara buzzing around me fussing.

  “Why,” she said, for what must have been the fourth time since I called her. “Why didn’t you just call 911?”

  I didn’t usually worry her about details. Only ever used generic terms like, there was a fire, or a car accident, or a kitten in a tree, but she wouldn’t stop, and it wasn’t as if this was likely to happen again, but I’d seen through the window and she needed me to…

  “Look.” I remained patient. “Sit down.”

  Sara sat next to me and was agitated.

  “So, it’s like this. When I looked in the window, I saw the blood and her neck and I knew she was bleeding out. I neede
d to stem the bleeding, because in the time it would take for first responders to get there she would have died. I used my fingers and plugged the hole where the door had hurt her and the buckle had caught her neck.” Sara paled, but I’d started now. “It doesn’t matter that they let me go, Sara, I’ll always have that instinct to help if I can. She was lucky we were behind her and could help her the minute after the crash.”

  Sara was still pale, but she placed a hand on my good thigh and squeezed a little.

  “Well done little brother,” she murmured.

  “Are we good?” I asked.

  “I always knew what you did, what happened, how you got hurt…” She closed her eyes briefly. “They called me, to tell me they’d pulled you out of that building, and I thought I’d lost the last thing I had of Mom and us. It nearly killed me.”

  We’d never actually talked about the accident, of me being trapped in a burning building, of the wall collapsing onto my leg, of nearly being caught by the flames and rescued by my fellow firefighters. They’d risked themselves for me, just as I had every time I’d been needed. The concept of that sort of brotherhood wasn’t something you could put into words, but Sara had understood enough to know why I did it.

  “When they told me that you were alive but you might not be a firefighter anymore.” She stopped but I knew what she was going to say.

  “You were relieved.”

  Her eyes brightened with tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “I get it, Sara, I promise you I understand.”

  She sat next to me, snuggled in under my arm and we sat there for a long time, just being brother and sister and chatting about Mom, and memories, and then it happened.

  That inevitable thing.

  “So tell me about your ad man.”

  Derek remained tightlipped on the journey to the resort. Obviously, he didn’t want to talk, and I was happy to watch the city become trees and to arrive at the main hotel. He stopped the car and I waited, because, were we getting out, talking, or staying in the car, or what.