“Here...”
Perhaps he said it aloud. Perhaps he only uttered the syllable inside his head. Fridge didn’t know. He wasn’t certain it made much of a difference.
Another spasm of pain racked him. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sanguineous light from the flames. This fire was starting to feel personal, he decided, with a touch of gallows’ humor. Real, real personal.
He didn’t want to die. But if his tune had come, he was prepared to meet his Maker. He’d done his best to be a good man, to lead a good hfe. And while it had taken him a long time to do so, he’d been fortunate enough to find a good woman to love.
If only his love for that good woman had been enough to erase the fear he’d seen lurking like a wounded animal in the topaz depths of her remarkable eyes, more times than he wanted to remember.
If only it had been enough to allow her to fully trust him.
Enough to allow her to trust herself.
“Keezia,” Fridge gasped, invoking the name like a prayer. “Oh...Keezia.”
One
Four months earlier
On top of all his other talents, the man could dance
The realization surprised Keezia Lorraine Carew, although she knew it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t as though she’d never seen Fridge move. She’d watched him on the job—running drills for rookies at the academy, tending to business at the fire station, responding to calls in the field—more times than she could count. Although he stood a strapping six-four and tipped the scales at a solidly muscular 230 pounds, the man was light on his feet Potently graceful, like a big, black jungle cat. He could be weighed down by turnout gear and breathing apparatus, but he still seemed to.. gli-i-i-ide...when he walked. And he had a knack for maintaining a rock-solid rhythm, even when everything around him was falling apart.
She’d watched how Fridge moved when he was off the job, too. It wasn’t a sexual thing. She wasn’t checking him out or sizing him up. He was a friend, for heaven’s sake! More than that, he was a fellow firefighter. If she were looking for a man—which she most emphatically was not now and had no intention of doing anytime soon—she’d have more sense than to go hunting for one in the department.
Still. Keezia knew that she’d be lying if she denied she found Fridge attractive. The source of his appeal was something she’d shied from examining except to acknowledge that he was very different from the brothers she’d been drawn to in the past. He didn’t strut his stuff. He didn’t represent himself as some streetwise stud He was, in fact, the kind of mama-loving, churchgoing black man she’d once disdained as hopelessly dull. But now...
What could she say? Ralph Randall compelled her interest. Her attention. And the unsettling thing was, he seemed to compel them against her will.
Keezia took a sip of the beer that had been thrust upon her by a colleague when she’d walked into the garishly decorated hall where several dozen members of the Atlanta Fire Department and their families were celebrating the retirement of one of their own. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she knew the drill. If she’d turned aside the brew and asked for something soft, she would have been labelled a wuss—or worse.
Swaying to the irresistibly down-and-dirty beat of the golden Motown oldie that was wailing out of the hall’s speaker system, she glanced around at the gathered throng. The mood in the hall was rocking, verging on rowdy. The esprit de corps—the camaraderie—was palpable Keezia gave herself over to the all-for-one, one-for-all feeling, wrapping it around her like a security blanket.
She shifted her gaze back toward Fridge. He was dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt. The dark, loose-fitting jacket he’d been wearing when she’d walked in—late, thanks to yet another problem with the hunk of junk she drove—had been discarded shortly after he started dancing. The T-shirt clung to the powerful muscles of his upper body as though it had been sprayed on. As for the jeans...
Keezia swallowed and shifted her weight, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
All right, she thought with a touch of self-directed anger. Okay. So she’d noticed. She’d have to be bind not to. Fridge’s jeans seemed to be clinging to some pretty well-developed anatomy, too. The man was just plain big all over.
Too big, something inside her warned. Bigger than—
Keezia clamped down on the comparison before it was completed. She took another drink of beer. A gulp this time, not a sip. She didn’t even grimace at the lukewarm temperature.
Motown gave way to a classic cut from the Rolling Stones. All of a sudden Fridge was dancing with a flashy young thing who, in Keezia’s considered opinion, should have taken a few of the dollars she’d paid to have her hair braided and beaded and spent them on a brassiere. A pair of super-control, jiggle-reducing panties would have been a good investment, too.
And what were those nails she was scratching against Fridge every time she wiggled near enough to touch him? Keezia wondered with a sardonic snort. A fancy manicure was one thing. Men liked a woman who made an effort to appear her best. But bloodred talons that looked as though a girl had been ripping at somebody’s jugular vein? Puh-leeze. Those things were worse than tacky. They were flat-out ugly.
Keezia tapped her short, unvarnished nails against her nearly emptied beer bottle. She was disappointed in Fire Officer Ralph Randall, she told herself She really was. She’d thought he had more sense than to take up with such obvious trash. She could only imagine what would happen if he decided to take Whoever-She-Was home to meet his mama!
That Helen Rose Randall wanted her only child married was plain to anyone with eyes or ears. But she wasn’t willing to settle for any old Sally, Jane or LaToya as a daughter-in-law. No, indeed not. Miz Helen was a lady with very definite standards. She’d take one look at—
Little Miss I-Got-It-So-I’m-Gonna-Flaunt-It said something at this point. Keezia decided the comment must have been downright hilarious because Fridge grinned m response to it, his even teeth flashing white beneath his mustache. A few seconds later, he swept his partner into a Michael Jackson-style spin.
The physical dominance implicit in the maneuver made Keezia flinch. The reaction was visceral. Involuntary. She shuddered slightly, her vision blurring, her palms going clammy. A brackish taste invaded her mouth. A part of her started looking for a place to hide.
Bitch! a nightmarishly familiar male voice rasped inside her skull You do what I tell you, when I tell you. You think I’m gonna let some—
“Hey, Keez!”
Keezia started violently, nearly dropping her beer bottle. Blinking rapidly, she drew a shaky breath. She was appalled by what she’d just experienced While she understood that she could never fully escape her past, she’d thought she was free from the worst of it It had been months since she’d suffered such a flashback That it had been something Fridge had done that had revived the fear and shame and helplessness she’d sworn she would die before going through again tore at her heart.
“Keezia?”
“You okay?”
“Hey, maybe she needs to sit down ”
“Geez, Keez. You’re damned near white.”
Keezia got herself under control, steadying her breathing and stilling her trembling hands by sheer force of will. She turned to confront a quartet of her fellow firefighters. Two were African-American like herself. One of them was tall, lean and totally bald; the other was short and squat, with biceps the size of baked hams. The third man had buzz-cut blond hair, blue eyes and the beginnings of a tan. The fourth was a wiry redhead whose faintly glassy gaze suggested he was a couple of beers over his limit. All four were staring at her with a combination of uncertainty and concern.
“Sorry,”