Copyright © 2006 Bella Tyler
All rights reserved, Freya's Bower.
By reading this excerpt, you are stating that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are younger than 18 years old, you must exit this site at once.
Once outside, she sat on the front lawn her chest aching from the smoke she had inhaled. She took a deep breath of the clean air and flopped back onto the damp grass. Within minutes, the fire department had arrived.
A lanky firefighter jumped out of the passenger side of the truck as it slowed in front of her house. He was to her in a few long strides. "Are you okay, Miss?"
Charly nodded.
"Do you think you can walk? We need to move you away from the house."
She sat slowly and started to pull herself up. Black spots swirled in front of her eyes like hundreds of attacking gnats. She swung her head back and forth in an effort to regain her clarity. When that failed she hung in front of her head between her knees, willing herself to stay conscious.
"On second thought..." He leaned over, scooping her up in his arms.
"Put me down. I'm more than capable of walking." As if she didn't already feel faint. Her heart raced as she hung rigidly over his shoulder.
"Well, you don't look capable to me." He hauled her over to the truck and set her down on the curb in front of it. He reached into one of the many metal compartments on the side of the vehicle, pulled out a blanket and tossed it into her lap. "Stay put," he said as he swaggered away.
Charly glanced down at the blanket, only now aware that she'd left the house in just a nightie. She wrapped the rough fabric around her shoulders. It was scratchy and smelled of storage. She looked back up, watching him for a moment, enjoying the swagger. She imagined when he wasn't donning turnouts he was the cowboy type. Boots, hat, Wranglers. The whole shebang. Yeah, he definitely walked as though he'd only recently dismounted his trusty steed. At the suggestion of a bow-legged cowboy, her mind descended rapidly into the gutter.
As she sat on the curb, picturing her rescuer in nothing but a Stetson and leather chaps, another unit pulled up and the men wandered around in a hurried sort of calm. They had a purpose and each appeared to know what his duties were and went about performing them with very little questioning.
* * *
Copyright © 2006 Bella Tyler
All rights reserved, Freya's Bower.
Forty-five minutes later, Charlie slid into a brown vinyl covered booth of Denny's. It may not have been the most romantic place to meet for the first time, but it was open twenty-four hours and served coffee. And Charlie definitely needed something packed with caffeine.
The waitress filled his mug and walked away, leaving him to consider this mystery woman. Her name was Anna, though she hadn't given him a last name over the phone. He wondered what he'd gotten himself into. He knew practically nothing about her except for her first name and the fact that the mere sound of her voice had a tendency to toss his mind straight into the gutter.
There was something familiar about her voice. She had a bit of a southern accent, not all that common around here, but something he'd always enjoyed in a woman. He'd gone to school with a southern girl, Betsy Tucker. Cheerleader, straight A student, gorgeous beyond description...way out of his league.
He drained his cup and set it with a clank onto the table. When he looked up, there she stood. Long rust-colored hair pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. He skin was a flawless shade of ivory, with a splattering of freckles across her nose.
"Betsy! How are you? This is weird because I was just thinking about you...well not like that, just about your accent really." He waved a hand as though to wash away the previous comment. "Anyway, it's been a long time. How've you been?"
She smiled at him and he thought if he hadn't already been sitting his knees may have buckled.
"I've been good. Just, well, making an ass out of myself, as usual."
He was dumbstruck. For a moment he couldn't make his mouth to cooperate with his brain. "You...uh...I..."
"Yeah." She smiled and extended her hand across the table. "Betsy Annabelle Tucker."
He took her hand. It was soft in his and he wondered how the rest of her body felt.
"I dropped the Betsy in college." She slid into the bench across from him, letting his hand drop from hers.
His brain had stopped functioning at full speed and his words came out in a sputter. "I...you...well..." His mind revved up and the last of his sentence came out a race of words. "I knew I recognized your voice. I just knew you sounded familiar, but I never imagined." His hand snaked across the table and touched the tips of her fingers. "You look beautiful."
She looked down into her coffee and sniggered. "I've had the week from hell."
"Tell me about it."
He hung on her sentences, clinging to every phrase she uttered for the next hour. Occasionally when she looked over at him he prayed that he wasn't the only one feeling the sparks. He had to continually bring to mind pictures of his Aunt Mildred, the one with the large mole in the middle of her forehead, in an attempt to control himself. And even that had little effect on deterring his body. Anna's sultry voice shattered through the awful visual with every word she spoke.
He had an irrational desire to brush all the silverware and coffee off the table and take her right there in the middle of Denny's. Of course, he had no reason to believe that she was having the same urges he was.