Daring Devotion (7 page)

“You all right, Cal?”

Cal looked up into the smug face of Jeff. Things were still somewhat disoriented. What was the man saying?

Jeff leaned forward closed to Cal's ear. “Next time, I might not be there to save your ass.”

Cal heard the tone of superiority that underlined the statement. So, it had been Jeff who'd pulled him through the blaze. He glanced past Jeff, and saw most of his team standing off to the side in heavy discussions amongst themselves. Every once in a while someone would glance in his direction, and he knew his behavior inside the building was the main topic.

What was he supposed to tell them? That he'd not rescued the woman because he could not see the stairs leading up to her? They'd never believe it, since they all saw the same thing. Cal leaning against a wall in helplessness, while Dwight was forced to rescue the victim.

Jeff was still bragging about his quick thinking and how fast everything had happened. Cal had tuned him out. He was more concerned with what his friends were saying. He knew what they were thinking. Hell, he'd had the same thoughts himself. Had he lost his edge?

 

Almost two hours later, back at the firehouse, Cal was sitting in front of the television flipping through the channels when he decided he'd had enough. All afternoon he'd been forced to listen as Jeff went on and on about pulling him through the fire. Cal had stopped being grateful two hours ago. Now, he just wanted to shut him up.

Cal put down the remote and headed in the direction of the kitchen. As he came through the door, Jeff was droning on about his
lightninglike
reflexes.

He leaned against the door frame, noting that the only audience Jeff had was KC, the youngest member of their team. Not that KC was listening. His attention seemed to be fully focused on the sandwich he was making.

“Anyway, had I not been there,” Jeff continued, “who knows what would've happened.”

Cal stood and came forward into the room. “All right Jeff, enough is enough. I think you are making too big a deal out of this.”

Jeff's eyes narrowed and a wide smile came over his face. Cal thought the overall effect reminded him of a snake.

“Face it, Cal. You don't belong here. You just can't cut it anymore.”

Cal flinched slightly. The cutting remarks caused KC to pause momentarily, then he scooped up the plate with his completed sandwich and quickly left the room. Cal did not miss the fact that the young man would not even make eye contact.

He took a deep breath trying to hold back the urge to break Jeff Collins in half over his knee. “There is no reason for all that, man.”

Jeff stood from where he'd been sitting at the table, and came toward the door. “Tell you what. Next time the alarm sounds, why don't you stay behind and let the
real men
take the call.” He touched his chin. “And you can bake us some cookies while you're waiting.”

Cal reacted before his brain had a chance to catch up with his fist, and he found himself standing over Jeff's prone body. He looked down at the moaning man not completely regretting his action, then without another word he turned and walked away.

“W
ith all due respect, sir, I haven't lost my edge.” Cal fought with every strand of willpower he could muster to keep control of his temper. Since his altercation with Jeff, he seemed to have lost complete control of it. He'd been snapping and snarling at everyone over the past week, so he wasn't completely surprised to look up and find his boss standing in his doorway.

“No one is saying you have, Cal.” Captain Mark McKinley, a large burly white man commonly known as Mack, stood leaning back against Cal's office desk, his thick arms crossed over his chest, watching the emotions play across Cal's expressive face.

“This suspension is department policy, you know that. Whatever happened in that house has to be addressed. There has to be a formal hearing, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.” He stood away from the desk. “Look, don't make this any harder than it has to be.”

Cal tightened his lips in a thin line to keep the harsh words in his mouth. Everything Mack was saying was true, but it didn't make it any easier to take.

“Look, Cal. You don't have to convince me, I'm the one who recommended you for promotion, remember?”

Cal nodded.

“Okay then, just go home, sit back and wait for this thing to play out.” Mack watched his face, but when Cal said nothing more, he continued. “I'm putting Dwight in charge for now, unless you have another recommendation?”

“No, Dwight's your man.”

“Good, now that that is settled,” he stood and clamped his hands together, “I'm going to get going. And Cal…you know you have to make an appointment with the department shrink.”

Cal frowned, but before he could say anything Mack spoke. “Like I told you before, it is all a part of the policy. I don't decide this and neither do you. Just get it over with, so we can put all this behind us.”

Cal stood in the same place for several minutes, long after Mack had left. As hard as he'd tried to hold it all together, things had finally spun out of control and he had no one but himself to blame. With the dizziness and hallucinations he'd been experiencing lately, he should've never been on the truck. But his pride wouldn't allow him to stay behind while the whole team went out.

And now, he was not only suspended, his promotion was on the line, and to add insult to injury, he was being forced to see a shrink. That kind of stuff stayed in your file permanently. Now, he had to go home and try to explain all this to Andrea.

Cal sighed with exhaustion, as he began collecting a few of his personal possessions. He'd tried to outrun the tornado, and had gotten flattened by it instead.

Andrea knew something was wrong the minute she turned the corner and saw Cal sitting in the hospital waiting room. He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, and his favorite baseball cap in his hand. As she drew closer, Andrea noticed that he was slapping the hat back and forth between his hands in an unconscious motion, but it was his face that told the tale.

Thinking he was alone, Cal had let his guard down and it was the first time Andrea could ever remember seeing anything like concern on his chocolate-brown face. His soft brown eyes were narrowed in concentration, his front teeth were sunk into his full bottom lip, and his forehead was crinkled with worried lines. Her man was troubled, but if she were to say that to him, she knew he would deny it. Just like Atlas, he carried the weight of the world on his broad shoulders, and insisted on carrying it alone.

Coming closer, she intentionally walked heavier, forcing her small feet to slap, slap against the tiled floor. As expected, the concerned expression disappeared as if it had never been there and Cal stood to greet her with a smile.

“There she is!” He leaned forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. “The sexiest woman in Detroit.”

Andrea reached up and wrapped him in her arms. He may not want her to know his pain, but it did not stop her from wanting to comfort him. “Only in Detroit?”

“Did I say Detroit? I meant the world.”

“Only the world?”

He leaned back to look in her face. “What? Are you trying to compete with the angels?”

“Okay, I'll take just the world.”

He wrapped her even tighter in his arms. “Baby, if I could give it to you I would,” he whispered in her ear.

Andrea accepted the tight embrace, reveling in his controlled strength. “What are you doing here?”

He glanced at his watch. “I was in the area, and remembered that you take your lunch break around now. Am I too late?”

“No, perfect timing, actually, but I can't go far. Would you mind eating in the cafeteria?”

“Lead the way.”

A few minutes later they sat across the table from one another at one of the small hospital cafeteria tables. Andrea was trying not to laugh as Cal struggled to get comfortable in the small seats.

“Who the hell do they expect to sit in this thing?”

“A normal size man.” She chuckled.

He glanced at her sharply, sensing the humor in her eyes was at his expense. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “I fit you just fine, don't I?”

Andrea felt the chill run through her whole body at the not-so-subtle reminder of the previous night. “Perfectly.” She whispered back, and with a light kiss they each returned to their own sides of the table.

Only then did it occur to her that something about the timing of this luncheon was off. Cal coming to have lunch with her on his off time was a common enough occurrence, but according to her memory, he should be at the firehouse.

“Aren't you on duty?”

“Um, there's been a, um…” Cal didn't realize it would be this hard to say it. “I was suspended.”

Andrea tried to squelch the bubble of hope that immediately appeared in her heart. She looked into his eyes, and the anguish she saw there popped the bubble faster than anything else ever could have. “Oh, Cal. I'm so sorry.”

“The suspension is just standard procedure,” he said with a shrug, trying to minimize the importance of it, but he didn't fool Andrea. As much as she hated it, she knew how important being a firefighter was to him.

“Because of the Hadley building?”

His eyes flashed to hers and he quickly looked away. He had not told her about the fire last week, or the run-in with Jeff. He knew it would just upset her. But there was no way around it now.

“No, because of a fire last week. I um…I froze in the middle of a rescue.”

“You froze?” she asked in confusion. Terrifying images of Cal standing like a statue in the mist of an out-of-control blaze raced through her mind.

Cal misunderstood her concern for disdain. “It's not like I
froze
froze,” he said defensively. The look in her eyes hurt worse than anything Jeff Collins could've said.

“I just had a delayed reaction time, that's all.” He took a bite of his burger, hoping she would not pursue the conversation.

Andrea read his reaction correctly with dismay. Once again, Cal had climbed into that place inside himself, that place she could never go. Anything she asked now would be given a vague, nondescript answer. She chose a safer topic. She reached inside her purse, and pulled out a small stack of invitations.

“Here.” She scooted it across the table toward him. “Since you have some free time on your hands.”

“What's this?”

“These invitations came back in the mail. I need correct addresses.”

Cal frowned as he quickly shuffled through the short stack that contained a couple of childhood friends and a few distant relatives. The last thing he wanted to spend his suspension doing was correct address labels for wedding invitations. He was just not that bored yet.

He pushed the stack back across the table toward Andrea, his nose twisted as if the small pile reeked of some foul odor. “Can't one of your friends do this?”

“How would my friends know your cousin Carolyn's correct street address in Austin, Texas?”

His frown deepened. “You got a point.” His eyes flashed over her face as he tried to broach an old argument. “Are you sure you don't want to ask your mother to help—”

“How many times do we have to go over this, Cal? No. I won't ask my mother for help. Involving her means involving my dad.”

Several months ago, when Andrea had first announced her engagement to her parents, it had been a complete disaster.

After they got over the initial shock, they'd immediately begun making plans and preparations for a wedding that her father vowed would be the event of the year. Under different circumstances, Andrea may have been able to see their efforts as generous and kind, except that the plans were being made without any input from her.

Through a fluke, the banquet hall her father had reserved called Andrea by mistake to confirm the date and the reservation for five hundred people. Needless to say, this was a surprise, considering at the time, she and Cal had not even settled on a date, or the amount of people they planned to invite.

In a panic she had taken her anger and outrage straight to Cal, which in hindsight she could see was a mistake. Together they confronted her parents and the situation exploded. That was the one and only time the two men had ever met in the past year, and they'd almost come to blows. Looking back, Andrea understood that what she'd seen as an argument about banquet halls and gowns was really a battle over her, and who would be the most important man in her life going forward. By the end of the evening, Andrea was so distraught she'd not only wanted to break off the engagement, but she also wanted to move as far away from her family as she could get.

It took some time, but like everything else involving her parents, she got over it and began making preparations for the wedding with just the help of a few friends and Marianne, her wedding planner. Now, they were down to less than two months and almost all the arrangements had been made and they were almost ready.

Thinking about the wedding brought to mind something else. Cal had been toying with the idea of telling Andrea about the party the guys had planned. Tommy had tried to talk him out of it, but a part of him was curious to know what she thought.

“Hey, I thought you should know the guys are planning to throw a little bachelor party for me. Would you have a problem with that?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Just so long as you don't forget why you're having the party in the first place. You're off the market, remember?”

“And happy to be.” He winked.

Andrea's mind briefly flashed to the last time she'd seen Dina at the firehouse.
By the way, don't
worry about that little party they were planning to throw for Cal. I've taken care of everything.
Andrea still had no idea what she'd meant.

Cal studied her face across the table while they continued to eat, noticing the darkened area under her eyes for the first time and the guilt assailed him. Of course she wasn't getting any sleep, he thought. Between my nightmares, her mother's late-night calls, and wedding stress, how could she?

“Hey, I got an idea.” Cal smiled as the plan began formulating in his mind. “Let's take a weekend trip up to Mackinaw.”

Andrea smiled in return. “I would love to, but we are running out of time. These two months will fly by.”

He reached across the table and took her hands in his. “When was the last time you had a full night's sleep?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Baby, you need a break.” He chuckled. “Besides, you'd never forgive me if I let you take wedding pictures with those little dark spots under your eyes.”

Her eyes widened. “What dark spots?” Within seconds, she'd whipped out her little compact and was examining each eye. “Oh no, you're right, our photos will be horrible. Oh, I can't wait a whole month for Spa Day, I've got to get an emergency appointment.” She mumbled to herself the whole while she pulled out her cell phone and phone book and went to work.

Cal just watched with his lips twisting in exasperation, wondering when he would learn to keep his big mouth shut.

“Let's get this party started!” Dwight burst through the door to Tommy's small apartment, carrying a carton of assorted pops and beer. He was feeling quite pleased with the plans he'd made for the evening. It had been a long, uphill battle, but he'd won.

Of course, there would not have been a battle if he hadn't made the critical mistake of leaving the notebook with the party plans lying on the desk of his home office. It had been a momentary slip but had cost him dearly. When Dina had discovered the notes, she'd had a fit. Not a little, wimpy fit, either, no…she had a full-blown,
angry-black-woman-in-full-outrage
kinda fit.

She'd insisted he cancel the party, and in a rare act of fortitude, Dwight refused to give in. Everyone, including Dwight, knew his wife had him wrapped around her little finger. The guys always teased him about being whipped, which Dwight had no problems with. Although he and Dina had been married for seven years, it was still too easy remember life before her.