Inferno 0f Love (Firefighters 0f Long Valley Book 2) Read online

  But it also wasn’t okay to be worked into the ground for the past 16 years. He was a grown-ass adult who was forced to live at home – who could be making more money down at Betty’s flipping burgers – and the only thing that had kept him there all this time was the dangling of the dealership in front of him. That prize was always held up as the ultimate in life; what he should spend every waking hour striving for. The last time they’d talked about it, his dad had told him just five more years, and he could take over.

  But he’d said that before, and somehow, the timeline had moved on him.

  Would it be moved again? How long could he survive before he broke into a million little pieces?

  Screw it. He headed for the shop door, his hands sweaty as he practically ran out of the shop.

  Freedom. It had never tasted so good.

  His heart racing, he drove through town like nothing was wrong – like he hadn’t just escaped the dealership like a convicted criminal would make a run for it. It was perfectly normal for him to drive a friend out to pick up her car. It was perfectly normal for him to have spent the night underneath the stars, huddling together and keeping from freezing to death.

  Okay, maybe not normal, but he knew they’d done nothing he wouldn’t have done within full view of 5000 of his closest friends. He had nothing to be ashamed of, or worried about. And right now, he was doing nothing more than driving a girl out to pick up her car. He wasn’t asking her to marry him or something.

  So why did it feel so illicit?

  Georgia’s head snapped up when he came walking into the fire station and she smiled nervously at him. She jumped off the tailgate of the water truck and came hurrying over. “I’m really sorry,” she called out as she headed his way. “I tried to tell Jaxson that your dad would kill you if you left work early after getting to work late, but he has some really naïve idea about you and your dad’s relationship and wouldn’t listen to me.”

  She arrived – breathless – in front of him. Her hair was curled, she had makeup on, and no dirt anywhere. She looked gorgeous, of course, which did absolutely nothing for his self-control. He smiled down at her, his heart racing with happiness even as the worry gnawed at the edges. He pushed back at it, fighting it down. Worry be damned. He was with Georgia again, even if only for a minute.

  “It’ll be fine,” he lied, pretty convincingly he thought. “I’m not even sure if Dad will notice.”

  Two lies in less than 20 seconds. Nice…

  He pushed that thought away, too.

  “I’m assuming Jaxson already left to go check on Sugar?” he asked as they headed for the door.

  She nodded. “He said you’d lock up after us, and he’d come back later.”

  Moose pulled the door shut, locking the handle and the deadbolt with his key he’d been given as deputy fire chief, and then they were off, headed for his truck.

  “How was your dad when you got to work?” Georgia asked as she slid into the passenger seat. He shut the door behind her and took his sweet time rounding the front of the truck to his side, trying to think of what to say.

  “He was…Dad,” he said dismissively as he opened the driver’s side door and slid inside. “Just like your farming customers who are stuck in their ways, so is my dad. He won’t change.” He shrugged, as if the browbeating he’d taken that morning hadn’t stung. Hadn’t bothered him a bit. “He is Rocky Garrett. If you expect him to ever soften up, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed. So I don’t expect it.”

  Georgia nodded, her gaze far away as she mulled over his words. “Your dad reminds me of my uncle,” she said softly as they turned to head out of town and towards the trailhead. “I guess it’s not surprising that they’re two peas in a pod.”

  “They’re so much alike, they’d either hate each other’s guts, or be best friends,” Moose said dryly. “I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad that they ended up as golfing buddies and hunting buddies and go-to-coffee-together buddies and wed-our-children-to-each-other buddies.”

  He was trying to pass that last part off as a joke, truly he was, but her little hiss of breath told him that she’d read right through that.

  “It’s gotta be hard to have a force-of-nature father like that,” she said, her voice still quiet as she gazed out the window. They’d begun winding their way up through the foothills, but something told Moose that she wasn’t watching the scenery as it passed. “Especially with him holding the dealership hostage until you marry Tenny.”

  “He what?!” Moose yelled, slamming on the brakes and stuttering to a stop in the middle of the road. He didn’t even care. It was a country road that’d probably had ten people drive on it today. He would stop wherever he damn well pleased.

  He threw his truck into park and just stared across the console at Georgia. She stared back, eyes wide. “You don’t get the dealership until you marry Tennessee?” she repeated, but this time it was a question, not a statement.

  “When did you hear that?” he demanded, adrenaline pouring through his veins. I’m gonna kill that son-of-a-bitch with my bare hands, I swear I will. I’ll tie him to a—

  “It’s always been that way?” Her voice ended in a squeak this time. “Moose, please tell me you knew that.”

  “Of course I didn’t know that!” he hollered, his voice echoing in the cab of the truck as the anger throbbed through him. “I was supposed to get the dealership in another five years. Where did you hear this?”

  “Sunday dinner. You know I eat with Tennessee’s family every Sunday, right? We switch back and forth between her parent’s house and my parent’s house. Just last week, this came up at dinner again. Moose, I cannot believe you didn’t know that. It’s the way it’s been since the beginning. For years.” She was sputtering now, just staring at him, her eyes huge and pitying.

  Pity…he hated seeing that. He didn’t want pity. He wanted revenge. Rage was boiling through his veins. Bastard, bastard, bastard.

  Since all he wanted in life was to punch his father in the face but couldn’t since the man wasn’t exactly in the truck with them, he settled instead on putting the truck into gear and starting back up the winding hill.

  “He’d told me it would be five years for a long time now,” he growled, more to himself than to her. He was talking through it, trying to figure out how he’d ended up in such a shitastic place. “It’s so ironic – I was just thinking this morning that I didn’t know if I could trust Dad that it really would be mine in five years, because he’d moved the fencepost a couple of times on me. But I thought he was moving the date back on me because he didn’t want to give up the reins and the power of owning it all, not that he was secretly requiring that I sell my soul to the company store before I could inherit.”

  He let out a long sigh, trying to bring the rage under control and failing desperately. It was too strong, too overwhelming. The betrayal was too damn deep.

  He whispered, “He knew that telling me who I could marry was a bridge too far, so he didn’t dare say this to my face. I wonder what he would’ve done if I’d brought home someone else as a fiancée? Would he have told me the truth then? I’ve always known marrying Tennessee was expected; I didn’t realize it was required.”

  “Do you want to marry her?” Georgia demanded, turning in her seat to face him. “Do you want to marry Tennessee?”

  Moose sucked in a deep breath. He hadn’t expected her to be so blunt in her questioning, but then again, this was Georgia. She told it how it was. That was one of the many reasons why he lo—

  Respected her.

  And he’d show her that respect by telling her the truth. No matter how scary that was to him in that moment. He’d never told anyone the truth about this.

  But it was about damn time to start.

  “No. I don’t. For the longest time, I had myself convinced that I did. Or at least that I could. But these last couple of weeks…” He shook his head, driving at this point more by instinct and feel than by sight. Thankfully these weren’t busy
roads, or he probably would’ve wrecked his truck by now. Staying in his own lane seemed like an awfully difficult concept at the moment.

  He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t want to marry Tennessee Rowland. I don’t. I was going to because it was my duty as the oldest son and she’s pretty enough and smart enough and she’d make someone a real fine wife, but…she’s not for me.” He blew out a breath and then began laughing, letting the hysterical laughter that was bubbling up inside of him loose. “I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud. Look at this – my hands are shaking.” He held his right hand out towards her, the tremor obvious.

  She laughed a little, but her eyes were serious as she said, “You need to talk to Tenny. Right away.”

  He nodded, feeling a ball of dread grow in his stomach. He didn’t want to hurt Tennessee – he never wanted to do that – but breaking things off with her after all this time…he was going to break her heart. He just had to face that fact. And his mom’s heart. And his father’s—

  No, he didn’t have one. It was impossible to break what does not exist.

  “You’re right,” he said firmly, pushing the boiling anger back down again. “I do. And I need to confront my father. We’re gonna have a come-to-Jesus moment. This isn’t okay.”

  He took a right and began bouncing down the washboard road towards the trailhead. “Someday, the county is going to fix these roads,” he yelled over the clatter. He kinda felt like half the noise was coming from just his teeth alone, chattering from the ruts on the awful road.

  Georgia nodded and smiled, but didn’t try to shout anything over the noise. Moose held on tight to the steering wheel, all of his attention required just to keep his truck on the road. More than anything else, this calmed him down. Focusing on something other than the overwhelming anger and hurt and betrayal welling up inside of him helped his racing heart finally start to slow.

  A little bit of the anger faded away, replaced by determination. A determination to finally take his life into his own hands.

  Finally, they pulled to a stop into the parking lot next to her car, and the quiet in the truck was almost deafening.

  “Well, I better—” Georgia said, reaching for the door handle just as Moose blurted out, “Will you go out with me?”

  Time stood still as Georgia spun in her seat, staring up at him. “What?” she breathed.

  “Will you go out with me?” he asked again, this time more confident. It’s what he wanted, and it’s what she wanted. He was sure of it.

  And yet, she shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, her eyes dark with pain. “You know that. Tenny is my cousin; the sister I never got to have. We’re really different in a lot of ways, but she’s still one of my closest friends.”

  He drew in a deep breath. She was right. Of course. He couldn’t just skip from one cousin to the next. He should branch out of the Rowland Family Tree. Maybe try dating someone from Franklin. That’d be different.

  Hell, considering he’d spent his whole life dating one girl, just about anything would be different.

  “Then, once you’ve talked to Tennessee, come talk to me,” she finished. “We can discuss…things from there.” She reached out and stroked his cheek, her fingers sliding over the rough stubble he hadn’t taken the time to shave off that morning, and then she was gone, grabbing her purse and jumping from the truck, sliding into her car and slamming the door closed behind her. She took off out of the small dirt parking lot before Moose could even shake himself from the stupor her touch had cast over him.

  Tennessee…Georgia was right. Of course. He had to take care of one disaster before even attempting to start another. But, Georgia wanted to talk to him after he told Tennessee the truth, and that gave him a little bit of hope. She wouldn’t say that if she was planning on telling him that she didn’t see a future with him, right?

  Before he got to discover the answer to that question, though, he had to break Tennessee’s heart, a thought that made his own heart twist a little. It wasn’t what he wanted. It had never been what he wanted.

  It was what he was going to do, though. Because marrying her when he didn’t love her would hurt her even more.

  Maybe it was the selfishness of his own desire to be free of her and the obligation she represented that made him think that; maybe he just liked to pretend he was doing the noble thing here because facing the truth – that he wasn’t strong enough to do what duty called for, no matter what his heart wanted – was too damn painful.

  But Tennessee, her father, his father…they all needed to know the truth. Then he’d be free for the first time in his life.

  You’re going to lose the dealership.

  The thought came out of nowhere, a lightning strike out of a bright blue sky. All the more jolting and painful because of that, and because…well, it was probably true.

  He leaned back, banging his head against the headrest.

  He was going to lose the dealership. Dammit to hell and back, his father would never put up with this rebellion.

  But honestly, who would he give it to? Rhys? He was in Japan, after having run away from their father by joining the Navy as soon as he graduated from high school.

  Zara? First off, she was a girl, and his father was too much of a male chauvinistic pig to let his daughter inherit the dealership. Second, she wanted to become a doctor. She’d told Moose more than once that she was going to run the Long Valley County Hospital someday. She didn’t want the Garrett Tractor & Implement Dealership any more than Rhys did.

  Hell, his father would probably just decide that he’d live forever, and then he wouldn’t have to pass the dealership on to anyone at all. Not only would that seem reasonable to him, he’d probably make it happen out of sheer force of will.

  Moose had a lot of thinking to do. He shifted into first gear and headed back down the washboard road, but instead of heading back towards town, he decided to take a right and head further into the hills. Maybe it was time to have a come-to-Jesus talk…with himself.

  Chapter 14

  Georgia

  Georgia stood up from her desk with a big stretch and groan. After her adventure up in the hills, her body was still recuperating and she found that there were parts of her that ached that she didn’t even realize existed.

  She looked down at her oversized desk with pride. She’d managed to get the report on car loan defaults done and into the main branch just minutes before the deadline, and had even started the process on a new vehicle loan for Abby and Wyatt Miller. They were filling out the paperwork to bring another foster child home and had come to the realization that a truck, even a quad-cab, wasn’t big enough. They were on the hunt for an SUV so they could cart their soon-to-be growing brood around with them.

  It was still a little weird, honestly, to see Wyatt smiling and holding hands with Abby, completely in love with his new wife. They’d brought Juan – their foster son – in with them, and had proudly talked about being close to finishing the adoption process. Juan hadn’t said a word, but had beamed from ear to ear, clearly as thrilled about life as his soon-to-be parents.

  Seeing Wyatt happy…it helped Georgia realize what Abby had seen in him in the first place. When she’d first heard that Abby was dating Wyatt, she was sure her friend had gone insane. Grumpy, testy, snappy, asshole-ly Wyatt Miller? Why on God’s green earth would Abby want to date him? He was handsome and all, but not that handsome – not handsome enough to put up with that kind of personality.

  No one in town had seen his soft and caring underbelly, until Abby had brought it out in him, and shown it to the world. Georgia had even heard that Stetson and Wyatt were honest-to-God friends now, which Georgia would’ve bet her right arm would never happen. They’d been at each other’s throats their whole lives.

  Transformations like this didn’t happen every day, that was for damn sure.

  Tripp knocked on her office door while sticking his head through and looking at her. “Hey, you’ve got a report
er here…?” he said, a question more than a statement. What do you want me to tell them? was written clearly in his eyes.

  Georgia looked at him quizzically, trying to think through why a reporter would want to talk to her. Her donation to the fundraiser for the fire department? That’d been a week ago. It seemed a little late to be writing that story, but she couldn’t think of anything else even remotely possible. “Tell ‘em to come in,” she finally said. Standing around and wondering why a reporter was there wouldn’t exactly get her the answers that she wanted.

  In came a taller woman, high heels making her tower over Georgia even more as she stuck her hand out to shake. “Hi, I’m Penny,” she said with a knuckle-cracking handshake. “Mr. Toewes sent me down here to interview you for a story in both the Times and the Gazette. Apparently, you were out in that fire in the foothills a couple of days ago?”

  Oh. Right. That angle at least made more sense than the fire department fundraiser. The two newspapers were sister papers, with the Gazette covering Franklin and the Times covering Sawyer. It was flattering, if awkward as hell, to think that someone would want to interview her. The last time the Sawyer Times newspaper had interviewed her, it was when she’d been promoted to be the branch manager, and the article that had ended up running had the world’s worst picture of her in it.

  It’d made her driver’s license picture look downright flattering, which was really saying something.

  “I…I was,” Georgia said hesitantly, trying to think of how to gracefully get out of this interview. And then, inspiration struck. “You know, what you should do is a piece on the Sawyer Fire Department as a whole. They did a big fundraiser a week ago that you could ask them about, and after all, it was one of their firefighters who saved me from that fire. All I did was live through it by hunkering down.”

  She shrugged, feeling pinned to the carpet by the reporter’s intense gaze. “These men are the ones who put their lives on the line to save others. There’s a training meeting tonight at 6:30 at the fire department. Why don’t you swing by there? I’ll stop by, too. Then you can interview all of us at the same time.”