Free The Firefighter's Match by Allie Pleiter Page A

Jones’s eyes wasn’t a reason. Not a sane one, anyway. She was like some kind of freakish magnet, a line tethering him to the disaster. “She blames me. Why does she blame me when she should blame Sam? Or her brother? Or WWW? Believe me, there’s plenty of blame to go around.”
    “Jones’s sister? The one you took to the hospital?”
    “JJ. I can’t get the way she looks at me out of my head. Like I just shot her in the stomach or something. I mean, I can’t really blame her for being upset, and the fact that I was there made me an easy target, but it gets to me in a way that just makes everything worse. Nothing— nothing— would be helped by getting personally involved here. It’s awful, what happened—I know that. But I think this may just be the thing that pulls AG under, and Doc, that scares the skin off me right now.”
    “But you’ve been threatening to leave for months. We all thought you were leaving before this, actually. I know your brother did. What is it to you if AG goes under?”
    He said it so casually. As if the dismantling of ten years of work—not to mention the evaporation of his own job—was as easy as tossing out the garbage. “You don’t mean that.”
    Doc sighed—an old man’s sigh, reminding Alex that the Italian climber had a good twenty years on him. “Neither do you. I have always wondered what it would look like when you ran out of escape clauses. In this case, you have to turn around and stand your ground, and you don’t have any idea how to do that, do you?”
    “There may be no ground for AG to stand on.”
    Doc’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t talking about AG. I don’t think you were, either. Aren’t you smart enough to realize this isn’t about AG? It’s about you and Samuel. It’s about this Miss Jones and her brother and what your fighting with Samuel has done to them.” He shook his head. “Really, I am surprised you’re not at the North Pole.”
    Alex didn’t have a response. He hated everything Doc was saying, detested the ring of truth the man’s words had. God had been after him for months to do something about his relationship with Sam, to get to the heart of why they fought the way they did and fix it, and Alex had refused. Stalled, excused, rationalized, whatever it took to sidestep the issue. Doc was right—this had become about so much more than faulty lines or shortcut prototypes. This was about the damage done by a partnership gone wrong and left to fester.
    Alex let his head fall into his hands. “I know I need to hash this out with Sam—once and for all—but...not yet. I’m supposed to be in Illinois, Doc. I can’t shake it. Right now—” Alex peered up into his friend’s eyes “—I’m pretty sure staying with the problem means going back to Illinois. Does that make any sense?”
    “Believe it or not, it does. And it doesn’t. But that is the kind of thing I expect from you.” He grabbed the crumpled bag. “I’ll drive you back to the airport.”
    “Rory is here waiting.”
    “No, he’s not. I sent him home when he called the office to say where you were. I had Cynthia fetch me your Go-Bag before I drove out here. Believe it or not, I came out here to convince you to stay out of Samuel’s way for now.”
    Alex’s Go-Bag was a fully packed duffel with a week’s worth of clothes that he kept in a closet in his office for times when he chose to disappear overnight. His assistant Cynthia was charged with keeping it ready at all times. It irked Alex to no end that Doc knew about it, knew to ask Cynthia and knew he’d turn around and go back to Chicago.
    Alex Cushman was supposed to be less predictable than that.

Chapter Seven
    JJ couldn’t believe it when she walked down the hall to find Alex back at his perch on the tiresome blue couch. When someone mentioned to her that he’d left this morning, she’d told herself to be glad she was rid of this guy. Now he was back? Already? She crossed her arms and sat back on one