Free The Firefighter's Match by Allie Pleiter Page B

hip. “Don’t you ever go away?”
    He looked up with surprisingly weary eyes. “I was heading back to Gordon Falls for the night and thought maybe you’d appreciate a lift. I can have the helicopter bring you back first thing in the morning. I’m sure you need a change of clothes, if nothing else.”
    That took a lot of nerve. He of all people knew he’d yanked her out of her cottage in the middle of the night and she hadn’t been back since. Where did he get off taking some kind of backhanded pity on her rumpled appearance? JJ’s cousin, Charlotte, who lived in Chicago, had sent keys to her tiny apartment while she was away on an importing trip, but it barely sufficed. All the shuttling back and forth to the hospital meant JJ could barely find ten minutes in a shower, much less a decent wardrobe change.
    “It’s a three-hour drive, JJ. You’d eat up half a day just getting there and back. I can have you in Gordon Falls in forty minutes. You could fix yourself dinner in your own kitchen. Sleep in your own bed. Think of it.”
    The craving to get out of here washed over her with startling force. Her eyes fell closed for a second, hungry for peaceful sounds of the river. Some actual food. The last piece of apple pie sitting uneaten in her fridge. A full breath of sweet riverbank air. One night out there would perk her up like a thousand cups of coffee. She needed it, and badly. Badly enough to consider taking Alex Cushman up on his disingenuous offer.
    “Come on,” he sighed, frustration twisting his voice. “I’m trying hard to be nice here.”
    That was it, wasn’t it? “You’re trying really hard. And I can’t help but wonder why.”
    He ran his fingers though his sandy-blond hair. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know why.”
    Come to think of it, he didn’t look much better than she did. They must really be panicked up there at WWW and Adventure Gear. After all, she didn’t think he was supposed to divulge as much of what he knew as he had in the chapel.
    He added, “I’m stumped, actually. I’m usually the first person out the door when complications like this happen.”
    “Is that what Max is to you?” she snapped back, annoyed at herself for even beginning to fall for his clever act. “A complication? ”
    “No. Not at all. That’s just it...Max is a person. A man. Someone whose life is forever changed and I can’t do anything to make it right again.” He fisted his hands and looked at her. “Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I can’t get your brother—or you—out of my head when putting things out of my mind is ordinarily a particular gift of mine.”
    He stood up and began pacing. “Not that I didn’t try.” He flipped one hand toward the window. “I couldn’t even get as far as Denver, and normally I’d be in another hemisphere with something like this. Sticking around to beat my head against problems I can’t fix isn’t my style. And there’s nothing I can really change here. I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing, only that I can’t...” He clamped his hands on either side of his face as if the notion actually gave him a headache. “I can’t...not...help even though I don’t see how I can help.” His ventured another look at her with pained eyes.
    She had to give Alex Cushman one thing—the man radiated charisma. His presence filled the room wherever he went. A quick Internet search the other night had told her Alex was the bold visionary behind Adventure Gear, the world-traveler enthusiast who embodied the company’s high-energy, high-integrity reputation. Where Sam Cushman was the clever empire builder, Alex was the free-spirit driving force behind the brand.
    True to his last comment, he also had earned a reputation for disappearing overnight, often at inopportune moments. According to the magazine profiles—and there were many—Alex got away with it because most of those times he showed up weeks later with