“Nothing Wrong With Independence In A Woman, Sugar...Up To A Point.” Letter to Reader Title Page CAROLE BUCK Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

“Nothing Wrong With Independence In A Woman, Sugar...Up To A Point.”

“And exactly what point might that be, Mr. Randall?” Keezia inquired, her voice like molten honey and her eyes shimmering with a uniquely feminine form of provocation.

“Well...” Fridge’s body thrummed with anticipation. “If you were to independently put your arms around my neck—”

“Like this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what if I were to move a little closer...? Are we beyond the point yet?”

“We’re nowhere close,” Fridge finally managed.

“So there wouldn’t be anything wrong with me sort of easing your head down....”

Their mouths met. Mated in an evocative dance that soon became blatantly sexual.

“I want to say that you are one fine kisser, Mr. Randall.”

“I can do much better, sugar.”

Dear Reader,

February, month of valentines, celebrates lovers—which is what Silhouette Desire does every month of the year. So this month, we have an extraspecial lineup of sensual and emotional page-turners. But how do you choose which exciting book to read first when all six stones are asking Be Mine?

Bestselling author Barbara Boswell delivers February’s MAN OF THE MONTH, a gorgeous doctor who insists on being a full-time father to his newly discovered child, in The Brennan Baby. Bride of the Bad Boy is the wonderful first book in Elizabeth Bevarly’s brand-new BLAME IT ON BOB trilogy. Don’t miss this fun story about a marriage of inconvenience!

Cupid slings an arrow at neighboring ranchers in Her Torrid Temporary Marriage by Sara Orwig. Next, a woman’s thirtieth-birthday wish brings her a supersexy cowboy—and an unexpected pregnancy—in The Texan, by Catherine Lanigan. Carole Buck brings red-hot chemistry to the pages of Three-Alarm Love. And Barbara McCauley’s Courtship in Granite Ridge reunites a single mother with the man she’d always loved.

Have a romantic holiday this month—and every month—with Silhouette Desire Enjoy!

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

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Three-Alarm Love

Carole Buck

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CAROLE BUCK

is a television news writer and movie reviewer who lives in Atlanta. She is single and her hobbies include cake decorating, ballet and traveling. She collects frogs, but does not kiss them. Carole says she’s in love with life; she hopes the books she writes reflect this. Carole loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 78845 Atlanta, GA 30357-2845.

Prologue

Ralph “Fridge” Randall was a man who accepted the existence of Heaven as a matter of faith. Hell—at least an earthly version of it—he was acquainted with, firsthand.

Fridge was a firefighter. A veteran of fourteen years of dedicated, frequently dangerous service with the Atlanta Fire Department And while he’d readily concede that the vast majority of the blazes he’d battled during this period could be attributed to either accident or arson, there’d been a few that he privately suspected of being, well, essentially diabolical in origin.

This was not to say that the only child of Helen Rose and the late Willie Leroy Randall believed the devil was going around striking sparks and igniting multiple-alarm infernos in Georgia’s Fulton County. He didn’t. Given his awareness that human carelessness, callousness and cruelty often had incendiary consequences, he didn’t figure the devil had much need to step in and personally play pyromaniac.

Still. Nearly a decade and a half on the department’s front line had taught Fridge that there were fires that seemed to be more malignant—more deliberate in their destructiveness—than others. Bizarre as it might sound to folks who’d never gone after a fully involved blaze wielding a ventilating ax or a charged-up hose, there were some fires that just plain exuded evil.

It was such fires that made Helen Rose Randall’s son think back to an illustration he’d happened upon in a Sunday-school reader many years before. He couldn’t recall the text of the caption, although he was pretty certain that it had had something to do with sin, brimstone and eternal damnation. But the picture...

That he remembered in full-color detail!

The picture had scared the living daylights out of him. He’d taken one look at it and persuaded himself that the flames it so vividly portrayed were intent on his personal incineration. “Intent” as in consciously determined, with malice aforethought.

There’d been no doubt m his young mind about the implications of what he’d seen Those flames had been out to get him—Ralph Booker Randall—no ifs, ands, buts or possibilities of divine salvation about it.

Fridge had been about six when he’d come across that Sunday-school illustration. He’d spoken about it to only two people in the nearly thirty years that had followed.

The first person had been his mama. Keeping secrets from her wasn’t something he’d done as a little boy. It wasn’t something he did much as a grown man, either.

The second person had been a fellow firefighter who, despite the difference in their skin color, Fridge had come to trust like a brother. The firefighter’s name was Jackson Miller.

Jackson had understood without needing an explanation why certain fires reminded him of the hellish image he’d seen as a kid. Fridge had been sure that he would.

Why had he been so certain Well, chalk it up to his awareness of Jackson’s family history. He knew that there’d been Miller men battling blazes in and around Atlanta ever since Jackson’s great-great-granddaddy had volunteered for the force back in 1870. The notion that there were flames capable of transcending the laws of science and taking on a seemingly sentient existence of their own was something Jackson had absorbed at his father’s knee.

“Fire’s always the enemy in our line of work,” he’d observed after listening to Fridge’s tale of the Sunday-school illustration and its lingering impact “But I hear what you’re saying, man With some calls, it feels...personal. Like you’re going up against a living, breathing, thinking thing that’s aiming to get you any way it can. And with those kind of fires, it’s not enough to knock ‘em down and put ’em out. You need to kill ’em.”

The warehouse blaze that Ralph Booker Randall faced on the fourth Sunday of the eighth month of his fourteenth year as an Atlanta firefighter didn’t feel personal to him. At least...not at first.

There could have been a lot of explanations for his lack of attune ment to the situation. Probably the most accurate was that he’d arrived on the scene with a small but significant piece of his mind still caught up with the conversation he and Jackson had been having when the wake-the-dead sound of an alarm had sent them running for their truck.

They’d been discussing the women in their lives. In Jackson’s case, a beautiful and brainy Yankee psychiatrist named Phoebe Donovan. In his, a firefighter named Keezia Carew who was as independent as she was exotically attractive.

Different ladies in a great many ways, to be sure. But soul sisters when it came to their capacity for confusing the men who loved them.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Fridge had declared at one point, gazing up at the star-spangled sky as though seeking guidance. Things had been remarkably quiet in the nearly fifteen hours since they’d come on duty. While many of the other members of the station’s A shift were sacked out in their bunks, he and Jackson had elected to sit outside and shoot the breeze for a bit. “If the good Lord had meant for men to understand women, He would have put the explanation in writing.”

His friend and colleague had chuckled briefly then observed, “You seem to understand Keezia pretty well.”

“Oh, I understand her just fine when she’s on the job, actin’ like a firefighter,” Fridge had acknowledged with a touch of pride. “But the rest of the time?” He’d grimaced, his memory fast-forwarding through a dozen particularly perplexing incidents. What does Keezia really want from me? he’d demanded of himself for the umpteenth time. Does she even know? “Give me a break. I feel like I’m stumblin’ around in a minefield at midnight.”

Stumblin’ around in a minefield at midnight...

Strange how that ominous turn of phrase popped back into Fridge’s head about fifteen seconds before the first drum of industrial solvent that wasn’t supposed to be on the scene blew up, killing a probationary firefighter named Dwight Daniels.

He and Jackson were inside the burning warehouse searching for the twenty-two-year-old “probie” when the blast occurred. They’d just come down from ventilating the structure’s roof when Daniels had been reported missing. They weren’t the only ones who volunteered to attempt to find him; just the quickest to step forward.

They basically went in blind. The warehouse was filled with smoke. Thick. Dark. Dirty. Fridge knew he’d stink of it for days, no matter how many times he showered.

He tried not to think about what might happen if something went wrong with his self-contained breathing apparatus and he was forced to inhale the rotten stuff. He also prayed that Damels hadn’t succumbed to panic and hyperventilated through an entire bottle of air as probies were wont to do in dicey situations. He’d seen rookies finish bottles that were supposed to last twenty minutes or more in less than half that time. The “huff ‘n’ puff” syndrome, some veterans called it.

Fridge moved forward cautiously, gripping the steel cable he’d hooked to the outside of the building before he’d started in. Jackson—who was a couple feet to his left—was similarly equipped. As long as they kept hold of their flexible metal guidelines, they’d be able to go out the way they’d come in.

Or so the manual maintained. If the way they’d come in had gone up in flames, they’d have to try an alternate route

The heat in the warehouse was increasing. Fridge was sweating profusely beneath his heavy turnout gear. His hands were slick inside his gloves. His short-cropped hair and mustache felt sodden. Running his tongue over his lips, he tasted salt.

He suddenly flashed back on something he’d been told early in his training: The intensity of a fire doubles with every seventeen-degree rise in—

Ka-boom!

The explosion seemed to come from the back of the warehouse. The unexpectedness of it more than its percussive force knocked Fridge to his knees. Fortunately, the drop wasn’t very far. Since heat and smoke rise, the importance of keeping close to the floor was something that had been drummed into him at the academy from day one.

Stay low, you go, went the blunt counsel. Stay high, you die.

“Fridge!” It was Jackson’s voice. It sounded muffled, but close to normal.

“Okay, man!” Fridge responded, getting to his feet He did a quick mental inventory of his condition and deemed himself to be shaken but intact. “You?”

“Okay. But I lost hold of my—”

Ka-boom!

This second blast jarred the fillings in Fridge’s molars and knocked him flat. His helmet came off. A metallic-tasting liquid flooded his tongue. It was blood. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that he’d bitten a chunk out of the inside of his right cheek.

He levered himself up on all fours, scrabbling to locate his headgear. He could feel the outer rims of his ears starting to blister. The back of his neck would begin to barbecue any second. He couldn’t see anything. Not a single... solitary... thing.

He hollered Jackson’s name.

No answer.

And then the building seemed to groan.

Somethin’s comin’ down, Fridge thought grimly. He shouted Jackson’s name again. He knew that being trapped in a collapse was his friend’s personal nightmare. His daddy had died that way. Captain Nathan Miller had been working the nozzle on a water-charged one-and-a-half-inch hose inside a burning frame building when the structure had kicked out and come crashing down. He’d never had a chance.

Fridge found his helmet. He clapped it on and started crawling in what he fervently hoped was Jackson’s direction.

A moment later, the something he’d feared was coming down actually did. Whatever it was, it struck Fridge across the back and slammed him to the concrete floor of the warehouse like a pile driver. He opened his mouth to cry out but the pain was so great he couldn’t muster the lung power to force the sound up his throat.

He tried to move. Shafts of agony spiraled down his legs, slicing along his nerves like knives. His stomach roiled He was afraid he was going to vomit. Swallowing convulsively, he once again tried to move. Whatever was on top of him shifted. He thought he heard something snap. Pain stabbed viciously at the small of his back.

A moment later, Fridge saw red. At first he assumed it was blood—his own blood—on the inside of his face mask. Then he realized that what he was seeing was the glow of encroaching flames.

He was caught. God in Heaven have mercy, he was caught and he was going to roast like a pig on a spit.

“Fridge?”

It was Jackson. The shout came across a great distance. Or maybe it just seemed far away because Helen Rose Randall’s son was losing his grip on consciousness.

“Fridge?” It was a bellow. Angry. And anxious. “Talk to me, dammit! Where are the hell are you?”

“Here...”

Perhaps he said it aloud. Perhaps he only uttered the syllable inside his head. Fridge didn’t know. He wasn’t certain it made much of a difference.

Another spasm of pain racked him. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sanguineous light from the flames. This fire was starting to feel personal, he decided, with a touch of gallows’ humor. Real, real personal.

He didn’t want to die. But if his tune had come, he was prepared to meet his Maker. He’d done his best to be a good man, to lead a good hfe. And while it had taken him a long time to do so, he’d been fortunate enough to find a good woman to love.

If only his love for that good woman had been enough to erase the fear he’d seen lurking like a wounded animal in the topaz depths of her remarkable eyes, more times than he wanted to remember.

If only it had been enough to allow her to fully trust him.

Enough to allow her to trust herself.

“Keezia,” Fridge gasped, invoking the name like a prayer. “Oh...Keezia.”

One

Four months earlier

On top of all his other talents, the man could dance

The realization surprised Keezia Lorraine Carew, although she knew it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t as though she’d never seen Fridge move. She’d watched him on the job—running drills for rookies at the academy, tending to business at the fire station, responding to calls in the field—more times than she could count. Although he stood a strapping six-four and tipped the scales at a solidly muscular 230 pounds, the man was light on his feet Potently graceful, like a big, black jungle cat. He could be weighed down by turnout gear and breathing apparatus, but he still seemed to.. gli-i-i-ide...when he walked. And he had a knack for maintaining a rock-solid rhythm, even when everything around him was falling apart.

She’d watched how Fridge moved when he was off the job, too. It wasn’t a sexual thing. She wasn’t checking him out or sizing him up. He was a friend, for heaven’s sake! More than that, he was a fellow firefighter. If she were looking for a man—which she most emphatically was not now and had no intention of doing anytime soon—she’d have more sense than to go hunting for one in the department.

Still. Keezia knew that she’d be lying if she denied she found Fridge attractive. The source of his appeal was something she’d shied from examining except to acknowledge that he was very different from the brothers she’d been drawn to in the past. He didn’t strut his stuff. He didn’t represent himself as some streetwise stud He was, in fact, the kind of mama-loving, churchgoing black man she’d once disdained as hopelessly dull. But now...

What could she say? Ralph Randall compelled her interest. Her attention. And the unsettling thing was, he seemed to compel them against her will.

Keezia took a sip of the beer that had been thrust upon her by a colleague when she’d walked into the garishly decorated hall where several dozen members of the Atlanta Fire Department and their families were celebrating the retirement of one of their own. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she knew the drill. If she’d turned aside the brew and asked for something soft, she would have been labelled a wuss—or worse.

Swaying to the irresistibly down-and-dirty beat of the golden Motown oldie that was wailing out of the hall’s speaker system, she glanced around at the gathered throng. The mood in the hall was rocking, verging on rowdy. The esprit de corps—the camaraderie—was palpable Keezia gave herself over to the all-for-one, one-for-all feeling, wrapping it around her like a security blanket.

She shifted her gaze back toward Fridge. He was dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt. The dark, loose-fitting jacket he’d been wearing when she’d walked in—late, thanks to yet another problem with the hunk of junk she drove—had been discarded shortly after he started dancing. The T-shirt clung to the powerful muscles of his upper body as though it had been sprayed on. As for the jeans...

Keezia swallowed and shifted her weight, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in the pit of her stomach.

All right, she thought with a touch of self-directed anger. Okay. So she’d noticed. She’d have to be bind not to. Fridge’s jeans seemed to be clinging to some pretty well-developed anatomy, too. The man was just plain big all over.

Too big, something inside her warned. Bigger than—

Keezia clamped down on the comparison before it was completed. She took another drink of beer. A gulp this time, not a sip. She didn’t even grimace at the lukewarm temperature.

Motown gave way to a classic cut from the Rolling Stones. All of a sudden Fridge was dancing with a flashy young thing who, in Keezia’s considered opinion, should have taken a few of the dollars she’d paid to have her hair braided and beaded and spent them on a brassiere. A pair of super-control, jiggle-reducing panties would have been a good investment, too.

And what were those nails she was scratching against Fridge every time she wiggled near enough to touch him? Keezia wondered with a sardonic snort. A fancy manicure was one thing. Men liked a woman who made an effort to appear her best. But bloodred talons that looked as though a girl had been ripping at somebody’s jugular vein? Puh-leeze. Those things were worse than tacky. They were flat-out ugly.

Keezia tapped her short, unvarnished nails against her nearly emptied beer bottle. She was disappointed in Fire Officer Ralph Randall, she told herself She really was. She’d thought he had more sense than to take up with such obvious trash. She could only imagine what would happen if he decided to take Whoever-She-Was home to meet his mama!

That Helen Rose Randall wanted her only child married was plain to anyone with eyes or ears. But she wasn’t willing to settle for any old Sally, Jane or LaToya as a daughter-in-law. No, indeed not. Miz Helen was a lady with very definite standards. She’d take one look at—

Little Miss I-Got-It-So-I’m-Gonna-Flaunt-It said something at this point. Keezia decided the comment must have been downright hilarious because Fridge grinned m response to it, his even teeth flashing white beneath his mustache. A few seconds later, he swept his partner into a Michael Jackson-style spin.

The physical dominance implicit in the maneuver made Keezia flinch. The reaction was visceral. Involuntary. She shuddered slightly, her vision blurring, her palms going clammy. A brackish taste invaded her mouth. A part of her started looking for a place to hide.

Bitch! a nightmarishly familiar male voice rasped inside her skull You do what I tell you, when I tell you. You think I’m gonna let some—

“Hey, Keez!”

Keezia started violently, nearly dropping her beer bottle. Blinking rapidly, she drew a shaky breath. She was appalled by what she’d just experienced While she understood that she could never fully escape her past, she’d thought she was free from the worst of it It had been months since she’d suffered such a flashback That it had been something Fridge had done that had revived the fear and shame and helplessness she’d sworn she would die before going through again tore at her heart.

“Keezia?”

“You okay?”

“Hey, maybe she needs to sit down ”

“Geez, Keez. You’re damned near white.”

Keezia got herself under control, steadying her breathing and stilling her trembling hands by sheer force of will. She turned to confront a quartet of her fellow firefighters. Two were African-American like herself. One of them was tall, lean and totally bald; the other was short and squat, with biceps the size of baked hams. The third man had buzz-cut blond hair, blue eyes and the beginnings of a tan. The fourth was a wiry redhead whose faintly glassy gaze suggested he was a couple of beers over his limit. All four were staring at her with a combination of uncertainty and concern.

“Sorry,” she said, manufacturing a smile. It must have looked less fake than it felt because there was a perceptible easing in her colleagues’ expressions “I was... uh ... zoning out.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” This was from the taller black man. His name was Sam Fields. He’d been something of a mentor to Keezia during her probationary period.

“Positive, Sam. I’m fine.”

The four men exchanged glances, then apparently decided to take her at her word.

“Sorry about shakin’ you up,” the shorter black man said. “We moseyed over because we didn’t think it was right for the best-lookin’ firefighter in Atlanta to be standin’ all by herself.”

Keezia made a conscious shift into what she’d come to think of as her sassy-but-classy mode. It had taken her quite a while to find the courage to participate in the verbal give-and-take that was an integral part of fire fighting life. The habit of speaking up for herself had pretty much been beaten out of her during her marriage.

The first time she’d finally felt confident enough to crack back at somebody who was ragging on her, she’d been suffused by a heady rush of triumph It wasn’t that what she’d said had been so clever. Indeed, it had been pretty lame compared to the “snaps” some of the guys traded. Nonetheless. She’d said it.

“Funny, J.T.,” she drawled, arching an eyebrow. “I’ve heard you tell folks the best-looking firefighter in Atlanta is you. ”

This provoked a hoot of derision from the blond firefighter. “Oh, yeah,” he sarcastically concurred. “John Thomas thinks he’s a regular Denzel Washington.”

“Let’s not be talkin’ about who thinks what about their looks, Bobby,” J.T. retorted, jutting his jaw pugnaciously. “And it’s Wesley Snipes I resemble, man. Not Denzel.”

“What?” The man addressed as Bobby gave another hoot. “Give me a break! You resemble Wesley Snipes about as much as Mitch here resembles what’s-his-name—that guy from Backdraft.”

The redheaded Mitch, who’d started listing to the left, straightened abruptly.

“Backdraf?” he repeated, slurring the title slightly. “Oh, man, I love that movie! I mean, it’s gotta be the bes’ movie about firefightin’ ever made in the hist’ry of makin’ movies. Y’know? My girlfrien’... she gimme the video of it las’ Chris’mas.” He grinned at no one in particular. “Says watchin’ it with me makes her hot.”

“You talking about Ron Howard, Bobby?” The inquiry came from Sam Fields, who’d apparently decided that Mitch’s inebriated comments were better left uncommented upon. “That red-hatred, freckled guy who used to be on Happy Days?”

Bobby shook his head. “No, not—”

“You know, Sam,” J.T. interrupted, scrutinizing Mitch as though he were a prune example of some new species “Mitch does kind of look like that dude. I never noticed it before. Hey, Mitch. Sober up for a second will you, bro? Anybody ever tell you that you could be the twin of that Happy Days guy?”

Mitch gulped audibly, his eyes darting back and forth. He’d clearly lost the thread of the conversation. He opened and shut his mouth several times. Then he belched. The noise seemed to erupt from the depths of his belly and went on for at least a couple of seconds.

“He used to be on another show, too,” J.T. continued helpfully, evidently unfazed by his colleague’s sophomoric behavior. “Played a little kid. Name of Mopey. Or Dopey. Some-thin’ like that.”

“It was Opie, J.T.,” Keezia corrected, choking back a laugh.

J.T. regarded her dubiously “Oh, yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know who Mopey is, but Dopey’s a dwarf.”

“So? That Happy Days dude ain’t no giant!”

“I’m not talking about the Happy Days dude!” Bobby interjected impatiently “I’m talking about the guy who starred in Backdraft, not the damned director! You know—Kurt Russell.”

“You think Mitch looks like Kurt Russell?” Sam shook his head and clucked his tongue reprovingly. “White boy, you’d best have your vision checked.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “No, I don’t think Mitch looks like Kurt Russell,” he snapped. “Geez Louise, Sam. That’s the point I was tryin’ to make when we got off on this tangent! Mitch looks as much like Kurt Russell as J.T. looks like Wesley Snipes.”

“Well—”

“Forget Wesley Snipes, man,” J.T. suddenly commanded. “Anybody know the name of the fox who’s dancin’ with Fridge Randall?”

Bobby and Sam immediately turned m the direction J.T. was staring. Keezia gritted her teeth and looked down at the floor. She knew what was coming. She also knew she was in no mood to contend with it.

“Where?” she heard Sam ask.

“Over there,” J.T. replied, probably pointing.

“Over whe—” Bobby broke off, groaning melodramatically. Keezia took this to mean that he’d spotted the “fox.” “Oh, man,” he said in an awed tone. “Oh... mama Will you guys take a good look at that? The last time I saw somebody shakin’ like that, it was at my brother-in-law’s stag party ”

Maybe she should just turn on her heel and walk away, Keezia thought, clenching her hands against her thighs.

“You think Brother Randall recruited her from that Bible class he teaches?” Sam inquired.

“I’d definitely go down on my knees and pray for somethin’ like that,” J T. declared crudely. “Ooooh, baby! What I wouldn’t give to have—”

“Hey, cool it, J.T.,” Bobby cut in, his voice tight. Keezia lifted her head, startled by his abrupt change in tone. The fair-haired firefighter met her questioning gaze for a split second, then looked away. He was beet red. “There’s a lady present.”

Caught off balance by Bobby’s sudden and unsolicited assumption of the role of protector of her sensibilities, Keezia debated what she should do. She’d worked hard to become one of the guys; to prove herself capable of handling all aspects of the job, including the macho horseplay. But the kind of sexual innuendo she’d just heard made her uncomfortable on a number of different levels for a number of different reasons. She knew she couldn’t let it pass.

Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth to say something. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure. Fortunately—if fortunately was the right word—Mitch preempted her.

“A lady?” he repeated, glancing around with a bewildered expression. “Where?”

Bobby smacked him on the back of the head, probably a bit harder than he intended. “Keezia, you cracker!”

“Yeah, man,” J T. seconded, sending her an apologetic look. “Keezia. ”

“Keezia?” Mitch turned and stared at her, his mouth gaping open. Then he apparently decided it was all a huge joke and uncorked a guffaw. “Keezia’s ... not a...lady!” he gasped through his hilarity. “She’s a firefighter. ”

While Ralph Randall was deeply grateful for the kind of upbringing he’d had, there were times when he wished his mama hadn’t been quite such a stickler about what she termed “mannerly behavior.”

This was one of those times.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t enjoying his dance with Bernadine Wallace. A man would have to be dead and buried not to appreciate the lady’s—uh—charms. Because her charms were abundant. To say nothing of obvious. Very, very obvious.

But appreciative wasn’t necessarily interested. At least, not interested the way Fridge got the distinct impression that Bernadine—Lord, he wished he could remember whose sister she’d said she was when she’d asked him to dance!—was encouraging him to be. There was only one woman in whom he was interested “that way” and the last time he’d checked, she’d been on the other side of the room, having herself a fine old time with four male firefighters.

He imagined himself handing Bernadine back to her brother—whoever he was—and going over to the five of them. Not directly. Oh, no. He knew better than that. He’d kind of... stroll... across the floor. Take his own sweet time. Be cool and casual about the whole process.

And once he reached his destination and joined in the conversation, he’d coolly and casually ask Bobby Robbins if he had any pictures of the baby girl his wife had given birth to—what was it? Three, maybe four weeks ago? He might also make a cool, casual reference to J.T. Wilson’s recent engagement. Lucinda, he seemed to recall the girl’s name being. Word was, she was a real sweet lady. She supposedly was working toward her teaching degree at Spelman College.

Bernadine said something to him. What it was, he had no idea. The volume of the music would have made it difficult for him to catch more than a word or two even if he’d been paying close attention. She apparently thought her remark was funny though, because she punctuated it with a shrill string of tee-hee-hee-hees.

He smiled noncommittally and kept on dancing. After executing a few seemingly spontaneous steps, he maneuvered himself into a position where he could take another look across the hall without being obvious about it.

Two more men—both vaguely familiar—had joined the group. It was like ants to a sugar spill, Fridge thought, his stomach muscles tightening. The problem was, he wanted Keezia’s sweetness all for himself.

He’d wanted it for a long time, although he’d spent quite a while avoiding facing up to the fact. And even after finally admitting to his desire, he hadn’t acted on it. He’d...well, the plain truth was, he hadn’t known what to do.

It wasn’t that he was inexperienced with the ladies. Although he didn’t do a whole lot of chasing—it seemed disrespectful to his black sisters as well as to himself not to exercise some restraint in that regard—he’d had his share of romances. But when it came to Keezia Carew...

It was different with her, Fridge acknowledged. Very different.

Maybe if they hadn’t met in church, with his mama performing the introductions...

Maybe if both of them hadn’t been firefighters...

Maybe if he hadn’t seen fear in her beautiful, gemstone eyes the first time he’d touched her...

It had taken him close to two years to learn the source of Keezia’s fear. He and she had become Mends—good, platonic buddies—during that period. They’d eventually reached a point where she’d trusted him enough to share the story of the relationship that had almost destroyed her.

He’d already known that she’d jumped the broom with some dude in Detroit right after graduating high school and that she’d come to Atlanta to visit with relatives a short time after divorcing him. That there’d been some kind of problem in her marriage had gone without saying. Couples did not split up because they were blissfully happy together. But Fridge had never for a moment considered the possibility that this “problem” had involved Keezia being brutalized, body and soul, by the son of a bitch who’d sworn to love, honor and cherish her.

The rage he’d felt after he’d heard her recitation had been more powerful than any he’d ever experienced. It had also shattered the trust Keezia had placed in him.

He hadn’t been angry at her in the aftermath of her tale. Lord, no! He’d been murderously funous with the bastard who’d hurt her so viciously. Nonetheless, the realization that he was capable of such violent emotion had shaken Keezia in ways he was still struggling to comprehend.

She’d pulled back from him, her guard going up, her attitude turning wary and watchful. It had become painfully clear to Fridge that the woman for whom he cared so deeply believed—really, truly believed—that it was only a matter of time before he turned his capacity for rage in her direction.

What was he supposed to do in the face of that kind of attitude? Fridge had asked himself over and over. Try to defend himself against her fear by proclaiming it unreasonable? Swear by all he held holy that he’d never, ever hurt her?

A fat lot of good either one of those approaches would accomplish, he’d eventually concluded. What right did he have to dismiss Keezia’s apprehensions? To maintain that he knew better than she how she should respond to him? Didn’t he see that she’d had enough of being told what to do and think and feel?

As for promising to do her no harm—well. Keezia had made it plain that every episode of abuse by her husband had been followed by pledges it would never, ever happen again. Those pledges had been broken, along with several of her bones and two of her teeth. No matter its sincerity, his rhetoric would carry precious little weight when balanced against her real-life experiences.

In the end, Fridge had decided that the key to the situation was patience. He’d earned Keezia’s trust once. He could earn it back again. Although her perception of him had changed, he had not. He was still the man in whom she’d chosen to confide the truth about her past. Given time, she would realize that.

And once she did ..

He turned, catching yet another glimpse of Keezia. She was laughing, her lush-lipped mouth parted, her slender throat arched like a lily stem. Bold gold earrings dangled from her lobes, glinting richly against her smooth, mocha-colored skin.

She reminded him of the famous statue of that Egyptian queen, Nefertiti. There was such pride in her. Such womanly strength. Not for the first time, Fridge wondered what kind of defect would cause a man to try to obliterate those qualities with his fists.

The Rolling Stones’ song came to an end amid much clapping and hollering. Fridge turned his attention back to his voluptuous partner. She was fanning her sweat-sheened face with both hands. The polite words he’d planned to utter got lost in a jolt of distaste as he registered the length and color of her fingernails. He grimaced inwardly, thinking about the guttearing velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

Bernadine moistened her lips and reached for him with one of her red-taloned hands. “You really know how to get down and move,” she declared throatily.

“Thanks.” He managed to evade her touch without making too big an issue of it. “You shake things pretty good, too, Bernadine.”

“You think?” She preened at his compliment, her acrylic nails clacking against the ceramic ornaments in her hair Then she fluttered her lashes at him. “Tell me, sugar. Do they call you Fridge ‘cuz you’re cool...or ’cuz you’re so bi-i-i-ig?” She stretched out the last word like an elastic band.

In point of fact, Ralph Randall owed his nickname to a little kid. The station where he was assigned was located close to an elementary school and attracted a lot of field trips. A number of years back, he’d found himself knee-to-nose with a kindergartner who’d become separated from his class. The kid had taken a good, long gawk at him and then piped up, “Gee, Mr. Fireman, you’re even bigger than my mama’s ’fridgidator!” His fire fighting buddies had found this innocent observation hilariously apt and insisted on calling him Fridge from that day forward.

“I—”

A shriek of feedback cut off his response to his companion’s deliberately provocative inquiry. A moment later, music started pouring through the sound system again. This time, the selection was a slow, sultry tune. Implicit in the music was the notion that a man and a woman could have just as much fun going at each other standing up as they could lying down.

Bernadine squealed in delighted recognition, practically flinging herself into Fridge’s arms. He winced slightly as several of her hair beads bounced against his T-shirted chest like BB pellets. It occurred to him that between her nails and her braids, this woman could do a man some serious accidental damage.

“Oooooh, I love this song!” she declared, wiggling to underscore the point. “Come on, baby. Dance with me.”

He could have said no, of course. But he didn’t. He didn’t because he knew that by his mama’s lights, it wouldn’t have been mannerly behavior.

Keezia detached herself from the group of firefighters that had gathered around her a few moments after Fridge’s partner super-glued herself against him. No one seemed to notice her departure. They were all too engrossed in listening to a story about the comeuppance of a local TV reporter who was notorious for sticking his mike in emergency workers’ faces while they were trying to do their jobs and demanding, “Whaddya got? Whaddya got? Gimme something good.”

Word was, this jerk had been his usual obnoxious—even obstructionist—self the previous night at the scene of a multiple-car, multiple-fatality collision on 1-85. Outraged by his behavior, a stressed-to-the-maximum paramedic had shut him up by shoving something ugly into his hands.

Keezia was just approaching the refreshment table when she heard a girlish voice call her name. She turned and saw a pixie-pretty young blonde coming her way. Following in her wake was a tall, sandy-haired man with sun-bronzed skin and brilliant blue eyes.

The man was Jackson Miller, probably Fridge’s closest friend in the department. Maybe his closest friend, period The girl was Jackson’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Lauralee.

“Hey, Keezia!” Lauralee greeted her with a merry wave.

Having been raised in Detroit, Keezia had had a few problems with Dixie-belle accents like Lauralee’s when she’d first arrived in Atlanta. While she still found some “Southern-speak” phony-sounding, she’d warmed to Lauralee’s drawl very quickly. The girl was as sweet as she was smart. She was also one of Keezia’s most ardent fans, regarding her as something of an icon because of her status as a female firefighter and—as she emphatically put it—an independent woman.

To say that Keezia had initially found Lauralee’s attitude toward her difficult to accept was to severely understate the case. She’d still been in the process of piecing herself back together when they’d met nearly three years ago. The idea that anyone—to say nothing of a sheltered little white girl—would consider her a role model had struck her as a sick joke. Gradually, however, the guileless intensity of Lauralee’s admiration had began to get through to her. It had proven a balm for her badly wounded self-esteem.

“Hi, honey.” She smiled at the teen, then nodded at her father. “Jackson.”

“Evening, Keezia.”

“Did y’all hear about the reporter and the paramedic and the chopped-off hand?” Lauralee inquired eagerly.

“Chopped-off hand?” Keezia said frowning. “I thought it was a severed foot.”

“Whatever.” Lauralee made an airy gesture, dismissing the need to be accurate about exactly which body part had been involved. Then her expression grew serious and she demanded, “Can y’all believe people have the nerve to act like that?”

“You mean the EMT?” Keezia used the acronym for “emergency medical technician.”

“Oh, no.” The teen shook her head vehemently. “I think what he did was wonderful! I’m talkin’ about that awful TV newsman—” she spat out the name, her wide, blue eyes fizzing with indignation. “Who does he think he is, anyway? Geraldo Rivera? Pokin’ his microphone at people when they’re tryin’ to save lives. Askin’ ‘em all kinds of insensitive questions. Makes me sick. Why, just a couple weeks ago, he ran his station wagon—you know, that tacky newshound thing they’re always promotin’ like it was the Batmobile or some-thin’? —over a charged-up line at a fire! Now, I believe it’s real important to have freedom of the press. But when a reporter does somethin’ as stupid as runnin’ over a workin’ hose—well, I don’t think he should get one tiny bit of protection from the First Amendment!”

Jackson chuckled and tweaked a lock of his daughter’s flaxen hair. “Spoken like the true child of a firefighter.”

Lauralee turned, clearly nettled by her father’s teasing attitude. “You pretty much said the same thing, Daddy,” she reminded him. “And Fridge, too. Remember? Last Monday? When he came over for dinner? He said he’d’ve liked to take an ax to that dumb old news car and ventilate it, but good.”

“There’s a rumor going around that the reporter is threatening to sue,” Keezia put in, wanting to steer the conversation away from Fridge as quickly as possible. She also knew that Jackson tended to have the inside scoop on departmental doings. No matter that he was only a lieutenant The man was heavily—and highly—connected.

“He can threaten all he wants,” Jackson replied. “But I don’t think he’ll follow through. There’s a videotape of what provoked the paramedic into reacting the way he did, and somebody in the Mayor’s office has a copy of it. If the reporter’s stupid enough to sue, the city’ll release it to all the local stations and CNN. Then the Department of Public Safety will yank his press credentials and cite him for interfering with official business. He might even wind up charged with malicious mischief and reckless endangerment.”

Keezia took a second or two to digest this scenario. Although she’d been spared any personal encounters with the newsman under discussion, his reputation was such that she felt justified in detesting him.

“Sounds good to me,” she declared. “But what about the paramedic?”

Jackson’s mouth twisted. “He’s been ordered to get some counseling. He’ll probably be suspended without pay for a week or so, too.”

“Which is totally unfair,” Lauralee chimed in with great conviction.

“A lot of things in this life aren’t fair, sugar,” her father advised, his words infused with a touch of melancholy. Keezia wondered fleetingly whether he was thinking of the untimely deaths of his wife and father.

“Yeah, but—” the teenager stopped, her gaze snagging on something behind Keezia. After a moment she furrowed her fair-skinned brow and observed, “She’s still dancin’ with him.”

“Who?” Puzzled, Keezia looked over her shoulder.

“That woman,” Lauralee said in an odd tone. “She’s still dancin’ with Fridge.”

“It’s not a one-way proposition, sugar,” Jackson admonished. Something in his voice hinted that this was not new conversational territory. “Fridge is dancing with her, too.”

Oh, he surely was, Keezia concurred sourly. Why, if he and Miss Bust-and-Braids got any closer, they’d be sharing lungs!

Exhaling a disgusted huff, she turned back toward the Millers. She had no reason to react this way, she told herself. She had no claim on Fridge Randall. His private life was none of her business. If he wanted to go about conducting that private life for all the world to see... well, fine! It was no skin off her backside.

“Daddy says he doesn’t know who she is, Keezia,” Lauralee reported. “Do you?”

“I never saw her before.” And if she never saw her again, it would be just hunky-dory.

“Mmm.” Lauralee shook her head, the corners of her soft mouth turning down. After a few seconds she said, “I don’t think he’s havin’ a very good time.”

“Lauralee Ophelia—”

“It was different before,” the teen persisted, undeterred by the exasperation in her father’s voice. “When they were dancin’ fast, I mean. Fridge was really into the music. But now—well, just look for yourself, Daddy! You see it, don’t you, Keezia? He’s all...stiff. It’s like he’s got a broom handle up his back or somethin’!”

Keezia glanced over her shoulder again. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Her pulse gave a curious hop-skip-jump as she once again focused on Fridge and his flamboyant partner.

Maybe...maybe he did look a little uncomfortable, she conceded after a moment or two. While Fridge certainly wasn’t pulling away from his showy lady friend, he wasn’t exactly cozying up to her, either. In fact, now that she really looked...well, she had to admit that something about his posture reminded her of the way he’d held himself right after he’d pulled a bunch of muscles hauling a hysterical four-hundred-pound woman out of a burning apartment building.

And then without warning, Fridge’s gaze met and fused with hers. Keezia’s breath wedged in her throat. Her knees wobbled for an instant. She found herself lifting her hand to check her hair. The crisp texture of her dark, short-cropped curls tickled the strangely sensitized tips of her fingers.

“You know, Keezia,” she heard Lauralee say through the hammering of her heartbeat. “I’ll just bet Fridge would rather be dancin’ with you. ”

Two

“Dance with me?” Fridge asked about five minutes later.

It had taken some doing, but he’d managed to extricate himself from Bernadine Wallace’s clutches after the slow, sultry number had finally come to an end. He’d then made his way across the hall, intercepting Keezia as she headed for the door. After an exchange of greetings and some friendly chitchat—keep it cool and casual, he’d reminded himself, cool and casual—he’ d issued his invitation

Keezia tilted her head. “Dance?”

“Uh-huh.” Man, she looked prime, he thought. Even better up close than from a distance, which, sad to say, wasn’t true with a lot of women. That sweet piece of skin revealed by the modest V-neckline of the loose-fitting pullover she was wearing—mmm-mmm Talk about temptation! And the way the creamy fabric sort of...flo-o-o-owed...over her breasts? Whew! He could definitely get accustomed to looking at that.

As for the short, tight, black leather skirt she had on—well, all he could say was that it was bad, and with those long, lean legs of hers, Keezia Lorraine Carew was wearing the hell out of it.

“I’m on duty tomorrow,” she said, toying with her right earring. Although Fridge wasn’t much on women who fussed with themselves in public, something about this unthinking gesture got to him in a very elemental way. He couldn’t help but speculate about what it would feel like to have Keezia stroking him instead of the burnished metal. “I really ought to be going home.”

“One dance.” While he didn’t want to come on too strong, he didn’t want to take no for an answer too quickly, either. Although he was well aware that sweet talk tended to put Keezia’s back up, he had the distinct impression that this was one instance where she might let herself be coaxed into changing her mind. “One itty-bitty dance and I’ll have you out the door right afterward.”

“I didn’t know you did anything—” his prospective partner paused, and a hint of feminine challenge sparked in her topazcolored eyes as she lowered her hand from her earring “—ittybitty.”

“Size is a relative thing, Sister Carew,” he answered, lowering his voice a note or two and infusing it with just a lick of the resonant bass he turned loose singing gospel every Sunday. “Why, I can imagine more than a few situations when my ‘itty-bitty’ would be another man’s. mighty big.”

He recognized that his choice of words was risky. Keezia was unnerved by his size. He’d picked up on that at their first meeting, long before he’d learned the ugly history that lay behind the reaction. Still, wary as she was, she’d decided to start this back-and-forth. He could only hope that she wouldn’t decide to end it by reiterating her initial excuse and taking her leave.

For a moment, he was certain that was exactly what she was going to do. Keezia’s expression went blank. She seemed to turn inward on herself. Retreating. Remembering. But then she surprised him. Maybe herself, too. The animation returned to her expressive face in a rush. Her richly colored lips parted in a smile that caused his breath to jam somewhere in his chest.

“Mighty big doesn’t do a man much more good than itty-bitty if he doesn’t know what to do with it,” she declared dulcetly. “But let’s leave that be, all right? Because if you’re serious about dancing with me—”

“Oh, I’m serious,” he managed to affirm.

“Well then, Brother Randall, you’d better get me out on the floor right now. The song for our one dance just started playing.”

The song that allowed Ralph Booker Randall to take Keezia Lorraine Carew into his arms had an insinuating beat, the kind of syncopated rhythm that snuck into a man’s bloodstream and started stirring things up. The lyrics had the same sort of sensual hook to them.

Although the urge to pull his partner close was throbbing through Fridge before the end of the tune’s first chorus, he disciplined himself not to give in to it. He kept his hold loose, his touch light. While he’d been encouraged by the sexy banter that had preceded Keezia’s acceptance of his invitation, he knew his proximity made her uneasy. He could feel it in the rigidity of her normally supple spine. He could hear it in the shallow irregularity of her breathing pattern.

Trust me, baby, he urged silently, stroking gently at the small of her back. Please. Trust me. I’m not that bastard Tyrel Babcock. I’d never hurt you.

Gradually, Keezia began to relax within the circle of his embrace. The tension in her slim, sleekly muscled body eased. Her breathing slowed and deepened. The distance between them got smaller and smaller and smaller, then disappeared.

Her hands slid up his forearms and along his shoulders, linking at the back of his neck. The touch of her fingertips against his nape shocked Fridge clear down to the soles of his feet. His nervous system started humming like an electrified power grid.

She didn’t plaster herself against him the bold way his previous partner had. She sort of snuggled up close instead, establishing the fit of their bodies by yielding increments. The process was an exquisite form of torture for Fridge, but he endured it without complaint. He was ready to go through much, much worse if it would help Keezia exorcise her demons.

“I was afraid you weren’t goin’ to make it tonight,” he murmured, inhaling the musk-spice scent of her café-au-lait-colored skin.

“Why’s that?” There was a hint of huskiness in her voice.

“Well, when the party’d been rollin’ for more than an hour and you still hadn’t walked in...”

Keezia shifted a little, raising her head and looking up at him. Her expression was difficult to interpret. There was suspicion in it, but it was mixed up with a lot of other emotions.

“You were watching out for me?” she asked after a fractional pause.

He flashed back on that sizzling moment when his eyes had met hers while he’d been slow-dancing with Bernadine. He held Keezia’s gaze for a few beats, willing her to remember—and acknowledge—the moment, too. A sudden flaring of her delicately shaped nostrils told him that she had.

“What do you think, sugar?” he countered, keeping his voice low

Keezia recovered her poise with remarkable rapidity. The suspicion in her expression was replaced by a don’t-mess-with-me sassiness. “I think you had plenty to be looking at besides the door I might be comin’ in through,” she retorted with a disdainful sniff

Her refusal to take the bait he’d offered didn’t surprise him. He’d expected her to sidestep his question. But the admission embedded in her evasion—the admission that she’d been keeping tabs on him in the same way he’d been keeping tabs on her—pretty much blind sided him.

“You mean Bernadine?” he asked after a few seconds. Fridge didn’t believe in playing one woman off against another. But if a little bit of jealousy helped clarify some of Keezia’s other feelings ..

“Is that her name?”

“So she said. Miss Bernadine Wallace.”

“Somebody... new?”

Fridge controlled the urge to grin, relishing the way his partner was trying—but not quite succeeding—to make her inquiries sound offhand. He suspected that he’d been similarly unconvincing when he’d done his cool and casual routine prior to asking her to dance.

“Somebody’s sister,” he answered after a second or two.

“Sister? ”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Whose?”

He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

Keezia stared up at him, her eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth. “Uh-huh,” she eventually said, her tone skeptical in the extreme. Then she turned her head and leaned her cheek against his chest. She muttered something under her breath as she did so. Fridge couldn’t make out the exact words. He didn’t really need to. The gist of what she’d said came through loud and clear. Namely, that of all the roles his current dance partner might be inclined to assign to his previous one, sister was way, way down on the list.

They danced without speaking for ten, maybe fifteen seconds. Out of the corner of his eye, Fridge caught a glimpse of Jackson Miller and his teenage daughter. They appeared to be having a small disagreement. If the direction in which Lauralee was gesturing was any indication, it involved him and Keezia.

“Why the late entrance?” he finally inquired, wondering uneasily whether his jones for Keezia Carew was a lot more obvious to people than he’d thought. Jackson had picked up on the situation pretty early on, of course. His mama had made a few uncomfortably acute remarks on the subject, too. But aside from them...

No, he told himself. If anybody else knew or suspected how he felt about Keezia, it’d be all over the department. The guys at the station would be ragging him around the clock!

Keezia muttered under her breath, much as she’d done before This time, though, Fridge caught what he thought was the operative word in her response.

“Say what?” he prompted, wanting to make certain of the facts before he reacted.

A long, frustrated-sounding sigh insinuated its way through the thin cotton fabric of his T-shirt. “I had some trouble with my car.”

Exactly what he’d suspected. Should have guessed without asking, in fact.

“The transmission?” That had been the problem the last time, as he recalled.

“Could have been.”

“What about the spark plugs?” They’d been at fault the time before last. Or had it been the fan belt?

Another sigh. “Could have been them, too.”

Much as he liked the feel of her warm breath fanning against his chest, Fridge figured it was his turn to ease back and make some eye contact. He did so.

“Sugar,” he began, gazing down at Keezia. “I know it’s pickin’ on a sore subject, but that car of yours is one of the sorriest excuses for an automobile I’ve ever seen. You are in desperate need of a new ride.”

“Tell me about it.” Her prickly tone suggested that if he knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t. “But unless I strike it rich in the Georgia State Lottery, I’m not going to get one till this fall. I want to finish paying off what I owe on my new furniture before I take on any more debt.”

Fridge had spent a lot of years messing with cars. Based on that experience—plus his under-the-hood acquaintance with the vehicle in question—he had some major doubts about whether Keezia was going to be able to stick with her very admirable fiscal plans. Not that he intended to voice these doubts at this particular juncture. He didn’t. Because unless his ears deceived him, the song he and Keezia were dancing to was going to be over very shortly. He didn’t want to squander what was left of it on arguing about how much life might be left in her old junker.

“I’ll ask my mama to remember your car in her prayers,” he promised, tightening the circle of his arms.

Keezia gave a throaty ripple of laughter. “To tell the truth,” she said, letting herself be drawn against him, “I was kind of hoping you’d ask her to ask Reverend Dixon whether he’d consider trying some faith healing on it I’ve noticed she seems to carry a lot of weight with him ”

“Mama carries a lot of weight with everybody,” Fridge returned, chuckling. He wasn’t just referring to her considerable stature within Atlanta’s African-American community, either. Helen Rose Randall definitely believed in living large. If old photographs were anything to depend on, she hadn’t just kept her girlish figure over the years, she’d doubted—maybe tripled—it. “But I’m sure she’d be pleased to have a word with Reverend Dixon.”

They lapsed into silence at this point, moving in perfect harmony to the last verse of the song and the final rendition of the chorus. Fridge savored the sensation of holding Keezia. It felt so good to him. So...right.

Please, Lord, he thought. Let this last.

The song came to an end. They didn’t separate immediately, though. In fact, Keezia seemed as reluctant to let go as he. Eventually, though, she lowered her arms from his neck and started to ease away. While his masculine instincts urged him to do otherwise, Fridge made no effort to stop her. He simply opened his hands and let her step back.

She stared up at him for several seconds, a hint of heat shimmering in the depths of her enticingly exotic eyes. He could see the jump of her pulse at the base of her long, queenly throat. The rise and fall of her breasts lured his gaze for a provocative moment or two before he forced his attention back to her face.

“Thank you,” she finally said.

“My pleasure,” he answered, meaning it.

There was a pause. Keezia glanced at her watch.

“Well—” she began.

“I’ll walk you out,” Fridge quickly volunteered. He had a number of reasons for not wanting her to leave alone. Included among them was the fact that they weren’t in the safest area of the city.

She shook her head. “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” he responded, clamping down on a spurt of annoyance at her knee-jerk rejection of his offer. He admired Keezia Carew’s independence, he really did. He also respected the dark power of the forces that drove her to defend it so intensely. Still, he lived for the day when she abandoned the notion that saying yes to a helping hand somehow translated into taking the first step toward inviting a smack in the face. “But I want to ”

Keezia was acutely conscious of the curve of Fridge’s strong right arm around her shoulders as he escorted her to the entrance of her apartment building about ninety minutes later. The contact was protective without being possessive. There was nothing about it to make her uneasy. Yet nagging at the back of her mind was the painful recognition that protectiveness could be a trap. Accepting it could sap a woman’s self-esteem. Make her vulnerable. Being dependent on a man could be dangerous. A woman needed to be able to take care of herself

“I really appreciate your driving me home, Fridge,” she said quietly

“My pleasure.” It was the same response—the same inflection—she’ d heard after she’d thanked him for dancing with her.

She took a long, deep breath, inhaling the soft, sweet fragrance of the night air. Atlanta had once again had a very early spring. There’d been pansies blooming at the beginning of February, trees budding in mid-March. It was now the second week of May, and Mother Nature was putting on a fullscale flower show. The beauty wasn’t entirely without cost, however. Keezia knew that emergency services had had dozens of 911 calls from people thinking they were having heart attacks when their problem was actually an allergic reaction to airborne pollen.

“I appreciate your calling your friend from the garage, too,” she added after a moment, slanting a glance up at Fridge. He was a very striking-looking man, with the legacy of his African forebears clearly imprinted on his face. She could picture him in the colorful robes of a tribal chieftain, exuding an authority based on moral strength as well as physical prowess.

You can trust him, something deep inside her suddenly whispered.

Keezia wanted to believe it. She wanted it with all her heart and soul. Her body wasn’t averse to taking the leap of faith, either. Not after the dance they’d shared. She could still feel a hint of sexual heat simmering in her bloodstream. It would take very little to bring that simmer to a full, rolling boil.

But wanting to believe wasn’t enough. Something deep inside her had once whispered that she could trust a man named Tyrell Babcock, and he’d nearly destroyed her. Until she could be absolutely sure...

Fridge smiled, his teeth bright against his dark brown skin. “Jamal’s one of the best mechanics I’ve ever met. I know some of the comments he made about your car weren’t very respectful, but he’ll have it up and running by the end of the week.”

They reached the front door of her building. Keezia eased herself out from under Fridge’s powerfully muscled arm and turned to face him. She nibbled on her lower lip, debating whether to raise the point that had been troubling her since she’d watched Jamal hook her pitiful car to his tow truck and haul it away.

“Jamal was a little hard to pin down when it came to getting an estimate of how much this repair job is going to cost me,” she finally remarked, selecting her words with great care.

“He’ll give you a good price, Keezia.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Well...actually...it probably was, given her limited financial resources. She certainly wasn’t looking to get overcharged or cheated by Fridge’s friend! But she wasn’t looking to be handed some kind of bogus bargain, either.

“It better not be too good,” she emphasized after a moment, staring directly up into her companion’s dark eyes. She needed him to understand that she was dead serious about this. “I heard what he said about owing you for delivering his son—”

“Simone did all the hard work,” Fridge interjected with a shrug. The bunch and release of his shoulder muscles was clearly visible beneath the fabric of his jacket. “I just caught Jamal Junior when he popped out.”

“Maybe so,” Keezia conceded, although she sincerely doubted it. While Jamal Senior hadn’t gone into detail, she’d gotten the impression that his son’s entrance into the world had been a very dicey matter She suspected the scenario had been one of those forget-trying-to-make-it-to-the-hospital-this-baby-ain’t-gonna-wait types of medical emergencies that every firefighter heard about during training and secretly prayed he or she would never have to face in the field. “The thing is, I saw those looks you and Jamal were giving each other. I don’t want him doing me any favors because of you.”

Fridge expelled a breath, his features tightening. “Because that’d make you feel like you owed me.”

She stiffened, uncertain how to interpret his tone. He’d sounded—what? Offended? No. Not exactly. He’d sounded closer to ..to... hurt.

The possibility that she’d bruised Ralph Randall’s feelings shook her. The man had been nothing but good to her from the day they’d met.

“Fridge—”

“It’s cool, baby,” he interrupted, his expression altering with breathtaking swiftness. He brushed the tip of one finger against her mouth. Her heart somersaulted at the feather-light caress. “Forget what I just said ”

“But—”

“It’s cool, baby,” he repeated firmly. “I heard what you were tryin’ to tell me. I’ll explain the way things have to be with Jamal. He’ll understand. ’Course, he’ll probably end up chargin’ you double for parts and labor just to make sure you don’t think he and I are conspirin’ to do you a friendly turn—but, hey. Sometimes that’s how life works out.”

Keezia gaped. Was he serious? Was he actually threatening to have his friend stick her with an outrageous bill if she didn’t let him cut her a sweetheart deal?

Then she saw caught a wicked glint of humor in Fridge’s eyes and realized he was getting a little bit of his own back. Profoundly relieved, she started to laugh. Her companion quickly joined in.

“Would you like to come up for a few minutes?” she found herself asking as their mutual merriment finally petered out. It wasn’t an invitation she’d intended to issue. But now that she had...

“To your apartment?”

She nodded, wondering at the wariness she thought she heard in his voice. “I could, uh, fix you a quick cup of coffee before you head home.”

Fridge regarded her silently for several seconds, his dark eyes searching deep into her topaz ones. “You don’t have to, Keezia,” he said at last.

It was the perfect opening for a retreat from her impulsive invitation. For reasons she was nowhere near being prepared to articulate, Keezia didn’t even contemplate the possibility of taking it.

“I know,” she said evenly, sustaining Fridge’s penetrating gaze. After a moment, she returned to him the words he’d given her earlier when she’d tried to brush aside his offer of an escort out to her car. “But I want to.”

There were lots of reasons Fridge accepted Keezia’s obviously unplanned invitation. Not the least of them was her coffee. He knew from experience that the brew she served was strong, black and sweet—just the way he liked it.

“Hard to believe this is the same place Jackson and I moved you into last month,” he commented, glancing around approvingly. They were sitting in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment in Virginia Highlands. He was ensconced on a comfortable, pillow-strewn sofa. She had kicked off her shoes and was curled up in an armchair angled off to his right. The earthenware mug that had held his coffee sat on a small, tile-topped table in front of him. Keezia’s cat, a marmalade-colored feline named Shabazz, was sprawled across his upper thighs, purring contentedly.

“It’s coming along,” Keezia agreed. Although her words were modest, they were laced with pride. “I got those—” she nodded toward a collection of shallow baskets hung on the cream-colored wall opposite her “—the other day at that gallery across from the High Museum. Handmade in Zimbabwe and marked down 50 percent.”

“Impressive,” Fridge said with a chuckle, scratching lightly beneath Shabazz’s chin. He’d known the cat almost as long as he’d known Keezia. She’d rescued Shabazz’s very pregnant mama from a tree during her first week as a probie, succeeding at the task after several veteran firefighters had failed. A month or so after this episode, the mama cat’s owners had turned up at her station house with a boxful of mewing kittens. After being assured by her captain that the prohibition against firefighters accepting gratuities did not apply to things like home-baked cookies or helpless, homeless little animals, Keezia had happily taken her pick from the litter.

“You must be wearing catnip for cologne, Fridge Randall,” she observed with a trace of asperity after a few moments. “Anybody else comes to visit, Shabazz hisses, spits and scratches. With you...”

“What can I say?” he asked wryly, stroking the cat from head to tail with a slow sweep of his fingers. He glanced down, struck by the contrast between the color of his skin and the color of the animal’s silken fur. He repeated the head-to-tail caress several times. Shabazz’s purring grew louder with each pass. “I have the magic touch with certain females.”

“Mmm.”

Something about this nonverbal response caused Fridge to look from the cat to her mistress. Keezia was staring at Shabazz. Or, rather, she was staring at Shabazz being petted. Her gaze was fixed on his hands, the dilation of her pupils reducing her irises to narrow rings of gold. Her lips were parted and trembling. There was a faint flush of excitement along the line of her angled cheekbones. She looked...dazed.

The memory of what he’d felt earlier in the evening when he’d watched Keezia toy with her right earring came back to Fridge. His body tightened in response to an erotic rush of sensation. Blood—heated and heavy—began to pool between his thighs.

Time to go, he told himself.

“Keezia,” he said, disciplining his voice into something he hoped approximated its normal tone.

She jerked, causing her earrings to swing wildly, then lifted her eyes to meet his. Although she did her best to hide it, he could tell that she was shocked by the potency of what she’d just experienced. He wondered, not for the first time, whether her ex-husband had been sexually incompetent as well as abusive.

“W-what?” she asked, the word catching in her throat.

“It’s getting late,” he told her, easing Shabazz off his lap The cat rebuked him with a disdainful twitch of her tail, then leapt to the floor and padded away.

“Late?” Keezia checked her watch. “Oh. I didn’t realize—”

“No problem,” Fridge assured her, standing up. “But it’s definitely time for me to be headin’ home.”

Keezia rose to her feet as well, smoothing the front of her pullover with a languid gesture as she did so. The garment’s V-neckline dipped for an instant, revealing the top of the shadowy cleft that separated her breasts. She seemed unaware of what she’d done.

Fridge cleared his throat, willing himself to stay focused on her face. “You plannin’ to take MARTA to work tomorrow?”

“MARTA?” It seemed for a moment that his hostess couldn’t imagine why he’d raised the question about Atlanta’s public transit system. Then she blinked, apparently recalling the circumstances that had led to his being present in her apartment. “Oh, yes. MARTA. Absolutely.” She underscored the affirmative with a nod. “There’s a, uh, bus stop about a block from here. I’ll change to the train at the Five Points station. It’ll probably be a quicker commute than when I drive.”

“Sounds good.” His gaze started drifting downward toward her breasts. He yanked it back up. “But listen, sugar. If you should happen to find yourself in need of a chauffeur before Jamal gets your car fixed up...”

Keezia smiled fleetingly, neither accepting nor rejecting his implied invitation. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They walked to her front door.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Fridge said.

“Thanks for the ride home.” Keezia smiled again, less noncommittally than before. “And the dance.”

“As I said earlier, that was my pleasure.” Although he knew it was unwise, Fridge sought to prolong the moment. He made a show of surveying the apartment. “You’ve got a lot more room here than in your last place.”

“Don’t I know,” Keezia concurred feelingly. If she suspected he was stalling, she gave no sign of it. “That other apartment was so small, I practically had to go outside to change my mind.”

He chuckled, dimly registering that Shabazz had evidently recovered from her feline snit and was rubbing up against his left leg. “I have to admit, I sometimes worried the walls might be closin’ in on me. I always felt a little cramped.”

“I thought about moving the furniture into the hall whenever you came to visit,” Keezia joked. “You seemed to get into a lot of elbowing contests with that ugly old sleeper-sofa I had. And you’ve probably got scars on your shins from bumping into my coffee table. A man your size...”

Her voice trailed off into silence as the blood drained from her cheeks. Her gaze veered off. She trembled for an instant, then went terribly still.

If Helen Rose Randall’s only child had been given to cursing, he would have done so.

Neither of them spoke for what seemed like a very long time.

All right, Fridge finally decided, forcing himself to unmake the fists he didn’t remember clenching. Let’s stop the jiving around and deal with this. The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to say what needs to be said.

“It bothers you, doesn’t it, Keezia,” he began, inflecting the words like a statement of fact rather than a request for confirmation.

Keezia brought her eyes back to his. He could tell it cost her to do so. “What?”

“My size.”

She made a gesture, obviously attempting to deflect the issue. “You can’t do anything about how big you are, Fridge.”

He shook his head, unwilling to let her evade the point he was trying to make. “Neither can you, Keezia,” he declared. “And I know that scares you sometimes. You’ve found the guts to take care of a whole lot of business since you left that ex-husband of yours, but when it comes to dealin’ with me—”

“What?” She cocked her chin, daring him to go on. “When it comes to dealing with you—what?”

Fridge hesitated. Forcing Keezia into confessing her fear was tantamount to bullying her into a corner, and that was something he desperately didn’t want to do. He also suspected that it was something she wouldn’t forgive.

Carefully, cautiously, he lifted his right hand and stroked the curve of her left cheek. He was attuned to the slightest hint of resistance. Detecting none, he cupped the curve of her jaw gently, finessing her smooth skin with the ball of his thumb. Keezia quivered at his touch, but didn’t try to turn away from it.

“Baby,” he began, letting his voice drop into a deeper, more intimate register. “Baby, listen to me. I’m bigger than you. That’s a fact and neither one of us can change it. But don’t you understand? I know what being bigger means. I know my own strength. It’s been...well, it’s been a gift to me. Same as my singing voice. My strength has helped me save lives, Keezia. I respect it. I don’t use it against people. And I would never, ever use it to hurt you.”

“I—” Keezia paused, moistening her lips “—know that.”

The darting lick of her tongue triggered a snap-to-attention reaction below Fridge’s belt. Closing his mind to the pulsing of his flesh he asked, “Do you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes...I do.”

It would have been easy for him to accept this assurance at face value and take the next step. Heaven knew, his libido was clamoring for him to do so. But he couldn’t. Because with this woman, accepting at face value wasn’t enough. Soul-centered certainty was the only thing that would serve in building a relationship with her.

“Maybe you know it up here,” he agreed after a moment, touching Keezia’s temple. “But here?” He lowered his hand and feathered the tip of one finger against the spot over her heart. “Do you know it in here, baby?”

Keezia released a breath on a tremulous sigh, her eyes wide and liquid. “I can’t...I mean, I—oh, Fridge. I trust you. I trust you more than anybody.”

The conditional nature of the last statement ripped at him, but he managed to keep his expression neutral. “Which isn’t the same as just plain trustin’ me, is it.”

“N-no.” The syllable came out reluctantly, as though she sensed how much her words had hurt him and regretted the pain she’d inflicted. “No, it isn’t. But I’m working on that. Only, I can‘t—it isn’t that I don’t—” She stopped, closing her eyes. When she reopened them, Fridge caught a glimpse of emotional storm within her. He also glimpsed her determination to weather it intact. “I need... time.”

There was a long pause. During the course of it, the dynamic between them seemed to alter. The air around them pulsed suddenly, as though charged by a silent lightning strike.

Keezia’s warm, womanly scent teased Fridge’s nostrils. The heat he’d seen shimmering in her eyes at the end of their dance was back, more alluring than before. He yearned to stoke that heat to flame. The ignition of the passion he knew she had within her was one form of combustion he didn’t fear.

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