Page 10 of Rescued Dreams (Last Chance Fire and Rescue #8)

TEN

R idge shot off a text to Kane as he walked back from the front door with one pizza. He’d left the other on the doorstep for his cousin to grab. Maria and Kane were going to hang out regardless of whether Amelia thought someone would show up to harass her tonight.

He was rapidly assimilating information he’d never known about her and trying to get his equilibrium back. Amelia was the daughter of the former fire chief—the one who had been exposed as a dangerous criminal. Someone who had profited off the misery of others.

She had been raised by him.

He couldn’t imagine what that must have been like. His childhood hadn’t all been sunshine and bike rides in the park, but he had no idea what she’d endured. No wonder she didn’t let people in easily. A firefighter who was the daughter of that man?

Ridge found her at the back door, waiting for him. “Kind of chilly to eat outside, isn’t it?”

She said, “Come with me.”

The back patio had some old furniture, just metal frames of chairs with no cushions and a table that had been knocked over. Wrought iron, lying on its side.

“Nice yard.” It resembled a park, wide and deep. Trees around the edge blocked it from view of the neighbors. A white stone pool to the right had been emptied long enough ago that it was now lined with leaves from the neighbor’s tree.

“It’s pretty good for running sprints up and down if I need to work out on my day off and I don’t have time to get to the gym.” She walked with her back to him, striding ahead, down to the end of the yard. Not looking back, just assuming he would follow her.

He was curious enough to do it. “I bought the town house a year ago. The complex has a clubhouse with a little gym that has enough equipment I can do what I need to do.”

She ducked under the limb of a tree and kept going, into the shadows between the trees.

“Pretty spooky back here. You don’t live in a tent, do you?”

She chuckled but didn’t say anything and still didn’t look back. “It’s not a shed…exactly. More like a storage hut. I worked on it, made it into a kind of clubhouse. Or a she shed. No one knows it’s back here.”

He spotted it between the trees.

“He probably used it to store lawn equipment or pool supplies.” She slowed her approach. “At least, I hope that’s all he used it for.” She looked back at the house with a smidge of distaste on her face.

“You grew up there. You probably heard, or saw, all kinds of things he got up to.”

Amelia clicked the metal keys on the door lock, a ten-digit combination that unlocked the cabin. She’d cleaned it up nicely, though it could do with some brighter paint than the sandy color on the outside. He saw a spigot at the bottom of the wall on one side with a bucket beside it.

But then, improving the exterior would make it more noticeable.

She was hiding.

Amelia clicked on a switch by the door, and fairy lights strung up inside the cabin, all around the top of the wall, illuminated.

“Wow.” He stepped inside and looked around.

Single cot, lots of blankets and pillows.

A space heater. She also had a wood stove in the corner with a funnel that went up to the roof for the smoke.

No sink, but she did have a refrigerator and a camp stove, a coffeepot plugged into a power strip.

And one of those tower water-cooler things that dispensed hot and cold water.

He frowned. “Wait. You don’t have a toilet or sink—or a shower?”

She shrugged. “I either shower at the gym or at work. I actually have a little outhouse out back, since there’s no water at the house.”

“An outhouse?” He imagined the twins being told they had to pee outside.

“Camping toilet. Super clean. I made it cute, which I’m sure you’ll fail to appreciate.” She dragged a second chair from the little desk over to a tiny table in the corner, where the back of the chair leaned up against the edge of the bed.

“Why not just get a condo, or a house?”

“Can’t sell the house. But the government keeps reminding me that the taxes and fees for owning it are my responsibility, along with everything else I inherited. Like constant break-ins and the need to hide my original last name.”

He set the pizza down and took a seat. “Constant?”

She shrugged. “I’ve called the police a few times.

They can’t do anything because I can’t ID the perpetrators.

They say I should get cameras in the house, or a security system, but the one time I did that, someone ripped it all out.

No one in town wants to work on this house.

Even with the warranty I asked for on the cameras, they wouldn’t come back and install new ones. ”

She slumped into the chair. “I don’t want to talk about this. I’m hungry and exhausted, and my side hurts.”

Ridge bowed his head for a second and said grace silently to himself, quickly asking for her pain to ease.

“I don’t want to be the sad tale. I don’t want pity. I just want to do my job and have people leave me alone.”

“I don’t pity you.” He’d rather help her. “My mom got remarried a few years ago.”

She frowned, her mouth full of hot and spicy pizza.

He continued. “Her new husband isn’t the kind of guy who wants to be tied down with kids.

The twins, Maddie and Ella, were fifteen at the time.

Gary—my mom’s husband—wanted to get an RV and hit the road.

The girls were in their freshman year of high school, and Mom isn’t the, uh… homeschooling kind.”

Amelia swallowed her bite. “What did they do?”

“I moved from a one-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom town house, and they moved in with me.” He shrugged.

“It isn’t something I talk about much. They don’t need to be at a firehouse, and they have school.

Homework. Jobs. They’re busy with their friends when they aren’t working.

Now they’re seniors, and they turn eighteen after Christmas.

I got a town house so they can have more space in a nicer place.

” He was probably talking about them like a proud parent. “They’re great kids.”

She smiled. “Thanks, in a big part, to you.”

He ducked his head and grabbed a slice. “Maybe some. They make it easy. Most of the time, anyway.”

Amelia sat across the little round table from him. She wiped her hands on a napkin, tipped back on her chair, and opened the refrigerator in a move so smooth he knew she’d done it plenty of times before. She pulled two flavored soda waters out and handed him one.

She said, “Didn’t take long for my mom to realize what Dad was.

You’d think him being the kind of man he was, he’d have put up more of a fight to keep her, but maybe she and I were cramping his style.

Getting in the way.” She put her palms together, her hands between her knees.

“She left and got her own place. As long as I can remember, she was dating other men on the side. I don’t know when she and Steven Hilden got divorced, but I was in elementary school when she married Matthew Patterson.

After that she was a one-man woman, at least as far as I know.

And I took his name as soon as I could.”

“They’re the ones who raised you?”

She nodded. “I always knew who my dad was, but she kept me away from him as much as she could. At least, until the court ordered I spend time with him in the summer and some holidays. Matthew was a firefighter.”

“He worked with Chief Hilden?”

Another nod. “Matthew died on the job. Hilden left him and another firefighter cut off from assistance, trapped so they had no way out. He waited until they were dead and then sent the others in to recover them. He never attempted to rescue them. He wanted them to die.”

Ridge’s heart squeezed in his chest. “I’m sorry you lost your dad, Amelia. That’s tragic.”

“Mom wasn’t ever the same. Eventually her heart gave out. I tried to honor Matthew’s memory by becoming a firefighter here in Last Chance County, but it was too hard. I transferred to Benson in the first year, and I figured it would be better there.”

He had a feeling the story didn’t end with her move. That there was more because it hadn’t necessarily been better.

She’d lost her family. Whatever the criminal actions of the former chief had cost others in town, it had cost Amelia far more.

Ridge said, “Are you okay back here, on your own?”

“I don’t need a guest. There’s no room.” She waited a beat, then smiled at him.

“Good, because the second the twins see this place and how adorable it is, they’re going to want to move in.”

Her smile widened and she laughed.

Ridge loved that she’d set him up with the chance to lighten the moment.

Things were heavy for her, and that wasn’t going to be solved with one conversation.

This was her life. The way it had turned out might not seem fair to her, but from his experience, life wasn’t even close to fair. It hadn’t been for him.

She took another bite of pizza, color in her cheeks now.

“If it’s okay with you, Kane is going to hang out in the house overnight.

So that you have someone close by who can offer protection in seconds if you need it.

Rather than you having to wait five minutes for the police to arrive.

” He figured Maria would likely stay in another room.

Ridge half wanted to camp out in the mansion as well, just to be near in case those guys came back, but they didn’t need to bombard Amelia with all of them.

“I’m so tired, I doubt I’d notice if there was anyone in the house.”

“I need to ask you about what happened at the firehouse. But there’s something else I need to say.”

She frowned, switching back to being wary of him. Which he didn’t like.

He said, “Before you went outside, you said something about your spot on Truck being given to Kane.” Ridge had to tread carefully. “No one is going to fire you, Amelia. You’re a great firefighter, and everyone knows it. Especially the chief.”

“I just spoke without thinking. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’d love to work with my cousin. Kind of like Bryce jumped at working with Logan. But not at the expense of losing you.” He leaned forward over the table, planting his elbows beside his napkin. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m not going to. But I might not be able to stay.”

“A realist. Why am I not surprised you’re a stone-cold pragmatist?”

She shrugged. “Why live in a dream world? I’d rather live in the real one, even if it sucks.”

“Why don’t we try and see if we can make it suck a little less for you?”

Amelia chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”

“What do you say? Is that the kind of enticing invitation you can’t refuse, or what?”

She was still laughing.

“I’m in for the ride. Are you?”

“Okay, stop,” she said, laughing. “If it gets you to stop, then fine.”

“I’m not trying to take over your life, Amelia. I just want to help as much as you’ll let me. That’s all.”

She studied him from across the table, the lights around them casting her in a soft glow. He thought he heard a phone vibrating but ignored it. He needed this moment. Close to her. Building rapport and convincing her to trust him.

He had a feeling they were going to need it.