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“Seriously, Pops, you should go to the Crooked R. No doubt.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Kevin repeated, his voice rising a little. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Even if I wanted to go, which I don’t, either they really didn’t mean the invitation, or...you’re basically saying that a man would be a fool not to jump at the chance to sleep with such a beautiful woman.”
“Sure.”
“So if any woman asks, a man should just jump on it?” Now he turned back to Kevin, who’d lost his smile.
“I mean... No. Only if he’s single.”
“So when you were single, you’d never pass up an opportunity like that, no matter how bad an idea it was?” Jake could see the “Oh, shit!” warning flashing brightly behind Kevin’s eyes now. Good.
“No. No! That’s not what I meant. I just meant that two pretty women who are both respectable and completely dateable invited you out for a drink and I think you should join them because you’ve been single for a while, and Annabelle and I think...” He paused to draw a breath, but then seemed to run out of thoughts.
“It’s none of your business. I told Annabelle the same.”
“All right,” Kevin responded with a shrug. When he exhaled, he deflated a little. “But you still need to work on your game.”
“I don’t have a game.”
“No, you definitely do not.”
Jake sighed. “Anyway, as I said, I’m gonna go tuck myself into bed.”
“Watch a little Matlock?” Kevin countered, apparently recovered from his close call with his future father-in-law. “You’re only forty-six, you know. Prime of your life.”
Jake threw an affectionate punch at Kevin’s shoulder. Affectionate enough that the younger man stumbled back two steps. “Remember that.”
The truth was he was heading home to go for a long run, but he probably would be in bed before Lauren and Sophie made it home.
Prime or not, he couldn’t quite handle four days on anymore. Not without collapsing at nine p.m., anyway. But even if he’d been fully rested and dying for a beer, he wouldn’t have headed to the Crooked R tonight.
First of all, Lauren hadn’t been the one to ask; Sophie had. And Lauren had looked horrified at the suggestion. But better horrified than excited, because if she’d smiled at him, if she’d raised her hand from her breasts to his shoulder and teased him about going to bed early... Jesus. He probably would’ve met them there. And then what?
Jake pulled his keys from his pocket and headed for his truck. When he slipped on his sunglasses, he felt a little safer. He wished he’d been wearing them earlier. He’d never seen Lauren dressed like that. Her tight black dress cut lower than he’d expected, showing off the pale skin of her full breasts. Her mouth looking plumper than ever and glossy pink.
He’d noticed her mouth before, of course. How could he not? And her bold blue eyes and strong nose. And he’d definitely noticed her breasts. But now that she wanted them noticed... Hell, he was a lost cause. And she was still his friend’s wife.
“Ex-wife,” he said aloud.
They’d all known each other. Not that they’d had dinner every week or gone on vacations together, but they’d socialized once or twice a year, and the fact that they’d known each other as couples... The idea of dating Lauren just felt wrong. As if that would mean they’d been doing something wrong the whole time.
Better to just let it go.
Five minutes into explaining to his brain that her breasts weren’t really as enticing as they looked, Jake heard a squawk from his radio. A vehicle fire near the airport. Sounded pretty harmless and the guys at the station were closer than he was. Despite his hope for a distraction tonight, Jake drove on. He’d let the guys handle this one.
But as he was pulling into his driveway a few minutes later, an update came over the radio clarifying that the vehicle on fire wasn’t a car. It was a fuel tanker. Jake turned around, hit the lights and headed back toward town. There was steady traffic, but nothing like the weekend, so he made pretty good time until he got to town, then he skirted around the town square and back out onto the highway.
Black smoke rose in the distance, and he saw the flash of the engine’s lights before he got anywhere near the actual fire.
Their second company engine roared up from behind, and Jake let them pass with a wave. The guys with the gear needed to get there more than Jake did, but his hands itched with the need to be in the thick of things. He didn’t have to wait long. Slipping his car behind the engine, he trailed it for the last mile as cars parted to let it through. They were always slightly more eager to get out of the way for a shiny red twenty-ton truck than his pickup.
As soon as they stopped, he knew he’d done the right thing in coming. He jumped out and raced toward his lieutenant, noting which men were on the hose and which were scrambling to extract the passenger from the overturned truck. Highway patrol worked to get the closest cars turned around and out of danger, though there was no help for the car whose hood was crushed beneath the back end of the tanker. But for a hundred yards on either side of the truck, the road was cleared of everyone except fire personnel.
“Car driver and passenger are out,” his lieutenant said quickly. Jake noted the open ambulance doors and the stunned face of the woman inside it. “A little banged up, but nothing bad so far. The driver of the truck is out and fine, but his passenger is wedged inside and unresponsive.”
