Blaze

Traffic inched forward in a snarl of overwhelmed intersections. Somewhere on the other side of the interstate, a fire engine's siren screamed through the hot air. The light turned green and Holly started to go, but the big Silverado in front of her didn't budge. She swore under her breath. Just then the fire engine turned in front of them followed by an ambulance and then a red SUV. The light turned red again and, groaning, Holly flopped back in her seat. She was wet with perspiration in the oppressive central Texas heat in a car with no air conditioning.

She looked down at the seat beside her, at the mail that had come from her post office box. There were the ubiquitous bills, a birthday card from her sister, and a letter from a regional publisher. It was the last piece of mail she most wanted to open, but she knew not to open it in rush hour traffic. Since it was thin she was fairly certain it was a rejection letter. That being the case, she would be in a foul mood the rest of the way home and very likely get into a wreck. No, she would wait until she was home, sitting at her drawing table, before she opened it.

The light finally turned green and Holly followed the Silverado across the intersection. She watched the big pickup truck's brake lights, reminding herself not to tailgate. She was really bad about that. For an instant she took her eyes off the road, noticing something black rising from just beyond those trees. Her eyes widened at the sight of flames licking the sky. A moment later she glanced back at the truck, seeing nothing but glowing red brake lights. Bracing herself against her steering wheel, she jammed both her feet on the brake pedal. The front of her car stopped inches away from the Silverado's back bumper. The next moment, her car slammed forward and she gasped as her car rammed into the pickup. For what seemed a long while she merely sat looking at the lettering on the truck in front of her. Then someone opened her door.

"Are you okay?" the man from the pickup truck asked.

Holly shook herself. "Yeah, yeah," she said. She unbuckled her seat belt and got out.

People were already honking as they had to change lanes to avoid the accident. The air was stifling, car exhaust and smoke from the burning building making it difficult to breath.

The airbag had gone off in the Cadillac behind her. The man from the pickup ran back to check on the white-haired lady in the Cadillac. Holly stood where she was, looking from her car wrinkled like an accordion to the burning building. It was four stories high and the second floor was on fire.

"I can't believe your airbag didn't go off," the man said when he walked back to her. He dialed emergency with his cell phone.

Holly let out a sigh. "My car's too old to have an airbag."

She knew her car was totaled. The book value couldn't be more than two thousand dollars. Where would she get even a used car for two thousand dollars?

Wrapping her arms around herself, she moved away from the accident towards the parking lot of the building partially in flames. She watched from sixty yards away as three fire engines worked to put out the blaze, a row of hulky firefighters holding hoses that arched water into the air before disappearing into the smoke billows. She couldn't really hear anything over the din of truck motors and water, but it seemed people were shouting.

A man with short, dark hair and dressed in blue slacks and a matching shirt emerged from the tangle of trucks and hoses and walked quickly to the red SUV designated FIRE CHIEF. As he walked he began unbuttoning his short-sleeve shirt and yanked it over his head to reveal a light blue t-shirt underneath. Holly's eyebrows went up. Quickly she glanced over her shoulder just to make sure the police hadn't arrived at the accident scene before glancing back at the much more interesting sight before her.

He unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants. Holly took out her cell phone. He was wearing skin-tight trunks that possibly doubled as workout shorts. Anyway, she had to have a picture of it. He turned away from her to open the SUV's back doors just as she was about to take the picture.

As he turned back around with something in his arms, Holly took the picture. She looked down at it and made a face. He was really too far away. When she glanced up he was already in the yellow bibbed pants and sliding his arms through the suspenders.

A news crew arrived from the television station, stopping their van within fifteen feet of where Holly stood. They were, unfortunately, right in her line of vision, and rather irritated by their lack of consideration, she stepped around the van just in time to see the man dragging on his jacket. The name SCOTT was stenciled along the bottom of the jacket.

He glanced one time behind him at the news van, his eyes a dark and smoldering color in his tanned face. Then, for the slightest moment, his gaze fell on Holly. It stilled there long enough for her to feel the shock of connection. And then he was off, slapping a helmet onto his head as he hurried towards the burning building.

David Scott. She had heard he was back in town, but that was twelve years ago and she had let his memory slip out of her mind in much the same way one hopes to get over a splinter. He was hard to forget. She had known him in their shared youth, in another place, when talent and beauty first blossomed and innocence was something easy to let go of.

The place had been New York and for Holly Alexander, it had meant a scholarship to a prestigious art school. Plucked from a small Hill Country high school, she had fallen quickly into the rhythm of the city not so much out of a desire to fit in but as a means of survival. For four years life moved at a frantic, dizzying pace. She went places, met people, and did things, which now seemed so far removed from her current everyday life that she could believe them fantasies of her own mind.

But they had happened. Really, all she needed to do was hook up with an old high school friend with a yearbook and turn to the page of Most Handsome to verify at least the beginning. David Scott had had the look of a beautiful, sensual savage. He hadn't been like the other kids: goofy, clumsy, always saying the wrong thing. Instead he'd been blessed with the most effortless charm and wit, appealing to everyone around him. Old, young, male, female: they all loved him. It seemed natural that he should go to New York to become a model. Why not? He was something beyond the rest of them.

It was in New York that she first saw David again, at an art show. He'd lost a lot of weight, as models will do, and his face was just one chiseled mass of bone with haunted eyes and pouting lips. He barely remembered her from high school, but he was happy to talk to someone from home, someone who knew all the people he knew in this sea of strangers.

He'd been there with a man, and at the time Holly's naiveté was so severe that she'd simply not made the connection. She remembered the way the man's hand had touched the small of David's back, shepherding him in the wanted direction. Looking back now, she didn't think David had really cared for the man. But it hadn't mattered, because not long after that, there had been more important men who came into his life.

Holly knew artists, but David knew power. The men he moved with owned the city. They speculated with billions and flew in private jets and financed blockbuster movies. He had his place as the amusement of the day, and he enjoyed the prestige along with the Lamborghinis and silk shirts and diamond watches.

The last time she saw him in New York, she'd been on the verge of graduation. She'd honed her craft to a degree that received not only recognition but financial reward. A client requested that she make a series of sketches for him. He'd tried himself to capture the young man's brutal beauty but failed, and he wanted a lasting memento to remind him of these halcyon days of romance.

She'd agreed, never suspecting that the subject of the sketches would be David Scott. The client had led her to the patio and presented her with a new sketch pad, then left, too anxious over the finished product to remain.

Holly could vividly recall David's body inclined on the lounge chair, naked except for a towel over his groin. She'd sketched him thus the first page, but after that the towel left him and the images had become more erotic with each succeeding page.

Standing in the scorching heat of a late afternoon in summer, Holly found it difficult to reconcile such memories with the man she had just seen rushing into a burning building. But it was him; yes, she'd heard twelve years ago that he'd come back home and gotten a job with the fire department. But hearing of a thing and seeing it are worlds apart.

The police arrived within a reasonable time and, having given her report, she was free to leave.

The tow truck driver dropped her by her house before rolling away with her little mangled car. Holly walked slowly up the walkway of the small frame house. It wasn't hers, of course. She only rented it. She'd been living there for four years and it looked almost the same as when she'd moved in. It had the look and feel of a rental: unloved and ill-used. Not that Holly wouldn't have liked to plant flowers and hang curtains in the windows; she would have. But those kinds of niceties required money, and money was in short supply these days.

Inside the very small living room, she sank down on the sofa and opened the letter from the publisher. A deep sigh escaped from her. They'd liked her pictures but not the story. The month before, another publisher had liked her story but not her pictures. And no one liked anything she did separately well enough to give her money for it. She would be spending yet another year teaching art classes at the community college.

She picked up her sketch pad and started drawing out a figure. It was halfway done before she realized who it was. Shewantedto quit. But her hand kept making those long lines, each stroke of her pencil making her heart race as David Scott's naked form stretched out in front of her. She could see his hand on his cock as he'd slowly stroked it into a hard shaft and how he'd stared at her with that come-hither look that turned his lovers into slaves. She could have easily fallen for him, and would have, if only he'd beckoned.

She tore out the sketch and set it aside and began another, this one of the man she had seen today. She chose the very moment, one now emblazoned on her mind, when his gaze had moved from the news van to her face. He held his helmet between his hands and wore his full bunker gear with his surname stenciled across the bottom of the jacket. Painstakingly she captured the eyes, dark and yet clear, looking out at her, full of fire and mystery and desire.

It was a good sketch. Probably the best she'd done in years. She tore it out of her sketch pad and carried it to her studio and pinned it to the wall. The man in the fire gear stared at her. She felt strangely at ease with him there, and yet unnerved. It was a though he could read her thoughts.

Next day, she opened up the newspaper during a break to find David Scott posing in front of the doused building.

"'Fire Chief David Scott was on the scene at the Haygood Building on Jefferson Street Tuesday'," she read the photo caption out loud, "'after an electrical fire on the second floor caused significant damage to the building's structure'."

"Isn't he a hunk?" her friend Ellen asked, leaning across the table in the faculty lounge to take in the picture. "God, what a body."

Ellen taught anatomy classes to the pre-med students. For her everything was about the body.

"I actually met him once last year when he was teaching a class here," Ellen went on.

Holly almost choked on her soda. "Hetaughthere last year? What did he teach?"

"I don't know. Something about fighting fires, I guess. Anyway, we happened to be at the soda machine at the same time and it wouldn't take his dollar so I gave him four quarters."

"That hardly qualifies as meeting someone, Ellen."

"Well, yeah, but then I saw his badge with his name on it and I was like, 'So are you single, Chief Scott?' And he looked at me very coolly and said, 'Are you?' And of course, he had me there, because I'm wearing this big hunker wedding ring. And I said, 'A girl can pretend, can't she?'And again he looked at me with those dark eyes and said, 'You can pretend all you want, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna play your game. ' And I gotta tell you, he just had me totally wrapped around his little finger."

"You're insane," Holly said into her soda can.

"You should try to get him to model for your class," Ellen said.

Again Holly choked on her Dr Pepper. "Are you trying to kill me, Ellen?" she demanded. "The fire chief isn't going to pose for my class."

"Oh, you never know. I heard he did some modeling in his younger days...the kind of modeling you wouldn't put on your resume if you're Fire Chief."

Holly said nothing. She'd never told anyone about that experience with David.

"Apparently he went to New York for several years and did quite a few things up there, including swinging both ways, if you know what I mean."

"Ellen, we work in Austin. We don't have to use code. You can come out and say he's bisexual and the world won't come to an end."

"I'm not saying he's bisexualnow. I'm just saying he tasted some forbidden fruit in his youth."

Holly sighed in exasperation. "You're talking in code again. And if he is bisexual, or gay, or whatever, so what? It just means he'll most likely have a date Friday night while I stay at home and sharpen my colored pencils."

Ellen laughed. "Well you could have a date if you let yourself get over You-Know-Who," she said, like a friend who knows too much and doesn't mind reminding you of the fact.

Holly stood up and cleared away her mess. "Yes, I know who, Ellen. His name is Sam. He broke my heart two weeks before our wedding and four years later I'm still getting over it. Sorry I don't heal fast enough to keep you comfortable."

She walked away from her friend, knowing she had sounded sarcastic and peevish. She didn't care. She was feeling bothered but by what she didn't know. She wanted something she couldn't have and it was grating her. She just didn't know what it was she wanted.

As she settled down to her desk in the art room, she saw voice messages waiting for her. Pressing play, she listened to a creditor harass her for money; her sister called to wish her a happy birthday; and David Scott wanted to speak to her.

Holly couldn't believe her ears. Replaying the message, she listened to that dark and sultry voice sounding oh-so-official.

"This is David Scott. I'd like to speak to you for a moment if I could. Please give me a callback at the following number...."

She scribbled down the number and immediately picked up the phone and dialed. She knew better than to put it off. If she did, she would never be able to carry it out and then he would only call her again and she'd feel like a fool.

"David Scott."

She gripped the phone. "Hi, this is Holly Alexander. You had called?"

"Hi, Holly. I was wondering if I might come over and speak with you."

"Now? I have a class and—"

"When it is convenient?"

"My last class is over this evening at eight."

"May I come to your home?"

"Yes," she sputtered. "Yes, of course."

She gave him the address and he hung up. It never occurred to her to ask him what it was he wanted.

Having picked up a rental car earlier in the day, she made it home just as he was pulling up in his personal vehicle. He stood out and waited for her on the curb, looking ravishingly handsome in a t-shirt and baggy khaki shorts. Holly steeled herself against his extraordinary good looks and walked up to him with a smile.

"Hello, David. It's good to see you again after so long."

He followed her up the walkway. "You, too. I recognized you yesterday on Jefferson. I understand you were involved in an accident. Did you know that was the mayor's wife who hit you?"

Holly laughed. "No, I didn't know that. All I know is that her insurance is paying for my rental car until they send me a check for my totaled one."

She unlocked the front door and led him inside, turning on lights as she went. There wasn't far to go, just the living room and then a place to eat and the kitchen. She gestured to the sofa and he moved around the coffee table to sit down. For the first time she noticed the envelope in his hands.

"Would you like something to drink? I don't have any alcohol but I have some sodas. Or water."

"No, I'm fine." He watched her finally settle in. "I actually wanted to talk to you about possibly illustrating a story for me. It's a children's story. I have a publisher lined up but I'm not crazy about their ideas for the illustrations."

Holly smiled, envying his position. Rarely did an author get to choose their illustrator unless they were their own, and sometimes not even then. But then, David Scott wasn't like everyone else.

He opened the envelope and drew out a stack of about ten sheets of typed paper and passed them to her.

Holly sat back in her chair and read the story. It was about a widowed fireman whose little boy was afraid his father would die. The story was sweet and poignant and stirring. The camaraderie and emotional support of the fire station was captured for a moving resolution. It left her feeling emotionally satisfied and wishing she could be a firefighter.

"That's very good," she said, holding the story between her hands. "Have you written before?"

"Well, I took a creative writing class," he admitted.

"It's very good, David. Superior. I would love to illustrate your book."

For the first time his handsome face relaxed and he smiled. "I'm so glad. I wanted someone local who could come into the fire station and really capture the feel of the guys in action, and I knew you would be perfect for it."

"I appreciate that." She didn't add that it would be an amazing opportunity for herself since she had yet to break into the market.

He stood up. "Well, that's it. Keep that copy for yourself. Give me a call when you have time to come by the station and make some preliminary sketches."

"I'll be calling you soon," Holly said. Very soon. Like, tomorrow morning.

He stopped at the door and turned around and faced her. He was a good foot taller than her, and just being so close to him in the narrow hallway was a bit overwhelming for her.

"Holly, there's one more thing," he said in a low voice, not making eye contact. "I appreciate you keeping what happened in New York all those years ago to yourself. You could have done a lot of damage to my reputation but you didn't. That means a lot."

"It was nobody else's business," she said simply.

Then his gaze met hers, warm and thankful and caring, and she barely kept herself from giving him a hug.

When he was gone, she sat down and read the story again. Making a cup of chamomile tea, she took the story with her back to her studio and started drawing. The sketches came easily, as though they had been saved up in her fingers just waiting to come out. At times she stretched or went to the bathroom, but for the most part she worked with an energy and focus she couldn't remember having ever possessed. Then the alarm on her cell phone went off and she looked up. It was six o'clock in the morning. She had worked all night.

She couldn't sleep. She lay down on top of her bed to try to get a few hours before leaving for the college but it was impossible. Thankfully today was her light load, and she showered and dressed and drove to school, thinking all the while about the story and the sketches and David Scott.