Book Excerpt

Rhys's Redemption

Chapter One

Rhys Wolfe wanted a hot shower, a cold beer, and twenty-four hours of sleep – in that order.

It was six a.m. in New York City, buses were rumbling, horns were honking, the city was waking up. And he was ready to hit the sack.

It wasn’t six a.m. in his head. He wasn’t sure in fact what time it was. All he knew was that he’d been playing “planes, trains and automobiles” for hours, and he was ready to drop.

He fumbled with his key in the lock to the ornate steel gate under the stoop that led to his brownstone garden apartment, glancing warily up at the flat two floors above as he did so.

Was Mariah up?

Lying in wait?

Yeah. Sure. Like she’d been standing at the window for the past nine weeks just waiting to catch a glimpse of him.

Like she cared.

Rhys twisted the key, opened the gate, then the door to his apartment. That was the trouble. She did care.

Mariah was his friend. And he was hers.

Or had been.

He didn’t know what he was now.

He shut the door behind him, dropped his duffel bag on the floor, and shut his eyes, and sagged against the door, letting the weariness -- and the worry -- overtake him.

He hadn’t been home in over two months. Not since . . .

Not since he’d awakened to find himself in bed with his upstairs neighbor.

His delectable, delightful upstairs neighbor. His friend.

Mariah.

God, what a mess. Usually he was eager to get home, looking forward to a respite from the demands and stress of his job as part of a specialized fire fighting unit. Usually he could hardly wait to give Mariah a call and see what she’d been up to for the past few weeks.

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, then began unbuttoning his shirt. Now he didn’t want to call her at all. He didn’t know what to say to her.

That was the trouble, he thought, with having sex with a woman you cared about. It complicated things. Messed everything up. Led to unreasonable expectations.

Like a relationship.

Like marriage.

No. Rhys shook his head fiercely as he shed his shirt and headed toward the bathroom.

Mariah knew better than that.

She, of all people, knew how he felt about marriage. She’d heard him expound on the subject often enough.

Rhys Wolfe wasn’t looking for marriage, for commitment, for responsibility. He’d been there, done that. He wasn’t doing it again.

And he made it a point to say that to every woman he met who might be tempted to think otherwise. It was a precaution. Good common sense. That way none of them could say she hadn’t been warned.

The only women who went to bed with Rhys Wolfe knew the score. Having sex with Rhys meant fun and games. No strings attached.

Rhys never slept with women to whom it might mean more than that.

It was his first rule of self-preservation -- a rule he’d made it eight years ago. And he’d never broken it.

Until that night nine weeks back.

Right after Jack died.

Jack.

He’d just finished the first assignment he’d done without Jack. Tough, competent, laughing Jack. The one they’d always marveled at – the man death couldn’t touch.

“Lucky Jack,” his friends, the guys on his high-intensity, high-risk, internationally known oil well and rig firefighting team, always called him.

“I’ll go with Jack,” they always said when the danger in their job was greater than usual. “Jack’s lucky.”

But ten weeks ago on a North Sea rig, Jack’s luck had run out. It had happened during a fire no different than those they’d fought a hundred times before. No one had been careless. No one had screwed up. As hard as he tried, Rhys still couldn’t nail down a reason for what happened.

Other than that Jack’s time had been up.

Lucky Jack’s luck had run out.

Five days later Rhys had come home from his best friend’s funeral, still reeling, shattered, angry and distraught. Mourning Jack had been bad enough, but worse than that even, had been the memories that had crowded his mind.

Memories of another fire, another funeral -- Sarah’s -- eight years before.

Sarah. His wife.

Sarah, his childhood love.

Sarah’s time hadn’t been up! Rhys was sure of it. She hadn’t had to die.

If he’d been home that night instead of working ridiculously long hours, if he’d been with her, like a proper husband instead trying, and failing, to be the perfect son, Sarah – and their unborn child -- would be alive today.

But he hadn’t been.

He’d been in the family business then -- right out of college and determined to prove himself, to show his father and his oldest, brother, Dominic, that he could work as many hours as they could, be as successful as they were. He hadn’t even gone home for dinner. He’d worked right through, stopping only to call Sarah and say, “I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”

She hadn’t. Still in the first trimester of her pregnancy and under doctor’s orders to get lots of rest, Sarah had gone to bed early that night. But first, apparently, she’d lit a candle. At least that’s what the fire marshal told him later.

“I’ll leave a light on for you,” she’d told Rhys.

A candle.

She’d been asleep when the fire broke out in their apartment. She’d never awakened.

He’d lost her – and their child – that night.

And nothing Rhys could do would bring them back.

He understood that. Eventually he’d managed to accept it.

He lived with the pain. And the guilt.

To his father’s consternation, Rhys had quit his job with the family firm, choosing instead to go into firefighting.

“What the hell for?” his dad had demanded. “It isn’t going to bring Sarah back.”

“No.” Rhys knew that. But he needed to do it. Needed to battle again and again the demons that took his wife from him. To do what he could to win the fight he’d lost before he knew how much it mattered.

He was a good firefighter. Determined. Focussed. Cool and controlled in the face of the flames.

And so he atoned. Or tried to.

Over the past eight years, he’d got past it. He was sure of that. He had a life now. A new apartment on the West Side, away from the East Side neighborhood where he and Sarah had lived. He had friends. And, now and then, he had women.

But he wasn’t marrying again. Ever.

He wasn’t letting himself get close to anyone again. That part he hadn’t got past. Loving someone the way he’d loved Sarah hurt too much.

He couldn’t do it again.

Wouldn’t. Ever.

So he always kept things light. He had friends. He had the occasional lover. But never a friend who was also a lover.

Until he came home after Jack had died. That night the grief and the memories had swallowed him whole.

And Mariah -- poor unsuspecting Mariah -- surprised to see his light on, had stopped down to tap on his door and see what was going on.

He didn’t remember much of what happened after that.

He’d tried not to. For over two months he had tried not to.

He hadn’t wanted to remember how she’d held him in her arms, had kissed him and soothed him, had let him – a man who needed no one – cling to her like a child.

He shut that out.

Just as he shut out how, in another way, he’d felt very much unlike a child. The flames of need had licked at him, had driven him to kiss her, to touch her, to seek the softness of her. His body had needed the solace of her. Desperately.

And slowly, gently, and then with what his shattered mind remembered as a passion equal to his, Mariah had given it to him.

He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t think about that.

Couldn’t let himself remember.

Because when he did, even now his body betrayed him, and he wanted it to happen again.

It couldn’t happen again!

He wouldn’t let it.

He cared about Mariah. As a friend. He wouldn’t let it become more.

He could still remember how shocked he’d been to awaken and find her asleep beside him in his bed.

Rhys had never slept with any woman -- not since Sarah.

It was too intimate. It implied too much.

But that night he had slept with Mariah. When he’d finally opened his eyes in the pale dawn, it was to find her curled around him, her cheek nestled against his shoulder, a leg casually draped over his, one arm across his belly and tucked against his hip.

He’d been afraid to breathe. He hadn’t dared move.

But he ‘d needed to. Desperately. He knew he had to get out of there -- without awakening her.

What the hell would he have said to her if he’d still been there when she opened her eyes?

He hadn’t known then.

He didn’t know now.

He’d spent the past nine weeks trying to figure it out.