WHEN CHIEF WARREN yelled “GO!” Brian’s thundering heart was drowned out by the shouts of his friends. He had seven distinct tasks to complete. Some required dexterity, some required speed, some required strength, and some required all three.
He counted them out to himself as he began each task.
One. Hauling a 200-foot hose across a parking lot to a fire hydrant took a great deal of muscle. In a calf roping contest, once the cow had been roped and its legs tied with a pigging string, a cowboy threw his arms in the air to stop the clock. Brian did nothing so dramatic when he reached his goal, just yelled, “Got it!” and went on to the next task.
Two. He hefted 45 pounds of fire hose over his shoulder and headed up the stairs. He was more worried about his lung capacity than his leg, since he hadn’t been able to practice going up three flights at one time. A few steps from the parapet at the top, the little bit of muscle remaining in his bad calf began to burn. He used his good leg to pull his body weight up the stairs and used the compromised one to keep him steady. He ignored the pain and pushed onward, moving even faster, until he reached the top, where he set down the hose.
The encouraging shouts of the firefighters and smoke jumpers rose up to him from below.
“Great work, Brian!”
“You did it!”
“Keep it up!”
Three. He had full confidence in his upper body strength and grabbed the rope which had a 45-pound, two-and-a-half-inch rolled hose attached, and pulled it to the top of the tower hand over hand in record time. He let it back down again, hand over hand, just as fast.
Four. He came down the stairs with the 45-pound hose the same way he’d gone up—putting most of his weight on his good leg and stabilizing with the injured one. As he covered the last few stairs, he felt a slight cramp. If his leg seized up completely, he wouldn’t be able to finish the test. He did his best to ignore the twinge and kept going.
Five. Brian grabbed the 9-pound sledgehammer and pounded on the Keiser sled twenty-two times, using the strength in his arms and back to move it five feet. A door might be locked or blocked and need to be opened to rescue the folks inside, and he was the man to do it. The sled seemed to move like it was gliding on butter, and Brian realized he must be pumping a lot of adrenaline.
Six. He’d expected to have an equally easy time picking up a section of ladder and “setting” it against the side of a building at the correct angle so it wouldn’t tip. He hadn’t counted on the buildup of lactic acid in his injured limb. His calf was definitely protesting now, and he knew that he didn’t have much time before he would need to give it a rest or end up flat on his back in agony. He gritted his teeth and got the ladder up. Set it. And took it back down.
Seven. He could no longer hear the firefighters. He could only feel the pain throbbing in his scarred leg. He bent down to grab the strap on the double set of tires standing in for a 175-pound human—the firehouse’s dummy was worn out—and began dragging it backward toward the orange cone fifty feet away. He got around the cone, but despite using mostly quads for the task, his compromised calf muscle was screaming for relief.
He looked up to see how far he was from the finish line and saw a glimpse of an unexpected face in the crowd. Tag must have caught him looking, because she ducked behind someone to avoid being seen. He could have sworn he heard her voice above all the others shouting, “Come on, Brian. You can do it!”
What is Tag doing here? How did she know about the test?
Brian realized he’d spent precious seconds speculating. He put his head down and forced himself to think of the unconscious victim of smoke inhalation he was rescuing from a burning building. A life was on the line. He was so consumed by the job he was doing that he didn’t realize he’d crossed the finish line until he heard a tremendous roar from the assembled crowd.
He stood up and looked for Chief Warren, who’d been keeping track of time. She grinned and put a thumb up.
I passed!
Brian could hardly believe it. The chief headed toward him, holding the stopwatch so he could see his time.
“Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds,” she said. “Congratulations, Brian. And welcome back.”
Brian was shocked at how close he’d come to failing. And so very glad that he’d passed. He felt the grin coming and let it spread across his face. Meanwhile, he surreptitiously manipulated his injured leg, circling it at the ankle and easing his toe upward to alleviate the cramp that had attacked with a vengeance.
His friends slapped him on the back and uttered words of congratulations, but he was busy looking for the one face he wanted to see again. He finally caught sight of Tag, glancing over her shoulder as she hurried away.
If she made the effort to come and cheer me on, why is she leaving without speaking to me?
He wanted to run after her, but running was out of the question at the moment. Besides, Brian realized he couldn’t walk away without celebrating with the friends who’d come to support him.
It was several hours before he was free to go after Tag, and Brian headed immediately for her home on the mountain.
He found her outside shoveling snow from her sidewalk, which she never used, because she always entered the house from the garage. Was she shoveling snow because she’d known he might show up and didn’t want him in the house?
She acted surprised to see him, as though she hadn’t been standing in the crowd urging him on when he took his Work Capacity Test. He looked for signs of her pregnancy, but she was wearing a bulky coat that concealed her belly.
“Is this something a pregnant woman should be doing?” he asked.
She turned her back to him as she scooped a shovelful of snow and threw it into the yard. “I’m not speaking to you. In fact, I’ll have to be a very old lady before I ever speak to you again.”
He laughed. “You have a strange way of staying mum. I heard you, Tag. I know you were there.”
She turned to face him, her eyes flashing. “That was different. Word was all over town that you were taking that test. I called Chief Warren, and she said I could come. I’d cheer for anyone who managed to come back from an injury as bad as yours.”
“But it wasn’t just anyone you cheered for,” he said in a tender voice. “It was me.”
She threw down the shovel, turned her back on him, and marched toward the front door.
He skip-hopped to catch up with her, amazed to realize that his bad leg was pain free and working fine. “I’m sorry.”
She whirled and poked a finger in his chest. “You should be! Walking out without a word. Not calling, as though I no longer existed, just because I told you a few home truths.”
“Truths I needed to hear.”
“Exactly!”
She was beautiful when she was angry, and knowing she carried his child only made her more so.
“How could you not call me last night? You had to know I would be expecting to hear from you.”
“I’m an idiot,” he admitted. “A stupid idiot.”
“If the shoe fits—”
“Who loves you,” he added.
Her features crumpled, and tears pooled in her eyes. She scrubbed them away. “These stupid hormones make me cry all the time over nothing.”
“I love you, Tag.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m pregnant with your child.”
“I’m saying it because I mean it. I’m saying it because I want to marry you and raise our children together.”
Her eyes opened wide with surprise. “How did you know it’s twins?”
Brian’s jaw dropped. “Twins?”
“Well, shoot. You didn’t know.” She turned and marched away again.
She reached the covered front porch before Brian caught up to her. He took her arm and swung her around so their bodies collided. He pulled her close and said, “Will you marry me, Tag?”
“Why should I marry a man who walks out and then stays gone without a word for six weeks? Why should I marry a man who doesn’t call—even to say hello—when he finds out he got me pregnant?”
“Guilty. Of everything. There’s no excuse for the way I’ve acted.”
“Then why did you do it, Brian? That isn’t how a man who’s supposedly in love behaves.”
“It isn’t? What if he knew you were right, and that he’d been acting like a coward? What if he wanted to prove himself before he came back to you? What if he wanted to be worthy of your respect? And your love?”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. “Is that true?”
He put his forefinger under her chin to raise her face for his kiss. He touched her lips reverently with his own. “Every word of it. Please say yes, Tag.”
“If you love me, I suppose I’ll marry you.”
“If I love you?” He picked her up and whirled her in a circle. “I love you so much I’ll still be saying the words when I’m an old, old man.” He set her down and looked into her eyes. “There’s something you haven’t said.”
She looked up at him, her face flushed. “You don’t have to ask, Brian. I know what you want to hear. I didn’t withhold the words on purpose. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment to say them.”
But she didn’t say them.
“Is there some reason you’re not speaking?”
“I have a confession to make.”
He lifted a questioning brow.
“I’ve been a coward, too.” She met his gaze earnestly and said, “I’ve been afraid to believe what my heart has been telling me. Afraid to believe you could really love me.”
She put her fingertips to his lips to silence his protest, then looked into his eyes and said, “I love you, Brian, more than—”
He cut her off with a kiss, sweeping her into his arms and holding her tight, wanting her to know that he would never let her go, that he was there for the long haul, and that he would still love her when he was old and gray and needed to walk with a cane.
He broke the kiss and began unbuttoning her coat so he could get his hands on her. “Just how pregnant are you?”
She laughed and put her hands over his, as he caressed her rounded belly. “Eighteen weeks.”
“Four and a half months? I’ve already missed too much of these babies’ lives,” he said. “I don’t intend to miss another day. What kind of a wedding do you want?”
“Nothing fancy,” she said. “But I’d like my family to be there.”
“I’d like mine to be there, too. First challenge of our lives together. Think we can make it happen?”
She grinned. “If we can survive a jump into an inferno, seven days trapped in a cave, and four more days in the wilderness—not to mention months of rehab for you—a little thing like a wedding between one of King’s Brats and one of ‘those awful Flynn boys’ should be a piece of cake.”
Brian laughed and hugged her close. “Can you make mine chocolate?”