Daring Devotion. Elaine Overton

down the long alley to meet them halfway. Cal allowed the man to brace him as he watched the world spinning around him.

      Cal took off his helmet and mask and shook his head hard, trying to dispel the feeling of vertigo that seemed to be lingering. He felt more than a little nauseous, and pushed Jeff away as he felt himself becoming sick.

      Before the paramedics reached them, Cal turned toward the brick wall, and shielded himself as best as he could while emptying his stomach, his head spinning, his stomach churning. His friends closed in with worried expressions.

      Unable to stand any longer, Cal leaned his back against the wall and hung his head in complete exhaustion.

      He heard the paramedics quietly discussing the best way to transport their large victim. Then the stretcher appeared and Cal was laid out across it. He closed his eyes to stop the white clouds from spinning overhead.

      “We’ll meet you at the hospital.” He heard Dwight in the distance. With his other team members wishing him well, the paramedics rolled Cal back to the ambulance and loaded him.

      As the doors on the vehicle closed and Cal heard the siren sound, he silently wondered what was wrong with him. He’d been prone long enough to have regained some sense of equilibrium. But still he felt as if the world was spinning around him and he had no gravity.

      He watched the technicians go about their routine, inserting the IV and dispensing the necessary medications. He answered their questions as best he could with head shakes and nods. He took a deep breath and decided that whatever was wrong would soon correct itself. He was Big Cal, nothing kept him down for long, not even a near-death experience.

      He closed his eyes and thanked God for another miracle, the latest in a long line. His mind went to Andrea. He desperately needed to see her, to hold her, to know that she was real because that would mean that he was real. That he was still alive in all the ways that mattered.

      Chapter 3

      “Cal.” Andrea scooted up on her knees to use her full strength to rock the man beside her as he thrashed about wildly on the bed. “Cal!” She ducked, barely missing a swinging arm. “Cal! Wake up!” She pushed hard against his tense form. “Wake up!”

      Large eyes opened in bewilderment. “What?” Cold brown eyes turned to her and the lack of recognition sent a chill down her spine.

      “It was a nightmare.” She rubbed her hand along his jawbone. “You were having another nightmare.”

      He looked in every direction seemingly surprised to find himself in her bed. Finally his troubled eyes settled on her again just before he ran his large hand over his face.

      It had been almost a month since the fire in the Hadley building, and something deep inside of Cal had changed. Andrea sensed it and saw it in his behavior. In the past few days, Andrea had seen something she thought she would never see. Her fearless man had become hesitant.

      Andrea had met Cal over a year ago, although she remembered it like yesterday. He’d come to visit Marty in the hospital where she was recovering from smoke inhalation. From the moment Andrea saw him, Cal had exuded a kind of larger-than-life confidence, and being the self-doubting person that she was, Andrea had been drawn to that self-assuredness. She’d known instinctively that he was everything she’d never known she needed, water to her parched soul.

      Over the past year, they’d struggled to find their way through the complex maze of contemporary relationships and had seemingly come to the inevitable conclusion that they belonged together.

      When Cal had proposed almost six months ago, her instant answer had been yes. And on that day something strange had happened to Andrea. Something that she was finding harder and harder to deal with. For the first time, she began to contemplate what it meant to be the wife of a firefighter. What she’d discovered was not good.

      The never-ending sense of dread. The empty feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach every time he began a seventy-two-hour rotation. The feeling would not go away until he returned to her after a call, safe and sound. And the apprehension had not stopped there. It followed her to work where, as a nurse in the emergency ward, she became more aware of the number of firefighters that came through the E.R.

      And on one horrible day, less than a month ago, she’d had her worst fears confirmed when she looked down at the gurney and saw that Cal was the patient. But something strange and wonderful had come out of the experience, something Andrea could not share with anyone, not even Cal. Something she was ashamed to admit gave her such pleasure. Cal had lost his sense of invincibility.

      She could remember any number of times she’d been in the firehouse when the emergency call came in and Cal would take off with a sexy grin and the wink of an eye, excited and pumped for the challenge. It was all she could do to wait for him to leave before she dropped to her knees and began to pray. Cal absolutely loved fighting fire.

      It was the greatest obstacle in their path and the one thing Andrea thought was unchangeable.

      But since the Hadley building fire, that wickedly playful gleam had left his eyes. He’d doubled the drills for his team. He’d become careful, and Andrea knew there was nothing as dangerous as an overly cautious firefighter. Which meant…he’d have to give it up. Now, all she had to do was wait for him to realize it.

      “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly, already knowing the answer before he shook his head and rolled over.

      Almost every night he’d spent with her since the accident had been the same. She’d wake him in the middle of a nightmare, and he’d shrug it off as nothing, roll over and go back to sleep.

      “Why won’t you talk to me?”

      “About what?” he mumbled into the pillow.

      “About the fire. About what really happened.”

      “I told you a thousand times, baby, nothing happened.”

      “Is this…” She hesitated. More than once he’d snapped at her when she attempted to ask questions regarding exactly what happened. “Because of Marco?”

      Marco had recently been released from the hospital. He’d had to stay longer than Cal to have a skin graft covering a six-inch patch of burnt skin on his arm. But given what could’ve happened, Andrea thought, the boy had been incredibly blessed.

      Of course, Cal had taken full responsibility for that, as well. “You saved his life, Cal, the skin graft was a small price compared to—”

      “I don’t want to hear it, Andrea! You weren’t there—you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

      A cold silence settled over the dark room.

      Sometimes Andrea felt as if she was trying to cuddle up to a wounded bear. She sighed in defeat and turned back over to her side of the bed and snuggled under the covers.

      She stared at the wall seeing right through the darkness. She studied the outline of the soft pink watercolor painting of a vase of peonies. Once again, her mind was swirling with conflicting emotions, many of which she knew she shouldn’t feel. Even in the midst of Cal’s crisis some part of her was blossoming with hope. There was no way he could go back to being a firefighter, not in his current state of mind.

      And as much as Andrea hurt for him, as much as it pained her to see him in such turmoil, some part of her still preferred it to the who-gives-a-damn way of looking at the world he had before. That attitude was dangerous, reckless, and…ultimately fatal.

      After several minutes, Cal turned over to spoon her. His large hand came over her hipbone and settled in the crook of her body. Although Andrea sensed the movement wasn’t meant to be arousing, she had no control over the tinkling sensation that started in her toes and worked its way up her body. It had been that way from the beginning. The most casual skim of his hand, an accidental brush of bodies and she was wired for action.

      Cal was the first man she’d ever known who had that kind of effect on her senses,