Men of Courage

Riley walked out into the hallway. “Be good, kids.”

“You know I’m always good. But I can’t make any promises for Ethan.”

He winked at her. “You’ll keep him in line.”

Ethan snapped the door shut, then turned both locks with a dreadful sense of finality. When he faced Rosie, she decided a strategic retreat was in order; he did not look like a happy man.

In fact, he looked very unhappy. Or maybe “riled” was the word. Yeah, he looked downright riled. She supposed Riley’s teasing flirtation hadn’t helped matters.

Ethan was used to Harris and Buck razzing her. After all, they’d all grown up in the same neighborhood. The three of them had been best buds with her brother—until her brother had slipped off with Ethan’s fiancée.

Riley was new to the mix, and while they all liked him a lot, Ethan apparently didn’t take Riley’s teasing the same at all.

She’d made it all the way to the bathroom when Ethan caught her arm. “Rosie.”

There was so much warning in the way he said her name, she kept her back to him. “Hmm?”

His sigh parted the back of her hair. “Don’t play games.” He caught both arms and turned her around. “What were you doing here this morning in my bed?”

“Sleeping?”

His jaw worked, his eyes narrowed. Reaching inside the neckline of the housecoat, Ethan fingered the collar of his shirt. His gaze settled on her mouth. “Why aren’t you wearing your own clothes?”

Very slowly, realization dawned on Rosie. “Oh, my God. You don’t remember, do you?”

An arrested expression crossed his features. His pupils expanded until only a thin ring of light brown remained. His straight, dark brows pulled together. “Just what am I supposed to remember?”

Indignation reared up, followed by humiliation. “Ethan Winters. You have no idea what happened last night, do you?”

He blustered with his own dose of exasperation. “I know damn good and well we didn’t have sex.”

Rosie gasped, not because he was wrong, but because he was so sure that he hadn’t touched her. What was she? Chopped liver? She felt just contrary enough not to reassure him. “Yeah, and how do you know that if you don’t remember?”

Muscles tensed, Ethan let his smoldering gaze take a leisurely trip over her—but he only got as far as her breasts. “You were wearing a shirt. And panties. When I have sex with a woman—” his gaze rose and locked on hers “—she’s buck naked. Not half-dressed.”

Rosie dropped back against the wall with a thud. Her heart had started bouncing around with his first hot look, and his words had nearly brought her to her knees. Oh, she could only imagine what Ethan did when he had sex, but she believed him: the woman wouldn’t be wearing clothes.

She cleared her throat, then had to clear it again when he flattened both hands to the wall on either side of her head. At five-nine she was a tall woman, but Ethan stood six-two and towered over her. He leaned in the smallest bit, probably trying to intimidate her—and doing a good job of it, but not for the reasons that he might assume. She wasn’t afraid of Ethan and she never would be.

But she was extremely aware of him as a man.

She stared at his sternum and gave an irrefutable reminder. “You were drunk. You couldn’t have gotten your own clothes off, much less mine.”

Ethan considered that, then smiled. “True. And being that drunk, I doubt I could have gotten a boner no matter what you did.”

With another gasp, Rosie shoved him hard—with no visible effect. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You must have taken off your clothes, because as you just said, I was too damn drunk to accomplish it on my own.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Not too drunk to flirt with that redhead.”

He stared past her shoulder. After a second, his eyes lightened and the right side of his mouth kicked up. “Yeah, I remember her now. Where’d she go?”

Oh, that was one nasty little shot too many. Rosie stomped on his toes. Given that she was as barefoot as he was, it wasn’t an overly painful move. But he did jerk back, giving her a chance to duck under his arm. She stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door. Hard. She took a lot of satisfaction in clicking the lock into place.

Ethan didn’t beat on the door. He just said, “You have to come out sooner or later.”

She felt like beating on the door. Or on his head. Instead she took two deep breaths to gather her calm. “My clothes are in your laundry room. Your precious redhead dumped her drink on me, so until you run them through the wash, I can’t wear them again. I’d smell like a lush.”

Silence stretched until Ethan finally said, “Oh.”

“Yes, oh.” Inside the bathroom, Rosie stripped off the housecoat and his shirt. “Why don’t you throw them in the washer while I shower?”

“Sure thing.”

She could hear him whistling as he walked away, secure in the knowledge that nothing of a sexual nature had occurred between them.

But he didn’t know that for sure, and no way would she tell him. Let him stew. Let him wonder.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d think about it enough that he’d start to like the idea.

Rosie grinned as she stepped into the shower. She had a plan, and oh, boy, it was going to be fun.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WALKED INTO the kitchen with his toothbrush sticking out of her mouth.

In the process of shaking out a large plastic garbage bag, Ethan froze. Rosie’s hair was still wet, pushed straight back from her forehead and hanging in long twisted ropes down her back. Over his housecoat.

Which was now the only thing she wore.

Ethan knew that because she leaned into the laundry room and pitched his shirt onto the pile of dirty clothes, then turned and stuck her folded panties into her purse, which was on the counter. With foamy toothpaste dripping down her chin, she headed back for the bathroom.

It took Ethan a moment to get his eyelids to work so he could blink. When he did, he couldn’t help but notice that her behind, without benefit of underwear, jiggled just a little more beneath the terry-cloth robe. He jerked around, grumbling and too warm and feeling somewhat hunted. “Damn irritant.” He shoved an old pizza box into the garbage bag.

Five minutes later Rosie emerged again. She gave him a big toothy smile and said, “I used your toothbrush.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He would not keep staring at her.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

He started to say, Of course not; after all, they’d been friends a long time, shared drinks, once even an ice-cream cone. He wasn’t worried about her germs.

But she didn’t give him a chance. “I figured after last night, it wouldn’t be any big deal.”

Ethan went rigid. “Nothing happened last night.”

“Did you put my stuff in the wash?” Apparently unconcerned with his emotional turmoil, Rosie pushed in a kitchen chair, closed a cabinet.

Shaking his head to clear it, Ethan said, “Yeah, they should be ready for the dryer in about ten more minutes.” He continued to stuff empty food containers and soup cans, plastic cups, newspapers and junk mail into the bag. He shouldn’t have felt so awkward with Rosie. He never had before—but then, he’d never slept with her before, either.

He glared when he realized that she intended to help him clean. Not only that, but she’d accomplished more in two minutes than he had in ten. Women, he decided, just had a knack for being efficient with housework.

“Leave that stuff. I’ll get it.” He glanced around at the remaining mess and for some stupid reason, felt compelled to explain. “I’ve been on a night shift all week. Had two nasty calls, one right before the banquet. Had to use the Jaws of Life on a guy who got caught in his car. Damn thing was on fire…” At her look of horror, his voice trailed off. He shook his head. “I got behind on stuff, but I planned to clean today anyway, since I have the next four days off.”

“You’re okay?”

Damn it, she didn’t have to sound so anxious. She was a friend, not his keeper, not his sibling, not his wife. “I’m fine.”

For a long moment she didn’t look convinced, then she shrugged. “I don’t mind helping.” She wrung out a dishrag and wiped off the stove. “I’ve got nothing else to do until my clothes are done, then I have to head into the office. I have a house to show today.”

As a real estate agent, her hours varied.

“I don’t want you to help.”

She blinked up at him with fresh-faced provocation. “Why?”

Damn, she looked cute straight from the shower. Rosie had never, in his opinion, needed much makeup. Her skin was fair, framed by silky brown hair that didn’t contain a single hint of red. Her brows were dark, finely arched, her lashes long. Though her eyes were blue, they weren’t an ordinary blue. They looked softer than ordinary blue, sort of smoky and smoldering, and when she got annoyed or excited, they turned stormy gray.

Would they turn gray when she was sexually aroused?

Ethan’s scowl intensified. “Women always think they have certain rights after cleaning a guy’s place.”

“Wow, no kidding?” Her brows rose higher. “That’s like…really profound. Your grasp on womankind is nothing short of astounding.”

She was baiting him, maybe even poking fun at him. “My grasp is astute enough to know you can’t be trusted, that you wait for a reason to screw a guy over or to confuse him so that he screws himself over or—”

Rosie stuck her fingers in her ears and said, “La, la, la, lalalal—”

“Stop that!”

She struck an arrogant, annoyed pose, her hands on her hips. “Then stop spouting nonsense.”

Ethan shook his head at the gesture, until he realized that her stance made the robe gap just a little above and below the belt. It showed a length of her legs—which he’d seen a gazillion times, for crying out loud—and her cleavage, which he knew she had but he hadn’t seen much before now.

Everything male within him went on alert, and he mumbled, “It is not nonsense.”

“Are you talking to me or my boobs?”

Flabbergasted, Ethan jerked his gaze up to her face, saw her smile and wanted to shout with frustration. Ruthlessly he beat his male instincts into submission. “You.”

“Huh. And here I was certain my ears were on my head, not my chest.”

In a ridiculous show of temper, he threw the garbage bag down on the floor. “Damn it, Rosie, what is wrong with you? What are you up to?”

She shrugged, then groaned dramatically. “I need some aspirin.”

Dismissing him, she turned to the cabinet and began riffling around until Ethan said, “Here, I keep them over the stove.” He shook out two white pills and handed them to her. A new thought occurred to him. “You hungover, too?”

She lifted the aspirin off his palm, tossed them into her mouth and bent her head into the sink to grab a drink of water straight from the tap. When she’d finished, she shook her head. “No, of course not.”

He hadn’t thought so. Rosie was never much of a drinker. Come to that, he wasn’t, either, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself for overindulging last night. “If you’re not suffering from too much drink, then what’s your problem?”

“I just have a headache from lack of sleep, actually.” She sent him a calculated look. “We didn’t get to bed till late.”

His chest constricted. Why hadn’t she gotten enough sleep? She’d been dead-out when he’d awakened.

The washer buzzed and Rosie stepped into the small laundry room off the kitchen to put her clothes in the dryer, giving Ethan a moment to think.

There had to be any number of reasons why she’d been in his bed, other than the most distressing one. Why she didn’t want to tell him, he couldn’t say. Sometimes Rosie could be difficult for no apparent reason.

But he’d get the truth out of her, one way or another.

“Hey, Ethan?”

He stayed in the kitchen, unwilling to test his resolve by getting near her again. “Yeah?”

“Did you mean that I couldn’t be trusted, or women in general?”

Oh, hell, he didn’t want to have this discussion with her. He jammed a carton of sour milk into the bag with more force than was necessary. Just getting the garbage off the countertops and off the floor made his place look much cleaner. Normally it didn’t get so bad, but on top of the lousy week, he’d really been dreading the party last night. For days, cleaning had been the last thing on his mind.

“Is this a tough question, Ethan?”

Knowing she wouldn’t let it go, he gave her the truth. “I meant all women.”

“Really?” The silence was telling. “Including me?” She strolled back in, her eyes a flat gray—not a good sign.

“Rosie, let’s drop this, okay?” Ethan could already tell she was up for an argument. He wasn’t. He needed to know that he hadn’t…touched her. And then he needed more sleep.

“No, it’s not okay.” She crossed her arms under her breasts. “You’ve insulted me.”

He stared at the ceiling so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at her breasts again. “How about if I just apologize?”

“Not if you aren’t sincere.” She sighed, sounding a little defeated. “You know, I fully intended to tell you everything.”

Everything? He gave up his study of the ceiling and met her gaze. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You know.” She flapped a hand. “Why I’m here, what I want, stuff like that.”

What she wanted? Ethan tied the bag shut and set it aside. If she kept this up, his head would explode. “Okay, let’s get this over with. What do you want?”

Her mischievous smile came slowly, accompanied by a twinkle in her eyes. “Oh, you’d like to rush me through this, wouldn’t you? But why? You weren’t in a rush last night.”

He reached for her and she ducked away, laughing. “I still can’t believe you forgot everything from last night.”

Two deep breaths didn’t help Ethan to contain his temper. “There wasn’t much to forget, now was there?”

“There was enough.”

His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. “If that’s true, then you took advantage of my drunken state—which proves what I said. Women can’t be trusted.”

“Some women, maybe.”

“Like a woman who sleeps with a guy she knows is drunk?”

She winced, pretending to be wounded, but her grin told the real story. “Okay, let’s back up. When you spout all that baloney about women not being trustworthy, you make yourself look really pathetic.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep. It shows that Michelle really did a number on you and that you let her.”

Oh, no, no way. He didn’t want to talk about Michelle. He didn’t even want to hear Michelle’s name. Not now, not ever. “Be smart, Rosie, and keep her out of this.”

Of course she didn’t listen to him. She wouldn’t be Rosie if she did. “Why? That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You got jilted and you’ve been playing the wounded swain ever since.”

“It’s none of your business. You’re a friend, not my mother, not my confessor.”

“Damn right I’m your friend.”

She put her hands on her hips again, but this time Ethan was too annoyed to admire her cleavage. Rosie’s anger struck him in waves and left him a little awed. He’d only witnessed her fierce temper a handful of times.

“I’ve had enough of you dragging around with your tail between your legs.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t growl at me, Ethan Winters. What would you call it? You date every single girl within a three-hundred-mile radius—but only once. You make cracks about women all the time—and in case you’ve failed to notice, I’m a woman.”

“I noticed.”

That shut her up, even left her bemused, but only for a moment. Her chin lifted. “Yeah, well, when you belittle half of humanity—”

“The female half. And I don’t belittle them, I just look at them realistically. I see them for how they are.”

She rolled her eyes. “You make yourself look defensive.” Her expression softened. “You make yourself look…well, lovesick.”

The humiliation of being jilted in front of half the town and all his friends and family would be burned on his brain for the rest of his life. It wasn’t the sort of thing that a man just got over.

It wasn’t the sort of thing that Ethan would ever forget.

Rosie took a step closer to him. “Getting drunk and picking up strange women is certainly not the behavior of a hero, a role model for the community.”

Because he didn’t like the way she looked at him, and he especially didn’t like the topic, Ethan backed up. “Screw that. I never asked to be called a hero.”

In fact, part of the reason he’d started drinking last night was the ceremony honoring him. It had been every bit as bad as he’d imagined. He’d felt ridiculous, the center of attention for the first time since the wedding. And he’d felt undeserving.

“Ethan.” Rosie’s tone chastised as she continued to advance, nearly backing him into the pantry. “You’re a firefighter and that’s heroic enough. But you risked your life to save those people.”

He sidestepped away from the pantry and found himself in a corner, next to the stove. “I did what any guy would have done, especially a firefighter. I did my job. That’s all there is to it.”

“In near-zero visibility? Knowing that the house could have collapsed at any moment?”

Ethan dropped his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. Three weeks ago when he’d entered the flaming residence, he hadn’t had heroism on his mind. Through the crackle of burning wood and shattering glass, he’d heard people calling, pleading for help. Their voices had been raw from the thick smoke, desperate. Weak. Ethan had simply reacted.

He’d done what he was trained to do.

It hadn’t been easy to carry the man out while dragging the teenage son. Everything was ablaze, the smoke so dense he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He’d made his way through, inch by inch, but he’d managed, and they’d all lived. He was grateful for that—and embarrassed that so much hoopla had been made about it. He didn’t ever again want to find himself as the focus of a crowd; it always reminded him of that awful wedding day when he’d been left standing alone at the altar.

Yet there he’d been last night, at the damn ceremony, being applauded by the very people who’d looked at him with pity the night his bride had failed to show. He’d been dressed up then, too, and he’d felt just as numb.

The memories assailed him, churning through his blood, ringing in his ears. He breathed hard, nearly panting, but it didn’t help.

God, he was going to puke again.

Rosie touched his chest, gently stroking his right pectoral muscle. Her fingertips grazed his nipple.

It so startled him, the awful memories faded beneath a new emotion. He felt his body stir with sexual awareness.

“I was so proud of you, Ethan, when they gave you the Fire Commission’s Valor Award. But then I’m always proud of you. You risk your life all the time without a second thought. You do what most men won’t do—to help others. You’re always so tall and commanding and direct. And last night you looked so incredibly handsome in your dress uniform.”

Trying to ignore his unwanted arousal, Ethan focused on her soothing voice and eventually on the familiar features of her face. Rosie smiled at him and rested her palm over his heart.

“You know, you owe it to yourself for the person you are, and to the community for the person they see you as, to stop being a self-pitying jerk.”

He lurched at the shock of her words, such a contrast to the mood she’d created. Rosie poked him in the chest. Her voice was no longer quite so soothing. “I understand how you feel, Ethan—”

“You can’t have a clue.”

That seemed to make her angrier. “You’re obviously, rightfully, embarrassed that Michelle jilted you.”

“In front of two hundred people.” He hadn’t meant to shout, not that it fazed Rosie at all. No, if anything, she stepped closer until he felt her legs against his.

She tilted her head way back so she could stare him in the eyes. “When you carry on the way you do, it looks like you’re still pining over her.”

Ethan snorted. Personally, he thought just the opposite to be true. People saw him with different women, saw him enjoying his bachelor life, and it proved that he was over Michelle, that he didn’t care.

That she hadn’t ripped his heart out.

Leaning closer still, until her nose nearly touched his chin, Rosie said, “But I know you’re not lovesick, Ethan. I know, because you didn’t love her.”

Ethan grabbed her shoulders to keep her from getting any closer. He would have moved away from her, but she had him boxed in. That thought almost made him smile. He weighed a smidgen off two hundred pounds, and Rosie couldn’t possibly go over one-thirty, yet she did her best to intimidate him with her body.

Her best was pretty damn tantalizing, he admitted, when he felt her soft belly against his crotch.

All humor vanished.

She stared up at him, her eyes the color of an approaching storm. “You want people to know you’re over Michelle, that she didn’t really affect you? Well, I have a better suggestion than what you’ve been doing.”

Ethan could barely breathe. Her mouth was right there, so close he could smell the toothpaste she’d just used and damn, it looked good. He wanted her, whether he denied it or not, whether he wanted to or not. Unable to move, he growled, “What suggestion?”

“Get involved with a nice girl.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and her voice lowered, went husky in a way he’d never heard from Rosie before. “Quit playing the sexist Neanderthal and get serious again. Stop running scared.”

“I’m not—”

She touched his bottom lip, stealing his thoughts, making him tense. She whispered, “Let me love you.”

* * *

ETHAN KEPT TO THE SHADOWS of the large elms that lined the street, skirting buildings while trying not to look too furtive. He wanted to see her without being seen himself.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

Actually, everything he’d done in the past twenty-four hours fell into the realm of the “not to be believed,” starting with getting rip-roaring drunk, and ending with Rosie in his bed. So what did one more idiotic thing matter?

It didn’t. Besides, his curiosity was too keen to keep him away. Luckily, Riley’s studio had an enormous front window, so he’d be able to see what kind of lessons Rosie was taking without her knowing he spied.

He could only imagine what she’d think if she knew. The silly goose already thought herself in love with him. If she thought, even for a second, that he returned that overly valued emotion…

Ethan grunted, but deep inside himself something warm had started stirring the moment she’d said those four little taunting words. Let me love you.

He knew it was only lust. And no wonder with the way she’d been coming on to him. An ordinary woman he could have withstood, but Rosie…he hadn’t wanted to chance it.

Nearly panicked, he’d sent her on her way with the explanation that he loved her, too—as a friend, and only a friend.

He’d looked her right in her beautiful blue eyes and lied through his teeth, telling her he didn’t want her sexually, that he saw her as asexual, like a pal. Totally sexless. No sex thoughts involved at all. Sex, no. Friends, yes.

Rosie was not stupid.

She’d sighed, patted his chest in a curiously tender way and told him she’d give him a little time to get used to the idea.

He had a week.

Then she’d dressed and left and he still didn’t know what the hell had happened last night in his bed. He’d be deranged with curiosity in a week. He had to find out something soon.

The sun was bright, baking down on his head and back. July had started on a heat wave that showed no signs of relenting. Shimmering hot waves rose from the blacktop parking lot. Ethan wore his aviator-style mirrored sunglasses, but still he had to hold a hand up to shield his eyes when he reached Riley’s.

There were few people out on this sweltering afternoon, so he stood alone on the sidewalk with only the occasional passerby. Still, he maintained a casual air of indifference so he wouldn’t look suspicious. The second he peeked inside, he spotted Riley rolling around in the middle of the mat with someone. It took Ethan less than three seconds to realize the person in the baggy T-shirt, snug shorts, sneakers and headgear was Rosie.