Waiting For You Read online

  Waiting for You

  by

  Claudia Connor

  Waiting for You is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Claudia Connor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN: 978-1-7320224-1-6

  Cover Design: The Cover Collection

  Cover Photograph: Shutterstock

  Digital Formatting: Author E.M.S.

  Excerpt from Worth the Wait © 2017 by Claudia Connor

  Table of Contents

  WAITING FOR YOU

  Copyright

  Praise for Claudia Connor’s Books

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Other Books By Claudia Connor

  Excerpt from WORTH THE WAIT

  About the Author

  Praise for Claudia Connor’s Books

  “This debut mixes passion and compassion in a contemporary story that has emotional depth. Readers will find the story heartwarming but with enough heat to remind them of what falling in love feels like.” (Worth The Fall) —Library Journal

  “Connor’s writing is strong enough to maintain the emotional intensity of the main couple’s relationship through it all, providing a reading experience that will no doubt satisfy fans and leave many eager for more tales of the passionate McKinney Brothers.” (Worth The Risk) —RT Book Reviews

  “I can’t remember the last book that had me crying for hours. I loved this hero and heroine and adored the kids. I didn’t want it to end.” (Worth The Fall) —New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips

  “SQUEEE!!! This was one of the most heart-warming and ROMANTIC books I’ve read in a long time!” (Worth The Wait) —Aestas Book Blog

  “Worth the Fall is a beautiful, compassionate romance that hits you straight in the heart and will have you falling in love with this family.” (Worth The Fall) —Smexy Books

  “Definitely one of the best books of the summer…a must read!” (Worth The Fall) —Underneath the Covers

  This book is dedicated to all firefighters, men and women, who put others first every single day.

  When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work. ~Edward F. Croker

  Acknowledgements

  A special thanks to the Germantown, TN fire department, Central Command Station. They welcomed me in, let me nose around their home away from home, and answered my extensive list of questions and then some. A very special thanks to Bip Cardosi who spent hours of his time off to help me with this book. Any and all mistakes regarding firefighters and firefighting are entirely my own.

  Chapter One

  ZACH WALKER LEANED A hip against the counter, sipping his second cup of midmorning coffee. His engine crew and the ambulance crew had been out on two minor calls since he’d come on shift at eight. The station house kitchen still smelled of burned bacon. Not because of the calls, but because truck driver, Walt, burned everything he cooked.

  Zach eyed the man bent low beside him in front of one of three industrial-sized refrigerators. “I thought you said you knew how to do this.”

  “I do.” Bull wiggled the thin metal pick, searching for the pin in the heavy silver padlock. “Didn’t say I was fast. Not like I’ve made a career of B and E.”

  Zach laughed softly, took another drink of coffee, and smirked at his good friend. “How the hell do you wear all that facial hair in this heat?”

  Bull paused to run his thumb and forefinger down his wooly beard. “I told you. It’s good luck. And you don’t know hot ’til you’ve lived through August in Alabama.”

  Bull continued working at the lock guarding B shift’s fridge. Those guys were a constant thorn in their side but still family. And as one of four boys himself, Zach knew nobody messed with you like family.

  Dink—or New Guy, as they affectionately called him even though he’d transferred to their station over a year ago—stood on Bull’s other side. He finished his can of diet soda and stood ready to remove the contents of the refrigerator as soon as Bull cracked the lock. “You know, Mikey’s going to shit himself when he comes in tomorrow and his chocolate milk is gone.”

  “That would be the point,” Zach said. “He started this war when he ate my peanut-butter pie. We’re finishing it.”

  “Boom.” Bull opened the lock, and there were congrats all around as the links of silver chain clanged against the door. “Commence food relocation.”

  Zach opened the door of their own fridge, and he, Bull, Dink, and Riley McKinney, their young recruit, removed everything belonging to Mike.

  “Why don’t we move it all?” Eddie, his engine driver asked. “You know, big statement. They come in tomorrow, open it up, and…nada.” Eddie sat at the shellacked pine table with five more guys, all of whom were encouraging the kitchen ransacking.

  Zach thought about it a second, agreed. Teresa from C shift came from the back, her hair wet from a shower. He’d passed her earlier as she got in her hour in their house gym. It was small but functional and saved them from paying a gym membership.

  She went straight for the coffee, watching their shenanigans as she poured. “They’re going to kill you. You know that, right?”

  “They’re not going to know it was us,” Zach said. “No way will you rat us out.”

  Teresa laughed. “If the incentive was right? In a heartbeat.”

  Riley abandoned the mission and eased down the counter toward Teresa. He picked up a rag as he went, but he didn’t wipe. The golden-haired Adonis had been there two weeks. Long enough to become enthralled with the station’s lone female crew member, whose space he was now leaning into. God help him.

  Teresa reached for the cream and dumped enough into her to-go cup to make Zach cringe.

  “So what made you want to be a fireman?” Riley asked her.

  She reached past him for a plastic spoon. “You mean a firefighter?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.” He grinned, thinking she was making conversation with him, oblivious to her tone.

  “Riley?” Teresa said.

  “Yeah?” He straightened his big body, his baby face pathetically hopeful at the way she said his first name.

  “Get the fuck out of my way.”

  The guys around the table burst out laughing.

  Teresa grabbed her coffee and threw Zach a look on her way out. “You’d better rein that one in, Walker.”

  “Me?” Zach narrowed his eyes at Riley. He didn’t know if Teresa had named him because he was the engine lieutenant and Riley was the recruit on the same apparatus or because his sister had married into the McKinney family, making her husband’s cousin her cousin and thus the kid was family in an extremely roundabout kind of way. Either way, he didn’t think Riley tangling with the sole female in the house qualified as his responsibility.

  Dink let out an award-winning belch that had Teresa rolling her eyes.

  “And with that,” she said, “I’m out.”

  “You know you’ll miss us,” Bull called after her.

  “Won’t miss you,” she said, giving them a backhanded wave over her shoulder.

  Riley wistfully stared at her back.

  “She’ll so miss us,” Dink said. “She’s probably on the phone right now, begging the chief to move her to our shift.”

  “Seriously? Could that happen?” Riley brightened.

  “Riley?” Zach looked at him with pity. “She will eat you alive.”

  “Maybe I want her to.”

  Dink choked on his Coke. “Go ahead, kid. But when she goes to crush your balls, I will not stand in front of you.”

  “Come on, peach fuzz,” Bull said. “Get this shit moved, and let our resident ladies’ man give you some tips.”

  Bull gave a chin jerk in his direction and Zach shook his head. “No way.”

  “Oh, come on, Walker. Help the kid out.”

  Zach turned to dump the rest of his coffee down the sink. The title ladies’ man might have fit years ago. What the guys at the house had called his parade of women. His siblings had laughingly called it a circus. He’d thought of it more like a carousel. Keep them moving, don’t get too tangled up with any one. Not so much anymore. In fact, not for years.

  “Fine, then. Uncle Bull will give you some tips. You can listen while you work. Rule number one: don’t ever get involved with someone in th
e house. Rule number two: don’t ever get involved with anyone you save. Women already have a thing for men—”

  “With a big hose?” Eddie offered, walking past.

  “I was going to say in uniform, dipshit.”

  A couple of the guys agreed, others encouraged Riley to use what he had since he obviously had no game.

  “Just trust me. Doesn’t matter if it’s carrying a woman out of a burning house or standing with her beside a fender bender.”

  The guys continued giving advice, most of it not intended to be helpful, until the captain walked through, making a beeline for coffee.

  A foot from the counter, the stocky man paused and, with a deep furrow between his bushy gray eyebrows, observed what they were doing with the refrigerators. “You know this is just going to go on and on.”

  Bull shrugged. “Maybe, but they started it.”

  Captain Bodine added sugar and cream to his coffee and took a sip, watching them finish their antics. “Whatever. I saw nothing. But…” He paused as the guys groaned. “The Truck Day deal is coming up, and guess who’s off that day?”

  Bull put the lock back in place and turned around. “More than one shift is off that day, Cap.”

  “That means I get to choose which one covers Truck Day, and guess who I pick to represent us, fine upstanding public servants that we are?” He gave them a mock salute and went back to his office.

  There were shrugs and a few muttered curses, but it was just for show. Most of the guys here would show up for a community event without having their arm twisted.

  Dink yawned loudly and cracked his neck from side to side.

  Zach raised a brow as the man went for another can of carbonated caffeine. “Still not getting any sleep?”

  In addition to a fourteen-year-old daughter, Dink had a new baby with his second wife.

  “Not much. Though Leena begs us to let her get up at night with her baby sister. Sweet as hell, but I still can’t sleep.”

  Zach knew about having a baby sister. Didn’t remember ever begging to get up with her at night. He and his brothers had been tossed into the raging waters of parenthood when other guys were skipping school and trying to round second base behind the bleachers. He hadn’t been prepared to take that on. None of them had.

  Ready or not, his oldest brother, Nick, at just nineteen had done what was hard, while he, only a few years younger, had spent most of his time trying to avoid it. The shame of that still hung over him. One reason he was single at an age most men were long since settled.

  He left emotional entanglements with the opposite sex to the other guys. He’d spent a lot of years watching drama in the firehouse. Men might not cry or get bitchy, but they had drama, and he’d had enough emotional upheaval to last a lifetime. Some might say that made him a coward. He tended to think it made him smart and sane.

  Three solid beeps on the intercom had Zach shutting the door on his personal baggage. All conversation dropped off as each of them tuned an ear to the computerized voice.

  “Vehicular accident. Two cars. One victim: male. Two victims: woman, male child.”

  Eddie went to the map and plotted a course. Without saying anything more, Zach and his crew headed out first to block traffic. The ambulance pulled out next with the truck and crew close behind. Even after eighteen years, he still loved the job—the teamwork, the control. Knowing exactly what to do, solving the problem in front of him, then passing it off and moving on to the next. Too much of his life he hadn’t known what to do.

  Zach sat up front and listened for more information to come through. The extra tension of a child being involved had them riding in silence. Mike drove the truck like a pro, pushing through intersections and getting them to the scene in just under eight minutes from the time the call came in.

  They arrived, and Zach took in the scene. Typical four-lane cross intersection. One car sat in the middle of the road, facing the wrong way, light smoke seeping from the hood. Another sat at an angle, one rear wheel on an embankment. Other drivers were slowly rerouting themselves around the stopped cars. A few extras sat on the side, and he took in a handful of civilians. The cops weren’t there yet, but Dink had situated the engine to block traffic and force a wide berth around the scene.

  He didn’t need to give much direction. The guys in his house knew their job. They’d discern any need for extraction and vehicle stabilization.

  “I’ll take the ditch,” Zach said. “Riley, with me.”

  As a recruit, Riley was already a certified EMT. Still, it was only his second accident scene, and shit happened. Irate drivers, oil leaks, unstable gas tanks. Zach breathed in the acrid scent of burned rubber, which made the sweltering morning feel even hotter. The front end of the car was smashed pretty good, the driver’s-side door slightly dented. From what he could tell just looking at the scene, he’d guess that dent had been there before today. He made his way over and saw a middle-aged man slumped forward, his head on the steering wheel.

  Zach took in the line of blood on the man’s forehead and thought possible concussion. He checked the door and found it locked, but the window was down—no sign of broken glass. He hit the button to unlock the doors. Riley, who’d gone around to the other side, opened the passenger door.

  “Sir, I’m with the Jacobson Fire Department. Can you tell me your name?” He leaned farther inside the open car window and saw an empty bottle of whiskey on the passenger seat. He had no sympathy for drunk drivers, especially when his parents had been killed by one, and he braced himself against the ball of fury that burned in his gut.

  The man lifted his head and turned it slowly toward Zach mumbling what and huh, as his mind wrapped around the fact that his car had come to a stop. Zach drew air in through his nose, grinding his teeth together until his back molars ached.

  Zach shoved aside his anger as he opened the door. Not the time for it. “Sir? Can you tell me your name?” He reached in with gloved hands and put two fingers against the man’s neck. “Does anything hurt? Did you lose consciousness?”

  There was a good chance he’d lost it before the impact.

  The guy groaned and mumbled something unintelligible.

  Mikey, another firefighter EMT, stepped up and Zach moved aside to let the man do his job.

  “How’s the other car?” Zach asked Bull when he came over and stopped beside him.

  “Minor. Driver had his seatbelt on. Kid in the back was strapped into a booster. Belt got him, but he’s having no trouble breathing.”

  “That’s good.” Didn’t lessen the fury, but it did help the knot in his gut to know the kid was okay.

  They got the man extracted and onto a stretcher. Another ambulance crew had arrived behind them, and the first car’s passengers—a mom and a five-year-old boy—were transported first just as a precaution.

  Dink approached, wiping his dripping forehead. “How’s that one?”

  “Probable DUI,” Zach said.

  Dink cursed under his breath and watched as the man was loaded. The police would sort out who was responsible and, after blood work, would decide whether to charge him.

  “Cops’ve got traffic control, and tow trucks are on the way.”

  “Okay. I’m going to ride in with the DUI,” Zach said. “I’ll take Riley along.” They were down a man today, and as one of the two acting lieutenants, he rode along with the ambulance every once in a while. In this case, it would give him a chance to assess the recruit.