Burned: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants #8) Read online

  BURNED

  AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE

  _______________________

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS, 8

  FLORA FERRARI

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  A Man Who Knows What He Wants Series

  Burned

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2016 by Flora Ferrari.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS

  Book 1: Baby Lust

  Book 2: Veteran

  Book 3: Built

  Book 4: Bambino

  Book 5: Rescued

  Book 6: Leader

  Book 7: Professor

  Book 8: Burned

  Book 9: Worldly

  BURNED

  I’ve been burned before.

  First by my ex-wife, and now by my own station. They say I endangered the department to rescue that girl. Screw them, I’d do it again a million times over. I risk my life every day to save the lives of others.

  Especially her.

  And after I save her, she saves me. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make her mine.

  I’ve been burned before too.

  My ex-boyfriend’s carelessness sent my apartment up in smoke. Luckily for me there was a real man there to save me. An older, experienced man who came to my rescue. A man who knows how to take care of a woman.

  But he’s my best friend’s dad.

  When she finds out will our relationship go up in smoke? Will I get burned by the heat between us? Will these flames be too hot for anyone to put out?

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  CHAPTER 1

  Emma

  F ire!”

  Am I dreaming?

  I pull out my earplugs and open my eyes. I had finally fallen asleep and now this. I think it’s just everyone downstairs messing around, but I better get up just in case.

  I stumble over to my door. I open it and, whoosh! I feel the heat hit me right in the face. I see a ball of flames engulfing the stairway. Oh shit!

  I step back and shut the door. Smoke is now coming underneath. I run to the window and look outside.

  I see a few of my boyfriend’s friends on the grass coughing and hacking. “She’s still inside,” one of them yells. He points up at me.

  “Stay there, honey. A fire truck is on the way,” my boyfriend yells. Stay here and die? Are you fucking kidding me?

  I look down and know that there’s no way I’m surviving an eight-story jump. There’s no fire escape and no ledges. I’ve got slippers on my feet and my one pair of heels in the closet. All my tennis shoes and flats are downstairs in the other closet by the front door. The closet that’s certainly gone by now.

  Shit! I run to the bathroom and wet a towel. I slide it under the door and run back to the bathroom. I wet another towel and put it around my mouth and run back to the window.

  A fire engine comes screaming around the corner. Men jump out in practiced precision and begin spraying down the flames.

  One of them points up at me. The man behind him takes off towards the front door. A third fireman dives at him, tackling him, taking him to the ground.

  I’m about to die and the firemen are wrestling on the grass in front of my building. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I just take in more smoke.

  “Help me!”

  The fireman who had been tackled wrestles his way out of the hold of the other fireman. His hat flies off. He dashes into the building.

  “Please, help me!”

  I see the firemen pulling something out of their truck. Yes! It’s that inflatable thing. I’m going to jump. They’re going to save me.

  The smoke is coming on stronger and stronger. I can barely breathe and my knees feel weak. I reach my hand out to the wall to steady myself. I put my back to the wall and slide down into a pile. I’m dizzy and about to faint.

  Suddenly the door flies open, ripping from the hinges and lands flat on the floor. The man from the front lawn is lying on top of it. He broke it down with his shoulder.

  My vision is blurring fast and I’m more and more light-headed.

  “I’ve got you,” the man says as he scoops me up in his arms.

  My head leans back and I get my first look at him.

  “Mr. Logan?” I mouth, but no words come out.

  I feel a cool breeze hit my body and I realize he’s standing in the windowsill.

  “Hold on to me as tight as you can,” he says.

  I grab with what little strength I have left, but it’s not much.

  Suddenly I feel weightless, like I’m falling. I can’t see anything because my head is buried into his chest. I feel our bodies hit a cloud and just as I slip from consciousness I realize I’m dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  Emma

  R ichard loved to party. He was notorious for it at UT. Theme parties, holiday parties, spontaneous parties…he didn’t even need a reason. When I was a freshman and he was a sophomore it was perfect. I was away from home, lonely, and eating too much. I got invited to one his parties during first semester and decided to go last second after my roommate talked me into it. She needed a wing woman, her words not mine, and insisted that I need to get out of the dorms.

  Two hours later I was dancing the night away, all of my worries were gone, and then I met Richard. He was the host. Fun, charming, and with All-American good looks. When he asked me out the next night I couldn’t resist. A few margaritas and guacamole later and I officially had myself a boyfriend.

  The problem now was that Richard had just graduated, but was still that same boy I met two and a half years earlier. The diploma he had received earlier in the day may have said he was ready to take on the world, but it was clear everything about him was still at college. He planned on taking some random electives just so he could ‘keep the party going.’

  I stayed as upbeat as I could and was proud he had finished, but was wondering more and more every day if he really was finished. Maybe he was destined to be a lifetime student. I found out a few weeks ago he had a trust fund that kicked in when he turned twenty-five. It was becoming more and more clear that there was at least three more years of this in my future. In our future.

  At three o’clock and
the party still going, I had to say my goodnights and head to my room. I still had tests to finish for my junior year, and needed to get some sleep so I could wake up at six and continue studying. Of course that was before I knew there was going to be a fire just before four in the morning.

  Apparently some mix of joints and cigarettes had caught the polyester curtains on fire. Half of the party had stepped outside to get some air, and the other half quickly joined them at the first sight of flames. Richard hadn’t even thought to come in and check on me. Boy, I sure can pick ‘em.

  I thought graduating was going to turn him around. Force him to grow up. He had some great job offers in Dallas and even a few in Houston. He said it was precisely because of his ‘networking skills.’ I called it alcoholism. He called it networking.

  I was wrong about Richard and I was wrong about our future. He had hinted something big was going to happen for us. I had gotten my hopes up. I thought he might propose, or at least take one of his job offers. Then I found out about his trust fund and that his ‘big news’ was nothing more than he was going to stay here longer to ‘be with me.’ Translation? Keep on partying.

  But none of that mattered now. He had been kind enough to bring flowers once when I was in the hospital. When he saw my bandages and the nurse told him I had burns covering over seventy percent of my hands and arms, he had a change of heart about being with me.

  I should have known he was shallow. I should have seen the signs. The hints that he could ‘help me out’ with a breast augmentation. The health club membership for my Christmas present last year. The only magazines he seemed to read focused on either naked girls or get rich quick schemes. And his gambling addiction on the Longhorns football team had taken a turn for the worse this past season.

  “I got burned by the referees,” he’d say after each loss. Pretty ironic considering now I was laying in the Blocker Burn Center in Galveston pretty burned up myself.

  I hear a knock on my door and look up.

  “Hey girl,” Jennifer says.

  “You drove all the way down here to see me?”

  “You know it.”

  Jen comes bursting through the door and up to my bed. She can see I’m not in huggable shape so she leans down and kisses me on the cheek.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” I say.

  “Glad to see you’re hanging in there,” Thomas says as he enters the room. Thomas is the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. His half Mexican half Texan blood makes him look like the poster boy for a Rico Suave ad, but in reality he’s the nicest most dedicated boyfriend on campus. Lucky for Jennifer. She’ll never have to know what getting dumped in a hospital bed feels like. Her boyfriend is perfect. Mine on the other hand, dumped me when I wasn’t even awake! Loser.

  “Thanks for coming, Thomas.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I smile.

  “And I found what might be a very, very small silver lining.”

  “Oh?” I say.

  “Yep. The two exams you were studying for? Both professors said they’d be happy to just award you your grade at the time before the accident.”

  “Really?” I ask. “That’s great.”

  “I take it you had somewhere around a 4.0.”

  “I did,” I wink. “Well, at least somebody’s thinking about me.”

  “Don’t worry about Richard,” Jennifer says. “He showed his true colors. He’s long gone. You’ll have guys lining up to call you the second you walk out of here.”

  “Jennifer, thanks, but you haven’t seen my arms yet.”

  Jennifer looks down at the bandages. “I’m sure they’re not too bad.”

  “Over seventy percent burned. Finding a guy is going to be nearly impossible.”

  “There are plenty of nice guys out there,” Thomas says. “I can introduce you to some of my friends.”

  I purse my lips. I don’t want to feel like the focus of a pity party at the moment. Jennifer gives Thomas the ‘thanks for helping, but let me handle this’ look.

  “Thanks, Thomas, but right now I’m going to have to make some money to pay off these medical bills.”

  “You’re not insured?” Jennifer asks.

  “I have a small plan through the university. Thankfully I signed up for it, but I was trying to save money so I picked the $5,000 deductible.”

  “A good summer job will take care of that.”

  “Hopefully, if there are any left. Most were probably already taken in the spring. I doubt anybody’s still looking this late.”

  “There’s always something that comes up,” Jennifer says.

  “True. I just need to get out of here first.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Emma

  T en days later I walked out of the hospital and back to a life completely different than the one I had left. Jennifer invited me out for Taco Tuesday but the last thing I felt like was socializing. I put a sweatshirt on over my bandages and sat there staring at chips and guacamole for the better part of two hours. I just wasn’t in the mood. And when one drunk guy did come over, to talk to Jennifer, he put his hand on my arm to brace himself as he leaned down to our table. Double no.

  I try not to cry, partially from the pain and partially because it’s going to be nearly impossible to meet a guy now that my arms look the way they do. It was already hard enough getting noticed at a university with over twenty-five thousand woman. And now it’s going to be even more difficult.

  A few days go by and I start Googling the incident reports. Somewhere in all the confusion I had totally forgotten that it was Jennifer’s dad who pulled me out of that building, or maybe I just forgot due to memory loss from the shock. Either way it was embarrassing. I didn’t remember much, but enough time had passed and I wanted to see what the papers had said about the fire. Jennifer has the world’s best manners so she hadn’t even brought it up when she visited me in the hospital. How sweet of her.

  The story about the fire was all over the news for about two days after. Apparently Jennifer’s dad, Liam, had ran into that building against a direct order from his fire chief. I’m not sure if he knew I lived in that building or not, but either way he was a hero and I definitely wanted to thank him.

  The first question would be finding out where he was. The news stories online said he had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation and a disciplinary hearing. Maybe that’s why Jennifer hadn’t said anything. If my situation wasn’t bad enough already, I may have lost her father his job.

  I go over to his station and am immediately greeted by a younger guy. At first he seems to be checking me out, but then he seems to realize who I am. I feel an arm on my shoulder.

  “Let’s go over here,” the man says. I follow him into a small side room. He offers me a chair and I introduce myself.

  “I know who you are. We all do,” he begins. His voice is solemn.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask.

  “Well, I’m sure you read about Liam in the news. He was really popular around here. It’s probably better if you don’t come around for awhile. Some of the guys are taking it pretty hard.”

  “Oh. I-I-I’m really sorry,” I say. A tear wells up in the corner of my eye. Bad has gone to worse and all because of my stupid ex-boyfriend. “Is there anyway maybe I can find him? To say thanks.”

  “We’re not really allowed to give out information like that,” he says.

  “Can I at least leave a note?”

  “Probably not a good idea right now.” His gaze shifts to the side wall as he ponders what to do. “Tell you what. He’s coming by in about an hour to pick up something. There’s a very good chance he’ll go to the coffee shop before or after he comes here.”

  “The one right across the street?”

  “Yes, it’s the only one around here. It’s not a good idea to try and meet him here, but if you wait over there you should be able to approach him. With everything that’s going on he’d probably like to hear that you really appreciate what
he did.”

  “Definitely. I do,” I say. The other fireman’s mood is still pretty somber so I see it’s time to leave. “Thank you. I’ll try and catch up with him at the coffee shop. I really appreciate your help.”

  The fireman stands up and escorts me towards a back door. “Probably best to go out this way.”

  Holy shit, how much trouble have I caused?

  CHAPTER 4