Pulling back, Emily looks between Nix and me. “What’s illicit?”
I shrug my shoulders. “The affair you and I are having under Nix’s nose.”
Emily just gives me an accommodating smile and starts walking back to the kitchen. “I see. We’re very stealthy, aren’t we? Well, come on back and let’s have some coffee. We can make future illicit plans. I was just getting ready to make some breakfast.”
Nix and I follow Emily into the kitchen. I hadn’t called before coming over and just took a gamble that Emily would be here. Even though she has an apartment in the city that she shares with her college roommate, Fil, she stays over at Nix’s house most nights.
Glancing over, I see Nix’s dog, Harley, lies in front of the kitchen windows, basking in the early morning son. He raises his head, gives me a lazy look, and then goes back to sleep.
“So seriously, what brings you over here?” Emily asks as she pours a cup of coffee and slides it across the counter toward me. She knows I take it black so doesn’t offer anything else.
“I need to borrow some of your clothes.”
Emily just stares at me blankly, and Nix rolls his eyes. “First, you’re having an affair with my fiancée and now you want to dress up in her clothes?”
“Yeah, it’s not as kinky as it sounds. Short version of a very long and whacked story is that I have a temporary, female roommate who I rescued from a fire yesterday. She has nothing to her name except a pair of surgical scrubs they released her from the hospital with. I was hoping to borrow a set of Emily’s clothes, particularly shoes, so I can take her shopping for some stuff today.”
After I finish my story, I watch to gauge their reaction. Both Emily and Nix just continue to stare at me, not saying a word.
I wait, particularly for Emily to pipe up that she’d be glad to help.
I’m met with silence.
Sighing deeply, I say, “What’s the silent treatment for?”
Emily and Nix exchange a quick look, but it’s filled with a little bit of worry, and a whole lot of frustration.
“Okay... go ahead and spill it out. Let’s get this over with.” I pull a kitchen chair out from the table, turn it backward, and straddle it, resting my arms across the back.
Nix leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. “Isn’t it a little out of the norm for a firefighter to bring one of his rescues home?”
It’s a legitimate question coming from anyone, but I know where Nix is headed. “You already know the answer to that, Nix. Why don’t you just say what you really want to say?”
My voice is hard and unforgiving. I’ve heard these concerns before from practically every family member and close friend.
Before Nix can say anything else, Emily steps forward, laying a restraining hand on Nix’s arm so he doesn’t say anything further. Nix isn’t known for his tact. “Flynn... you know we’re just worried about you. You tend to take on every hopeless and lost cause there is, often to your detriment, many times causing you pain.”
“And it often comes in the form of a woman,” Nix adds.
I shoot him a glare and then look back to Emily. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?”
“Flynn, it’s just that—” Emily starts to say but she gets cut off by Nix.
“You tend to date broken women and then you try to fix them. And when you find out you can’t fix them, or that they don’t want to be fixed, you’re left behind holding a broken heart and usually their debt.”
“Nix,” Emily says in a chastising tone.
“It’s true, Em. I know you haven’t known Flynn long, but ever since Marney died, he thinks every woman needs saved from some dark catastrophe.”
Emily opens her mouth to say something but I beat her to the punch. “Leave Marney out of this, Nix.” My voice is laced with so much venom, I can see Emily actually take a step backward.
There was a time in his life that Nix would have just as soon punched my lights out for talking to him that way, but he only drags his hand through his long hair in frustration.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was out of line. I just don’t want to see you hurt. You’re like a brother to me and I protect what’s mine.”
The anger deflates out of me and the tension leaves my shoulders. Standing from the chair, I clap a hand on his shoulder. “I know, man, and I love you for it. But this is a little different situation.”
“How so?” Emily asks.
“First... I’m not dating her and have no intentions of doing so. It was just a really interesting situation, and it’s a very temporary sort of help.”
Picking my coffee cup back up, I take another sip and then proceed to tell them the entire story of how I met Rowan Page. I speak in impersonal tones, so they don’t even catch a whiff of the fact that my interest in Rowan isn’t completely professional. Those gray eyes don’t just haunt me anymore, they’ve perked an interest in me that has me looking at her as a woman, and not as a victim.
But I’m not about to let them know that. I lay out the scenario, and assure them that I just want to help get her on her feet. I don’t hold back about the fact that she could be in danger so they understand that Rowan is truly in a bad situation and needs help.
By the time I’m finished, there’s no doubt in my mind Emily would have taken her in had I not. She rushes upstairs to pull together a few outfits that Rowan can borrow until I can buy her some new clothes.