Throw Him My Way

No wonder, he told himself. She had pretty much asked him to put his career on the line for her.

Though he did wonder at the kind of person who would get mace candles.

Who made them? Who marketed them? Who bought them? For that matter, who would ever assume that somebody would buy them, and come up with the idea of making them? Nobody woke up one day and decided that mace would be a good scent for a damn aromatherapy candle.

He couldn’t fault Heidi for wanting to know what it was like. He was pretty curious, himself.

But there had been no scent of mace in the apartment. He figured it would be a stronger version of nutmeg.

It had just been smoke, and he had said the honest truth when he told her that she’d been lucky. She had endangered every person in that building, through carelessness.

But people were often careless. She was obviously sorry, and he would bet all of his savings that she would never be so careless again.

Of course, compared to some, it wasn’t a lot to bet.

And he might very well be betting his career on that instinct, that split second when he had sized her up and decided she was worth the risk.

When they got back to the fire station, Christian realized, with a start, that he had already made his decision. He wasn’t going to rat her out.

He was going to take the huge risk of not being honest in his report.

It made no real difference to anybody, he told himself, but that was only true as long as he wasn’t caught.

Christian didn’t quite buy his own justification – that it was because she had great promise as a singer, and he wanted her to be able to make a living and chase her dream.

That was true enough.

But it wasn’t all, and he knew that.

*****

Heidi wanted to drown her sorrows in a good, stiff whiskey. Or three.

Or, hell, five.

She’d never had five drinks before, which was odd for somebody who spent so much time in bars and pubs.

“Heidi! I was worried, where have you been?”

She didn’t feel like dealing with Mrs. Spinelli, much as she loved her. She had to be ready to sing in exactly an hour, of which twenty minutes would be getting there, and another twenty would be prep. That gave her twenty minutes to…

She didn’t know what she could possibly do to make herself feel better in any way at all.

Sighing, she turned to Mrs. Spinelli and smiled.

“You don’t look very good, honey.”

Heidi tried to make the smile a bit better, and brighter.

“No, I’m fine. It was just a bad day. There was a fire at Zoe’s apartment. Apple and I were out. We called it in. The smoke alarm didn’t go off, apparently. Anyway, Zoe’s settled with her aunt for now. So is Apple. But I had to stay with her for a while, and then go to get the rest of the dogs, and… Well, it wasn’t a good day, really.”

“Oh, you poor thing! Come on in and put your feet up. Have a glass of wine, and have dinner, and you’ll feel better soon.”

Heidi kept the smile in place as she shook her head.

But the regret was real. Putting her feet up and relaxing for the whole evening – that sounded so enticing! But Heidi had a purpose, and that purpose was music. She wouldn’t give up just because she’d had a hard day.

She knew that she could take a break if she wanted to, but she had promised herself that she would never let laziness stop her. This would be laziness, because she could easily do a one-hour set, maybe even a two-hour set, even if she was dead on her feet.

As she nearly was that evening.

“I wish, Mrs. Spinelli. But I’ve got a set tonight. You could come, you know. Get a handsome young man to buy you a glass of wine. Or three.”

She laughed, as Heidi had intended, but there were those worry lines between her eyebrows, meticulously drawn as usual, anyway.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll come home before midnight. I promise.”

Her neighbor, the woman who treated her with as much affection as she would a beloved niece, sighed.

“There’s no way I can stop you, is there.”

“No, but I will be fine. I promise,” repeated Heidi.

It took some more reassuring, taking up a few more precious minutes of relaxation, before she was reassured enough to let Heidi go into her apartment.

Once inside, Heidi gave herself a moment to just lean against the door, bury her face in her hands and just breathe.

She needed to breathe. She felt as if she hadn’t been able to do that very simple thing in so long.

It had been the longest day ever.

She still couldn’t believe how careless she had been. She could’ve done so much damage.

No, she had done plenty of damage. She could’ve caused people to lose their lives; certainly, she could’ve caused many people to lose their lives’ work.

How could she have done that? She had never done anything remotely like that ever before. She had always been responsible and sensible.

Sure, many people thought she was an idiot with her career choices and her decisions, but with things like this…

She had never been so terribly stupid before.

Heidi considered just chucking everything for a moment. She was just so, incredibly tired.

Giving up seemed so appealing.

She did what she always did when she got low enough to consider giving up. She closed her eyes and pictured it – her name in lights.

She would, one day, play Madison Square Garden. And that day, she would have her name in lights.

That was worth all of this.

She had time to have a shower. What she really wanted to do was put her head down for a while and give over to oblivion, but she had a feeling that would last longer than ten minutes.

So she made do with shoving her head under the shower for a solid five minutes.

That, of course, meant that most of the twenty minutes set aside for getting ready went on her hair, which was wild when it was wet.

But with two minutes to spare, she was ready.

The makeup had done its job. She didn’t look as if she’d had one of the worst days of her life.

As she left, she finally let herself think about what she had been avoiding all day: Christian Sanders.

She’d never been the cliché that liked firemen. But boy, he sure had looked absolutely irresistible, even with smoke-reddened eyes.

Smoke that she had caused.

Even with the guilt roiling inside her, she couldn’t deny that immediate, solid punch of desire that had burst through her like a storm.

She’d never felt anything like it before.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to. It complicated life.

But then, mused Heidi as she walked into Barney’s, a good singer and song-writer never had a simple life.

She was going to kill her set that night if she could pull everything inside her and pour it out through her music.