Like firefighters.
But Frumpy was terrifying Laura, and was an indoor cat. The last place the damn beast should be was anywhere near a road.
Nothing makes a cat more ornery than a group of people trying to catch it, and Frumpy was no exception, dodging and weaving around the various bystanders and rubberneckers who noticed Laura's shout. Running hard, she nearly blew out her heart, her body unaccustomed to exercise (because why?), but she got within two houses of the huge fire before a police officer blocked her, watching as Frumpy darted between his legs.
“Your cat?” he asked bluntly.
“Yes! Please!”
She couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if the firefighter who snagged Frumpy, lifting the cat into the crook of his arm with kindness and a tender care that nearly burst her heart even more, was the same man who'd stared at her earlier.
Who looked like one of the guys from her dream.
He handed her cat over to a policeman who sauntered to her and transferred Frumpy with an efficient movement.
“Sorry. Allergic,” he said, brushing cat hair off him.
That was that.
No hot firefighter to muse over.
Clinging to Frumpy, she found her way back to Alice, who stared at the fire, shaking her head.
“Did they tell you what happened?”
“No. I didn't ask.”
“Amateur.”
That made Laura laugh, but her vision blurred a little with the effort, making her realize how shaky she felt. “Sorry. I promise to be better next time.”
“Sadly, there will be a next time. That's how life works, right? It's never the good stuff that repeats. Only the bad.” Alice reached over and scratched Frumpy's head. “At least a man touched you today.”
“Two men,” Laura said absentmindedly.
“Even better,” Alice replied with a wink, laughing as she walked back into their building, leaving Laura to look back at the fire scene.
And find no one staring back.
Chapter 8
Was he dreaming?
Again?
The cat was easy to grab, a wandering little scamp who knew better. Dylan even chided the thing, whispering, “You stay away. No one likes crispy cat,” before handing him off to the patrolman who was standing guard around the perimeter. As he turned back to the fire, he caught a vision across the street, a woman looking frantic.
She was voluptuous, with long blonde curls, so far away he couldn't see her face, just read her nonverbal cues. Arms in the air, she waved to them, the patrolman waving back and holding the cat up a little.
Her shoulders sagged with relief.
Ah. The cat owner. A smile spread across his face. Dylan couldn't stop staring at her. There was something about her.
Something fine.
“Stanwyck!” Colachi called out to him. “Quit thinking with the wrong hose!”
So he wasn't the only one checking out the hot blonde, huh? With a dismissive wave, he got back to work.
This was a third-floor apartment fire, the kind he answered nonstop in Boston, the kind that had kept him in a regular paycheck, with benefits, for most of his adult life.
The kind of job he didn't need any longer.
But still clung to.
The guys at the fire station all worked because they had no choice. Most of them picked up second jobs, too, and that was the norm. It was how everyone they knew lived their life, so why should they be any different?
Everyone scratched. Everyone squeezed dimes until they bled. Everyone talked about money nonstop, because it's what you worried about.
It was social glue.
Losing that as a topic of conversation turned out to be much weirder than Dylan ever imagined. Bitch sessions where people complained about low funds just weren't something he experienced now.
Griping about getting screwed financially in a transaction over two dollars felt like nothing.
Busting ass on weekends to walk home with a hundred in cash for helping someone move was trivial.
He was a billionaire with a capital B now and that – that was unfathomable.
So he pretended he wasn't.
Lots of people pretended about other aspects of life, so why couldn't he be in denial about this? Backyard BBQs with the guys felt so alien now, as they complained about the cost of gardening tools, or new brake pads, or kids' braces. Hours could be spent debating the merits of Aldi vs. Market Basket as a grocery store, and now Dylan's eyes glazed over.
Who cared?
Well – they did.
But he didn't have to care anymore.
And that made him an outsider.
A phony. A fake.
Worse – he was taking someone's job.
Living every breath like he was an imposter wasn't fun. Mike handled it by running, but Dylan didn't have that as a side-show to divert his feelings. Instead, he played along, pretending he was one of the guys, because until Jill died, he had been.
Her death wasn't just something to mourn.
It was something that made him seethe.
And that, ladies and gentleman, was the biggest source of shame of all.
Because you shouldn't be angry when you become a billionaire.
Dylan was a freak for so, so many reasons. Sex, love – those he knew. He knew he was an aberration.
But now money?
Screw that. He didn't need to be that different from the people who were his entire social circle.
It was unfair.
But who considered inheriting a billion dollars to be unfair?
No one. No one sane, that's who.
Dylan wasn't the kind of guy who went against the crowd. Never needed to be a leader, or the smartest guy in the room. Always content to be part of the group, he enjoyed blending in. That's where he found his jam.
Being average.
Yes, it sounded weird, but when you thought about it, it made sense. The vast majority of people are average. Why not enjoy it?
Revel in it, even?
He was who he was, and didn't like being different.
Jill had forced him to be different.
And his grief over her death was contaminated by the damn money.
“Cute cat,” Officer Maas said as the blonde woman walked away with the cat, her movements tight, his mind spinning. His dick rarely betrayed him when he was in uniform, but he was backup now, focused more on making sure the hose didn't get too tangled than anything else.
And that was turning into a metaphor for his pants.
“Cute chick,” Dylan joked, earning a grin back from the cop. Was it politically correct? No. If he'd been attracted to dudes, he'd have said the same thing.
As for letting people know his true sexual orientation: that's where Dylan was already enough of an aberration. He didn't need to stand out even more.
Everything with Mike had changed after Jill died. For ten years they'd been inseparable, and Jill had been a filter. A conduit.
An interpreter.
Without her, the two of them muddled through, but what were they without their Jill? He wasn't attracted to Mike, per se, but he wasn't not attracted to the guy. They didn't touch during sex, so Dylan never considered himself bi, but sex without Mike felt... incomplete.
Not fully real.
Like going through the motions.
How could he put into words a feeling? Wasn't that the point of emotions – that they were emotions because there wasn't logic attached to them?