Love Me (The Elites of Cheshire shore #2)

10. Rome

CHAPTER TEN

rome

F lo starts shivering and it forces me into action. Shit she’s only wearing a bathrobe it’s freezing out here. Sliding my thick woolen coat off my shoulders I quickly cover her with it. I bend slightly so we are eye to eye and I run my palm along her soot covered cheek. “We need to get you checked over.”

Flo shakes her head no and coughs. “I’m fine. I need to call my mom.” I don’t miss that she pulls the lapels of my jacket around her tighter. She is freezing.

“Yes, you do, after you’ve been given the all clear,” I signal for an EMT to come over. The guy nods at me and starts making his way over to us. I’m not moving from my spot until a fucking doctor tells me she’s okay. And that doctor better not have Savino as their last name. Otherwise, I will load her into the back of one of these ambulances and drive her to Cheshire Shore Hospital myself. The guy rushes over putting on a fresh set of gloves from the bag strapped to his shoulder. I need to know she’s okay, so I can get her out of here and back to my place, where I know she will be safe.

“I’m fine, I need to help the EMTs.” She argues with me, but I shake my head, no. I need to get her away from all the sirens and people, the longer she stays here the more she is going to insist on helping and she is in no condition to help. For once, Flo will put herself first, even if I’m the one who is forcing her to do it.

“No you don’t. You need to get checked over.”

More sirens wail in the distance. “I’m a doctor I think I know if I’m fine or not,” Flo snaps at the guy and I actually think she bared her teeth. Watching the EMT back away with his hands raised. Poor guy, he is just trying to do his job and Flo is being a difficult patient. Not that I can blame her, she just had to escape out of her burning building.

“Yes, you are a kick-ass doctor, Flo. But tonight, you need to be a patient,” I reply as the EMT steps forward and proceeds to check her over. I keep my arm wrapped around her, needing her close. Needing to feel the steady rise and fall of her chest with each breath she takes. Resting my thumb on the base of her throat, my knotted stomach relaxes at the heady thrum of her heartbeat. She’s safe. My adrenaline is still surging through my body just as violently as when I saw the smoke billowing from my office.

“What you did was really heroic,” The EMT says as he finishes his check. “Carrying that little boy on your back could be what saved his life.”

“It was no biggie,” Flo manages a weak smile, as she rubs her wrist. Why am I not surprised to hear Flo saving someone else’s life before her own and she is now trying to play it down. I tuck my hand in my pocket so I don’t do something stupid like smash my lips into hers.

I swallow the lump in my throat and finally ask, “What kid?”

“I helped Tyler and Jane from two doors down, get down the staircase. Tyler couldn’t walk it and Jane couldn’t carry him so I did,” she mentions so casually, like carrying her neighbor down twenty-seven flights of stairs isn’t a big deal. My heart constricts in my chest, hearing that she climbed down all those flights of stairs with a kid on her back. I gingerly grasp her wrist in my hand and start slowly rubbing the spot she was. She must have hurt it when she was escaping, but she is too hopped up on adrenaline to realize.

The EMT checks her pupils, and makes her take more deep breaths while he listens to her chest. He checks her glands prodding gently, and uses a torch to check her throat. I thought she might punch him when he told her to open up and say ahh . I thought she might punch me when I snickered.

“You have a bit of smoke inhalation. Monitor it over the next few days, and take some cough drops to help if your throat becomes sore, avoid any irritants and if you start to struggle to breathe go to emergency. I know you know what to do and what to look out for, so I won’t run through it all.” Her shoulders sag a little with relief. But he isn’t done, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re fine to go. But what you went through tonight was a lot, please be mindful of that.” he says sternly, before leaving Flo to check on the next patient.

“Great, that means I can eat more of my honey ginger lollipops.”

Satisfied that she has been given an all clear. All I want to do now is get her in the car and away from this carnage. “Come on let’s go back to mine,” My arm wraps around her waist, her numb legs barely supporting her, as she takes heavy steps next to me. I lead her away from the crowded area, not giving her an option to refuse.

The weight currently constricting my chest isn’t going to let go and let me take a proper breath until we are in the safety of my own apartment and I can check her over properly. Until she is safe and warm at my place, and away from all of this, I won’t relax. “Do you want to borrow my phone?” I ask, stopping abruptly and pulling her in front of me. My phone already in my hand waiting for her to take it. I’m sure with how large this fire is, news has already spread and Dara is probably going out of her mind calling Flo’s phone which is still in her apartment.

Flo slams her eyebrows down and wipes her cheeks on the arms of her robe, leaving a grayish stain. “For what?”

Her eyes are glassy and it’s clear she’s having trouble focusing now she isn’t in doctor-mode. Fuck I nearly lost her tonight. “To call your mom and tell her you’re, I don’t know…alive?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Flo buries her hand in one of her pockets, pulls out her phone, and dials her mom. I wait for her to finish telling her mom she is okay for the third time before hanging up. “What?” She looks at me, blinking innocently. “Do you really think I would have run out of my apartment without my phone and my Kindle?”

I close my eyes and run my finger over my brow, “You remembered your Kindle?”

Flo snorts, the adrenaline that was running through her veins starting to die as she starts to become more like herself. “Trust me, there is nowhere I go without my Kindle.” She pulls it out of the pocket in her bathrobe and shrugs. “Besides, it was next to me while I was in the bath. That’s what I was doing when I smelled the smoke.”

“Are you telling me you’re naked under there,” I gesture with my hand to her bathrobe. The image I’d had of her tiny sleep shorts and tank under her robe evaporates. My lips part as a new image of her perfectly tanned naked skin invades my mind. I have to will my body to not react to this new revelation. I thought she’d grabbed her bathrobe as some sort of flame protection before running out of the building, fucking idiot, a bath robe is probably more flammable than anything else.

Flo rolls her eyes, before pinning me with a silver eyed-glare. “Yes Rome, usually people are naked when they take a bath.”

My blood starts to heat when I think about anyone catching a glimpse of smooth tanned skin. Wrapping her tighter in my arms, making sure my coat is covering as much of her as possible I usher her to my car up ahead.

“Oh my god. Would you stop, why are you going all caveman on me?” She attempts to bat my hands away but now I know she is naked underneath that robe, nothing is loosening the death grip my fingers have on her. I don’t want the firemen leering at her. I stop when we reach my car, still where I parked it between fire trucks.

“Sure, I will lollipop, when you’re in my car.” Her nickname slips from my lips again. She’s always been my lollipop, because she eats these disgusting ginger lemon ones for “immunity,” but the way she sucks them, her cheeks hollowing out, should be illegal.

“Rome.” She gives this cute little growl.

“What?” I say unlocking the car and grabbing the door. I don’t even wait for her to try and get in. I place one arm around her knees, making sure to keep her covered with my coat and the other round her shoulders and deposit her straight into the passenger seat, going as far as to click in her seat belt before closing the door.

A few of the firemen yell at me as I round the car and my answer is to flip them off.

“I think you might be in trouble,” Flo winces when I get in the car. “I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to park your car in between emergency service vehicles.”

I shrug and start the engine of my Bentley making sure to rev it a few times for the benefit of the particular fireman who is staring daggers at me. I think his badge says chief on it. Looking over at Flo, I say, “Lucky for me I don’t give a shit.”

I take off back in the direction of my apartment in the Elite building. My apartment isn’t as high up as Fallington’s but it still sits over two levels. “Well that’s just great, I think you’ve just found yourself on the Cheshire Shore FD shit list?” she asks breaking the silence, causing us to both dissolve into a fit of laughter.

I shrug my shoulders, a grin plastered across my lips, just happy to hear her laugh. “I’ve been on worse shit lists.”

“Yeah, I know you, I’m pretty sure the Kappa Phi-Delta sorority house still has your photo on the wall.”

“Eh, they were overrated anyway.” I try not to remember the sorority house Flo rushed for but was ultimately denied. Luca, Henley and I had a lot of fun turning the water off to the main house and connecting the sewage pipes to the water mains. It took them weeks and a whole new plumbing system to get the smell out. Flo’s head falls back against the chair, a small smile on her face like she too is recalling that moment.

“How did you know?” she asks, as my apartment building comes into view.

“About the fire?” I ask, not sure if she is wanting to revist that whole college memory again.

“Yes, about the fire.”

“I was driving home from work and I saw the road closed off,” I reply. I didn’t tell her I saw the smoke in the sky, that I grabbed my keys and ran out of the office, just to see if it was in fact her apartment building that was on fire.

Flo looks at the dashboard then up at me, “Rome it’s three a.m. And my place isn’t on your way home.” It’s fucking lucky I drove past her apartment when I did or else, she would have been all alone. I wouldn’t have been there when she emerged from her apartment, a sharp pain stings my guts. She would still be sitting out in the cold waiting for her mom to come and get her. Or worse. Shaking those dark thoughts from my head, I concentrate on driving but I suddenly feel drained.

Scrubbing a tired hand down my face I blink away the fatigue. “Yeah, we’ve had a tough week, the port isn’t coming along as well as we’d hoped and of course Dante is only available at stupid hours. I’ve had to pull a few late nights with Ven Industries.”

Flo’s face becomes a mask, “Oh, but why were you driving past my apartment?”

I let the silence sit between us for a few seconds, debating whether or not I should tell her. She has enough on her plate tonight without knowing my stalker tendencies. “I always drive past your apartment on my way home from work,” I whisper.

“Oh,” is all she says before she goes quiet and stares out the window. I get a sinking feeling I may have just said the wrong thing.