Lucy And The Loner

And a recalcitrant tomcat.

And a ragged teddy bear.

“Sorry, lady,” he said softly. “But it looks like you’ve lost everything.”

She shook her head, squeezing the cat and the teddy bear close to her heart. “No, I haven’t,” she told him with a sad smile. “Everything I need, everything that matters most, is right here with me. Thanks to you.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said with a negligent shake of his head. “Just doing my job.”

“You have no idea what you just did.”

Her words were cryptic, but he decided that was a result of her shock at seeing her possessions go up in smoke. He shrugged off the comment and replaced his helmet, ready to rejoin the battle. Of course, he conceded, the battle now was essentially lost—her house was toast. There was nothing more he or his colleagues could do except make sure the fire was confined to the one building until they finally extinguished it.

“What’s your name?” he heard the woman ask as he turned to leave her.

“Boone,” he replied automatically. “Boone Cagney.”

“I owe you, Boone Cagney,” she told him. “I owe you big. And I always pay my debts. Always.”

He turned to look at her and shook his head, shoving his hand into a heavy glove. “You don’t owe me jack, lady. Like I said. Just doing my job.”

“Lucy,” she murmured softly.

He turned to look at her and nearly lost himself in those spectacular blue eyes. “What?”

She was still holding the cat and the bear, and for some reason, Boone was overcome by a massive wave of protectiveness. Which was really crazy. Protecting people was his job. It wasn’t something he wanted to do in his personal life, too.

“My name isn’t ‘Lady,’ ” she told him, her gaze steady and dry-eyed. “It’s Lucy. Lucy Dolan.”

“Well, Lucy Dolan,” he said, forcing himself to look away from her amazing eyes, “you need to get on that ambulance and go to the hospital, just to be on the safe side. And you might want to get your cat to a vet, just to be sure. But you don’t owe me anything.”

“Oh, yes I do,” she countered. “And you can’t imagine how huge the debt is. I don’t know how I’m going to repay you, but I will. Somehow, some way, I’ll settle the debt.” When he turned to look at her again, she nodded sagely and vowed further, “I promise you that, Boone Cagney. I promise you that.”

Two

Lucy nudged a black, sodden, still-smoldering lump with the toe of her borrowed sneaker, and wondered what the sooty blob had been before succumbing to the fire. The teapot her mother had ordered from England and loved so much? The box that had held her father’s fishing lures? The piggy bank full of quarters her grandmother had given her for her twelfth birthday? It was impossible to tell.

She tilted her head to the right to contemplate the object once more, squeezed her eyes shut to fight back the tears that threatened, and inevitably replayed in her mind the events of the night once more.

So much of what had happened was just a blur of unrecalled chaos now, and she guessed there were some things she would never quite fully remember. She supposed she was lucky neither she nor Mack had been hurt beyond a little smoke inhalation and the jerky handling necessary to save their lives. Ultimately, confident she was perfectly all right, Lucy had declined the complementary ride to the hospital that was evidently the consolation prize when one’s house burned to the ground. But she’d made an appointment with the vet for Mack this afternoon.

Perfectly all right, she repeated to herself. Oh, sure. She was perfectly all right. Just fine and dandy. Hey, she wasn’t going to let a little something like losing all her worldly possessions spoil her day. No way. She shivered and tried not to think about how badly this whole episode could have turned out if it hadn’t been for the big blond firefighter.

What was his name again? she wondered. Oh, yeah, Boone Cagney. Boone Cagney who had emerged from smoke and fire to carry her and Mack to safety, then hopped back up on his big red truck to disappear into the night. Without a word, without a trace, without even realizing the magnitude of what he had done.

Lucy sighed deeply and stared at the sparse remains of her house. Gone. Everything. Just like that. The track and field hockey trophies from high school that had lined her bedroom windowsills like soldiers. The airplane models she had built so passionately as a child. Her favorite pair of blue jeans—the ones it had taken four full years to get faded just the way she liked them.

Odd, the things people felt wistful about once those things were gone. And now Lucy had nothing.

Actually, that wasn’t true, she reminded herself. As she had told Boone Cagney, she did still possess the two things that were most important to her in the world—Mack and Stevie. And, of course, there was the truck she’d just bought a few months before and that she’d never been able to fit in the cluttered, cramped garage. But her house, her furniture, her clothes, and everything else she had ever owned—all the physical trappings that made Lucy Dolan Lucy Dolan—all that was gone forever.

She hugged the teddy bear tighter to her, rubbing her chin over the worn spot on top of his head that had become worn by that same gesture for thirty-four years, and wondered how she was going to take care of Mack—not to mention herself—now that she had nothing else left.

“Lucy?”

She turned at the sound of her name to find her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Palatka, wringing her arthritic hands in worry. It was she who had made Lucy put on the sneakers some time ago, but the older woman had been unable to get her young neighbor to do much more in the way of self-preservation. Lucy was still wearing the clothes she’d managed to throw on before making her escape, but she was only now beginning to realize that the T-shirt and boxer shorts were damp and cold and offered no protection from the chill morning air. In spite of that, she scarcely noted the goose bumps mottling her flesh.

“Come to the house and have some breakfast, dear,” Mrs. Palatka said. “You need something to warm you up.”

The white-haired, warm-hearted woman looped a surprisingly sturdy arm around Lucy’s waist and squeezed hard. Mrs. Palatka hadn’t changed out of her night clothes yet, either, and beneath her winter coat fluttered a red flowered muumuu emblazoned here and there with big purple letters that spelled out, Aloha from Waikiki! Coupled with her huge, purple, fuzzy bedroom slippers, limp from the morning dew, she looked almost as much the part of a refugee as Lucy did.

“Come on,” she said again. “You’re going to catch your death out here. You need a hot shower and some hot food. And you can borrow some of my clothes until you get settled.”

Recalling that Mrs. Palatka’s wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of synthetic Capri pants and fluorescent halter tops for the full-figured gal, Lucy battled a smile. “That’s okay, Mrs. P.,” she told her neighbor. “I keep my work clothes in the truck. They’ll do for now.”

Wordlessly, she collected a few things from the cab of her pickup, then allowed herself to be led to the house next door. She listened passively to the soothing words her neighbor offered about thank God no one had been hurt and it was a good thing Lucy had insurance and tomorrow was another day and everything would work out fine, just wait and see.

She put herself on automatic pilot and let Mrs. Palatka ply her with hotcakes and sausages and coffee. Then she mechanically showered, letting the hot cascade pelt her back, watching with an odd melancholy as the black, sooty water swirled down the drain. She pulled a faded green, hooded sweatshirt over her head and stepped into a pair of equally faded, baggy denim overalls, donned her work boots, and felt a little better. Only when Lucy was seated on her neighbor’s couch with nothing more demanding to do than stare out into space did the enormity of her situation finally register.

She had no place to go. No one to turn to.

Except for Mack, Lucy was completely alone in the world. She was an only child, having been adopted as a toddler, and her parents had died within a few years of each other by the time she was thirty-one. With only a handful of cousins she’d met maybe two or three times in her life scattered on the other side of the country, Lucy essentially had no family left. And the Arlington, Virginia, house where she’d grown up, the only house she’d ever really known, was nothing now but a pile of ash.

All she had left was Mack, who had pretty much been her only family for more than three years—ever since he’d shown up as a shivering, soggy handful of skin and bones at her back door, following a monstrous thunderstorm the morning after her mother’s funeral.

Lucy had taken his timely appearance to be a sign. As silly as it might sound to others, she’d always had the feeling that Providence had given her Mack to love and care for, because she’d had no one else left for that after her mother’s death.

That was why she owed such a huge debt to the firefighter who had rescued him. By running back into a blazing house, Boone Cagney had saved the only living creature in the world Lucy needed and loved, the only living creature in the world who needed her and loved her in return. Without Mack, her life would be hollow, joyless and lonely. Boone Cagney had saved Lucy’s family. He had saved her life.

She inhaled a broken, battered sigh and released it in a shudder of breath. From nowhere Mack jumped up onto the couch and bumped his head against her elbow, then nuzzled close before curling up in her lap. Lucy smiled and rubbed her hand along his back and under his throat, and the thrumming of his steady purr reassured her some.

As long as she had Mack, she told herself, everything would be okay. Somehow, some way, she’d put her life back together again. She’d just have to force herself to focus on the future and not dwell on the past. Piece of cake, right?

She sighed furtively and decided not to think about it for now. What consumed her thoughts instead was the huge debt she owed to Boone Cagney. And although Lucy prided herself in the fact that she always paid her debts, the settlement of this one eluded her. Everything she owned was gone. Her financial savings were meager at best. Whatever she received for her house from the insurance settlement was going to have to buy and outfit a new place for her to live.

All she had was a tattered teddy bear whose inherent value would be useless to anyone but her, and Mack, with whom she would never part, no matter how grave the debt. She simply had nothing to offer the big, blond firefighter who’d saved Mack’s life, she realized morosely. Unless, of course, she wanted to give him herself. But why would he want something like that? No one else ever had.

The hand stroking Mack’s back gradually slowed, then stilled altogether as a hazy idea rooted itself in her brain. Actually, she thought, that just might work. There was a way Lucy could repay Boone for everything he had done for her. There was something she could give him that would settle the debt in some small way.

She could give him herself. Sort of.

Now all she had to do was figure out how to wrap herself up all nice and neat and make him accept her small token of gratitude. Unfortunately, Boone Cagney didn’t seem like the kind of man who was open to receiving gifts, whether they were owed him or not.

“So what do you think, Mack?” she asked the cat who had moved into her lap, tucked his legs up under himself, and curled his tail around his body quite contentedly.

Mack opened one eye, clearly disinterested, then closed it again, sighed with much satisfaction and purred louder.

Lucy thought some more as she rubbed Mack behind the ear. “I guess if he’s not the kind of guy who accepts things easily,” she murmured, “then I’ll just have to be a bit more persuasive than usual.”