Authors: Jennifer Bernard
“By the way,” said Fred as they moved awkwardly toward the exit, with the two other firefighters leading the way. Every little bump and jostle brought fresh pain with it. “I assume you heard everything Lizzie said on the radio. She really loves you, and if you don’t feel the same way, you’d better be straight with her. I’m not saving your ass so you can break my sister’s heart.”
“I love her, you moron,” gasped Mulligan. “Now shut up.”
“If you love her, you probably want to marry her, but let me just warn you that we don’t let just anyone marry into the Breen family. You’re going to have to pass some tests first.”
“Huh?” Mulligan grunted. But listening to Fred babble on had the benefit of distracting him from the pain.
“Yes. Tests. You’re going to have to come for Christmas dinner. None of that chicken-shit ‘I don’t do Christmas’ excuse. You’ll come and you’ll put a smile on that ugly mug and you’ll stand under the mistletoe and let all my great-aunts kiss you. It’s a rite of passage.”
“Who . . . else?” Mulligan managed.
“Who else has married into the Breen family? Well, no one, so far. Rachel’s exempt because a building collapsed on her. Oh . . . wait . . . I guess you’re exempt too. This is a strange coincidence, come to think of it. Do the Breens always have to dig through rubble to find their mates? I can’t wait to tell Trent, Zee, and Jack about this. ‘You can’t marry anyone until they survive a building collapse.’ Hell of a thing to put in a dating profile.”
Above Mulligan’s head, Vader was laughing his ass off. “You’re an idiot, Fred.”
Very gingerly, they maneuvered him past a huge pile of concrete that must have once been a wall. “Hey, I’m not making this up. Look at the facts. May. Earthquake hits. Rachel’s trapped. We get engaged. December. Roof collapses on Mulligan’s ass. He declares his love for my sister. Don’t you see the pattern?”
“Only if they get engaged.”
Mulligan, fighting off the pain in his shoulder, lifted his radio to his mouth. “Lizzie,” he said. “Is Lizzie there?”
The stern voice of Captain Brody replied. “This channel is reserved for fireground operations. How are you doing, Mulligan?”
“Not bad. Festive. Got a question for Lizzie. Kind of important. Feeling faint.”
“Shoot. She’s standing right here.”
“Ask her . . . marry me.”
“You can ask her yourself as soon as you get out here.”
“Hurts.” Now that he was on his way out of this disaster, and pain was pounding through his body like a stampede of elephants, he was filled with terror that he wouldn’t get a chance to say everything he wanted to Lizzie.
As always, Brody got it. “I understand. I’m putting her on.”
A rustling sound, then Lizzie’s fresh, worried voice sang in his ear like a morning breeze. “Mulligan? Everything’s going to be okay. The ambulance is here, everyone’s ready for you. Just stay calm and let Fred and Vader do their job.”
“Marry,” he said firmly. He had to get that word out if it was the last thing he did. “Want to marry you.”
“Really? You do?”
Why did she sound so surprised? “Love you. Could die.”
“You’re not going to die.” Her confidence actually reassured him, and the pain subsided just a bit. “And maybe we should talk about this when you’re more yourself. And everyone isn’t listening.”
“Don’t care who’s listening. Want to marry you. Right away.”
“You have to go to the hospital first.” She sounded amused. His Lizzie loved to laugh, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than making her laugh—except making her scream.
“After? Right after?”
“You’re in an awful hurry for someone who kept putting on the brakes not too long ago.”
“I was stupid. Love you. Marry.”
Finally, there it was . . . a whispered “Yes.” The tension in his body released, and a great weight seemed to lift off his body.
“Thank you,” he whispered back. “See you soon.” He gritted his teeth against another wave of pain, but this one he could take, because he’d just spotted the first glimmer of outside light. They were almost free of the Mistletoe, so close he felt a drift of air against his face, like the brush of an angel’s wing. He closed his eyes, thinking of Clarence. Lizzie made a damn good Clarence, which meant that he had his own personal angel, one right here on earth with him, and he was never going to let her go again, no matter how many great-aunts he had to kiss under the mistletoe.
Something solid brushed against his face, and he pursed his lips in a kiss, just in case it was one of Lizzie’s great-aunts. He opened heavy eyes, and saw that his face mask was gone and an oxygen mask was being lowered over his mouth and nose. He heard shouting, and pounding footsteps, and the distant roar of flames. Voices close by, asking him questions. The world was a dark, rushing blur.
Panic flashed through him. A paramedic he didn’t recognize was trying to adjust the oxygen mask, but he pushed the guy away and tried to sit up.
Wild, he looked around for Lizzie. “Lizzie,” he called, the cry wrenched from the bottom of his soul. He needed her. Right this second. “Lizzie!”
“Right here.” His beloved girl appeared, elbowing the paramedic out of the way. Her friend Stacy was at her heels. “I’ll take him. I have my credentials. You can check with anyone.”
“I can vouch for her,” said Fred, jogging next to the gurney on which Mulligan now lay.
“So will I,” said Stacy. “I’m an intern at Good Sam.”
Lizzie settled him back on the gurney and fixed the oxygen mask into place. He drank her in, so real and alive. So much better than Dream Lizzie, although he’d always remember that Lizzie with fondness. She was checking his pulse as she walked alongside the gurney. So beautiful, her merry little face all serious and businesslike.
“BP seventy over forty,” she muttered. “Skin pale and clammy. All signs point to internal bleeding. Anyone have any idea where?”
Stacy ran an expert eye over him. “My best guess is a broken femur with internal hemorrhaging. If it was something in the abdominal cavity, he’d probably be dead by now.”
Lizzie forced a smile, meeting his eyes above the mask. “Mulligan knows all about internal injuries. And he’s not about to let them get in his way, right?”
He nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from her glimmering dark eyes. Was she crying? She shouldn’t cry. Everything was going to be fine now. He’d bet his life on it.
His miraculous, wonderful life.
W
HEN
M
ULLIGAN WOKE
up again, for a moment he thought he was back inside Under the Mistletoe. Christmas decorations twinkled and glowed from every inch of the little hospital room. Fake boughs of holly with insistently red berries festooned the doorway, jolly Santas grinned from the opposite wall, and a mini Christmas tree, about two feet tall, twinkled merrily in the corner.
He gave the little tree a menacing glare. “Where were you when I was trapped in that hellhole? I could have pushed you off with my little finger.”
The tree did nothing more than glitter innocently, its white twinkle lights mute as stars.
From the notations on the whiteboard on the opposite wall—underneath the Santas—he saw that it was now Christmas Day, and that the nurse on duty was named Blair. Poor Blair, forced to work on Christmas.
Wait . . . Christmas? Last he knew, it was Christmas Eve Eve. He’d been in the hospital for two days. Where was Lizzie? What time was it? What was wrong with him? A huge bandage covered his lower abdomen, his left leg was in a cast, and a long tube ran from his arm to an IV drip. His shoulder didn’t hurt much anymore; that was one blessing.
He shoved aside the panic and looked around for clues. There must be a call button somewhere. On the little side table next to the bed, a folded piece of paper caught his eye. His name was scrawled on the front, inside a heart. A wisp of shrubbery pinned it to the table.
Leaning to the side caused a stab of pain in his stomach. He ignored it and managed to slide the note between his fingers.
My darling, wonderful Mulligan, I had to duck out to go to the Breen family dinner, since my great-aunts will throw a fit if I’m not there. But I’ll be back as soon as I can, with Christmas treats to share. If you wake up and see this note, know that you’re going to be fine. You fractured your thigh and nearly ruptured your spleen. They want you to stay put in the hospital for a few more nights, but that’s okay because they’ve been letting me sleep there with you. I love you so much. Oops, there goes a tear, and I promised myself I’d stop crying because everything is fine now. Okay, Freddie’s getting impatient. I have to go. See you soon. Merry Christmas. Your Lizzie.
P.S. Who is Clarence? The surgical team said you kept muttering something about Clarence. Dog? Friend? Secret-agent identity????
P.P.S. I still love you, despite the whole Clarence thing.
Exhausted from the effort of reading, Mulligan rested his head back on the hospital pillow and let out a long, low laugh. How would he ever explain what he’d experienced at Under the Mistletoe? Would it be enough just to tell Lizzie he’d realized how much he loved her?
L
IZZIE WAS USED
to the stupendously fit, ferociously strong, street-tough, bad-boy Mulligan. Seeing him laid low in a hospital bed, pale and exhausted, made her heart hurt.
“Oh, Mulligan.” She kneeled next to him and stroked his hand with a light touch, not to wake him, but to reassure herself that he still lived. His dark eyelashes lifted and his intense dark eyes met hers, and all her worries fell away. The Under the Mistletoe fire hadn’t extinguished the Mulligan fire. It still burned as fierce as ever.
“Merry Christmas,” he said with an impish smile, tugging her toward him. “I tried to sleep through it, but no such luck.”
He took her face in his big hands and kissed her deeply. Her head spun with the sheer delight of feeling his lips against hers again. When she emerged from the kiss, they were both breathless and he had to lie back down.
“So it was all a big plot to avoid Christmas dinner at the Breens?” she teased him. “Should have known. You could have been making out with my Great-Aunt Lucy.”
“There’s only one woman on my make-out list,” he told her. “Forevermore. Great-Aunt Lucy’s going to have to find herself another fireman.”
Lizzie ran her hand along his forearm, the sparse dark hairs tickling the pads of her fingers. “I know you didn’t necessarily mean everything you said when you came out of the building. It was a crisis situation. Things might look different now that it’s over.”
“Yes, that’s true. They do look different. I have you right here where you belong. And I meant every single word. Do you think I’d be so scared of a little rubble that I’d lose my mind? I’m insulted. You should know me better.” His look of outrage made her laugh.
“But Mulligan . . . you were talking about getting married. I think there are some things you should know before we get that serious.”
“Babe, it’s too late. I’m serious as a clambake. It took me a while to get there. But I’m all in, Lizzie. There’s no going back now. Unless you don’t want to marry me. That’s different. If that’s what you’re saying, brace yourself for an all-out, nonstop, old-fashioned courtship, Mulligan-style. You know, motorcycle rides to drive-in movie theaters and spontaneous trips to Vegas.”
“No, no, that’s not the problem. You don’t have to take me to Vegas. Well, you can, and I’m sure that would be really fun, because I have fun whenever I’m with you, but there’s something else . . .”
This was the hard part. God, she was such a coward. Why had she left this part until now? She should have told him ages ago, so he could have chosen to walk away without hurting either of them.
She couldn’t look at him, but instead fixed her gaze on the browned skin of his arm, with its tight, sloping cords of muscle. “I . . . had cancer.” He opened his mouth to respond, but she stopped him with an upheld hand. She had to get this out before she lost her nerve.
“When I was ten, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I was really tired all the time and didn’t want to play, so my mother knew something was wrong. You know me. Tomboy all the way.” She pulled in another breath. “I was lucky because they caught it early. I had chemotherapy for two months, but I didn’t have to have radiation. Technically, I’m in remission, but they haven’t detected any abnormal cells for a long time. I still have to get tested regularly, and I have a greater chance of developing other cancers as a result of the treatment. But the main thing is . . . I don’t know if I can have children. Chemo can affect fertility. Which means the sooner I have kids, the better my chances. So I don’t know how to put this exactly. I may not be able to have children, but the sooner I try, the better. I know it’s complicated, but since you mentioned marriage, I thought you should know—”
“Oh, Lizzie.” He cupped her chin in his hand and forced her to meet his eyes, which seared her with that patented Mulligan intensity. “Whatever you need, I’m there. You want to get pregnant right away, I’m there. You want to adopt instead, I’m there. I want you.
All
of you. And you get all of me. Fighter, remember? This isn’t anything we can’t deal with.”
Tears rushed to her eyes. She blinked them away so she could focus on Mulligan’s tough, tender face. “Really? But it’s so contradictory. It’s either have kids right away or be okay with not having any.”
“It’s not contradictory. It’s you. And me. It’s where we’re at. I love you, and I want you to be happy. Why is that contradictory?”
“Well . . .” She’d spent so much time worrying about this issue that she couldn’t just let it go. “The last time I mentioned the possibility of you being a father, you went a little nuts.”
“Yes. And I’m pretty sure you called me an idiot.”
Her face burned. “Sorry.”
“No, you were right. I was pushing you away, but not because I didn’t love you. Because I was sure you deserved someone better than me. I’m done with that now. No one else is getting you except me.”
The possessiveness in his voice gave her a giddy rush. She laid her head on his chest, basking in the reassuringly steady beat of his heart. “Maybe you’re not always an idiot.”