Of course she was no longer looking at him the way she used to. She’d learned to temper her emotions. And she’d gotten good at it, too, because she was staring right at him and he had absolutely no idea what she was thinking.

She wore his sweats, which swam on her. Covered from chin to toe, she was now shapeless, which was good. Now maybe he could forget how she’d looked when he’d first flicked on the light, when her thin scrubs had been drenched through and clinging to her curves. “Warmer?” he asked.

“Yes. Thanks.” She narrowed in on the jar in his hand. “Breakfast of champions?”

He turned the jar in his palm and read the ingredients. “Hey, it’s got five percent of my daily required protein. Practically a vitamin.”

She actually smiled, and whoa baby, that was new. He hadn’t seen many smiles out of her in their high school years. She’d been too shy, too reserved. The smile transformed her face, and while he stared stupidly at her, she came close and read over his shoulder. “It’s ninety-five percent fat, Jase.”

Jase. No one had called him that since…well, since her, and he laughed, his first in a good long time. “Ready to roll?”

“Yeah. Listen-” She broke off to glance over his shoulder, at the window above the sink, and her entire body went tense. “Move!” she cried, adding a shove packed with surprising strength for a little thing, taking them both down to the tile floor with a bone-jarring thud.

Above them the kitchen window shattered, spraying in glass and wind and water, all of which rained down over the top of them.

Jason managed not to bash his head on the floor as he circled his arms around Lizzy, trying to cushion her fall but not quite succeeding. Lying there flat on his back with her sprawled over the top of him, he tightened his grip when she gasped and wriggled. “Don’t move,” he demanded. “The glass.” He slid his fingers into her hair and stared up at her, searching her face. “Are you okay?”

She craned her neck to look behind them, where he’d been standing, where the majority of the glass had hit. Rain was flying in freely now, pushed by the brutal wind. The branch that had broken the window shimmied and danced in the opening. “That almost got you,” she breathed.

“Well, it didn’t, thanks to you.” He turned her head back to his. “And do you ever answer a question?”

“I’m fine. And you’re not,” she said, pointing to where blood was blooming through the material of his shirt from a slice on his upper arm. She started to push herself up but her grimace tipped him off and he held her still, reaching for her hand, which was also cut.

He sat up, which meant that she was sitting, too, straddling him. In the back of his mind he registered the fact that it was a very nice position to be in as he ran his gaze over her carefully, looking for-“Damn.” Another cut. Gently he ran a finger over her cheekbone, which was beginning to bleed. “Just a nick, though.”

“I’m okay.” Using nothing but thigh muscles, she stood, then reached down with her uninjured hand to pull him up. Very carefully she brushed the glass from him, until he grabbed her wrist and moved them both from the shattered window, back into the living room. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the couch, going for his first-aid kit from his bag.

“I will if you will.”

“So you’re still stubborn,” he noted, amused at both of them.

“As a mule. And I’m the nurse, remember?” She grabbed the first-aid kit from him as he sat next to her.

“I’m a trained medic.” He grabbed it back, holding it over her head.

“So, what, brute strength trumps brains?”

“Look at you,” he murmured. “You’ve grown claws. I’m so proud.”

“I call it a backbone.”

His smile faded. “Ah, Lizzy. You always had that.”

And while she stared at him in surprise, he got to work cleaning, gauzing and wrapping up her palm with medical tape. He swiped her cheek with antiseptic, then let her repeat the favor on him.

“If we’re done playing doctor…” she murmured when she’d finished.

He had no idea what it said about him that he loved this new version of her, all tough and no longer so reserved. Once upon a time she’d stirred protectiveness and affection within him, and definitely the normal horniness of a teenage boy. All of which he’d hidden.

The woman she’d grown into stirred a hell of a lot more. But what shocked him was that he didn’t feel like hiding from any of it.

“What are you grinning about?” she asked.

Other than he had his first hard-on in eight weeks? “I like this Lizzy.”

“You don’t know this Lizzy.”

True. But as he looked out the window into the sheer destruction of the day, he had a feeling he was going to get to know her pretty quickly. “I knew you once.”

“For a minute.”

“Longer than that,” he chided gently. “We were friends.”

She laughed. “Friends? We weren’t friends, Jason. I did your English papers, and you…”

“I…?”

“You were a jerk.”

“Not all the time.”

“All the time.”

“Come on. What about the day I taught you to kiss after that idiot Paul Drucker said you kissed like a poodle?”

“I try not to remember that day,” she said bitterly.

“I don’t know. It was a pretty good day for me.”

She turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“About which, the fact that we kissed behind the bleachers until you had it right? Or how afterward, you-”

She sent him a glacial glance over her shoulder. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.” She paused, then let out a sigh. “But thanks for teaching me how to kiss.”

“You are most welcome.”

“You know…” She narrowed her eyes. “Now that I think about it, the whole teaching process took a lot longer than it should have.”

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “You kissed like heaven, Lizzy, from the get-go. Paul was an idiot and an ass.”

“So you only pretended I needed kissing tutoring? Why?”

“Hello, I was seventeen.”

With an annoyed sound, she walked away.

Yeah, he’d been an ass, but only because of what had happened next, the thing she didn’t want to talk about, and for the first time in all these years, he remembered, and felt regret. “Lizzy-”

“I’m going.”

“We’ve been through this. If you go, I go.”

“I’m sure you had other plans today.”

“Yeah,” he agreed readily enough. “I had a whole list-sleep, food and sex.” He smiled tightly. “Not that I was going to get any of that. There’s nothing good to eat here, and as it’s just me, sex wouldn’t be much fun.”

She looked at him. “Is this what you do in the Guard?” she asked. “Rescue people?”

“A lot, yeah.” Or in the case of Matt, not.

“Are you going back to it?”

“That seems to be the million-dollar question.”

She let out a half smile, full of sympathy. “Still decompressing?”

“Yeah.” More than she could possibly know, and it was a reminder, a cold slap of hard reality that he had decisions to make for a future he didn’t want to face. So it was him who turned away this time, needing to break eye contact, needing to not let her in his head.

She was quiet as he bent to put on his shoes. “When we had the big fires here last year, I worked four straight days without much more than a few catnaps. My entire life was the E.R., treating the firefighters, the victims, and when I finally got off duty and out into the parking lot where I’d left my car, I had the weirdest thing happen.”

He straightened. “What?”

“I broke down.” She lifted a shoulder. “I just sat on the curb and cried like a baby for half an hour. I have no idea why.”

He could picture it. Hell, he’d lived it. “That was sheer exhaustion, Lizzy.”

“Yes. After only four days of hell.”

Knowing where she was going with this, he shook his head. “Don’t.”

She walked toward him. “I have to.” Her gaze touched over each of his features, feeling like a caress. “I felt that way after only four days of adrenaline and fear and craziness, so I can only imagine what it’s like for you after years.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Very fine.”

Her words made him want to smile but he held back because she didn’t stop moving until they were toe to toe, until she’d once again put a hand on his chest.

Clearly she wasn’t finished with hacking at his hard-earned self-control.

“I’m sure there’s a transition period,” she said very quietly, giving him something he hadn’t had any of and didn’t want because it ripped at that control more than anything else could-sympathy. “Between what you’ve been doing, and being here…” Her hand slid over his chest until she laid her palm right over his heart, which was not nearly as steady as he’d have liked. “I imagine there’s a disconnect. A gap.”

She had no idea. “The size of the equator,” he agreed, not thrilled that his voice came out low and hoarse.

She was quiet another moment, then reached for his hand. “Don’t worry, Jase, I’m sure it’ll come to you, what you want to do.”

Well, he was glad she was sure. Because he wasn’t.

The moment broken, she dropped her hands from him and turned away.

He slipped into his rain gear while she did the same. He put two first-aids kits inside his backpack and shouldered it.

“Two?” she asked.

“Who knows what we’ll need.”

“There’s only a couple of inches so far.”

“Yeah, but even one inch in the wrong place can cause flash flooding, which can bring walls of water ten to twenty feet high. Trust me, there’s a whole town out there thinking this is no big deal, but it can turn into one in seconds. Plus, if we find Cece and she’s in labor-”

“When.” Her voice was unyielding as she corrected him. “When we find her.”

“If she’s out there,” he promised, “we’ll find her.”