Every Little Kiss Read Online Free

building. It was all she could do to smile and thank her rescuers. She wanted to collapse onto the floor and kiss the solid ground beneath her feet.
    “Casey!” Her director, Ingrid, was racing down the wood-planked hallway to get to her. “Oh my God, Rolf called me just as I was dropping Heidi back off at school. I got here as soon as I could. I was so worried!” Whole sections of Ingrid’s white-blonde hair had come loose from her ponytail. A number-two pencil was tucked behind her ear, its yellow wood indented with teeth marks.
    “I’m fine,” Casey managed. “I just don’t like small spaces much.”
    “What an ordeal. Take the rest of the day off. Please.”
    “I’m sure I’ll be all right.”
    “Just do it, okay? It’ll make me feel better, anyway.”
    She hugged Casey just as Abe’s voice sliced through the commotion. He was directly behind her. “Get the ladder hauled up. Talk to the mechanic. I want it logged in.”
    “Yes, Lu.” The firefighters scurried to get their tasks finished.
    “Abe!” Ingrid said, waving at him. “You saved our girl here. Thank you.”
    Casey was momentarily confused as to how these two were acquainted. Abe had been tutored at Robot Lit years ago. Had he stayed in touch with the staff?
    “You guys know each other?” she asked dumbly.
    “Abe’s a good friend to this place,” Ingrid said.
    Recognition dawned. Casey hadn’t been around nonprofits very much, but she was beginning to understand that friend meant donor.
    Abe smiled at Ingrid—big enough to show two rows of gloriously straight white teeth. Casey’s heart jerked. “Happy to help,” he said. “You two take care.”
    He started off, radioing more commands. He wasn’t leaving, was he? The thought had her stomach clenching unexpectedly. Casey gave Ingrid a hang-on-a-minute gesture.
    She trotted after Abe. “Thank you,” she said, sliding in front of him to stop his forward march. “You kept me calm down there and I’m grateful. You were great. Are great, I mean. At your job, that is.” Her brain still felt tangled, her words twisted into each other.
    Oh, God, what was she doing? She should have just let him go. She was making an ass of herself.
    If Abe minded her babbling, he didn’t show it. In fact, his eyes flashed with emotion and, if Casey didn’t know better, she’d say that look was filled with warmth. Maybe even something hotter—a light closer to flame.
    “Happy to help.” Then he tipped his helmet at her and walked away, barking orders at the other firefighters. The sound of his fireman’s boots on the warehouse’s wood floors grew more and more distant.
    The connection she’d felt between them stretched thin as he retreated, like taffy pulled too far apart. She felt a pang of hollowness, an unexpected disappointment. Did he really have to walk away like that? He’d been so comforting, so calming, in the elevator, telling her about Robot Lit and the German city he loved. Underneath all those layers of fireman’s gear, she thought she’d glimpsed his tender side, and it left her wanting more.
    She thought maybe he’d seen something in her that he wanted more of, too. The way he’d pulled her close, the way he’d murmured into her hair.
    Apparently he was just doing his job.
    She pulled in a breath. It was just as well. Abe Cameron was a stranger to her. In her frazzled state in the elevator, she’d simply contrived a connection to a man she barely knew. Even worse, she’d turned him into something he clearly wasn’t—gentle, caring, even sexy, a hero —and when the hard light of day hit her again, she’d been left staring at something that had never been.
    It’s all for the best. She wasn’t looking for someone whose lifelong dream was to visit an orderly German town. Practicality was not on her list of sexy attributes. She had enough of that in her own life, thank you very much.
    Which reminded her…
    She pulled out her phone and typed an e-mail to herself, a note