Fully Ignited (Boston Fire #3) (9 page)

She wasn’t sure if he meant being around all the Kincaids, or the strain of keeping up the appearance they hadn’t recently had sex.
I enjoyed tonight.

I wish I hadn’t promised Rick I’d help him with a few things around his place tomorrow. I want to see you again.

She smiled, though she wished the same thing.
You’ll see me Tuesday.

It only took a few seconds for him to respond
. You won’t be naked.

Not on Tuesday.

Wednesday?

Some of her anxiety about how their tour on Tuesday would go had been eased by their success at getting through a family dinner without anybody seeming suspicious, so she didn’t hesitate.
Yes.

Good. The guys have the game paused for me, so I have to go. Good night.

Sweet dreams.

After setting a reminder on her phone to text Steph at a time the pizza shop was typically slow, she stretched out on her couch and hit the TV’s power button on the remote control. There was no way she could go to bed after eating all that food, so she flipped through the channels, looking for something to catch her eye.

When she landed on a hockey game and some of the guys were wearing black and gold, she stopped channel surfing. It must be the game Scott was watching, which made her smile. Over the years she’d survived a lot of sports games on station televisions. Being a fan seemed to mean a lot of yelling and hand waving and cursing, so she’d usually used game time for catching up on paperwork or doing anything she could find to do in a room farthest from the TV. The E-59 guys, though, were taking it as a personal challenge to make her a hockey fan and they spent a lot of free time trying to tutor her.

After watching it for a few minutes, she laughed at herself and starting hitting the channel-up button again. It was hard enough to keep track of the guys flying around on the ice. She had no hope of figuring out where the puck was and the words the announcers were using still meant nothing to her.

After settling on a disaster movie she’d seen enough times that the fact she’d missed the first twenty minutes didn’t matter, she pulled the knit throw off the back of the couch and got comfortable.

Her eyelids got heavy fast, though, and as she drifted off, her last thought was that she had to remember to ask Scott what kind of movies he liked.

EIGHT

S
COTT
FROWNED
AT
the puzzle piece in his hand, then looked back at the picture on the box lid. “I think some dipshit mixed up the pieces of this puzzle with another one.”

Jeff leaned over on the couch to look at the piece. “That looks like part of a Santa hat.”

“We’re doing a fall foliage puzzle.”

Jeff shrugged. “Maybe it’s like one of those
Where’s Waldo
things and there’s a Santa hat hiding in the leaves.”

“Or maybe some dipshit mixed up the puzzles,” Scott repeated under his breath.

“I’ve done that foliage puzzle about nineteen times,” Chris said from across the room, where he’d been pretending to nap in a chair. “There’s no Santa hat. It’s probably the pointy part of a red leaf.”

Scott tossed the piece back into the pile and picked up another one. It was a blur of red and orange, like 80 percent of the other pieces. He really hated jigsaw puzzles that were mostly scenery. “We need to put a puzzle fund jar on the table and buy some new ones.”

Some tours, they busted their asses for hours without any rest beyond the short breaks necessary to keep them going. Most varied, with some medical emergencies and accidents and people smelling smoke, but plenty of downtime for meals, rest and getting stuff done around the station. And then there were days like today, when it seemed everybody in their neighborhood was feeling good, obeying traffic laws and not setting stuff on fire. They were good days for everybody but, holy crap, did the hours drag on when the chores were all checked off and the alarm didn’t sound.

“Hey, Scotty, Ellen wants to set you up on a date,” Jeff said.

“I’m not interested. Tell your wife I said thanks, though.”

“She says this new girl at work would be perfect for you. Her dad’s a firefighter in Philly, so she knows how it goes. Came up here for college and plans to stay. She’s really pretty, smart, makes good money, and wants to get married and have kids in a few years.”

“She sounds great, but I’m not into dating right now. Which you know.”

“Yeah, but she’s not the women you were dating when you decided to take a break. She’s the kind of woman you’re looking for.”

Scott was glad Jamie had gone down to the second floor to do paperwork because he’d have a hard time not looking her way to see her reaction to this conversation. “I’m not looking for any women right now.”

“I like pretty and smart women who make good money,” Grant said from the kitchen doorway.

“Yeah, but my wife thinks you’re a shithead because you flaked out on the charity breakfast last summer and you were supposed to be in charge of the bacon.”

Grant sighed. “I was sick.”

“You were hungover. And you can fudge a lot when it comes to breakfast, but you can’t fake your way out of a bacon issue. It’s bacon.” Jeff pressed a yellow leaf into place in the puzzle. “Besides, her friend wants a guy who’s ready to settle down. Rings. Strollers.”

With a grimace, Grant disappeared back into the kitchen, which Scott hoped would end the issue. He didn’t want to date Ellen’s friend and Ellen wouldn’t want her friend to date Grant or Gavin, who wasn’t any more ready to settle down. Everybody else was taken, so both companies were a dead end on the road to finding Ellen’s friend a husband.

“It’s been a while since you talked about going out, Scotty,” Jeff said. “You have to go on first dates to know who you want to go on a second date with, you know what I mean?”

He already knew he wanted to go on a second date with the woman who was one floor beneath them, either doing paperwork or asleep at her desk, but he couldn’t say that. It was awkward because, if he hadn’t met Jamie, it would have been in his nature to at least take Ellen’s smart, pretty friend who made good money to dinner and they all knew it.

“Or maybe he’s already found somebody to date and he’s not telling us,” Chris said, and Scott looked up from the puzzle to frown at him. Was he just messing with him, or was he fishing for information?

“Why wouldn’t I tell you?” he asked, neither confirming or denying he actually
had
found a woman to date and wasn’t telling them.

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s ninety-seven and you think she’ll leave you her fortune.”

Scott laughed. “If you don’t tell anybody, I’ll buy you a pony. And on that note, I’m sick of this puzzle. I’m going to go find Aidan. He said he was going to check the tanks and never came back.”

“He’s probably hiding in the cage, talking to Lydia,” Gavin said as he walked out of the weight room with a towel draped around his neck. At least, unlike the rest of them, he’d worked up a sweat today.

Scott went down one flight of stairs and paused in the narrow hallway of the second floor. The door to the office Jamie and Rick shared was closed, but he could knock. He’d have to come up with a reason to want to talk to her if Rick was in there, but if she was alone, Scott could visit for a few minutes.

But showing up in her office their first tour after sleeping together might make her change her mind about their relationship. If there was any time besides on a run she would be most conscious of the fact they worked together, it would be when they were on opposite sides of her desk.

He continued down the other flight and checked the cage where they kept the air tanks, but it was locked. Then he heard a swishing sound and walked around the back of Engine 59 to see Aidan sweeping the floor with a wide push broom.

“Busywork?”

Aidan looked up and shrugged. “I just don’t feel like sitting around today.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I can only do the same jigsaw puzzle so many times.” He went to the bench and grabbed a rag. Even though both trucks were clean, he went around theirs, rubbing the bits of chrome trim until they gleamed. The younger guys tended to do the bumpers and ignore the rest.

“Jeff was telling me Ellen wants to set me up with a new friend of hers from work.”

“You going?”

He snorted. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. Seems like you’ve got your eye on a woman already and you might hold the record for the number of girlfriends for the company, but I’ve gotta hand it to you—they were never at the same time.”

“I’m not dating anybody,” he said, feeling as if he was walking a tightrope of semantics. Technically, he wasn’t lying to his best friend. He and Jamie hadn’t actually gone on a real date yet. “I’m on a break, remember?”

Aidan hung the big broom on its hook and pulled down the smaller broom and dustpan to pick up the piles he’d made. “Here’s the thing. I’m not going to ask you any questions about a certain person that require an outright answer one way or the other because I don’t want to force you into a situation where you have to lie to me to protect somebody else. But don’t bullshit me.”

Scott looked at Aidan for a minute, remembering how much anger and betrayal he’d felt when he found out his best friend had been seeing his sister without telling him. It had almost ended their friendship, but the bond between them was too strong. Even with that blowup only about six months behind them, Scott knew there was nobody in the world he could trust like he could this guy. But there was Jamie’s trust to consider, too, so he was going to have to accept the compromise Aidan offered.

“Grant jumped at the chance to be set up with Ellen’s friend, of course,” he said, evading the issue of Jamie.

Aidan snorted. “Has she forgiven him for the bacon debacle yet?”

“Nope.”

“Can’t say as I blame her. It was the bacon.”

Scott did a final walk around the engine, eyeballing not only the chrome, but every inch of her. She was probably his first love and he never told anybody, but he was secretly relieved when their house was passed over for new trucks every year.

“So Lydia and I set a date for the wedding so Ashley will stop bugging us about it. Fourteenth of May. It’s a Saturday.”

“No shit.” Content now that there wasn’t a water spot to be found on E-59’s chrome, Scott tossed the cloth onto the workbench. “She’s really going to go through with it, huh?”

“Have I told you lately how funny you are?” Aidan folded his arms and leaned against the engine. “No? I wonder why.”

“That’s pretty quick. What, a little over a month away?”

“Ashley’s the matron of honor, of course, and she wants a killer dress for the pictures, I guess. So we either do it now or we wait until after the baby’s born.”

“And then, because she wants a killer dress, she’ll want to lose the baby weight.”

Aidan winced. “Yeah, I mentioned that during the discussion with Lydia and you shouldn’t ever say that out loud again. It’s probably safest to not even think it.”

“I love my sisters, but I also know them really well and yeah, if the dress is an issue, you’re going to want to get married sooner rather than later. Can you get a place that fast?”

“I know the guy who owns Kincaid’s Pub.”

“Seriously? You’re going to get married at our bar?” It was all well and good to not want to drop a crap load of cash on a fancy wedding, but his sister was basically going to get married at work? “Wait. Does that mean we can wear jeans and T-shirts?”

“Nice try, but no. Suits for us. The aforementioned killer dresses for the bride and her matron of honor. The bar will be closed, obviously, and done up really nice.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, really.”

Aidan nodded. “Think about it. There’s no place else in the world that means more to either of us. When we think about home and family, Lydia and I both think of the bar. All we want is a justice of the peace and a small party with our closest friends and family, so why not? And we’re going to delay the honeymoon until fall when it’s peak foliage, and then we’re going to get a cabin in northern New Hampshire and hide out for a week.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Yeah, it’s what we both want.”

“Then I’m happy for you. And I’ll try hard not to schedule anything else that day.”

Aidan snorted. “I’ll kick your ass if you do because I really want you to be my best man.”

The punch of emotion in his gut surprised the hell out of Scott. It wasn’t as if it was a surprise. They’d been best friends for so long, who else would they ask but each other? Aidan had a brother, but they weren’t the
best man
kind of close. Over the years Scott and Aidan had even made passing references to future bachelor parties. Things like “when I get married, you better have smoking hot strippers at my bachelor party” or “you should probably leave that out of your speech when I get married.”

But hearing it now, when they were adults and Aidan actually needed a best man, was different. Holy shit, Aidan Hunt was getting married.

“So you gonna be around that day?” Aidan asked when Scott didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, I’ll be around.” He reached out to shake his friend’s hand, and then pulled him in for a black-slapping hug. “I’m honored, and there’s nowhere else I’d be.”

“Your first act as my best man can be informing Tommy we’ll need to use the pool table for the buffet.”

“You rotten bastard.”

* * *

T
HERE
WAS
A
knock on the office door and Jamie looked up from her paperwork, her pulse ticking like an overwound clock. “Come in.”

When Cobb poked his head in, she felt a rush of disappointment. Yes, it would be inappropriate for Scott to come lock himself in her office with her. Yes, it would be disastrous for her plan to keep their personal relationship and their work relationship separate. But she still thought it might be him.

“Hey, Chief.”

“Where’s Gullotti?”

“In his bunk. I guess his fiancée had some evening business meetings so they talked late. With the three-hour time difference between here and San Diego, it ended up being a little
too
late for him.”

“That’s gotta be tough on a relationship. But I know her grandparents. The Broussards are good people, and I’m happy for the kids.”

It amused her to hear Rick called a kid, since he was older than all of them except Chris and Cobb himself. When she’d looked through their files prior to reporting the first day, she’d seen that Rick had been promoted over Chris because the latter hated paperwork and bureaucracy. He preferred being left alone to do his job.

“Do you want me to get Rick?” she asked.

“No, you can fill him in. I just wanted to let you guys know Danny had another appointment today and his leg’s looking real good. He’s still on track for another five to seven weeks.”

“That’s good news. I’ll let Rick know, definitely.”

“Thanks.” Cobb started to leave, but then paused. “It
is
good news. Danny’s a damn good firefighter and a great officer, but so are you. I’m bummed we only have you for a bit over a month left, and I wish E-59 could keep you both.”

She recognized it as high praise from an old-school guy like Cobb, and gave him a warm smile. “Thanks, Chief. This is a great group of guys to work with.”

“They’re inspecting the equipment right now. The lines and couplers mostly, just because they were starting to bicker like a bunch of kids with cabin fever. It’s a nice day so I told them to open the garage doors and find something to do.”

“You sent them outside to play, sir?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess I did. I would have told them to clean their rooms, but they already did that. I called them in as out of commission for an hour so they could check the line and another house can cover for us.”

They definitely couldn’t respond to an alarm when the water hoses were spread out on the ground. “I could use some fresh air myself, actually. Maybe I’ll go down and join in.”

Cobb was right, she realized as soon as she stepped into the engine bay. It was a gorgeous spring day and there was just enough of a breeze so it brought fresh air into the building. Her guys had lines laid out along the floor while the ladder company had their own equipment strewn all over their half of the garage.

“Hey, Jamie,” Grant said when he spotted her.

Through the corner of her eye, she saw Scott look up from the coupler he was checking for any defects, but she kept her gaze on the younger guy. “I heard you were all getting some fresh air, so I decided to break out of my office.”