A Fighting Chance (14 page)

“Okay.” He didn’t seem to have any more questions. “Are you hungry?”

“No, but thanks.”

Scott Kincaid walked into the kitchen, and looked at her before heading to the fridge. “What do you think?”

“Not too different from any other house, except a little cleaner.”

“He show you the lists?”

“Yeah.”

Jamie watched him pop open a soda and chug some of it, his throat working as he swallowed. She’d worked in this so-called man’s field a long time
and had had her share of attractive coworkers, so she knew her body language and expression remained totally neutral. But inside, she felt a sizzle of sexual attraction that was strong enough she knew she’d have to be careful around this guy.

He lowered the can and grimaced. “I hate this crap.”

“So why are you drinking it?” She’d caught a glimpse of the wide variety of beverages in the
refrigerator, so his choice had been deliberate.

“Looking for a caffeine and sugar double whammy. I was going to hit the bunk room for a nap, but there’s a fully involved commercial fire and if they strike more alarms, we’ll have to go.”

A sugar high wasn’t going to sustain him long, but he already knew that and
den mother
wasn’t the first impression she wanted to make. “I should probably
get out of the way, then. I guess I’ll see you guys Tuesday.”

“How’s your commute look?” Scott asked after suffering a few more gulps of the soda.

“Believe it or not, I found a place only a few blocks from here because the price was right. Boston’s not cheap, but I didn’t want roommates, so it’s just a studio. I had a bitch of a commute at my last assignment, though, so I’d live in a
closet to be able to walk to work.”

“But just temporarily,” Grant said. “Danny’s coming back.”

She didn’t take any offense, since she knew he hadn’t intended any. “The rent’s month to month instead of a lease, so if I end up back across the city, I can move again.”

Scott rinsed out his empty can and dumped it into the recycling bucket. “Guess I’ll see you Tuesday.”

“Yeah. See
you then.” Because Scott was walking away and Grant was behind her, Jamie let her gaze drop to Scott’s ass.

Fortunately, she managed to stifle the sigh of appreciation before it escaped, but she had a feeling she’d be giving herself a stern talking-to in the mirror later. Scott Kincaid might not mind being known around the neighborhood as a ladies’ man, but people tended to be harder on women.
The only reputation she cared to have was the one she’d built—a damn good firefighter who showed up, did her job well and went home.

TWO

S
COTT
PULLED
OPEN
the glass door of Kincaid’s Pub and stepped inside. His dad had chosen not to update all the old brick and wood, and the building still had antique fixtures, so it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dim lighting.

He wasn’t surprised to see it was on the slow side for a Saturday night. Besides the fact everybody was still partied out from St.
Patrick’s Day, the bar didn’t get a lot of off-the-street traffic. The plain brick building didn’t look like much, there were no neon or beer signs in the two big windows, and the only sign was a small one screwed over the door. While anybody was welcome at Kincaid’s, Scott had always gotten the feeling his dad preferred it the way it was—a local watering hole catering mostly to firefighters.

His sister Lydia was behind the U-shaped bar, and he didn’t see any sign of Ashley. After she and Danny had gotten back together, they’d spent time rebuilding their marriage. Then, shortly after she found out she was expecting their first child, Danny had gotten hurt working a fire. It was no surprise she’d been spending less and less time at the bar.

Fortunately for their father, who
believed a Kincaid should man the bar at Kincaid’s Pub, but who also didn’t want to work too hard, Lydia was not only great at it, but didn’t mind the job. Because of Aidan’s schedule, they were free to work around the bar’s hours. Even those weren’t set in stone, since they opened around lunchtime and were generally closing up by nine or ten. Tommy wasn’t into the late-night bar-hopping crowd so
if the locals went home early, so did they. Occasionally a big game would keep them in front of the television past close, but it was at the whim of whoever was working the bar.

His father’s best friend, Fitz Fitzgibbon, sat on his usual stool in the back corner of the bar, near the ancient scanner that barely worked. Not only had Scott known the man his entire life—he’d even called him Uncle
Fitz when he was a kid—but Fitz had retired from Ladder 37 a few years after Tommy Kincaid retired from Engine 59, so there was a sense of kinship that went beyond being family.

When Fitz waved him over, Scott didn’t need a crystal ball to know what was on the guy’s mind. He’d been hoping to have a beer first, but Lydia was delivering food to one of the tables. Just as he reached Fitz, his
dad stepped out from the back room.

Tommy Kincaid had always been a big man, but now he was made up of a lot less muscle and not as strong as he used to be. He could be a real son of a bitch at times and had a temper—which he’d passed on to both Scott and Lydia—but he grinned when he saw Scott and joined them.

Fitz set his mug down on the bar with a thump. “Scotty, what’s this bullshit
I hear about a girl being assigned to Engine 59?”

Tommy snorted. “Fitzy, as the father of two adult daughters, I can tell you they don’t like being called
girls
these days.”

“What the hell am I supposed to call them?”

“Women,” Scott snapped. “Seriously. Have you moved off that stool in the last century at all? You know they can vote now, too, right?”

“I’ll move off this stool
and teach you a lesson about respect if you don’t watch your tone, boy.”

If any other old guy gathering moss on a bar stool threatened him, Scott would have laughed in his face. But when it was your old man’s best friend, you had to watch your tone. He wasn’t too worried about his physical well-being, but it would suck if his dad threw him out of the bar and he had to go somewhere else for
a beer.

“It’s bad luck to have a
woman
around,” Fitz grumbled.

“I think that’s only on ships,” Scott said. He wasn’t sure about bad luck, but he had a feeling having Jamie Rutherford around was going to be a distraction.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was about her that made him want to sit across a table from her and ask her a million questions about herself. The hard
punch of sexual attraction had taken him by surprise with its intensity, but it was more than that. She had an air of calm confidence that intrigued him—like she was a woman who really had her shit together—and that was something he must find attractive because he’d thought about her more than few times in the last twenty-four hours.

It was too bad that they not only worked together, but
that she was his superior.

Fitz gave a mournful shake of his head. “Can’t talk about stuff of a sexual nature with your buddy when there’s a woman around, if you know what I mean.”

“Since
my
buddy’s doing stuff of a sexual nature with my
sister
, trust me, that ship has already sailed,” Scott replied, trying to keep the annoyance he felt from creeping into his tone. The old guy was really
scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for a reason to disapprove of a woman being on the job.

“What do you guys talk about, then?”

“Sports and how much taxes suck, like everybody else.”

As intended, the mention of taxes set Fitz off like a wind-up toy. Once he got going, dragging Tommy into a tirade about the government, Scott made his escape. “I’m going to grab a beer. I’ll
be back.”

Not anytime soon, if he could help it, but they probably wouldn’t even notice. He walked around to the other side of the bar, which had no stools. Tommy had figured out a long time ago nobody ever sat on that side, but would stand around and talk, so he’d taken the stools out to make more space.

Lydia set a mug on a napkin in front of him and smiled. “I would have brought one
to you, but I thought you might need a reason to escape.”

“Thanks.” He took a long sip and sighed. “I knew they’d have some opinions about a woman in the company, but I thought they’d go with PMS or women having less upper body strength or something, not the fact we can’t indulge in locker room talk around her.”

“Aidan said it kind of sucks that he can’t talk to his best friend about
his sex life ever again.”

Scott grimaced. “I don’t even want to talk
about
talking about Aidan’s sex life.”

“How do
you
feel about having a woman in the company?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’ll be weird, I guess. None of us have ever worked with a woman before. But she’s not only a firefighter, she’s an officer, so I guess she’s probably good at the job.”

“What’s she like?”

“Don’t really know yet. I talked to her for like maybe five minutes.”

When his sister just looked at him, one eyebrow arched, he wondered what Aidan had said about Jamie. Or, more specifically, what Aidan had said about what Scott thought of Jamie. While he had no intention of sharing his reaction to her with anybody because he’d never hear the end of it, Aidan was like a brother to him.
If anybody would pick up on a look or body language or any other sign Scott was attracted to their new lieutenant, it would be him.

“I’m going to need better gossip from you guys if I’m going to be stuck behind this bar all the time,” she said, letting him off the hook for now. “Aidan’s out back with Chris. I guess the mother-in-law’s in town, so his wife let him sneak out for few minutes.”

Scott chuckled and carried his beer back to the small alcove that held a pool table and a few tables. Chris Eriksson had been married a long time and they’d all spent more than a few hours hanging around the station, listening to his mother-in-law war stories.

The room was empty except for the two guys, who were sitting at one of the tables with their feet up on empty chairs. “Well, this
is one helluva party.”

“If by
helluva party
,” Chris said, “you mean quiet and nagging-free, then yes. Pull up a chair.”

Scott had been thinking about playing a couple games of pool, but neither of them looked like they’d be able to muster enough ambition to stand that long, so he pulled over a chair and sat down. Then he put his feet up on the edge of the chair Aidan was using as an
ottoman.

“Heard your mother-in-law’s visiting,” he said to Chris.

“Yeah. And guess what moron made the mistake of mentioning the fact our new lieutenant is a woman?”

“Why’s that a big deal? It’s not your wife or her mother who have to carry the line if she can’t handle it. Which I’m pretty sure she can.”

“They don’t even care about her pulling her weight. They want to know
how old she is and if she’s married and what she looks like, and shit like that.”

Aidan laughed. “I guess young, attractive and single didn’t go over well.”

“She’s older than we are,” Scott said.

“She ain’t older than me,” Chris said. “And she ain’t older than my wife so, in her eyes, Jamie Rutherford is a pretty young thing. Probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just Cindy,
but her mom wouldn’t let it go. Wanted to know if she sleeps with us—you know, in the same bunk room—and about the shower situation and shit.”

It hadn’t occurred to Scott that some of the wives or girlfriends might take issue with a woman being assigned to the company. It was tight quarters and they tended to form a strong bond, so he could see how some of them would be insecure about it.

“Lydia asked me what she’s like,” Scott said.

Aidan laughed. “Oh, she already interrogated the hell out of me, but she knows I’m not going home to anybody but her.”

Since the guy had been willing to sacrifice their friendship, his relationship with Tommy Kincaid
and
his job for Lydia, Scott wasn’t too worried about Aidan straying. “Plus, when your coworker and best friend is your
future brother-in-law, you know that’s a one-way street to getting your ass kicked.”

Aidan lifted his beer in a mock toast. “True story.”

Scott nodded and drank his own beer, listening as Chris went back to telling them how dinner with his mother-in-law had gone. But he was only partly paying attention because his mind kept wandering to Jamie Rutherford.

He wasn’t sure how having
a woman in the company was going to work out, but he had no doubt it was going to be interesting.

* * *

J
AMIE
PULLED
OPEN
the tucked flaps on another cardboard box with a weary sigh. She’d gotten pretty good at moving over the years, but this her first time moving into a studio apartment that didn’t feel a whole lot bigger than the box she was unpacking.

She’d already seen to the
most important stuff. The television had cable. The Keurig was on the counter and her favorite mug was next to it. The modem was hooked up, her laptop was on the small kitchen table, and her phone charger was plugged in next to the bed.

The rest she was chipping away at a little bit at a time. Having very few cupboards and only one closet was a challenge, but she’d picked up some under-the-bed
plastic bins at the store. She’d also grabbed some picnic hamper–style baskets at the same time. They’d be good for storing things in the living room area while being somewhat decorative. As long as she didn’t have cardboard boxes or piles of stuff in corners, she’d be happy.

Her cell phone, which was sitting on the counter, chimed to let her know she had a new text message. After hitting
the button to heat up water for a cup of decaf, she picked it up and smiled when she saw it was from Steph Lawson. She worked at her family’s pizza place around the corner from Jamie’s old station and was the closest friend she’d made in Boston.

According to my app, it will take me five hours to visit you.

Jamie laughed. Stop exaggerating.