A Fighting Chance (17 page)

Authors: Shannon Stacey

BOOK: A Fighting Chance

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“It’s a four-cylinder, so don’t try
to beat any lights,” Danny warned. “You won’t make it.”

Scott laughed and backed out onto the street. “Too bad I don’t have long enough ramps. I could put you in this car, drive it up into the back of my truck and then drive that.”

“We’d be legendary.” Danny laughed and then looked over at him. “I really appreciate this, Scotty. I’m losing my freaking mind at home. I mean, I get out
with Ashley, but I know she’d like a break and I need a break.”

“Hey, anytime.”

It took longer to get Danny out of the car, onto his crutches and into the bar, and then to go park the car, than it had taken to drive there, and Scott managed to break a sweat despite the dropping temperature.

By the time he got back inside, Danny had disappeared, but Lydia waved him toward the back
room. Danny was sitting at a table against the wall, with his leg propped up on a second chair. He was talking to Gavin, who seemed to be there alone.

“Hey, I was hoping you’d show up,” he said to Scott. “I had some time to kill, so I figured I’d see if anybody was around for a game.”

“Since you got me a beer, I guess it would be rude to say no.”

“I got you two beers, since Danny
can’t drink his.”

Danny held up a soda. “If I can get enough of a sugar rush, I might be able to lean against the table and shoot some pool. For now, I’ll watch.”

Scott broke and the game was on. He won the first game, pausing occasionally for a sip of beer while Gavin analyzed potential shots. The kid was a math whiz and sometimes mumbled to himself, as if he was doing fancy geometry
equations in his head to line up his shots.

Scott happened to be standing at the end of the pool table that offered a view of the door when it opened and a woman walked in. It was Jamie, and he was glad she went the other way—toward the bar—because he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“Hey, it’s your shot,” Gavin said just as Jamie passed beyond his view from the alcove.

“You got
somewhere to be?” he asked, turning back to the table.

“Yeah, I’ve got a date tonight. I’m meeting her at nine.”

Scott bent over the table and considered the angle. “Who goes on a date at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night?”

“Two people who have Thursdays off. Was that Jamie who walked in just now?”

He asked the question midshot and Scott swore as the ball rebounded off the
bumper, a fraction of an inch from the pocket. “Yeah, I guess.”

Gavin sank his last two balls, putting an end to the game. “You must have something on your mind tonight. You’re not usually this easy to beat.”

“I read somewhere you’re supposed to allow kids to win things once in a while. Good for your self-esteem.”

A few guys wandered in, each carrying a full mug of beer. Scott recognized
two of them as firefighters from a nearby station, though not nearby enough so they were regulars at Kincaid’s.

“Hey, boys. How’s it going?”

Scott felt his temper rise at the arrogant tone, but he shrugged. “Just finishing up. Feel free.”

Gavin was heading out anyway, and he had no desire to shoot pool with this group. They’d been at a table when he showed up, so he knew they’d
had a head start on the drinking, and he didn’t like the one guy very much. Randy, he thought his name was.

He joined Danny at the table and took a long swallow of his beer before grimacing. A fresh cold one would be nice, but Lydia didn’t wait on him when he was in the back room, so he’d have to go to the bar. And Jamie was at the bar.

Danny leaned across the table so he could keep
his voice low. “Speaking as both your brother-in-law and your lieutenant, you don’t want to go there.”

“Go where?”

“I saw you, man. It was pretty obvious you were checking out a woman you thought was hot, and then a minute later Gavin says Jamie Rutherford had walked in.”

Scott managed not to squirm on the chair, but he didn’t look at Danny. Instead he watched Randy whatever-his-name-was
breaking, and he winced. The guy was sloppy and if he ripped the felt, Tommy would tear him a new one.

“Scotty.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, so I looked. Nothing wrong with that.”

“You don’t exactly have a reputation for self-control when it comes to women.” His brother-in-law held up his hand when he turned to frown at him. “Yeah, I know you’re reformed and all that happy horseshit. I’m
just saying you shouldn’t go there. It’s a bad idea.”

“I know that.” He also knew that changing his ways as far as women were concerned wasn’t just happy horseshit. He was serious about taking relationships more seriously and finding the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a beautiful woman, though, as long as he was more careful
to keep his appreciation to himself.

* * *

J
AMIE
CALLED
HERSELF
every synonym for idiot she could think of as she walked across Kincaid’s Pub to the bar.

Yesterday, she’d told herself she needed to find some hangout spots and meet a guy who wasn’t a firefighter and would hopefully distract her from Scott Kincaid. Today, she was walking into his family’s bar.

She knew it was
stupid, but she’d done her best to rationalize the decision, anyway. What better way to get to know her coworkers than to have a beer with them?

As soon as she reached the bar, she would have guessed the woman behind it was one of Scott’s sisters even if he hadn’t told her they primarily did the bartending. The woman with the dark hair pulled into a thick ponytail gave her a polite smile,
and then did a double-take when she saw the E-59 logo on Jamie’s T-shirt.

“You must be Jamie,” she said, extending her hand over the bar. “I’m Lydia, Scott’s sister and Aidan’s fiancée.”

Jamie shook her hand, smiling. “Nice to meet you. I’ve been in with friends a couple of times, though it’s been a while and I don’t think you were here.”

“I was living in New Hampshire for a while.
What can I get you to drink?”

Jamie told her she’d take whatever Lydia recommended on tap, noticing there were no stools on her side of the bar, though a couple of guys were sitting on the other side. They were in business suits, so she guessed it was an after-work meet-up and their work wasn’t fighting fires.

Lydia set a frosted mug on a paper coaster in front of her. “You’re not a
New Englander, judging by the accent. How’d you end up in Boston?”

She shrugged, swirling what remained of her drink in the bottom of the glass. “Classic story, I guess. I moved here for a guy. Then the guy moved on and I didn’t.”

“Was he from here?”

“No. He got offered a job in pharmaceutical sales and we’d been together long enough so he asked me to go with him the first time.
Once you do that, you’re pretty much an official couple, so every time he moved to a bigger city and a bigger company for work, I moved, too. Things were going south between us about the time he realized he hated being away from his parents and I like Boston, so he went home without me.”

“Where’s home?”

Jamie hated this part—all the questions—though she knew there was no way around it.
The firefighting community was close-knit, and she was going to be part of if whether she wanted to be or not. “Nebraska.”

Lydia frowned. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody from Nebraska.”

Jamie laughed. “You’d be surprised how often I hear that.”

“You guys don’t even have a hockey team, do you?”

“Not a professional one, no.”

“Nothing to
stop you from being a Bruins fan, then. Some of the guys are out back, playing pool. It’s that room off to the side over there.”

Wondering if one of the guys was Scott, Jamie picked up her beer and looked in the direction Lydia pointed. “Thanks. I guess I’ll say hi, at least.”

As she walked across the bar, she took a few deep breaths. If Scott was in there, she’d be ready for that spark
she felt every time she saw him and make sure she didn’t look at him any differently than she looked at the other guys.

It wasn’t easy, though. There were four guys around the pool table, none of whom she recognized. But there, at a table against the wall, was Scott. He was sitting with a guy in a cast who had to be Danny Walsh, and they both smiled when they saw her.

Her stomach did
a little flip-flop at Scott’s smile, so she focused on his companion. “You must be Danny.”

“Nice to meet you in person. I’d get up, but...” He waved a hand at the cast. “You’d probably be gone by the time I managed it.”

She stepped forward and shook his hand, before backing up. Unfortunately, in trying to put a little space between her and Scott, she backed up too far and bumped into
one of the guys playing pool.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, turning to apologize.

The guy smiled turned sleazy when he looked her over and his gaze caught on her T-shirt. “Who’d you sleep with to get the shirt, honey?”

“Excuse me?”

“Does he know you took it or did you sneak out in it?”

“The shirt belongs to me.” She turned her back on him because he wasn’t worth her time.

“Aw, don’t be like that, honey. You can play with my hose if you want.”

Jamie turned to give the guy
the look.
It was a look that had served her well over the years and, more often than not, ended with the person on the receiving end dropping his or her gaze and muttering an apology.

But the asshole wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over her shoulder, and before she could grasp what
that meant, somebody rushed by her to the right.

Jamie dropped her beer as she reached for Scott, but he was too fast. He grabbed the douche bag by the shirt, but the guy had seen him coming and managed to get his fist in Scott’s face. It didn’t slow him down, though, and Scott landed a punch of his own.

“Scotty!” Danny yelled, and through the corner of her eye, Jamie saw him trying
to get his cast off the chair. “Goddammit, Kincaid!”

The two guys went to the ground and Jamie saw the douche bag’s buddies moving in. This was going to get messy, especially if Danny decided to be a hero and wade in on his crutches.

“That’s enough,” she yelled, bending to grab the back of Scott’s collar.

When the douche bag’s arm flopped out for a second, she put her foot on it,
pinning it to the floor. That put her slightly off balance, though, so pulling at Scott’s collar didn’t accomplish anything.

She threaded her hands into Scott’s hair and yanked hard. “I said that’s enough.”

He let go of the douche bag to reach for her hand. “Ow. Let go.”

“Get up.” When he resisted, she pulled harder. “Get. Up.”

He struggled to his feet as his sister rounded
the corner, a softball bat in her hand. She looked at Jamie and, for a second, she thought Lydia was going to smile. Then she looked at the guy on the floor before narrowing her eyes at his friends.

“Get your buddy and get out of my bar.”

“He started it.”

“Yeah, but his name’s over the door, so get out and don’t bother coming back.”

Once they were gone, Scott batted at Jamie’s
hand again. “You can let go now. And you didn’t have to do that.”

She released her grip on his hair. “I wouldn’t have had to do that if you’d listened to me.”

“This isn’t the station.”

“No, it’s not,” Lydia broke in, pointing the bat at him. “It’s our bar and if you pull this stupid shit again, you can find another place to hang out. Now go put some ice on that eye for a few minutes
and then clean up that beer.”

“That’s mine,” Jamie said. “Just tell me where the mop is.”

“He can do it.”

Lydia walked away, and Jamie might have smiled at the exasperated look Scott sent after his older sister, but she was too annoyed with him. And with the way Danny was watching them.

“Show me where the mop is,” she said. “I’ll clean this up while you put ice on that eye.”

“You okay for a few minutes, Danny?” he asked.

“I’m good.”

Jamie followed him, her eyes on the back of his head. Because he’d gotten sweaty in the tussle with the douche bag, she could still see the ruffled area where her fingers had been buried in his hair.

It was tempting to reach out and smooth the strands so she wouldn’t be distracted, but she curled her hands into fists
instead. No more touching Scott Kincaid.

Don’t miss

FULLY IGNITED
by Shannon Stacey,

Available March 2016

In digital and print

www.CarinaPress.com

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Angela James and everybody at Carina Press for your support, encouragement and enthusiasm.

The Kowalski Series from Shannon Stacey