Playing With Fire (3 page)

Maybe if she could just quit thinking about Matt all the time...

"I'm heading to Tucson later this morning to visit my parents and won't be back until tomorrow,” he said, using the scouring pad to shove food scraps into the garbage disposal.

"Special occasion?"

"No. Family emergency. My mother called last night,” he said with lack of concern.

"Is everything okay?” Lindsay suffered a small stab of guilt. Here she'd been totally absorbed with herself and all the while, Matt was dealing with a crisis.

He shrugged. “Dad's having chest pains and refuses to see a doctor. Mom's worried, so she's calling in reinforcements, namely me and my sister. I don't know what she thinks we can do."

As he talked, he rinsed dishes and passed them to her for loading into the dishwasher. Another man with Matt's towering height and rugged build might have looked silly scraping food from plates, but not Matt. He handled a kitchen faucet water sprayer with the same skill he did a one and three-quarter inch fog nozzle.

Chores at the fire station were customarily divvied up among the crew. Emilio Chavez, the veteran among them, had cooked breakfast. While Matt and Lindsay cleared the table and washed the dishes, Dennis Bigelow tidied the common rooms. Cleaning of the bedrooms was left to each individual. Cleaning of the community bathrooms was shared.

In another thirty minutes, crew members from the next shift would begin arriving. Shortly thereafter, they'd be debriefed by the outgoing crew. At precisely eight a.m., the fire station would officially change hands.

"Why won't he see a doctor?” Lindsay talked as she unplugged the coffee maker and emptied the basket of used grounds.

Matt scowled and shook his head. Steam from the running hot water mingled with his perspiration and dampened the front of his uniform shirt. “He's too busy."

"Too busy to take care of his health?"

"Too busy for anything except work."

Lindsay thought she saw a flicker of pain cross Matt's face. If so, it was gone in the next instant. “If your mother asked you to come down for a visit, it must be serious."

"Maybe.” He gave her a crooked grin which more closely resembled a frown. “Or maybe it's a ploy to assemble the family. With both kids out of the house and Dad working sixty plus hours a week, Mom's alone a lot."

"Would she really do that?"

Lindsay didn't know Matt's parents. Occasionally, he discussed his family life, and she had the distinct impression the Callahans weren't close knit by any stretch of the imagination.

She sympathized, but only to a degree. Matt at least had a father. In Lindsay's case, her dad had stuck around only long enough to see his baby daughter take her first steps, then left her and her mother for a commune outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lindsay's mother said she always knew Jeremy Carpenter wasn't the marrying kind. He'd lived up to Adelie Pfeiffer's expectations and then some by not being the parenting kind either.

No great loss. Things eventually turned out well. Lindsay adored her stepfather and his care and concern for her almost made up for her real father's abandonment. Almost.

Matt scrunched his brow in concentration. “It's possible,” he said in answer to Lindsay's question. “Mom's good at pushing the right buttons. I'll find out what's going on with Dad for sure when I get there."

"Take a nap before you leave. We were really busy last night.” The crew had responded to four calls between the hours of ten at night and five in the morning; eight altogether for the entire twenty-four hour shift. None of them had managed more than a few snatches of sleep here and there.

Matt wiped his forehead with the back of his arm in a tired gesture. The effort mussed his hair. “I think I will crash first. Take off after lunch.” He handed her a frying pan. “What are you doing the rest of the weekend?"

"Not much. Going shopping this afternoon with my stepsister. If it doesn't rain, that is.” Lindsay peered out the window at the overcast sky before turning away from Matt to load the frying pan. When she turned back, she misjudged her step and came face to face with a navy blue cotton tee-shirt pulled tight across rock hard pecs.

Flinching automatically, she reached behind her for the counter and much needed support. Matt gazed down at her, a me-Tarzan-you-Jane possessiveness in his eyes that set off enough sparks inside Lindsay to light up an entire city. At almost five foot eight, she was no midget. Yet Matt had a way of making her feel small and dainty and gloriously female.

The moment passed as quickly as it came. Might never have happened at all. Matt stepped back and nonchalantly threw a dishtowel over his shoulder. Appearing not the least bit affected by what had happened, he reached into the sink and scooped up a handful of silverware, then passed the bundle to Lindsay, an almost apologetic smile pulling at the corners of his wide mouth.

Quite unexpectedly, she felt the urge to smooth the short brown locks poking every which way on his head. She stared at him, her mind wandering to places best avoided. What did his hair feel like? Was it soft and smooth, or thick and coarse? She pictured the strands parting as she tunneled her fingers through it. Pictured herself cupping the back of his neck and pulling him down to her level as she stood on tiptoes, straining to meet him halfway.

He turned to her, ready to pass her a spatula. Their gazes locked and the smile on his lips died. Whatever emotions he read in her expression prompted an immediate reaction. He stepped closer, lowered his head, and fixed his attention on her mouth.

"Aw ... fuck it."

Lindsay went weak all over and dropped the forks and knives she'd been holding. The ensuing loud clatter brought her to her senses.

She knelt, more to escape Matt's unsettling scrutiny than anything else. Her reprieve didn't last. He followed her down, sandwiching her between the cabinet and the solid wall of his muscled torso. They were so close she felt his breath, heavy and rapid, on her cheek. She sensed the tightly coiled tension vibrating through him, smelled the faint odor of smoke and chemicals clinging to his clothes. With fumbling fingers and a pounding heart, she began retrieving the scattered forks and knives.

"What are you two doing in there?” Dennis Bigelow called from the other room. “Making a mess?"

"Making something,” Matt answered in a cheery voice that contradicted the dark intensity blazing in his eyes. He leaned in until their foreheads touched, and said in a seductive voice only she could hear, “What that is exactly depends on you."

Lindsay jerked back, startled not so much by his brash statement—Matt was a notorious flirt after all—as by the fact his flirting had obviously progressed beyond the harmless stage.

Reeling from the revelation, she stood on legs steady as cooked spaghetti noodles. Matt also rose. His legs, however, didn't wobble, and he loomed over her, sure, strong, and determined.

Hot water poured from the faucet, sending a cloud of steam into the air. He didn't seem to notice and watched her with unwavering concentration, reminding her of a predatory animal stalking its dinner. What was he waiting for? A reaction from her?

Unless ... he really was interested in her and she'd been mistaken all along.

Could that be possible?

Seeing her own lust-induced symptoms mirrored in him, she thought the answer might be yes.

Deciding to test her newly discovered theory, she propped an arm on the edge of the counter and gave her head a saucy, take-that shake.

"Aren't you going to put those in the dishwasher?” Stone-faced, Matt motioned to the forks and knives still clutched in her hand.

"Uh, yes. I am."

All right. Cheesy fashion model poses didn't work. But Lindsay refused to quit just yet. She hadn't succeeded in a profession where countless others failed by giving up at the first little bump in the road. Present her with a challenge, and she'd rise to meet it.

Remembering Cassandra Hughes from training academy and her flouncing fanny, Lindsay spun around on the balls of her feet. She bent over and wiggled her bottom as she deposited the utensils in the bin. From behind her came a hissing sound. Matt sucking in air.

Now that's more like it
. She glowed with self-satisfaction. Just for fun, she tried the move again, this time putting a little more swing in her gyrations. She waited, ears straining, for a low grunt of male appreciation or some other indication Matt liked what he saw.

Nothing.

Had she rendered him speechless?

She wiggled her bottom a third time, putting everything she had into it.

"What's the matter, Pfeiffer?” Dennis Bigelow's booming voice filled the kitchen. “Got ants in your pants?"

Lindsay bolted upright and turned sharply, slamming her right shin into the open dishwasher door. Pain radiated up her leg, but she didn't care. She was alone in the kitchen except for Dennis. Matt had disappeared and worse, Dennis had witnessed her idiotic behavior. She'd never live this down, not in a million years.

He broke into laughter, his beefy shoulders shaking like an erupting volcano. “That was some show. Where's a video camera when you need one?” He wiped imaginary tears from his eyes. “I swear, Pfeiffer, you should have seen yourself."

He bent over and swiveled his large posterior from side to side, puckering his face into an unflattering female parody and making kissing noises.

Lindsay burned with mortification and fury. Fury at Dennis Bigelow for being an unqualified jerk; fury at Matt for abandoning her; and fury mostly at herself for behaving like a fool. Matt attracted to her? Obviously not! No doubt her pink nose was now indistinguishable from the rest of her complexion.

She slammed the dishwasher door shut and flipped off the faucet, anxious to retreat to the sanctuary of her bedroom where she could recover and regroup before their relief arrived. The story would be repeated for their benefit, reach all levels of the department by noon tomorrow. Lindsay needed to steel herself for the barrage of teasing headed her way.

"Cute, Bigelow.” She breezed past him, knowing if she showed one sign of weakness, he'd harass her unmercifully, like a schoolyard bully who picks on the littlest kid in class. Her only defense was a strong offense. “Wear a dress and maybe some poor slob will ask you out. How long's it been since you had a date anyway? A year?"

His belly laugh followed her down the hall and to her bedroom. She shut her door seconds before angry tears filled her eyes. Heaving a bed pillow into the wall was a poor substitute for screaming out in frustration.

Matt winced at the sounds of Dennis Bigelow's laughter and Lindsay's bedroom door being slammed. He'd overhead enough before his hasty exit to his own bedroom to piece together what had transpired between his two coworkers. The thought of that unpleasant scene countered the very visible side effects of Lindsay's little hoochie-coochie dance back there in the kitchen. Whatever game she'd been playing, Matt had been up for it. Literally.

Lucky for him, Dennis had been so enamored with Lindsay's finer asset waving in the air he hadn't paid much attention to Matt. Not so lucky for Lindsay. Dennis was a topnotch firefighter, but he had his faults, one of them being a warped sense of humor. With a loud groan, Matt sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his thighs. He was a lowlife of the worst kind for running out on Lindsay and leaving her alone with Dennis. But he'd had no choice.

Their full body contact dishwashing had pushed his control almost to its limit. When she'd looked at him like she wanted nothing more than to crawl up his shirt front to get to his mouth, he'd reach that limit. The butt-shaking exhibition threw him over the edge. Only by exercising superhuman willpower was he able to resist pinning her to the counter, nudging her legs apart and fusing his hips firmly with hers.

That, of course, wasn't an option.

If he hadn't left when he did, both their jobs would be in jeopardy. There were rules to abide by, policies to which they had to adhere. And just because Matt had been ready to break every one of them, didn't mean Lindsay was too.

Not to mention the potential loss of Joey's friendship, something Matt valued greatly.

How did his roommate do it? How could he be with Lindsay, not plant his hands all over her, and still keep his sanity? Matt felt his own grip on reality slipping daily. It was probably a good thing he and Lindsay were off work the next couple days. He needed to clear his head. The trip to Tucson to visit his family—and the inevitable disagreement he and his father got into any time they spent more than three seconds in the same room—should do the trick.

"Are you serious?” Mahina Lauas’ lovely dark eyes blinked in astonishment. “Joey's never tried
anything
with you? Ever?"

"Speak a little louder, please.” Lindsay glowered at her stepsister with exaggerated annoyance. “Not everyone in Lady Footlocker heard you.” Despite Mahina's outburst, Lindsay doubted they'd drawn much attention. One nice thing about a mall, private conversations could be carried on in public and nobody broke rhythm long enough to listen.

"I'm sorry. I'm just so ... surprised."

"I know.” Lindsay let out a long breath. “Me, too."

They wove their way through the Sunday afternoon throng of sale-inspired shoppers. Best friends since meeting as freshman in high school, the two matchmakers were related by marriage mid-sophomore year. It didn't require much maneuvering on their part. Adalie Pfeiffer, former bra burner turned successful entrepreneur, and Sam Lauas, retired Navy Commander, were polar opposites. Yet it took only one look at each other for them to fall head over heels in love. Lindsay couldn't have been happier. For the first time in her life, she had a real family.

"Okay.” Mahina pushed back a long strand of jet black hair from her face. “I knew you two weren't sleeping together, but I figured you were ... well, building up to it. You're not building up to it?"

"No,” Lindsay replied dismally.

"But you kiss."

"Of course."

"French kiss?"

"Be serious."