The Last of The Red Hot Firefighters (Red Hot Reunions Book 1) (4 page)

Jamison rolled his eyes. “At least I sold to a hot blond. Who’d you go to, Mrs. Watson’s grandson with the pimples?”

Faith crossed her arms. “No, as a matter of fact I sold to Theresa Simpson’s son, the one who works at the bank and has biceps the size of your head.”

Jamison snorted. “Well, good for you. Maybe you’ll finally find a guy you can’t beat at arm wrestling.”

“Doubt it.” Faith grinned and punched Jamison again. “Come on, come drink with us. We haven’t been for a beer in forever and I’m too hyper to go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Jamison said, surprising Jake, who had assumed Faith would be able to talk Jamison into coming out.

For all their teasing, Jamison and Faith were even closer than he and Faith were. Jamison was the one Faith had called when her mom had broken up with her latest deadbeat and Faith needed help convincing the guy to move out of her mom’s place. Jamison said it was because Faith thought he was scarier-looking than Jake, but Jake knew that wasn’t the reason. Even when it came to friends, Jake had a hard time letting people in.

“I’m headed for home as soon as this is over,” Jamison continued, grabbing a handful of chips. “But you and Jake can take off. I’ll say your good-byes for you.”

“All right.” Faith shrugged and turned to Jake. “You ready to hit it?”

“Past ready,” Jake said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get while the getting’s good.”

A few minutes later, they had grabbed their coats and made their way through the fellowship hall’s kitchen and out the back door into the alley between the Methodist church and the massive bank building behind it.

“I walked here after work so I can’t drive,” Faith said, shoulders hunching as they emerged into the cold, winter air. “Where are you parked?”

“Down in the public lot,” Jake said, leading the way. “I wanted to leave the best spots for the ladies coming to bid.”

“Always the knight in shining armor,” Faith said with a laugh as she crossed her arms and shivered. “
Brr!
It’s freezing out here.”

“You need a better coat,” Jake said, putting his arm around her again, sharing the warmth from his down-filled jacket.

“But this one is cute,” Faith said, making him laugh. “What? I can’t be a girl sometimes?”

“You can be a girl anytime,” Jake said. “I encourage it, in fact. You can’t stay single forever.”

Faith snorted. “I absolutely can. I need a man like I need cancer.”

“Ouch.” Jake winced. “That’s pretty harsh. I don’t think…”

Jake trailed off as his gaze settled on a silver BMW parked a few spots away from his truck and the woman hunched behind the wheel. Even with only the top of her head and her blue eyes showing above the dashboard, Jake knew it was Naomi. He had Naomi-Whitehouse-dar.

He could sense her in his vicinity, like an enemy sub, cruising in for the attack.

“Well, life is pretty harsh,” Faith said, huddling closer to him, oblivious to the fact that Jake’s ex-girlfriend was checking her out with a crest-fallen expression that made Jake wonder what exactly Naomi was thinking when she bid on him tonight.

Surely she couldn’t think there was a chance for the two of them to be anything more than friends. Hell, even friends would be stretching things. Naomi had violated his trust, broken her promises, and made him hurt in a way no one had, before or since. He didn’t want to breathe the same air she breathed, let alone be her friend.

A part of him wanted to stroll over to her right now and tell her as much, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much she still affected him.

And so as he helped Faith into the truck and circled around to the driver’s side, he dropped his gaze to the ground and pretended not to see Naomi.

But he could feel her eyes on him every step of the way, making his skin prickle and a part of him sit up and take notice that hadn’t noticed a woman’s attention in a damn long time.

The irony that the woman was Naomi Whitehouse made Jake’s mouth fill with a bitter taste he knew beer would do nothing to chase away.

CHAPTER SIX

Naomi

“I need those cookies. Now.” Aria March, their third business partner, froze inside the door to the future home of
Icing
, a wild gleam in her green eyes that made Naomi laugh.

“No, seriously,” she continued. “I need
all
of those cookies. Right now.”

“Are they ready, Maddie?” Naomi stood with a groan, her back killing her after an hour of chipping away the old, cracked, black and white tile that presently covered half the floor. “I could use a cookie break.”

Behind the hideous blue laminate counter they had all agreed had to be replaced no matter what the cost, Maddie slid fresh, salted caramel and dark chocolate oatmeal cookies onto a cooling rack. “Just let them cool for a few minutes so you won’t burn your mouths, and you can each have two.”

“No. All. All for me,” Aria said with a mock glare in Naomi’s direction as she unwound the scarf from her long, auburn hair and shed her coat to reveal her adorable little baby bump. The black turtleneck maternity dress she was wearing minimized the roundness of her tummy, but she was definitely starting to show

Aria and Maddie had been friends in high school and attended the same pastry school in Paris. The first time Naomi had seen Aria after returning to Summerville, she’d experienced that full-body pang of sadness that overtook her every time she saw a pregnant woman. But this time the twinge only flashed through her chest for a moment before fading away. She knew she would always mourn Grace, the little girl she’d lost, but she hoped there would come a day when she could look at an expectant woman again with nothing but shared joy.

Just last Monday, Naomi had signed up with an adoption agency out of Atlanta, and by this time next year, she hoped to have a child of her own. She knew her chances of carrying a baby to term were slim—every doctor she’d visited said it would only be possible with close monitoring and lots of bed rest—and there were certainly no prospective husbands on her horizon. She was thirty-three, financially secure, and past ready to become a mom.

So Naomi had decided to let go of her dreams of marriage before children, and bringing a child of her body into the world. She felt certain there were children out there waiting for her, children she would love every bit as much as the biological babies she wasn’t destined to have.

“But I thought you told me not to let you eat ‘all’ the anything,” Maddie said, giving Aria a sideways glance as she set the pan on the counter behind her. “You only want to gain forty pounds this time, right?”

“Or fifty or sixty,” Aria said, sniffing the air, eyelids fluttering as she inhaled the heady scent of melted caramel and chocolate. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to resist sweets with you around, Mad. I swear, Lark is going to fire me as soon as she gets a taste of anything you’ve baked.”

“Your sister won’t fire you,” Naomi said, crossing the room to settle onto a stool across the counter from Maddie. “That’s crazy talk.”

Aria sank onto the stool next to Naomi with a sigh. “I don’t know. I think Lark’s a little miffed that I’m starting a new business only months before we’ll both be going on maternity leave from
Ever After
.”

Ever After Catering
, Aria’s sister’s business, was the most successful wedding caterer in Georgia outside Atlanta, and primed to give some of the bigger companies in the city a run for their money.

“I think she’s got great replacement staff in place,” Aria continued. “But I can tell she’s nervous about having two of us out of rotation for at least six weeks, maybe more if she gets put on bed rest at the end.”

“She’s having twins, right?” Maddie asked, fetching Naomi a fresh cup of coffee without being asked.

But then Maddie knew Naomi had barely slept last night. Maddie had been there at one in the morning, sipping grappa with Naomi at their parents’ dining room table, while Naomi googled Jake Hansen six ways to Sunday, trying to find out if he and the very young-looking blonde he’d left the auction with were an item.

Not that Naomi cared one way or the other, of course—she only wanted to be friends with Jake—but it would be nice to know if she needed to watch her back during her month of dates. The fundraiser might be for charity, but in Naomi’s experience, most women weren’t very charitable about their boyfriends squiring other women around town.

As far as the blonde went, Naomi’s web trolling had turned up a whole lot of nothing. Her name was Faith, and she worked for the Summerville Fire Department—that was the extent of the juicy info. For a girl so young, Faith had a shockingly non-existent social media presence.

Jake’s online trail, on the other hand, had revealed a slew of insights Naomi almost wished she hadn’t uncovered. Like that Jake had been married, and his wife had died not quite two years ago. Jenny Hansen was a former cheerleader turned personal trainer who volunteered at the senior center, ran marathons with a group of old college friends called Blondes Have More Run, and sounded absolutely lovely in every way. She was carrying Christmas presents to her car at the local mall when a drunk driver careened across the lot in an SUV and hit her from behind. She’d died instantly. The newspaper article had shared every horrible detail, including a picture of Jenny’s presents scattered across the asphalt that broke Naomi’s heart.

It was so horribly sad that she knew she would have cried reading the piece, even if she hadn’t been pretty tipsy by the time she unearthed the story.

Poor Jake. Naomi felt awful for him, losing his lovely, smiling wife as they were about to finish their dream house and start a family—or so the article had said. Naomi could only imagine how her death must have devastated him. Pain like that didn’t vanish overnight. Even if he and the pretty blond firefighter were an item, there was a chance Jake was still in mourning, which meant Naomi felt obligated to give him an out.

As soon as she gathered up the courage, she was going to trot herself right across the street to the firehouse and tell him it was fine to call off their month of dates, if that’s what he wanted. She craved his forgiveness, but she didn’t want to become a pain in his ass so close to the second anniversary of his wife’s death.

Now all she had to do was gather up her courage.

Hopefully, salted caramel cookies would help.

She snagged one from the cooling tray and listened with half an ear as Aria and Maddie discussed due dates and baby showers. Naomi was halfway through her first cookie and considering skipping her second in the interest of getting back to work on the insufferable tile when her little brother, Mick, burst through the swinging door leading to the kitchen.

“Are you eating cookies without me while I slave away on the cabinets?” Mick asked, a scowl on his handsome face.

In Naomi’s absence, her little brother had grown into a giant with dark black curls and devilish blue eyes. Gone was the runt who was still shorter than all of his female classmates, even at seventeen. In his place were five feet, eleven inches of thickly muscled man. Mick’s shoulders were so wide he could barely fit through a door without turning sideways and his forearms looked like something out of a Mr. Clean commercial.

And from what Maddie had told her, her little brother no longer had any problems in the girl department. He’d broken up with his college girlfriend before moving home to work as a handy man while he sorted out what he wanted to do next, but he’d been out with three different girls in the last two weeks alone. At this rate, he was going to have made his way through all the single twenty-somethings in Summerville by spring break.

“There are still plenty of cookies for you,” Maddie said, casting a fond smile in her baby brother’s direction. Maddie and Mick were only six years apart, compared to Mick and Naomi’s ten, and had a closeness that Naomi sometimes envied.

“And you can have as many as you like,” Maddie continued, fetching another coffee cup for Mick, “since you are being such a sweetheart and working for free.”

“He’s not working for free.” Naomi glared at Mick over the rim of her cup. “I’m paying for his groceries, and he eats like a pack animal. I think I could feed a pair of mules for less.”

“I can’t help it. I’m a growing boy,” Mick said, grinning as he snatched a cookie and shoved it into his mouth in one big bite. He might have graduated from college, but the kid still ate like a frat boy with a Sunday morning hangover.

“Manners, please,” Maddie said, slapping his hand when he reached for another cookie. “Swallow first and take at least two bites. I worry you’re going to choke to death when you eat them in one gulp.”

“I wish I could eat a cookie in one gulp,” Aria said, taking a bite of her own treat. “I swear I’m so hungry lately I just want to unhinge my jaw and shovel all the food in.”

“Like this?” Mick asked, opening his mouth so wide Naomi could see the ridged tunnel at the back of his throat, as well as the cookie still stuck in his teeth.

“Ew! Close your mouth,” Naomi said, taking her turn to slap her little brother’s meaty shoulder. “Were you raised in a barn? Thank God Mom’s in Florida. She would be flipping out if she knew what a boor you’ve become.”