“Everybody reuses lesson plans,” Katherine protested.
“She stopped crossing out the old dates in 2002.”
Pam folded her arms. “Kitty, I fail to see what this has to do with Kathy and her fireman.”
“Everything.” Kitty set down her coffee cup. “If you had to choose between a few exciting years with the hero or twenty-five boring ones, which would you want?”
“I’d hardly describe my years with Gary as exciting.” Katherine took another sip of coffee and regretted it.
“Yes, but you said that one kiss was like nothing in your entire relationship. Imagine what the rest would be like,” Kitty said smugly.
Katherine peered into her coffee cup to hide her blush. It was too easy to imagine. Her subconscious showed little movies to her every night. And the images had gotten a lot more vivid now that she had something to base them on. So what was better? Twenty-five boring years ending with her sitting next to a casket or a few happy years ending the same way?
Twenty-five boring years of sleeping through the night or six happy years waking up every time a siren went off? Did Darlene kiss her husband goodbye every morning wondering if he would come home that night?
“I don’t know, Kitty. Darlene is probably never going to have the police show up at her classroom door and tell her they need to speak to her in the principal’s office.” She set down her cup and walked out of the room.
Chapter 8
Katherine sat in bed with the blankets nested around her hips, staring at her closet. She didn’t want to look as if she’d been trying to impress him, but here it was two weeks before the dance and she was already worrying about what to wear. This rated as lovesick and pathetic for a woman who had sworn to herself, and to him, that their relationship would never go beyond friendship.
The phone rang.
Katherine threw off the covers and ran to get it. Who would call at eight on a Sunday morning? Visions of her mother lying in a twisted heap, just able to reach the phone were crowded out by visions of her mother’s doctor looking sorrowful at the prospect of delivering dire news. Then she imagined Pam with the phone pressed against her cheek, sobbing with the children clinging to her. That in turn was replaced by the fire chief calling to tell her Jack had been killed in an early morning blaze, very sorry. As her fingers touched the phone she remembered Jack left for work a few minutes ago. She heard him put Archer out and set off up the street, whistling. Now that the weather was nice enough to have windows open, she could hear everything. Jack in the backyard. Archer barking at squirrels. The odd car backfiring. Each and every siren within five blocks. Not having a television or stereo to drown out ambient noise didn’t help her nerves at all.
But there hadn’t been any sirens this morning. She’d have heard the engine. She knew its distinct tone now. Besides, he hadn’t had time to get the run if there had been one, let alone get to a fire and be killed. And why would the fire chief call his landlord anyway?
“Hello?” She couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice. It still had to be bad news. No one called this early for no reason.
“Hey Kate, it’s Jack.” He paused. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.” Katherine's heart clattered around in her chest as if it had come loose from its moorings. “I’m fine. Why?”
“You sounded a little wound up. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. What did you call for?” Katherine shifted the phone away from her mouth and took a deep breath. She had to stop imagining worst case scenarios every time the phone rang.
“I left something at home. I wondered if you could bring it to me.” He paused again. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, you didn’t wake me.” I was lying in bed like a school girl thinking about what I’m going to wear to a dance in two weeks. She twisted and untwisted the phone cord around her finger. “What did you need?”
“I left my St. Florian medal at home. It’s kind of a lucky charm.” He chuckled. “I was hoping you could bring it up here.”
Katherine combed her fingers through her hair. A medal? A lucky charm? He was calling at daybreak on a Sunday to ask her to bring his lucky charm to the station? He wanted her to go into his apartment unattended for a trinket? Her mother was fine. Pam was fine. Not an emergency at all. “A medal?”
“I always have it with me on duty and I forgot it this morning. I guess I don’t need it if you’re busy.”
He did want her to go unattended into his apartment. “It’s not that. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Well, my book said I had to give tenants twenty-four hours notice.” She wondered if she would be able to go in and not rifle through his medicine chest. Her heart was still pounding, but for a different reason now. She could only hope if he heard it, he would assume it was interference.
“Kate, I’m giving you permission to go into my apartment. I won’t call the landlord police or anything.”
“The Fair Housing Bureau.”
“Them, then. I won’t tell a soul. Can you bring the medal?”
“I guess so.” Katherine licked her lips. Permission to check out his apartment and a chance to pay him back for bringing her lunch to school. Almost too perfect. “Where is it?”
“That’s the thing. If it was where it was supposed to be I would have it. It’s supposed to be on my dresser in my bedroom.”
Katherine felt her body get warm. His bedroom. Not just his apartment, he wanted her to go into his bedroom.
“But it might have fallen on the floor. Or it might be on the nightstand beside the bed. Or I could have put it in the cabinet. You know the top part where the windows are? I was in there yesterday, and I might have put it there, but I don’t think so. It might have fallen out of my pocket on the bed.”
Not only did he want her to wander around his bedroom, he had practically invited her to lounge on his bed. Katherine squeezed her eyes closed. “So you want me to search the place?” she said when she could manage to speak without squeaking.
“I guess so.” A voice spoke behind him. “Dan has volunteered to be your witness that I gave you permission to inspect the place.”
“Tell him thank you. What is this thing I’m looking for anyway?”
“It looks like a dog tag. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“I hope so.” Katherine licked her lips.
“Thanks, Kate. I really appreciate this.”
“I'm sure. I’ll be over as soon as I find it.”
“Good. See ya.”
“Good-bye.” Katherine hung up the phone. He wanted her to go into his apartment, into his bedroom, to find a lucky charm. Rubbing her face, she looked around the room to confirm she had had the conversation she remembered having. She must have. Which meant she did have permission to go into his apartment alone and look around his bedroom.
But first she had to get dressed.
Five minutes later, Katherine stood outside Jack’s front door with her copy of the front door key. She took a deep breath. This is a favor for a friend, she told herself. It’s as if Pam had asked her to stop by her house to pick up lesson plans. There would be no spying. She unlocked the door.
Though she’d been inside a dozen times, she hadn’t looked around because she didn’t want to be nosy. But without an audience, it seemed less nosy.
The foyer was still an empty room. He had a prefab bookcase in the corner and an easy chair with a reading lamp beside it in front of the window. He’d hung a couple of family pictures on the wall. She'd never had a chance to look at them before. His parents looked more or less as she’d expected. In one picture, an old woman smirked at the camera. The eighty-two year old grandmother, she decided. He also had a picture of his sister at one of her graduations, judging by the robe. And there was one picture of a yellow Labrador panting at the camera. Cody.
She glanced in the living room, but it held no real surprises other than general neatness. Until now she’d ass
umed he tidied up for her, but it didn’t seem any messier now when he hadn’t expected her to see it. Other than the sloppy magazine stack on the coffee table and the half-chewed rawhide bone in the middle of the floor, his living room could have been in a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot. The kitchen wasn’t a surprise either. Neat, functional, one coffee mug in the sink.
She stopped at the bedroom door. There never used to be a door here, just an open doorway, but she had decided it would have to be the bedroom and would need a door, so Randy hung a door, complaining the whole time. Nudging the door open with the tips of her fingers, she expected it to be snagged on a pile of dirty clothes any second. She’d never seen a man’s room that didn’t have a pile of dirty clothes on the floor somewhere.
The door swung open. Bed made. Drawers closed. Floor clear. The bedroom was as neat as the rest of the apartment.
The curtains hung open, flooding the room with light which gleamed off the glass of the built in cabinet. He had a queen-sized bed with a heavy, dark wood headboard. The dark blue bedspread had an Archer-sized depression in the middle of it. She walked over to the dresser, built of the same dark heavy wood, and scanned the top. Nothing that could be the medal lay there. In fact, almost nothing littered the top of his dresser. He had a dish with a few coins and his truck keys in it, a plastic comb, a full bottle of aftershave she’d never noticed him wearing, and a pair of sunglasses. She glanced under the dresser, but it didn’t seem to have so much as a dust bunny, let alone a medal.
Next, she tried the nightstand. The medal wasn’t under the lamp or the alarm clock and there was nowhere else for it to hide. Pulling open the drawer, she found a package of cough drops, a box of Kleenex, and a paperback mystery novel. No medal. He probably had it in his pocket sandwiched between an expired fast food coupon and his pen knife. He seemed to keep more in his pockets than in his apartment.
Shading the glass with her hand she looked in the cabinet. On the top shelf he had more framed photographs. She stood on her toes, but couldn’t see anything else. On the second shelf along the back wall was a framed certificate she couldn’t read for the shadow of the shelf above it so she opened the case and took it out. The commendation. Why did he have it sitting on the back of a shelf in his bedroom, instead of hanging in the foyer with his pictures? Her teaching award from the newspaper looked very similar, and she had it in a file folder. Maybe he viewed his award the same way she viewed hers. Nice, but it was her job, it was expected she would do it well. Of course her job didn’t carry as much inherent risk. She cradled the frame in her hands reading it. It didn’t tell what he’d done either. All it said was “for bravery above and beyond the call of duty” in fancy script, which left a lot up to the imagination.
She put the frame back as she found it and examined the rest of the shelf for the medal. He probably did have it in his pocket and didn’t know it, because he had everything in his pockets. Leaning down she looked at the bottom shelf. The medal lay half under another paperback novel toward the back.
And behind the novel, shoved all the way back in the corner, was an unopened box of condoms.
Katherine reared back sputtering. Condoms. “What are you doing with a box of condoms?” she demanded. “Are you hoping one of these days I’ll be down here doing laundry and watching a movie and one thing will lead to another? Do you think I’m going to change my mind? Or I’ll give in to your overwhelming masculinity?”
Archer started barking in the back room.
Katherine stormed into the kitchen and yanked open the door. Archer bounded in and jumped on her, knocking her back into the door frame. Her head bounced against the wood. “Hey! Get down!”
Archer dropped to the floor and cringed.
Katherine touched the back of her head. “I've got to train you out of that habit,” she grumbled. She had a tender spot on the back of her skull that would make brushing her hair fun for the next couple of days, and rule out barrettes.
Archer half perked up when she didn’t yell again, but kept his ears down.
Katherine watched Jack’s dog. Enthusiastic and hopeful, but never cruel. Just like his owner. Jack probably had condoms around for any dates he might have. She quelled a flash of jealousy thinking he might have dates that would go that far. Some other woman would enjoy feeling those hands against her flesh and taste his mouth over hers.
Some woman who would never be her. Katherine couldn’t get mixed up with a man so willing to get killed in the line of duty he got a commendation for it. But she could hardly tell him ‘you can’t have me, but you can’t have anyone else.’ That wouldn’t be fair. She had no right to pry either. He'd probably forgotten the condoms were there. They were friends, nothing more. Someday she would have to go to his wedding and watch him marry some other unlucky woman who didn’t yet know the joys of lying awake at night listening for sirens and waiting for the police to knock on the door.
But the idea he had them, they were ready, sparked the desire she’d been trying to smother. He would be ready any time. Her skin burned remembering the way his hands had caressed her. She wanted to fall into his bed and bury her face in his pillow. Her belly warmed at the idea. It was all too easy to see herself in his bed. To see him beside her. To feel the way his hands would stroke her and the way his lips would taste her. To know the weight of his body on top of hers.
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, blinking. The fact that she assumed he had them for her said more about her than him. Archer stood watching her. She patted him on the head.
“It’s okay, boy. We’ll work on your jumping problem later. You want to walk up to the station?”
* * * *
Jack stood at the top of Worchester staring down the road. Where was she? How long did it take to find a small object in a neat apartment? He’d narrowed it down to one room. Parts of one room even.
“Still no sign?" Kevin asked, peering down the street beside him.
“No.”
“Takes a long time to search a whole apartment.” Kevin started back to the station.
“She isn’t searching the whole apartment."
“That’s what you think." Kevin disappeared into the apparatus bay before Jack could shout something smart at him.
Jack looked at his watch.
Archer turned the corner first, followed by Katherine. Archer stopped when he spotted Jack, barked and started pulling Katherine forward. She stopped, and twitched the leash. Archer stopped dragging her and heeled. Jack smiled. She’d had to have taught him that trick. Half the time Archer about pulled his arm off. He started down the block and met her halfway. “You found it?”
“Of course.” She held up the medal. “It was in the cabinet.”
He took it and dropped it in his pocket. “You want to come up to the station?” he asked. She looked great this morning. Her long hair blew across her face, glinting in the sun. She brushed it back with her free hand, watching him. Her jacket hung open showing a pink cotton knit v-neck shirt. If he stepped a little closer he’d have a great view down her cleavage.
“Why?'”
He met her eyes wondering if she’d read his mind. “I thought you’d like to meet everybody.”
She frowned at him. “I’ve already met them. When you moved in, remember?”
He couldn’t tell her he wanted them to meet her when she wasn’t likely to start running cold, could he? She hadn’t done that since the morning of the faucet disaster.
“I know, but you only met them once. Besides, I think they want a report on the inspection.”
“What inspection?” she asked, turning pink.
“Of my apartment.” Jack watched the glow gathering on her cheeks. Kevin had been right. She’d taken the opportunity to look around his place. At least there wasn’t anything to find. Or he hoped there wasn’t.
“Hmm. I guess so,” she said looking at the pavement to cover her blush.
Jack resisted the temptation to drape his arm across her shoulders as he led
her to the station. It had to be enough that she fell into step beside him. She did look great this morning. He wondered if he thought so because he was about to show her off to the guys or if he was starved for the sight of her.
“Are you allowed to wander this far from the station?” She switched the leash to her other hand so Archer wouldn’t walk between them.
“I could hear it if we got a call.” Jack clasped his hands behind his back. She didn’t want the dog between them. Definitely a good sign. “Did you have any trouble finding the medal?"
Archer stopped to sniff something interesting.
“A little. Then your dog attacked me.” Katherine paused until Archer finished his investigation.
“Attacked you?”
“He noticed me inside, and when I opened the door he jumped on me and knocked me into the wall.” Katherine rubbed the back of her head.
Jack stopped. “Did you get hurt?” They had reached the end of Worchester across from the station. He’d stepped off the curb before he stopped, but she hadn’t, giving her a few extra inches. She stood almost eye to eye with him. Perfect kissing angle.
“No, he knocked some sense into me.” She grimaced.
“Are you sure?” Jack reached toward her intending to check the back of her head, but she stiffened. He dropped his hand. While she might not want Archer between them, she also didn’t want him touching her. Fair enough, for now.
“It was nothing.” She walked around him and stepped off the curb.
Kevin and Lew leaned on the engine watching them cross the street.
“Hey Conley, did your mom bring you your lunch?” Lew called.
“Aw come on Lew, she’s not old enough to be his mom,” Kevin pointed out. “She’s his girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jack said. He glanced at her, worried how she would take that comment and caught her eyes skimming over the engine. Something else to file away for later consideration. Then she smiled as if she hadn’t a care.
“I’m his dog walker,” Katherine announced.
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