“At least you’re going down first,” Gavin called after her. “I don’t have to worry about you pushing me down the stairs.”
“That was an accident,” she shouted over her shoulder, and she might have been tempted to go back and explain it a little better, but she heard both men laughing.
Gavin was pushing her buttons and she’d let him get under her skin. Again.
After helping load mommy and baby into the back of Phil’s truck, Cait and Tony took a few minutes to pack their gear away in their own ambulance before climbing into the cab. The firefighters were still milling around on the sidewalk, laughing and talking about who knew what.
Her gaze landed on Gavin because it always seemed to, whether she wanted it to or not. She wasn’t sure how old he was. One of the younger guys in his house, but around her age—late twenties or so. There definitely weren’t enough years between them to merit him calling her ma’am.
He was average height for a guy, but with a better than average body. Or maybe that was just her take on it. She liked guys who were in shape, but not such good shape they spent hours at the gym and expected applause when they flexed an arm. Physically, he definitely checked all her boxes.
And every time she saw him—which thankfully wasn’t that often—she wanted to smooth that damn cowlick down. Maybe run her fingers through his hair a few times to help it stay. Then she’d invariably remember how close she’d come to asking him out, and why she hadn’t.
He turned his head, looking straight at her, as if he’d felt her staring. Which he probably had. After a few seconds, he lifted an eyebrow and she looked away.
Dammit.
“I can’t stand that guy,” she said, not sure if she was making a statement or simply reminding herself of the fact.
“Why?”
Cait opened her mouth, but then snapped it closed again because she didn’t want to tell him the real reason why. “He just rubs me the wrong way.”
Tony gave her a sideways look before checking the mirrors and pulling away from the curb. “Maybe you’re just mad because you want him to rub you the right way.”
That was close enough to the truth so she wasn’t going to discuss the possibility with Tony or anybody else. Gavin Boudreau was attractive, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. Men didn’t want to go on hot dates with women they called ma’am.
It was for the best, anyway. She was drowning in responsibilities and didn’t have the time or energy to be fun and sexy with anybody, never mind somebody like Gavin.
“Shut up,” she told Tony, “or I’ll push you down the stairs.”
He just laughed at her and took a left, heading toward their favorite coffee shop.
* * *
Usually, by the time the apparatus—Engine 59 and Ladder 37—were backed side by side into the bays of the brick firehouse they called home, Gavin was starving. As the adrenaline rush faded, his appetite kicked in. Throw in being genetically blessed with a fast metabolism, and there was a reason the guys gave him shit about being a human garbage disposal.
Today, though, even the thought of the overstuffed sandwich he’d been thinking about for half the day couldn’t tempt him. Childbirth might be natural and awe-inspiring, but it definitely wasn’t pretty.
But by the time they’d finished up checking and repacking their gear and gone up to the third-floor living quarters, he was starting to feel better. He figured he’d start with some chips and, if those went down okay, he’d follow up with that sandwich.
“What did you do to piss that EMT off?” Grant asked, taking the bag away from him and shaking some chips out onto a napkin for himself.
“I don’t know. I think it pisses her off when I breathe.”
“You guys have some kind of a history together?”
He knew what Grant was really asking. Had he slept with her and then cut it off badly? “No. The only time I’ve ever talked to her has been on the job, and it can’t have been more than a dozen times, if that. She just doesn’t like me.”
“She’s pretty hot.”
“Yeah, she is. Not my type, though.”
Grant snorted. “You don’t have a type, other than women being susceptible to your so-called charm.”
That wasn’t true, and Grant knew it, since they’d been each other’s wingman for several years. He had a particular weakness for women who were soft and super feminine. It wasn’t so much about makeup and manicures, but women who liked having doors held for them and needed spiders killed and had soft hands.
Cait Tasker was abrasive and tough and there was nothing soft about her. He doubted she was afraid of bugs, and she’d probably give him shit about being able to hold her own damn doors, thank you very much.
But an image of her popped into his head and he decided maybe she had some soft parts, after all. Like her lower lip, which was soft and full and his favorite kind of mouth on a woman. And it was natural, too, since she didn’t wear makeup. More often than not when he kissed a woman with a mouth like that, he had to put up with the faintly burning tingle of those fancy lipsticks that made their lips look fuller. Maybe they did, but they tasted like shit.
But while Cait’s mouth looked like a perfectly kissable mouth, the words that came out of it were a serious problem.
And she’d crossed a line today. She could be annoyed by him. She didn’t have to get his sense of humor. She could think he was an asshole and tell him so, if it made her happy. But to imply he didn’t take his job seriously? That wasn’t okay.
“You’re thinking about her right now.”
“Of course I am. We’re talking about her.”
“No, I mean like really thinking about her. You forgot I was even in the room.”
“I guess I just can’t figure out why she dislikes me so much.” It was partly the truth, anyway. If he mentioned Cait’s mouth, he’d never hear the end of it.
“Does she have any sisters? Maybe you hooked up with one of them and it went south and she has to hate you on principle now.”
“I don’t know if she does or not. I guess it’s possible.” At least that would be an explanation that made sense. “But I doubt it. What are the chances somebody dating a Boston firefighter doesn’t mention her sister’s with Boston EMS?”
“Good point. I guess she just doesn’t like you.” Grant grinned and reached for the chips.
Jerking the bag out of his reach, Gavin was in the middle of telling him where he could shove that suggestion when Jeff Porter walked into the kitchen.
“It’s like living with a couple of teenage girls around here,” he said, shoving his hand into the chip bag.
Danny Walsh, E-59’s LT, was right behind him. “We’ve talked about this, Porter. Pour some chips onto a napkin or paper plate and stop groping around in the bag. God knows where those hands have been.”
“Me? How ’bout where the kid’s hands were today.”
“Hey!” Gavin pointed at the pile of chips he’d shaken out onto the table. “I had gloves on. You could have helped but it takes an hour and half a bottle of baby powder to get gloves on those baseball mitts you call hands.”
He ducked when Jeff tried to cuff him with one of those enormous hands because even in fun, those suckers hurt when they connected.
“This coffee tastes like dish soap,” Walsh grumbled.
“For the hundredth time, LT,” Grant said, “the new dish soap is super concentrated, so you’re supposed to use less.”
“What was wrong with the old dish soap?”
“Coupon from Mrs. Cobb.”
Gavin snorted, knowing that would only escalate Walsh’s grumbling. Their chief’s wife got sick of him grumbling about grocery costs, even though they all had to contribute to the house fund, so she’d taken up coupon clipping. Now they had super turbo dish soap and a freezer full of Hot Pockets.
As they dron
ed on about how embarrassing it was to hold up the entire line while the cashier scanned the coupons Cobb’s wife had sent in to work with him—all sorted into a pink wallet-type organizer with panda bears on it—Gavin’s mind wandered.
Straight back to Cait Tasker and that mouth of hers. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what her reaction would be if he cut off the attitude-loaded words coming out of her mouth by kissing her and maybe catching that soft bottom lip between his teeth.
Knowing her, he’d end up in the back of her ambulance and she and her partner would stop for lunch on the way to the hospital.
Chapter Two
Cait stood in front of the small, shabby cape with dirty blue vinyl siding she was once again calling home, trying to brace herself before she went in.
She’d only lived in the house for a few years, between her mom marrying Duke—whose real name was John, which had inexplicably led to John Wayne jokes and the nickname back when he was a child—and moving into a shitty apartment with two broke friends as soon as she graduated from high school. She’d worked hard and eventually moved into a much smaller apartment with a similar level of shittiness, but without the roommates she’d come to like less than she had before living with them.
Then, almost eight months ago, Duke had a heart attack and he didn’t make it. Her mom and her sixteen-year-old half-brother, Carter, hadn’t handled it well. Her older sister, Michelle, was in Texas with her Air Force husband and had her hands full with a toddler. Cait had given all the help she could from arm’s length, but she’d eventually had to come to grips with the fact her mom wasn’t coping with being widowed a second time. It was a scared phone call from her brother that had been the final straw. Since she’d already been looking to lease or buy a less-shitty-than-her-apartment condo, she let her place go and temporarily moved back in with her mother.
Now it was six months later and it wasn’t going well.
But it was too cold to stand outside all night, wishing she was someplace else. A nightclub with friends, dancing and drinking and checking out the hot guys would be nice. Or maybe she’d finally get around to stopping by Kincaid’s Pub, which was supposed to have damned good food and was a favorite of the local firefighters. It was owned by a retired firefighter from Gavin Boudreau’s house, actually, and the owner’s son and son-in-law were on the same crew, too.
And she’d managed to circle right back around to the one guy she was trying not to think about anymore today. With an aggravated sigh, she walked into the house and almost ran into her brother, who was crossing the kitchen to the fridge. Carter’s hair, as dark as her own, needed cutting again and one more thing got added to her to-do list before she even got her shoes off.
“How was your day?” she asked him as he sidestepped around her.
“Fine.” He didn’t stop walking or look up from his phone. The only indication he gave that he’d even heard her was the one word spoken in a flat tone.
On another day, she might have pushed him—forced him to put the phone down and have a conversation with her—but she was tired and not in the mood to get in a war of words with another guy today. Especially since she was already starting to feel guilty about the earlier exchange with Gavin. Whether he pushed her buttons or not, she shouldn’t have taken her bad mood out on him.
Carter rummaged in the fridge for a few seconds before heading to the living room with a drink and his phone.
Her mom was at the counter, where she usually was when Cait came home. Every day, after her workday as a bank teller ended, Patty changed into one of Duke’s old sweatshirts over leggings. “Hi, honey. I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, so I didn’t start dinner yet. It won’t take long, though.”
Cait had sent her a text message when she left the garage, but her mom rarely had her cell phone with her in the house. It was probably at the bottom of her purse, which was hung on the hook under her mom’s heavy winter coat, chiming out reminders nobody could hear.
“I’ll help,” she said, but she wasn’t surprised when her mom shook her head and told her to go relax.
Patty had always enjoyed cooking and they’d often worked side by side in the kitchen but, since Duke’s death, she’d become adamant about doing it herself. Cait had figured out a long time ago that it was one of the few aspects of being the sole head of the household that Patty felt confident about—feeding her children was something she could handle—so she didn’t argue with her.
Instead, she turned her attention to one of the household chores her mother definitely didn’t handle well, which was dealing with the pile of mail tossed on the kitchen island.
And, oh, joy, it was credit card statement time again. One of the first fires Cait had to put out when she moved back in was stopping the auto-payments to the credit card company from Duke’s savings account. The automatic withdrawals meant the statements could go unopened, to deal with another day. Her mother probably would have let it go on forever if Cait hadn’t gotten pushy about her financial situation. Now, every month, Cait looked over every item on the statement, watching for problems and trying to keep a rein on the retail therapy habit her mom had developed. It was a double whammy because she got the retail therapy by buying things for Carter he didn’t need—or deserve—just to make him happy for about two and a half minutes.
“Mom, we need to talk about this gym membership.” Again. “Neither you or Carter have used it a single time since the last time we talked about it.”
“I told you it was Duke’s. He liked to go alone, and I think he went more to hang out with his friends than to work out. I won’t use it, but it just keeps renewing itself.”
So it was basically just setting forty of her mother’s dollars on fire every month. “It needs to be canceled.”
“I tried once. The gym has a website, but I didn’t have the information to sign into his account. And I told you last time you asked that I’ve been meaning to ask Carter if he’d be interested in it, but I keep forgetting. I’ll ask him.”
Cait took a long drink of her coffee to drown the words she wanted to say to her mother. If Carter had any interest in going to the gym, he probably would have gone with his dad. He wasn’t likely to be more interested now that his dad was gone. But she could tell by the way her mother ducked her head and lifted her shoulders a little that she wasn’t feeling very strong at the moment, and Cait knew pushing the issue now would only end in her mother’s tears and her own increasing frustration. Especially if they had to go through the grueling process of trying to guess the answers to her stepfather’s security questions. That hadn’t been fun and the only saving grace was that Duke seemed to reuse the same few passwords on a lot of sites.
Instead, she reached for the notebook that was never far from her laptop—which pretty much lived on the island with the mail since she rarely used it—and opened it to the page where she kept the list of credit card transactions that required further action. After writing down the company name and all the details, she finished scanning the statement and was relieved she didn’t find anything else amiss.
Then she flipped to the most recent page in her never-ending to-do list and added nag Carter about stopping at the barber shop after school. That was a hard one because one Saturday morning of every month, Duke and Carter would go out to breakfast and then spend a couple of hours at the barber’s, getting their hair trimmed and engaging in the male version of salon gossip. While most of Carter’s acting out got on her nerves, since much of it was aimed at getting one over on their mother, she knew this one really hurt him.
“They’re saying we might get snow later this week,” her mother said as she snapped spaghetti in half and dropped it into the pot of boiling water. “We should hire somebody to shovel the driveway and the walk. One of the kids in the neighborhood, maybe.”
“We are not hiring a teenager to shovel snow, Mom. You have one sitting in the living room.”
“It’s a lot for one boy. And you know he’s behind on his homework. He needs to spend that time catching up.”
“It’s not too much for him. He just doesn’t want to do it because nobody wants to shovel snow, and you need to stop babying him. He can shovel the snow and then do his homework.”
“I know you think I baby him, Cait, but you’re too hard on him.”
With a weary sigh, Cait closed the notebook. Then she shut her eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, wondering what her life would be like if Duke hadn’t died. She’d never been much of a party girl, but she’d gone out with friends. She’d even started dating again, after her last long-term relationship had gone stale.
But now, after an exhausting day at work, there was an exhausting evening with her mother and brother ahead of her. And the distance to her old neighborhood, where her friends and favorite stomping grounds were, was just far enough to require an effort she didn’t have the energy for.
It made her feel old and tired, and the memory of Gavin’s carefree laugh popped into her head. She could picture that boyish grin and that damn cowlick, so she opened her eyes. Thinking about him again wouldn’t do anything but make her feel restless, and it was a restlessness she couldn’t do a damn thing about.
She was willing to bet Gavin knew how to show a girl a good time, and—damn—she really needed a good time in her life.
But trying to date, even casually, while she was stressed out by her family would probably only lead to more complications and her plate was full of those. She’d be better off getting her mom back on her own two feet, finding herself her own place and then finding a guy who was actually her type.
It made a lot more sense than being frustrated by her inexplicable attraction to a guy who was very much not her type, and—as her mother often pointed out—Cait was always the sensible one in the family.
* * *
Gavin wasn’t really in the mood to shoot pool, but they’d all come up with the plan to meet up at Kincaid’s Pub while they were standing out on the sidewalk after the surprise childbirth incident yesterday, so he showed up. A night with the guys would probably beat sitting on his couch, watching TV alone. And even if it didn’t, he could use the distraction.
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