Fire at Dawn: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 2

by Lila Ashe

  That was how she thought about work. That was how she thought about Coin. As a friend.

  Such a good friend.

  Why, then, could she still feel him on her lips? Why was it she could still taste him, feel the weight of his mouth on hers?

  And why had she had so many dreams about him all night? In the most disturbing one, he’d pulled off her dress and touched her in the places she’d never imagined Coin touching. She’d wanted him to. Then he’d disappeared, and she’d heard his voice, calling out for her on the radio. She’d known he was trapped, pinned, hurt somewhere, and she couldn’t help him. She’d woken with her hands shaking and tears on her cheeks.

  Lexie put the coffee into the filter and hit the red button. Behind her, Mira twittered about something, flitting in and out of the kitchen. She’d settle soon enough, and Lexie would have to listen. But now, as she leaned against the counter—which reminded her of how she’d leaned against his sink last night—she put her fingers to her lips.

  Online, men who liked big women just came right out and said it. In fact, men online were often disappointed that Lexie didn’t weigh more, which was always a strange kind of treat. Online dating meant she could weed out the ones who had issues with bigger girls. “Please be height/weight proportionate.” If Lexie knew one thing, she knew that’s something she was. Her round curves suited her frame, they always had. It had taken years and years for her to accept them, especially with a mother like Mira always chipping away at her, but finally, she was okay with what she had to work with. Her weight was truly appropriate to her height and frame. She was strong and fit.

  But height/weight proportionate—to men—meant thin enough to disappear while standing sideways.

  Coin had put that in his ad.

  What if he’d stopped kissing Lexie because he’d felt her love handles? What if he hadn’t followed her outside when she left last night because he was mortified by his mistake?

  How on earth was she supposed to go back to work tomorrow?

  Mira flitted back into the room, rubbing oil into her cuticles. “You know, I just love that manicure set I gave you. Don’t you?” Mira reached out and grabbed Lexie’s hand, looking carefully at the chipped nails, at her old, worn-off polish. “Honey. That just sits in your bathroom, and you don’t even use it. Let’s go get mani-pedis today! Together!”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Why not?”

  “No, thank you.” Sometimes that was all she could say to her mother, all she could think of saying. If she kept repeating it, kept saying no without explaining why, she knew from past experience that eventually her mother would give up and start bugging her about something else.

  Mira poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table.

  “Will you make me a slice of toast, darling?”

  “Yes,” said Lexie. That she could do.

  “Gluten-free?”

  Lexie didn’t bother answering. The regular kind of bread—full of delicious gluten—would be just fine for her mother.

  “Now tell me about the date, darling, from start to finish. No, just one piece is fine for me.”

  It wouldn’t cross her mother’s mind that perhaps the other piece of bread might be for Lexie. She pressed the toaster’s button, folded her arms, and turned to face the music that was Mira Tindall.

  “I didn’t tell you, but it was a double date.”

  “Oh! How interesting! Why?”

  “Safety in numbers.”

  “What is this fellow’s name again?”

  “Thomas.”

  “A good, strong name.”

  It wasn’t. It was a little boring, Lexie thought, especially when contrasted to a name like Coin. “We had dinner. That’s all.”

  “You said it was great. What made it that?” Mira leaned forward, her eyes alight. “Did he kiss you?”

  Lexie paused. Thomas hadn’t.

  “He did! He did. Was it a good kiss?”

  The best kiss of her life, maybe. That’s why it was so upsetting. “Ma, I’m sorry, but I’m not that into telling you about any kind of kiss.”

  Mira frowned. “Now you’re just hurting my feelings on purpose. I just want you to find your always.”

  Crap. She’d meant to head her mother off at the pass, not to hurt her. “I’m sorry. It just feels weird.”

  But sheesh. Her “always.” It had been her father’s favorite word. He said it to Lexie when he kissed her goodnight and told her he loved her. “Always,” he’d whisper with one last kiss pressed to her forehead. It was the last word he always said to her mother before he left the house. “Always,” he’d say before smiling at her and shutting the door.

  Yeah, sometimes Lexie dreamed about an “always.” But she also dreamed about pregnant giraffes chasing her in off-road vehicles. She didn’t put that much stock in dreams.

  Still looking pained, her nose tilted higher than normal, Mira reached for the basket she’d brought. “I’ll give you your present and then I’ll leave, and then you can get back to your day that I’m so obviously interrupting.” She sent a pointed look around Lexie’s kitchen. “Or you can go back to sleep. It’s all the same to me, obviously.”

  Inwardly, Lexie sighed. “Thank you.”

  “I haven’t even given it to you yet.”

  With this kind of lead-up, Lexie knew she’d hate the present. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”

  Mira clapped. “Oh, you will.” She took out a package and unwrapped the red cloth around it. “It’s herbal. The woman who sold it to me swears by it, and you should have seen her cute little figure. She said it will cut the craving for all fats and sugar by ninety percent if you just drink a cup of this every morning and then again before you go to bed.”

  “It’s a diet supplement?”

  “Aid, darling. It’s a health aid. Everyone needs a little help now and again.” Mira tilted her head and examined Lexie. “You look like you’ve put on just a skosh more weight again. I thought you told me you’d keep that five pounds off. For your health.”

  Lexie sucked a sip of coffee into her mouth even though it was still too hot. “It’s not for my health,” she muttered, knowing better and doing it anyway.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You hate that I’m not tiny, like you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” But Mira’s smile was too bright.

  Lexie stood up. “I will never be anything like you. And you know what? I don’t want to be.” She willed herself to stop talking, but she couldn’t seem to find the off switch. “You’re too small.”

  Her mother preened like a peacock. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a compliment.”

  “Your father liked me trim. Sometimes, I think that if you …”

  “Lost weight I could catch a firefighter? Like you did?”

  “No!” Her mother looked genuinely horrified.

  “Dad loved me, too. Just like this.”

  “But—”

  Lexie said, “I’m the way I am because of you. Because of the fact that you’ve never been healthy a day in your life. If you have a piece of candy, you have to punish yourself for three days. You know what that does to a kid? Whenever I had a piece of birthday cake at a kid’s party, you’d make me run around the block ten times before bed for a week.”

  “For your health.”

  Lexie pushed forward, gripping her coffee cup handle as if it could save her. “Healthy is eating sensibly. You were anorexic and bulimic when you were in college.” Her mother had admitted it only once, when Lexie had caught her vomiting in the bathroom at a dinner party.

  “But I haven’t been since then. I’m just very careful to watch what I eat.”

  “Last Wednesday? Eating an apple for your one meal of the day isn’t careful.”

  Mira sniffed, but the whites of her eyes looked panicked. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I just didn’t have much food in the house last week and I didn’t want to go shopping.”

  “You brag
ged about it in order to make me feel bad.”

  “I didn’t.” Mira rewrapped the tea in the cloth.

  “I’ll never be you.” She said it as gently as she could. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked on being okay with myself? Finally accepting myself? It’s taken years. And therapy. And lots of friends loving me for exactly what I am.”

  “I know—but now that you’re dating more …”

  “Lots of men love a girl with curves.” Lexie’s voice had a wobble now, and she wished with all her heart that her mother would just leave.

  “Sure.” Mira’s head bobbed again. “Sure.”

  Her mother left quickly, saying something unconvincing about a charity meeting. As the front door closed, Lexie could almost hear her father’s voice. “Always.”

  It sounded like a reproach.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Station One was directly on the route between Serena’s school and her mother’s house, so she often stopped by to see Coin on his work days.

  Today Coin had plans for his daughter. Coin realized he was scheming to use Serena to get the attention of a woman, romantically. That probably made him some kind of unfit father. But then again, Serena was going to end up with a bag full of oatmeal raisin cookies, her favorite, so he supposed that made up for it. At least, he hoped it did.

  Serena was suspicious, though. “You want to bake cookies here at work?” From the day room, the baseball game blared. Hank and Tox yelled at whatever play their guy had just screwed up.

  “Why not?”

  “What if you get a call?”

  “Then you can stay in the station and make sure the cookies don’t burn.”

  Serena poked the room temperature butter with her finger. “I thought when you guys got a call that the oven shuts off.”

  “It does.” It was a fire safety thing—if they had to go on a medical or fire run while a pan of eggs was on the stove or a loaf of garlic bread was in the oven, the fire station wouldn’t burn down in their absence.

  “So that won’t work.”

  “But if you stay behind, you can turn the oven back on. If you can’t fix a problem, you’re not trying hard enough.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I hate it when you say that. I don’t know about this.”

  Coin was flummoxed. “You don’t know about baking cookies? That’s what you’re telling me.”

  Holding up a finger she said in a voice that was strangely grown up, “One, you don’t normally bake cookies at work. Two, you’re weird today.”

  “How weird?” He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, but Serena didn’t laugh.

  “Oh, I get it,” she said, throwing her backpack onto the kitchen island.

  “What?”

  “That date you had two nights ago. You’re making her cookies.”

  “Why can’t I make my daughter a treat if I want to?”

  “Because you don’t,” she said simply. “Mom makes cookies. You and I go out to ice cream. That how this works.”

  It was true. That was the division of labor that had come to pass over the years.

  “So you’re getting your daughter to make cookies for the girl you like.”

  Coin rubbed his face. “Yes.”

  She laughed, a child again. “That’s so cute! Let’s bake!”

  The engine—of course—did get a call between the baking of the second and third trays. It was just a woman who cut herself shaving but was on blood thinners, so the clean up took longer than Coin would have liked.

  When he finally got back into the station kitchen, the oven was off. Two trays of cooling cookies sat on the big wooden island. Coin knew that with the guys coming back from the hospital, they’d last about five minutes, so he piled a plateful and headed to dispatch.

  Laughter filtered down the hall. Good. Lexie was awake, then. Nerves raced down his spine. He’d pointedly stayed out of dispatch today until now. That in itself was enough to look suspicious, but he hadn’t wanted to arrive empty handed.

  “Dad! Lexie’s playing poker with me!” Serena was standing next to Lexie’s computer, bouncing on the balls of her red sneakers. “Look! Look! I won fifty bucks!”

  Coin leaned in to look and caught a breath of Lexie’s scent, light and floral. “Tell me that’s not real money.”

  Lexie said, “I know we get away with a lot here, but I’m pretty sure the chief would frown on gambling while on the job.”

  “Lexie said she always wins when she plays poker with you,” Serena crowed, picking up a still-warm cookie from the plate.

  “Only because she cheats,” said Coin. He held the plate out to Lexie.

  “She said it’s because you have no poker face. But I don’t really know what that means.”

  Lexie took a cookie. “It means he can’t hide anything.” She paused, as if weighing the cookie in her hand. “I just realized I might be wrong about that, though.”

  “Okay, Dad, I’m going home.” She grinned at him. “And tell me how taking those cookies to the girl goes. Be nice. Make her laugh.”

  “Wilco,” said Coin, kissing her on the top of her head as she raced past.

  “Bye, Lex!”

  Lexie waved and then leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “That girl has energy.”

  “Enough to power the sun,” agreed Coin. “Hi, you.”

  “Hi.” Her eyes dropped to the cookie plate. “Serena said you were baking cookies for Ginger. She had the clever thought after you left that you should have baked gingersnaps. But I bet Ginger might have heard that one already, huh?” Her words fell faster than normal, as if she was nervous.

  “She got it wrong.”

  Lexie bit her cookie.

  “I said I was baking them for the woman I liked.”

  Lexie started coughing.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, holding up a hand. Good grief, even red faced and sputtering out small pieces of oatmeal raisin cookie, she was still sexy. A trio of long red curls fell in front of her eyes as she coughed, and she didn’t push them out of the way. She hid behind them.

  Coin’s heart beat faster. This was when she told him to stop, to leave her alone.

  But instead, she only said, “She didn’t tell me that part.”

  Incredibly heartened that she wasn’t—yet—tossing him out on his ear, Coin said, “I guess she left that for me to do.”

  Lexie gestured to the plate he still held. “You can put that down, if you want.”

  “Yeah.” Coin felt about thirteen years old and just as smooth.

  “You made my favorite cookies.”

  “You always say they’re your favorite but you only like them when they’re fresh. Homemade.”

  She laughed, and her eyes danced this time. “I swore to Megan before she went to bed that I could smell cookies baking, but she told me it was just wishful thinking.”

  Coin shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Thank you.”

  She had no idea how welcome she was.

  Maybe it was time to tell her again.

  “Lexie,” he started.

  “Look,” she said. “About what happened—”

  “Can I say this first? And then you can tell me what you think? I’d let you talk but I’m so nervous I feel like I might pass out, and if you had to call the guys down here to evaluate me, I’d have to quit and then I’d have no way to pay the bills and I’d end up living in my car, which would be fine most of the year but it’s coming up on winter and—”

  “Coin. Say it.”

  “When I kissed you, that was exactly what I’d wanted for a long time. A really long time. I’d imagined kissing you a thousand times, and when I did, it was better than anything I’d ever been able to conjure with my mind. However …” He picked up a cookie, broke it in half, and then put it down again. “I know that’s not for the workplace, though.”

  “Coin, it’s …”

  “I promise to be my regular self while I’m at work with you. Just me. We do the c
rossword puzzle in the morning and I bring you coffee in the afternoon.”

  She touched the newspaper. “You didn’t come in this morning.”

  “I know.”

  “I couldn’t get 11-down.”

  “Me, neither.”

  Her gaze rose to meet his. “You did the puzzle without me?”

  Pointing, he said, “So did you.”

  “Oh.”

  Slowly, Lexie said, “You said you’re yourself when you’re at work. What about when you’re not at work?”

  Coin turned a chair backward so he could straddle it. He looked right at her. “All bets are off. I pursue you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The way he said it—Lexie had never heard Coin speak in that particular tone of voice. As if he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it, and as if what he wanted was her.

  It was so hot. Good grief, she was still thinking of Coin as hot. She’d been hoping she would get over it. Apparently she hadn’t. “So you …”

  “I call you. I ask you out on dates. If you say yes, then we go.”

  Would he kiss her again? At the end of a date? Lexie made the mistake of meeting his eyes, and she found the answer there. He would. He would kiss her senseless, until she lost her breath and her reason and everything else she felt as if she’d left behind her at his house.

  “What about the bet?”

  He shook his head. “What?”

  “The Bora Bora bet. On who falls in love first.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Coin said.

  “And?”

  “I’m hoping I get to take you to the islands.”

  He wasn’t touching her—still five feet away—and she gasped as if he had.

  Coin went on, “But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to find your perfect match.”

  She frowned. Now she was confused. “Wait …”

  “I know this isn’t your idea. I’m just telling you I’m not scared of who you might meet online.”