by Lila Ashe
Coin shouldered his axe and said, “If she thinks that’s smoke damage? My ex-wife did more damage frying blackened catfish than that little bit of smoke she’s got in there.”
Tox frowned. “You set up the blower?”
“Yeah, it didn’t even take three minutes to send it out the back door. TIC’s clear.” Coin said, referencing the thermal imaging camera they used to make sure fire hadn’t spread elsewhere in the building.
“She’s not taking a ride with us.”
Coin signaled Hank and headed across the grass toward the engine. “That’s not smart. That cough sounded like something that should get checked. And she DFO’d.”
“I know, right?”
“Ain’t she some doctor? She should know better, right?” Coin swung himself up to the driver’s seat.
“A doctor who does voodoo with needles?” Tox said. “Not likely.”
“You know, Lexie in dispatch swears by that stuff.” Behind them, Hank jumped on board. Coin started the engine. “Let’s hit it.”
“Hold up,” said Tox.
“What?” said Coin, releasing the air brake.
“I just … Wait, that’s all. I’ll just be a second.”
Inside the clinic, the air still smelled faintly of burnt electrical wiring, but he barely noticed. Grace was yanking those tiny little needles out of the old guy’s face. Tox winced.
She dropped the needles in a sharps container and turned to face him. “Not done harassing me about being unable to afford health-care in this great state of ours?”
He shook his head. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he handed her the albuterol inhaler he’d brought inside.
“What’s this?”
“Use it if you feel short of breath. And seriously, if you have any pain at all, you have to go see someone. Lung infections aren’t to be messed with.”
Her eyes softened a little. “You gonna send me a bill for this, too?”
“No.”
“Then, why …”
Gruffly, he said, “Just use it if you have to. It’ll make me feel better.”
She gave a small quick smile. One that he wanted to see more of. “Well. Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to see to Mrs. Little.”
He raised his eyebrows in salute—it was really all he could manage. Something about Grace Rowe tangled his tongue and his brain-waves at the same time.
As he walked back toward the truck, he touched his side pocket. He’d have to remember to replace his inhaler with his extra when they got back to the station.
CHAPTER THREE
Grace groaned and rubbed her belly. Her sister Samantha had taken on many professions since she turned eighteen, from truck-stop waitress to exotic dancer, from well-driller to—astonishingly—legal secretary, but in Grace’s estimation, the best job her sister had ever had was the stint she took as cook at a small diner in southern Tennessee a few years back. No one knew how to cook bacon crisper or fry chicken greasier. Nothing Samantha made was healthy, but that was something they were working on. Okay, that was something Grace was working on at least.
“That was amazing. What do you even call that?”
“Hush-puppy-corn-fritter-sausage casserole. Or as I say, Mash’n’Smash.”
“You know this is Northern California, right? You could get arrested for that in seven counties.”
Samantha’s eyebrows jumped. “Really?”
Grace held up her hands. “Teasing. That’s all.” Crap. It wasn’t ever smart to joke about arrests of any kind in front of Samantha. You’d think she’d remember once in a while. “It tastes amazing. I wonder how we could make it a little more heart-healthy?”
Samantha laughed and untied her apron. “I can tell you exactly—substitute spinach and quinoa for all the ingredients, and then curl up in a ball and weep from hunger pains.” She cleared their plates from the table.
Grace stood, trying to grab one of the plates back. “No, for once, can I do the dishes in my own house?”
Samantha shook her head. “We talked about that. It’s my job.”
“This isn’t your job. I want you to live here.”
“I’ve always made my own way. You know that.” Samantha looked at her hands as she ran the hot water into the sink. “If I could contribute, I’d feel better. If I could just find a dang job.”
“What about that thing you were doing, editing college applications?”
“Pays next to nothing. And I swear they just write whatever I tell them to. But yeah, I do have a little money to give you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” said Samantha sharply. “It’s what I meant.”
Grace hated hearing the frustration in Samantha’s voice. She would do anything to take it away. There was a time when, heartbreakingly, she hadn’t been able to do a single thing to help her sister. Now that Sam was clean, now that she was trying so hard … Grace wanted to fix everything for her, to make everything all right.
“Later,” Grace said, shutting off the water.
“Why are you coughing like that?”
Grace cleared her throat. “I’m not. Come on.”
“What are we doing?”
“Change into your workout clothes. We’re going for a run.”
Sam gave her a look of horror. “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? I will blow chunks from here to the harbor. Did you see what we just ate?”
“That’s exactly why we’re going for a run. I don’t want us to die of a cardiovascular … thingie anytime soon.”
“We’re too young.”
“I know a woman who had a heart attack at thirty-four.”
Sam crossed her arms in front of her and looked at her challengingly. “Who?”
Grace dried her hands and then wiped down the already-clean counter. “No one you know.”
“Her name?”
“Um … Okay, maybe I read it in a magazine.”
“One of your holistic yogapuncture journals?”
“It can happen.”
Samantha pulled a rubber band out of the junk drawer and pulled up her long, brown, gorgeous hair. No matter what, Sam’s hair always looked amazing, thick and wavy, even just rolling right out of bed. Grace, on the other hand, knew that now, by the end of the day, her hair was wild in all the places it wasn’t flat.
Handing a second rubber band to Grace, Sam said, “Fine. If by run you mean jog.”
“Girl, I think I might mean walk fast.” Grace patted her overly-full stomach again. “I have no more interest in losing my dinner than you do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
It wasn’t until they were fast-walking down Lowry Avenue on their way to the marina that Grace realized their walk would take them past the fire station. Part of her wanted nothing more than to pass in front and peer inside. Sometimes, when she’d walked by before, she’d noticed she could see the firefighters in the kitchen through a screened window. It looked so homey that once she’d stopped dead in her tracks, staring inside at the man at the stove, stirring a huge pot that had white steam billowing out of it. Another guy had stood at the center island chopping something she couldn’t identify. A third man had been by the sink laughing while rock music filtered out.
Grace wondered now if one of them had been Tox.
Certainly it hadn’t been the laughing one.
“Let’s go down Clackman Street instead.”
“Why?” Sam’s ponytail swung. She was walking faster than Grace wanted to, which was a little galling.
“Change of pace.”
“But I want to go past the fire station,” said Samantha. “Maybe we’ll see the guys working out.”
“Exactly what I don’t want to do,” said Grace under her rather short breath.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you wheezing?”
“I’m fine.”
Sam put out a hand and slowed Grace down. “No, wait. You’re not. You’re flushed and your breathing sounds funny. Oh, jeez, are you having a
heart attack?”
Grace leaned forward and put her hands on her thighs. Maybe she should have brought that inhaler Tox had given her. She hadn’t even thought of it. “I’m not having a heart attack.”
“You are. You totally are. I’m calling 911.” She fished around in the front of her bra for her phone—that was another thing they didn’t have in common—Sam had enough rack to hold a cell phone, whereas Grace couldn’t have hidden a tissue in hers without it being obvious.
“Over my dead body will you call 911.” Grace took a careful breath. It didn’t hurt, and that’s what Tox had warned her about, right? “I’ve already done that once today.”
Samantha punched her in the arm. “What? For this?”
“Ow. Why did you do that?”
“Because we just ate dinner and you didn’t mention a word about an emergency? Are you dying? Do you have lung cancer?”
“Jeez, Sam. No, I just had a little fire at the clinic.”
“Little fire?” Samantha’s voice was almost a shriek. “Are you serious?”
“Just in the air conditioning. I might have inhaled a little smoke. Oh, and maybe I passed out. But only for a second.”
Sam grabbed Grace by the arm she was still rubbing from the punching. “March.”
“Hey.”
“To the fire station.”
Grace felt like a mule digging in her heels and pulling backward. “No way.”
“It’s that or I call 911.”
“I don’t know what’s worse.”
“Walk.”
Samantha had that look in her eye, the one Grace had always recognized as the one she wasn’t going to get around. She’d had that look before she bought her first motorcycle. And when she’d insisted on following a drummer across the country to Maine. Luckily, she’d had that look a few weeks into rehab, too. Grace loved that her little sister was as stubborn—no, more—than she was.
It was unfortunate in situations like this, though.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tox couldn’t think of much more he liked better than standing outside with a bowl of ice cream on a warm summer night at the firehouse, watching women go by in workout gear. The guys were inside playing dice for who did the dishes. He was immune, since he’d done them last night.
Three scoops in his bowl, one coffee, one peanut butter, one chocolate. He’d added about four pounds of hot fudge and a metric ton of caramel, just to even the score. Hank had taken one look at it and said, “You’re an idiot.”
“You are.” It had been the only appropriate answer, really.
“Where’s your whipped cream? Where’s the cherry? Where’re the nuts?”
Tox said, “This is a snack, not a sundae, and I got all the nuts I need. Wanna see ‘em?”
“You don’t know anything about dessert,” Hank said disgustedly, reaching for the door of the freezer.
Now, outside, his mouth full of ice cream, he watched with appreciation the two women doing a jog-walk down the sidewalk. For some reason, the street the firehouse sat on saw a lot of exercise activity. All the runner-MILFs liked to run down Lowry. Some of them stopped at the bench in front to “stretch.” More than one firefighter had nabbed a hose bunny under the flagpole, but Tox had never been desperate like that. He wasn’t the type for relationships.
He kind of sucked at them, that was the truth. And he hated doing things he wasn’t good at. Okay, sex he was good at, or at least he’d been told that often enough he kind of believed it. He tried his best, that was for sure, and he liked trying. He just wasn’t good at the rest of it.
Fine by him. If he had a girlfriend waiting for his call, he wouldn’t be able to ogle without guilt, and the two women walking at a fast trot were enough to slow his spoon.
The one in front, who appeared to be dragging the other by the arm was a leggy brunette who looked familiar. She got more so the closer she got. The one behind her—the one with the huge brown eyes wearing a black running skirt—was the woman from earlier. The Rowe sisters, Samantha and Grace.
Now, what were the odds of that?
Tox set the bowl of ice cream on the bench. “Ladies,” he said.
“She’s having a heart attack.”
His adrenaline pumped. He’d expected flirting. Not another medical.
“I am not,” said Grace. “I just had trouble catching my breath for a second. Now I’m fine.”
“Sit,” he said. “Here, on the grass.”
“I’m totally serious,” Grace said. “I’m fine. I don’t want or need medical attention. Samantha overreacts.” But she sat, folding her compact, well-shaped legs carefully under her. Samantha flopped on the grass next to her.
“You have that inhaler on you?”
Grace shook her head, and her messy ponytail flopped back and forth. “I don’t need it. You know Samantha, right? Samantha, this is Tox.”
He ignored the reintroduction for a moment and reached in his pocket where he’d already stashed his other inhaler. “Here. Use mine.”
Grace pulled in her lips and shook her head again.
“Use it,” said Samantha. “Or I’ll make bacon and grits every morning for the next week and eat it in front of you.”
“Jeez,” Grace said, accepting it from him. She lifted the edge of her black tank top and wiped off the mouthpiece.
He folded his arms and looked down at her. Jeez, she was a cute little thing. “Cooties all gone?”
She folded her lips around the inhaler and sucked. Her color looked better within seconds.
“She’s careful about germs.”
Tox nodded. “Immunocompromised?” She didn’t look sick, other than pale, but you never knew.
“No!” gasped Grace, releasing her breath. “It’s just healthier to avoid them as much as possible. You never know where …” She passed the inhaler back to him. Their fingertips touched. “… something’s been.”
“Like I said. Cooties. You know it’s actually better for your immune system to deal with germs and battle them off, right?”
She tilted her head. “Some say that, and I can see the worth in that argument. But I work with immunocompromised people all the time, so I try to stay healthy. And I really don’t know where your lips have been.”
She obviously didn’t realize how her sentence would sound until it was out of her mouth, and the look on her face was hilarious: two parts shocked, one part amused. Tox could look at her a while, he realized.
He finally turned to Samantha. “Hey. I wasn’t ignoring you, I was just paying attention to the patient. You look great. I’d heard you were back in town.”
Samantha bounced to her feet and hugged him. Of course she did. California girls. Back in Boston, where he’d grown up, people didn’t just hug willy-nilly. People here, though—he’d been at parties where, after being introduced to a perfect stranger, he’d been squeezed. Who did that?
Sam’s hug was friendly. She smelled like the same soap he’d smelled on Grace earlier. But on Grace, it had been different. Sweeter, somehow. Deeper. For a second, he kinda wished he was hugging Grace instead.
“You okay now?” he said to Grace. “Do I need to pull out another form for you to sign, refusing medical attention?”
She jerked her chin up, obviously not realizing he was teasing her. “I’ll sign it. No problem.”
“I’m only—” Tox’s attention was yanked away from the startling amber color of her eyes in the dusk light by the man who was barreling toward him full-tilt. “What the—”
“Help!” The man, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, ran barefoot toward Tox, an infant swaddled in blue cradled against his chest. “My baby! Help me, please, help!” When he reached Tox, he thrust out the baby as if he were a hot potato. Reflexively, Tox caught him.
No. Not again.
CHAPTER SIX
Grace watched, astonished, as a terrified-looking man practically threw a small baby into Tox’s arms.
Tox took one look down at the child and barked at Grace, �
��Go in the side door and yell, as loud as you can, Infant code blue.”
Grace ran as fast as she could. In her haste she couldn’t find the side door, so she went through the huge open doors to the big room where the fire engines were housed. It was dark, coming from the outside, but she found an interior door and pulled.
“Infant code blue!” she yelled. She choked and yelled it again. She didn’t see anyone. She ran farther into the fire station, down a short hall where matching yellow coats hung on high hooks, and yelled it a third time. She coughed in terror, and wondered if she should just scream the high, thin scream that was threatening the back of her throat. Help. She needed help.
She heard boots hit the floor. Two men were at her side, bags in hand. Apparently they were the magic words.
“Where?”
Grace pointed with a shaking finger. “Front. Outside.”
She stayed at their heels. The one who had been with Tox earlier, the man he’d called Coin yelled over his shoulder, “Is it your baby? Girl or boy? Age?”
“Not mine,” she gasped.
Outside, Tox had dropped to his knees on the grass. The father hovered over him, and Samantha was standing a few feet away, her hand over her mouth.
“Sir, I need you to back up a few steps so we can work, okay? How old is your son?”
“Three months. But he was a preemie. My wife called 911, but I thought it would be faster to run here …”
Tox laid the blanket the baby was wrapped in on the grass. The child was rigid, his eyes open and glassy, his jaw gritted, his fingers flexed.
Grace was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing.
“For the love of Pete,” spat Tox. “What if we’d been out on a call?” He did something with the baby’s neck as Coin inserted a plastic mouthpiece into a clear bag. “Has he been feverish?”
The father looked as if he were watching his worst nightmare come true in front of his eyes. “Yeah. We’ve been giving him baby acetaminophen—did that cause it?”
Tox shook his head as he tilted the baby’s chin. “No.” But he didn’t reassure the man, either. He just spoke quickly, words that Grace didn’t understand, instructing what each firefighter should do. “Febrile seizure. Postictal. Compressions if he doesn’t breathe in about twenty seconds.”