This time it was Becca, and Lydia wondered which of them the message was aimed at. Probably her.
Before she could respond, another text from Becca came through.
Heard you were at KP last night. Ninja visit?
Lydia didn’t have time to compose a reply before a response from her sister popped up.
I’m taking some time off. L’s home to cover for me.
How long?
Don’t know.
Since Ashley was not only awake, but able to type coherently, Lydia dropped the phone onto the blanket and closed her eyes again. Kincaid’s didn’t open until eleven, so she didn’t have to jump out of bed.
But when the phone chimed again she realized that, even if she didn’t join in the conversation, the alerts would drive her crazy. After a big stretch, she picked up the phone again.
GNO!
That was Courtney, and Lydia rolled her eyes. While a girl’s night out was appealing, she barely had her feet under her. She hadn’t even worked a shift at the bar yet, so trying to get time off would be tough.
Soon. Stop at KP & say hi if you can.
That might hold them off for a while. Long enough to get coffee into her system, at least.
That turned out to be the end of the messages, but Lydia knew she’d tipped past the mostly awake point and wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now. After unplugging her phone, she made a quick stop in the bathroom and then headed downstairs.
Once she reached the top of the stairs, she could smell the coffee and followed the aroma to the kitchen. Ashley was sitting at the table, her phone in hand, and she looked up when Lydia walked in.
“Hey, how did you sleep?”
“Like a baby.” It was a lie, but Ashley already felt bad about asking her to come home. No sense in piling on guilt about it. And even a crappy mattress was better than staying at her dad’s.
Once she’d made her coffee, she sat down across from her sister and sipped it. If it wasn’t so hot, she’d guzzle the stuff. Lydia was a better cook than Ashley, but her sister was definitely better at making coffee.
After a few minutes, Ashley put down her phone and looked at her. “It’s been ten days.”
“Ten days?” A week and half had gone by before her sister bothered telling her that her marriage was over?
“I thought he’d come back, you know? Like maybe he’d blow off some steam and then we’d talk about it. But he didn’t come back. And when I called him, he just closed up and it was like talking to a machine.” Ashley stared at her coffee, shaking her head. “More than usual, even. So the more I hope we can work it out, the more he does the thing I can’t live with anymore.”
Lydia took the time to consider her next words carefully. She had her sister’s back, 100 percent, but sometimes having a person’s back wasn’t as cut-and-dried as blindly agreeing with everything they said. “He’s always been quiet. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the other guys call him the ice man. It’s not just with you.”
“He can be however he wants with other people, especially the other guys. I’m his wife. If I’m upset and worried or pissed off, I need to feel like he at least cares.”
“Have you thought about counseling?”
Ashley shrugged. “I mentioned it once and he changed the subject. I’m not sure what the point would be in talking to somebody when he doesn’t talk.”
“That is the point. A professional can help you guys communicate, including helping him break through whatever block he’s got up and talk to you.”
“I left a message on his voicemail, asking him if we could set up a time to meet somewhere for coffee. If he shows up, I’ll mention it.”
“Just don’t make it about him—that he needs help because he can’t communicate. Make it about you feeling like it would be good for your marriage.”
She nodded. “Assuming he even calls me back. He keeps texting me, but I want him to stop taking the easy way out and actually talk to me. I want to hear his voice.”
“Where’s he staying? With his parents?” Ashley’s mouth tightened and Lydia leaned back in her chair. “No. Don’t even tell me.”
“He’s staying with Scotty.”
“Of course he is.” Lydia’s hand tightened around the coffee mug and it took supreme will not to chuck it at the wall. “Is Scott working today?”
Ashley looked at her, and then slowly shook her head. “Don’t, Lydia. You’ll only make it worse.”
“It’s not right. You’re his sister.”
“It’s better than not knowing where Danny is or having him shack up with God knows who.”
“There are plenty of other guys who could offer him a couch,” Lydia argued. “He could crash with Aidan or Rick. Jeff. Chris. Any of them. It didn’t have to be your brother. In our father’s house.”
When Ashley just gave a small shrug, Lydia wanted to shake her. As far as she was concerned, Scott had crossed a line and she wanted her sister to be pissed off about it. To demand the respect and loyalty the Kincaid men should be showing her, and not Danny.
But she knew Ashley wasn’t wired the same way she was and it took a lot to make her angry. Just like their mother, once she’d had enough, she could give Lydia and Scott a run for their money, and that’s what Lydia wanted to see.
“Did I really jam you up by asking you to come back?” Ashley asked. “I’m sorry about what I said about your job, by the way. I was so desperate to get out of being at the bar, but that was dirty.”
“I forgive you because God knows I’ve vented at you often enough. That’s what sisters are for. And you didn’t jam me up at all. You were right about me hating that job and, when I go back, I’ll find one I like more.”
“You should go back to bartending. You’re a natural.”
Lydia shrugged. Bartending was something she was good at and she honestly enjoyed it, but she’d taken the waitressing job because she wanted something different. Tending a bar that wasn’t Kincaid’s Pub had seemed at the time like it might be too painful for her.
“I thought about going to school,” she said. “But I spent weeks looking at brochures and stuff online and nothing jumped out at me. If I’m going to invest that time and money, I want it to be for something I really want to be, you know?”
“If I had the chance to go to college, I’d go for office or business stuff. I don’t even know what it’s called, but I think it would be awesome to work in a medical clinic, like for women’s health.”
“Have you thought about going to the community college?” They’d both been thrown into work young and college had never been a big deal in their family, but if Ashley wanted to go, she should.
“Danny and I talked about it a while back. He was supportive, but Dad made a big deal out of needing me at Kincaid’s and you were getting a divorce. Plus working around Danny’s hours would be a pain. It was easier to forget about it.”
Lydia shoved back at the guilt that threatened to overwhelm her and make her say something stupid, like offering to stay in Boston so Ashley could go to college. Her dad had accused her of being selfish when she’d taken off, and maybe she was, but she couldn’t be responsible for everybody’s lives. She was still working on her own.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Lydia said when it became clear Ashley had nothing else to say at the moment. “We should go out for breakfast.”
“I already made pancake batter. I was just waiting for you to get up.”
Her sister wasn’t the best cook in the world, but she made amazing pancakes. “I hope you made a lot. I’m starving.”
Ashley’s face lit up with a real smile. “I know you and my pancakes. I practically had to mix it in a bucket.”
* * *
Aidan held up a metal rod and looked over at Scotty. “What is this? Does this go somewhere?”
They
both looked at the piece of playground equipment they’d spent the past hour assembling, and then Scotty shrugged. “It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere.”
“I don’t think they said, ‘Hey, let’s throw a random metal rod in there just to mess with the idiots who have to put it together,’ do you?”
“I don’t know. If you set something on fire, I know what to do with it. Building things? Not my job.”
Chris Eriksson joined them, scratching at a slowly graying beard. “I don’t think you’re supposed to have extra pieces. A bolt maybe. A few nuts. That looks important.”
“Where did the instructions go?” Aidan asked, scanning the playground to see if they’d blown away.
“There were instructions?”
“Funny, Kincaid.” Eriksson shook his head. “My kid’s going to climb on this thing. If we can’t figure it out, we’re breaking it down and starting over.”
Aidan stifled the curse words he wanted to mutter as he started circling the playground structure. They were surrounded by an increasingly bored pack of elementary students and a photographer waiting to snap a few pictures of the kids playing on the equipment the firehouse had donated and built. When Eriksson had come to them, looking for some help for his son’s school, they’d been all-in.
And they still were. This was their community and they all did what they could. But it would have been nice if somebody had been in charge of the directions. After a few minutes, one of the teachers—a pretty brunette with a warm smile—moved closer and beckoned him over.
“We built one of these where I did my student teaching, and I think it’s a support bar for under the slide,” she whispered. “If you look up at it from underneath, you should see the braces where it bolts on.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you. We really appreciate you volunteering your time.”
He gave her his best public relations smile, secure in doing so because of the ring on her finger and lack of I’m hitting on a firefighter vibe. “Just doing our part for the children, ma’am.”
She nodded and went back to her students, leaving him relieved he’d judged the situation correctly. Having a teacher flirt with him in front of her students would be a level of awkward he didn’t care to experience. He’d learned fairly quickly that, for whatever reason, there were women out there who really liked men in uniform, with police and fire uniforms ranking right up there. Fake kitchen fires were rare, but not unheard of, and it seemed like every firehouse had a story about busting through a front door to find the lady of the house wearing little to nothing.
For a few years, he’d been like a kid in a candy store, so to speak, but it had gotten old after a while. He’d grown to hate not being sure if a woman was attracted to him or his job, so one time he’d actually told a woman he was interested in that he was a plumber. It was a lie he kept going for several weeks, until she suffered a plumbing emergency and he was forced to admit he had no idea why disgusting water was backing up into her bathtub.
That had been his longest relationship, surviving his confession and lasting about a year and a half. He’d even been thinking about an engagement ring, but she struggled with his job and in the end, she opted out. Or rather, she opted for a guy who worked in a bank and was home by five and never worked weekends.
There had been a few almost-serious relationships since then, but they always fizzled out under the strain of his job. Flipping back and forth between day tours and night tours was something that came naturally to him at this point, but it was a lot harder on the people in his life.
He tried to stay hopeful, but sometimes it was hard to be optimistic about finding a woman he’d spend the rest of his life with. Even Scotty’s sisters—who’d grown up with Tommy Kincaid and surrounded by firefighters—hadn’t been able to make their marriages to firefighters work. Sure, there were a lot of strong marriages if he looked around enough, but it got discouraging at times.
“Hey, Hunt, you gonna stand around yank—” Scotty bit off the words, no doubt remembering just in time they had a young audience. “Doing nothing, or are you gonna help?”
Once they’d gotten the metal rod bolted into the proper position, Chris Eriksson turned testing it out into a comedy skit that made the children laugh and then, finally, it was time for some press photos. The kids gave them a handmade thank-you card that the firefighters promised to hang on their bulletin board, and then it was time to get back to the station. Several guys had agreed to cover for them, but only for a few morning hours.
Once they were on their way back, in Eriksson’s truck, Chris looked over at Scott. “Hey, I heard Lydia’s back.”
Aidan was glad he’d been too slow to call shotgun and was wedged into the truck’s inadequate back seat because he felt the quick flash of heat across the back of his neck. He was going to end up in trouble if he didn’t figure out how to stifle his reaction to hearing Lydia’s name.
But the way she’d looked at him at Kincaid’s last night...
“Yeah,” Scotty said. “She’s going to help out at the bar so Ashley can take a little time off while she and Danny figure out what the hell they’re doing.”
“I heard Walsh was staying with you. That’s cozy.”
Aidan wondered if Lydia knew that part yet, because he couldn’t imagine she’d take it well. He’d known the Kincaid family almost a decade and a half, and he knew that Ashley was the older sister, but Lydia was the junkyard dog. If you messed with the family, Ashley would try to talk it out with you, but Lydia would take your head off your shoulders.
“Lydia can worry about the beer and burgers and stay out of the rest of it,” Scotty said.
Aidan laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t recommend you tell her that.”
“Hell, no. I’m not stupid.”
As they got close, Eriksson sighed. “Fun time’s over. Chief says we’ve gotta clean the engine bays today. And everything else that needs cleaning.”
“That’s bullshit,” Scotty said. “I swear to God, the guys on night tour last week were all raised in barns. We should go drag their asses out of bed and make them clean up.”
Aidan didn’t mind the thought of filling the time around any runs with cleaning. It was mindless work that would keep him from having to look his best friend in the eye until he’d gotten a handle on thinking dirty thoughts about the guy’s sister.
He didn’t think the she started it excuse would cut it with Scott Kincaid.
Chapter Three
Lydia almost made it to Kincaid’s Pub without getting sidetracked. She might have made it all the way if she hadn’t heard sirens in the distance, which made her think of her brother. And thinking about her brother brought her back to the fact that—in her eyes—he’d chosen a fellow firefighter over his own sister.
She detoured down an alley and then over two blocks until she was standing in front of three stories of old, red brick. The bay doors were open so she could see the gleaming fronts of both trucks—Engine 59 written over the door on the left and Ladder 37 written over the right in big gold letters that gleamed against the chalky brick.
When she was a little girl, she’d thought it was a castle. She’d even drawn it into a picture for art class, the bricks towering behind a dark-haired princess in a long pink gown. The assignment had been fairy-tale illustrations, so the teacher had drawn a sad face on her picture. Lydia had been crushed. She’d also been the one who hid the unsealed bag of pastrami in the depths of the art teacher’s desk supply cabinet, but nobody knew that but her.
Over the years, the tall and narrow brick building became less of a princess castle and more of a place that competed for her father’s attention. More often than not, it had won. But there was no denying this place was woven into the fabric of her life.
There were a couple of webbed folding chairs in front of L-37, so she knew the guys had been sitting on the side
walk, but there was nobody out there now. She stepped inside the open bay door, running her hand down E-59’s glossy, red side as her eyes adjusted to the light.
She’d shown up in high temper, but the sights, sounds and smells of the house wrapped around her like a blanket that brought her familiar comfort, even if it chafed a little bit.
“Can I help you?”
Lydia looked at the guy standing in front of her, who looked as if he was about twelve years old. “I’m looking for Scott Kincaid.”
He frowned, and then his expression morphed into a wide grin. “You must be his sister. You look just like him. I’m Grant Cutter. I was assigned here right after you moved away, I guess.”
“Lydia,” she said, shaking his hand. “Is Scotty around, do you know?”
“He was back in the cage with the air tanks. Let me—” There was a clang of metal and Grant broke off, peering around the end of the truck. “Here he comes. Hey, Scotty, your sister’s here.”
When her brother stepped around the back of the truck, a clipboard in his hand, Lydia nodded. “Hey, Scotty.”
“Hey.” He handed the clipboard to Grant. “Can you take this to Cobb?”
“Sure thing.”
“Don’t just put it on his desk or he’ll claim he never saw it. Hand it to him directly.” When Cutter nodded and headed for the stairs, Scotty turned his attention to Lydia. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the bar?”
“I was on my way and took a little detour. I’ve got enough time and Don’s cooking.” Don had been with the bar since before the ownership and name change, and her dad trusted him with a key and the safe combination. If she ran late, he’d cover out front until she got there.
“So just a little detour for grins, or were you looking for me?”
She knew him well enough to hear the slight edge in his voice, which meant he was already feeling defensive. And that meant he knew he was doing something wrong. “I stopped by to talk about Danny, actually.”
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