Controlled Burn

by Shannon Stacey

  “So probably at least a week, then?”

  “At least. Probably more like two. I told my father it might be a couple of weeks.”

  Two weeks...maybe. And he had a feeling that they’d be spending a lot of time together over the course of the two weeks. When the time was up and she had to go back to her life in California, he was going to have one hell of a hard time letting her go.

  “I should probably go downstairs and let you get some rest or something. You said you shoveled out fire hydrants all day yesterday and then you shoveled snow today. You must be exhausted.”

  “You’re right. I should go to bed.” He kissed her neck again, and then gave it a gentle bite. “You should go with me. We can pretend bad guys are chasing us.”

  She laughed and rolled so she was straddling him on the couch. “Let’s see if you’re hero material, then.”

  * * *

  Since they’d kept in touch a little by way of Facebook and they’d reached out to her when they found out she was back in the city, Jessica met Lydia and Ashley at a tiny Chinese restaurant they said was within walking distance of Joe and Marie’s since parking was almost impossible in that area in the winter. Unfortunately, their idea of walking distance didn’t factor in the weather and by the time she stepped through the front door, she wished she’d at least called a cab.

  They were already there and they waved her over when they saw her. Jessica didn’t even take off her coat before sitting down. Her gloved hands were freezing and she rubbed them together, hoping she could get a hot cup of coffee here.

  “You look like you want to cry,” Ashley said, sympathy heavy in her voice. “I should have told you to take a cab, but I haven’t really paid attention to the weather forecasts lately. It’s winter. Winter sucks.”

  “I’d cry, but I’m afraid my eyeballs would freeze if they get that wet.” Both women laughed, probably not realizing she was serious.

  “So Rick must be glad to have you back on this coast,” Lydia said once they’d all ordered coffees and Jessica had requested a few minutes to thaw out before deciding what she wanted to eat.

  She pressed her gloved hands to her cheeks, trying to warm them enough to manage normal facial expressions. “I think so. He seems to be.”

  “Are you happy to be back?”

  “That’s...not an easy question to answer,” she said honestly. “It’s kind of a mess.”

  “That’s why you have friends to talk to,” Ashley said. “Sometimes things aren’t as messy as they seem when you’re the one in it.”

  “I’m glad to be back because I’ve missed Joe and Marie. And Rick. But being back also makes it harder because it starts to feel like real life and I like it. But my real life is actually in San Diego, so it screws with my head.”

  Lydia held up her hands. “This might be overly simplistic, but if you prefer this life to your so-called real life, why not make this your real life? We have financial advisors in Boston. Good ones, even, or so I’m told.”

  “But it’s not just switching jobs,” Ashley said. “She built that business with her father and she’s probably meant to take it over.”

  “Yes,” Jessica said. “Besides my house and my friends, there’s loyalty not only to my father and everybody who works for us, but to the plan I had, you know? I mean, I guess it was mostly his plan, but I’ve invested most of my life into it.”

  “I guess we know how that feels,” Lydia said. She gave Jessica a sympathetic look. “My dad just assumed Ashley and I would run the bar and I hated that. I hated the whole firefighter thing, too. I even left Massachusetts to get away from it all, but I came back to help Ashley out while she and Danny went through their rough patch. Then Aidan was all smoking hot and sweet and sexy and...well, here I am. But this time it’s my choice and I have no regrets.”

  “What do you mean you hated the whole firefighter thing?” Jessica asked because if there was something specifically bad about firefighters, it would probably be helpful to know that now.

  Lydia shrugged. “It’s a close community, and that’s obviously a good thing. But they’re a brotherhood and sometimes it feels like they come first, before families. And it can also be claustrophobic at times. My first husband was a firefighter, too, and I took a lot of shit when I got fed up and divorced him. Forgiving the community for circling the wagons around him took me a while.”

  “But Aidan’s not like that?”

  “He is to a point. Their lives depend on each other so they have each other’s backs to a degree not a lot of people can understand. They’re truly brothers.”

  “And sisters,” Ashley added.

  “And sisters. But I know Aidan doesn’t put anybody else before me and that matters.”

  “Wow.” Jessica drank another gulp of coffee and then peeled her gloves off. She’d give the coat a few more minutes. “I had no idea. So far my experience with...being involved with a firefighter is trying to spot him on the news, which is dumb, of course. I don’t know enough about the fire stations to even know what locations he’d respond to.”

  “It probably seems fun at first,” Ashley said. “Trying to spot him on the news, I guess. But it’s easy to become obsessed with that. With knowing he’s okay, I mean. It makes the waiting harder.”

  “I agree,” Lydia said. “Everything’s on social media. People are live-tweeting fires on Twitter and there are Facebook statuses and videos on Snapchat and Instagram. They’re actually streaming as it’s happening, and that means it’s almost like being there at the fire with them, but being helpless to do anything but stand there and watch.”

  “I don’t follow any of it,” Ashley said. “If something happens, they’ll tell me. Otherwise, the only way to get through each shift is to assume everything’s going okay and his training and experience is keeping him safe.”

  “But you both chose firefighters anyway?” It was a lot to think about.

  “The heart wants what it wants,” Ashley said.

  “My heart isn’t the only part of my body that decided it wouldn’t settle for less than Aidan Hunt,” Lydia added, her snarky smile looking so much like her brother’s.

  Jessica finally took her coat off to hang on the back of her chair, shoving her hat and scarf into one of the sleeves like she’d seen her grandmother do. “Firefighters seem to have good...endurance.”

  Lydia and Ashley laughed, but their server chose that moment to see if they were ready to order, probably signaled by Jessica removing her coat. After a quick scan of the menu, they ordered a variety of dishes to share.

  “So I take it things are going really well with Rick, then?” Lydia asked once they were alone again.

  “We’re....yeah.” She smiled. “Things are going well. It’s almost like we weren’t even apart for weeks.”

  Ashley smiled. “I’m glad. He’s such a good guy.”

  “So what’s holding you back?” Lydia asked Jessica.

  “We’re kind of thrown together because of my grandparents. Once they’re settled, what brings us together? How many times, realistically, can I travel to Boston in a year?”

  “Ideally it’ll be love that brings you together. But I don’t think many relationships could survive that kind of distance. I mean some do, but probably not many. One of you will have to make a hard choice eventually. And eventually might not be that far away.”

  And it would be her who made the hard choice. Even though she’d lived in San Diego her entire life, she couldn’t picture Rick living there. This place—this community—was a part of who he was and that bond was part of what she loved about him.

  “Shit.”

  Lydia and Ashley both looked at her, but it was Lydia who spoke. Jessica had already figured out she was the more vocal of the two sisters. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No,
that was a particularly vehement shit. And we’re bartenders. We’re awesome at picking up those kinds of signals and when somebody hisses shit in that way, something’s usually wrong.”

  Jessica sighed. “I think I just realized—like really admitted to myself for the first time—that I’m in love with him.”

  “Honey, if ever there was cause to bust out a four-letter word, it’s being in love with a firefighter,” Ashley said, and they both raised their coffee mugs in a toast to her.

  * * *

  Usually Saturday night wouldn’t be a good time to hit Kincaid’s Pub looking for company and a game of pool, but the wind chill was pretty fierce and Rick thought it would keep a lot of people from leaving their homes just to get a beer and some wings.

  He sent out a group text that yielded the information he was the only single guy at the station who didn’t have a date that night. Aidan had said he might stop by, but Rick didn’t see him when he walked in. That was fine. The television was offering up sports highlights and they were company enough.

  Karen was covering the bar tonight, which didn’t surprise him. He already knew Lydia and Ashley had the night off, since they were going out with Jess, so they had to get somebody to fill in. Even though he owned the place, Tommy preferred sitting at the bar with Fitz to actually working the bar and preferred not to do any of the actual manual labor unless it was an unavoidable situation.

  “Hey, Rick,” she said, setting a beer in front of him, making the lights flash off her engagement ring. “How you been?”

  “Not too bad. Looks like a slow night.”

  “Trust me, that doesn’t break my heart.” He knew what she meant. This time of year kept first responders and emergency rooms hopping, so tending the bar on a slow night probably felt like a vacation to her. “You all alone tonight?”

  “Everybody had plans or didn’t feel like going out in the cold, I guess.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if the wind would die down.”

  “Let me ask you something. The day Joe and Marie were in the ER because he fell and you showed me your engagement ring, I said it happened fast. And you said ‘when it’s right, it’s right.’ What did you mean by that? I mean, how did you know it was right?” When she looked at him as if he just asked her something outrageous, like her bra size, he looked down and traced the condensation on his mug. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Rick Gullotti, if you just hinted around that you’re even thinking about settling down, this moment is unforgettable.”

  “Exaggerate much?”

  “No.” She tilted her head to give him a considering look. “I guess you asking that question when your landlords’ granddaughter just happened to return to Boston is a coincidence?”

  “She won’t be my landlords’ granddaughter very long since they’re selling the house.”

  “Nice deflection, Gullotti. But I’ll let it slide. How do you feel about them selling? You put so much work into your apartment and now you might have to find a new place and start all over.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just an apartment. And nothing says I’ll have to start over. Whoever buys it might want to keep me there, although I’m sure they’ll raise the rent. Or there’s a possibility we can have the property deed changed so I can buy the apartment as a condo, separate from the rest of the house. I think. I haven’t really looked into it yet because I thought I’d have a little more time.”

  And because it wasn’t something he’d wanted to deal with. Not only because he hated paperwork, but because he was afraid if he broached the subject to Joe and Marie, they’d realize he really didn’t want to move and they might factor that into their own decision. Now that they’d made their decision, it might be time to look into it.

  “So how long is Jessica in town for?”

  “A couple of weeks, probably.” He took a sip of his beer. “How do you know so much about what’s going on?”

  She smiled. “You think Aidan catching you kissing a woman in the pool room isn’t going to get talked about?”

  “It’s ridiculous. The city’s a little big for such a small-town grapevine.”

  “The important thing here is that she came back. Focus on that.”

  “She wants to check out the place Joe and Marie are considering moving into. I guess places like that sometimes tack on a shitload of hidden fees you don’t find out about until you’ve already started the process. She wants to make sure they can afford it.”

  “She could have done that by phone,” Karen pointed out.

  He wanted to believe seeing him had factored into Jess’s decision to fly all the way across the country again to handle business that probably could be handled by phone and online. “She knows it makes her grandparents feel better having her out here.”

  “It’s nice of her to come all the way to Boston to help them with this. It must be a daunting decision for them.”

  “Yup.”

  “But she’s getting to know them, right? I mean, she’ll still come out here even after the business end is settled?”

  Rick knew exactly where Karen was heading with that. “Yeah, she will. Though it’s hard to say how often.”

  “You think she’d consider moving out here? With the right incentive, of course.” And she tilted her hand again, letting the light refract off her diamond.

  “I doubt it. She’s pretty thankful to have Joe and Marie in her life, but it doesn’t change the fact she’s spent her entire life in San Diego. She has a home and friends and not only does she have a job, but it’s a family business. That’s not easy to walk away from.”

  “You’re a great guy, Rick. You have no idea how much I used to wish we had that something special I was looking for. If you think she’s the one, you need to let her know that. How can she make decisions for her future if she thinks what you two have is just casual sex?”

  Just the thought of having that conversation made his chest ache. What if she thought it was just casual sex? He’d been told so many times that he wasn’t the marrying kind and he’d laughed it off. Hell, there was a time in his life when it had been some kind of misguided badge of honor. But he had a gut feeling hearing Jess say those words to him would hurt like hell.

  “She knows it’s not just casual,” he said. Moment of panicked doubt aside, he was certain Jessica knew she was more to him than a casual fling.

  “Have you thought about moving to San Diego?” Karen asked.

  “Maybe I should have gone to a different bar,” he muttered.

  “In other words, you have.”

  “I don’t really see myself doing that. I love it here. I can’t imagine leaving Ladder 37. My family’s nearby. And there’s Joe and Marie. Just because they’re moving into a smaller place doesn’t mean they don’t need somebody looking after them a bit.”

  Karen shook her head, tossing her bar towel over her shoulder. “You sure are full of reasons why a relationship with Jessica won’t work.”

  “It’s called being practical.”

  “Or being scared.”

  She walked away before he could argue with that, which was probably a good thing because the words to deny it wouldn’t come to him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next Monday, Rick looked around his apartment and decided it was as good as it would get. He knew the real estate agent was already downstairs with Joe, Marie and Jess. It was only a matter of time before they’d make their way to his place, so he’d given it a quick cleaning and made sure there was no clutter lying around.

  The agent would need to take pictures, he supposed. And probably a ton of notes. And he still hadn’t decided if he wanted to broach the subject of restructuring the property so he could buy the top floor. The more he thought about it, the less attractive an option it seemed.

  Sure, he’d sunk qu
ite a bit into the renovation. He could afford to since the Broussards lowballed his rent. But he wasn’t sure he had the heart to live there without them. Another family living under him wouldn’t be the same, whether he liked them or not. And he’d renovated this apartment to suit his taste. There was no reason he couldn’t do it again.

  When the sliding door opened, he looked up from his seat at the island, expecting to see all of them walk through the door. But it was only Jess and she hurried to close the door behind her. They were heading into a deep freeze, weatherwise, and it was already bitterly cold.

  “She didn’t leave, did she?” That wouldn’t make sense, since the property couldn’t be listed without mentioning the third-floor apartment.

  “I don’t think she’s ever going to leave, to be honest. Joe and Marie are really taking her request to give them some history of the house seriously. Every room seems to have a dozen stories.”

  He opened his arms so she could step into his embrace, then wrapped her in a warm hug. She was shivering a little, just from the walk up to his apartment. “Why didn’t you use the inside stairs?”

  “I had an opportunity to escape and I took it. I was closer to the back door and was afraid I’d get sucked into another description of what kind of wallpaper was in the kitchen forty years before I was born.”

  He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Driving you a little crazy?”

  “A little? Measurements. Photos. Facts. I thought it would take maybe half an hour, tops.”

  “Marie doesn’t do anything in a half hour. You should know that by now.”

  “Are you okay with this?” she asked. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so he frowned. “The real estate agent, I mean.”

  “Oh. It would be awfully hard for her to list the house with an entire floor of description missing.”