No fire here.
But his nose never lied.
And then his ears tuned in to the distinctly high-pitched, repetitive beep of a smoke detector, muted by walls and distance.
The fire wasn’t here.
Pulling the towel from around the neck of his gray KCFD T-shirt, he tossed it over the back of a kitchen chair and reached beneath the sink to pull out the small fire extinguisher he stored there. Sweats and running shoes were hardly standard gear to battle a fire, but he knew it was the man, not the equipment, that was his best weapon to locate and put out a blaze. Ready to do battle, he jogged to the door of his apartment and flung it open.
A woman screamed.
Corie McGuire, the single mom who lived across the hall, pressed a hand to the neckline of her navy cardigan sweater, her small chest heaving in and out as she huddled back against the door to her apartment. “Good grief, Mr. Taylor. Don’t startle me like that.”
“Where’s the fire?” He was sharply aware of the panic rounding her mossy-green eyes that were tilted up at him, the fact she was keeping as much distance between them as the door at her back allowed, and the charred iron skillet she clutched with an oven mitt down at her side. The sticky residue in the bottom of the skillet was still smoking. Matt quickly kicked the welcome mat from in front of his door across the wood-planked floor. “Put it down.”
She hesitated a few seconds before nodding. He’d spoken in a tone that people usually obeyed, and she did, kneeling to set the hot pan on the mat. “It will leave a mark on your—Oh. Okay.” He sprayed foam on the skillet, pulled the mitt from her startled hand, and lifted the pan to spray the bottom and sides as well, ensuring whatever substance had burned inside it couldn’t catch fire again. “Thank you. I was going to take it downstairs and set it in the snow beside the dumpster out back. Pitch it out in the morning before school. This works, too.”
With the charcoal goop in the pan extinguished to his satisfaction, Matt stood the same time she did. And swallowed hard. Somehow, he had drifted closer to his neighbor, or she had moved closer to him, and her ponytail had brushed against the So Others May Live firefighting emblem tattooed beneath the sleeve on his upper arm. Objectively, he’d always known Corie McGuire was a pretty woman, probably about his same age, late twenties, early thirties. But he’d never been this close to her before.
He’d never felt this gut punch of awareness about her, either.
Beneath the scent of her shampoo, he detected something salty and sweet, like pancakes and syrup with a side of crispy bacon. Maybe not the sexiest scent to most men, but he found himself craving it. It was certainly a more enticing scent than the smoky haze seeping into the hallway from beneath her closed door.
“You have smoke in your apartment,” he pointed out, switching off the man to stay in firefighter mode. “I can help.”
“That’s all right. I’ve opened some windows to air things out. Sorry if it bothered you.” When she knelt to retrieve the skillet, Matt stuck out a warning hand, which she instantly straightened away from. “Leave it.”
“Leave it?” She shook her head. “Mr. Stinson will hardly appreciate finding a burned mess in the middle of the floor.”
Matt didn’t care what the building super thought—he had a more immediate problem that needed to be dealt with. But he knew he wasn’t handling tonight’s encounter well. From the time he’d reached his full height of six feet five inches and started bulking up after high school, his adoptive mother and grandmother had gently warned him that people who didn’t know him might find him intimidating. And though the women in his family knew he was more gentle giant than scary ogre, others, like Corie McGuire here, might misread his blunt demeanor and quiet ways and be afraid of him.
Not that he blamed her for giving him a wide berth. He was a big, scary dude. When he wasn’t lifting weights, he was running, partly because the physical demands of his job meant he needed to stay in shape, and partly because he had little else to do, especially in the wintertime. Other than a Sunday dinner with his grandmother and some assortment of parents, brothers, uncles and their families once or twice a month, or an occasional trip to the bar after shift with his Lucky 13 firehouse buddies, he didn’t really have a social calendar.
The top of Corie McGuire’s blond head barely reached his shoulder, and the woman was built on the slender side of things. They’d exchanged little more than a nod in the elevator after she and her son had moved in across the hall. Even then, she kept her boy hugged close to her and shifted to wherever the opposite side of the elevator was from him. He’d helped carry her groceries up one time, and even then, she’d stopped at her door and had taken the bags without letting him into their apartment. Since he wasn’t the most outgoing of people, he hadn’t immediately noticed that she was right there with him, keeping neighbors at a polite distance and never having friends over. Now that he thought about it, the woman and her son kept to themselves pretty much. He should give her the space she seemed to want from him.
But there was a haze of smoke drifting into the hallway and a beeping alarm telling him something wasn’t right. And one thing that Matt Taylor never shied away from was his job as a firefighter.
“This is what I do for a living. Would you mind if I came in and checked to make sure there are no secondary hot spots trying to ignite?”
If possible, Corie’s eyes widened further. “There could be another fire?”
“You said you opened a window?”
To his surprise, she reached behind her to twist the doorknob, inviting him in. “My son is in here. Please.”
The moment the door opened, the shrill beep of the smoke detector pierced Matt’s eardrums. Closing the door behind them, he followed her into the kitchen. Corie braced her hands over her ears as they walked beneath the archway where the smoke detector was blaring its warning. The smoke was thicker here, with a dirty-gray plume billowing out of the open oven. Matt wasted no time closing the oven door and moving past her to close the kitchen window. Then he reached up to pry the cover off the smoke detector and pulled out the battery. The sudden silence didn’t immediately stop the ringing in his ears.
But Corie lowered her hands. “Thank you.” She’d already turned the oven off, but he squatted in front of the appliance, peering through the rectangle of glass, looking for any stray sparks or glowing elements. “Is something still burning?”
“You want to keep the oven door shut and all the windows closed until you’re certain the fire is out. A lot of fires reignite the moment you add fresh air to the mix.” He watched for a full minute before he set the fire extinguisher he’d carried in with him on the counter. “I think we’re good.” She had leaned in beside him to study the oven, too. But he didn’t realize how close she was, and he bumped into her when he stood. His instinct was to reach for her to keep her from falling, but she grabbed the edge of the countertop to steady herself and scuttled away to the kitchen archway to keep him from touching her. Matt let his hand drop back down to his side. “Sorry.”
She growled and huffed a breath that stirred the wheat-colored bangs on her forehead, and he wondered if that was her version of a curse. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. You’ve never been anything but polite, and now you’re trying to help us, and that was rude. I’ve already screamed at you once tonight.”
“Self-preservation isn’t rude. I startled you. You do what you need to do to feel safe.”
“I...” Her lips parted to argue, but they snapped shut again. Her posture relaxed and she hugged her arms around her middle. And smiled. A real smile. The tension around her eyes relaxed, and her soft pink mouth curved into a grin. “Thank you for understanding.”
He could point out that with his superior strength and longer legs, he could have reached out and grabbed her without any effort at all if that had been his intent. But why would anyone want to make that beautiful smile disappear? Especial
ly when that smile was directed at him. It made him want to smile, too.
Um, what are you doing, Taylor? Sniffing your neighbor? Smiling at her? Stop it or you’ll really scare her.
Turning away, Matt checked the oven one more time, assuring himself the fire was out and whatever had burned had been starved of the oxygen it needed. Instead of moving toward Corie and the archway, he crossed back to the kitchen window and opened it. Then he turned on the hood fan above the stove and waited to see if she would move out of his path.
“Is it safe to open windows now?” she asked, maybe just to break the awkward silence of him waiting for her to move.
Matt nodded. But when he heard the furnace kick on, he took a step toward her and the smile vanished. He quickly halted. She didn’t need a firefighter anymore. She needed a respectful neighbor who would finish his business here as quickly as possible and go back to his own apartment. “Where’s your thermostat?” She hugged one edge of her sweater over the other, shivering at the cold night air filling the kitchen. “You might want to grab an extra sweater,” he advised. “It’ll take twenty, thirty minutes to get the smoke out of here.”
She nodded. “Mother Nature hasn’t exactly graced us with warm weather and sunshine. I loved having all this snow for Christmas. But it wouldn’t hurt my feelings any if it warmed up and melted away and spring came early.”
“Spring won’t happen in January. Not in Missouri.”
“You’re right, of course.” She grabbed her wool coat off the back of a chair and shrugged into it as she led him through the apartment. “This way.”
Although the layout of her apartment was a mirror image of his own across the hall, and he could have found the thermostat on his own, his training as a KCFD firefighter had taught him that a woman alone at the scene of a fire of any size probably wouldn’t appreciate a man barging through her personal space—unless the whole place was fully engulfed and him storming in meant the difference between life and death. So he politely followed her out of the kitchen, through the living room and down the hall.
Corie wore her ponytail high on the back of her head, and it bounced against her collar like a shaft of golden wheat swaying in the wind. There was a sway to her hips, too. He’d noticed how her jeans had curved with a womanly flare, but even with her heavy coat, her natural slenderness blossomed in all the right places.
Matt didn’t realize his gaze was still plastered to her backside until she stopped at the hallway wall between the two bedrooms and a little boy with a longish mop of brown hair stepped out of the second bedroom. “What do you want?” He stepped in front of Corie and held up a beastly-looking blob built out of hard plastic blocks—a dragon, he’d guess, based on the plastic swirls of flame attached to the creature’s snout and the triangular bits that were either short wings or Godzilla-like spines on its back. From behind the colorful creation, which he held up like a shield, the boy peeked up at Matt with green eyes that matched his mother’s. “The fire will get you if you come too close.”
“Evan!” Corie slipped her arm around her son’s shoulders. “You remember Mr. Taylor from across the hall. He’s our neighbor. Now be polite.”
Matt had a little nephew who had mastered that put-upon eye roll. He also recognized the stance of a young man—even this slight little boy—protecting someone he cared about. He respected that reaction as much as he worried about being the cause of it. Evan McGuire tucked his homemade dragon beneath his arm. “Sorry, sir. Hi.”
Matt was equally brief. “Hi.” He adjusted the thermostat to a much lower temperature, waiting for the furnace to shut off.
If Corie McGuire barely reached his shoulder, her son, Evan, barely reached his waist. They must be built on the slim side of things in the McGuire family. Matt scarcely remembered his birth parents, but they had been tall and broad shouldered like him and his younger brother, Mark, who was also a firefighter with the Lucky 13 crew.
The boy’s diminutive size didn’t stop Evan from stepping forward, tipping his head back and sizing up their visitor. “You’re big up close.”
“I’m big far away, too.” He parroted the phrase his petite grandmother had often teased him with.
Corie snickered at the joke. She snorted a laugh through her nose, then quickly slapped her hand over her mouth. She looked more embarrassed than he was by her noisy amusement. Whether it was for his sake or hers, she quickly hustled her son toward the hall tree by the front door. “Evan, get your coat on. It’s going to get cold in here.”
Matt recalled one elevator ride together where Evan had announced it was his eighth birthday before his mother had shushed him and ended any conversation before it got started. Like any self-respecting young man, he groaned at being told what to do, even as he tromped through the living room and pulled on an insulated jacket that had sleeves that were too short for his arms and that clung to his small frame as he zipped it up.
But his demeanor changed when he looked into the hallway and saw the ruined skillet on Matt’s door mat. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to make a mess. I tried to put the fire out.”
“It’s not your fault.” Corie ruffled his hair and kissed the top of his head, ushering him back inside. “I should have ended my phone call with Professor Nelms and fixed you a snack myself so you didn’t have to turn on that old oven.”
“But I made the frozen pizza just the way you showed me.”
“Then maybe there’s something wrong with the oven. I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”
He nodded. Then tipped his chin up to Matt. “I’m sorry we bothered you, Mr. Taylor.” Evan glanced over at his mom. “Isn’t that right?”
Matt glimpsed the sadness and regret that tightened her features before she forced a smile onto her lips that wasn’t quite as pretty as the natural smile she’d shared in the kitchen. What made a child apologize for a simple, albeit potentially dangerous, mistake, and a mother regret that he felt he needed to apologize?
Matt had never been a parent, but he’d been raised by the two finest people he’d ever known. He remembered how his adoptive father, Gideon Taylor, had coaxed him out of his silence and fear as a traumatized orphan. He’d given Matt jobs to do, small responsibilities that he could succeed at and grow his self-confidence. Gideon Taylor had worked side by side with each of his sons, showing them what it took to be a good man, how to be part of a family, how to live in the world with a sense of purpose and not be afraid of doing the wrong thing. Again.
Emulating the lesson of his own dad, Matt unhooked the multidialed utility watch from his wrist and held it out to Evan. “Can you tell time?”
Evan scoffed a little snort through his nose, reminding Matt of the adorable sound his mother had made a few minutes earlier. “Of course I can. We learned that in first grade. I’m a second grader now.”
“Good man. Take this.” Evan’s eyes widened as he looked at all the numbers for time, temperature and barometric pressure readings. His mouth dropped open before he took it from Matt’s outstretched hand. “When thirty minutes have passed, I want you to turn this thermostat back up to seventy degrees and remind your mom to close the kitchen window. Can you do that?”
Evan danced with excitement. “Is that okay, Mom?”
“You’ll have to give Mr. Taylor his watch back,” she reminded him.
“Not for thirty minutes,” Evan protested.
“It’s not a gift.”
“Please?”
Matt wasn’t sure he’d be able to withstand the enthusiastic energy pouring off the boy. Corie smiled the good smile again. “All right. Homework done?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Then you can use that same half hour to play your game before bedtime.”
Corie combed her fingers through his hair and cupped his cheek. When she started to kiss him again, he glanced up at Matt and pulled away, perhaps embarrassed by the PDA, p
erhaps trying to be more like the man he believed being trusted with Matt’s watch made him. “Did I tell you I earned a ronin to fight with my dwarf? Now I can shoot arrows at the bad guys.”
“That’s great.” She smiled again at her son’s delight over the video game Matt was familiar with. “Do you even know what a ronin is?”
But Evan was already dashing down the hallway past Matt into his room. “’Bye, Mr. Taylor. See you in thirty...twenty-nine minutes.”
The furnace clicked off with a noisy jerk. Matt hadn’t had this much conversation outside of work for a long time, and the urge to stay a little longer and keep talking with this tiny family felt odd. Didn’t stop him, though. “Sounds like something my younger cousins have played. I’ve played it with my brothers, too, a few times. If I remember correctly, a shapeshifter and sorcerer are next to join the team.”
“You play Bomba’s Quest?”
Matt wondered if his cheeks were heating with a blush or if he was succumbing to some weird kind of hypothermia. “My uncle Brett wanted to know if it was appropriate for his kids to play. My brothers and I volunteered to test it.”
“I wondered if it was appropriate for an eight-year-old, too. He likes figuring out the puzzles and solving the riddles. But the characters are all cartoons, and no one dies when they go to battle. Not like real violence where people get hurt.” She stopped abruptly, as though she was surprised to hear herself say those words out loud. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling. I’ll be sure to get your watch back to you. That was a nice gesture.”
Matt was as curious about the shadow that crossed her features as he’d been about the things he’d said that had made her smile.
Get back to being a firefighter and get out of here.
“You make pizza in a skillet?” he asked, picking up on something her son had said.
The Fugitive Page 19