by Carina Alyce
“If Noah gets promoted what happens to you?” Abby assumed a promotion would finally move Noah out of active firefighting, leaving Jacen behind.
“Hopefully, I move from lieutenant to captain and get a pay raise for a future Baby Williams.” He mimed cradling a baby. “But enough about me, why did you call me back here?”
“Tell me about Kathleen. How serious are they?” Abby didn’t mince words.
Jacen tried to edge toward the door. “Is Hank calling my name?”
“No, he's not. In fact, Hank, I need you for a second!” Abby beat him to the punch. “You will stay here, and you will tell me.”
Hank came in and got himself a stool and a beer. Abby was in her Abby interrogation mode, so he offered some advice. “Save yourself the time and spill whatever it is she wants.”
Jacen sighed, “What has Noah told you?”
“Nothing. He does his mandatory once a week phone call but won't say anything about her. The two times I met her and tried to corner her, he blocked me out.”
“That should tell you something if he's keeping you away from her. What do you want to know?”
“Job? How they met?”
“She's an interior designer. He met her at an interior design class.”
“Was this a class about designing the Starship Enterprise? My brother doesn't interior design,” Abby said. Time hadn't changed the geeky core of Noah Baker.
“No, he has zero artistic talent. We're lucky he can draw smiley faces. He was studying combustible materials involved in interior design products and construction.”
“That does sound more like him.”
“It was for his Master's of Fire Science. The point is, they met, she talked to him.”
“That alone would get her foot in the door.”
“Since he's so quiet, she just kept talking. When she took a breath, he asked her out, and she said 'yes,'” Jacen said.
“It's his passive listening strategy. It’s really effective. Right, Hank?”
“So effective,” Hank agreed. Long ago they had realized that Abby would be talking and Hank would be listening. The trade-off was that when Hank spoke up, Abby had to listen.
“They kept going out. She's fine.”
“That’s a glowing recommendation,” Abby pouted.
“I don't know what to say about it. He and I have widely different tactics with women. He never hesitates to ask one out, but then he doesn't talk. Me, I tend to talk faster and faster, so it's good Noah convinced Dre to give me a chance.”
“Your motormouth is part of your charm. Is Kathleen fun? Likable? Does she make Noah happy?”
“There's nothing wrong with her,” Jacen said neutrally.
“Solid recommendation from the best friend for the job opening of Mrs. Noah Baker. No dodging; Is she the One for Noah?”
Jacen craned his head backward to check the kitchen door. “The truth is, I thought Noah would go for someone who balances him out more. Someone who makes him smile and loosens him up while respecting his drive. She does appreciate his drive and appearance and prestige of dating a fire captain.”
Abby blinked hard, and Hank cracked up because she knew she looked like she swallowed a frog.
She recovered to pat Jacen on the cheek. “I've got to save that one. 'Appearance and prestige' are the new codewords for 'superficial bitch.'”
Hank put his hand over Abby's mouth with a long-suffering sigh. “She values your opinion, and her main goal is for Noah to be happy. Abby is happy, so everyone around her should be happy, and she will do what it takes to make everyone happy. Oww!”
“Are you happy now?” Abby smiled, having bit Hank's hand.
He took it in stride and playfully kissed the side of her neck. “Never better.”
“Not the kissing again!” Nate whined, entering with the rest of the group.
“You didn't let Jacen near the food, did you?” Dre said, this being her first Thanksgiving at the Finsters.
“I only let him touch the plates. What's the worst thing he burned in your house?” Abby reassured her.
Dre had an immediate answer. “Noah's birthday cake.”
“You made me a birthday cake?” Noah was surprised.
Jacen said, “I tried two weeks ago. Then I broke down and went to Giant Eagle afterward.”
“He must have taken a blowtorch to it. I had to throw out the pan, too,” Dre leaned against her husband. “Fortunately, he has other good qualities.”
“He does? Because if you can't cook, how do you eat?” Nathan didn't let anything get in the way of his pre-teen stomach.
“I, unlike your uncle, am a great dancer, so I dance, and she cooks,” Jacen reassured Nathan.
“But his boxing is still so-so,” Noah said. “I admit he's a solid firefighter, and he'll make captain soon.”
“Does that mean you're moving to battalion chief? Or are you going to be fire chief next?” Abby inquired innocently.
“Maybe fire chief in twenty years.” Noah snorted and dodged the question. “Cleveland FD likes their battalion chiefs to serve as an assistant in Operations for a while first. The assistants go to a lot of scenes and work as incident command.”
Dre pointed to the clock. “Jacen said there's some pre-lunch rituals. A phone call and musical theater thing?”
“True. We call Nate and Barry in New York, but this year we're doing it in the afternoon,” Hank said.
“It's guitar time!” Nathan opened the door to display two full-sized and one smaller acoustic guitars.
“That's right. What are we playing this year?” Hank picked up his guitar.
“Same thing we play every year because that's the only one Uncle Noah can play,” Abby said as she settled on the couch with Annabelle on her lap.
“At least my voice is better than yours,” Noah said. That led to a chuckle in the group.
“Is this the only song Uncle Noah knows how to play?” Annabelle asked. “Nathan and Daddy practice a lot of different songs all the time.”
“That's because Noah's not very good.” Jacen put his arm around Dre. “He played the same song at your parents’s and my wedding.”
Sitting together, the Finster-Baker clan began strumming the first notes of I Don't Want to Miss a Thing from the movie Armageddon.
For once, Abby sat back and took a deep breath, giving herself a moment of enjoyment. Hank had proven to be a perfect father, husband, and lover in every single part of her life. He’d held her hand through the loss of her parents. Then he hadn't flinched when she’d nearly squeezed his fingers off during the births of their children. A day never went by without her marveling that she'd picked him up on the side of the road.
Then Noah crooned out the part about staying in the moment forever. While he was no Steven Tyler, this was a good moment. She and Hank had found their family. Jacen had grown up, and, hopefully someday, Noah would be as happy as everyone else around him.
Maybe nothing lasts forever, but it only takes fifteen minutes to recognize a good thing.
Labor Day Weekend 2018
Las Vegas, Nevada
The Diary of the Chaplain at MetroGen
Friday August 31, 2018
You would not believe the holiday package being offered to go to Vegas. Hell, yeah, I jumped on that. I suspect half the hospital did took advantage. We haven't had that much to celebrate this past year between the hospital merger and the Memorial Day disaster and the Perfect Season.
Vegas is the bomb. (Am I too old to say that? Is it out of style?) People call it Sin City, but it's about the human condition. Highest of highs, lowest of lows, boom or bust. All in or folding. . . I should probably not be in charge of using these terms actually. I don't really gamble. Something about letting the cards fall or the dice or the roulette wheel something like that.
Either way, I can’t wait to fill for my buddy at the Chapel of Love. He needed a vacation from Vegas!
Chapter 16
The new management had a sense of hu
mor, Captain James Haskell observed as he signed into the conference at the Las Vegas Venetian.
Take this, Firefighter Worldwide Conference. At room check-in, Cleveland Fire attendees received a goodie bag from the Fire Chief. The bag contained a request for one write up of a lecture they attended and a string of condoms with a note:
Do not increase our health premiums by getting the clap. Do not decrease your pension by getting a divorce.
The Department had had a rough time recently. The state had merged the Cleveland and Cuyahoga County departments into one last. The closure of twenty firehouses for ‘redundancies’ in the county had sown plenty of bad blood, and then a high-profile Memorial Day incident led to Chief Pegg's forced retirement.
Rather than promoting an assistant chief, they appointed a dark horse candidate, Noah Baker, who promised to turn everything around. He had been the Battalion Chief of 5 and was thirty-six, two years younger than James. Not only was he young, he’d only been a bat chief for two years and jumped the ranks of section, division, and assistant chief in one bound.
In his first official act, Baker fired Battalion Chief John Conley for incompetence and promoted Dennis Judge from the suburbs in his place.
This morning, Chief Baker was grumpy. “Whose brilliant idea was it hold this conference in Vegas during Labor Day weekend? They serve beer, Red Bull, and water in the back.”
“What idiot paid for our officers to attend?” the redheaded chief, Leslie McClunis, answered. The Cleveland delegation of chiefs, identifiable in their white shirts, had a table near check-in and were taking attendance by their ‘Cleveland only’ coffee and bagel station.
James hid his smile behind a cup of black java. Bruce Hall, his lieutenant from 5, had opted to share a room with another lieutenant Jared, instead of James. It gave James two goodie bags, and James had decided to do a second write up in case the lieutenants partied too hard. Despite being a captain for six years, this was his first conference.
It actually because of Chief Baker. His email three weeks ago stated any officer who hadn’t attended a past conference would be given a room at the Venetian with their conference and airfare covered up to 350 dollars. The only price was a write up of one lecture they attended to be delivered directly to a chief.
The only problem with this popular plan was the Cleveland chiefs needed to herd their 150 officers into continuing education classes rather than letting them enjoy a holiday boondoggle. He suspected that was why the chiefs were here. Their presence, ideally, would deter public drunkenness.
Pity the other departments hadn't put in the same effort.
“It’s the Devil’s playground. Where is Cunningham? He hasn’t shown up,” said the eldest chief in the group, Alan Hastings, as he scanned the crowd. It was difficult to find anyone since there were 6,000 attendees and almost everyone wore navy blue t-shirts and leather boots. Firefighters were big on uniforms, code of conducts, staying up for 24-hour shifts, and day drinking.
The day drinking aspect was going strong. Lots of the attendees he saw stagger by gave off the vibe of too much hair off the dog that had bitten them. Security was going to have a great time with this. The combination of booze, testosterone, and relative lack of women would make tempers short. It wouldn't take much to escalate minor scuffles.
McClunis flipped through a packet. “His lecture starts in ten minutes.”
“Where is he?” Hastings asked again.
Further down the hall, two men started shouting at each other about who tried to enter the ballroom first.
McClunis narrated her text. “’Where the fuck are you, asshole?’”
James was glad he was hiding behind the coffee cart. Especially since security hotfooted it to the sound of the fight.
“Who can cover his spot?” Baker asked. “I’m manning the table for two more hours and then going to five lectures.”
“I have High-rise Standard Operating Procedures Updates, Diversifying the Firehouse, Expanding the Role of Paramedics, and Recruiting and Retaining Women back-to-back,” McClunis said.
Hastings wasn't in a better position. “I'm doing six hours of Budgeting, Operations, and Equipment Procurement.”
“Sound fascinating,” McClunis said, and her phone pinged. “It’s Cunningham. ‘I’m going to be an hour late. I forgot which leg to put the condom on and woke up in bed with a hooker. Don’t tell my wife.’”
“Leslie,” Baker warned.
“It’s your second month. If he screws this up for you, I’m gonna castrate him.”
“She has a point. The other chiefs are already at their lectures. Not drunk. I hope they aren't from Cleveland.” Baker jerked his head toward the sound of security separating the fighters.
“Nope, guys from Seattle and LA fighting over a red-shirt rookie from Seattle. It's neither of the two women from my battalion,” McClunis confirmed after checking the hallway.
“Yes, your women are wonderful. Can either of them attend the FEMA lecture?” Baker asked.
Hastings shook his head. “I already reassigned them other lectures. We’ve had more absences than I anticipated.”
“I can go,” Baker sounded reluctant.
“No, you can’t. You show your pretty blue eyes to our new members from the suburbs and build some goodwill,” McClunis disagreed. “I’ll skip the High-rise lecture.”
“That is unnecessary.” James stepped out from behind the towering coffee carafe. “Your battalion is high-rise. I'll cover the FEMA lecture.”
The Chief stiffened, and McClunis practically imposed herself in front of him. She read his navy shirt with its yellow letters, identifying him as a captain in Cleveland FD. “Sober?”
“It’s coffee, not beer. I don’t drink much.” James saluted her with his disposable cup.
“Yes, I know.” Chief Baker gave him a measured glance, undoubtedly thinking of the last big scene they’d shared when Baker was Bat Chief of 5. “We wouldn't want to impose.”
“Chief McClunis can lend me her notes,” James offered.
“Deal,” she said. “Though my notes might be longer than the lecture.”
“I look forward to reading them,” James said.
“You're up then,” Baker said. “Forms?”
Hastings handed James an extremely detailed pre-print of the intended lecture. This was much more than the PowerPoint. The pre-print named the lecturer, listed their background, and generated five questions to be answered by the end of the lecture. James was impressed with the unprecedented detail if they did this for every lecture and assigned chief to each one.
Fast work in the few weeks they’d had to plan.
“You have five minutes. Thank you, Captain Haskell,” Baker said.
Taking that for the dismissal it was, James balanced his bagel and coffee on his newly acquired pre-print and headed down to the wide hallway to the appropriate ballroom.
James sent a group text to his cadre of lieutenants. He’d mentored four guys who had been promoted in the last two years. They’d agreed to meet up at lectures together, though based on their texts from last night, they might not be up for an 8am lecture.
As with every conference ever, the lecturer got on the podium and started his PowerPoint. James knew the lecturer, Jacen Williams, who had been captain of Firehouse 33. They’d seen each other on occasion, though they were in different battalions.
Perhaps ‘knew’ was too strong a word. During Williams’ tenure at 33, James had found the man to be dour and intensely protocol driven. Frankly, intense was too mild of a word to encompass the man’s unfriendly and angry continence.
According to the rumor mill, Williams had once been the life of the party until the death of his wife led to a distinct personality change. It was odd three years later to see how little Williams had changed and how different James had become. Some days, James didn’t recognize himself, but he hoped he wasn’t nearly as unfriendly as Williams had become.
Still, the man absolutely commanded his informat
ion. He went through the organizational framework of FEMA, the steps in disaster assessment, and basics of local coordination. It was very detailed, and James took notes with a focus on expanding the five assigned questions.
To guarantee he took no chances, he snapped photos of his work at the end and emailed it to himself. While the chances he would be out drinking were zero, James didn’t want to take a risk. The Chief appreciated this type of meticulous work and might reward it.
These past two years had been disappointing personally and professionally. It would be more than prudent to take this opportunity to score points with the new boss. While it wouldn’t solve his lack of success in the romance sphere, it was something.
Especially since James’s last major contact with Baker had been back when James was dead.
Vegas is full of temptation, but nothing is more sinful than finding yourself married to your next-door neighbor . . .
The love and the heat continues with Captain James Haskell and his neighbor Caroline in Burn Card Book 3 of MetroGen After Hours setting your screen on fire on 8/31/2021. Available wide!
If you need more Abby and Hank, don’t miss your chance to read the exclusive epilogue that will steam up your computer screen. Go to CarinaAlyce.com/20QuestionsWithAbby to sign up for the secret sexy epilogue and all the fun subscriber-only content available only on Carina’s VIP list!
Afterword
Thank you for reading Embers. While it tackled a much darker and real topic than most romances, in the case of firefighters, it was a seminal event for most current firefighters. It would be difficult to imagine Noah Baker and Jacen Williams in Smolder not having experienced something profound.
