Falling for the Fireman

by Allie Pleiter

  “Well, I agree, but think of it this way. Ben’s just first in line to assure you Nicky’s future hasn’t tanked. Ben still thinks he’s cool, it’s just that now he’s gained an additional sort of ‘cool’ most of us would rather he’d have avoided. Here,” she said, popping one of the caramels into her mouth with an appreciative moan, “take these to the Nick Nelworth Admiration Society downstairs.”

  Jeannie felt Chad come up behind her as she stood at the top of the den stairs. She’d been watching Nick and Ben as they devoured cake between bursts of video-game combat. Chad looked down at the boys as well, tucking his hands into the pocket of the olive-colored corduroy pants he wore. He wore a tan shirt, the henley kind with no collar and a handful of buttons at the neck, and the way he pushed the sleeves up made his arms look lean and strong. He was chewing, and she could tell he had one of her caramels in his mouth. It was an unnerving thought. He had a way of looking grounded and sad, as if nothing could ever unsettle him. She knew, though, by the way he’d spoken so painfully of his past, that his sullen stability came at a very high cost.

  “Peas in a pod, those two,” Jeannie said as Ben cuffed Nicky playfully, the two of them erupting in laughter and taunts over the game.

  “Yep,” he said as he polished off the last of the caramel. Jeannie loved to watch people tasting her candy. She jokingly called it “the caramel swoon” when people rolled their eyes shut in pleasure after popping one of her famous caramels into their mouths. She wasn’t at all ready to think of Chad Owens doing “the caramel swoon.”

  He didn’t look like he swooned over anything. She saw hints of pleasure in his face, but a bitter resignation always clung to the edge of his eyes. The boys burst out laughing again, bringing a wide smile from her but only the start of one from Chad. Nicky had said he’d laughed yesterday. She found herself envious that her son had heard Chad’s laughter but she had not.

  “He talked to me yesterday,” he offered, eyes on the boys. “Told me about what’s been going on at school, how he’s been feeling, what’s bugging him. Not much, but the wall came down for a minute or two.” Chad looked up at her, and she saw how much Nicky had come to mean to Chad.

  Chad Owens, the last person she’d ever have thought, cared about her son. A great deal from the looks of it. Something broke loose in her heart, the last of her resistance slipped down without her permission. At that moment, Ben scored some victory, which sent the boys tumbling over each other in shouts and good-natured tussling. For the first time since Mrs. Hunnington’s awful phone call, Jeannie felt weight slide from her shoulders. Maybe Nicky would really be okay after all. Maybe she didn’t need all the answers just yet.

  “He’s a great kid, your son.” There was a lot behind those words. Far better than any caramel swoon.

  “He thinks you’re great.” She could see the veil of pain come down over his eyes at the mention of Nicky’s admiration, and thought maybe Abby was right; maybe and all this with Nicky was “the clear path,” and not just for her. What if they were also part of Chad’s journey back into his faith? She found that enormously satisfying. “He looks up to you. You know that.”

  A storm of emotion tumbled through his mossy eyes. He was uncomfortable with how much Nicky looked up to him, but at the same time too pleased to deny it. How had she ever thought this man so one-dimensional? How had she never seen past the gruff facade before when it seemed too obvious now?

  “Knock it off down there, you boys!” came Frank’s voice from the kitchen behind them. “You’ve got the full moon in the both of you and Ben has already broken the coffee table once this year.”

  “Full moon?” Chad peered up through the back door window on the landing behind him. “Oh, she’s a beauty. Harvest moon, I think.” He turned and looked at her, his eyes doing wild things to her pulse. He licked a smear of chocolate from his finger and Jeannie felt her own “caramel swoon.”

  She knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Want to go see?” he almost whispered.

  “Sure,” Jeannie heard herself whisper back, not objecting when Chad grabbed a plaid wool blanket from a set of hooks on the nearby wall. She nearly giggled when he opened the door and she swept out into the night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The whole night Chad had known he was slipping, falling for her in a way that would irrevocably tangle his life with Jeannie’s and Nick’s. When she’d ducked outside to do something so hopelessly romantic as to see the moon, he didn’t stand a chance. He hadn’t from the beginning.

  With that confounded resolution of hers, she’d leaped across the chasm he couldn’t. She slowed her steps away from the house until he’d caught up to her, and then promptly slipped her hand into his. The whole world skidded to a halt around them. Jeannie held his hand, Jeannie had taken his hand by her own choice. The other night he’d touched her, but tonight she’d touched him.

  He pulled her a few paces away from the light of the house, then turned to wrap the red plaid blanket more tightly around her shoulders. The need to keep her safe and warm warred with the urge to keep her here under the night sky. They might only have a few minutes, but the dark stillness seemed to be arranged perfectly around them, the moonlight like something out of a Van Gogh painting. Countless stars hovered overhead, the vastness of the universe spread possibilities in every direction. He wanted to see her in this moonlight more than he wanted to be strong or sensible. She was so delicately beautiful, he was sure he’d break her heart.

  He pulled in a breath to tell her to stay away, but couldn’t form the words. Jeannie Nelworth was turning him inside out.

  He’d barely been able to contain the urge to wrap her in his arms when they were in her kitchen the other night. He’d thought about the feel of her hair falling over her shoulders, the way it brushed against his hand as he touched her, nearly every waking moment since it happened. His growing affection for Nick made the red sirens going off in his head hard to bear. Did his professional involvement—though he was involved now, totally, completely, personally involved—mean he should keep an objective distance?

  He still wasn’t sure why she’d asked him to leave that night. Was it because she didn’t want to hear his suspicions? Or was it because now was not the time for them to get into a complicated relationship? Neither changed the fact he knew—absolutely—that she felt something for him. She just said yes now with eyes that told him she wanted to be near him.

  “You were in church last night.” It seemed unrelated, but then again, not for Jeannie. Had that been what changed her mind? Her faith was everything to her; she’d need someone who could share that.

  “Yes.”

  “What made you come back?”

  How had she known it was a return for him? “At first I told myself it was just to show Nick that church was where he should turn when things got tough.”

  Her eyes grew wide and lush. “You went for Nicky? You’d do that for him?”

  “It was way more than that. I couldn’t come back before, but lately, it’s been as if I couldn’t help but come back. You and Nick had a lot…so much…to do with that.” Would she realize what an enormous admission that was? He saw so much of God’s spirit in her. Now, tonight, now he realized how badly he wanted her to lead him back toward his own lost faith. Rescue me, he wanted to whisper into her hair.

  He wasn’t supposed to get a second chance at this. She needed someone with less damage, someone who could match her joy at life. “Tell me to go away, and I will. You and Nick need…well, you don’t need someone like me.”

  “Nicky needs you. And I…” She didn’t finish, just looked at him. He was tumbling off the edge of the highest cliff and he knew it. He relished it.

  The blanket slipped off her shoulders and he quickly ducked to bring it back around her. The gesture placed his arms around her, and he was lost for certain. “Jeannie,” he gulped out, the curve of her shoulders under his hands driving him mad. She brought her hand up to rest against his cheek, and
Chad actually felt his head spin. He’d thought this kind of thing was gone for him forever, but it wasn’t. She was here, now, nearly glowing in the moonlight and laying her impossibly smooth hand against his cheek. He found himself as desperate to kiss her as a high-schooler, but would not allow himself to give in until he knew she felt the same. Please let her feel the same.

  The flush in her cheeks had nothing to do with the cold, their breath tumbled frosty-white in the air as he pulled her just the tiniest bit closer. “Chad,” she whispered as he lost himself in those huge brown eyes, “you better kiss me now or I think I’ll just about die.”

  “Don’t die.” He realized he was smiling. Grinning like a fool, actually. She felt the same.

  “Don’t wait.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and he had just enough composure to catch the blanket as it nearly fell again before he leaned in and let his lips brush across hers. She shivered slightly in his arms, and that was the end of all reason. Chad pulled the blanket around the two of them, taking her into his arms and giving in to the blinding bliss of kissing her. She was soft and warm. She felt exquisite in his arms, perfect and delicate and stirring up such heat he felt he could stay out here a week.

  Still, it was about so much more than heat. She was sweet, courageous and so full of light that her touch seemed to crack open parts of him that had been dark for ages. When he kissed her, he touched the spark of life that always seemed to surround her, and he felt that energy spark him to life.

  She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her appearance that intrigued him. It was her strength and vibrancy, the most lovable tenacity he’d ever known in a woman. In anyone. He could love her, someday, if he healed enough. Right now, with the moonlight shimmering in her hair, he prayed that he would heal enough to love this woman and her son.

  Jeannie melted against his chest, snuggling into the blanket as he wrapped her closer. “I think I just forgot how to breathe,” she said softly. Was that his heart slamming against his chest or hers?

  He took a deep breath of his own. “They’ll…um…miss us,” he said, somehow coming to his senses before the scent of her hair stole his last scrap of reason. “We should go inside.”

  “We should.” There was that butterscotch smile of hers again. He couldn’t help smiling himself. Smiling. When was the last time he’d done that? Out of nowhere, an idea tempted him: forget every obligation, every worry, every task and simply walk with her through the moonlit pines that filled Frank’s backyard. A woman who paints her Jeep in polka dots can do that to you, he chided himself, unsettled at how much appeal the crazy idea held. Chad Owens was the kind of man who filed reports, not the kind of man who stole kisses in the dark.

  He stole three more before they went inside.

  Monday was Nicky’s least favorite school day—math test day—but it also meant his return to class. Piled on top of everything else, it made for a complicated morning. Jeannie’s spirit waffled between concern for Nicky and a giddy wonder over Saturday night. She watched Nicky’s every movement for some confirmation that things would be okay from here, but couldn’t read him. His spirit had seemed lighter over the weekend, but the threat of Monday’s return to school had rendered him dark and grumpy again last night. “Teenagers are like a roller coaster,” Abby had consoled. If the ups and downs were this bad in eighth grade, Jeannie wasn’t sure how she was going to make it through his high school years.

  “Can I have some coffee?” Nicky wandered in looking rumpled and surly in black jeans and a dark brown shirt with some video game logo on the back. It startled her how much older he looked in dark colors.

  “Coffee? Absolutely not. You’ve thirteen, for goodness’ sake.”

  “I’ll be in high school soon.”

  Oh, how she was aware of that fact. Jeannie stared into her coffee as Nicky got out the cereal—a sugary, kid cereal she noticed with a satisfied smirk.

  She’d been thinking about Chad all morning, and Nicky had noticed. More than once her son had looked up from his cereal to give her the same exasperated look he usually reserved for pink objects, anything with ruffles or his grandmother’s cheek pinches.

  “I thought you told me Chad was coming to our church now.”

  “I did. He went Thursday night, Mrs. Reed said.”

  “So where was he yesterday?” he asked behind an enormous mouthful of cereal.

  So he had looked for Chad, too? “Well, Chief Bradens was missing as well, so maybe there was something going on over at the firehouse.” Chad couldn’t have been avoiding her, could he? Oh, goodness, now who was acting like a teenager? Nicky seemed to somehow know her tension had a new and unfamiliar layer. “He’s nice,” she offered, groping some parentally wise way to raise such a difficult subject.

  Nicky just grunted.

  Jeannie had no idea how to handle the prospect of a new man in her life. She still had to deal with his school issues, emotional tangles or no. They ended up driving to school in near silence.

  “Nicky,” she began as she pulled up in the school drive, “make sure Mrs. Hunnington—”

  “Got it, Mom,” he cut in sharply.

  She went to hand him his backpack, but he snatched it from the backseat before she could reach it. “You still have to serve deten—”

  “I know, Mom,” Nicky barked at her as he lifted the door latch, obviously not wanting her to raise the subject.

  Well, he wasn’t going to get his way. This was too important a juncture for him, too much at stake. He was sliding out of the car when she caught his elbow. Nicky groaned and swiveled his head back to glare at her. Jeannie refused to back down. “Now look here, Nicky…”

  He threw his hand in the air. “Stop calling me Nicky! Just stop calling me that!”

  It was like getting the wind knocked out of her. They both sat stunned for a second. Jeannie swallowed, grappling to keep her composure. “Nicholas Nelworth,” she said as evenly as she could manage, “you made a big mistake. You know that, and what’s done is done. But you’ve also been given a second chance. I expect you to make the most of it.”

  Nicky merely grunted and pulled out of the car. Watch over him, Lord, she prayed as she watched him shuffle up the sidewalk, all dark-jeaned and bushy-haired. It was as if someone threw a mysterious internal switch on her son, kicking him over into the teenage years before either of them was ready. Oh, Lord, watch over all of us. It’s gotten so complicated all of a sudden.

  She said a dozen other prayers as she made the short drive from school to the Sweet Treats renovation site. Things in her life had grown wonderfully and immensely complicated at the same time. Her heart leaped as she pulled the Jeep into the parking space in front of Sweet Treats—not only because of her beautiful new front door, but because Abby was there with a steaming cup of coffee in each hand.

  “You have the most wonderful gift of showing up when you’re needed,” Jeannie said with a tired sigh as she unlocked the new door.

  “That bad, huh?” Abby followed inside.

  “What happened to my nice little boy? It’s like sharing an apartment with a porcupine.” She looked at the new display racks leaning up against the wood studs and wished for a time machine to whoosh her directly to the store’s opening. It killed her not to be able to work in here, live in here. She could only visit, and that was like being asked to visit paradise but never stay. To stand in here and feel her future so clearly made the tiny beige apartment all the more painful.

  “In a word? Hormones.” Abby shucked her jacket and wandered over to look at the racks. “Well, that and a lot of other stuff. You’re in the parenting Olympics here, girl. You can’t get discouraged if things don’t go perfectly. You’ve gone from cute and cuddly to dark and prickly, and it doesn’t let up for another eight years or so…if then.”

  Jeannie drowned her apprehensions a gulp of the delicious coffee. Once Sweet Treats opened, it would be a particular blessing that Karl’s Koffee was exactly halfway between here and Abby’s craft store. “Oh, c
uddly is definitely off the table. And as for perfection? I think we’re looking at pure survival.”

  “Has he stopped hugging you yet?”

  Jeannie swallowed hard. “They stop?”

  Abby sighed. “For a while. Punches you in the gut, it does. I used to think the moms who went in to hug their teenagers while they were sleeping were nuts.”

  Jeannie did not like the look in Abby’s eyes. “Have you?”

  “Only twice. Now I just demand he hugs me and pretend that I can’t see his tortured expression.”

  “I’m so glad you’re funny, even when you’re sad.” She hugged Abby enough for three sons. “You’re the perfect laugh I needed this morning.”

  Abby turned her gaze out the window to the fire station. “Speaking of perfection, you were looking perfectly smitten Saturday night. I take it things are going well between you and Chad?”

  She spoke as if they were already a certified couple. Were they? It was so hard to tell. “He is so different than what I thought, Abby.”

  Abby shot her a look as she sipped her coffee. “You’re positively grinning. I’ll take that to mean he’s so much better than you thought?”

  Leaning back against one of the columns, Jeannie wondered if she could even put her confusion into words. “I don’t know. There’s so much in our pasts. He lost someone very close to him in a fire, did you know that?”

  Abby shook her head. “I figured it was something like that, but it makes sense. You two have a great deal in common. And as for tough pasts, well, that’s what futures are for.”

  “It feels too early to be thinking about that kind of future. He’s still so distant in some ways, as if he’s always fighting something dark coming up from behind him.”

  Abby smiled at Jeannie. “I can’t think of anybody better to lighten up a life than you. I’d say it’s time you both got your second helpings of happiness in this world.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re not some love-struck teenagers. You know the real thing when you see it and you know where to be careful. You both go deeper than that. So don’t be afraid of being happy instead of just being cheerful, Jeannie. God’s not done with either of you yet by a long shot.” She took another gulp of coffee and looked around. “Speaking of not being done, how is the store coming?”