“I didn’t think teachers cared about such things,” murmured a deep voice from behind her. “At least none of the ones who taught me seemed to.”
She spun, a ready retort on her lips, but he cupped her face in both big palms and tilted it up. He was at least six inches taller than her and so masculine. Hands powerful enough to crush her like an egg, but instead, they supported her gently as his lips descended toward hers. Her eyelids fluttered closed at the first touch. Her head spun, and she felt swoony.
Knees wobbling, she tried to maintain consciousness, even if decorum had entirely fled. This was not her first kiss, but it was the first time she’d seen stars and had to lock her knees to stay upright. Nothing touched between them but his hands on her face and his lips moving against hers, coaxing, urging them to part and allow him to take further liberties. Liberties she would grant in a second if only she were—weren’t—
“Miss McIntosh!” The outraged voice of her principal seared her aroused nerve endings, and she gave a firm shove on Fireman MacKay’s chest that sent him halfway across the hall. “I hope there is a good explanation for this outlandish behavior, although I cannot imagine what it could be.”
Explanation? Sure. She was kissing a stranger in the school hallway in hopes of losing her job. “Mr. Harrell. Of course, no, that is I…”
The fireman recovered faster than she could, however, taking her left hand and extending his right toward the principal. “I finally get to meet the man my sweetie idolizes. And on this day of all days. You may congratulate us, sir.” He pumped the principal’s hand with enthusiasm. “Miss McIntosh, Tina, has agreed to become my wife.”
Tina didn’t know who was more astonished, but she would lay odds it was her. Her mouth moved but no words emerged. What could she say? He’s a liar, and I am a tramp?
“And who is watching your class? I am quite taken aback.” The paunchy man certainly appeared it. Suddenly less panicked, she began to enjoy the situation. Mr. Harrell took pleasure in intimidating his teachers, especially the women. Perhaps one engaged to a big, strong man might expect fewer lectures in his office.
Fireman MacKay released her boss’s hand and waved at the door. “My partner, Engineer Royal, is speaking to them about the program we offer. He graciously offered to give me a moment to speak with Miss McIntosh.” His wink and grin included the old bossypants in their secret love affair. “I planned a more romantic moment, but my sweetie spends every evening grading papers and preparing her lessons for the next day.”
Mr. Harrell shook his head in male empathy. “It’s a shame some women have to leave the home, isn’t it? Better if they could stay home and put their attention to learning the skills they will need to be excellent wives and mothers. Of course, some of them don’t have the home life to learn in.”
Oh, that man! Sure, her mom had not been home baking cookies every afternoon. She’d been at the diner, waiting tables and earning enough money so they could eat and have a roof over their heads. Before she said anything in reply, her “fiancé” did. “I’m very proud of my girl here. She can bake a pie with the best of them, but she also takes her job seriously. Like she does everything in life.”
The shorter stouter man took a step back. “Of course, of course.”
“When we arrived this morning to visit the class, and I saw her up there at the front of the room in complete charge, smiling at the boys and girls…I was overwhelmed with love and the desire to make sure I secured her heart before someone else snapped her up.”
His heartfelt sigh had her believing for just a moment that they were a couple in love. She wanted to promise him more of her time, to apologize for neglecting him…to offer to be a better girlfriend—fiancée—in future. But as she shook her head, forcing reality back in where fantasy had dwelled, the old bossypants asked a valid question.
“Where’s the ring?”
Of course, the glib-tongued man had an answer for everything. “At home. As I said, this was not where I planned to press my suit. Perhaps you can convince my fiancée to take some time from her duties tomorrow night when I am off shift to have dinner at my parents’ home and give them the good news? I’d hate for them to hear it anywhere else.” He squeezed her to his side. “And I have faith she will listen to your good counsel.”
Mr. Harrell huffed and puffed and looked about to bust the buttons off his not-quite-white shirt. “These young women don’t know what’s good for them. They are all about career and put family life second. The sooner they realize their place is in the home, the better. I’d hire all men, if I could find enough qualified and willing to work for a teacher’s salary.” He fixed his attention on her. “I assume you will be staying single long enough to finish the term, Miss McIntosh?”
Her face flamed, but she nodded. She’d managed to save her job, or rather, the fireman had, and she couldn’t throw that back in his face.
“Then I suppose we’ll need to consider hiring a replacement at the first of the year.”
“I signed a contract through June, Mr. Harrell. We have not even begun to make our plans, so you may count on me until then.” And after that, too, once she figured a way out of the mess she’d landed in.
“Oh no need, my dear. I will consider this your notice to leave at the holidays. Even if you won’t wed until June, you’ll be so busy picking out china patterns and ordering flowers and whatever women do for these things, you won’t have time for the Cedar Valley Elementary children anymore.” He threw a sly glance at Fireman MacKay. “These women must have their orange blossoms and sunny wedding trips, eh?”
Her imagination lit. Even coming from the grouchy old bear, her girlish dreams were lying in wait for just such an opportunity. She knew exactly what kind of flowers she wanted. Gardenias for their exotic fragrance, a whole wreath of them from which her veil would hang in delicate folds. More in her bouquet along with little pale-pink roses, and no baby’s breath but some ferns to add a strong green to the sweet colors. Her mother’s dress hung in its heavy bag in the back of the closet, and she’d wear none other. The cake—
“As I’m sure you and Mrs. Harrell enjoyed, sir.”
His jovial expression soured, and she felt a bit of mean enjoyment. “Never married, my boy. This school is all the wife I need. Takes all my time.” And, of course, no woman would have him. But she bit that back, too. She’d come close enough to disaster.
The taller man’s smile held great compassion, even if his eyes did spark a bit with humor. “It’s a great responsibility you shoulder for all our young people.”
“Indeed.” Mr. Harrell shuffled back toward his office but turned to them again. “Of course, it goes without saying there will be no future, errr…canoodling in the hallways of the school. Bad example for the other teachers. And the board doesn’t like it.”
“Indeed,” he replied with a grave nod. They both stood and watched the office door close behind the principal before he faced her. “Hi, my intended.”
The bubble popped. The fantasy disappeared, and, instead of the happy fiancée planning a wedding and honeymoon, she was back to spinster teacher. Canoodling? Really?
“I am not your intended,” she murmured. “But I don’t know whether to thank you for saving me or curse you for getting me into the situation you had to save me from.”
His grin still held every bit as much appeal even at that moment. Drat! “You can thank me by having dinner with me tomorrow.”
“Look, I don’t know what kind of game you like to play with helpless women, but know that I am not one. You caught me off-guard before. But that’s not reason to continue the charade. I will wait a month or so then tell Mr. Harrell we broke it off, hopefully before he gives my job to one of those men he’s talking about. He should be grateful to have so many women. Did you know they pay the male teachers nearly twice as much?”
“Well, they probably have families to support.”
“Oh!” She stomped her foot then glanced around in frustration, hoping not to
draw a crowd. “Whether or not they have families to support, they get the same pay. And a widow with small children—if they don’t decide that the fact she has actually had S. E. X. to produce those children makes her a danger to the students—earns the same as me. A pittance.”
And after all her years of education, one misstep at this time could cost her everything. A teacher with a bad reputation was a teacher unable to find work anywhere. She wanted to weep in frustration but refused to give him the satisfaction.
“You’re right,” he said in a quiet voice. “In a way. But most female teachers do choose to leave when they marry, to become homemakers and mothers. The men do not have that luxury.”
She eyed him. The fireman appeared sincere, but he’d missed an important point, and it had occurred right in front of him. “Did it appear as if I was given a choice? Or did my boss just void my written contract when we gave him our ‘happy’ news?”
A low, rolling wail interrupted their conversation. The 10:00 a.m. air raid siren. Although they had the drill every Friday, the sound never failed to chill her a little. Rumor had it they were going to be discontinued, and she hoped that was true. Opening the door, she watched the children slipping from their seats and huddling under the desks, their fingers laced behind their necks. Who in their right mind thought the position would protect them from a massive explosion? At the teacher’s workshop at the start of the year, she’d listened to the “expert” they’d brought in explain how to handle these events with her class.
She’d wanted to stand up and inform the “expert” that desks were no match for collapsing buildings, super winds, flying trees, and radiation poisoning. But she’d have been fired on the spot for such outrageous behavior. Funny, she’d gone from outrageous to outlandish in less than two months.
The fireman came to her side and surveyed the children. “What a world, isn’t it? Where we can be destroyed in moments by someone’s bad decision?”
“The nuclear age,” she murmured. “A time we have to be brave. There are fewer guarantees than ever before.” The siren finished its wail, and Tina bustled to the front of the class. “Back in your seats, children.” She offered an encouraging smile as they did, but they showed no signs of concern. To them it was no different from a fire drill. Something to break up the day. They did not cower in terror because their tomorrows could so easily be stolen.
The Atomic Age children displayed greater bravery in the face of the changing world than any generation before them. This was why she wanted to teach them. They inspired her every day.
“Boys and girls, please thank the firemen who have so generously come here today.”
“Thank you,” they chanted. “Please come again.”
“Now please open your reading books to page thirty-five. Who would like to read first?” While the scuffling sounds of the desks opening and the pages fluttering filled the room, she escorted the two men to the door.
“Six o’clock tomorrow, okay?” Mr. Fireman asked. “I need your address. Your principal might be surprised if I asked him for it.”
Unprepared for the question, she sputtered out her address before pausing to think and was closing the door to the hallway and turning to face her class before the implications hit her.
I have a date…what am I going to wear?
Chapter Three
Mac finished the day with only one callout. On the way back to the station, he and Tim were diverted to help a little old lady get her cat out of a tree. Very cliché, but they took each incident seriously because a small issue could lead to a larger one. Once they’d been tied up at a grass fire and, by the time they arrived, they had not only a kitten but a little old lady clinging to a branch. He shuddered to think at what could have been the result if they’d been a few minutes later.
Settled into his bunk at the station that night, he replayed his actions at the school. He could not sort out what made him start the chain of events that led to his announcing to the principal of the school that he and the fourth grade teacher were engaged to be married. He dismissed the fleeting thought that she’d one day be his wife. She was very pretty. Curvier than many of the women he’d dated in Dallas who seemed to be obsessed with that new model…Stick-Girl? Twig Woman? Something like that. Everything British was exciting, and many even in Texas were adopting the oddest attempts to sound like the Beatles.
He was probably just too old to appreciate the British invasion as a way of life. He liked the music…but give him a girl who could fill out a fuzzy sweater any day. Tina McIntosh had that quality and a little more even. He shifted under the covers, since there was nothing he could do about his arousal until he got home.
And now he had a date with her. Tomorrow, after he got off shift. She lived in one of the new apartments springing up at the edge of town. They went up in what seemed like a matter of days, probably made of that new particle board garbage which was also suddenly popular. The buildings did look nice but, in twenty years, they’d probably fall over under their own weight and decrepitude.
Not that a woman like Miss McIntosh would be there that long. She’d be married in the blink of an eye. Far too pretty to stay on the market much longer. For a second, he considered what would happen if he went forward with his suit. His mother would be beyond delighted and his dad relieved. They’d probably insist he move into the house so they could help with the kids.
Kids!
Just this morning he’d been contemplating never having any because of his siblings’ ingratitude for all their parents’ sacrifices. Dad’s stroke—the one that brought Mac home—had knocked him down for a while, but the subsequent ones had been much more minor. In fact, he called them “the dizzies” if he was willing to discuss them at all. The doctors monitored his blood pressure and tried to get him to eat a little better, but if you didn’t know he had a problem already, you’d never notice the slight droop in his lips. He looked just as healthy and hearty as ever.
Mac had enough on him between his job and the farm and keeping an eye on Mom and Dad. So far as he knew, Mom had no health problems, she bustled around like always, feeding the hands and his father, caring for her chickens and her garden, but with the advancing years, she was bound to slow down. If anything, she did far too much.
He’d begged them to sell the place. If none of his siblings wanted it, they could make enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. They’d already been approached by a man who wanted to buy the acreage to build some of those cookie-cutter tract houses. Probably made them out of particle board, too.
Predictably, Dad would have none of it. If his children didn’t want the place, one of the grandkids would. The city grandkids who didn’t know a chicken from a cable car. Tomorrow night, when he had dinner with them, Mac would make another run at changing their minds
Tomorrow night.
Far out. Looks like he’d be taking his date to the farm after all. He hadn’t been serious about it when he told the principal, but he had promised to eat there tomorrow and Mom would not be pleased if he cancelled. Maybe Tina would change her mind about their date. She might even have given him the wrong address just to get rid of him, although she’d spit it out quickly enough.
Slamming a pillow over his face, he moaned. Maybe he’d suffocate and end the complicated mess his life had become.
But, instead, all he could see was the image of the fiery-haired, sweater-filling-out Miss McIntosh. She’d trembled when he’d cupped her face and kissed her, her pulse fluttering in her neck where the outside of his hands rested. The memory did not help to abate his woody. The girl had too much of an effect on him for one short meeting.
And, unless she cancelled, he’d be having dinner with his grandchildren-hungry parents and the perfect candidate to provide them. Pretty, smart…and loved kids. Yep, he’d have to make this date a one-time thing or end up married in June as Mr. Harrell expected.
Would that be such a terrible thing? Yes, yes it would be. He still had a yen for trave
l, and if he could convince his folks to make a move to more appropriate digs, he’d be able to relocate to at least the semi-bright lights of Sacramento. As long as his parents lived—and he hoped it would be many years—rejoining Dallas Fire and Rescue was out of the picture.
As he slipped into sleep, the images came back in force. He wanted to pull off her hairband and bury his hands in the fiery length of her hair, to inhale its fresh scent.
Tina’s day picked up where it left off when he showed up outside the schoolyard in that big red fire engine. An appropriate vehicle not only because of his profession but because he’d landed in her life sirens wailing and lights flashing, so to speak. She’d begun the day a spinster teacher, happy enough with her job, her cute little apartment in that nice, brand-new building, and not remotely interested in chasing flashy fellows in uniform. In fact, she’d never been a uniform girl. When two of her best friends in high school giggled over the servicemen they wrote to and eventually married, she’d insisted she’d rather stay single and maintain her independence. She hadn’t gone to school for all those years just to set aside her profession the day some smiling yokel dropped to one knee and offered to pay for her milk and bread and provide her with a clothing budget and guidance in how to live her life.
It certainly hadn’t worked out that way for her mom.
Dallas Fire & Rescue: MacKay's Fire (Kindle Worlds Novella) (MacKay Destiny Book 2) Page 2
