The Firefighters Baby

by Roberts, Alison

‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ Jason blinked in consternation at the stare he was still receiving and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it is. In fact, I’m beginning to think that all women might be better off on their own.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ Jason eyed the door as though planning a hasty exit. ‘I meant, it would be all right if you came to the doctor’s with me and Megan.’

  ‘Seeing as you’ve so kindly pointed out that I’ve got nothing better to do, I may as well.’ Laura’s tone was wry. ‘But don’t push it, Jase. I’m not going to look after your daughter while you go out and have a good time with some bimbo.’

  The atmosphere was still strained by the time they had returned with a clean bill of health for Megan and a take-away dinner for themselves, which obviated any need to cook. Laura took a shower but found Jason still curiously quiet when she returned in time to give Megan a bedtime bottle at ten p.m.

  ‘Let’s hope she sleeps as well as she did last night. It was a bit of a treat only having to get up once, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Jason was watching Laura settle herself on the couch with Megan in her arms. She knew her hair was hanging in damp waves like rats’ tails and the soft old T-shirt she intended sleeping in clung to her figure quite well enough to reveal how ample her curves were, but did he have to stare at her quite like that? Maybe she’d been less than pleasant about him wanting to go out on a date but she wasn’t trying to pass herself off as some kind of saint here. There was no point in getting Jason interested in her by pretending to be something she wasn’t. She wasn’t that desperate.

  ‘Something bothering you, Jase?’ Maybe it was time to make a joke out of it all. ‘Other than missing out on sex with Maxine, that is?’

  Jason scowled. ‘Cut it out, Laura. I didn’t think you were the bitchy type.’

  Laura hung her head, watching Megan suck. Maybe it hadn’t come out as lightly as she’d intended because it cut a little too close to the bone. She wasn’t the bitchy type, and she’d better start being more careful or Jason would realise why she might be the jealous type. She heard Jason sigh and looked up swiftly. ‘You’re right, I was being bitchy. Sorry. I guess I’m a bit tired…and…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I have trouble understanding why you find Maxine so attractive.’ If Jason needed a prime example of a bitchy type, he didn’t have to look far. Laura had only met Maxine once, when she’d come to meet Jason after work at the station. The frankly dismissive glance she’d received had been enough to know that appearances were all that mattered to Jason’s latest conquest.

  ‘She’s got great legs.’

  ‘Ah.’ Laura managed a smile. ‘That makes it all right, then.’

  The look they shared acknowledged that Maxine wasn’t likely to make the grade long term. They both laughed but Laura’s amusement was forced. She was tired and she could feel a headache coming on. Adjusting her position to hold the bottle with the hand of the arm holding Megan, Laura removed her glasses with her other hand and gave the bridge of her nose a good rub. She left the glasses on the coffee-table to give her face a rest. Then she kept her gaze on the baby she held as she felt her mouth relax into a soft smile.

  Megan was turned a little into her body and one hand was on her breast with its fingers splayed like a tiny starfish. It was pushing and squeezing rhythmically, as though she was being breast-fed and helping the supply along. Laura was astonished at the response it provoked in both her body and heart. She was staring down a bottomless well of emotion from which any amount of love for this infant could be drawn.

  And that was disturbing. It hadn’t been part of the plan at all. She might end up being more upset by having to hand Megan back to her mother than finding out Jason would never be remotely attracted to her.

  The thought prompted a gaze in Jason’s direction and Laura caught her breath. He had been watching Megan’s hand on her breast as well and his gaze flicked up to catch hers almost guiltily. He stood up, mumbling something about making coffee, but his gaze didn’t leave hers until he turned away and that had been quite long enough for Laura to see what she had thought impossible.

  Had it simply been wishful thinking?

  No. Her own body was on fire right now. She wanted Jason more than she had ever wanted anyone but the flashes of desire she was used to experiencing had been nothing like this. There was a totally new dimension to it now. Only one thing could have caused such an increase in intensity and that was the unmistakable glimpse of sexual awareness she had caught in Jason’s gaze.

  It wasn’t desire exactly, but the knowledge that Jason had woken up to the fact she was a woman was enough.

  For now.

  Chapter 6

  Inglewood station had acquired a new mascot.

  By the end of her second day shift, Megan Bates Halliday had earned the nickname of ‘Peanut’, due to her small size, and had at least half a dozen macho specimens of manhood quite besotted with her. Not that they advertised the fact, of course.

  ‘I’ll have a hold, if you have something else you want to do, Jase.’

  ‘Hey, thanks, Cliff. I’m due to do a check on the breathing apparatus filters and valves. Shouldn’t take too long.’

  ‘We’ll be all right. Take as long as you like.’ Cliff adjusted his hold on the baby. ‘What do you reckon, Peanut? Shall we see what’s on the sports channel?’

  When Jason came back, having completed the maintenance duty, he found Megan being held by Stick.

  ‘Wasn’t my idea,’ Stick said loftily.

  ‘Was so,’ Cliff contradicted. ‘I suggested a game of snooker to Bruce and you said, “Guess I’ll have to have a turn with Peanut, then.”’

  ‘You could have left her with Mrs Mack.’ Jason noticed that, although Stick was now looking somewhat sheepish, he wasn’t in any hurry to offload his burden.

  ‘She’s busy washing the floors.’

  ‘Is Laura still out on the road, then?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re having a really busy day. I don’t think they’ve even been back for a lunch-break.’

  Snooker balls clicked and Cliff whistled appreciatively. ‘Nice shot, Bruce.’

  ‘Six points,’ Stick informed Megan. ‘Let’s put them on the board, shall we?’ Megan did appear to be watching as Stick moved the marker to a new score and the cooing noise could easily be read as approval. Stick grinned. ‘She’s catching on,’ he told Jason. ‘Pretty smart, isn’t she?’

  ‘I like a girl who likes watching snooker.’ Cliff was lining up his next shot. ‘I reckon she should be the station mascot.’

  Stick’s nod was enthusiastic. ‘I’ll bet Mrs Mack could make her a junior-sized uniform. That’d be cute.’

  Jason could just imagine Megan as a toddler with a custom-made fireman’s jacket and helmet. He could even see her holding his hand as she tottered along beside the life-sized version. Hell, it would be cute. He shoved the image aside and held out his arms.

  ‘She’s due for a feed,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised she’s not yelling her head off by now.’

  ‘She likes us,’ Cliff announced.

  ‘Don’t get too attached,’ Jason warned. ‘I’m not keeping her.’

  ‘Might not be that bad, you know.’ Stick’s gaze slid away from Jason’s raised eyebrows. ‘Well, she is kinda cute. For a baby, that is.’

  Absurdly, Jason felt proud of the fact that Megan was his daughter as he carried her away from the games room-cum-gymnasium towards the kitchen. She could certainly turn on the charm at times. His colleagues had no idea what she was like when she wasn’t happy, though. They wouldn’t be anything like as smitten if they had to endure an hour or two of grizzling ill humour.

  As he had to that night. There was no pleasure in having a beer while he cooked dinner listening to that incessant squalling. She quietened down so that Laura could eat in peace, he noticed, but he felt obliged to keep walking round and round the living room in the hope of ge
tting her off to sleep.

  ‘Did you end up getting any lunch?’ he asked Laura.

  ‘No. This is great, though. What is it?’

  ‘Goulash.’

  ‘Is it?’ Laura took another mouthful. ‘I can’t taste any paprika.’

  ‘What’s paprika?’

  ‘The red stuff that looks like pepper and goes into goulash.’

  ‘Nah.’ Jason skirted the couch and began another circuit. ‘Goulash is just what you make when you chop up all the leftovers, throw in some veg and cook it.’

  ‘Whatever. It tastes fantastic.’

  Jason eyed his own plate, cooling on the bench, and sighed. ‘So what kept you so busy?’

  ‘We kicked off with a hypoglycaemic coma, had a heart attack around nine a.m., a kid fell off a climbing frame at play centre for morning tea and then we got stuck with an MVA and entrapment out on the motorway.’

  ‘Who went out to that?’ Jason watched carefully to see if he could detect any disappointment on Laura’s part that he hadn’t arrived. Surely, if she did fancy him, as his mates had suggested, he could pick up a few clues here and there.

  ‘A crew from Central station.’ Laura didn’t seem at all disappointed.

  ‘They could have called us,’ Jason grumbled. ‘We spent half the morning putting in smoke alarms for old-age pensioners, had a false alarm at a factory warehouse and then nothing for the rest of the day. It was dead boring.’

  ‘Our afternoon was a bit dull. Non-stop calls but none of them were very exciting. Sore backs, sore hearts, sore legs. You name it, we saw it.’

  ‘How long did the extrication for the MVA take?’

  ‘Two hours.’

  ‘What? We could have done it in less than half the time.’

  ‘So could they, but he wasn’t badly injured. We just didn’t want to do anything that might exacerbate his neck injury so we put on a neck brace and gave him oxygen and basically kept him amused while the fire boys cut up the car all around him.’

  ‘Still shouldn’t have taken two hours. What was it, an armoured truck?’

  Laura laughed. ‘No, it was a Mini and he was a very large man. We ended up taking off the roof and lifting him out with a crane.’

  ‘That would have been embarrassing. Especially on the motorway.’

  ‘Quite a few people stopped to have a look,’ Laura said. ‘Maybe the embarrassment will motivate him to lose a bit of weight.’ She picked up another forkful of her meal and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘I’m a great one to talk, aren’t I? And here I am, stuffing myself.’

  ‘You’re not fat,’ Jason assured her.

  ‘I’m not exactly skinny either.’

  ‘Women who are naturally skinny are few and far between. The ones who are obsessed with being unnaturally skinny usually have a hell of a lot of other hang-ups as well. Believe me,’ Jason said firmly. ‘I’m speaking from experience here.’

  ‘So why do you always pick skinny girlfriends, then?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Jason tried to sound offhand. ‘Maybe I’ll go for curvy next time.’

  Megan’s fractious cry distracted him from trying to assess whether Laura had responded to that fishing expedition. The quiet period was definitely over.

  ‘Maybe she’s got another ear infection.’

  ‘I think she’s just overtired,’ Laura said. ‘Maybe she should have been sleeping on station today, instead of being used for some pass-the-parcel game. Has it turned into some sort of competition to see who can spend the most time playing with the baby or something?’

  ‘If you ask me, we’re lucky that the guys are happy to have her around at all.’

  ‘It’s a night shift tomorrow. They won’t be so happy if their sleep gets interrupted.’ Laura stopped eating, her fork poised. ‘What will we do if we’re both called out at the same time?’

  ‘Mackie’s offered to sleep on station for two nights.’ Jason sighed heavily as Megan paused only long enough to take in a deep enough breath to raise her volume. ‘I’ve had about enough of this,’ he muttered. ‘It’s been a week, Peanut. Where the hell is your mother?’

  ‘Here, I’ll take her.’ Laura dropped her fork and her chair scraped as she pushed it back hurriedly. ‘That was really nice, thanks. You’d better have yours before it’s too cold.’

  It was already too cold. Jason grimaced around his mouthful and eyed the microwave as he chewed, but he was too hungry to be bothered reheating his meal and the second mouthful didn’t taste so bad.

  Megan grizzled on intermittently. Laura looked fed up but Jason stubbornly took his time to eat. Perversely, he welcomed the increase in tension because it made him forget any disturbing thoughts that Laura might be helping him because she wanted more than friendship from him. It also effectively blotted out any of the brief fantasies he’d been experiencing about still having the kid around when she was old enough to hold his hand and walk beside him. Or go off to school with a cute little backpack. Or smile when her front baby teeth had been purchased by the tooth fairy.

  He didn’t offer to relieve Laura when he’d finished eating either. She couldn’t complain about him clearing the bench, could she? He knew he was pushing his luck when he popped the tab on a can of beer and turned the television set on, but what was the worst thing that could happen here? Laura would go home, he’d be left with a baby he couldn’t possibly manage on his own and he’d have to stop procrastinating and do something about finding Shelley Bates.

  The scenario was unlikely, in any case. Laura seemed quite happy to do more than her share most of the time, and why not? She was female, wasn’t she? Didn’t they all get a bit clucky by the time they were pushing thirty? He was doing her a favour, really, by showing what that genetic programming could land you with.

  Within a few minutes, however, it became apparent that a surprising hiccup could be occurring in Laura Green’s genetic programming.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Jase?’

  ‘Sorry. Did you want a beer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come and watch this programme, then. This forensic pathologist is great at solving murder mysteries.’

  ‘There’ll be a murder around here soon and it won’t be at all mysterious.’

  Jason grinned. ‘I know how you feel. She’s a bit of a pain when she won’t go to sleep, isn’t she?’

  ‘Right.’ Laura’s lips compressed into a grim line. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough.’

  Megan landed on Jason’s lap with enough speed to provoke an outraged wail. While a reprimand was undeniably justified, Jason was alarmed to see Laura heading for the back door of the house.

  ‘Where are you going?”

  ‘Out.’

  ‘When will you be back?’ Jason was sorry he’d taken her assistance for granted now. Really sorry. The faint note of panic in his tone was quite genuine and he could feel himself go a shade paler when the only response he received from Laura was the slamming of the back door.

  He’d done it now. He was up the creek without a paddle and he knew quite well he deserved it. Laura had turned her life upside down for the last week in order to help him and she’d done it with remarkably good humour and competence. She’d had a much busier day than he’d had today and yet he’d been enough of a bastard to expect her to keep going. Jason groaned. If he’d wanted to find a way of ensuring Laura didn’t want him for a friend, let alone anything more, he’d found it without any effort at all.

  He’d just have to make up for it somehow. Find something nice to do that would let Laura know how much he appreciated her. But what? Jason’s idea of looking after a woman generally involved some quality physical contact, and that wasn’t an option with Laura.

  Or was it?

  Unbidden, the image of seeing Laura feeding Megan last night surfaced. The full, soft-looking outline of her breast had been made startlingly obvious by the movements of that tiny hand. Jason had never seen Laura without her spectacles on before either, and when she’d looked up at h
im he had been struck by eyes that had reminded him of melted chocolate. Recognising that Laura was actually a rather attractive woman had been a shock. Like that time his kid sister had brought her first boyfriend home.

  But him and Laura? No way. She was so far removed from what he considered to be his type it was inconceivable. Not that she wouldn’t make someone a fantastic wife and mother, but it was precisely those qualities that put her into a friendship rather than relationship category. She was fun to have around. They could have a laugh, the way they did at work. Laura was one of the boys. Hell, she even liked beer! And when life wasn’t so much fun Laura was prepared to help and he knew by now that he could trust her not to jump ship when the going got tough.

  At least, he had up until he’d pushed her to breaking point. He didn’t deserve a mate like Laura and he wouldn’t have her around much longer unless he found some way to apologise. Trying to come up with an idea was enough of a challenge to distract Jason throughout an entire nappy change so that it was no more than a vaguely unpleasant duty.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ he told Megan as he pushed her feet into the leg holes of a clean stretchsuit. ‘Mummy’s tired. And what do women like to do most when they’re tired?’

  He needed three goes on some of those pesky, undersized stud buttons. ‘I’ve seen the ads,’ he explained. ‘They like a soak in a hot bath, with candles and nice smelly stuff and a glass of wine.’

  The plan was excellent. Brilliant, even if he did say so himself, but it was a little harder to execute than he’d anticipated. The triumph of finding a single, well-used decorative candle in the depths of a kitchen cupboard was dimmed by the unavailability of any perfume or bubble bath.

  ‘A bit of dishwashing liquid would make some bubbles, wouldn’t it?’ He conferred with the baby he was carrying on one arm. ‘But what smells nice?’

  Another one-handed fossick in the cupboards began, and Megan started to feel heavy. Jason briefly considered trying out that front pack contraption Laura had persuaded him to purchase on that expensive visit to Baby Warehouse but he dismissed the thought. There was something disturbingly permanent about attaching a baby to your body like that. Holding her tucked casually into the crook of one arm was a kind of insurance policy. She could be put down or passed on to someone else with no effort required at all. The way she was handed around at the station was becoming part of the routine. One of the guys was always hovering somewhere nearby, waiting for a turn and pretending not to be. Wouldn’t work at all if they had to deal with buckles and straps, and it would look ridiculous. Who wanted to look like a kangaroo with a pouch in dire need of mending?