The Firefighter's Woman

by Loki Renard

  “You have what your parents left you, yes,” he nodded. “But what were you doing with yourself? How were you occupying your days?”

  “Oh, this and that,” she shrugged. “There are a lot of cat videos on the internet. I was working my way through them.”

  The flippant response earned her a raised brow and made her instantly defensive.

  “What do you think I did? I hung out.”

  “With who? You’ve not mentioned any friends, and nobody has come over.”

  “More like acquaintances than friends,” she clarified. “People you drink and stuff with. Meet at clubs, go dancing with. You know, fun stuff. Fun friends. Not people you invite to your house.”

  That answer didn’t seem to please him any more than the one before it had. “So you’re telling me your primary activity since graduating high school several years ago has been… partying? Underage drinking?”

  Sarah snorted. “Don’t sound so shocked. It’s what most college kids do anyway. I just cut out the college part.”

  “Well, those days are over,” he informed her. “I don’t want you going out drinking every night. And I don’t want you lying around the house all day either. It’s not good for you.”

  “This is going to be another one of those times where I tell you no and you say my house, my rules and if I don’t roll over for you like Odin does, you put me over your lap, isn’t it?”

  John’s smile was warm as he nodded. “I think you’re getting the hang of how things work around here.”

  “There’s a limit, John.”

  His smile faded. “A limit to what?”

  “A limit to how much control I’m going to let you have over me.”

  “It’s not controlling to say that a young woman should have some kind of education or employment goals.”

  “It is, actually. The ‘should’ part is controlling. If you don’t want me in your house when you’re not here, fine. I’ll go to a hotel.”

  “And go back to drinking and partying and throwing your youth and inheritance away.” He shook his head. “No. I’m not going to allow that. You’re too smart and you’ve got far too much talent to waste.”

  “So what’s your plan for me, John? You seem to have this all laid out already.”

  “I’ve got you a place to stay on the nights where I’m working the night shift. And I’ve gotten you a job.”

  “A job? I don’t need a…”

  “Maybe not financially,” he said. “But mentally, emotionally, you need to work on the self-discipline you get going to a job every day and being responsible for a task. It’s important, Sarah.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head. “Sometimes I can’t work out what it is you want to be to me. My lover? My father? My career counselor? You’re taking over my life, John. This started out as me just staying here for a few days with a few rules. Now we’re fucking, and you’re getting me jobs and… what is this, exactly?”

  “This is a relationship,” John said simply. “This is where someone cares about you. For you.”

  “Well, I don’t want a job,” she said. “I’m not qualified for anything worth doing and I’m not going to do some stupid job just because you think I need to. You’re not in charge of me.”

  “If you’re with me, then I’m in charge.”

  Her jaw dropped. “But, John…”

  “No butts. Except yours,” he said firmly. “Over my knee if you misbehave. Just like you said.”

  Sarah scowled at him with frustration. It didn’t matter what she said; he didn’t deny what he was doing, he just doubled down on it. There was no way to guilt him out of his stance, and that made negotiating with him hard.

  “You know what? Being with you means having so many strings attached I might as well be a puppet.”

  “But you do want to be with me, don’t you, Sarah,” he purred in dominant, masculine tones that reminded her that really, the only thing keeping her there, submitting to his discipline, obeying his rules, was her desire and love for him. She was caught in a prison of her own making.

  “I hate this,” she pouted.

  “I don’t think you do. I think you’re scared to admit just how much you like it.” He swatted her bottom lightly. “Now go on and put something work appropriate on. I want to introduce you to your new boss.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sarah’s hangover, which had seemed to abate while making love with John, returned with a vengeance when she found herself standing outside a municipal building.

  “The library?”

  “Mhm. This is where you’re going to work. Come on.”

  Sarah allowed herself to be led into the old building. It smelled of old people and books. And books that smelled like old people. The smells were interchangeable and she didn’t like any of them. She tried not to look too petulant as she folded her arms over her chest and stood next to John at the ‘returns’ counter. He probably wished he could return her where he got her from.

  “Can I help you?” An old woman with spectacles as thick as the lenses of telescopes peered at them from behind the desk.

  “We’re here to see Mrs. Derringer,” John said. “I believe she’s expecting us.”

  “She’s in her office. Up the stairs and to the right.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” John said politely, leading the way behind the library counter and toward a door in the rear that led to a stairway, which eventually led to the aforementioned door on the right. He knocked and announced their presence, which was met with rather deep but feminine tones.

  “Come in, John!”

  Sarah entered the room behind John and found herself looking at a tall older woman with her hair in a dark chignon streaked with many strands of gray. She had bright blue eyes much like Sarah’s own eyes, but they were obscured behind thick round spectacles. Her fashion was, well, old-fashioned. She wore a cream blouse with the buttons done all the way up to the very top of her collar, and a long tweed skirt. The only potential nod to fashion was the long leather boots that went up past the hem of the skirt. Sarah rather liked them. She didn’t like anything else about the woman, who was looking at her with a piercing gaze and a smile that was just the wrong side of friendly.

  “This is Mrs. Anne Derringer,” John said. “She’s the head librarian and she needs an assistant. That’s you.” He gave her a little nudge. “Say hello, Sarah.”

  “Hello, Sarah,” Sarah said with a bright smile. Mrs. Derringer’s brow rose just a hair.

  “Don’t be a little smart ass,” John murmured in her ear.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Sarah,” Mrs. Derringer said in cultured tones.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Sarah lied. She couldn’t believe John thought she should work at the library. If she had to have a job, she would have much preferred to work in a clothing store or something bright and loud. Somewhere with life. It made sense though, that he would choose someplace like this, somewhere boring where she couldn’t get into what he would have called ‘trouble.’

  “Have you worked in a library before, Sarah?”

  “I didn’t even know they still had libraries,” Sarah said brashly. “I thought these places had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Is there a section for stone tablets?”

  Mrs. Derringer’s lips pressed into a thin smile and she cast a questioning look at John as if to ask him why he had brought such a hellion into her presence.

  “You’re being rude,” John growled into her ear.

  “I don’t care,” Sarah rejoined in a hiss. “I don’t want to work here.”

  “You don’t want to work anywhere,” John replied. “But this is a good place to start, and we’re killing two birds with one stone. As well as offering you a job, Mrs. Derringer has kindly offered to have you stay on the nights where I have night shifts to work.”

  Sarah stared at the woman, and then at John. “What?”

  “You’re going to stay w
ith Mrs. Derringer when I have night shifts.”

  “Oh. Well.” Sarah forced a plastic smile onto her face. “Can I please talk to you outside, John?”

  To her surprise, he agreed to step outside of Mrs. Derringer’s office, but not before apologizing profusely to the woman herself. He and Sarah stood on the landing and had a whispered argument with each other.

  “I don’t want to stay with some old woman,” Sarah hissed. “I don’t need someone watching my every move.”

  “That’s precisely what you need,” he drawled back at her. “Until I’m sure you’re going to stay out of trouble, I want you to be polite to Mrs. Derringer. She’s a decent, upstanding woman and I know you’ll be in safe hands with her.”

  “I don’t need to be in anyone’s hands.”

  “If you don’t settle down, you’ll be over my lap in a moment.”

  She gritted her teeth and did her best not to let out an audible growl. “Look, I’ll get a job if you want me to. I’ll become a bartender. I can do that now, I’m twenty-one. I’ll be out while you’re out at nights.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s way too much scope for trouble there. I want you out of trouble. I want you somewhere safe at night. I don’t want you hanging around a lot of drunk men.”

  “You want me bored out of my mind in a library.”

  “You don’t have to work here forever. This is just a start. If it’s boring, use that time to think about what you do want for yourself. No, it doesn’t have to be a nine to five job. It could be anything. But what it can’t be is sitting around the house all day and going out and getting drunk all night.” He reached out and brushed some stray strands of hair out of her eyes. “Not everything has to be a fight,” he said more gently. “Can you see why I want this?”

  “Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I can see why, but John… this is going to suck.”

  “Just until you work out what won’t suck,” he winked. “Come on, let’s go and see Mrs. Derringer again.”

  Sarah took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She knew if she kept pushing it, John really would punish her. And the woman, Mrs. Derringer, she’d already made a fool of herself in front of her.

  “Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.”

  Chapter Ten

  After finishing the rest of the interview from hell, in which she listened to Mrs. Derringer and John discuss the many benefits of forced library labor, Sarah started work the next day, the same day that John was returning to the night shift. She was, by far, the library’s least happy employee. The work was just as boring as she had imagined it would be. At first she tried avoiding doing any work by hiding in the reference section and playing on her phone, but Mrs. Derringer soon got wise to that ploy and insisted on supervising her more directly.

  Sarah had been shelving books for three hours and was fantasizing about jumping out one of the large windows and just running away. The doors were wide open, of course, but there was something about the window with its view onto the botanical gardens that sparked her fantasies. She could have taken the heavy book in her hand, thrown it right through the glass, and escaped into the tulip bed beyond.

  “How much longer are you intending on sulking?” A mature female voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Sarah looked over to see leather boots a few feet away. She hadn’t heard the woman coming closer, so either Mrs. Derringer moved like a ninja or Sarah had just tuned out from reality due to boredom. Either way, the question made her blush a little.

  “I’m not sulking,” she said. “I’m just doing my job. That’s what everyone wants me to do, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  She was aware that she sounded more sullen than ever, but that could hardly be avoided. She was on her knees on the floor and Mrs. Derringer was quite a tall woman to start with and the effect of all that was to make Sarah feel very, very small.

  “It’s what John wants you to do,” Mrs. Derringer observed. “And you’re doing it to please him more than yourself.”

  It didn’t take a genius to work that much out, so Sarah wasn’t impressed. “Mhm,” she muttered noncommittally.

  “John is a kind and handsome man, isn’t he?” The woman tried to make conversation again.

  “He’s nice,” Sarah said, reluctant to share more.

  “He’s a very good man,” Mrs. Derringer said. “I’ve known him a long time. I’ve never known him to bring anyone to the library before.”

  “It’s not exactly a hot date spot,” Sarah muttered.

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse, dear?”

  Sarah looked at the woman with a hint of surprise. “No?”

  “I’m saying he must be very taken with you. Are you equally taken with him?”

  Sarah didn’t reply.

  “You think I’m being nosy,” Mrs. Derringer said wisely. “But John is a dear boy and I’ve known him since he was very small. Him bringing you here means something, I think.”

  Ah. So that’s what was going on. The woman was vetting her, trying to work out what her intentions were.

  Sarah sat back and looked Mrs. Derringer in the eye. It was not an easy thing to do. The woman was a formidable spinster, emphasis on the formidable. “Look, if this is the equivalent of meeting his parents, I’m sorry, but I don’t really do family things. So I’m not going to sit here and try to make you like me, or prove myself to you. I’m not even going to stay at your place. I don’t need anyone to look out for me.”

  “I can see why he likes you,” Mrs. Derringer said, smiling for the first time. “But you are going to stay with me, my dear.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “No, but John can. And if I have to call him and tell him that you’re not where you’re supposed to be, then I think he will have words with you.”

  A not-so-subtle inflection on words told Sarah that Mrs. Derringer knew precisely what she was threatening. After years on her own, Sarah was suddenly facing the adult equivalent of a potential ‘wait until your father gets home’ situation.

  “I cannot believe this,” she muttered under her breath as she shoved another book back into the shelf.

  *

  Five o’clock crawled around and far from being happy that she was done with work, Sarah found herself dreading closer contact with Mrs. Derringer. She wanted to go back to John’s place and just curl up on the couch by herself, and she even figured a way to sneak out a side door and accomplish that, but Mrs. Derringer was two steps ahead of her. Before Sarah managed to skulk away, the head librarian called her and informed her that they would be heading home early.

  “Really, Mrs. Derringer,” Sarah said. “This isn’t necessary. I’m twenty-one, I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I wasn’t intending on babysitting you,” Mrs. Derringer said calmly. “And I don’t think we need to call John and talk about this, do we?”

  “You can’t throw John at me every time I want to do something other than what’s been planned for me.”

  “I can’t throw John at you whatsoever,” Mrs. Derringer said, her lips quirking with amusement at her own joke. “Come along, Sarah. We have a long commute.”

  “Great,” Sarah said flatly. After a day of tedious work, she was now going to be stuck in traffic with a woman she barely knew and who made her nervous.

  She followed Mrs. Derringer through the parking lot with the demeanor of a prisoner going to the gallows. Throughout the commute, she kept largely silent, alternately staring out the window and playing with her phone.

  *

  Mrs. Derringer lived on the other side of the city, far from the devastation of the tornado and fairly far from John’s place too. It was a nice neighborhood, quiet and leafy and peaceful and Mrs. Derringer’s house was a double-storied home with a swing on the porch and gerberas in the front garden.

  Sarah followed Mrs. Derringer inside, expecting the place to be dated like the library. Surprisingly, it was quite moder
n and clean. There were books lining shelves in the living room, but the shelves weren’t old wood, they were reinforced glass, and between the books were various items from around the world: statues and gems and rocks and pictures of creatures and places she’d never seen or heard of before. Finally, she decided to initiate conversation.

  “You like travel, or garage sales?”

  “Travel,” Mrs. Derringer said. “I collected each of these pieces in my younger years when I worked as an archeology assistant in the Middle East and African continent.”

  “Wow,” Sarah said, surprised. She had imagined that Mrs. Derringer had been born in the library, never setting foot outside it except maybe to get some groceries every now and then. It was surprising to learn that she’d lived a very full life. Pictures further down the room showed a younger Anne Derringer smiling from the exotic locations she’d named. “That’s really impressive, Mrs. Derringer.”

  “Call me Anne, dear,” Mrs. Derringer said. “And I’m glad you think so. Have you been overseas before?”

  “Never.” Sarah shook her head emphatically. “I’ve barely been out of the state.”

  “That’s a shame. Travel broadens the mind.”

  “I always liked being at home. Well, when I had one. Now I’m stuck imposing in other people’s homes.”

  Anne gave her a sympathetic look. “You’ve been through a lot,” she said. “Perhaps, if you didn’t fight the help you’re being given quite so hard, it would be easier.”

  “I’m not fighting help,” Sarah frowned. “I’m just not used to all this. I’ve been on my own for a long time, so it’s a little weird to suddenly have John thinking he needs to do all these things for me.”

  “He’s a traditional man, and he’s protective,” Anne agreed. “There aren’t many like him left.”

  Sarah nodded, not sure what else to say. Mrs. Derringer, Anne, was still a stranger to her, and there was something about the woman that made Sarah feel very topsy-turvy inside. Not quite in the same way John did, but almost as powerfully.