As he fell into a brief snooze, his last thought was about what the fire chief would say if he knew that he and Sabina had been one second thought away from hot, naked, sweaty, spectacular sex.
Luke raced across the San Gabriel Airport terminal and launched himself at Roman, who caught him in a tight hug. Being mostly Italian, their family had never been shy with physical affection. Roman loved ruffling his son’s hair, giving him random bear hugs, slinging his arm around his shoulder as they walked. Like a flashback to the old Luke, he talked a mile a minute as they waited at the outdoor baggage carousel in the glaring sunshine.
“Nonna gave me money to rent a DVD player and I watched ten movies, fast forwarded right through the boring parts, where’s our house, did our stuff come, cuz I wouldn’t mind camping out a couple nights, I think it would be fun, maybe we’d see some coyotes, Ben knows someone whose cat was eaten by a coyote, do you think we could get a dog now that we have a backyard, I was thinking maybe a Great Dane, like a huge dog, because we’re Romans and our family is big, even Nonno is huge he says it’s because we’re part Cherokee but I thought we were part Viking, do you know, Papa?”
Roman just shook his head, shouldered two of Luke’s duffel bags, and handed him the third. Hopefully, Luke’s excitement meant this move was the right step. For the first time in a year he didn’t seem irritated or angry.
“One thing at a time. Are you hungry? Did you eat anything on the plane?”
Luke reeled off every snack he’d had on the flight, including the homemade cannoli his grandmother had given him.
“I had an extra but I gave one to the girl next to me,” he finished, looking guiltily up at Roman. “She looked really thin and hungry. She hadn’t even eaten breakfast.”
“You’ve got a good heart, Lukey.”
“Not really. I had two myself before I even talked to her.”
Roman grinned down at his son. Honest to a fault, his Luke. Except for his height, he didn’t look much like Roman; his exuberant brown eyes and sandy hair came straight from his mother’s side of the family. Tall for his age, he used his wiry strength to whip fastballs past gawking batters.
“Home, then food?”
“I can’t wait to see the house!” And he was off again. He chattered nonstop through the tour of the little beige house. Luke’s bed had gotten broken during the move, but for now Roman had plopped the mattress in the center of his bedroom. Luke chose to shove it up against the window that looked out on the backyard.
“Can you believe how warm it is?” he kept saying. “It’s like summer vacation every single day!”
“Don’t you believe it. I’ve registered you at the toughest school in San Gabriel. The teachers are all ex-marines from Company F. Stands for Flunk.”
“Papa. Not funny. Don’t you think a Great Dane would love it here? Or maybe a Great Dane and a Newfie.”
“I’ll have to introduce you to the dog at work. You might change your mind about getting one.”
“Never,” Luke vowed.
In his joy at having his son back to normal, Roman forgot about the station, the awkward situation with Jones, and his sense of being a fish out of water—an enormous one. Maybe a shark.
For dinner, he took Luke to the neighborhood Italian restaurant, La Piaggia, whose stucco façade glowed a lovely apricot pink in the sunset. But when the hostess, an energetic young Indian woman in a hot-pink sari, brought him his penne al’arrabiata, his good mood disappeared.
He gagged on the thick, cloying tomato-ish sauce. Luke put his fork down, eyeing him nervously.
“Papa. It’s just pasta.”
“No. No, it isn’t. You can’t call this pasta. Arrabiata is not a challenging sauce. That’s why I ordered it. If they can’t do—”
The sharp-eyed hostess hurried to their table. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes. This sauce. It tastes like ketchup. I don’t think it has a single speck of red pepper in it.”
She raised her chin. “Our customers don’t enjoy spicy food. More’s the pity, because there are some excellent North Indian dishes that—”
“But it’s arrabiata! Do you know what that means?”
“I await enlightenment.” She joined her palms in a gesture somewhere between spiritual and sarcastic.
“Angry. It means angry. Fired up. Inflamed.”
“Inflamed?”
“And it’s not hard to accomplish.”
“Clearly.” She eyed him pointedly. “You are inflaming me at this very moment. And not in the good way.”
“Papa, please.”
Roman struggled for calm. “Here’s the thing. I’m new in town. You know the fire station nearby?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes and she nodded.
“That’s me. Respectable, law-abiding, life-saving citizen. So work with me here. If I show you how to make a proper arrabiata, will you try it out on your customers? I promise you they’ll love it. Everyone does. Right, Luke?”
“You’ll probably want to marry him,” said Luke, resigned by now.
“Highly unlikely,” the hostess said, gesturing to the red mark on her forehead. “Once is more than enough.”
“And another thing. Why is your restaurant named after a beach?”
“I’m Indian. You think I know?”
Roman lost his capacity for words. Luckily, she didn’t. “Come along then.”
“What? Really?”
“You offer to cook for me, I would be crazy to say no, would I not?”
Roman leaped to his feet, nearly upending the table in the process. Of all the times he’d offered to make a real sauce at an inferior restaurant, this brisk Indian woman was the first to accept. He loped toward the kitchen, Luke hopping after him.
Maybe San Gabriel had some potential.
Chapter Six
Sabina couldn’t wait to tell Anu all about her terrible day, her horrible new sort-of-boss, and the god-awful coincidence that had ambushed her. How was it possible that the random man in the Jeep next to her, a man who then showed up at the same Reno casino, a man so wildly attractive she’d nearly fallen into bed with him, would turn out to be her new training officer? What were the chances of that?
The words started pouring out of her the second she walked into the kitchen.
“You will not believe what an utter jerk—” A hand was clapped over her face and someone dragged her back into the dining area. She yanked her head free and found Anu behind her, in full, hot-pink, Indian hostess garb.
“What the—”
Anu slammed the swinging kitchen door shut and blocked it, arms folded. “No yelling. You might upset my special guest.”
“What?”
“Smell that. Take a deep breath.”
Sabina breathed in and caught a waft of some magical, tomatoey scent floating through the cracks in the door.
“New cook?”
“No. Some crazy customer who took over my kitchen for the night. Take a look. Just don’t let him see you. I don’t want him distracted.”
Bewildered, Sabina crept up to the diamond-shaped window in the door. Inside the kitchen, the regular cook leaned against the dishwashing station, his arms folded sullenly across his chest. The kitchen assistant, who hated the cook, smirked as he diced onions. The heavenly smell made her stomach growl.
She craned her neck to see all the way to the stove. A tall figure loomed over it, giving his complete and total attention to the large stainless steel pot he was stirring. A sandy-haired boy stood next to him, peering over his arm and taking enthusiastic sniffs of the sauce.
Oh my God. It couldn’t be. But it was. Was Chief Roman haunting her? She whirled around, her back to the door, and put her hands to her temples, which were starting to throb.
“Does he work at your station?” Anu asked with avid curiosity. “Is he wasting his talent putting out fires? You must tell me everything you know.”
Sabina groaned. “He’s my new training officer. And he must be an even bigg
er jerk than I thought. Yesterday he announced he wasn’t going to be part of the dinner rotation. We figured he couldn’t cook. But here he is, making the most incredible sauce I’ve ever smelled. I suppose he thinks he’s too good for us. I suppose we’re not worthy of his New York culinary expertise.” The more Sabina thought about it, the more worked up she got.
Anu made a gesture Sabina interpreted as complete agreement.
“Who does he think he is?” She paced back and forth. “You should have heard how he lectured us today. He thinks we lounge around all day eating bonbons and calling the tabloids. And now this! He’s the most arrogant, rude, patronizing ass, the whole crew hates him already . . .”
Finally Anu gave up on the gestures and clapped her hand over Sabina’s mouth again.
Sabina squealed in outrage. Then went silent as a deep voice spoke from the half-opened kitchen door behind her.
“Firefighter Jones. Hungry?”
“If the Encyclopedia Britannica listed all the ways to piss off your new training officer, I’ve hit them all. And made up some new ones.” Sabina kicked her feet up on her glass-topped table and gave Vader a morose look. They’d planned to grab a bite at La Piaggia but she’d fled in agonized embarrassment after spewing every abject apology she could think of. None of them had helped. She’d never forget Roman’s expression. Or the look on his kid’s face as he glared at her from behind his father. Or the endearing sight of such a big, powerful man bent over a stove, his son at his elbow.
Chief Roman, she now knew, was undoubtedly the most attractive man she’d ever met. But he must despise her after that scene in the restaurant. She’d insulted him in front of his son, for God’s sake. Every time she thought about it, she cringed.
With a groan, she dropped her head in her hands. “I called him arrogant and rude. And more bad things. It’s all a blur.”
“You only said the truth. I can’t stand the dude.”
Oddly, Sabina found she didn’t appreciate hearing someone else insult Roman.
“That’s just because he’s stronger than you.”
Vader’s jaw clenched tight and the tendons in his neck stood out.
“Just teasing,” Sabina said quickly, before he popped a vein. “You could probably bench-press five of him. Single-handed.”
Vader emptied his beer can and crushed it in his fist.
“Vader! Must you?”
“I must. I’m a man.”
“I know you’re a man. You don’t need to prove it by demolishing things.”
Vader got to his feet and circled restlessly around her comfiest armchair, then sat back down. Something must be bothering him. She knew Vader’s rhythms well. He was an outstanding friend, loyal, devoted, unquestioning, goofy—kind of like a golden retriever. The other guys saw him as a steroid-obsessed bodybuilder, but she knew he was more than that.
“Something happened over Thanksgiving.”
“You went out drinking, went home with twin models, and now you can’t remember their names?”
“I wish.”
She did a double take at his tone of deepest misery. “Well, spill it. You know me. I don’t judge.”
He did another circuit of her living room, which she’d decorated in a neutral palate of ecru and sage green to give away absolutely nothing about herself—as if it were an impersonal, upscale hotel room, comfortable but anonymous. Long silence followed while he played with her pleated window shade. She crossed one leg over the other, trying to contain her impatience.
“I want to help you out, but you’re going to have to tell me what it is,” she finally said.
“Fine.” His Adam’s apple worked as he tried to bring forth the words. He shifted from one foot to the other, shoved his hands in the pockets of his black jeans, made his biceps twitch the way he did when he was nervous. “The thing is, I got dumped. This chick, Cherie, called me a . . .” He dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Homophobe.”
“What?” Sabina wondered for a wild moment if Vader actually knew what it meant. “That’s a big word, Vader, don’t hurt yourself.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“Sorry.” Sabina quickly sobered. Maybe it sounded ridiculous to her, but Vader deserved her sincere attention. “You’d better tell me the whole story.”
“I went out with this girl over Thanksgiving. Cherie. We were out playing pool and this dude made a pass at me. I told him to bug off. Politely and all. But Cherie got offended because her brother’s gay. She said I was a homophobe and that she couldn’t possibly date one of those.”
Sabina considered the best approach to take here. She loved Vader, but some of his ideas about men and women dated from the Stone Age. “Do you think . . . well, maybe you are?”
He shifted around some more, cracked his neck, clenched his jaw. “If I tell you something, you have to keep it on the down low. Not one word, ever.”
“Geez, Vader.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“At my rookie station, the guys thought I was gay because I like to work out. They made fun of me every single freaking shift. Probably trying to break me down. I nearly quit, but I stuck it out just to rub their faces in it.”
Sabina sucked in a horrified breath. “Vader, that’s wrong. Someone should have stopped it. That’s called harassment.”
“Nah. I just put in my time and moved on. But it opened my eyes, you know. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m like those homophobic dickheads.”
His brown eyes glittered, and for once, he looked completely serious. It occurred to Sabina that there was a lot she didn’t know about Vader. He never talked about anything too personal and was especially mysterious about his family.
He assumed his usual leer. “Especially if it keeps me from boning Cherie.”
Then again, maybe she’d imagined that brief moment of reflectiveness. “Why don’t you just move on to someone else?”
“I would, but she’s hot. Stacked, and it’s all natural, I checked—”
“Okay, okay.” Listening to Vader talk about women could be unnerving. “So you want to date her, but she won’t go out with you because you might be a homophobe. No problem. Just prove to her that you aren’t.”
Vader sank into the armchair, opened a new can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, then plopped it back on the coffee table without even a taste. “I was thinking you could talk to her. Tell her I’m cool with the gays. But not actually gay. You can tell her, you know, what a stud I am.”
“Excuse me?”
“It wouldn’t be a lie, because I am a stud.” He winked with his usual goofy-macho spirit.
“You know I don’t want anyone thinking I sleep with guys at the station.” One of the hazards of being a female firefighter was the dating issue. One, so nicknamed because she was the first female to join the crew, kept to herself and spent her downtime doing Sudoku. But Sabina liked hanging out with firemen. She loved the banter, the pranks, the traditions, the bets, the teasing, the back-and-forth. She admired, loved, and respected her fellow firefighters. And she was extra careful not to mess that up with sex. That’s why the close call with Roman was so . . . But never mind him.
“Okay, then tell her I’m not a homophobe. Tell her I’m manly but enlightened. She won’t believe me, but maybe she’ll listen to you. For some reason she thinks I just want to get into her pants.”
He looked so indignant that she burst into laughter. Vader, goofy but sweet to the core, never failed to entertain her.
“Sounds like Cherie’s no dummy. I’ll help you come up with some ways to impress her, how’s that?”
A text message popped up on her phone. Max. You can’t avoid me forever, it read. She could practically hear that rusty saw blade voice of his. Just watch me, Max! She ignored this text as she had the last four and reminded herself to look into changing her number.
“Come on, big guy,” she told Vader, jumping to her feet. “Let’s go get some very manly but enlightened pizza.”
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Roman arrived for his next overtime shift walking as if he had lead in his boots. It had taken him a while to reassure Luke that the whole station didn’t hate him and that they didn’t need to escape back to New York. And that he shouldn’t fire Sabina.
“She should take back every word,” Luke kept saying. “If she doesn’t, I’m going to sneak into the station and put spiders in her bed.”
“She’s probably encountered worse. It’s not easy being a female firefighter. Your mom had some stories to tell. Cut her some slack, would you? She apologized.”
He had no idea why he was defending her. Clearly Sabina Jones despised him. Which was absolutely fine as long as she did her job and showed him the proper respect.
At lineup, he kept his expression hard as concrete as he surveyed the crew. Everyone was on time. Everyone looked well turned-out. No one was on his cell phone to People magazine setting up a photo shoot. He wondered if they got a bad rap. Once the news media got hold of something, no one could shake it loose. He’d seen enough of it after 9/11 to know.
Sabina met his gaze with a completely professional demeanor, though he thought she looked a little tired. Savagely, he hoped she’d tossed and turned all night. Her words at the restaurant had hurt more than he wanted to admit. Did he really come off as some arrogant ass?
“Okay, troops,” he said when lineup was over. “More drills today. Show me how fast you can suit up in full turnout and breathers on air.”
The firefighters obediently headed for the apparatus bay. As Roman strode after them, a movement caught his eye.
Firefighter Brown, the muscleman known as Vader, was whispering in Sabina’s ear. Roman’s hackles rose as he looked more closely at the two of them. That was no professional whisper. It was personal. Intimate. Unacceptable.
“Firefighter Brown,” he barked. “Can you run a stopwatch?”
Vader looked offended. The muscles in his jaw bulged as if they had a mind of their own. “Yes, sir. Of course I can. What do you think, I can’t tell time . . .”
“Sit this drill out and take this.” He tossed Vader his stopwatch, which forced the guy to take a step away from Sabina. Instant relief settled over him, as if the world had turned back on its proper axis. “I’ll catch more errors if I don’t have to time. Come on.”
Sex and the Single Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novel Page 5
