How to Tame a Wild Fireman

by Jennifer Bernard

  She bit the inside of her mouth to keep her sarcastic comeback to herself—it would have been something along the lines of: Of course, because your good opinion is the only thing in the world that matters to me.

  “Thanks, Adam, but—”

  “I thought you wanted to know about your patient and her little bundle of allergens?”

  Lara scrambled to her feet. “Do you have to be such a dick?” She clapped her hand over her mouth, just as shocked by her words as Adam was. His jaw dropped and his chair nearly tipped over backward.

  “What is going on with you, Lara?” he asked when he’d stabilized his chair. “You’re not acting like yourself at all.”

  She shifted her hand away from her mouth enough to say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. I’m going to assume it’s the grief talking.”

  The grief. True, the grief was there, lurking in her chest like a wildcat she didn’t want to let out. Especially not in front of Dr. OCD.

  “Maybe you should just tell me the rest of it, get it off your chest,” he said soothingly. “I aced my psychiatry rotation.”

  “Of course you did,” she murmured. What else would an obsessive compulsive do?

  Adam got to his feet and walked around the desk to stand next to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and lowered his voice intimately. “You should give me a chance to be there for you. A sign of things to come, you might say.”

  A shudder went through her, and she fought the urge to step back. The thought of being close to Adam held no appeal. But that was her problem, not his. Brilliant and ambitious, highly eligible Adam had no trouble attracting women, despite his quirks.

  She remembered something Aunt Tam had always preached: true intimacy kept no secrets. Maybe that was the key. Maybe if she shared something personal with Adam she’d be more interested in him.

  “Okay,” she said slowly, fixing her gaze on the gray tile of the floor. “My aunt was Dr. Tam Baumgartner. She used to have a radio show about . . . well, sex. The show was called Ask the Sex Guru.” She didn’t dare look at Adam yet, but felt him stiffen in surprise. “She ran a sort of center, a counseling center. Like a retreat. It was called . . . is called . . . the Haven for Sexual and Spiritual Healing. She left it to me. I used to live there, you see, after my parents died in a car accident.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t shut up.

  “She left me the Haven, with the recommendation that I sell it to pay off my med school bills. She knew how much the place embarrassed me.”

  “I can see why.” He squeezed her shoulder sympathetically.

  That comment made her bristle. “She also asked me to make sure the Goddesses are taken care of first.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re not really goddesses, of course, they’re her workshop leaders. She called them Goddesses to encourage participants to connect with their inner divine nature. She hired all of them except Janey, who came with the place when she bought it. It used to be a brothel, you see. In Nevada. Loveless, Nevada.”

  Finally the flow of words trailed off. Adam’s hand seemed to be frozen in place on her shoulder. She raised an eyebrow at him. He was staring at her as if she’d suddenly turned into a bichon frise.

  “You used to live in a brothel with your aunt the sex guru? You?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a brothel when I lived there, it was a . . . what do you mean, me?”

  “No offense, but even though you’re very attractive, you’re on the uptight side. Conservative. Focused.”

  Lara flinched. Those words shouldn’t hurt, since she’d worked so hard to fit that description. She should be glad Adam saw her that way.

  Maybe it was even true, after all this time.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m going to take some vacation time and go back to Loveless. I have a clinic rotation coming up, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You’re going back to the brothel?”

  She could swear she heard a snicker in his voice. Pressing her lips together, she spun toward the door. “Yes, and I have a million things to do before I go.” First on the list, check on Naomi.

  But then a hand on her arm stopped her. She turned to meet Adam’s contrite gaze. “I’m sorry, Lara. I shouldn’t be teasing you at a time like this. Can I help? Do you need someone to go with you?”

  “No, thanks,” she said politely, although the thought of meticulous Dr. Adam Dennison showing up in tumbledown Loveless made her want to laugh out loud. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Naomi’s sleeping, by the way,” he said gently. “I let the dog stay until her mother came. It was a nice thing you did, though completely against the rules, not to mention out of character. I’ll let it go this time.”

  “Thanks, Adam.” She gave him a wobbly smile. If he was going to be nice, she might lose her battle with the tears. “I’ll call you from Loveless.”

  He made a jerky motion toward her, as if he weren’t sure whether a hug would be welcome. The gesture made her soften, and she stepped forward. The citrusy scent of his aftershave surrounded her, along with an overlay of antiseptic. She pressed a quick kiss on his cheek.

  Mistake. As soon as she pulled away, she spotted that look on his face. That look was a hypocritical mixture of disapproval and lascivious speculation. She’d seen it a thousand times in Loveless as soon as people figured out whose niece she was and where she lived.

  With barely a wave good-bye, she fled to the women’s locker room, which was empty at the moment—her first stroke of good luck that day. As she dialed the combination of her lock, she cursed her moment of weakness. Why had she told Adam all that stuff? Why? Things would never be the same between them. And she hadn’t even told him to keep it to himself. It might be all over the hospital by morning.

  She dug through the overstuffed tote bag she’d crammed into her locker that morning. Her personal iPhone was in there somewhere, and she had to start making a list. Talk to the chief of staff about vacation time. Call Mrs. Hannigan about Britney’s prescription. Call clinic to rearrange interview. Tell Emily I can’t watch her cat this week after all. Book flight to Elko. Book rental car.

  There was nothing like a list to calm you down and make you feel on top of things. Lists contained practical, concrete steps instead of embarrassing, vaguely spiritual preachings. That’s why she loved the medical field. It was based on facts, not intuition. If they talked about penises, it was in a medical context, not sexual, and they didn’t call them lotus roots.

  A memory flashed through her mind—a quarrel. Herself at fifteen, fingers stuffed in her ears.

  “Can you please postpone the penis talk until I leave for school? Or at least until after breakfast?”

  “But it’s completely natural, Lulu. You don’t have to be afraid of sex.”

  “I’m not afraid! I just don’t want to think about it first thing in the morning!”

  “I see your inner goddess is quite disturbed about this.”

  Lara had stuffed her fingers deeper. “Whatever.”

  “Fine, since you’re still in your pubescent squeamish phase, we’ll call them lotus roots instead.”

  Lara couldn’t stop a burble of laughter. Aunt Tam might have been . . . unique . . . but she’d had the biggest heart in the Northern Hemisphere. And, Lara reflected, she wasn’t fifteen anymore. She didn’t have to allow the Haven’s crazy atmosphere to upset her. She could apply her academic training to the Haven and sort everything out with rational common sense.

  Lara stripped off her scrubs and pulled on teal seersucker capris and a white blouse. She owed her aunt so much. She loved her. She even owed this outfit to Aunt Tam, who’d warned her no one would trust a doctor who wore black. A sudden attack of sadness made her lean her head against her locker. What a terrible niece she was. She’d dragged her feet about going back to Loveless, even when she knew Aunt Tam was sick. The least she could do now was honor her last request.

  At lea
st she didn’t have to worry about a memorial service. Tam hadn’t wanted one, although no doubt the Goddesses had held some sort of ceremony. They’d probably held a drum circle and danced until dawn. Naked.

  After her parents died, Aunt Tam had swept into Lara’s life like some kind of rare comet. She’d always approached life as a weird, amazing, fabulous adventure. Maybe Lara should try to approach her trip back to Loveless in the same way.

  It was guaranteed to be weird anyway.

  Chapter Three

  On top of everything else, it was wildfire season in eastern Nevada. The sky was a yellowish-pink, as if the sun was held captive in some hellish otherworld. As she drove into Loveless in her rented white Aveo, Lara’s throat prickled from the smoke that hung in the air. An old frontier town, Loveless had retained its ramshackle roots. A wooden boardwalk wound its way past the storefronts of the downtown business center. A banner strung across Main Street read, THANK YOU, FIREFIGHTERS! She spotted a few people walking around wearing bandannas over their mouths, but most Nevadans took the yearly onslaught of brushfires in stride.

  Loveless had a High Noon feel; cowboys were a common sight. Real ones, not the expensive snakeskin-boot cowboys she occasionally saw in San Diego. These guys were tough as rawhide and could drink all night and sleep it off on horseback.

  The grief that had lurked in Lara’s heart since she’d first gotten the call about Aunt Tam bloomed into full-fledged sorrow as she passed all the familiar landmarks of Loveless. The family-run, one-screen movie theater where Aunt Tam had taken her to every single movie that ever came to town. The Loveless Pharmacy, where Lara had bought her black hair dye. Loveless High School, where she’d spent some of the most miserable years of her life—except for Liam.

  But lately her contact with him had been via text message only.

  And there, at the edge of town, stood the Haven for Sexual and Spiritual Healing, squatting like a fat, overdressed, confused opera singer stranded by the side of a dusty highway. In its first lifetime it had actually been an opera house, adorned with ornate, elaborate curlicues and even a gargoyle—anything that might look hoity-toity. Then it had become a brothel. The owner had painted it pink, chopped it up into rooms, added some frescoes and canopied bedchambers, and named it the Pink Swan. The brothel did well, until a recession hit. That’s when Aunt Tam had swooped in. She’d decided she needed a base where she could help people in a more hands-on manner, in addition to her radio show. And thus the Haven for Sexual and Spiritual Healing was born.

  The inspirational sayings attached to the fence posts that lined the driveway set the tone.

  SMILE. YOU ARE DIVINE. RELEASE YOUR FEARS. SURRENDER TO BLISS.

  Lara could practically hear her aunt repeating the slogans to eager couples. She’d always hidden in her room playing loud music during workshops, but she caught enough to know she wanted nothing to do with the sexual self-actualization business.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate the Goddesses. When the front door, with its carvings of Greek nymphs, opened and four women hurried out, a huge smile spread over her face. She jumped out of the car and into their welcoming group hug.

  “Lara!. . . . Look at you, all grown and luscious . . . I told you she always had good bones . . . never mind her bones, look at that skin . . . We’re so sad about Tam, we’re just lost without her . . . come inside, this smoke is terrible for your skin . . . I heard on the news it’s like smoking a pack a day . . . but my oh my, you should see some of the firemen who’ve shown up to fight this thing . . .”

  Lara let them bundle her inside the building. It was like being carried down a river of fragrant bath suds. It had always been like that; the Haven often felt like a cross between a dysfunctional family and a hippie sorority, with maybe a dash of burlesque show thrown in. The “Goddesses” had always been there for her. They’d helped her with homework, makeup advice, and boy trouble.

  Janey, the most senior Goddess, who had to be in her mid-fifties by now, still looked spectacular with cocoa-dark skin and magenta-striped hair piled on her head in an unruly heap. She led the way into the “Be Loved and Welcomed Room,” which was filled with a motley collection of love seats, fainting couches, and velvet armchairs. Inside the Haven you could easily forget there was another world outside. Everything was either gold or deep burgundy, left over from the brothel days, or a newly added shade of white called “sea breeze.” Lara had mockingly referred to it as “lobotomy white” as a teenager.

  “How you holding up, dollbaby?” Janey asked, when they’d all settled in and Annabella had left to fetch refreshments. Janey was the intellectual of the group, and took a scientific approach to sex. She’d once warned Lara not to date a new guy while taking birth control pills because they’d mess with her ability to chemically sense if he was a good genetic match.

  “I’m doing okay. I just never thought Aunt Tam would actually . . . I mean, I figured she’d beat the odds. Find some shaman in Peru or somewhere who’d chant her back to health.”

  “I’d have put money on her outlasting us all,” said Dynah Steel. Six feet tall, her wheat-gold hair tucked into a ponytail, she wore a ribbed white cotton tank over a skirt decorated with OM symbols. Bright purple cowboy boots completed the look; Dynah had always refused to be a cliché. She’d joined the Haven while Lara was in college.

  “My heart weeps for you, Lara, even though I’ve only heard about you from Miz Tam,” said a delicate-looking blonde, whose hair was pinned in dozens of little knots, and whose violet eyes were rimmed in tragic-looking charcoal.

  “You must be Romaine,” said Lara, remembering Aunt Tam’s mention of a fragile new runaway she’d taken in. Lara still didn’t understand why Romaine had named herself after lettuce, but there was a lot she didn’t understand about the sex industry. And the self-help industry.

  “Your aunt saved my life,” she answered dramatically. “I’ll hold her close forever.”

  Annabella came back into the room carrying a red enamel tray. It held a pitcher of cucumber-scented water, glasses, and date-almond cookies. Annabella, who came from Brazil, was a fount of oddball beauty tips. She’d taught Lara not to wash her hair every day to preserve the oils—and how to shop for hair products at the hardware store. “Diatemaceous earth, querida. I can barely pronounce it, but I swear by it.”

  Lara took a glass and sipped. It was heaven on her throat, which was already feeling the effects of the smoke in the air.

  “I might as well tell you right up front that Tam’s passing has raised some issues for the business,” Janey said. “Not that it matters to you, since you’ve always kept your distance from the Haven.”

  “Actually—”

  “It’s my fault. I’m no good at the workshops,” interrupted Romaine, who looked to be on the edge of tears. Or maybe her eye makeup always made her look that way.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” said Lara uncomfortably.

  “It is.” Janey was never one to dance around the truth. “Romaine still hasn’t connected with her inner power. But she’s working on it.”

  “The problem is,” said Dynah, “the wildfire’s been terrible for business. No couple wants to deepen their relationship while they’re hacking their lungs out. I say we need to get back to basics. The old in-and-out, wham bam thank you ma’am, see you same time next week.”

  Lara winced. So this was her legacy. “I don’t know if that’s—”

  “Silly us,” said Annabella, nestling into a love seat and curling her legs under her like a cat. “As if you care about our little problems. It will all work out. It always does. We want to hear about you, querida.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact—”

  “It’s not going to just magically work out,” said Dynah, legs crossed, one purple cowboy boot bouncing restlessly. “I need to make me some money, honey. I have a horse ranch all picked out back in Kentucky, just waiting for my down payment. And right now the money’s disappearing faster’n my virginity on p
rom night.”

  “That’s not true,” said Janey, perching a pair of wire rims on her eyes and pulling out a ledger. “Business was up ten percent last week.”

  “Yeah, from zero.”

  “Tam always told us that focusing on the negative solves nothing,” said Janey, her brown eyes firing sparks behind her glasses.

  “Negative income solves nothing either. We’re in the sex business. All the other stuff is woo-woo. The workshops, the spiritual babbling, the perfume.”

  “Aromatherapy,” said Annabella, toying with the dark hair that flowed over her shoulders like lava. “And it’s not woo-woo. It’s transformative.”

  “No one came here for aromatherapy, I’ll tell you that. And now no one’s coming much at all.”

  “Hang on.” Lara waved a hand in the air for attention. “I’m still confused. Business is down, is that it? The market for sex has collapsed?” She winced. That hadn’t come out right.

  Annabella clucked her tongue reproachfully. “It’s not only about sex. We tend to people’s deepest needs. Now we are also tending to other needs.”

  Puzzled, Lara frowned. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what other needs?”

  “Neuromuscular. Myofascial. That sort of thing.”

  Lara blinked. For the first time in her life Annabella was actually speaking her language. Anatomical terms—the soothing lingo of the medical world.

  “Sí, querida! We’ve been practicing our massage on some of the firefighters and they really seem to appreciate it. Romaine and I have been working our little fingers to the bones on those handsome men.” Annabella winked. “Tough job, no? You should come along with us, Lulu. We’re leaving as soon as—”

  “Focus, ladies, focus,” Janey broke in. “Fact is, our clients are getting older. They’re starting to be more concerned about their spines than their inner selves. It’s distracting from our mission. Besides, your Aunt Tam was the heart and soul of the workshops. She was like the Deepak Chopra of sex. Without her, it’s just—”

  “Sex,” said Dynah. “Nothing wrong with that.”