“Your tires were so bald I couldn’t even find a groove to put a coin in to measure the depth.”
Mercy nodded and grimaced.
“Link had a used set of snow tires, so we threw those on there.”
Mercy looked at the front tire, then at the back tire, then at the front. She looked up at JFK with that same unreadable expression and he felt himself fidgeting with uncertainty about how she felt. Had he gone overboard? Was there such a thing as being too mannerly? Or had Dom meant something different about taking care of a lady’s car?
The speech he’d semi-prepared started to come out, but it didn’t flow. “I want to learn how to be a manners guy.” The start had been easy enough, but it was really hard to know how to say all this. “It’s going to take some work. At the awards ceremony I guess I was supposed to escort you to the table instead of just expecting you to follow me there. And then there were all the other things. Will you do me a favor, Mercy? Carry a billy club and just give me a hard one in the head when I screw it up.” Suddenly he was back to pushing her to spend time with him. Hopefully she didn’t think he was trying to get something from her by doing all the work on her car.
“A billy club?” she stammered.
“Or a baton. The cops carry those ones that fold up. One of those would totally work.”
Mercy was almost in a stupor, and that worried JFK. If she was a patient on a medical call, he would be concerned about her mental status.
But he went on talking. “Little black stick, you know? Fit in your purse. Not much bigger than a tampon.”
With her mouth hanging open, she was still slowly looking back and forth between him and the car.
JFK made the last of his little speech. “I’m not saying that I have a chance with you, Mercy.” This was the important part, so he paused to make sure he said it just right. “But I didn’t treat you right yesterday. I hope this starts to make a difference.”
A dam broke somewhere in her eyes and tears splashed out, pouring down her face in half a dozen different rivulets.
Oh no. What this time?
“Did I … do something wrong?” he asked as he ran a hand through his hair. “I promise, I’m trying.”
Like a zombie suddenly coming to life, she threw her arms around his neck. All the way around, sinking the hug all the way to the elbow. And her body trembled as she held him and sobbed.
The only reason he was able to keep himself from trembling with the pleasure of being so close to her was the concern about her crying because of what he’d done.
He patted her back carefully. “Was that …” “Did I … do it wrong?”
“No,” she said, sniffling. “No. You didn’t.”
And JFK believed her. The tone, the sincerity convinced him that everything was good. That the tears were happy tears. And so he relaxed, and instead of cautiously patting her back, he embraced her, and felt the softness of her body against his. Occasionally she shuddered, as she continued to cry on him.
JFK wanted to kiss her, to run his hand along the side of her hair where it was shaved short and pull her face up to his. He wanted to hold her there until they froze to death in each other’s arms because he’d never felt anything like it. But dying together tonight would definitely screw up every bit of progress he’d made so far.
Still, he couldn’t help himself. Without any of the movie make-out touches like running his hand through her hair or staring into her eyes for five minutes first, JFK turned his face and gently kissed her. In the half of a second their lips touched, he felt connected to her. More strongly than ever in his life, and maybe for the first time in his life, he felt a bond with another human being and despite what he’d always believed about how great life as a loner was, this was infinitely better.
Just as quick as it happened, she backed out of his arms and shook her head, as if she could undo the kiss. “Don’t …” said Mercy. “I’m not … that wasn’t …” She wasn’t mad, she just seemed disoriented.
Great. He’d screwed it up. This entire time with her he’d done everything he knew how to do right, to not push, and to not open himself up, then with one impulsive move he’d blown it all away.
They awkwardly turned toward the car and a frigid silence settled between them.
Was he supposed to apologize now? Should he have asked permission before kissing her? That was not how he hoped his first kiss would go. Sure, deep down he expected rejection like that. In fact, it was the reason he’d never kissed anyone. It was so much easier to be rejected before trying something like that.
“Why do they call you JFK?” Mercy’s voice was soft and a little bit strained.
It didn’t feel like the time for his standard answer about being so handsome, cultured, and suave. After only knowing him for a few days, she knew him too well to know he was none of those things.
“One guy didn’t want me to come work at his station so he said, ‘Just Freaking Kill me.’ The JFK stuck. Typical firehouse nickname.” Usually he laughed with pride at the name, but after seeing how much he’d hurt Mercy, and now in pain himself, he actually felt a little bit of remorse for the way he’d always treated people.
“I figured it was something derisive,” said Mercy. She looked up at him. Faint black streaks and puffy eyes showed proof of her tears. “I’m not going to call you that.”
JFK was uncomfortable being face-to-face with her after she’d pushed him away. He didn’t want someone he cared about seeing him so close up. Stepping up to the tire, he bent as if inspecting the tread, and said, “JFK is better than Amos.”
“Then I’ll think of something better. Like Knight in Shining Armor.”
Was that a joke? It had to be. Unless knight in shining armor was some friend-zone phrase. “That won’t work. It sounds like Keesa if you make it an acronym.”
Mercy mouthed the word. “You’re right, Knight. I’ll shorten it to one word, then no one can make it an acronym.”
“Knight?” That was … he couldn’t really define it. It was a pretty amazing feeling that someone like her would even say something like that on a spur of the moment, even as a friend, but it was so far off the truth of who he was, it made him writhe because of the hypocrisy. He was no hero. Never would be. Then again, a good nickname was often contrary to the truth. “What about Night, N-I-G-H-T? The K doesn’t work. It’s not me.”
He saw her look over at him and study his face. “You believe that don’t you? You have no idea how badly I wanted this job, or how many days I’ve expected this car to roll over and die. Or how hard I prayed this morning that it would start.” She started to choke up again.
JFK shuffled his feet and kicked the tire. What did etiquette require of him at a time like this? Hug her again? Look away? Look right at her? Dom had told him that if a woman was throwing up, she probably wanted to be left alone but for whatever reason if you couldn’t give her space, to consider patting her back and holding her hair out of the way.
Maybe it was the same for all body fluids. Her beautiful black hair was well out of the path of the tears, so he came close enough to pat her on the back. He wanted to say, Poor little bunny, but he was positive he couldn’t do it without sounding patronizing, so he clamped his mouth shut.
Mercy wiped more tears away, first from one side, then the other. It made her hands all wet without even clearing up her face all the way.
Patting her back was accomplishing nothing so he said, “Hold on just a sec.” He got into the car and popped the glove box. He’d seen a stack of napkins in there earlier, so he pulled out a couple and offered them to her.
As she took them and dabbed under her eyes, she said, “Look at you. Suddenly a gentleman overnight.”
JFK laughed sharply. Yeah, he was such an expert.
“I don’t really care what you are to other people, Night, but for me today you were nothing short of a knight in shining armor. An answer to a prayer.”
JFK shrugged. The warring feelings of accomplishment at doing th
e perfect thing was overshadowed by the awkwardness of the failed kiss. Add to that the prickliness of sitting there accepting so much praise. “You know what they say. Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while.”
“I’m tired of standing around crying, Night.” She made an uncertain face. “I don’t know if that nickname is gonna stick. I’ll try it out for a while. Anyway, I gotta celebrate my new job! Let’s go do something fun, and preferably free.”
That sounded so much better. He was way more comfortable in her friend zone than in the failed boyfriend zone or whatever this was.
“You got a leather jacket with short sleeves?” he asked.
“I have a vest with no sleeves.”
“Even better.” He moved toward the car and motioned her in. “What about a giant pair of sunglasses?”
She accepted his hand and climbed into the passenger seat. “Like obnoxious, celebrity-trying-to-hide sunglasses? No.”
“I got you covered. We’ll swing by my place.”
“What do you have planned?” Her countenance had changed to one that was playfully curious rather than teary and sappy. JFK was so much more comfortable.
As he walked around her car to climb in the driver’s seat, he couldn’t believe the change twenty-four hours could make. Who knew something as simple and pointless as trying to do manners could mean so much? All he had to do now was not kiss her again like the idiot he was.
Now to see if she was up for some fun.
Chapter
That kiss. It’s what she’d wanted from him on more than one occasion, so what was she thinking pushing him away like that?
It was the timing, that was all. She knew it, but … still. No, there was no still about it. He’d performed a miracle with the car, she’d hugged him like she meant it, he planted a very chaste kiss on her lips, and she freaked out. Mercy gulped at the old memories, of guys giving her things—alcohol—and expecting physical intimacy in return. It had been a formula for too long in her life, and for the millionth time she thanked God for helping her change.
Had she ruined everything by pushing Night away? What kind of signals was she sending if a very long, intimate hug was okay, but a simple peck on the lips was going too far? That it was okay for her to initiate intimacy, but if he tried doing it then he was trying to turn her into a prostitute?
She wanted to talk about it so badly and just tell him straight out what the deal was. Being open and honest was part of her recovery, but there was such a thing as too much too soon. Eventually, she’d explain it and they could try again and it would be as wonderful as the other kiss had been in the split second before she freaked out. But the timing had been wrong. Even if that wasn’t the reason he’d performed the car miracle, it had just felt wrong for Mercy to go there at that moment.
Her car! Mercy could not believe that it was back from the dead. When she had told JFK to sell it for scrap she hadn’t been kidding, but here it was running better than ever and all tuned up and with actual snow tires on it. The job search had included Salt Lake City, which was by far the biggest market for her skill set within 500 miles, but she’d thought if she landed something down there she’d have to move. There was no way her car would be reliable enough to commute the twenty miles through treacherous Parley’s Canyon.
But that was this morning and this was now. It was impossible how much things had changed from one night to the next. As if a forgiving witch had retracted a beast spell on JFK—no, on Night—leaving Mercy with, like she’d told him, a knight to rescue her at her hour of need. She knew it was no witch or any type of magic. It was an answer to her prayer, and an answer so much sweeter than if her car had just started this morning. The Big Guy knew what He was doing.
Basic manners would have been enough for her to take a long second look at Night. And now she couldn’t stop staring at him, half expecting him to puff away in smoke at any second. Even her high standards of chivalry didn’t include fixing her broken down car. A ride home so she didn’t have to walk in the dark and the cold would have been more than enough.
Just like that they were at her place. She ran in, changed into her leather vest with a tank top, then they hit the road again. The fear of breaking down and being stranded in her car was completely gone. The heater had her feeling nice and toasty, no blanket required. He had worked a miracle.
He caught her staring. “You’re quiet over there.”
Still not convinced it had actually happened, Mercy said, “You three must have spent all day fixing everything and tuning up everything else. And all of that had to cost, what, over a thousand dollars?” It felt like years since she’d had that much money in her bank account.
Night squirmed and didn’t make eye contact with her. “If you would have taken it to a shop, it would have been closer to twenty-five. We got it all done for about a hundred. I don’t know if I mentioned flushing your coolant system.” The way he admitted it almost seemed like he was in trouble or thought he’d done something wrong. What was his deal with accepting thanks and praise?
“You might have said something about it,” admitted Mercy. “I only followed about half of what you said. This will probably shock you, but I’m not great with car maintenance. Wait. Twenty five? Hundred?”
“At a shop,” said JFK casually. “Probably closer to three grand. It’s good to have friends, huh?”
At the word ‘friends’ he seemed to relax. Was that what he wanted from her? To be friends? Or was he just emphasizing that to show her that he’d picked up the hint after the kiss, even though she hadn’t meant that.
Her entire adult life she’d been out of the dating scene. First, because she was so into partying and second because she had to work so hard in school to catch up. Between working part time jobs, taking a full load and a half of classes, and busting her butt in internships, she barely had time to breathe. This good-looking fireman in his mid-20s had probably been in the middle of the dating scene for the better part of a decade.
Maybe what he knew of her past and her tattoos put him off. It was just a kiss, after all. Rush of the moment and all that. Night wouldn’t be the first guy, even in her casual relationships with them, to not think of her as girlfriend material. Or maybe she was getting ahead of herself and she should spend more than two hours and one tiny kiss with this guy before she decided they were going to be together forever.
After a quick stop at a small house in a quiet neighborhood which she assumed was Night’s, they hit the road again. From the looks of the turns he was taking, it appeared they were heading downtown. “I know it’s a big secret where we’re heading, but the streets downtown are going to be a parking lot. Sundance is ramping up, remember?” The world-famous film festival brought in tens of thousands of people.
“Yep,” he replied. “That’s what I’m planning on.”
“You’re up to something,” she accused, a little nervous and a little excited by his mischievous smile.
“Always.” A few blocks away from downtown, traffic had begun to slow to crawl. “How are you at acting?”
“Why? We going to make a movie?”
“There you go asking questions again.”
It took a solid fifteen minutes to drive three blocks. Night squeezed her car into a spot in front of a red curb.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” said Mercy, all sense of worry gone. It sounded like they were going on an adventure.
“Up for some fun?”
“So up,” she said, realizing that her life hadn’t been full of a lot of fun lately. Mostly just trying to be an adult and getting ready for life. Hopefully that wasn’t a sign of times to come.
Night looked at the clock on the radio, which was working for the first time in like two years. “We gotta kill about five minutes.”
“Whose turn is it to say, ‘Can I ask you a serious question?’”
Night said, “Mine, I think.”
“Go for it.”
“The tattoos,” he said without taking
time to think. “You ever thought about getting them removed?”
Mercy looked down at the random smattering of low-cost tattoos on her arm. “Thought about it? Yeah. Will I ever do it? No. Even though that’s probably what it would take to get fully accepted back into my family and genteel society as a whole.”
“So why not? At least the ones you can’t cover?”
So there was something about her tattoos that he found off-putting. That was fine, she tried to tell herself, but up until tonight she thought he didn’t mind them.
In her delay he asked, “Are you attached to them? Do they have significance?”
“Not really,” she answered. She pointed at a tiny Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes on the inside of her wrist. “This one I don’t even remember getting.”
“So what is it?” he asked. “The cost?”
“You don’t like them?”
Night’s eyebrows went up and he said, “Oh, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. I like them. I do.”
If that was true, why was he asking? “Most of them I got when I was wasted,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I hate myself for having tattoos.”
There was a bit of silence and Mercy couldn’t read how he really felt about the tattoos.
Looking up and down her arm, she said, “They’re a part of me. Whether that’s a hot mess, or a new woman, it’s me.”
“Do you have a favorite?” He was still examining her arm in the light that came through the windows.
There was the To thine own self be true over her heart, but she wasn’t about to show him that one. Maybe—hopefully—someday. “These two,” she said, touching the two simple birds on her shoulder. “They represent freedom.”
He touched them with his fingertips and Mercy closed her eyes and took a deep breath, craving more of his hand on her bare skin.
Rescue and Redemption: Park City Firefighter Romance Page 8
