Saved by the Fireman

by Allie Pleiter

  Charlotte was thrilled. This last renovation made the house officially livable. She’d spend her first night in the cottage tonight, even though it meant sleeping on the mattress on the floor, since she hadn’t taken delivery yet on the majestic four-poster bed she’d found at the local antiques store. While waiting on some of the final utilities—and a disturbingly empty e-mail inbox—Charlotte had poured over catalogues, invaded furniture stores and even scoured local flea markets in search of perfect finds. Even Jesse had remarked that the place managed to boast a surprising amount of furniture already. It was much better to focus on the decorating progress she could control than to ruminate on the employment process she could not. A dozen curtains came in, but the two dozen résumés she’d most recently sent out hadn’t produced any response.

  She poked her head into a cabinet to produce a brand-new stovetop kettle and two mugs. “Shall we celebrate? Without the smoke signals this time?”

  Jesse pulled a rag from his toolbox and wiped the worst of the grime from his hands. He had a royal-blue T-shirt on today that did distracting things to his eyes. “Tea?”

  “Yogurt doesn’t feel very festive, and that’s all I’ve got in the fridge right now. I was heading out for groceries this afternoon.”

  “Well, if it’s either tea or yogurt, I’ll opt for tea. As long as it’s really strong.” He clearly had no interest in the brew and was consenting for her benefit. Charlotte hadn’t seen that level of consideration in a guy for a long time. How nice that he sensed what an important moment this was for her, how it was much more than two mugs of tea on a flea-market table—it was a declaration of resilience. Jesse held up one finger. “Go ahead and put the kettle on...I’ll be right back.”

  Turning the brand-new faucet lever warmed her all the way out to her fingertips. The perfection of it felt like the best antidote to the sagging job search—satisfying and empowering. This house had been waiting for her. Okay, the first welcome hadn’t gone well, but despite that kitchen fire she knew the house loved her.

  That was silly of course; a house was incapable of loving her. Still, how many times had she felt her knitting comfort her—or mock her when things went horribly wrong? Charlotte drew strongly from her surroundings; her tactile world had always affected her deeply. The scent of her favorite tea filling this kitchen would feel like an anointing; a blessing of her life here. A promise that it would all work out in the end. Not that she could or would explain such a thing to the likes of Jesse Sykes.

  The porch door slammed as she was placing the tea cozy—one she’d knitted herself—around the steeping pot, and Jesse entered the room with a small handful of flowers and a package of cookies. “What’s a tea party without cookies?” He waved the package and the flowers at her. “Although they’ve been in the backseat of my truck for a week—we may be looking at more crumbs than cookies.”

  Charlotte didn’t think her smile could get any wider. He’d understood her need to celebrate. And yet his gesture wasn’t forced or overwhelming; it was just an honest gift of what he could scramble together. “Are those from Mrs. Hawthorne’s yard?” She didn’t know her new next-door neighbor well enough to judge how much of a trespass Jesse had just committed.

  Jesse made a “who me?” face. “Could be. Could be I just happened to have black-eyed susans in my glove box. Or a flat of flowers in the back of my truck. You’d have no way of knowing. You’re completely innocent.”

  The closest thing Charlotte had to a vase was a tall blue glass canning jar, which she filled with water and set in the center of the table. She grabbed a small tin tray from a box in the hallway, laid a paper towel across it and arranged the rather sad assortment of broken cookies on the towel. The tea, flowers, mugs and cookies made a comical vignette, and he couldn’t help but laugh as she placed a few restaurant packets of sugar by the teapot. “One lump or two?”

  “With only a brother in the house growing up, I’m not exactly up on my tea party etiquette.” He pulled the chair out for Charlotte with a dramatic gesture, then made a show of easing himself into the opposite chair. He winced a little when it creaked a bit under his weight, looking like the proverbial bull in the china shop of her furnishings. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Charlotte laughed. “Drink tea and eat cookies—or what’s left of the cookies. This isn’t a test.” She poured his cup, then her own. “This is a chai tea—it’s strong like coffee, so you might actually like it.”

  Jesse smelled the aroma wafting up from the mug, his face scrunching in suspicion. “Doubtful. Might be good for dunking, though.” He caught her eye. “I am allowed to dunk, aren’t I?”

  “I heartily encourage the dunking of cookies. I’m a dunker myself, you know.” After a second, she felt compelled to add, “Thanks.”

  “For putting in your sink?” His eyes told her he knew exactly why she had thanked him, and that it had nothing to do with the sink.

  “No.” The word slid soft and warm between them. The aroma of chai tea in her new kitchen settled around her like a consecration, with all the comfort of a fluffy shawl on a cold evening.

  Jesse added two sugars before even tasting the tea, then lifted the mug to his lips. “Um—” he paused, clearly looking for the right description “—delicious?”

  “You hate it.” Charlotte found she wasn’t offended at all. In fact, she was more enchanted by his efforts to hide it. “No, really, it’s okay.”

  “I’m a coffee guy,” he explained, spreading his hands in admission.

  “I like coffee, too,” she said, then wondered why she was trying to build connections with him. “I just don’t have any in the cottage right now. I’ll get some this afternoon.” Why had she said that? Why was she extending social invitations to a guy she’d already decided wasn’t a good match, even if she was looking for someone? “So you can have coffee while you work and all.”

  Plausible as the excuse was, they both knew that wasn’t what she’d meant. Things were tumbling in a direction Charlotte didn’t really understand or endorse. Only she knew she didn’t want Jesse to leave—now or even soon. She told herself it was that she wasn’t ready to be in the house all alone, but that rang as false as Jesse’s compliment of her chai tea.

  “So your Mima wasn’t a tea drinker? Even with all the china cups and all?”

  Why was it that every time Charlotte talked herself into dismissing the tug she felt toward Jesse, he’d say something that pulled her to him again? She needed to talk about Mima. A lot. Charlotte didn’t like how it felt as if Mima were slipping from her memory, as if she had to speak aloud to secure all those wonderful memories in her life now that Mima was gone. It was silly—she’d never even spoken that often to Mima. Their communication in the last few years was mostly fun texts or postcards or jots of short correspondence. Why the burning need to keep talking about her? Grief did funny things to a person.

  Charlotte wrapped her hands around the warmth of her mug—despite the June afternoon heat—and wished for the dozens of china plates, cups and saucers to be surrounding her here in the cottage kitchen instead of still back in Chicago. “Mima drank tea, coffee, cocoa, anything. She was always bringing exotic blends of coffee and tea home to me. And that spicy Mexican hot chocolate. She loved that, too. When I was little, she would make me tea or coffee in my own special cup that she kept at her house just for me. A real china cup, not a plastic kiddie thing. Of course, the drink was more milk than coffee or tea, and it was loaded with sugar, but I felt so grown up when I drank it.” Tears clamped her throat again. “Important, you know? She was great at making me feel like I meant the world to her.”

  “That’s nice. A rare thing.” There was a shadow in Jesse’s eyes as he looked at her. A dark place behind all the sympathy. After a second or two, Charlotte realized it was envy. Hunger, even. It made her wonder if Jesse had ever had anyone in his life to make him feel important. W
as that where the showmanship personality and the hero-rescuer drive came from? She’d had so much affirmation in her life, it stung to see the lack of it played out so clearly in his features.

  Even though she knew it might not be a safe question, she asked anyway. “Anyone like that in your life?”

  * * *

  Is there anyone like that in my life?

  Jesse swallowed hard. Charlotte had asked the million-dollar question, and he found himself unable to dredge up one of his smart-aleck evasive answers. Not here, not when he was faced with the collection of sweet memories playing across her face. To be so loved—it must be amazing. And then again gut-wrenching to have that love taken away. She had on a peach-colored tunic, and he watched her finger the simple gold cross that sat in the V neckline of the top. He knew, without having to ask, that it had been her grandmother’s. He realized he’d never seen her without it, and that she touched it whenever she talked about Mima. He could guess that she’d put it on the day the beloved old woman had died and she hadn’t taken it off since.

  To love someone so hard and know they loved you just as much—that hadn’t ever really been the case in his family. Sure, he’d mourn his parents when they were gone, but it wouldn’t be like the loss he could see in Charlotte’s eyes when she talked about this amazing grandmother of hers.

  “Not like that.” It seemed the safest way to answer her question. His memories of his grandparents were mostly about instructions and expectations. He and Randy got along, but they’d never been particularly close. His mom loved him—in a safe, mom kind of way—but not with the fierce, lasting affection Charlotte seemed to have known. And Dad? Well, he supposed Dad thought the pushy way he treated Jesse was what parental love was supposed to look like.

  “I’m sorry.” Charlotte looked at him—really looked at him, as though she could see all the regrettable things going through his head. No judgment, just awareness. A sad sort of understanding that wandered a little too close to pity.

  Guilt twisted Jesse’s gut. “Don’t get me wrong, my parents love me and all, but they don’t really—” he couldn’t find a word that didn’t sound ungrateful and even petulant “—root for me.” He pushed out a sigh and took another swig of the tolerable tea just to buy time to think. “I have a younger brother, and he does all the expected stuff. All the right, successful things moms and dads think their kids ought to do when they grow up. Great job, big house, all the trimmings. They say they don’t compare, but...” He found he didn’t want to finish that sentence.

  “You save people.” She said it with something close to awe. The wideness of her eyes pulled at him. He was wrong; it wasn’t pity he saw in her features—it was “you deserve so much more.” It wasn’t fair what that did to him. He wasn’t prepared for how she got to him without even realizing what she was doing.

  “Yeah, I think that confuses them most of all. The whole volunteer firefighter thing makes no sense to them. Why risk myself for nothing? At least that’s how they see it. Mom never comes out and says it like that, but Dad never minces words on the subject.”

  Charlotte picked up a broken cookie. “Your dad doesn’t like you in the volunteer fire department?”

  “He thinks of it as a waste of time. Or close to that—I don’t think he’s been quite that harsh. More like an unnecessary distraction that seems to be keeping me from reaching my professional potential.” Jesse picked up a piece of cookie and dunked it in the mug. “He’d be happier if I were more successful.”

  “More like your brother?”

  “If you mean my brother whose marriage just fell apart and who is working on his second ulcer, then you can see why maybe I don’t share the old man’s opinion.” Jesse hadn’t meant the words to come out with quite that much edge, but Charlotte had hit a nerve. “I have my own idea of success. I have big plans for a remodeling business.” He stopped himself there, afraid that if he launched into those plans he might reveal how he’d wanted this cottage as his first project. Right now he didn’t want Charlotte to know that. It would make everything weird, and it was weird enough already.

  “You’re different than him.”

  The simple words struck a completely separate nerve. The hungry nerve, the unfed craving. She managed to meet some need in him he wasn’t even aware of until she’d waltzed into Gordon Falls and stymied his plans. How had she managed to articulate the one thing, the one thought, that he could never seem to get his parents to understand? “Completely.” He didn’t trust himself to go any further than that.

  “I don’t think I’d like this brother of yours very much.” She’d said it casually, before either of them realized the natural progression of that thought. It unwound itself in Jesse’s brain like a mathematical equation: if C dislikes R and J is the opposite of R, therefore C must like J. She knew it, too, for suddenly she stared too hard at her cookie instead of looking at him.

  He had to find some way out of this too-close moment. “You’d hate his cooking.”

  “Most guys can’t cook their way out of a paper bag.” Charlotte was trying, as he’d done, to lighten the moment, but it wasn’t working for either of them. “Well, evidently, except for chefs, and you and your burgers.”

  Ah, now she’d done it. Had she knowingly thrown that door open, or just by accident? He puffed up his chest. “I am an outstanding cook. I could probably cook circles around half the restaurants in Gordon Falls, and not just on firehouse fare. I’ll have you know my skills extend far beyond chili and burgers.”

  Her eyes narrowed at his boasting. “Do they? So not only can you install ovens, but you can use one, too?”

  There was just enough tease in her words to seal her fate. “I’m on duty tomorrow night, but Friday you are going to find out just how well this man can cook his way out of a paper bag. As a matter of fact, I could probably cook a paper bag and you’d think it was delicious.” Before Charlotte could put in one word of protest, Jesse stood up and began opening the mostly empty cupboards and fridge, taking stock of what was here and what he’d need to bring. “You said you were going to the grocery store and back to Chicago for a load of stuff tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes?” She looked as if she had just opened Pandora’s box and wasn’t sure if she should start regretting it.

  “You’re coming back Friday? You’ve got a saucepan?” He circled his hands to mimic a deep round pan just in case she didn’t know her way around a kitchen.

  “I’ll be back Friday. And of course I have a saucepan.” Her hands crossed over her chest.

  “Frying pan?”

  “Yes. Two, in fact.”

  He scratched his chin, the meal planning itself in his head already. “Bring both.” Grabbing a receipt from off the counter, he started writing. Within five minutes he’d given her a list of items and suggested tableware. This was going to be fun. If there was anything Jesse Sykes knew how to do as well as build things, it was cook things. Delicious, incredible things. Friends cooked for friends all the time, right? It wasn’t a date. Not even close.

  Charlotte sat there, running her hand down the list with her mouth open. “Um, I’ve got everything on here but a cheese grater.”

  “I’ll bring mine. And my spices. I don’t trust the grocery store stuff most people get—no offense, but it makes all the difference. Can you be back in Gordon Falls by five-thirty?”

  She shrugged. “Works for me.”

  Charlotte’s smile held the tiny hint of “you gotta be kidding me” that touched the edges of her eyes. It kindled an insane need to put that doubt to rest and flat-out amaze her. Jesse knew—down to his boots knew—that he could. He just wasn’t going to take the time to analyze why.

  Chapter Ten

  Charlotte pulled open her back door Friday night to the sight of Jesse holding a pair of stuffed grocery bags. A bouquet of flowers tottered on the top of one b
ag while a loaf of delicious-smelling bread poked out of the other. He grinned. “Hungry?”

  She grabbed one of the bags and held the door open. A whiff of “clean guy”—that extraordinary mix of soap and man and a hint of whatever it was he put on his hair—wafted by as he passed, and Charlotte felt her stomach flip. Maybe she should have stayed in Chicago and said no to this little feast. That probably would have been the smart thing to do, but this didn’t really feel like a date, and besides, Jesse didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who took no for an answer.

  Still, there was no denying the guy was seriously attractive. And toting incredible food. God must have known what He was doing when He ensured she wouldn’t be hosting Jesse alone.

  Just as he put the bag down on the counter, Jesse caught site of Charlotte’s new housemate. His entire face changed.

  “You have a cat.”

  Jesse said the words slowly, biting off the end of the last word with a sharp t. This was clearly not a welcome revelation.

  “I do.” She forced ignorant cheer into her voice. For the fifth time today, Charlotte wondered if Melba had known exactly what she was doing when she’d presented her with the furry little wonder when Charlotte got back from Chicago this afternoon. She walked over to the kitchen seat where her new companion sat staring suspiciously at her guest cook. “Jesse, meet Mo.”

  Mo curled up the end of his tail in something Charlotte hoped did not translate to “I was here first.”

  “Hello, Mo.” Charlotte could practically watch Jesse’s back straighten. Dinner was in danger of becoming a territorial battle, and the man had been here all of thirty seconds.

  “You brought a cat into a house under renovation.” Charlotte could practically hear Jesse’s brain trying to link the two ideas. While he never said it, and was trying hard not to look it, the man’s every pore seemed to seep “Are you out of your mind?” She watched him mentally sift through potential verbal responses before he settled on “That will make things interesting.” Then he set down the bag of groceries they’d both forgotten he was holding.