“That’s . . . You’re . . . I was wrong!” she yelled after him. “You’re not a nice guy!”
He probably shouldn’t be pleased by those last words, but he just couldn’t help it.
Eight o’clock on Friday night found Fred making spaghetti sauce and trying to get the Sinclair boys to go home.
“Your mother wanted you home at seven-thirty. What are you still doing here?” he called from the kitchen.
“We’re practicing,” squeaked Jackson. For the past hour, he and Tremaine had been working on a new hold Fred had taught them. Right now he was probably facedown on the living room carpet. “You told us we gotta practice harder. Mama said so too.”
“If you go home now, I’ll spar with you tomorrow.” Bribery usually worked with the kids. “I have someone coming over.”
“Oooh, dude’s got a date,” Tremaine yelled. “He’s going to get some tonight.”
Fred cringed, glancing at the clock timer on his stove. She was three minutes late. That probably meant she wasn’t coming. “It’s not a date, Tremaine. I don’t want you talking like that here. This is like your dojo. Respect your dojo.”
“Sorry, Mr. Fred.” Tremaine led the other boys into the kitchen. “You should let us stay so we can help out.”
“Oh, really, I should? How would you help out?”
“Bring the food and shit. Get her some water if she wants water. Or if she wants a soda we can do that too.”
“We do that for Mama,” Kip piped up.
Jackson added, “We can make you look good too. Act like we really like you and say good things about you.”
“I thought you did really like me.”
“We like you better when you’re not kicking us out of your house,” he explained.
“Nice try, but I got this,” he told them. “I’ll be lucky if she shows up at all, and I don’t want to scare her off.”
“Why would we scare her? She afraid of kids?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is that she likes dogs.”
Tremaine immediately dropped to his hands and knees and began howling. Kip laughed hysterically and started hopping around, yipping like a Chihuahua.
“Okay, that’s it. Everybody out. If you’re not gone in the next two minutes, no lessons this weekend.”
The boys raced out of the kitchen. Fred looked down at the splash of tomato puree on his T-shirt. Very suave. Rachel probably always hung out with men who had food all over their clothes. He left the pan on a low simmer, checked to make sure the pasta water wasn’t boiling yet, and dashed into his bedroom, stripping off his stained T-shirt on the way.
When the doorbell rang, he called, “Be there in a second,” and grabbed a loose black long-sleeved shirt, with a T-shirt already nested inside, off the back of his chair. The arms were still inside out. He’d worn it for only an hour yesterday; it should be clean enough. The best he could do at the last minute. Hurrying back to the living room, he tried to put the shirt to rights as he went. He was still trying to get the sleeves untangled when a laughing voice surprised him.
“I wasn’t sure I had the right house at first. I wasn’t really expecting a doorman.”
He glanced up sharply. Rachel stood just inside the still-open door, a sleek border collie at her side. Kip was standing proudly next to her, his hand on the doorknob. He kept sweeping deep bows as if Rachel were visiting royalty.
“That’s enough, Kip. You can stop now,” he told the boy. “And you can close the door.”
Kip enthusiastically shut the door.
“With you on the outside,” Fred said through gritted teeth. He transferred his gaze to Rachel. She looked mouthwatering in a deep burgundy, clingy kind of top, with her hair loose to her shoulders. One hand held her dog’s leash, the other a grocery bag.
“Hi,” he said, realizing at that moment that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Because, of course, his shirt was still bunched up in his hands.
“Wardrobe assistance!” called Jackson, striding in from the living room. “You said you didn’t need help, dude. Looks to me like you need lots of help.”
“I don’t need help,” he ground out. “You guys are supposed to be gone. Neighbor kids,” he told Rachel. “They, uh . . .”
Just then something came flying through the air with an inhuman shriek. Fred tossed his shirt over his shoulder and raised his hands to deal with the unknown threat.
In a blur of black sweat suit, Tremaine was sailing through the air, one foot aimed squarely at Fred’s jaw. He must have jumped from the coffee table or something, because usually he couldn’t reach higher than mid-chest. Fred quickly assumed a fighting stance. “Nice move, terrible timing,” he told the kid as he deflected, flipped and set him on his feet. Tremaine stood, dazed, as if he didn’t know what had hit him. He feinted another attack move, but Fred got him in a headlock so he couldn’t do any more damage.
At the same time, he put out a hand to stop Jackson’s somersaulting approach, catching him with a firm palm to the forehead. “Let me guess. You guys are helping me impress Rachel with my martial arts prowess. Have you forgotten you’re only ten? You’re making me look bad, not good.”
He released them both. They hung their heads and scuffed their feet on the floor.
“But I appreciate the effort,” he added, since he couldn’t bear to see them look so downcast.
Tremaine, rubbing his shoulder, revived. “He can beat grown-ups too,” he told Rachel eagerly. “We watched him beat up a guy at the gym, it was sick.”
“That’s, uh . . .” Rachel seemed at a loss for words. He couldn’t say for sure how she was reacting, because he was afraid to look at her. In fact, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ran out the door the second it was cleared of blockading kids.
Instead, he looked around for his shirt. Jackson gathered it up, neatly separated the T-shirt from the outer shirt, and presented them with a bow.
“Thank you.” He pulled on his T-shirt, which made him feel more in command of the situation. “Now can you guys please go? Remember what I said before.”
“That you didn’t need help. That’s okay. You didn’t mean it,” said Tremaine confidently. “Ma’am, you tell him.”
“Um . . .” she said, looking completely at sea.
“Out,” said Fred firmly, and corralled the boys out the front door. Rachel stepped aside so they could pass.
“Is that ice cream?” Kip yelled. He had an unerring nose for sweets.
“New York Super Fudge Chunk, Chubby Hubby, and Cherry Garcia,” Rachel answered. She looked relieved to finally be on familiar ground. “And I promise that we’ll leave you some leftovers, since you’ve been such good butlers and doormen.”
If anything was guaranteed to cement their approval, that was it. They skipped out the front door, hooting and hollering, and shot across the street to their own house. The last thing Fred heard was “He’s going to get some, for sure!”
Cringing, Fred shut the door firmly, then locked it. Then slid the deadbolt, which he normally never used, into place. “I’m really sorry about that.” He turned to face her, expecting either shock or horror, or some combination. Courtney had been appalled by the Sinclair boys and their nonstop energy.
But Rachel’s face brimmed with amusement. “Don’t be sorry. They’re so much fun. Do they really come over here all the time?”
“All. The time. Their mother says they need a male role model and I’m the closest they’ve got. Want me to take that off your hands?”
“Sure.” She handed over the ice cream, which made him relax a little. Contributing ice cream seemed like a commitment to stay for the entire dinner. Which reminded him . . .
“Uh oh,” he said with dread. “Something tells me the boys didn’t get around to checking the pasta. Come on in, make yourself at home.” He hurried into the kitchen, where the pasta water was at a full boil, making the lid bounce up and down with a clatter. “I hope you like spaghetti, because it’s the only thing I
make well,” he called to Rachel. “Usually,” he muttered.
The pasta sauce had thickened around the edges of the pan and made sluggish gurgling sounds. He turned it off, jabbed violently at it, then went hunting through his cabinets for a package of spaghetti. How could this be such a disaster already?
“I love spaghetti,” Rachel said, making him jump. He hadn’t realized she’d followed him into the kitchen. “Do you mind if I put the ice cream in your freezer? It’s starting to melt out here.”
Oops. He’d left her ice cream on the counter while he dealt with the looming spaghetti crisis. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I promise no neighbor kids will jump out at you. Reminds me of the time we got a call from a woman during a blackout. She was freaking out because she’d put her dead cat in the freezer and it was starting to thaw out.”
Spaghetti package in hand, he pulled his head from inside the cupboard, horror dawning as he replayed his words. “Did I really just mention a dead, frozen cat? To a pet therapist who works at an animal refuge?”
Rachel closed the freezer door and faced him. Her face was the same deep red as her top, making him wonder if she’d gotten freezer burn in there. As a trained paramedic, should he do something about that? What was the treatment for freezer burn? What about the treatment for full-on, maximum strength humiliation?
Their eyes met. Dry sticks of spaghetti slid through his fingers and bounced onto the floor like pickup sticks. Rachel burst into laughter.
Chapter 8
Rachel felt all the worries of the last few days float away on a cloud of laughter. The accident, her friends’ injuries, the news cameras, the text from Bradford, and of course, always, the kidnapper, it all vanished at the comically mortified expression on Fred’s face.
“It’s . . . it’s okay,” she managed when she finally managed to stop the waves of giggles. “You didn’t have to make dinner for me anyway. We can go straight to ice cream. Or straight to Greta.”
Her dog was sniffing at the dry spaghetti and pushing it with her nose, trying to determine if it was edible. Fred bent down to give her a pat on the head. The motion pulled his T-shirt snug against his chest muscles, which made her remember the sight of him without his T-shirt. Which made her mouth go dry.
That image wasn’t likely to leave her any time soon. At first glance, Fred didn’t look like a muscleman, but the guy was rock-solid. His torso was a spectacular landscape of rippling muscles. With his shirt on, he looked like a cute, nice guy. Without his shirt, he looked like someone you didn’t want to mess with. A badass. The easy way he’d lifted her out of the limo made complete sense now.
“Is there any way we could start this evening over from the beginning?” Fred was still crouched next to Greta, staring in dismay at the spaghetti littering the blue-and-white kitchen floor.
And that was the other thing. Fred’s home was so . . . homey. The windows had ruffled curtains, not reinforced bulletproof glass. Instead of state-of-the-art stainless steel, the kitchen featured worn wooden butcher blocks and counters the color of speckled sunshine. She tried to imagine what would have happened if three exuberant boys had tried karate kicks in her apartment without previously notifying Marsden. There probably would have been lawsuits involved at some point. The thought of the kids made her smile.
“No way,” she told him emphatically. “So far I’ve been treated like a queen. I had the door opened for me and got my own personal martial arts exhibition. I wouldn’t change a minute of it.”
The dimple that appeared in Fred’s cheek when he smiled made her a little weak in the knees. “You’re a good sport. I like that in a guest.”
She smiled back. Something hummed between them, and again the memory of his bare, tautly muscled chest flashed into her mind. No one would guess he had so much hidden power under that shirt. It was as if he was masking his true identity beneath a regular-guy exterior.
He broke the moment by clearing his throat. “Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that was my last package of spaghetti. But . . .” He whipped a piece of paper off his refrigerator, which was cluttered with photos and magnets shaped like fire engines and Betty Boop. “My sister, who visits a lot, made this list of takeout places. Anything look interesting?”
He handed her the sheet of paper. At the top, its title, written in round handwriting, read, “In Case of Emergency, Call These Numbers. Aka How Not to Starve at Freddie’s House.” A list of restaurants and phone numbers followed, with short descriptions such as “killer egg rolls” and “chicken salad = eww.” One of the notations caught her eye.
“‘For a hot date, try the fudge cake’?” she read aloud.
He snatched the list away. “My sister likes to ruin my life on at least a biweekly basis. How’s pizza?”
“Perfect.” They settled on ingredients, finding themselves perfectly in harmony on the issues of green peppers—only if they were the last vegetable on earth—and pepperoni—it couldn’t be considered pizza without some. He opened the fridge and retrieved two bottles of beer, while she tried very hard not to notice his butt. And failed.
“Like a glass?” he offered as he dialed the number of the pizza place. She shook her head. “I’ll order. Go ahead into the living room and I’ll be there in a second.”
She, Greta, and her bottle of microbrewed beer wandered into the living room. She sank onto Fred’s comfortable couch and surveyed his decor. Clearly he’d spent little on his furniture and a lot on the big plasma screen TV mounted on the wall. The house definitely felt like a bachelor pad, although the neighbor kids had left their mark with a few abandoned Transformer toys. He had no security whatsoever; in fact, one of his windows was open, letting in the evening air. No screen, she noticed. Someone could climb right in.
Oddly, it didn’t make her nervous. The house felt safe to her. Or maybe Fred’s presence made it feel safe. After all, he’d practically made a second career out of rescuing her.
As Fred came into the room with a tray filled with wooden bowls of chips and salsa, she gave him a big smile. “That looks perfect. Chips, pizza, and ice cream, my favorite kind of meal.”
Fred sat on the armchair kitty-corner to the couch. Greta trotted next to him and fixed a determined gaze on his face.
“Ignore her,” she told him. “Greta, stop begging.” She gave her dog a subtle hand signal.
Greta gave her a reproachful look and dragged herself dramatically to a corner.
“She’s such a drama queen,” said Rachel. “I don’t know if that makes for a good rescue dog or not. I figure she might like all the applause.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. How does she handle physical discomfort?” Fred offered her a torn-off paper towel. She thought of the linen napkins at Cranesbill, and the housekeeper’s likely look of horror at the thought of eating off a paper towel.
“She spent a week starving in a sewer pipe before I got her.”
An appalled look widened Fred’s eyes. “Poor girl. But that might be a problem because rescue dogs need to be able to work around rubble.”
“Yeah, I should test her on that.”
“We could take her to a fire station where they do USAR training, for earthquakes and so forth. They have big piles of concrete and an overturned train set up. We could see how she takes to it.”
“Maybe.” Depending on how safe it was from prying media eyes. She carefully brought a chip to her mouth, holding the paper towel underneath it to avoid spills. He noticed her caution.
“Don’t worry about dripping on the floor. The . . . uh . . . the kids do it all the time. Any stains are entirely their fault.” He gave her a ghost of a wink, and she relaxed a bit. If this was her one tiny sliver of “normal life,” she wanted to take full advantage and find out all about him.
“How old is your sister?”
“Twenty-three. But she’s been hopelessly spoiled by having four older brothers, so she’s more like twenty, on a good day.”
She stared. “There are five kids in your family? Are you the
oldest?”
“Oh no.” Fred scooped up salsa with a chip. “I’m the second youngest. All my brothers are older. They’re all in the military. Two in the Army, one in the Marines. I’m the only one who stayed around, so I get to walk Lizzie through her heartbreaks. I have a stash of chick flicks and extra pints of ice cream in the freezer.”
“That’s a bit of a cliché, don’t you think?”
She thought he’d be offended by her comment, but he wasn’t. He tilted his head and thought about it. “Maybe it is, but it seems to work for Lizzie. She spends the night and rants about clueless guys, we eat ice cream and watch a movie and that seems to do the job. Whatever works.”
Rachel thought Fred’s sympathetic company was probably all Lizzie really needed, but she didn’t point that out.
“How about you?” Fred asked. “Brothers or sisters?”
“None. Well, I had a stepbrother and sister for a short time, but that marriage didn’t last. I never saw them after my father and their mother divorced. It was nice while it lasted, though.” She’d never told her father, not wanting to make him feel bad, but she’d cried herself to sleep for weeks after that particular divorce. Her stepsiblings had wanted nothing to do with her anymore, which had hurt her terribly.
“So you lived with your father?”
“Yes.” His name hovered on her lips. She pressed them close together to stop it from leaking out. That bit of information could ruin everything. “My mother died when I was seven and it broke my father’s heart. He married two more times, but it’s never been the same. At least according to . . .” The household staff. Again, she caught herself. “People who knew him back then.”
The Night Belongs to Fireman Page 8
