Controlled Burn

by Shannon Stacey

  He stopped in the process of pulling the carafe off the brew plate to look at her. “Excuse me?”

  She felt the heat in her cheeks. Polite conversation was usually a lot easier for her, but there was something about Rick that made her feel awkward. “I’m sorry. I was surprised to see you because I guess I just assumed you’d be at work today, but I didn’t mean to be so abrupt about it.”

  “I’ll be at work tomorrow if there’s some reason it matters.”

  Jessica wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but there was some bite to his tone. “Are you upset that I’m here?”

  After pouring himself a mug of coffee, he set the carafe back in place and then turned to face her. He leaned against the counter, just as he had the day before, and looked at her over the rim of his mug. She waited, saying nothing, while he drank a few sips of coffee.

  “No.” He cradled the mug in his hands and shook his head. “I’m not upset. But I find it a little funny you think two people who didn’t know you existed twenty-four hours ago will just put their legal and financial affairs in your hands.”

  Her eyes widened as what he wasn’t saying sank in. “You think I’m here to take advantage of Joe and Marie?”

  “I really hope you’re not, for their sake, but I don’t know you so I’ll probably be around a little more than you thought, just to keep an eye on things.”

  She tried not to take offense, but the implication she was running some kind of con on her own family stung. “Or maybe you’re unhappy I’m here because you want to be in charge of their legal and financial affairs.”

  He snorted. “Sorry, Jess, but you’re barking up the wrong tree there.”

  Jess? When was the last time anybody had called her that? High school, maybe. She couldn’t remember, but she knew she’d gone only by Jessica in college because her father had explained it was a stronger name, and she’d probably be taken more seriously.

  She didn’t correct Rick as she usually did other people, though, and she wasn’t sure why. “It’s a valuable piece of property and it’s obvious you’ve been helping them maintain it for quite some time. It’s not unreasonable to think you might feel entitled to something.”

  “Maybe it’s not unreasonable, but it’s wrong.”

  There was no way to force trust. “So I guess we’re at an impasse and we’ll have to take each other’s word for it.”

  “For now.” He pulled out the chair directly across the table from her and sat down. “I’m a firefighter. That’s my job.”

  “Really?” Now that he was sitting in front of her, she realized the small logo on his T-shirt’s pocket said Boston Fire.

  “Yeah. I work two twenty-four shifts each week and I don’t have a second job like some of the guys, so I’m around quite a bit.”

  “Is that a warning?” She smiled to let him know she was joking with him, and was relieved when he smiled back.

  He had a great smile. It softened the hard angles of his face and deepened the laugh lines around his eyes. He was even scruffier today than he’d been yesterday, and for the first time in her life, she got the appeal. It was too easy to imagine how that gray-flecked scruff would feel against tender skin.

  “You okay?”

  She wished he’d stop arching his eyebrow like that. It was distracting. “I’m fine. Just a little warm, I guess.”

  “Maybe because you’re wearing a coat.”

  Jessica looked down at the thick, fleece zip-up she’d bought on a whim at the airport. “It’s not really a coat, exactly. And it’s cold here, remember?”

  “That was yesterday, and you were outside. We heat the inside with these newfangled things called furnaces.”

  She laughed and unzipped the fleece so she could pull her arms free of it. “Are you from here? Do you have family nearby?”

  “My parents still live in Fall River, where I was born. It’s about an hour and a half south of here. And I have an older brother, who lives and teaches high school science in the next town over from them.”

  “So he’s not a danger junkie, like you?”

  There went that damn eyebrow again. “Danger junkie?”

  “Don’t you have to be a little bit of a danger junkie to be a firefighter?”

  “Or maybe I became a firefighter because I’m a safety junkie.” He took a sip of coffee, his gaze locking with hers.

  She wasn’t sure she bought that. “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Oh, Rick, it’s you.” The eye contact was broken when Marie spoke, and they both looked toward her. “I thought I heard talking, but I wasn’t sure if Jessica was doing one of those video meeting things.”

  “We do have a setup for video conferencing in the office, but I mostly talk to the team by text. It’s easier. Except for my father, who hates texting. He either calls or summons me to his office.”

  Marie’s mouth pinched a little at the mention of her son and that bothered Jessica. Her father—and the company—was a huge part of her life, so she tended to talk about him a lot. If hearing about him made her grandparents unhappy or uncomfortable, that was going to be a problem.

  “Joe made a couple of phone calls and we can see the doctor next week, because he wants to follow up after the fall he took anyway, and we’re waiting for a return call from our lawyer. It’s been a long time since we talked to him. I hope he didn’t retire. Anyway, can you stay that long?”

  Jessica hesitated. Things were going smoothly in the office and her accounts were all in order. Even though it was only her second day away from the office, she felt confident everything could be handled in her absence. Truthfully, with technology the way it was, it almost made no difference whether she was in her office or in a kitchen in Boston. But eventually her father was going to surface and when he did, he was going to be livid.

  She looked at the hopeful expression on her grandmother’s face and smiled. “I can stay.”

  * * *

  The next day, Rick stepped over a hole in the charred roof and walked to the edge to look down at the scene on the street. They were six stories up, so he had quite a view of the neighborhood. There were probably a dozen engines jammed around the corner lot, along with support vehicles and the police cruisers. The bystanders were wandering away now that the fire was out and there was just the boring stuff left.

  Roof fires were never fun, but there had been no injuries and it hadn’t spread. As long as none of them tripped over a line and fell through a hole or a weak spot, all would be well.

  Jeff Porter was sitting on the brick fascia, and Rick hoped like hell it wouldn’t crumble out from under him. Porter was a big guy. “All clear?”

  “Yeah, we can start picking this shit up anytime we’re ready,” Rick said. “I’m just taking a few minutes to relax. It’s pretty quiet up here.”

  “I hear that.”

  It was warm, though the weather wasn’t going to last long. The temperature was already dropping and there was snow in the forecast, but for now they were seriously overdressed. Rick slid off the big bunker coat and tossed it next to Porter’s before turning to watch the guys from E-59 head down L-37’s ladder with hose in tow. He stood with hands tucked in his suspenders, soaking in the sun.

  “Took the wife to Kincaid’s for lunch yesterday,” Porter said. “I hear your landlords have a surprise granddaughter.”

  Of course he’d heard. By now, everybody probably had. He’d told Scotty. Both of Scotty’s sisters—Lydia and Ashley—worked the bar at Kincaid’s. And they were both with guys assigned to Engine 59. Lydia was engaged to Aidan, and Ashley was married to Danny Walsh, the engine company’s LT. And each of the guys had helped him with some project or other at the Broussards’ over the years, the most recent being the handicapped ramp in the back of the house, so they knew Joe and Marie in varying degrees.

  �
�Yeah, her name’s Jessica. She showed up day before yesterday.”

  “Must be awkward.”

  “It is. Joe and Marie are over the moon to have her there, of course, but they’re all still dancing around the issue of Davey.”

  “That’s their son, right? Her dad?” Rick nodded. “How long is she staying?”

  “Not sure yet. They’ve got some meetings next week, I guess, but she’s kind of a big deal at her old man’s company from the sounds of it, so she’ll have to go back to San Diego eventually.”

  “San Diego.” Porter snorted. “Went there once. Hated it.”

  “Next time don’t take your mother-in-law. Or the kids.”

  They were laughing when Rick got a heads-up from Danny Walsh that relaxation time was over and they needed to hustle. Their trucks were blocking another company from leaving and they wanted to unclog the streets before the elementary school up the street dismissed.

  Once they’d repacked and made the drive back to the house, they backed the ladder truck and the pumper engine into the side-by-side bays and went through the post-run routine of checking and restocking equipment, and cleaning the trucks. Rick and Danny went up to the second floor to take care of some paperwork, while the rest of the guys went up to the living space on the third floor of the old brick building.

  He did step into the bathroom and wash away the soot he’d managed to get on his neck and up one side of his face. But he knew if he went up and made himself a coffee or pulled up some couch for a few minutes, he wasn’t going to drag himself back to the hated desk.

  By the time he made his way upstairs, he could smell the big pot of chili that had been simmering for most of the day. There were some drawbacks to feeding a building full of guys chili, of course, but Chris Eriksson’s recipe was too good to resist. And anything that simmered, slow-cooked or could be shut off and reheated made for a good meal because the dispatchers couldn’t say, “Hey sorry, but they’re eating so it’ll be an hour or so.”

  The somewhat outdated space on the third floor never felt as small as it did at mealtimes, when the guys all came together. Cobb had come up, getting a break from the office in which the chief oversaw both companies. His own guys from Ladder 37. Jeff Porter. Gavin Boudreau. Chris Eriksson. And the guys from Engine 59. Danny Walsh. Aidan Hunt. Scott Kincaid. And the kid, Grant Cutter. All together, they made a good team, and they were like brothers.

  Then Rick watched Grant jostling for space in front of the shredded cheese and crackers with Gavin—who was only a few years older—and felt old. In some cases he was starting to feel more like an uncle or other mentor to the younger guys, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to be that guy yet.

  Once he’d scored a bowl of the chili and topped it with some shredded cheese and garlic salt, Rick went into the living room to watch the news while he ate. Most of the guys would hang in the kitchen and shoot the shit, even if it meant standing while they ate, so he was able to grab a seat on the battered love seat with Aidan. Jeff and Scott were on the big couch, and Cobb was sitting in one of the wooden rockers.

  Because they were all busy eating, he was able to watch the news in peace. There was footage of the roof fire and they watched the district chief give a statement for the cameras. Rick knew him, of course, but it wasn’t Cobb in front of the cameras because they’d been called out when additional alarms were struck, so the scene wasn’t theirs. But he knew Joe and Marie would ask him about it later anyway since they were sitting in front of their television watching the same news broadcast.

  He wondered if Jessica was watching it with them. Probably curled up at the opposite end of the couch from her grandmother, maybe wrapped in the fleece blanket Marie kept draped over the back of the couch once the weather turned cooler. Even though they’d had a decent couple of days, the chill had to be a bit of a shock coming from San Diego.

  “What’s so funny, Gullotti?”

  Rick jerked his gaze to Cobb, who was scowling at him, his dark and caterpillar-like eyebrows almost meeting over his nose. “What?”

  “They’re talking snow in the forecast and you’re the only guy in the room grinning like somebody just told you there are naked twins waiting for you in the bunk room.”

  “Oh, I didn’t even hear the forecast. I was thinking about something else.”

  “What’s her name?” Scott asked with a smirk.

  Jessica. “Maybe I was thinking about the time you got stuck going through a window and I had to push you through like that cartoon bear.”

  Before Scotty could come back with a smart-ass response, the alarm sounded and they all groaned. Rick shoved his way into the kitchen to dump his bowl in the sink and then joined the stampede down to the bays.

  As he stepped into his boots and pulled the suspenders on the pants up over his shoulders, he hoped this wouldn’t be a long call because chili was a bitch to clean up after the fact. And as he grabbed his bunker coat and helmet off their hooks, he wondered what Jessica would think if she saw him on the late news in all his gear. A lot of women tended to find firefighters sexy, but he had no idea if she was one of them or not.

  Rick swung up into the seat, scowling. He also had no idea why he cared.

  * * *

  After dinner was eaten—far earlier in the day than she was accustomed to—and the dishes were washed, Jessica excused herself to her room. She’d heard her phone ringing in the distance while they ate, and that particular ringtone was only assigned to her father.

  She hadn’t answered it, of course, but she hadn’t heard the voice-mail tone. That meant, if she didn’t call him back very soon, he’d try again.

  “Are you going to come watch the news with us?” Joe asked before she left the kitchen. “We watch the six o’clock news together every night.”

  “The news?” She almost said no, because checking in on financial news online would be a more productive use of her time than watching highlights of budget fights and Boston sports games on the television. But there was something about the way he said it that made it sound less like a polite question and more like an invitation to join them in a family activity. “Sure. I’ll make sure I’m finished in time.”

  The smile on his face made her smile in return, thankful she’d made the right call. “Great. We’ll make extra decaf tonight.”

  At least their third-floor tenant wasn’t around tonight, she thought as she went up the stairs to her room. Not that she didn’t like him. That wasn’t the problem at all.

  The problem was that whenever he was in the room, she had to resist the urge to look at him. She kept telling herself it was because he was tall and broad at the shoulder. Of course he’d draw the eye. But she’d also found herself wondering if his hands were as strong as they looked and what the scruffy beard on his face would feel like against skin, and she was pretty sure neither of those things had anything to do with how much space he took up in the kitchen.

  Jessica had just closed her bedroom door behind her when her cell phone rang again, vibrating in her pocket while playing the distinctive ringtone that signaled a call from her father. Sighing, she pulled it out. She’d been hoping to do a quick sweep of her email and make sure nothing was happening at the office before calling him back.

  Talking to him had been inevitable. While she hadn’t expected him to step foot in the office for several more weeks, at least, he usually checked in with her or Sharon every so often. As tempting as it was to mute the ringer and let his call go to voice mail, Jessica knew he’d only keep calling back until he got through to her. And he would get angrier with each attempt.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  So he knew where she was, which meant he’d called Sharon before calling her. “I called to tell you about the message from the doctor, but you chose not to listen.”

 
“What is it you think you’re going to accomplish?”

  “You told me to handle it. I’m handling it.” More or less.

  “Jessica, why didn’t you tell me my parents are involved?”

  Because he hadn’t given her a chance to talk before barking out his demands and hanging up on her, like usual. But she recognized by his tone that he wasn’t in the mood to admit any fault on this one. All she could do was try to keep anything emotional off the table. “I wanted to solve their problem for you as quickly as possible, and coming to Boston seemed like the most efficient way to accomplish that.”

  “I expect your assistance when it comes to the company, but this is personal. My family is none of your business.”

  Jessica was glad they were having this conversation by cell phone so he couldn’t see her actually look at the phone and cock her head sideways in an are-you-serious-right-now kind of way. “I’m your daughter.”

  “I know who you are. And you’re also vice president of Broussard Financial Services.”

  “I am your daughter,” she repeated. “I am your family. That makes your parents—who are my grandparents, by the way—very much my business.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds, and she waited, knowing he was pondering the best route to take. “I told you a long time ago that they’re not our kind of people, honey. And you know how much I depend on you in the office. I can’t do it without you. I can hire somebody to help out my parents, but nobody can run this business for me like you do.”

  In the past, she would have given in. Not because she was flattered. Regardless of the truth in what he said, she knew he was saying it to manipulate her. For years she’d been telling herself that she let him get away with it because it made her life easier, not because it was actually effective.

  But she wasn’t finished in Boston. The initial awkwardness of staying in the house with her grandparents was wearing off, and she was enjoying getting to know Joe and Marie. Their conversations were still of the getting-to-know-you variety, though. They were almost comfortable enough with each other to maybe start having some heart-to-heart discussions and if she left for California now, it might not happen. Who knew when her father would free her up to return to the East Coast again?