Controlled Burn

by Shannon Stacey

  Jessica nodded and dropped her gaze back to their hands. He wasn’t sure if the sudden scowl was one of concentration or if she was thinking about what had just passed between them. Or hadn’t, as the case may be.

  As soon as her fingers were in the right place, he removed his hands from hers and picked up the drill again. The sooner they were finished with this, the sooner he could stop calling himself every kind of an idiot for making up a stupid reason for having her out there in the first place.

  She helped him do the fourth frame and then stepped back as he put them in place over Marie’s more delicate bushes. Rick was keenly aware Jessica was watching him as he screwed a small cross member on each one so they couldn’t collapse if the snow was heavy enough to shift the hinges.

  “It’s snowing!”

  He turned to see her with her face turned up to the sky, watching scattered flakes fall. “Yeah, they said we might get some flurries off and on before the actual snow starts.”

  “Is it true that if you stick your tongue to a metal pole, it’ll stick?”

  “If it’s cold enough, hell yes, it’ll stick. We responded to three calls for that last winter.”

  Her eyes widened, making him chuckle. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. And now that all the kids want funny videos or selfies for the internet, they do dumb shit like that all the time and we get to lecture them while saving them from themselves. Licking metal poles seems to be popular for some reason.”

  “So how cold is too cold?”

  “It’s definitely not cold enough yet.” He put his hands on his hips and looked at her. “Is licking a pole on your list of things to do while in Boston or what?”

  As soon as he said the words, his inner twelve-year-old boy snickered, but he hoped she wouldn’t catch the accidental innuendo.

  “I have no intention of licking any poles while in Boston, thank you.” Yeah, she’d caught it. He could tell by the way her lips tightened in an effort not to smile. The tiny quirk at the corners gave her away, though.

  He had to stop paying so much attention to her mouth. After putting the battery drill back in its box, Rick wrapped the cord around the circular saw and put them both, along with the square and a few other miscellaneous tools, back in Joe’s toolshed. After he’d snapped the padlock closed, he turned, expecting Jessica to have gone back into the house.

  But she was still in the yard, frowning at the snow flurries that were barely worth noticing. “Joe and Marie will get home before the roads get slippery, right?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, they will. This is just a flurry, I promise, and the roads won’t be affected. The snow’s supposed to pick up some later in the day. And speaking of driving, do you need to do something about that rental?”

  “No. I already talked to them because I anticipated having it for a few days, but since it was already open-ended, they don’t really care. I’m not sure about driving it in the snow, though.”

  “You don’t need to. Joe or I can drive you if you absolutely need something before the roads are clear. It’s still early in the winter, so you shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “You don’t worry about Joe driving?”

  It took him a second to realize she probably meant because of his age and not because of the snow. “Not really. There have been a couple of times Marie or I have had to taxi him around, but unless his doctor tells him he’s done driving, there’s no reason he can’t.”

  “And the doctor isn’t concerned?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. It seems to be living arrangements he’s concerned about.”

  She sighed and tilted her head way back to take in the three-story building. “It’s a lovely house, but it’s so big.”

  “They like it. And I can tell you right now, they’ll fight to stay here.”

  “Be honest, though. If you move out, can Joe and Marie still take care of the property without you?”

  That was a tough question to answer. He definitely didn’t want them doing some of the stuff he took care of. The idea of Joe up on a ladder cleaning the gutters, for instance, made him ill. And he didn’t know if they could afford to hire people to do all those tasks because he’d never asked about their finances. They were none of his business.

  “I don’t know,” he said, going for honesty. “But I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “What if you fall in love and get married and want to start a family?”

  Maybe that had been on his mind a little lately, but it didn’t appear it was going to happen anytime soon. “Don’t worry, I’m not the marrying kind.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s what all guys say and then, bam, wedding rings and minivans.”

  “No minivans. An SUV, maybe.” He didn’t really want to think about what vehicle he’d cart his hypothetical family around in and preferred to talk about her. After fending off that urge to kiss her, he needed to put a little more distance between them again. “Joe and I spend a lot of time talking, just so you know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that if you try to push them in the direction you want them to go instead of the direction they want to go, I’ll hear about it.”

  Jessica looked at him a long time, her mouth in a grim line, before she shook her head. “I know I can’t make you trust me, but they’re my grandparents. I’m not going to try to screw them out of anything.”

  “You’ve been with Davey for thirty-four years. You’ve been with Joe and Marie for three days. Can you blame me for wondering where your loyalty lies?”

  “Says the man who’s sunk a lot of time and hard work and maybe even money into a property that he has no claim to other than through the affection of its owners.”

  It should have pissed him off, but he found himself smiling. He admired the way she stood her ground without letting temper get the better of her. “As long as we both have Joe and Marie’s best interests at heart, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out, but you can trust me,” she said, and then she walked up the ramp and back into the house, letting the screen door slam behind her before she closed the big door with a solid thud.

  Rick bent to pick up the scraps of wood with a sigh. With the Broussards’ future on the line, he definitely hoped their granddaughter was right. He wanted to trust her. But he needed to trust her for the right reasons, and neither her mouth nor the dreamy expression on her face as she watched the snowflakes fall were the right reasons.

  One thing he was certain of was the fact he didn’t want Joe and Marie to come home and find out he’d pissed off their granddaughter. Once he’d picked up the yard, he’d go inside and make sure he hadn’t offended her too badly.

  * * *

  Jessica tried opening her laptop, but she gave up after ten minutes or so and closed it again.

  For a few crazy seconds outside, she’d thought Rick was going to kiss her. There was something about the way he looked at her—especially her mouth—that made her sure he wanted to.

  What a disaster that would be, she thought. Since a few minutes later, it sounded a lot as if he was accusing her of wanting to take advantage of Joe and Marie financially, kissing Rick could only add to the weird emotional place she’d found herself in.

  To distract herself from the sexy firefighter she absolutely couldn’t kiss, she reached across and picked up the puzzle book sitting open on her grandfather’s end of the kitchen table, along with the pencil. She’d already figured out that Joe loved his puzzle books, but only the language puzzles. The math ones were rarely even started, never mind finished.

  Even though she submersed herself fairly quickly in numbers, she heard Rick’s footsteps outside before the door opened. She was thankful because it gave her a few seconds to focus o
n not looking as if she’d been thinking about kissing him.

  “Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Sorry if I’m bothering you again, but I just wanted to make sure you’re not too mad at me.”

  It took her a few seconds to realize what he was talking about, and then she smiled. “I’m not mad. I mean, I didn’t like the implication, but I understand where you’re coming from. Plus I’m doing Joe’s math puzzles and I’m one of those weird people who find numbers soothing.”

  He looked at the puzzle book and then arched an eyebrow when he realized she’d already finished the puzzle. “I guess if you’re in charge of taking people’s money and making it into more money, you must be pretty good at math.”

  “I am. My father made sure of that.”

  “How do you make sure somebody’s good at math? Isn’t that a you-are-or-you-aren’t kind of thing?”

  “He told me when I was a little girl that I have a natural aptitude for it.”

  Rick grinned. “Of course you do. Your grandmother taught advanced high school math for almost forty years.”

  “Really? I guess numbers must run in my family. I don’t know why, but I just assumed she was a homemaker. Maybe because she’s so good at it and Joe seems so...old-fashioned, I guess.”

  “It’s only been a few days, Jess. You and your grandparents aren’t going to learn everybody’s life stories overnight.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t ask, though. Or why she wouldn’t have mentioned it, since math’s a big part of my job.”

  He took up his usual position, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I think she just wants to know about you so much she doesn’t think to tell you much about herself. They’re still wrapping their minds around the fact you even exist, you know.”

  She nodded, feeling as if there was a lump of emotion clogging her throat. “He made them sound pretty horrible, you know. And it made him so angry when I asked about them that I stopped. Maybe I should have kept asking.”

  “You were a kid. And why wouldn’t you believe him? You were only getting one side of the story and you had no reason to doubt what he told you.” He shifted his weight, crossing one ankle over the other. “I’m a little surprised you never reached out to them when you were an adult, though.”

  “It would have made my father unhappy.”

  “A lot of things make parents unhappy. They get over it.”

  “Do they?” She fiddled with the pencil, rolling it between her fingers before tapping it on the book. “I guess my mother didn’t get over it, since she never came back.”

  His expression turned serious, and he inhaled deeply through his nose. “I’m sorry about that. It’s a pretty shitty thing for a mother to do, but I highly doubt you were the one who made her unhappy enough to abandon being a mother.”

  Jessica shrugged, trying to hide how much she wanted that to be true. “Maybe not. But what I do know is that my mother took off, and was an only child whose parents had both passed. My paternal grandparents were supposedly awful people, and stepmothers come and go. When you only have one person in your life who’s family, you try not to piss him off too much.”

  He nodded his head, as if he could see her point. “Since we’re kind of on the subject, what does unavailable mean?”

  It was tempting to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was a core word in her vocabulary. I’m sorry, but my father is unavailable at the moment... “He drinks. Which is really ironic considering it’s one of the things he holds against his parents. Or Joe, at least.”

  “So Davey’s an alcoholic?”

  “It sounds so weird to me, the way everybody here calls him Davey. He’s always David now. Not even Dave.” She paused and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “And I honestly don’t know if he’s an alcoholic. He’ll go a long time without drinking at all. Or he’ll have a few cocktails here and there at social events. But if things get rough he...binge drinks, I guess you’d call it. He just disappears and spends days drunk. Sometimes weeks. He’s unavailable right now because my most recent stepmother is about to join my previous three stepmothers in the ex-wives club.”

  “Ouch.”

  “He’s not an easy man to live with.” That was a bit of an understatement.

  “Yet you’ve built your entire life around him.”

  There was no censure in his voice. No inflection implying she was an idiot. It was just a statement of fact, but it still made her wince inside. “I’ve built my life to suit me, but he is the only family I’ve ever had before now. We’re a team.”

  It was a habit to defend him, she supposed. She’d done it often enough with the staff and trying to play peacemaker with his wives. But it was also the truth. Other people, including her mother, had come and gone, but she and her father had always been a team.

  “Family should be a team,” Rick agreed. “And I’m glad you’re taking the time to get to know Joe and Marie because they’re your family, too. And they’re good people.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Good. While I’m thinking of it, I’m going to check the filters on the furnace because I think it’s time to change them out. It’s in the cellar, though, so I shouldn’t be in your way.”

  Jessica stood and pushed the puzzle book and pencil back to Joe’s end of the table. “I’m probably going to do some laundry or something, anyway. I’m not in the mood to sit in this chair today.”

  “Sitting at the desk doing paperwork is the only part of the job I don’t like,” Rick said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how people who work in offices stand it.”

  “Well, I don’t have to climb giant ladders and risk my life in smoke and fire. So there’s that.”

  He laughed as he walked toward the door to the cellar. “Good point.”

  Because the rich sound of his laughter did funny things to her nerves, Jessica gave a little wave and walked out of the kitchen. Everything in her life seemed to have changed so much and so fast with that one voice mail from Joe’s doctor, so she knew she had to be careful about being vulnerable emotionally.

  She needed to squash this attraction she seemed to have for Rick, and the best place to start was probably getting out of the kitchen and not staring at the cellar door, waiting for him to reappear.

  Chapter Five

  Jessica loved exploring the house. Every time she looked around, she seemed to notice something new. And since she was too antsy after her conversation with Rick to sit in front of her laptop, she went into the big living room.

  She’d already looked at the framed family photos scattered around. There weren’t many, and she got the sense Marie hadn’t been much for taking pictures. The staircase wall had pictures of her dad, and she’d spent some time yesterday looking at them. There was very little of the boy growing up in the variety of frames in the man she knew. He’d been cute with no front teeth, but it was obvious he didn’t like having his picture taken. And there were no photos of him at all after his senior portrait, in which he glared sullenly at the photographer in front of what looked like a department-store studio backdrop.

  It was the treasures that she really enjoyed. Her father wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy, and certainly wasn’t sentimental about things, so she’d grown up in a very uncluttered household. But on display in Marie’s curio cabinet was all manner of things. The bride and groom figurine from her grandparents’ wedding cake. A clay cup her dad had made them in elementary school. A gilt-edged teacup so old the fine age cracks made the flowers look almost mosaic. According to Marie, it had belonged to Joe’s grandmother and was the only piece of china left from the set that had come from Nova Scotia with her.

  Today she wandered to the bookshelf and, tilting her head, scanned the spines. There were a lot of old Westerns and Agatha Christie titles, which made her smile. And on th
e top shelf was a framed newspaper article. She realized it was a picture of a firefighter and leaned closer.

  All of the gear obscured the identity of the man helping an extremely pregnant woman onto the ladder while the black smoke billowing from the window framed them. But the caption told her it was Rick, and that the woman’s water had broken halfway down the ladder and her daughter had been born in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

  “That was a helluva day.”

  Jessica turned at the sound of Rick’s voice, caught off guard because she hadn’t heard him come back up the cellar stairs. “They were both okay?”

  “Yeah.” He tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Three stories up on a ladder with the most pregnant woman I’d ever seen was already hairy. Then her water broke and she started panicking. There was no way to throw her over my shoulder, so she just leaned back against me while I tried to get us both to the ground in one piece.”

  His gaze was fixed over her shoulder, probably on the framed clipping, but he had a faraway look. Jessica couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact doing stuff like that was his job. “Is it always like that?”

  He snorted, shaking his head. “No, thank God. We get our share of fires, but there are accidents and medical calls. Cats stuck in trees.”

  “Why did you become a firefighter? And don’t tell me it’s because you’re a safety junkie. If you wanted safety, you’d probably be a teacher, like your brother.”

  “My teachers would be horrified at the thought.” He gave her a grin that made her whole body tingle. “Guy I played hockey with sometimes was at the fire academy and there was some trash talking and, to make a long story short, I became a firefighter to prove I could. Almost like a dare. I guess I still do it because it pays good, the benefits don’t suck and I really can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

  She wanted to ask more, but they heard the faint squeak of the back door’s hinges, followed by Marie’s voice. Despite being disappointed her conversation with Rick was at an end, since he’d turned and walked away, Jessica was relieved her grandparents were home. She knew it was silly to be worried about a few snowflakes, but she also knew that the older people got, the worse their reflexes were.