Heat Exchange

by Shannon Stacey

  Aidan kicked the back of her heel and she realized he not only wasn’t snoring, but he was breathing funny. Folding back the sheet, she rolled over and pushed onto her elbow. He was on his side, facing away from her, but in the moonlight she could see the slight sheen of sweat just below his hairline. His leg jerked again and the hand she could see clenched into a fist.

  He was having a nightmare.

  Lydia wasn’t sure what the best way to handle it was. Maybe she should move away and call his name, in case he came up swinging. That probably wasn’t likely, though. It was more likely his dream involved fire than violence.

  When he made a keening sound low in his throat and his head twitched on the pillow, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She stroked his hair, making a shh sound. He stilled, but his breathing was still quick and his hand didn’t relax.

  “Aidan?” He rolled onto his back without waking up, and she saw how deeply a scowl had drawn his eyebrows together. Pushing his hair back from his clammy forehead, she tried again. “Aidan, wake up.”

  He opened his eyes and then took a deep, shuddering breath. It took him a few seconds to shake off the dream, and she smiled when his gaze finally focused on her.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “Bad dream.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat to try again. “I couldn’t find Scotty. I can never find Scotty.”

  She stroked his hair, smiling down at him. “Scotty’s fine. Do you want some water?”

  “No.” He lifted his arm and she ducked under it to lay her head on his chest and throw her arm across his body. He held her close and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  “I’ll go back to sleep.” She could hear his heartbeat, and it was slowly returning to normal. “Once you’re okay.”

  He pulled the sheet back over her and then gave her a squeeze. “I’m okay now. Sleep.”

  She didn’t right away, though. I can never find Scotty. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to imagine anything except Aidan and her brother in a fire gone wrong. And, besides the fear that was constant when you loved firefighters flaring up, Lydia felt guilt rising above it.

  To her, brotherhood meant people who were as—if not more—important to her father and ex-husband than she’d ever been. But to Aidan and Scotty and the rest of them, it was more than just a word. They lived together and worked together, but they also risked their lives together. They depended on each other in a way most people could never understand. Aidan and Scotty weren’t only best friends. They trusted each other with their lives.

  And there was a possibility her choosing to be here in Aidan’s bed might break that bond. No amount of telling herself Aidan was a big boy and could make his own choices could ease the knot in her chest at the thought of he and Scotty not having each other’s backs, and it was a long time before she drifted back into a fitful sleep.

  * * *

  AIDAN WOKE A FEW hours later with the weight of Lydia’s head on his chest, half her body flung over his, and an arm he couldn’t feel and simply had to hope was still there. He didn’t care. Having her there to comfort him when that damn dream got hold of him again had been worth any price.

  He closed his eyes again, knowing he wouldn’t go back to sleep, but content to hold her and listen to her breathe softly. She had to work later, but she could sleep another hour and still get home in plenty of time to get ready for her shift at Kincaid’s.

  “Coffee,” he heard her mutter against his chest.

  “Good morning,” he said, kissing her hair. “I thought you’d sleep a little longer.”

  “Coffee.”

  “I’d be happy to make a pot of coffee, but I think it’ll be at least two hours before I get feeling back in my arm.”

  She rolled away, taking the sheet with her, until she was back on the other side of the bed. He grimaced and tried to make a fist, but was pretty sure he failed. The pins and needles were going to suck.

  “How’d you sleep?” he asked Lydia. “Other than me waking you up, of course.”

  “Coffee,” she growled into her pillow.

  Laughing, he rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. “I’ll go make a pot of coffee.”

  “Make some for yourself, too,” she called after him.

  In an act of impeccable timing he assumed must be her secret superpower, Lydia walked into the kitchen just as the coffeemaker gurgled and shot the last bit of liquid into the carafe. He turned to tease her about it, but whatever he’d been going to say died on the tip of his tongue.

  She was rubbing her face, and having her arms slightly raised also slightly raised the hem of his T-shirt so he got a tantalizing glimpse of the tops of her thighs. The shirt appeared to be the only article of clothing she was wearing, which was ample reward for the pain of the blood flow returning to his hand and arm. Her hair was what the younger crowd probably meant by “hot mess,” and she’d never looked more beautiful to him.

  “Coffee’s done brewing,” he said.

  “Those are my favorite words in the whole world.” She kissed him, leaving behind the minty tingle of his mouthwash, and then took a mug out of his dish rack. After fixing herself a cup of coffee, she went to his couch and curled up on one end.

  He usually sat at his kitchen table with his first coffee, watching the news and scrolling through headlines and the Facebook account he mostly ignored on his phone. He’d signed up for that at the urging of a former girlfriend and, since everybody else had one, he’d given in to the peer pressure. Now he skimmed through, looking at pictures, but he never posted and rarely commented.

  But if Lydia wanted to sit on the couch, he was okay with that, too. She hit the power button on the TV and pulled up the on-screen guide to change the channel to what he assumed was her usual morning news show. Not the one he usually put on when he bothered with the television, but he didn’t really care. He listened to the chatter of the people on the screen and read the constant scroll across the bottom, leaving Lydia to drink her coffee in peace.

  She was about halfway through when she turned her head to face him. “Have you had that nightmare before? Or is it new?”

  A vague sense of embarrassment crept over him. Not super smooth, having a nightmare the first time she stayed over. “I’ve had it before, but it’s not usually so vivid. And I’ve had it twice in the last couple of weeks. That’s different.”

  “I think that makes sense, though.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, a firefighter having a nightmare about being lost in the smoke and separated from his company probably makes sense.”

  “I meant your dream about Scotty being more vivid and more frequent. You feel like you’re distanced from him. Because of me.”

  “No.” Maybe. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, that theory might not be totally off base. But he wasn’t going to let her take the blame for it. “When it comes to my friendship with Scott, that’s between him and me, and I own the choices I’ve made.”

  She reached over to slap his shoulder. “We made the decision together, remember?”

  “Either way, I’ve had the nightmare before—many times—so don’t read too much into it. It’s probably the fire version of that stress dream where you’re at school or in front of a crowd and you realize you forgot to put on pants.”

  “If you say so. Are you making me breakfast?”

  He laughed. “I made the coffee.”

  “Okay, I’ll make breakfast, but only because of the storage closet. I still owe you for that.”

  It took him all of two seconds to shake his head. “Oh, no you don’t. You know what you owe me for that and it’s not scrambled eggs.”

  “So you’re making breakfast, then?” she asked sweetly, though the look of impending victory on her face gave lie to that.

 
; No way in hell was he giving up a blow job IOU to save himself a few minutes of cooking. “I’ll make breakfast.”

  He made them scrambled eggs and melted a couple of slices of American cheese on top. A few slices of toast and microwave sausage links and it was done. It was nice, he thought as he sat down across from her at the kitchen table, having somebody to eat breakfast with. And to watch television with.

  Not only had giving in to his need to sleep with Lydia not scratched that particular itch to his satisfaction—and he wondered if that was even possible—but new little, nagging itches seemed to be popping up now.

  Like the one that wished they could spend the entire day doing nothing but watching television and making love and maybe taking a walk to the deli for lunch. Couple stuff.

  He wanted to take her out on a date. Make out with her in a movie theater. Kiss her without looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody was watching. His brother could sometimes get him decent tickets to a ball game, and he wanted to buy her a chili dog.

  But he’d known this was how it was going to be when he made the jump, so he ate his eggs and made up his mind to enjoy every minute he had with her. He’d worry about the minutes he didn’t have with her some other time.

  Chapter Eleven

  LYDIA WAS GOING to be late if she didn’t get a move on. The good news was that she’d already showered. The bad news was that Aidan had been in the shower with her, so it had taken longer than it should have. A lot longer.

  Because she was rushing, she swung the door closed behind her with a little more force than she’d intended and it slammed. Wincing, she headed for the stairs. She may have showered, but she needed a fresh set of clothes and some hair product before it totally dried that way.

  “Lydia?”

  Dammit. “Yeah, it’s me. I have to get ready for work.”

  Ashley walked out of the kitchen, and Lydia could see she’d been crying. “Danny stopped by again last night.”

  And she was still puffy-eyed and red-nosed. “You should have called me. I would have come home.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Lydia.”

  On the inside, she let out a long, resigned sigh. Outwardly, she offered a supportive smile. “Go pour us each a cup of coffee. I’ve got to get this hair into a pony or it’ll drive me crazy.”

  Once she was upstairs, Lydia took a few seconds to send a text to her dad, telling him she might be a little late and he needed to head to the bar or let the cook open. It shouldn’t have surprised her when her phone rang in her hand a few seconds later. The man hated texts.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Why are you going to be late?”

  It was tempting to tell him she was having lady problems. Nothing made her old man bail from a conversation faster than bringing up menstruation. But she needed to hold that in reserve for if and when it was actually an issue. “Danny stopped by last night and Ashley’s upset. I’m going to talk to her for a few minutes and then I’ll be in.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to her last night? Or earlier this morning? You gotta wait until it’s almost time to open the bar?”

  Lydia froze, making an ouch, busted face she was thankful he couldn’t see. That’s what she got for trying to multitask. “I was out. I just got home.”

  Maybe it would be enough. If menstruation held the number one spot for things Tommy Kincaid didn’t want to hear his daughters talk about, sex was definitely a close runner-up.

  “You went out after the bar closed last night? Where did you go?”

  Lydia sighed, but quietly so he wouldn’t hear it, and lied. “I had to stop by Becca’s and we got talking and it was late enough so I just crashed on her couch.”

  “Fine. Go see what’s up with your sister. I swear, those two really need to get their shit together, so talk some sense into her, would ya?”

  Once the call was over, she changed into some clean clothes and put her hair up, muttering unflattering things about her father the entire time. She knew as dads went, others had worse. Hers didn’t drink more alcohol than he could handle. He’d never laid a hand on his wife or kids in anger. But he was also gruff, emotionally hands-off and—perhaps worst of all—not exactly progressive when it came to his thoughts about women and family. The implication Ashley should just get over whatever her problem was made Lydia want to dump a full mug of ice-cold beer over his head.

  Ashley, who was leaning against the counter, gestured to the mug on the table when Lydia walked into the kitchen. “I made you a coffee, but you don’t have to drink it. I know you have to get to work, and I’m okay now. I just had a moment, that’s all.”

  “Why were you crying?” Lydia pulled out the chair and sat in front of the coffee. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. He texted me and asked if he could stop by again, and I said yes. When he stopped by in the morning, he only grabbed his dress shoes, so this time I thought he was ready to talk. But when he got here, he just wanted to talk about the financial situation. We have joint accounts, of course, and he said he didn’t feel right taking money out of them without talking to me, but he was running low on cash.”

  “That’s better than him taking the money out and screw you if you don’t like it.” Ashley stared into her coffee mug, looking like somebody had just kicked her favorite dog. “I asked the wrong question. You told me what happened, but what were you expecting to happen?”

  She knew she’d hit the right button when her sister’s eyes filled up with tears. “I want him to fight for me—for us. I want him to tell me he loves me and that he doesn’t want our marriage to be over, and not sound like he’s reading it from a script or something.”

  “When you told him you weren’t sure you wanted to be married anymore, you were testing him, weren’t you? Pushing him into a corner so he’d have to give you some kind of emotional validation.”

  Ashley took a deep breath and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to be married to him anymore, but I saw it as some kind of wake-up call that we needed to work on it before it got worse. I guess he saw it as my way of saying I wanted a divorce.”

  “And you don’t.”

  “I love Danny. I don’t want a divorce.”

  “You need to tell him that.”

  “No,” Ashley said, and Lydia sighed. She really wanted to go to work. If somebody was having a bad day, you set a beer and some pretzels in front of them and put a game on the television. “If I tell him that and he comes back home, nothing’s changed. Maybe we won’t be divorced, but the problems that drove me to that point will still be there. I need for him to show me he loves me. I’m not going to let him keep assuming I know.”

  Lydia wrapped her hands around her mug and took a long drink of her coffee to give herself time to think of how to phrase what she was thinking. While Ashley was the most even-tempered of them, she could be pretty stubborn.

  “Just say it,” Ashley snapped. She was also perceptive.

  “Have you told him any of that, or are you expecting him to read your mind?”

  “A guy doesn’t have to be psychic to know if his wife says she’s so unhappy she’s not sure if she wants to be married to him anymore, that he should sit down and talk to her about it.”

  “You’ve told me yourself Danny doesn’t like emotional confrontations. That his parents are always screaming at each other and that he’ll walk away before he’ll lose his temper. Maybe it’s not just his temper he keeps a tight hold on. And you told him you needed space. Maybe he’s just trying to give you that and doesn’t realize you’re expecting him to push back.”

  “I should have let you go to work.”

  Lydia laughed and got up to rinse out her cup. “You know I always have your back, even if that means telling you something you don’t want to hear. And let me ask you one
more question. Have you asked him straight-out if he wants a divorce?”

  Ashley’s long silence was telling, but she waited her out and made her say it. “No, but he’s made it sound like he doesn’t. He’s putting it all on me.”

  “Your communication problem is not all on Danny, love.”

  “You should go to work now,” Ashley said, and Lydia kissed her cheek and made a break for it.

  Kincaid’s Pub felt like a drama-free oasis after her sister’s kitchen, and Lydia quickly settled into the rhythm of the bar. Even though the basic job description was the same, it was amazing to her how much different it seemed than the job she’d quit in New Hampshire. Granted, an old neighborhood bar and a nice restaurant weren’t the same, but serving customers was serving customers.

  At some point, she was going to have to decide what she wanted to do when Ashley was ready to return to Kincaid’s. Going back to her old job wouldn’t be an option, even in the unlikely event they were willing to take her back. Being here behind her father’s bar again had reminded her how much she loved bartending. But it didn’t make a lot of sense to go tend bar for strangers somewhere—and for less money—when she had Kincaid’s. At the rate her sister and Danny were going, Lydia had plenty of time to start making decisions, but the question of her future was definitely simmering in the back of her mind.

  About nine o’clock, Scotty walked in and Lydia tried not to be disappointed he was alone. In fact, it might even be for the best, since it was hard to know how awkward it would be to see her brother and Aidan at the same time. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too bad, since it was inevitable that moment would come, but at least it wouldn’t be tonight.

  “Hey, sis.” He draped his hoodie over the back of the seat and hopped up onto the stool. After waving to Fitz a few seats down, he turned back to her. “Where’s Dad tonight?”

  “He said he was going out with a friend.”

  Scotty jerked his thumb toward the end of the bar. “Fitz is here.”