Heat Exchange

by Shannon Stacey

  “You really should get some sleep.”

  “I will later. But I always come home to an empty apartment and last night sucked, but once you told me you’d be here, that was all I could think about. That you’d be here. And now we’re arguing and I don’t want you to leave like this.” She hesitated, torn by the sincerity in his voice. “For no other reason than I’m a friend who had a shitty night and could use some company.”

  “Even shitty company?”

  He smiled, and the weariness in his eyes tugged at her. “I don’t care what kind of mood you’re in. I always want your company. And if you get too bitchy, I’ll just turn the TV up to drown out your voice.”

  She laughed and sat back down on the couch. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Aidan Hunt.”

  “You still laughed.” His slid his hand across the sofa cushion and laced his fingers through hers before using his other hand to unmute the television. “I’ll even let you pick what we watch.”

  Chapter Twelve

  TWO DAYS LATER, Aidan kept his gaze on the yellow reflective tape on Scotty’s jacket and helped support the line as they tried to beat the flames back. The smoke was thick and the world seemed to be crackling around them, but the woman was still screaming, pleading for somebody to save her.

  That was good. As long as she was still screaming, she could be saved. They pushed forward, their world reduced to each other, the fire and the woman’s voice.

  They knew she was the only person left in the house and they had an idea of where she was. Her husband thought he might have fallen asleep in his recliner while smoking a cigarette because he woke up with his sweatpants on fire and had to roll on the grass to extinguish the flames after throwing himself out the window. As they’d put him in the ambulance, he’d begged for them to find his wife, who’d been in the master bathroom.

  “I see her,” Aidan shouted. He reached over Scotty’s shoulder to point to the doorway, and waited for his nod. As his friend turned the hose to keep the water spraying toward the flames that kept popping out at them, Aidan went by him with Grant Cutter on his heels.

  She’d almost made it out. The fire, along with the water they had to throw at it, had weakened the structure and the ceiling had partially collapsed on her, pinning her legs. Her pleas for help were hoarse now—barely audible and broken up by coughing—but she was moving.

  Aidan spared a second to grasp her hand and squeeze it while he looked over the situation. It wasn’t too bad, and if she’d been younger and stronger, she might have freed herself.

  “Get ready,” he yelled to Grant. Then he wedged the Halligan tool under the beam across her legs, looking for leverage and taking the precious seconds to play out the cause and effect in his head. If he moved that beam, those ceiling panels would fall and another joist might shift, but nothing catastrophic. “On three.”

  He counted, and then put his weight on the end of the bar until it lifted the beam. The mask blocked his peripheral vision, so he couldn’t see the woman, but he heard Grant shout that she was clear.

  He slowly released the tension on the Halligan and let the beam back down into place. He didn’t see or feel any shifts in the structure, so he pulled it free and turned. Grant had the woman in his arms and they got the hell out of there as quickly as they could. They had to stop a couple of times and turn the hose on hot spots that flamed up, and Aidan could hear Grant yelling to the woman the entire time. He told her over and over she’d be okay, and he tried to keep her face tucked toward his coat.

  The woman had stopped coughing and was limp in Grant’s arms when they cleared the building, and the kid ran straight to the ambulance with her. They were ready because of the constant radio contact, and Aidan watched Grant back out of the way, his gaze never leaving the woman.

  Stepping forward, he pulled off his helmet and mask before putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. There weren’t really any words that would help. Aidan and most of the others had been there. They’d pulled a lot of people out of harm’s way. They’d been too late more often than he cared to dwell on, retrieving bodies instead of rescuing victims.

  The worst, though, was getting to a person on time and racing to the ambulance, only to have EMS sadly shake their heads. It had happened to Aidan only twice, and both times he’d been torn up. Could he have run faster? If he’d gone down one hallway instead of another, would it have made a difference? He’d lain in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to count off the seconds every action and decision had taken him in an effort to convince himself he couldn’t have saved the victim by making a different choice.

  Suddenly the woman was coughing and Aidan felt Grant’s shoulder sag as the tension left his body. “Good job, kid.”

  Walsh, who’d stood by to kill the water pressure, gave them a nod. “Nice job. I heard the EMS talking about her husband. He’s going to be fine, obviously, but all he could talk about was how his wife had been nagging him to fix the smoke detectors.”

  “If they’d been working, she wouldn’t have gotten pinned down,” Aidan said. “That would have been a shitty thing for him to live with the rest of his life.”

  “Yeah. I guess one kept going off in the middle of the night and he couldn’t figure out why, so he ripped them all down.” Walsh shook his head. “And then fell asleep smoking a cigarette. Okay, get a drink, you guys, and then we’ll see what’s up.”

  Once he’d drained a quarter of a water bottle, Aidan pulled out his phone to text Lydia.

  Fire today. I’m not hurt. Just FYI.

  He grinned and hit Send. Yesterday, she’d threatened to run his phone over after he sent her constant updates, like had to help a roofer get off a roof because he sprained his ankle on a loose shingle, but I’m okay.

  He was deliberately being a pain in the ass, he knew, but she had it coming. In the three days since they’d had their less-than-pleasant discussion about her not wanting to be a firefighter’s wife, they hadn’t mentioned it again. But he hadn’t forgotten about it, either.

  You can forget that blow job I owe you.

  Ouch. She wasn’t playing nice anymore.

  This was a big fire. We saved a woman, so we might be on the news. I was only thinking of you.

  You’re only thinking of being a pain in my ass.

  There was a pause, and then a second text came through.

  But I’m glad you saved the woman and that you’re okay.

  So the blow job?

  I’m working. Gotta run.

  He chuckled and snapped the phone back into its holster. He should know better than to play games with a Kincaid. They weren’t above playing dirty if it meant they won.

  “Still the blonde?” Scotty asked, sitting next to him on the bumper.

  Aidan was totally blank for a second, and then he nodded. “Uh, yeah. The blonde from the market.”

  “She have a name yet?”

  “No. I haven’t seen her again. We’ve just been texting here and there, but it’s gone on too long to ask her at this point.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and she’ll send you a Facebook friend request or something before you get together and she figures out you have no clue what her name is.” Scotty shook his head. “Women don’t like that too much.”

  Aidan downed some more water so he didn’t have to answer. The less he said to Scott at this point, the fewer lies he was forced to tell. He hated it, more than his best friend would probably believe if he ever found out, and sometimes it literally made his stomach ache.

  “I guess we should see if those guys need a hand,” Scotty said, nodding toward the men still working on making sure the fire was totally out. “But let me know if you and the blonde from the market want to go out sometime. I’ve got a few women I could call so I’m not the third wheel, and it could be a group thing. And, sin
ce I’ve got your back, I can find a way to introduce myself so she has to tell me her name herself. Problem solved.”

  Shame burned like acid in his stomach. Scotty had his back. He always had. And now Aidan was going behind his back. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  “THIS IS GOING to blow up in your face. And in his. It’ll be bad, Lydia.”

  Lydia knew Ashley was right, but she didn’t want to hear it right now. She had only a couple of hours before she had to open the bar and, since Aidan was home, she wanted to spend those hours with him. They were trying to limit the late nights after the bar closed because, as they’d both agreed, they were too damn old to stay up half the night, even for sex, and still function the next day.

  “Nothing’s blowing up in anybody’s faces,” she said.

  “Look at you. You’re like a teenager going to the prom and all you’re going to do is hang out for a couple of hours before you go to work. You can’t tell me you’re just having some hot sex to get it out of your system now.”

  “Sure I can. I just haven’t gotten it out of my system yet.”

  “Whatever.” Ashley yanked the vacuum cleaner’s cord out of the wall. “It’ll be no big deal for you. You’ll just run back to New Hampshire. Aidan will be the one left here with a broken friendship and, honestly, he’ll probably end up having to transfer to a different house.”

  “He’s a grown man, making his own choices,” Lydia responded, but the words made her feel a little sick inside. Under the bitchy tone, what her sister said was probably true.

  The words stayed with her on the way to Aidan’s, and she sat in her car for a minute after parking it on the main street where there were plenty of businesses offering excuses for being there.

  It was hard to tell how Scotty would react if he found out Aidan and Lydia had been hooking up. They were both assuming he’d be pissed, but maybe he wouldn’t care. Hell, maybe he’d even be happy, thinking the relationship might go the distance and Aidan would be his brother-in-law. Lydia didn’t think so, though. Or at least she wasn’t willing to bet on it, with the stakes being so high for Aidan.

  She walked down the street and turned the corner to Aidan’s building. After jogging up the back stairs to the third floor, she gave a quick knock and let herself in. Aidan walked out of the bedroom when she called for him, looking annoyed.

  “Hey,” he said. He gave her a quick kiss, but his mind was elsewhere. “I can’t find my damn phone. And I can’t call it because I don’t have a landline anymore.”

  “You didn’t do any laundry this morning, did you?”

  “No. And I checked the hamper to make sure I didn’t leave it in my pocket, even though I’ve never done that. Send me a text so I can listen for the ding.”

  Lydia grabbed her phone and sent a happy face emoticon to his phone and listened for the notification. “I think it came from the couch.”

  “I already looked there.”

  “I have smaller hands. I can reach farther down in the cushions.”

  A quick search turned up nothing, so Lydia typed dumbass into the box and hit Send again. This time they were ready and she shoved her hand down behind the cushion, feeling around until she came up with his phone. She started to hand it to him, but then she noticed the text previews on his lock screen and pulled her hand back.

  “Who is Blonde from market?” She looked at the screen again, then shook her head. “Wait. I’m the one who called you a dumbass. You have me saved in your contacts as Blonde from market?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She crossed her arms, his phone still clutched in her hand. “If you want your phone back, you should probably make the time to tell it.”

  He grinned. “You know I can take that phone away from you if I want to, right?”

  “Maybe you can, but you’ll need bandages and Bengay later.”

  “I believe you.” He sat down on the couch and laced his fingers together on top of his head as he leaned back against the cushion. It was a favorite position of his and usually she liked the effect it had on his biceps and chest, but she wasn’t going to be distracted right now. “Remember the day you texted me while I was on my way to a promotion ceremony?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you sent that, I was mashed up against Scotty in the backseat of Rick’s truck and my phone was just kind of in my hand. I turned it before he saw your name on the screen, but I realized he grabs my phone sometimes. So I changed your name in my contacts.”

  “Because you didn’t want him to know I was texting you.”

  “He might think it was a little weird, and some of the texts you’ve sent...no, I don’t want him reading them.”

  Lydia wasn’t sure how she felt about the depths Aidan was going to in order to keep their relationship a secret. It made her feel as if she was doing something wrong and she really wasn’t. But Aidan obviously thought he was, and so he was lying to his best friend. Then it got weird because Scotty was her brother and she knew his best friend was lying to him, which should make her angry on his behalf.

  All of that on top of what Ashley had said was too much, and she wanted to kick a garbage barrel or something to let off steam. The entire situation was seriously messed up and obviously a huge part of why you didn’t sleep with your brother’s best friend.

  “Why Blonde from market?” she asked, because that seemed a little random. “You could have at least left me a brunette.”

  “Scotty asked me how I saved her in my contacts since I couldn’t remember her name and it just came out of my mouth at the time,” he replied. When he shrugged his shoulders with his hands on his head like that, it made his biceps flex, which she liked. “I’m not a good liar, so it’s been a challenge.”

  “Or you could just tell him.”

  His mouth tightened as he considered her words. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  Lydia tried to imagine what her brother’s reaction would be if Aidan told him he’d been sleeping with her, and it wouldn’t be pretty. “I don’t like that you have to lie to him. I know that bothers you.”

  “You’re right. I hate lying to him and the more I lie to him, the worse it’ll be if I tell him.”

  She mentally flailed for a solution. “Maybe we can pretend we haven’t been seeing each other and you can bring it up to see how he reacts. If he freaks out, then we’re still a secret. But if he’s okay with it, then we go out on a date and pick up where nobody knows we left off.”

  “If he freaks out, that would be the end of it. What I’m doing now is shitty. If I kept seeing you after he said no...I couldn’t do that to him.”

  She could see in his eyes how much it tore him up, and she hated it. “I think Ashley’s starting to get bored and she’ll need to start making money again, so pretty soon I’ll probably be back in New Hampshire and you won’t have to.”

  That didn’t seem to make him feel any better. If anything, his mouth got even tighter and his eyes more troubled. He dropped his hands to his lap and then held one out to her. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

  She thought he was reaching for his phone and, since he had told her the story as requested, she put it in his hand. But he just dropped the phone into his lap and reached out again. “Come sit with me.”

  When she took his hand, he pulled her down so she was sitting next to him. Lydia wanted to change the subject to pretty much anything other than her brother and New Hampshire, and she had a good idea of how to do that.

  Turning sideways, she leaned her head against his shoulder and ran her hand over his stomach. His abs tightened in response, making her smile. “Sometimes the fact you’re always running around in just your boxer briefs is very convenient.”

  “Oh yeah? How so?”

  She slid just the tips of
her fingers under the elastic waistband. “Easy access.”

  He moaned when her fingers stroked the length of his erection, and closed his eyes for a moment. She wasn’t surprised when he opened them again, though. He’d want to watch.

  “I should see if I can make you beg,” she told him.

  “Nope.” He lifted his hips so his hot, hard flesh brushed her palm. “I didn’t make you beg for my hand down your pants in the storage closet, did I?”

  She closed her fingers around his hard length and smiled when he groaned, deep in his throat. Then she stroked him with long and slow strokes, watching his face. “But we’re not talking about my hand. We’re talking about my mouth.”

  “I’d beg for your mouth.”

  It was tempting to make him, but she wasn’t in the mood for games. She moved over on the cushion so she had room to bend down and then very slowly circled her tongue around the head of his cock.

  Her hair fell forward and she shoved at with her free hand, but it wouldn’t stay. She was debating on how much it would kill his mood if she paused to throw an elastic in it when she felt his hands gathering it.

  He held it all in one fist, and she knew it was as much so he could see her face as to keep her hair out of the way. She licked her lips, making him groan in anticipation, and then closed her mouth over him.

  With the same slow, lazy rhythm he liked to torment her with, she drew him into her mouth and then raised her head again. When his hand tightened in her hair, she stopped and closed her lips only around the head of his cock. She swirled her tongue around the tip and resisted when he gave her head a little nudge.

  He muttered a mix of curses and pleas under his breath, and she closed her hand around the base of his dick. Squeezing gently, she worked her hand up to meet her mouth and then back again.

  His breath grew ragged and she took him fully into her mouth again, until her lips met her curled fingers. Then she worked them together—her mouth and her fist—in fast, deep strokes. He groaned her name, his fist in her hair tightening almost to the point of being painful, and then he was coming. She stroked him until the orgasm passed, swallowing without losing the rhythm.