Heat Exchange

by Shannon Stacey

  She’d laughed, getting a curious glance from Ashley, who’d been watching some afternoon talk show she was hooked on now.

  It’s only been a few hours since you saw me.

  You can help me forget I spent the evening with my family.

  There had been a pause while he typed more.

  Unless you’re tired or don’t want to. I have another charger.

  Of course he did. But she didn’t mind.

  I’ll be over later.

  “Really?” Ashley asked a few hours later, when Lydia told her she was heading out for a while.

  “Yeah, really. I accidentally stole his phone charger.”

  “Yeah, because I’m sure he only has the one.”

  Lydia frowned at her, not liking the attitude she heard in Ashley’s voice. “What is going on with you? One second, you’re giving me shit. Then you’re helping me plan a weekend alone with him. Now you’re all snippy again.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I can’t decide how I feel about it. And maybe if my life was settled, I’d be better at knowing how I feel about yours, but everything just seems so messed up.”

  Lydia sank onto the couch next to her with a sigh. “That’s because everything is so messed up.”

  “I’m going to work with you tomorrow night.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  Ashley shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not sure. That’s why I’m going to work with you and not telling you I’ll work instead of you. If I need to leave, I’ll be able to.”

  “You have to brace yourself for some comments, though. Because you’ve been away, people are going to want to say something about you being back.”

  “I know. I think I’m ready. Danny and I are...I can’t hide here until we figure it out. It shook me and I didn’t know how to act, but I’m turning into a hermit afraid to face the world and that is not me.”

  Lydia’s heart ached for her sister. “It’s not. You’re stronger than this, but it’s not something anybody can push you into.”

  “Dad and Fitz are going to something at the VFW for a friend of theirs, so it seems like a good night to get my feet wet again.”

  Lydia reached over and squeezed her knee. “Good thinking. And you’ll be fine. I’ll be there, so if you need a break, you can hang out in the office for a breather. And if you need to leave, you can do that, too.”

  She didn’t think Ashley would leave, though. Once she made up her mind it was time to get back behind the bar, she’d probably stick with it.

  “Thanks.” Ashley picked up the remote control and gestured at the paused television screen. “Go bring Aidan his phone charger. I’m going to finish watching this show.”

  Aidan was in his boxer briefs when he opened the door again, but Lydia was used to that now. She wasn’t sure if it was just his nature, or if it had to do with wearing almost seventy pounds worth of gear at work, but the guy hated wearing clothes in his own apartment.

  He let her in and kissed her as soon as the door was closed behind her, as if he hadn’t just kissed her goodbye a few hours ago. “Hey, stranger.”

  “Funny. Here’s your cord.” When he took it and tossed it on the counter, she caught a whiff of something odd and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You smell like a cheap hooker.” She wrinkled her nose, amused by his look of outrage. “I’m serious.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She moved closer, sniffing at him. Then she grabbed his hands and inhaled deeply. “It’s your hands. Seriously, it smells like you’ve been rubbing them all over a cheap hooker.”

  Aidan laughed. “I’ll pass that compliment on to my mother. She’ll be thrilled to know the soap in the guest bathroom smells so nice.”

  Lydia winced. “Ouch. If you pass that compliment on, tell her Ashley said it. So, how did dinner with the family go?”

  “Same as usual. My dad’s an ass and my mom tries to pretend he’s not. My brother needs my father’s permission to breathe and my sister’s turning into my mother. But the food was good.”

  “I can put up with a lot for good food. Especially if it’s free and I don’t have to cook it.”

  “It’ll be at least a month before I have to do it again. Six weeks if I can come up with some good excuses.” He dropped onto the couch and patted the seat next to him. “Sit with me. Unless you’re running right off.”

  “I can stay for a little while. Didn’t you save an episode of that show you want me to watch on your DVR?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He grabbed the remote and pulled up the menu. “And it’s not just an episode. They had a marathon, so I saved the whole first season.”

  “Aren’t you way past that? You’ve already seen the first season.”

  “I’ll watch it again. It has zombies. Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  Once he hit Play, he lifted his arm and she snuggled against his side as the show started. She’d heard a lot about the show, but working nights meant having to save or stream prime-time shows to watch during the day and she was lazy when it came to television.

  But as he tried to drum up her enthusiasm—he was one of those watch this and oh, this next part’s cool kind of people—a part of Lydia’s mind was hung up on Ashley going back to work at the bar the next night.

  She wouldn’t leave Boston until Ashley had resolution one way or the other with Danny. Not for the entire process, if it came to divorce, but she’d be there to hold Ashley’s hand when she filed the papers. But if Ashley was feeling strong enough to go back to work, the clock was ticking on her making up her mind about her marriage.

  Lydia didn’t want to say anything to Aidan and ruin the mood, but there was a very real possibility she wouldn’t be around to watch the entire season of this show he’d saved to share with her.

  * * *

  ALMOST A WEEK LATER, Lydia took another slice of pizza out of the box and slid it onto her paper plate. “This pizza was worth pissing my dad off for. Every time I have pizza in Concord, I think of this, but I haven’t had it since I got home.”

  “How pissed is he?”

  She shrugged. “He’s not happy, but what is he going to do? He could cover me for three hours while I had a fake appointment, or I can quit and he can cover Ashley every night until she returns to work.”

  Aidan laughed and snagged a third slice for himself. “You’ve pretty much got him over a barrel, since you’re the one doing him a favor.”

  “So true.” She bit into the pizza, savoring the spicy pepperoni and gooey cheese while a giant robot got its ass kicked in the ocean on television.

  When Aidan had texted her that morning and wondered what the chances were she’d be able to stop by for pizza and Pacific Rim, she’d told him she’d make it happen. They’d both seen the movie at least a half dozen times, but they hadn’t yet seen it together. And it had been three days since she’d seen him, so she wasn’t missing this opportunity.

  After a second bite, she realized that Aidan was looking at her instead of the TV screen. “What?”

  “I just think it’s funny how you call the place you have an apartment Concord and here home. I don’t even know if you’re aware of it.”

  She hadn’t been, actually, but when she replayed her words in her head, she realized he was right. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  “Or maybe that’s just a place you happen to live, but this is still home to you.”

  “Most people probably refer to their hometown as home, especially if they still have family there.”

  He shrugged. “Or maybe you needed some time away after your divorce, but your subconscious knows your heart is here.”

  Lydia didn’t want any part of a conversation about her heart. “I doubt that.”

  After setting
the half-eaten slice on the coffee table, Aidan turned sideways on the couch so he was facing her. “Would it be so bad?”

  “Would what be so bad?”

  “Staying here. You love Kincaid’s Pub. Anybody who spends an hour in the place can see how much pride you take in the place, and the customers love you.”

  “Of course I love Kincaid’s. It like...part of the family, as weird as that sounds. But I didn’t leave Boston because I wanted a different job.”

  “I know that. It just seems like you’re different now. You’ve proven—to yourself and to your dad—that you can do what you want and make your life whatever you want it to be. So, this time, if you stayed in Boston and tended the bar, it would be your choice.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to deny she had any interest in staying, as if by reflex, but she didn’t. What he’d said kind of made sense to her, and the sudden uncertainty threw her off.

  But there were a lot of bars like Kincaid’s Pub in the world, even if they didn’t bear her last name, and she could make a place for herself at any one of them. The difference between the Boston she left behind and the Boston she’d come back to was the man sitting on the couch with her.

  The firefighter. The man hiding his relationship with her from the world so his best friend wouldn’t find out. The man so worried about what her father and brother would think that she was sneaking around and lying like a teenager just to have pizza with him.

  “Did you really become a firefighter because of my dad?” she asked, deciding if he could push a little, so could she.

  He seemed startled by the question, but he recovered quickly. “I guess the easy answer is yes, but I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I became a firefighter because of the accident. Or maybe I would have anyway, even if that never happened.”

  “What was it about the accident, though? I mean, you’d seen firefighters on TV and in movies, I’m sure. Why did seeing them in person make a difference to you?”

  He shook his head. “It’s really hard to explain, but it wasn’t about them at all. It was about me. I was always trying to be who my family expected and failing, and then the accident happened and I took charge. I was confident and somehow, even without knowing what to do, I was in my element. It was like for the first time, I was my true self. Does that make sense?”

  It did, Lydia admitted to herself with a sinking feeling. She’d known a lot of firefighters in her life, and they chose the job for a lot of reasons. Some because it was family tradition. Some, like her ex, wanted to be heroes. Luckily, there weren’t a lot of those guys around because they washed out pretty quickly. Most wanted to help people and serve their communities.

  For Aidan, it was obviously a calling. Putting on that bunker coat and running toward what others ran away from was a part of who he was.

  These feelings she was developing for him—feelings that made her think she might rather keep doing what she was doing than go back to her apartment in New Hampshire—didn’t pick and choose which parts of him to like. But her head had a say, too, and it still shied away from allowing her to love another firefighter.

  And then there was the fact that, even if she managed to reconcile herself to his job, there was no way their relationship could progress until it was out in the open.

  “You’re thinking about something wicked hard,” Aidan said, giving her a questioning look. “Something bothering you?”

  Something like both of them dancing around the fact they weren’t just burning off the excess chemistry anymore but neither of them could admit it because that would raise a whole lot of questions they couldn’t answer.

  “Nope.” She smiled. “I was just curious how you ended up with Boston Fire, I guess. Scotty’s fourth generation, which you obviously know. It’s what the men in my family do. But you come from a totally different background.”

  “I don’t remember if I was into fire trucks or anything before the accident, but I know from the time I was eleven on, there was nothing else I ever wanted to be.”

  And that was the hard part. The firefighter community drove her nuts, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a deep, lifelong respect and admiration for the men and women who did the job. And because of that, and the look in Aidan’s eye when he talked about it, she knew she couldn’t ask him to give it up.

  “Oh, I like this part,” Aidan said, and she realized she’d lost him to the movie again. The two main characters—a man and a woman—were sparring with staffs as part of a training and selection process, and after a few minutes, Aidan turned back to her. “Do you know how to use one of those?”

  “I’m not sparring with you,” she told him. “That’s not my idea of foreplay at all.”

  “Bummer.”

  “But if I did spar with you, I’d totally kick your ass.”

  He grinned, his eyes lighting up at the challenge. “They don’t have sticks like that at my gym, but they’ve got gloves. We could go a few rounds and give each other a workout.”

  Even as she thought that sounded like a fun date, his expression dimmed and she realized he was thinking of Scotty. Obviously they went to the same gym, and there was also no way Aidan could take Tommy Kincaid’s daughter there without every guy in a five-house radius hearing about it.

  “We don’t need to use gloves for a workout, you know,” she said, not in the mood to watch him beat himself up about her brother.

  It worked. “Are you asking me to choose between sex and Pacific Rim?”

  Good point. “We can fast-forward through the science guys and still have time for a quickie workout before I leave.”

  “I do love the way you come up with a plan.” He picked up the remote control and turned his attention back to the TV, his thumb hovering over the fast-forward button.

  Lydia laughed and moved closer so she could snuggle with him now that they were done eating. If only she could come up with a plan for having a real relationship with him as easily as she came up with plans for a secret fling.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Aidan sat at the bar, sipping Sam Adams out of a cold bottle and watching Lydia work. And he watched with the awareness he could happily do this forever.

  He’d finished up his shift and hit Kincaid’s for a meal—the grilled chicken sandwich tonight because a man couldn’t live on burgers alone—and a beer. After visiting with Lydia and the other regulars for a while, he’d head home. Maybe do some laundry or clean the bathroom. And then Kincaid’s would close and Lydia would show up. She usually didn’t stay more than an hour or two, because of Ashley, but they made the most of that time and it was enough.

  Almost. The few occasions she’d stayed over and he’d slept the entire night with her butt pressed to his hip before waking up to her sleepy face made him want more of them.

  If he pressed her to stay, she always defaulted to Ashley. If her sister got up in the middle of the night or early morning and she wasn’t home, she’d worry. And she’d already gone to bed, so it was too late to text her and tell her not to worry.

  Aidan knew that was a bunch of crap. He was pretty sure if Ashley woke up in the middle of the night and Lydia wasn’t there, Ashley would assume she was at his place. It was more likely some boundary wall Lydia had built to keep up the pretense they weren’t really having a relationship. If they weren’t having a real relationship, she didn’t have to worry about the fact he was a firefighter or that some apartment in New Hampshire she shared with a virtual stranger and a cat was her future.

  He still believed, however, that the best way to convince Lydia otherwise was not to try to convince of her anything. If he pushed too hard, she’d dig in.

  “How long you going to make that beer last?”

  He tore his gaze away from Lydia to look at Ashley, who was standing in front of him in a
green Kincaid’s Pub T-shirt identical to her sister’s. He wouldn’t say she looked happy, but she looked better than she had the last time he saw her and it was good that she was getting out again. She needed to step back into her life and reclaim her space.

  “When the beer’s gone, I’ll head home.” He flicked a glance at Lydia. “So it might take me a while to drink it all.”

  She smiled, but her eyes were sad and he wondered if that sadness was for her or for him. “Take your time.”

  He wasn’t stupid. Ashley felt a little sorry for him because she could probably see he was mooning over her sister and she would know better than anybody that Lydia wanted nothing to do with another firefighter.

  A few minutes later, Lydia freed herself from a group of guys who were convinced they’d play pool better if she went in the alcove with them and blew on their cue sticks. He’d been watching them, making sure they didn’t step out of line, but he knew Lydia had it under control. She’d been doing this for a lot of years and she was really good at it. She knew how to keep them in check while also making them think she was the most wicked cool bartender ever, knowing they’d tip accordingly.

  That didn’t make it any easier to watch them hit on Lydia with their cheesy innuendos, but if he went Neanderthal on them, she’d throw him out along with them.

  “You are seriously rocking the scowl tonight,” she said.

  “I feel like those guys could be a problem.”

  She laughed. “They’re amateurs, trust me. If cracking jokes about touching their balls and blowing their sticks makes them happy, more power to them. If it changes from corny shit to personal, or one of them touches me, then they’ll be leaving.”

  He watched her face change as she looked over his shoulder. “What’s up?”

  “It’s not a big deal. Scotty and Danny just walked in.”

  His muscles tensed and he sat up straight, as if he was putting distance between him and the woman on the other side of the bar. “Okay.”

  “Will you relax? Jesus, Aidan, how many years have you known me? There’s nothing weird about you sitting here at the bar talking to me.”