Controlled Burn (17 page)

“Oh.” The corners of Marie’s mouth lifted just enough
to give away her amusement. “I’m sure you two have some catching up to do since you’ve been gone for weeks.”

“We’ll probably talk about the house. He knows a lot about it, of course.”

“I’m sure that must be it.” And then her grandmother winked at her.

With no idea what to say to that, Jessica took her coffee to the window and looked out at the new snow. It was pretty, she had to
admit, but it was definitely nicer from this side of the window. Late January in Boston was very different than December and, even though she’d dressed for the weather, the cold had threatened to steal her breath when she walked out of the terminal.

She’d just finished her coffee when she heard Rick’s truck pull into the driveway, so she rinsed the mug and kissed Marie’s cheek. “I won’t be
too long. You’re probably right about Rick wanting to get out there and shovel.”

Rather than get bundled up to go outside, Jessica used the staircase up to the third floor that was at the end of the hall opposite her bedroom. They rarely used it because the stairs were steep and narrow, but Joe had told her they hadn’t locked the door since Rick moved in, and they liked knowing it could be
a fire exit for him if necessary.

After a quick knock, she opened the door and stepped into Rick’s kitchen. He’d obviously just walked in because he was still pulling off his sweatshirt. She’d been anxious walking up the stairs, afraid that somehow it wouldn’t be the same now that she’d been gone, despite the fact they’d talked every day. But the look in his eyes and the warm smile made something
shift inside of her. He’d missed her. She could see it and she could see that he was as happy to see her as she was to see him.

Tossing the sweatshirt aside, he strode across the room to her and hauled her into his arms. He kissed her, his mouth hot and demanding, until she was breathless and her knees were weak.

“Jesus, I’ve missed you,” he said against her mouth.

She backed away
enough to peel off her shirt and bra, then slid the yoga pants she’d thrown on to the floor. He was even faster and by the time she was free of her clothes, he was not only naked but had rolled on the condom he must have stuck in his pocket for this moment.

“I swear that felt like the longest shift I’ve ever worked,” he said, pulling her body hard against his.

“That was the longest five
weeks of my life.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth to his.

His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs running across her nipples. “This time I’ll just tell you up front I’m going to kiss you and touch you every chance I get.”

Jessica ran her hands down his back to the curve of his ass. “While naked, as often as possible.”

When he slid his hand between her legs,
her knees weakened and they went to the floor. His free hand was between her head and the tile as he kissed her. With a moan she opened her legs as he slipped a finger deep inside her.

“I can’t wait,” she said, sliding her heels up the back of his legs.

“Good, because I can’t, either.”

She gasped when his cock drove into her, her back arching off the floor. His fingertips bit into
her left hip as he moved, and he leaned on his other arm so he could look down at her. His gaze as he watched her was intense until he raised his eyebrow in that way she found so sexy, and she smiled.

“What?” he asked.

“You have the sexiest eyebrows.”

He rocked his hips in a lazy rhythm. “I don’t think anybody’s ever told me that before. As a matter of fact, I’m sure of it.”

“They were one of the first things I noticed about you the day I got here. We were still outside on the sidewalk and I was distracted by what great eyebrows you have.”

“I noticed everything about you. Especially your eyes.” He grinned. “And your ass. And your legs.”

Jessica wrapped those legs around his hips and he thrust deep enough so she moaned. When she ran her hands up his back,
the muscles were tight under her palms. The tension in her body built and her breath quickened along with his thrusts.

She cried out as she came, finding the release her body had been wanting for weeks, and it wasn’t long before Rick’s body stiffened and she felt his orgasm pulsing through his body.

When he collapsed on top of her, his breath hot and ragged against her neck, Jessica
wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him close. For the first time in weeks, she was totally content and the warm rush of happiness was almost as potent as the post-orgasm glow.

But once she’d caught her breath, Jessica became aware of how hard the floor was under her body. She moved a little, and saw the wince on Rick’s face when he took some of his weight off of her by shifting
it to his arm and hip.

“Are we cuddling,” she asked, “or just trying not to admit we might be too old to have sex on a tile floor?”

He chuckled, and then groaned as he pushed himself off the floor. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice my reluctance to try to get up.”

He helped her up and, after kissing her again, walked to his bedroom. Just as she finished putting her clothes back
on, he returned. He’d thrown on a pair of sweatpants, but skipped the shirt. She didn’t mind at all.

“I’ll pick up my clothes later,” he said when she looked at them scattered on the floor. “Now that my biggest hunger is taken care of for now, it’s time for breakfast. I’m starving. You want an omelet?”

“That sounds delicious.” So did the idea of watching her shirtless man cooking her
breakfast.

“I missed talking to you,” he said, taking a carton of eggs out of the fridge. He set them next to a big mixing bowl and cracked the first egg open. “The phone just isn’t the same.”

“I missed you, too. What can I do to help?”

“You can grab us some coffee and then sit and talk to me,” he said. “And then later, I’m going to drag you outside and teach you how to shovel snow.”

She laughed and went to his coffeemaker and poured them each a coffee. “Good luck with that. And Marie was right. She said you should go to bed, but you’d probably shovel snow instead. She was going to make you a nice breakfast to keep you going.”

“You should have told me that before I started cracking the eggs.” He winked at her. “So I guess you told her you were coming up here to have
breakfast with me?”

“I didn’t really have a choice.” She sat on a bar stool and watched him drop a blob of butter into a frying pan. “Is that okay?”

“Of course. I mean, I guess all I can do is hope they’re okay with it. Did you not want to tell her?”

Jessica shrugged. “Joe and Marie are a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

“Very true. So how was your father about
you coming out here again? Did he give you a hard time?”

“No, he was really good about it, actually, and said he didn’t want to get in the way of me building a relationship with Marie and Joe. I think he’s starting to regret a lot of the choices he’s made in his life.”

“As he should,” Rick said, pouring the egg mixture into the pan.

Jessica fought back the automatic reflex to defend
her father and said nothing instead. She knew nothing Rick had ever heard about David Broussard would inspire him to like her father, so he’d believe it when he saw it, so to speak.

She changed the subject to the weather while he cooked their breakfasts. It surprised her that a guy who spent as much time outside in the cold as he did wouldn’t be jealous of her home city’s temperate climate.
“You wouldn’t even need to own a coat.”

He laughed. “I don’t mind owning a coat. And I need four seasons. Without cold and snow, how do you know when it’s time to start singing Christmas carols?”

“Oh, the department stores will let you know.”

The omelets were delicious, but she balked when he told her to go downstairs and borrow some good boots, along with a coat and gloves, from
her grandmother. “I have boots and a coat.”

“Not for shoveling snow, you don’t.”

“I don’t mind watching out the window.”

He laughed and nudged her toward the door. “Meet me outside in ten minutes. You’ll have fun, I promise.”

Shoveling snow didn’t sound at all fun to Jessica, but spending time with him did. And since he was going to be outside in the cold, she did as he suggested
and borrowed Marie’s coat and boots. Her grandmother also loaned her some brightly patterned wool mittens with a matching hat.

None of which saved her from the first shock of stepping out the door. It felt even colder than yesterday, when she’d arrived in the city, and she wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

When Rick stepped out of the garage with two snow shovels, she shook her
head. He was wearing a zip-up hoodie—albeit a thick one—and had gloves on, but no big coat or hat. She knew it was just a matter of her being out of her natural climate, but she thought he might be showing off a little, too.

And there was no way she’d let him—or Mother Nature—get the better of her.

Chapter Sixteen

Rick had to admit, Jess was either a lot tougher or a lot more stubborn than he’d given her credit for. He would have bet money she’d make it about fifteen minutes before she gave him his shovel back and went inside.

But she made it almost an hour, shoveling snow in the name of working out, and then practicing her snowball-making skills. The first few she tossed
in his direction disintegrated on impact, but he made the mistake of showing her how to take the loose snow and really pack it down, breathing on it to help make it sticky. She managed to make a few small snowballs that actually stung a little bit.

“You have a good arm,” he said. “If this was good snowball snow, you could hurt somebody.”

“Isn’t all snow good snowball snow? How can there
be bad snow for snowballs?”

He laughed and explained the different between the dry and fluffy snowflakes that fell when it was really cold and wouldn’t stick together, and the wet, heavy snow that fell in warmer temperatures and could be packed into snowballs that were practically lethal.

“I think my friends would be a little surprised if they could see me right now.” She laughed, a
short self-deprecating sound, while brushing snow off the wool mittens.

“You look beautiful. Your cheeks are all flushed and your nose is red. It’s cute.”

She gave him a look that let him know she thought he was crazy. “Yes, red noses are all the rage right now. So tell me, what do you do after you shovel snow?”

“Usually, unless I have errands to do, I read for a while. After being
outside, it’s nice to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book and relax.”

“I just happened to borrow a book from Marie’s bookshelf last night.”

“Grab it and we’ll go snuggle on my couch and read for a while.”

The smile she gave him seemed to grab hold of something deep inside of him and squeeze. And that scared him. It had sucked when she’d gone back to California the first
time and, even though she’d only been back in Boston a day, he already knew it was going to suck even worse when she left again. Though he was pretty sure it was already too late, he should be trying to put more distance between them, not getting closer.

Rolling his eyes at himself, he put the shovels away. He was pretty sure it was too late. He
knew
it was. And even though he knew living
on two opposite coasts was going to be a serious problem they’d have to solve in the future, he didn’t see himself giving up on this relationship.

A little while later, they couldn’t
get
any closer and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Because she’d caught a chill, she’d curled up on his lap and covered them both with the fleece blanket he kept on the back of the couch. When he’d stretched
his legs out, she’d stayed put, using him like a heated recliner.

It was awkward, holding his book open with one hand and turning the pages with his thumb, but he managed because it was worth the effort to have Jess stretched out on top of him. Concentrating wasn’t easy, either, and every time he started losing himself in the story, she’d sigh or shift slightly and become the center of his
awareness again.

Then she snorted. “I think if I was running for my life, hiding from the bad guys in a warehouse, I wouldn’t be in the mood to have sex.”

“Duly noted.”

She laughed. “How’s your book?”

“Not as interesting as the sounds you make reading yours.”

“I do
not
make sounds.”

His arm was wrapped around her waist, and he squeezed as he kissed the side of her
neck. “Oh, you definitely do. A couple of chuckles. A few sighs. And a snort which, judging by the timing, was your opinion of being turned on when somebody’s trying to kill you.”

“It’s so dumb. I mean, if you were in a house that was on fire and you just happened to stumble on a room with no smoke in it, would you feel compelled to stop and have sex in it?”

“No.” He paused. “A blow
job, maybe, but not sex.”

She elbowed him hard enough to make him grunt. “You would not.”

“Of course not. With the amount of gear we wear, by the time I could get my dick out, the flames would be knocked down and the guys would be in the truck, laying on the horn.”

“Funny.” Sighing, she closed the book and tossed it onto the coffee table without getting up. “That’s not a very good
book.”

His was, but she was more interesting to him than any work of fiction, so he did the same. “How long are you planning to stay this trip?”

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then he felt her shrug. “I’m not sure. Marie’s left two messages for the real estate agent, but they’re playing phone tag. And I’m helping her go through the boxes that represent decades of the worst
filing system ever. She has receipts for everything, like the heating system and stuff like that, and prospective buyers will want to know the dates. We just have to find the paperwork.”

“So probably at least a week, then?”

“At least. Probably more like two. I told my father it might be a couple of weeks.”

Two weeks...maybe. And he had a feeling that they’d be spending a lot of
time together over the course of the two weeks. When the time was up and she had to go back to her life in California, he was going to have one hell of a hard time letting her go.

“I should probably go downstairs and let you get some rest or something. You said you shoveled out fire hydrants all day yesterday and then you shoveled snow today. You must be exhausted.”

“You’re right. I
should go to bed.” He kissed her neck again, and then gave it a gentle bite. “You should go with me. We can pretend bad guys are chasing us.”

She laughed and rolled so she was straddling him on the couch. “Let’s see if you’re hero material, then.”

* * *

Since they’d kept in touch a little by way of Facebook and they’d reached out to her when they found out she was back in the city,
Jessica met Lydia and Ashley at a tiny Chinese restaurant they said was within walking distance of Joe and Marie’s since parking was almost impossible in that area in the winter. Unfortunately, their idea of walking distance didn’t factor in the weather and by the time she stepped through the front door, she wished she’d at least called a cab.

They were already there and they waved her over
when they saw her. Jessica didn’t even take off her coat before sitting down. Her gloved hands were freezing and she rubbed them together, hoping she could get a hot cup of coffee here.

“You look like you want to cry,” Ashley said, sympathy heavy in her voice. “I should have told you to take a cab, but I haven’t really paid attention to the weather forecasts lately. It’s winter. Winter sucks.”

“I’d cry, but I’m afraid my eyeballs would freeze if they get that wet.” Both women laughed, probably not realizing she was serious.

“So Rick must be glad to have you back on this coast,” Lydia said once they’d all ordered coffees and Jessica had requested a few minutes to thaw out before deciding what she wanted to eat.

She pressed her gloved hands to her cheeks, trying to warm
them enough to manage normal facial expressions. “I think so. He seems to be.”

“Are you happy to be back?”

“That’s...not an easy question to answer,” she said honestly. “It’s kind of a mess.”

“That’s why you have friends to talk to,” Ashley said. “Sometimes things aren’t as messy as they seem when you’re the one in it.”

“I’m glad to be back because I’ve missed Joe and Marie.
And Rick. But being back also makes it harder because it starts to feel like real life and I like it. But my real life is actually in San Diego, so it screws with my head.”

Lydia held up her hands. “This might be overly simplistic, but if you prefer this life to your so-called real life, why not make
this
your real life? We have financial advisors in Boston. Good ones, even, or so I’m told.”

“But it’s not just switching jobs,” Ashley said. “She built that business with her father and she’s probably meant to take it over.”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “Besides my house and my friends, there’s loyalty not only to my father and everybody who works for us, but to the plan I had, you know? I mean, I guess it was mostly his plan, but I’ve invested most of my life into it.”

“I guess
we know how that feels,” Lydia said. She gave Jessica a sympathetic look. “My dad just assumed Ashley and I would run the bar and I hated that. I hated the whole firefighter thing, too. I even left Massachusetts to get away from it all, but I came back to help Ashley out while she and Danny went through their rough patch. Then Aidan was all smoking hot and sweet and sexy and...well, here I am. But
this time it’s my choice and I have no regrets.”

“What do you mean you hated the whole firefighter thing?” Jessica asked because if there was something specifically bad about firefighters, it would probably be helpful to know that now.

Lydia shrugged. “It’s a close community, and that’s obviously a good thing. But they’re a brotherhood and sometimes it feels like they come first, before
families. And it can also be claustrophobic at times. My first husband was a firefighter, too, and I took a lot of shit when I got fed up and divorced him. Forgiving the community for circling the wagons around him took me a while.”

“But Aidan’s not like that?”

“He is to a point. Their lives depend on each other so they have each other’s backs to a degree not a lot of people can understand.
They’re truly brothers.”

“And sisters,” Ashley added.

“And sisters. But I know Aidan doesn’t put anybody else before me and that matters.”

“Wow.” Jessica drank another gulp of coffee and then peeled her gloves off. She’d give the coat a few more minutes. “I had no idea. So far my experience with...being involved with a firefighter is trying to spot him on the news, which is dumb,
of course. I don’t know enough about the fire stations to even know what locations he’d respond to.”

“It probably seems fun at first,” Ashley said. “Trying to spot him on the news, I guess. But it’s easy to become obsessed with that. With knowing he’s okay, I mean. It makes the waiting harder.”

“I agree,” Lydia said. “Everything’s on social media. People are live-tweeting fires on Twitter
and there are Facebook statuses and videos on Snapchat and Instagram. They’re actually streaming as it’s happening, and that means it’s almost like being there at the fire with them, but being helpless to do anything but stand there and watch.”

“I don’t follow any of it,” Ashley said. “If something happens, they’ll tell me. Otherwise, the only way to get through each shift is to assume everything’s
going okay and his training and experience is keeping him safe.”

“But you both chose firefighters anyway?” It was a lot to think about.

“The heart wants what it wants,” Ashley said.

“My heart isn’t the only part of my body that decided it wouldn’t settle for less than Aidan Hunt,” Lydia added, her snarky smile looking so much like her brother’s.

Jessica finally took her coat
off to hang on the back of her chair, shoving her hat and scarf into one of the sleeves like she’d seen her grandmother do. “Firefighters seem to have good...endurance.”

Lydia and Ashley laughed, but their server chose that moment to see if they were ready to order, probably signaled by Jessica removing her coat. After a quick scan of the menu, they ordered a variety of dishes to share.

“So I take it things are going
really
well with Rick, then?” Lydia asked once they were alone again.

“We’re....yeah.” She smiled. “Things are going well. It’s almost like we weren’t even apart for weeks.”

Ashley smiled. “I’m glad. He’s such a good guy.”

“So what’s holding you back?” Lydia asked Jessica.

“We’re kind of thrown together because of my grandparents. Once they’re
settled, what brings us together? How many times, realistically, can I travel to Boston in a year?”

“Ideally it’ll be love that brings you together. But I don’t think many relationships could survive that kind of distance. I mean some do, but probably not many. One of you will have to make a hard choice eventually. And eventually might not be that far away.”

And it would be her who made
the hard choice. Even though she’d lived in San Diego her entire life, she couldn’t picture Rick living there. This place—this community—was a part of who he was and that bond was part of what she loved about him.

“Shit.”

Lydia and Ashley both looked at her, but it was Lydia who spoke. Jessica had already figured out she was the more vocal of the two sisters. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, that was a particularly vehement
shit
. And we’re bartenders. We’re awesome at picking up those kinds of signals and when somebody hisses
shit
in that way, something’s usually wrong.”

Jessica sighed. “I think I just realized—like really admitted to myself for the first time—that I’m in love with him.”

“Honey, if ever there was cause to bust out a four-letter word, it’s being
in love with a firefighter,” Ashley said, and they both raised their coffee mugs in a toast to her.

* * *

Usually Saturday night wouldn’t be a good time to hit Kincaid’s Pub looking for company and a game of pool, but the wind chill was pretty fierce and Rick thought it would keep a lot of people from leaving their homes just to get a beer and some wings.

He sent out a group text
that yielded the information he was the only single guy at the station who didn’t have a date that night. Aidan had said he might stop by, but Rick didn’t see him when he walked in. That was fine. The television was offering up sports highlights and they were company enough.

Karen was covering the bar tonight, which didn’t surprise him. He already knew Lydia and Ashley had the night off,
since they were going out with Jess, so they had to get somebody to fill in. Even though he owned the place, Tommy preferred sitting at the bar with Fitz to actually
working
the bar and preferred not to do any of the actual manual labor unless it was an unavoidable situation.