Controlled Burn (3 page)

“I don’t think it’s too dusty in here.” Marie pulled off the sheet draped over the bare mattress before walking to a closet. She pulled out a pile of fresh bedding and together they made the
bed.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jessica asked when they were almost done.

Marie smiled at her from across the bed, but her eyes were wary. “Of course.”

“How did you get my father’s business number to put on your forms? I know he’s had the number a long time, but...not
that
long.” Somehow she doubted making sure they had his current contact info was high on her father’s priority
list.

“Sometimes I type his name into the Google on the computer at the library,” Marie said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. “I’m not very good with computers, but I clicked on the first thing in the list it gave me and it was a website for his business—and yours, I guess. It has a phone number so I put it on the form, and there’s a picture of him, too. I look at it a lot.”

Jessica had no idea what to say to that, so she kept her mouth shut, but it made her sad to think this woman had been pining for her son. A son who seemed to harbor no good feelings toward her at all. She tried to remind herself that people changed and almost forty years was a long time.

Although, her father never seemed to change.

“There.” Marie ran her hand over the quilt to smooth
out a wrinkle, and smiled at Jessica. “It’s no five-star hotel, but I think you’ll be comfortable.”

“I know I will. I’m glad I’m staying.” And she was. It was going to be awkward, of course, but distance wouldn’t help make it any less so.

They started toward the door, but at the last second, Marie turned to face her again. “I know this is probably weird for you, but would you mind if
I gave you a hug?”

“I...I’d like that.”

When Marie wrapped her arms around her, Jessica sighed and rested her head on her shoulder. Tears blurred her vision, so she closed her eyes and let herself soak in the emotion.

She knew the coming days would be a mess. Her father would be angry. There would be doctors, real estate people and perhaps lawyers to talk to with her grandparents,
and there would probably be some emotional conversations about the family’s past.

But for now, she was content to hug her grandmother.

* * *

Rick walked through the door of Kincaid’s Pub and just the sight of Tommy Kincaid and “Fitz” Fitzgerald sitting at the bar relaxed him. Both retired firefighters, they’d been a fixture in the place even before Tommy bought it, enabling Fitz
to claim the back stool by right of best friendship.

Kincaid’s wasn’t pretty, but firefighters had made it their own decades before—even before Tommy bought it—and it was like a second home for the guys of Ladder 37 and Engine 59. Memorabilia and photos from the local stations decorated the place, along with a signed photo of Bruins legend Bobby Orr screwed right to the wall to keep anybody
from walking off with him.

Lydia Kincaid was behind the bar tonight and she waved to him when he walked in. She’d left the family business—and Boston—for a while, but came back to help out on a temporary basis a few months before. Temporary until she hooked up with Aidan Hunt, who was assigned to Engine 59 with her brother and his best friend, Scott. The firehouse had been a little tense
when that relationship news broke but now, almost four months later, the drama was forgotten. Scott and Aidan were as tight as they’d ever been and Lydia had a diamond on her left hand.

And she had a beer in her right hand, which she set down on the bar next to the one she’d poured for her brother. Scotty was alone, so Rick walked up and draped his arm over his shoulders. “You hanging out
with all your friends?”

“Screw you. I thought Aidan might show up, but Lydia’s making him do responsible adult shit, I guess.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “He’s grocery shopping because we like to eat. He said he might stop by to shoot some pool later, or he might not.”

“I figured he’d spend more time here, not less,” Rick said. “Since you’re here.”

“I don’t go hang around
the firehouse just because Aidan’s there.”

He shrugged. “True. But he was hanging out here long before you became the reason why.”

“He’ll probably be in, unless there’s an animal documentary on. Then he’ll sit down and end up asleep.”

Rick watched her mouth curve upward in an affectionate smile and took a few swallows of beer as she walked away. He was happy for her. He’d known
her for years, since she was Scott’s sister and she’d been tending the bar since he was old enough to drink. And he was happy for Aidan, too. He was a good guy.

“You’re antsy tonight,” Scott said, and Rick realized he was tapping his fingers against his mug. “What’s up?”

“My landlords’ granddaughter showed up from San Diego today.”

“Joe and Marie have a granddaughter?”

“That’s
what I said when she showed up.”

“And?” Scotty prompted when he didn’t offer up any more details.

“And what?”

“Where has she been? Why is she here now?”

Rick filled him in on what little he knew, pausing now and then to sip his beer. It didn’t take him very long to tell the story, of course, since he had a lot more questions than answers when it came to Jessica.

“So she’s
basically vice president of a financial management company, but she gets on a plane to Boston with no advance notice because her father got a call about her grandparents, who she’s never even met?” Scotty frowned. “That’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure what to think. I don’t like the fact she’s already researching the value of the house, though.”

“What I can’t believe
is that they haven’t updated their legal situation in how many decades? From what you’ve told me, their son wants nothing to do with them.”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, but what else are they gonna do? With Davey out of the picture, it’s just the two of them.”

“And you.”

“No.” Even the suggestion Joe and Marie would disinherit Davey in his favor made him uncomfortable. “When push comes to
shove, I’m their tenant. It’s bad enough they cut me such a break on the rent. They don’t need to be giving me more than that.”

“They’re not just giving you a break on the rent for no reason, though. They want to keep you because they trust you and because you take care of the house. And the yard. And pretty much everything else a son would do for them.”

“I don’t want the house. Or their
money. I just want them to be comfortable and safe. If that means selling the house to find them something more manageable or to pay for one of those assisted-living places, so be it. I’m a big boy. I can find a new place to live.”

“So you’re just going to stay out of it?”

Rick took a long drink, considering the question. “No. Maybe Jessica’s here because her father’s unavailable, whatever
the hell that means, and she wants to help out her grandparents and maybe even get to know them. Or maybe they got a phone call and saw dollar signs. I’m not going to sit back and watch father and daughter shuffle Joe and Marie off to some shit hole and take control of their finances.”

“I don’t know your landlords as well as you do, but they don’t seem like the type to fall for something
like that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Rick said. “But their son left a big hole in their lives and... If you could have seen Marie’s face when it hit home that Jessica was really her granddaughter. They’re vulnerable, even if they don’t see it.”

“We don’t have another shift until Tuesday morning, so you’ll be able to keep an eye on her.”

“And what woman are you keeping an eye on now?”
Lydia asked. She’d been passing by, carrying a couple of empty mugs from some guys at the end of the bar, and she stopped in front of them.

“Not that kind of keeping an eye on,” Rick said. “I don’t have my eye on anybody in that sense right now.”

Her eyebrow arched. “It’s not like you to be single for long.”

She walked away before he could respond, but he wasn’t sure what he’d say,
anyway. It made him a little uncomfortable to hear her say that, he realized. He dated a lot. So what? He was single and his relationships almost always ended mutually. Most of his ex-girlfriends were still women he considered friends.

Like Karen. He turned his head to face his friend. “Did you know Karen’s engaged?”

Scotty nodded. “Did she tell you or did you hear it somewhere? I don’t
think too many people know yet, actually.”

“I saw her ring when I was in the ER for Joe and Marie yesterday.”

“She tell you the rest of it?”

“About them having a baby? Yeah.” Rick took a long swallow of his beer. “I’m happy for her.”

“Really? Because you look kind of like a man who’s one more beer away from writing a bad country song on the back of a bar napkin.”

“Sure,
I liked her. But it wasn’t a forever kind of thing.” He shrugged. “The first time I saw her with the new boyfriend, I knew there was something between them we didn’t have.”

“You will someday. Probably.”

Scott Kincaid was probably the last guy he should be talking about relationships with, but there was nobody else around. “What do you think
not the marrying kind
really means?”

Scotty snorted. “Hell if I know, but I’ve been told more than once if you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me.”

“Maybe next time a woman says it, I should ask her to be more specific.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

Rick wasn’t sure he did, either. But seeing how happy Karen had been lately made him see how big a difference there was between having a woman in
your life and having a woman you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

Once the issue with Jessica Broussard had been resolved, he was going to have to give some serious thought to making himself into the marrying kind. Whatever the hell that meant.

Chapter Three

Jessica opened her eyes and blinked at the sun shining through the frilly white curtains. She’d struggled with sleep issues her entire life, so she had room-darkening drapes in her bedroom at home and only ever knew what time of day it was by looking at the clock.

There was certainly no doubt it was morning right now. And it was her first full day in Boston,
in her grandparents’ house.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, surprised she’d slept at all. The last thing she remembered was the clock ticking over to one o’clock as she tried to reconcile the Joe and Marie she’d met yesterday with the crass, alcoholic, bad-tempered people her father had refused to talk about.

Even given the fact people changed and her grandparents
were different now than when they’d raised their son, Jessica’s gut told her something wasn’t right about the way he’d cut his parents out of his life. Maybe she’d always suspected that, but it had taken something of a perfect storm for her to face it. She’d become painfully aware most of her friends had married and started families, while she was still acting as her father’s business partner and
hostess, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. At thirty-four, she needed to figure out if she even wanted those things, or if she liked her life just how it was.

There had been a lot of introspection, though. And a realization that, when her father eventually passed away, she’d be alone. Then the call had come from Boston. And her father had been unavailable to stop her from getting
on the plane.

Maybe she’d find out that, once the element of surprise wore off, Joe and Marie weren’t very nice people, after all. If that was the case, she could just get on a plane back to San Diego. She’d be sad, but at least she’d know her father had been right all along.

Now she desperately wanted a cup of coffee, but she wasn’t sure what would happen when she went downstairs. Marie
might not mind if she went through her usual morning routine of catching up on stock movement and financial news on her phone while waiting for the caffeine to kick in. Or she might want to chat and make breakfast together. As lovely as that sounded, business came before family. She’d learned that at her father’s knee.

Ten minutes into scanning reports, though, and the craving for coffee
burned through her good intentions. Coffee was too ingrained in her morning routine to attempt productivity without it. After getting dressed, she grabbed her phone and her laptop and went down the stairs.

Her grandparents were sitting in the living room when she reached the bottom, and they both looked over at her. Joe was sitting in a leather recliner, a mug of coffee on an end table next
to it. And Marie was seated on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table, flipping through a magazine.

“Good morning,” she said, feeling awkward all over again. She really shouldn’t have let Marie talk her out of staying at a hotel.

“Good morning,” Joe said, and then he turned back to the television. It was turned up pretty loud, so she guessed they didn’t really do morning small
talk.

Marie smiled. “Good morning, honey. There’s coffee in the carafe. And I left some muffins and a few slices of bacon on a plate for you. There’s a paper towel over it. If you want eggs, I can fry you up some.”

“No, thank you. A muffin will be plenty.”

“You can go ahead and do your computer stuff at the kitchen table if it’s comfortable. We’re watching our morning shows for
another hour, at least.”

“Thank you.”

Once she’d fixed her coffee and inhaled a cranberry muffin and two strips of bacon, Jessica sat down at the kitchen table and got to work. It wasn’t ergonomically ideal, but she wouldn’t be spending enough time on the computer to worry about it today. Not only did she use her phone a lot, but she felt as if it would be rude to ignore her grandparents
on her first day there.

By the halfway point of her second coffee, she’d cleared her inbox and exchanged a few emails with Sharon, her father’s secretary and the woman who’d be doing the heavy lifting as far as keeping the office up and running. There were several messages from clients to respond to, but overall things were quiet. Most people were wrapped up in ski trips and the upcoming
holidays once December hit.

She jumped, almost bumping her coffee cup, when the back door opened and Rick walked in. He’d skipped the sweatshirt today and she admired the way his navy T-shirt clung to his upper body before forcing herself to look at his face. He looked tired.

“Good morning,” she said, watching him walk to the coffeemaker.

“Morning. Where are Joe and Marie?”

“In the living room watching television. Marie said they have morning shows they usually watch, so I could go ahead and work at the table.” And speaking of work, why wasn’t he at work? She hadn’t expected him to be around until later in the day, if at all. “Do you have a job?”

He stopped in the process of pulling the carafe off the brew plate to look at her. “Excuse me?”

She felt the
heat in her cheeks. Polite conversation was usually a lot easier for her, but there was something about Rick that made her feel awkward. “I’m sorry. I was surprised to see you because I guess I just assumed you’d be at work today, but I didn’t mean to be so abrupt about it.”

“I’ll be at work tomorrow if there’s some reason it matters.”

Jessica wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but there
was some bite to his tone. “Are you upset that I’m here?”

After pouring himself a mug of coffee, he set the carafe back in place and then turned to face her. He leaned against the counter, just as he had the day before, and looked at her over the rim of his mug. She waited, saying nothing, while he drank a few sips of coffee.

“No.” He cradled the mug in his hands and shook his head.
“I’m not upset. But I find it a little funny you think two people who didn’t know you existed twenty-four hours ago will just put their legal and financial affairs in your hands.”

Her eyes widened as what he
wasn’t
saying sank in. “You think I’m here to take advantage of Joe and Marie?”

“I really hope you’re not, for their sake, but I don’t know you so I’ll probably be around a little
more than you thought, just to keep an eye on things.”

She tried not to take offense, but the implication she was running some kind of con on her own family stung. “Or maybe you’re unhappy I’m here because
you
want to be in charge of their legal and financial affairs.”

He snorted. “Sorry, Jess, but you’re barking up the wrong tree there.”

Jess?
When was the last time anybody had
called her that? High school, maybe. She couldn’t remember, but she knew she’d gone only by Jessica in college because her father had explained it was a stronger name, and she’d probably be taken more seriously.

She didn’t correct Rick as she usually did other people, though, and she wasn’t sure why. “It’s a valuable piece of property and it’s obvious you’ve been helping them maintain it
for quite some time. It’s not unreasonable to think you might feel entitled to something.”

“Maybe it’s not unreasonable, but it’s wrong.”

There was no way to force trust. “So I guess we’re at an impasse and we’ll have to take each other’s word for it.”

“For now.” He pulled out the chair directly across the table from her and sat down. “I’m a firefighter. That’s my job.”

“Really?”
Now that he was sitting in front of her, she realized the small logo on his T-shirt’s pocket said Boston Fire.

“Yeah. I work two twenty-four shifts each week and I don’t have a second job like some of the guys, so I’m around quite a bit.”

“Is that a warning?” She smiled to let him know she was joking with him, and was relieved when he smiled back.

He had a great smile. It softened
the hard angles of his face and deepened the laugh lines around his eyes. He was even scruffier today than he’d been yesterday, and for the first time in her life, she got the appeal. It was too easy to imagine how that gray-flecked scruff would feel against tender skin.

“You okay?”

She wished he’d stop arching his eyebrow like that. It was distracting. “I’m fine. Just a little warm,
I guess.”

“Maybe because you’re wearing a coat.”

Jessica looked down at the thick, fleece zip-up she’d bought on a whim at the airport. “It’s not really a coat, exactly. And it’s cold here, remember?”

“That was yesterday, and you were outside. We heat the inside with these newfangled things called furnaces.”

She laughed and unzipped the fleece so she could pull her arms free
of it. “Are you from here? Do you have family nearby?”

“My parents still live in Fall River, where I was born. It’s about an hour and a half south of here. And I have an older brother, who lives and teaches high school science in the next town over from them.”

“So he’s not a danger junkie, like you?”

There went that damn eyebrow again. “Danger junkie?”

“Don’t you have to be
a little bit of a danger junkie to be a firefighter?”

“Or maybe I became a firefighter because I’m a safety junkie.” He took a sip of coffee, his gaze locking with hers.

She wasn’t sure she bought that. “Maybe a little of both.”

“Oh, Rick, it’s you.” The eye contact was broken when Marie spoke, and they both looked toward her. “I thought I heard talking, but I wasn’t sure if Jessica
was doing one of those video meeting things.”

“We do have a setup for video conferencing in the office, but I mostly talk to the team by text. It’s easier. Except for my father, who hates texting. He either calls or summons me to his office.”

Marie’s mouth pinched a little at the mention of her son and that bothered Jessica. Her father—and the company—was a huge part of her life, so
she tended to talk about him a lot. If hearing about him made her grandparents unhappy or uncomfortable, that was going to be a problem.

“Joe made a couple of phone calls and we can see the doctor next week, because he wants to follow up after the fall he took anyway, and we’re waiting for a return call from our lawyer. It’s been a long time since we talked to him. I hope he didn’t retire.
Anyway, can you stay that long?”

Jessica hesitated. Things were going smoothly in the office and her accounts were all in order. Even though it was only her second day away from the office, she felt confident everything could be handled in her absence. Truthfully, with technology the way it was, it almost made no difference whether she was in her office or in a kitchen in Boston. But eventually
her father was going to surface and when he did, he was going to be livid.

She looked at the hopeful expression on her grandmother’s face and smiled. “I can stay.”

* * *

The next day, Rick stepped over a hole in the charred roof and walked to the edge to look down at the scene on the street. They were six stories up, so he had quite a view of the neighborhood. There were probably
a dozen engines jammed around the corner lot, along with support vehicles and the police cruisers. The bystanders were wandering away now that the fire was out and there was just the boring stuff left.

Roof fires were never fun, but there had been no injuries and it hadn’t spread. As long as none of them tripped over a line and fell through a hole or a weak spot, all would be well.

Jeff Porter was sitting on the brick fascia, and Rick hoped like hell it wouldn’t crumble out from under him. Porter was a big guy. “All clear?”

“Yeah, we can start picking this shit up anytime we’re ready,” Rick said. “I’m just taking a few minutes to relax. It’s pretty quiet up here.”

“I hear that.”

It was warm, though the weather wasn’t going to last long. The temperature was
already dropping and there was snow in the forecast, but for now they were seriously overdressed. Rick slid off the big bunker coat and tossed it next to Porter’s before turning to watch the guys from E-59 head down L-37’s ladder with hose in tow. He stood with hands tucked in his suspenders, soaking in the sun.

“Took the wife to Kincaid’s for lunch yesterday,” Porter said. “I hear your landlords
have a surprise granddaughter.”

Of course he’d heard. By now, everybody probably had. He’d told Scotty. Both of Scotty’s sisters—Lydia and Ashley—worked the bar at Kincaid’s. And they were both with guys assigned to Engine 59. Lydia was engaged to Aidan, and Ashley was married to Danny Walsh, the engine company’s LT. And each of the guys had helped him with some project or other at the Broussards’
over the years, the most recent being the handicapped ramp in the back of the house, so they knew Joe and Marie in varying degrees.

“Yeah, her name’s Jessica. She showed up day before yesterday.”

“Must be awkward.”

“It is. Joe and Marie are over the moon to have her there, of course, but they’re all still dancing around the issue of Davey.”

“That’s their son, right? Her dad?”
Rick nodded. “How long is she staying?”

“Not sure yet. They’ve got some meetings next week, I guess, but she’s kind of a big deal at her old man’s company from the sounds of it, so she’ll have to go back to San Diego eventually.”

“San Diego.” Porter snorted. “Went there once. Hated it.”

“Next time don’t take your mother-in-law. Or the kids.”

They were laughing when Rick got
a heads-up from Danny Walsh that relaxation time was over and they needed to hustle. Their trucks were blocking another company from leaving and they wanted to unclog the streets before the elementary school up the street dismissed.

Once they’d repacked and made the drive back to the house, they backed the ladder truck and the pumper engine into the side-by-side bays and went through the
post-run routine of checking and restocking equipment, and cleaning the trucks. Rick and Danny went up to the second floor to take care of some paperwork, while the rest of the guys went up to the living space on the third floor of the old brick building.

He did step into the bathroom and wash away the soot he’d managed to get on his neck and up one side of his face. But he knew if he went
up and made himself a coffee or pulled up some couch for a few minutes, he wasn’t going to drag himself back to the hated desk.