Controlled Burn (6 page)

But she was still in the yard, frowning at the snow flurries that were barely worth noticing. “Joe and Marie will get home before the roads get slippery, right?”

He smiled. “Yeah, they will. This is just a flurry, I promise, and the roads won’t be affected. The
snow’s supposed to pick up some later in the day. And speaking of driving, do you need to do something about that rental?”

“No. I already talked to them because I anticipated having it for a few days, but since it was already open-ended, they don’t really care. I’m not sure about driving it in the snow, though.”

“You don’t need to. Joe or I can drive you if you absolutely need something
before the roads are clear. It’s still early in the winter, so you shouldn’t have any problems.”

“You don’t worry about Joe driving?”

It took him a second to realize she probably meant because of his age and not because of the snow. “Not really. There have been a couple of times Marie or I have had to taxi him around, but unless his doctor tells him he’s done driving, there’s no reason
he can’t.”

“And the doctor isn’t concerned?”

“Not that I’ve heard. It seems to be living arrangements he’s concerned about.”

She sighed and tilted her head way back to take in the three-story building. “It’s a lovely house, but it’s so big.”

“They like it. And I can tell you right now, they’ll fight to stay here.”

“Be honest, though. If you move out, can Joe and Marie
still take care of the property without you?”

That was a tough question to answer. He definitely didn’t want them doing some of the stuff he took care of. The idea of Joe up on a ladder cleaning the gutters, for instance, made him ill. And he didn’t know if they could afford to hire people to do all those tasks because he’d never asked about their finances. They were none of his business.

“I don’t know,” he said, going for honesty. “But I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.”

“What if you fall in love and get married and want to start a family?”

Maybe that had been on his mind a little lately, but it didn’t appear it was going to happen anytime soon. “Don’t worry, I’m not the marrying kind.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s what all guys say and then, bam,
wedding rings and minivans.”

“No minivans. An SUV, maybe.” He didn’t really want to think about what vehicle he’d cart his hypothetical family around in and preferred to talk about her. After fending off that urge to kiss her, he needed to put a little more distance between them again. “Joe and I spend a lot of time talking, just so you know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just
that if you try to push them in the direction you want them to go instead of the direction
they
want to go, I’ll hear about it.”

Jessica looked at him a long time, her mouth in a grim line, before she shook her head. “I know I can’t make you trust me, but they’re my grandparents. I’m not going to try to screw them out of anything.”

“You’ve been with Davey for thirty-four years. You’ve
been with Joe and Marie for three days. Can you blame me for wondering where your loyalty lies?”

“Says the man who’s sunk a lot of time and hard work and maybe even money into a property that he has no claim to other than through the affection of its owners.”

It should have pissed him off, but he found himself smiling. He admired the way she stood her ground without letting temper get
the better of her. “As long as we both have Joe and Marie’s best interests at heart, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out, but you
can
trust me,” she said, and then she walked up the ramp and back into the house, letting the screen door slam behind her before she closed the big door with a solid thud.

Rick bent to pick up the scraps
of wood with a sigh. With the Broussards’ future on the line, he definitely hoped their granddaughter was right. He wanted to trust her. But he needed to trust her for the right reasons, and neither her mouth nor the dreamy expression on her face as she watched the snowflakes fall were the right reasons.

One thing he was certain of was the fact he didn’t want Joe and Marie to come home and
find out he’d pissed off their granddaughter. Once he’d picked up the yard, he’d go inside and make sure he hadn’t offended her too badly.

* * *

Jessica tried opening her laptop, but she gave up after ten minutes or so and closed it again.

For a few crazy seconds outside, she’d thought Rick was going to kiss her. There was something about the way he looked at her—especially her
mouth—that made her sure he wanted to.

What a disaster that would be, she thought. Since a few minutes later, it sounded a lot as if he was accusing her of wanting to take advantage of Joe and Marie financially, kissing Rick could only add to the weird emotional place she’d found herself in.

To distract herself from the sexy firefighter she absolutely couldn’t kiss, she reached across
and picked up the puzzle book sitting open on her grandfather’s end of the kitchen table, along with the pencil. She’d already figured out that Joe loved his puzzle books, but only the language puzzles. The math ones were rarely even started, never mind finished.

Even though she submersed herself fairly quickly in numbers, she heard Rick’s footsteps outside before the door opened. She was
thankful because it gave her a few seconds to focus on not looking as if she’d been thinking about kissing him.

“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Sorry if I’m bothering you again, but I just wanted to make sure you’re not too mad at me.”

It took her a few seconds to realize what he was talking about, and then she smiled. “I’m not mad. I mean, I didn’t like the implication,
but I understand where you’re coming from. Plus I’m doing Joe’s math puzzles and I’m one of those weird people who find numbers soothing.”

He looked at the puzzle book and then arched an eyebrow when he realized she’d already finished the puzzle. “I guess if you’re in charge of taking people’s money and making it into more money, you must be pretty good at math.”

“I am. My father made
sure of that.”

“How do you make sure somebody’s good at math? Isn’t that a you-are-or-you-aren’t kind of thing?”

“He told me when I was a little girl that I have a natural aptitude for it.”

Rick grinned. “Of course you do. Your grandmother taught advanced high school math for almost forty years.”

“Really? I guess numbers must run in my family. I don’t know why, but I just assumed
she was a homemaker. Maybe because she’s so good at it and Joe seems so...old-fashioned, I guess.”

“It’s only been a few days, Jess. You and your grandparents aren’t going to learn everybody’s life stories overnight.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t ask, though. Or why she wouldn’t have mentioned it, since math’s a big part of my job.”

He took up his usual position, leaning against the
kitchen counter. “I think she just wants to know about you so much she doesn’t think to tell you much about herself. They’re still wrapping their minds around the fact you even exist, you know.”

She nodded, feeling as if there was a lump of emotion clogging her throat. “He made them sound pretty horrible, you know. And it made him so angry when I asked about them that I stopped. Maybe I should
have kept asking.”

“You were a kid. And why wouldn’t you believe him? You were only getting one side of the story and you had no reason to doubt what he told you.” He shifted his weight, crossing one ankle over the other. “I’m a little surprised you never reached out to them when you were an adult, though.”

“It would have made my father unhappy.”

“A lot of things make parents unhappy.
They get over it.”

“Do they?” She fiddled with the pencil, rolling it between her fingers before tapping it on the book. “I guess my mother didn’t get over it, since she never came back.”

His expression turned serious, and he inhaled deeply through his nose. “I’m sorry about that. It’s a pretty shitty thing for a mother to do, but I highly doubt you were the one who made her unhappy
enough to abandon being a mother.”

Jessica shrugged, trying to hide how much she wanted that to be true. “Maybe not. But what I do know is that my mother took off, and was an only child whose parents had both passed. My paternal grandparents were supposedly awful people, and stepmothers come and go. When you only have one person in your life who’s family, you try not to piss him off too much.”

He nodded his head, as if he could see her point. “Since we’re kind of on the subject, what does unavailable mean?”

It was tempting to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was a core word in her vocabulary.
I’m sorry, but my father is unavailable at the moment...
“He drinks. Which is really ironic considering it’s one of the things he holds against his parents. Or
Joe, at least.”

“So Davey’s an alcoholic?”

“It sounds so weird to me, the way everybody here calls him Davey. He’s always David now. Not even Dave.” She paused and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “And I honestly don’t know if he’s an alcoholic. He’ll go a long time without drinking at all. Or he’ll have a few cocktails here and there at social events. But if things get rough
he...binge drinks, I guess you’d call it. He just disappears and spends days drunk. Sometimes weeks. He’s
unavailable
right now because my most recent stepmother is about to join my previous three stepmothers in the ex-wives club.”

“Ouch.”

“He’s not an easy man to live with.” That was a bit of an understatement.

“Yet you’ve built your entire life around him.”

There was no censure
in his voice. No inflection implying she was an idiot. It was just a statement of fact, but it still made her wince inside. “I’ve built my life to suit
me
, but he is the only family I’ve ever had before now. We’re a team.”

It was a habit to defend him, she supposed. She’d done it often enough with the staff and trying to play peacemaker with his wives. But it was also the truth. Other people,
including her mother, had come and gone, but she and her father had always been a team.

“Family should be a team,” Rick agreed. “And I’m glad you’re taking the time to get to know Joe and Marie because they’re your family, too. And they’re good people.”

“I think so, too.”

“Good. While I’m thinking of it, I’m going to check the filters on the furnace because I think it’s time to
change them out. It’s in the cellar, though, so I shouldn’t be in your way.”

Jessica stood and pushed the puzzle book and pencil back to Joe’s end of the table. “I’m probably going to do some laundry or something, anyway. I’m not in the mood to sit in this chair today.”

“Sitting at the desk doing paperwork is the only part of the job I don’t like,” Rick said, shaking his head. “I don’t
know how people who work in offices stand it.”

“Well, I don’t have to climb giant ladders and risk my life in smoke and fire. So there’s that.”

He laughed as he walked toward the door to the cellar. “Good point.”

Because the rich sound of his laughter did funny things to her nerves, Jessica gave a little wave and walked out of the kitchen. Everything in her life seemed to have changed
so much and so fast with that one voice mail from Joe’s doctor, so she knew she had to be careful about being vulnerable emotionally.

She needed to squash this attraction she seemed to have for Rick, and the best place to start was probably getting out of the kitchen and not staring at the cellar door, waiting for him to reappear.

Chapter Five

Jessica loved exploring the house. Every time she looked around, she seemed to notice something new. And since she was too antsy after her conversation with Rick to sit in front of her laptop, she went into the big living room.

She’d already looked at the framed family photos scattered around. There weren’t many, and she got the sense Marie hadn’t been much for
taking pictures. The staircase wall had pictures of her dad, and she’d spent some time yesterday looking at them. There was very little of the boy growing up in the variety of frames in the man she knew. He’d been cute with no front teeth, but it was obvious he didn’t like having his picture taken. And there were no photos of him at all after his senior portrait, in which he glared sullenly at the
photographer in front of what looked like a department-store studio backdrop.

It was the treasures that she really enjoyed. Her father wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy, and certainly wasn’t sentimental about things, so she’d grown up in a very uncluttered household. But on display in Marie’s curio cabinet was all manner of things. The bride and groom figurine from her grandparents’ wedding
cake. A clay cup her dad had made them in elementary school. A gilt-edged teacup so old the fine age cracks made the flowers look almost mosaic. According to Marie, it had belonged to Joe’s grandmother and was the only piece of china left from the set that had come from Nova Scotia with her.

Today she wandered to the bookshelf and, tilting her head, scanned the spines. There were a lot of
old Westerns and Agatha Christie titles, which made her smile. And on the top shelf was a framed newspaper article. She realized it was a picture of a firefighter and leaned closer.

All of the gear obscured the identity of the man helping an extremely pregnant woman onto the ladder while the black smoke billowing from the window framed them. But the caption told her it was Rick, and that
the woman’s water had broken halfway down the ladder and her daughter had been born in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

“That was a helluva day.”

Jessica turned at the sound of Rick’s voice, caught off guard because she hadn’t heard him come back up the cellar stairs. “They were both okay?”

“Yeah.” He tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged.
“Three stories up on a ladder with the most pregnant woman I’d ever seen was already hairy. Then her water broke and she started panicking. There was no way to throw her over my shoulder, so she just leaned back against me while I tried to get us both to the ground in one piece.”

His gaze was fixed over her shoulder, probably on the framed clipping, but he had a faraway look. Jessica couldn’t
wrap her mind around the fact doing stuff like that was his job. “Is it always like that?”

He snorted, shaking his head. “No, thank God. We get our share of fires, but there are accidents and medical calls. Cats stuck in trees.”

“Why did you become a firefighter? And don’t tell me it’s because you’re a safety junkie. If you wanted safety, you’d probably be a teacher, like your brother.”

“
My
teachers would be horrified at the thought.” He gave her a grin that made her whole body tingle. “Guy I played hockey with sometimes was at the fire academy and there was some trash talking and, to make a long story short, I became a firefighter to prove I could. Almost like a dare. I guess I still do it because it pays good, the benefits don’t suck and I really can’t imagine myself doing
anything else.”

She wanted to ask more, but they heard the faint squeak of the back door’s hinges, followed by Marie’s voice. Despite being disappointed her conversation with Rick was at an end, since he’d turned and walked away, Jessica was relieved her grandparents were home. She knew it was silly to be worried about a few snowflakes, but she also knew that the older people got, the worse
their reflexes were.

Following Rick into the kitchen, she listened to them all talk about the barbecue. The conversation mostly consisted of news about a lot of people Jessica didn’t know, so it was tempting to grab her laptop and go upstairs. It had been several hours since she checked her email and that might have been a record for her.

But she liked the easy rhythm of their interactions.
They even seemed to have their own individual spots for talking. Joe sat at the table, with his word search book open in front of him. Marie puttered around the kitchen, getting ready to make dinner. And Rick, as usual, leaned against the counter.

Because it seemed the logical thing to do, Jessica had sat in the chair she’d been using since she arrived on Wednesday. While Joe, Marie and Rick
were almost a family unit, it made her feel almost as if she belonged to have a usual spot, too.

But she jumped in her chair when her phone, still sitting on the table next to her laptop, rang. It was her father’s ringtone, and his name flashed on the screen. The others looked at it, since it was hard to ignore the sound, and she realized Marie could see the name when her body stiffened.

“Sorry,” Jessica said softly, tapping the option to send his call to voice mail, and then flipping the switch to silence her phone in case he called again. He almost certainly would.

“You can answer that, you know,” Joe said. “It could be important business.”

“It’s nothing that can’t wait.” It would be too awkward to talk to him while they were in the room. “It’s not like Rick’s
job, which is literally life-and-death.”

“And cats in trees,” he added, making Joe and Marie laugh.

The bubble of tension popped, and Jessica smiled. “Can’t forget the cats.”

“I should head upstairs,” Rick said a few minutes later. “I left laundry in the washer and I hate when I forget it’s in there and have to wash it again.”

“You’ll come down and eat supper with us, won’t
you?” Marie asked.

Jessica saw him hesitate as his gaze met hers. Then he looked away with a sigh. “You don’t need me underfoot. And besides the laundry, I’ve got a list of other stuff waiting to get done.”

“You took care of my bushes today. And I’m making stuffed manicotti.”

He groaned. “You know I’m a sucker for any of your pasta dishes.”

“Come back down in about two hours,
then.”

Jessica watched him go, and then snatched her phone off the table when it vibrated loudly against the wood. She should have anticipated that. After rejecting her father’s second call, she cradled the phone in her hands under the table where it wouldn’t be as noticeable if it went off again.

“I’m going to go watch some television, I think,” Joe said, pushing himself up off his
chair. He winced a little as his knees straightened, but he gave Jessica a wink. “I get nervous when I’m the only man in the kitchen.”

Marie snorted. “You should be. And Jessica probably needs to go upstairs and deal with work stuff, anyway.”

Yes, she needed to. But after a few seconds, she shook her head. Then she powered off her phone completely and tossed it on top of her laptop.
“Actually, I’ve never made stuffed manicotti. If you don’t mind teaching as you go along, I’d love to help.”

The smile that lit up her grandmother’s face made Jessica’s heart ache, and she knew she’d made the right choice. She’d probably still regret it when she finally had to return to her father’s phone call, but for right now, she was going to hang out in the kitchen and cook a meal with
her grandmother.

After the men vacated the kitchen, they got to work. Jessica wasn’t surprised Marie didn’t have to pull out a recipe card or cookbook, though she did promise to write it down for Jessica after dinner if she liked it.

“This was one of your dad’s favorite meals growing up,” her grandmother said.

“It still is, actually. I probably would have made it before now, except
when we dine together, it usually doubles as a business meeting. It’s a lot easier to do that in a restaurant.”

“Do you cook at home for yourself, though?”

“Sometimes, but definitely nothing like stuffed manicotti. I have an indoor grill I love and I’ll toss a quick salad to go with whatever meat I grilled for dinner. I’m not very creative, I’m afraid.”

“And none of your stepmothers
taught you how to cook?”

Jess sighed. “Most of them haven’t been very fond of me, I guess. I’m a big part of my father’s life and he would defer to me a lot even for household decisions.”

“Why haven’t you ever married?” Marie said, popping the lid off of a tub of ricotta cheese. “If you don’t mind my asking. I’m being very nosy, I guess.”

“Confession time. I don’t really care how
to make stuffed manicotti. I just wanted to spend time getting to know you and the kitchen seems like a good place, so nosy is kind of the point. I found out from Rick that you taught math in high school and I can’t believe I hadn’t already asked you that.”

Marie laughed. “I think I’ve been hogging all the questions. But I’d really rather hear about your love life than my teaching career,
that’s for sure.”

Jess snorted and shook her head. “I wouldn’t call it a love life. I date, of course. But for some reason, most of the men I’ve gone out with have been younger than I am, maybe because they’re not beating the
time to start a family
drum.”

“And you’re not ready for that yet?”

“I think I’m getting there, but not quite yet. And besides the age issue, there’s my father.
The men I’ve dated have either wanted a chance to work with my father or they’ve been scared spitless of him. It’s really annoying, so I haven’t dated much at all lately.”

“You’d be surprised how many friends I have with grandsons that would be perfect for you.”

Jess side-eyed Marie, who laughed at her. “I have enough on my plate right now.”

“Oh, but let me tell you about this one
young man. Well, young meaning forty-five or so.”

Two hours of blind date dodging and a lot of laughter later, Jessica found out why Rick had been willing to forego doing his own chores to come back downstairs for dinner. Even though the ones Jessica had stuffed looked a little messy, the manicotti tasted amazing and she ate until she couldn’t bear to put another bite in her mouth.

Then she leaned back in her chair with a groan. “I can’t keep eating like this. I swear my jeans are already getting too tight and I have a closet full of pencil skirts. Those are
not
forgiving.”

“What’s a pencil skirt?” Rick asked from across the table.

“They’re long, like midcalf length, and they hug your...let’s just say they’re somewhat form-fitting.” When he raised an eyebrow, she
tried not to blush. “They’re flattering, but they won’t be for long if I keep having seconds of everything Marie cooks.”

“You have a beautiful figure,” her grandmother said, and Jessica didn’t miss the slight nod of Rick’s head before he quickly turned his attention back to his plate.

“Not for much longer. Our office building has a fitness center in it, so I usually work out at the end
of the day. Only for half an hour or so, but I can gather my thoughts and sweat out any frustrations before heading home. And it keeps my jeans from getting too tight, I guess.”

“Rick, you belong to a gym, don’t you?” Marie asked. “Even though she doesn’t need it as far as I can tell, you should take her to work out with you if it makes her feel better.”

Jessica’s imagination coughed
up an image of a shirtless, sweaty Rick and the instant hot flash made her feel anything but better.

* * *

Rick had just put a big chunk of stuffed manicotti into his mouth and he took his time chewing it. He didn’t need a flashing neon arrow to see what direction Marie was going with that question, but he had a suspicion the place he had a membership to and the San Diego office building
“fitness center” Jessica used were on totally opposite ends of the gym spectrum.

“Sometimes,” he said once he couldn’t put off swallowing his food any longer. “We have some workout equipment at the station, so I don’t really get to the gym very often. I probably talk about it a lot more often then I actually see the inside of it.”

Marie set her fork down and took a sip of her drink before
turning her laser focus on him. “There aren’t any of those gyms just for women nearby, I don’t think, and I don’t want Jessica running around the city trying to find one. But I don’t want her going to your gym with a bunch of strange men all by herself, either.”

“It’s honestly okay, Marie,” Jessica said, but Rick knew it was a lost cause. “I don’t think I’ll actually outgrow my jeans before
I get back to San Diego.”

“But you use it to clear your mind, too, and it’s probably stressful being out here while you have a business to run all the way across the country.”

The obvious answer would be for Jessica to go back across the country and just run her business, but Rick wisely kept that suggestion to himself. “I can take you to the gym. You want to go tomorrow?”

“I...”
She gave him a look across the table that clearly said she wasn’t sure she wanted to at all, but she
was
getting the hint that Marie wasn’t going to give up on the idea. “Okay.”

“How’s ten o’clock? It’s not far. Down the street and around the corner, so we can walk. And there’s no place to change, so wear what you want to work out in.”

“Sounds good.”

“That’s settled, then.” Looking
very satisfied with herself, Marie picked up her fork again. “Since you’re going to the gym tomorrow, do you want another manicotti?”

Once they were done eating and the kitchen had been cleaned up, Rick made his second escape of the day. They’d invited him to watch television with them, but he’d reminded them he had stuff he needed to get done.

It wasn’t entirely true. He didn’t have
much of a to-do list other than the laundry and some light housekeeping, but he’d pretty much had his fill of Broussards for the day. They were exhausting, really. He’d been worried about Joe and Marie for so long, he should have been relieved to have Jess there to take up some of the slack. But he couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a coincidence that they were meeting with the doctor on a Tuesday,
when they knew he’d be at the station.