Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay (3 page)

She thought about today and the sugary tartness of the lemonade she was making. As she sliced the first of them, she could feel her mouth start to pucker.

It felt good, being here. With her sister.

“Is Tox stopping by?”

Grace shook her head and sliced the pie. “No. He’s working.”

“Oh, of course. I knew that. I saw him earlier, actually.”

Grace looked up. “Really? Where?”

“At the community center.”

“What happened?”

“Jim Hinds fainted during a class.”

“Is he okay?”

“Should be fine.” Samantha had gone by to see Jim after talking to Hank. At the hospital, Jim had seemed shaken and pale, but in good spirits. Not in similar spirits was his wife, who’d been furious. Jim had told Samantha he would be out for a couple of months while he figured out what was wrong with him, but Allie Hinds had followed her into the hall and had told her that her husband wouldn’t be attacking any more women for Samantha.

It was too bad. Jim not only hit hard, he laughed hard, too. Her students felt safe with him. Sure, he was terrifying the first time he came at them for real, but then, when they stood their ground, and he had to fall down or back off or run, he was the first to congratulate them when he took off his helmet.

“He’s not going to be able to come back.”

“Oh, that’s no good. Hey, be careful with that knife, would you?”

Samantha held it up. “Lady, I know how to fight off men armed with machetes. You think I’m scared of a little kitchen knife like this?” She set the next lemon on the cutting board and promptly sliced through the tip of her finger.

“Ow.” The blood came fast as Samantha held it up to look at the damage. “Double ow. Maybe triple.”

Grace laughed.

“I can’t believe you’re
laughing
at me right now,” Samantha said as she wound a paper towel around her finger. “I’m probably dying.”

Grace straightened her face, and Samantha could tell it wasn’t easy. “Do you think you need stitches?”

Samantha peeked under the towel. “Not more than one or two.”

The grin on Grace’s face fell. “Really truly?”

“No. I’m probably fine. It’ll stop bleeding in a second.” She paused. “Or I’ll
bleed to death
because my sister
doesn’t care.
”

Grace, looking reassured, shrugged. “I warned you about that knife. Tox has been sharpening them every time he comes over.”

“Why doesn’t he just move in? Now that you’ve got your child, and by that I mean me, out of the house?” Samantha had recently rented an apartment over the bagel shop. The fact that she got a discount on rent for working the register a couple of mornings a week had sealed the already-sweet deal of the bay-facing one bedroom.

Grace placed a piece of pie on a paper plate and carefully covered it with saran wrap. Samantha knew she probably didn’t realize that she was as transparent as the plastic—that piece of pie would be Samantha’s piece to take home with her. The rest of the pie would go to the fire station. If Samantha didn’t like the big, loud Tox as much as she did, she’d probably be sickened by it.

Instead, she found herself wondering what it must be like to have that kind of relationship with someone.

And most disconcertingly, she found herself wondering about Hank.

Grace slipped in front of her, making short work of slicing the lemons and using the hand-press to get the most liquid out. “Just sit. Keep me company.”

“What’s the lemonade for, anyway? You’ve never been that into lemonade.”

Grace colored prettily and Samantha groaned. “You’re taking that to him, too? Martha Stewart, huh? I think you need to add a vanilla bean and a spring of wild rosemary to that, don’t forget.”

“You were
just
trying to pair us off into the same living arrangement.”

“That’s different. I want him to live with you and for him to mow your lawn for you.”

Dreamily, Grace said, “Oh, he mows my lawn, all right…”

Samantha held up her hands. “Enough. That’s way more than I needed to know, anyway. Hey, what if I asked Hank Coffee to help out at Darling Defense?”

Grace blinked. “Really?”

“To be my attacker when Wally can’t be there,” she clarified.

Grace shook her head. “Are you sure about that? Do you want me to tell you what I really think?”

“I want your opinion. Of what you think he would be like to work with. That’s all.” Samantha took a deep breath. She loved her sister with all her heart, and sometimes she just wished that for
once
, Grace could not try to manage things.

She watched Grace take a matching breath as she put down the knife. “Tox adores him. Wait. Let me correct that. Tox doesn’t adore anyone—”

“Except you.”

“—okay, but he really trusts Hank. He says he’s a good listener.”

“I remember that about him.”

Grace slapped the top of the counter. “Right, right, I forgot for a minute. You freaking
dated
him, when, in junior college?”

Samantha nodded. “Way back when we were too stupid to figure anything out except how to drop any class that started before noon.”

“And that’s why he was all moony after your accident. That’s right. Why are you asking me, then? You know him way better than I ever could. I, for example, never slept with him.”

Samantha opened her mouth and then closed it. She hadn’t slept with Hank back then. For some reason, that made the memory of him more…special. It felt stupid, and she wouldn’t admit it to her sister, but Hank had been better than just some guy she’d randomly hooked up with while drunk at a frat party. She’d really
liked
Hank, with his lanky limbs and shy brown eyes and that mop of scruffy surfer-boy hair, dark with blond highlights colored by the sun.

And then Vicente had come along, bragging on his arrest record—who else but a rebellious teenager grown into a looking-for-excitement woman would fall for that?—and roaring out on his Harley. Young Samantha, idiotic Samantha, had dumped Hank almost unceremoniously. She’d taken him out, yeah. To a little bar in town, the Wooden Duck, if she remembered right. She’d bought him a beer and had told him that there was someone else. He’d looked upset. She hadn’t had enough alcohol yet that night to wipe that out of her mind.

Then Vicente had pushed through the bar doors—because, again, the idiotic Samantha had thought she could get everything done in one place, break up with one guy, meet up with another. She’d left with Vicente that night, wrapping one arm around his waist, waving with the other hand back at Hank.

How would her life have been different if she’d jumped off Vicente’s motorcycle while it was still in the lot, if she’d raced back to be with Hank, instead?

But no. Samantha leaped before she looked. She decided to do things before weighing the consequences. Sometimes that turned out great. Once she’d ended up waitressing for six months at a surfer bar in Molokai, sand between her toes.

And once, she’d ended up in rehab after an overdose.

They say it took some people a long time to hit rock bottom. Samantha knew she’d been lucky. Her bottom had been no place to stay, no job, nowhere to go, her sister finally refusing her calls. She’d come close to dying herself that time, and she didn’t want that ever to happen again.

So yeah, jumping off that motorcycle would have earned her some road rash, but might have saved a lot of heartache over the years.

“He offered to help with the classes. After the ambulance took Jim away.”

“What did you say?”

“What could I say? I think he’d be perfect, if he can learn to hit a girl.”

Grace shuddered. “I hate it when you say that.”

“People hit girls,” said Samantha. “It’s better if women know how to hit back if necessary.”

“Remember when you were tutoring kids? You helped them write their college essays. Wasn’t that a nicer job? More easy on the…hands? And body? I hate that you’re taking punches.” Grace measured the sugar, and Samantha knew she wouldn’t ever go over or under the recommended amount, whereas Samantha liked to pour in as much extra sugar as she could, until the liquid wouldn’t take any more. She’d learned it from their mother, who loved sweet things, just like Samantha. Their mother had died of cancer before she’d been able to do all the things she’d wanted to, and Samantha had recovered slower than the aptly-named Grace, so much more like their prosaic, sensible father.

Samantha pulled the paper towel more tightly around her finger. “We do the same job, if you think about it.”

“Huh. Acupuncture as self-defense? Or are you looking at it the other way around?”

“You punch people with needles to be more healthy. I needle people until they throw punches in order to be more safe.” Samantha felt pleased with her turn of phrase, awkward though it was.

“That might be a bit over-the-top. How about we’re both helping people to be better humans?”

“Okay, Rainshadow Warrior, put your incense and moon crystals down before someone gets hurt.” Samantha pulled off a piece of the pie crust and popped it in her mouth.

Grace hit her lightly on the knee. “He’s cute, you know.”

Samantha frowned. “Do you think so?” She tried to play dumb but knew it would never fly.

“Come on. And I know you do, too.”

It was a good point. Samantha
did
think Hank was cute. He’d grown into those long limbs—no longer lanky, he’d filled out with what seemed like all muscle. He was gorgeous, in fact, still with that mop of floppy brown surfer hair, those big dark eyes, those chiseled cheek bones, and his chest so wide it looked like he did push-ups all day. “You might be right. I don’t think I should give him the job.”

Grace closed her eyes. “So you’re going to change your mind again.”

Samantha gritted her teeth. She hated it when Grace said that. Just because Samantha frequently thought about things and decided on new courses of action didn’t mean that she was as fickle as her sister thought. “It might be weird. With our history and all.”

Grace said, “Hmm.”

“And then there’s the whole thing that he’s Tox’s partner…”

“One of his coworkers.”

“They ride in the same fire engine. Every day.”

Grace shook her head. “Not every day. They get days off. I don’t understand why you’re changing your mind on this. Give the guy a chance. Look, come with me to the fire station tonight when I go to visit Tox. Bring the lemonade. The guys’ll love it.”

“No way.” Samantha grabbed her coat—too thin for the cold weather outside—and checked her jeans pocket for her keys. “Hey, do me a favor, would you?”

“No, no,
no
.” Grace held up her hands. “I’m not telling him you’re backing out.”

“Please?” Samantha clapped her hands together, prayer-like. “Pretty please? For me?”

“I’m a founding member of your business, right?”

“The only one I have.”

“So this member says no. I’m not telling him.
You
tell him you changed your mind.”

“Gracie. I can’t. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“What, you think he hasn’t recovered from when you broke up with him a million years ago?”

Samantha didn’t say anything and just kept her eyes on Grace’s. If there was any chance that Hank still minded her leaving him in that bar so many years ago, it wasn’t fair to hurt him again.

“Gah. Fine. What am I supposed to tell him?”

“That Jim got better.”

“No.”

“That I found someone else.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Hank, of
all
people, couldn’t be the attacker for Darling Defense. Why hadn’t she thought it through? Hank would probably sign his girlfriend up for the class—because a guy like him
had
to have a beautiful little girlfriend—and then Samantha would have to be friends with her. And that quickly became one of the worst ideas Samantha had ever thought of. “Anyone. You. Tox. I don’t care.”

Grace sighed heavily. “Fine,” her sister said. “Whatever. I’ll clean up the mess. Again.”

Samantha hated with all her heart that that was exactly what Grace was doing. But she couldn’t hurt Hank again, not even one tiny little mosquito’s worth of hurt, and heck. She was used to her sister being disappointed in her.

CHAPTER FIVE

HANK HAD NEVER noticed the apartment over the bagel shop, even though he stopped for coffee there at least once a week. The staircase that led up from the back parking lot was rickety, the handhold loose. The small back porch trembled as he stood on it, and he noticed that there wasn’t even a bulb screwed in to the porch fixture.

He knocked on the glass panel in the door.
Calm down
. He was being ridiculous, but the nervousness he’d woken up with hadn’t gone away—in fact, he’d had to leave his coffee half-drunk on the counter at home.

Jeez. He wasn’t picking her up for a date, after all. This was a business thing. All business.

Sure, all business, but he’d dreamed of her mouth last night. The way her body had felt against his—that wasn’t business at all. That had just been so hot it had hurt to roll over.

The fact that she hadn’t opened the door yet, though, was weird.

He knocked again, and the glass panes clattered in the door. They were loose enough he bet he could slip one pane out without even breaking it. If there was one thing he and his firefighter brethren were good at, it was breaking into people’s homes. Most older people left their doors unlocked in case they needed help, and Darling Bay was safe enough for it to be okay most of the time. But younger residents still fell in their bathrooms or had sudden asthma attacks. Medical problems often rendered healthy people unable to unlock a door in a timely fashion. And when every second counted, firefighters broke down doors, bashed in windows, tore off locked screens, and lifted sliding glass doors off their rails.

Curiosity got the better of him. Hank fit the flat of his palm to the pane and jiggling it lightly, used an upward pressure. Sure enough, the glass lifted enough in its small frame that he was able to get his thumb under it. He slid it out, toward him. Great. Now he’d have to make sure it was fixed before he left, but it should be easy enough to slip it back in.