Spark Of Desire (27 page)

“Thank you,” Kevin muttered.

Dan draped his arm over Kevin’s shoulder. “Listen, I have a lot of experience with this kind of problem. This is what you do. When you get off duty, go to the florist and pick out a big bouquet, preferably with roses. Red ones. The more the better. Take them to her job and apologize in front of all her girlfriends so they know how contrite you are.”

“I don’t know if I’d go to her job,” Jack shook his head. “Try her at home. You have no scene control at her job. People walking in and out all the time. It’s too risky.”

“Okay, if you’re not sure how she’ll react, then do it at her house. You know when she’ll be home. Get there before she’s due home and wait at the door. It works like a charm.” Dan nodded.

“I’m not doing it,” Kevin growled and tried to walk away, but his friends crowded around him again, blocking his way.

“Why not?” Jack asked. “It’s just an apology. You know you were stupid.”

“She wouldn’t accept my apology. She hates me, and there’s no hope.” Kevin shook them off and headed inside the station, leaving the other three men standing confused behind him.

* * * *

Jessica walked into Eric’s office. “I need next Sunday and Monday off,” she announced. She was about to turn around and walk out again, but Eric’s nervous squeak stopped her. The last couple of days, employees and customers alike had fled her path. Anyone unlucky enough to talk to her had been happy to escape her snarling presence. For Eric to even whimper at her now boded ill. “What?” she demanded, turning on him.

“It’s just— Well, that week’s bad.” Eric started leafing through his day planner. “See, Mindi has the second through the eighth off, and Sonya asked for Sunday the sixth, too. I have a family reunion on that same day, and I had planned on being gone until the eighth so I had time to drive home, and then Tonya is off the seventh through the twelfth and she can’t come in until after six on the sixth. So if you take the sixth and the seventh,” Eric coughed. “We won’t be covered.”

Jessica put her hands on her hips. “I can’t open on the day of my oral exam. You scheduled me to work on all my exam days.”
Provided I get that far
. She pushed the thought out of her mind. She would get that far, rank high enough to be hired, survive training, and become a paramedic just to spite Kevin Marshall, or die trying.

Eric coughed again. He shrank into his chair. “I guess I could open the seventh. I’ll just drive straight home after the reunion instead of staying at my grandmother’s house.”

“So I still have to work that Sunday.”

Eric swallowed and stiffened. “Yes. It’s just a swing,” he added.

Jessica groaned. She had wanted that day to relax and prepare herself, but when the schedule changed last Monday, she had to work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and the written and the oral fell on consecutive Mondays. She’d managed to trade off the thirtieth and thirty-first, but not the sixth and seventh. “All right. I guess I can do the ten to seven.” Making it sound like she was doing him a favor. Kevin was right. She was manipulative. Walking out of the office, she caught a glimpse of herself in the window. The new haircut didn’t look like her for a second.

Things about her had changed in the last couple of days. Her tension and anger was reflected in the faces of her friends. All her time was spent either studying or working out. When she went in for the usual trim yesterday, she’d gotten her hair cut very short instead. She told herself she’d gotten it cut so it would be out of the way. The boyish cut was because it had looked best with her face.

She couldn’t quite convince herself it had nothing to do with the memory of Kevin running his fingers through it. Or that the purpose of the boyish cut was to make her look as masculine as possible. She didn’t want to think that she was trying to look and behave as little like a woman as possible.

Even though she knew she was.

* * * *

Jessica picked eggshell out of the mixing bowl. She shouldn’t be baking cookies. Right now she should be soaking the aches out of every muscle in her body or sleeping to recover from the physical exam. But if she stopped to do anything, she ended up getting mad at Kevin and mad at herself for wasting energy getting mad at Kevin. Stupid Kevin. She tried to crack the second egg on the side of the bowl without smashing eggshells in the batter again.

The phone rang. Jessica’s hand slipped and half the eggshell slithered into the batter. Probably Kevin calling with excellent timing to get her all wound up again. She snatched the phone off the cradle. “Hello?”

“Um, Jessica? What are you doing home?”

Kevin’s voice would never get that high. “Who is this?”

“Bobbie.”

Jessica grinned. “Bobbie? Really?”

“Yes. What are you doing home?”

“Resting my sore, tired body.” Baking cookies and hating Kevin Marshall to distraction. She carried the phone into the kitchen.

“I hear you ranked third so far. That’s, well, that’s really great. How come you’re not out celebrating with Kevin?”

Jessica snorted. “Kevin. We had an argument. He stormed out. I haven’t seen him since.” She started picked eggshells again, flicking them into the trash.

“When?”

“After the wedding. I don’t know, two weeks ago.” Something new started to ache in the vicinity of her chest. She’d been so stupid to look forward to that event. Such a big deal to be invited. Going to a wedding always meant something. Ha. What about that nitwit Dan brought? And Lew had brought his sister.

“You’re kidding. I thought you two were a couple.” If Bobbie followed the pattern of Jessica’s other friends, she’d move on to flabbergasted pretty fast. Unless she was like Julie, who’d leaped right past that in favor of outrage. Julie had been all for making a voodoo doll and burning it in the alley behind the store. She’d even hunted down the kit on the sales floor.

“No. According to him, I was trying to manipulate him into marrying me. I was using him to get into the department, and I was willing to lie to do it.” She picked up the mixer and surveyed the bowl for any remaining eggshell pieces. Hell, they were calcium. Leave the damn things in there as a nutritional supplement.

“That doesn’t sound like Kevin,” Bobbie said.

“It sounded just like him when he was snarling at me in my living room.” Jessica cringed at the sound of her own voice. No wonder people were avoiding her. She was sweating fury like she was in Hell’s best sauna.

“What a jerk,” Bobbie howled. Straight for outrage. Jessica thought she should introduce Bobbie to Julie. “He said you were using him to get into the department? What’s the point? You didn’t need that much help, and there isn’t a casting couch anyplace in City Hall. Did he think you were stupid?”

“I don’t know.” Jessica sighed. She felt comforted by Bobbie’s reaction. Having her friends pronounce him a jerk was almost a requirement. Having his friend do it was confirmation. “But I haven’t heard from him.”

“Have you tried to call him?”

“No,” Jessica snapped. “My best friend assumed I was chasing Kevin, too. You’re the only one who didn’t assume I was doing all this to catch a man.” Her voice tightened and she switched on the mixer to cream the dough.

“Nobody else knows how hard it is. And Kevin is cute, too. He never looked at me the way he looks at you.”

“Fat lot of good it does.” Jessica turned off the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Bobbie was right. All this training was hard. Really hard. How pathetic did Mindi think she was to go through all this to catch a man? This went way beyond running to catch the bus. “At least I proved I didn’t need him.” Jessica turned on the mixer again to give the dough a final whirl before adding the dry ingredients.

“Yeah, you did,” Bobbie said. “You always seemed like you’d be good together. He’d never have been happy with me.”

Jessica pinned the phone between her shoulder and her ear so she use both hands for the cookies. “I don’t think he’ll be happy with anyone.”

“He would have been happy with you if he’d given you half a chance. He’s just too stupid to see it.”

“The worst part about it is I did everything I could to play it cool. I didn’t attack him, I didn’t lure him. I didn’t do anything. He kissed me in the kitchen on his birthday, and he asked to kiss me when he was here after the wedding. He was the one who wanted to keep it quiet.” Jessica sneered despite that fact that no one would see her. He’d stood in her dining room and asked if he could kiss her. Very gentlemanly and sweet.

Just a few minutes before he went insane.

“Why did he want to keep it quiet?”

“At his birthday party he said something about the department not wanting couples and that it might mess up my ranking. I guess it doesn’t matter now.” Jessica ground her teeth, scraping off the beaters with her fingers. They hadn’t paid any attention to each other until they couldn’t have one another. He’d been shopping there for years. How many times had they talked without him ever noticing her? What if she stayed at the bookstore? Would he like her better then? Would they have a chance? Would she be miserable without him or without the job? Not that she seemed to have any say in the matter.

“You have your oral on Monday, right?”

“I find out tomorrow what time.”

“Good. Let me know. I’ll take you out for a congratulatory dinner if Kevin’s too much of a pig to do it.”

“You don’t have to.” Jessica tore open the bag of chocolate chips and dumped them in the dough. Would anybody congratulate her when she passed? Would anybody be that excited? Bobbie sounded more determined than enthusiastic.

“Of course I don’t have to. I want to. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay. Bye,” Jessica muttered. Kevin had dumped her on Bobbie, and now Bobbie felt required to see this through. At least Bobbie would have a little class about this if Kevin couldn’t.

“Bye.”

Jessica took the phone back to the dining room. When she went back to the kitchen, she looked at the bowl of cookie dough, deciding whether or not to just eat it. With the way her luck had been running she’d end up in the hospital with salmonella poisoning from the raw eggs and miss the oral exam. Then she’d never be able to glare at Kevin from inside the department. Stupid Kevin.

* * * *

Everyone in the living room jumped when the pounding started at the door. Jack, Dan and Lew had been brave enough to show up for poker, but they had decided to call the game due to Kevin’s inability to be civil. To be honest, all three of them had only come out of loyalty and not to spend time with Kevin. For four shifts in a row he’d been impossible to work with and impossible to avoid, and he knew it. He didn’t deserve any of them. Somebody should be kicking his ass from here to the second Monday of next month.

Kevin opened the door and as he did, Bobbie pushed into the living room.

“You fool,” she bellowed at Kevin. She looked even worse for wear than Kevin did. If they hadn’t known her as well as they all did, they would have thought she was drunk. Her hair sprang out at odd angles and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

“Hello to you too, Bobbie,” Kevin quipped, backing up a couple of paces.

“Don’t get smart with me.” She poked him in the chest. “You know, Marshall, I used to think you were the greatest. You were smart, and you were good-looking, and you were fun to be with. I wanted you in the worst way. You’re a…” Her voice deteriorated into sputtering.

“Bobbie, what is wrong with you?” Kevin tried to keep his voice calm, but if Bobbie couldn’t manage to vent in English, he worried she might start throwing things. He might be getting that ass-kicking after all. Dan and Jack were sitting up, ready to jump if he needed them. Lew had already stood and come around the coffee table. At least only those three were here to witness this.

“Wrong with me?” She sobbed. Tears flooded out of her blue eyes. “You jerk.”

He reached onto the coffee table and picked up a box of Kleenex. “Here.” He held it out.

She swatted the box out of his hands. It sailed across the room into the dining room, bounced off the table and into the wall.

Dan muttered an awed curse. Jack stood up.

“What
is
wrong with me, huh? I was here first. I tried to be what you wanted. But you never even looked at me. Then you found her.” Bobbie wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You found her, and you couldn’t keep your hands off her.”

“Her?” Kevin stammered.

“Jessica,” Bobbie shouted. “I saw you kissing her at your party. You were practically having sex against the wall in the kitchen.”