To Protect & Serve (12 page)

Soup. Jeff was too depressed to eat anything else. He had already checked the machine six times, and still nothing. Just like he knew there would be—infinitely.

The night was one long, exhausting merry-go-round of trips to the bathroom and fighting Tucker off when he tried to dance with her. Hands. He was all hands. They would slide up and down her back as they danced, and Lisa wondered what the feasibility of simply decking him and being done with it was.

“You know,” she finally said, pulling back from him, fighting for air. “I’m getting kind of tired. Why don’t we call it a night?”

“Good idea.”

You idiot
, her brain yelled at her a mere fifteen minutes later.
The office is not this direction
. “This is kind of the long way around, don’t you think?” she asked, willing herself not to lose her cool.

“Relax.” Tucker flashed that smile that ate away
at her gut. “I thought we could have a nightcap at my place.”

She closed her eyes, knowing polite was going to get her in the middle of a wrestling match she had been a participant in one too many times. “Look, I’m really tired. I need to go back and get my car.”

“Hard to get.” He put his hand on her shoulder and dug into the hardened muscles there. “I like that.”

“No.” She took his hand and put it back on the steering wheel. “Not hard to get. No get. Now, take me back to my car.”

He glanced over at her and scowled. “But it’s all the way across town.”

“So?”

“So, let’s just go to my place. You can crash there, and we’ll get your car tomorrow.”

“No, Tucker. You’re not hearing me. I want to go to my car. Now either you take me there, or I’m going to get out and walk.” Her gaze chanced out to the freeway speeding by her window.

“Yeah, right,” he said with a dismissive laugh. “Like you’re going to jump out going 80 on the freeway.”

Lisa reached for the door handle. “I’m not kidding, Tucker.”

He glanced over at her, and his face fell into a deeper scowl. “But I bought you dinner.”

“Money?” She understood his insinuation and dug into her purse. “Is that what you’re worried about? Then here. Here’s forty. That should cover mine.” She pushed the bills into his space as he glanced down at them without moving more than his eyes.

“Put your money back. It was on me.”

“No,” she said as her patience snapped. “‘On me’ means you don’t expect anything in return. Nothing. Otherwise it’s not on you. It’s on me. And that’s not how this is going to go. So, here, take this.” She tried to stuff the bills into his jacket pocket, but he pushed her away.

“We’re almost there,” Tucker said as his voice darkened. He pulled off the freeway and stopped at an intersection. “Just chill. Okay?”

But she knew all too well where chilling was going to get her. With no more than a half-second of thought, she reached for the door handle, clicked it, and swung it open as the light turned green ahead of them.

“What are you doing?” he practically screamed.

“What I should’ve done when you showed up.” One hand clicked her seat belt as her first heel hit the pavement. Horns behind them
blared to life. Her body out, she slammed the door and stumbled from the middle of the road across three lanes to the other side as the cars played pinball with her path. “Cripes! How do I let myself get into these messes?”

Beep. Honk. Beep. And she made it safely to the other side of the street. “Great. Now what?” She looked around to get her bearings, and then she realized that Tucker might actually have the audacity to come try to find her. That thought jerked her steps down the street. “I truly hate guys,” she said into the night air. “I really and truly do. They are nothing but egomaniacal, selfish, inconsiderate jerks, and if I never see another one again, it will be too soon.”

Lisa didn’t bother going to work over the weekend. The possibility that Tucker would call or worse--that he would outright show up at her door again make her skin crawl across her veins. How many times had she been so stupid in the past? As she clicked across the zebras on the computer in her living room, she tried not to think about it. However, the thoughts were going nowhere. There was Jay in high school. He had seemed nice enough until they made it to the back row of the movies together.

Then there was Martin, the
only prom date she ever had, junior year. Why she had tried to look so perfect for him, she couldn’t really tell now. All that had done was send an invitation that had nearly cost her more than the heel of one shoe and half of the top of her dress. Her face set into stone as she clicked across the web. In college it was a whole string of guys—many of which she didn’t even want to remember. Culminating with Conner Beale…

In frustration she clicked the
mouse twice and shut the computer down. Thinking was a bad idea. She needed something to do so she wouldn’t think. Picking up the stereo remote, she flicked the little black box on, found a song that was actually louder than her thoughts, turned it up a notch, and then went into the kitchen where a week’s worth of dirty dishes stared back at her. It was better than the alternatives.

The only thing Jeff thought of all weekend was her and the possibility that when he happened by the answering machine, the light would be blinking. However, that little light wasn’t cooperating.
She’ll call Monday
, he told himself, as he crawled into bed Sunday night.
She has to get the message tomorrow
. Arching an arm behind his head, he gazed up at the ceiling, and let his mind float to the two of them in some distant space in the future. It was all that was keeping him sane.

“Here’s the weekend messages,” Sherie said Monday morning, laying the small stack on top of the folders piled on Lisa’s desk. She took one look at them, and dread traced through her. When Sherie was gone, Lisa reached over and flipped through them—fully intending to trash anything that had the name Tucker on it. However, before she found one so easy to discard, a name jumped out at her.
Jeff
.

Telling herself it made no sense, she stood from her desk and strode out into the front office. “What’s this one about Jeff?”

“I don’t know,” Sherie said. “He just said Jeff, from some fire station. He didn’t sound like a client, but I think he knows you.”

“Oh.” Lisa looked down at the pink slip in her hand. “Okay, I know who it is.” She closed the door softly behind her, went around to her desk, and sat down. This was insane. How much clearer message could she have gotten on Friday night? Guys were not to be trusted... ever. Closing her eyes lest her heart see what she was doing, she crunched the little paper up and sent it sailing to the trashcan. It didn’t quite make it, b
ut Lisa turned back to her work.
It’s the thought that counts
.

That light was getting on his nerves. Jeff checked it twice when he got home from work on Tuesday, but still nothing. “Please, God, I’m asking you here. I just want to see her again. Please.”

“I want a full-blown proposal,” Burke said on Wednesday when he called. There was no mention of Tucker or Friday, which Lisa was grateful for, but what she really wished was that they would just give up on this whole idea altogether and leave her alone. “If you could put a brochure together to send out to the schools, I think that would put the idea over the top with them.”

“A… brochure, Sir?”

“I was thinking. You could get quotes from Fletcher, and Hayes, and that other guy, what’s his name at the City Engineering Department. That would put our name out there so the school board and everybody can get behind this thing.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Great idea. I’ll get to work on it right away.”

“Great. If you could get those out by the first…”

“The first? But that’s only a week away.”

“Then I’d better let you get to work.”

“Yeah,” she said as she hung up the phone. “You’d better.”

When Sherie walked past Lisa’s door Friday at one on her way back in from lunch, Lisa’s attention snapped up. “Sherie, did Hayes call back yet?” She took a bite of the sandwich lying on her desk, hoping that somehow she had simply missed the phone call.

“Nope, nothing,” Sherie called back.

“And you called him?”

“I’ve left all kinds of messages,” Sherie said, appearing at the door. “Either he’s not getting them or…”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Lisa finished for her. Furiously she wiped her hands across each other to get the crumbs off. “Okay, if that’s the way he wants to play it, then that’s the way we’ll play.”

A whole day of continuing education to relearn CPR after a night of little sleep due to the cornflakes scattered across his short-sheeted mattress was enough to make a minister cuss, and yet Jeff was determined not to let them get to him. They were testing him, and he was going to pass this test as surely as he had passed every other one to get to this point.

However, his eyelids were betraying him the longer the nurse droned on, and when they took a five minute break at 4:20, he stumbled to the break room to grab a cup of coffee, hoping it would get him through the last thirty minutes awake. Cup in hand, he stepped out of the break room and very nearly ran into Lisa coming the other direction. “Oh. Lisa. Hi.” His heart did a somersault and two cartwheels as the coffee in his hand nearly jumped from the cup.

“Hi,” she said, her tone was harsh and businesslike. “Is Captain Hayes here?”

“Uh. Yeah.” He pointed up the wire mesh. “I think he’s up in his office.”

“Great. Thanks.” With no more than that, she turned and her heels clicked across the concrete and up the stairs as Jeff stood, body frozen to the spot, letting his gaze follow her all the way to the door, which she opened barely a half-second after she knocked.

Carefully he bent and took another sip as his gaze traveled up the stairs completely on its own. Whatever he had done, the chief was about to regret it.

“Don’t take this
the wrong way.” Without pretense, Lisa sat in the chair across from a none-too-pleased Captain Hayes who had only to be on-site while his troops took this latest round of classes. “But just because you are a captain, that doesn’t give you the right to blow me off like I don’t even exist.”

“Ms. Matheson, I’m sure I don’t know…”

“Messages,” she said shortly. “And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve called—repeatedly. I’ve left tons of messages, but I guess you were just too busy to pick up the phone and tell me you had no intention of helping me so you let the answering machine do it for you. Well, I don’t like being ignored, and I am not going to go away. So you can either have the courtesy to tell me to my face to take a long leap into an empty river, or you can start treating me with a little respect.”

Slowly his gaze fell from hers to the desk. “I know you’re trying, Ms. Matheson, but I really, really wish you would just get somebody else. Speaking is just not my expertise.”

“I appreciate that, Sir. I really do, but I’m on a deadline here, and you’re what I have to go with—whether either of us likes that or not.” She shifted an inch in her chair. “Look, I’m putting this brochure thing together for the schools. They may very well turn tail and run in the other direction over this thing like everyone else has. Who knows at this point? But Burke Cordell wants this project, and I’ve committed to doing it. So, please. Are you going to help me or not?”

The captain sighed and scratched his head. “Okay, what do you need?”

He really was a nice man, Lisa decided as she shut the captain's door behind her after an impromptu interview which had gleaned exactly what she needed—nice quotes from a very knowledgeable, interesting person. The kids were going to love him if she could ever actually get him up there on stage.

Clutching her black notebook to her chest, she looked down at the steps as she descended them. The fear of catching a heel on the mesh and ending up on the concrete below grabbed her gaze and held it there. However, a thought superseded even that one. She looked at her watch and thanked God above for 24-hour shifts. Although that still put him somewhere in the building, at least if she could make it to the door and out, she wouldn’t have to talk to him again.

At the concrete the guys standing around the truck noticed her and half-waved, but none of them was Jeff. She should have been happy about that fact, but something in her just wouldn’t let her be. The sunshine outside was definitely getting warmer. The trees were blanketed with tiny pink blossoms, and she breathed in their fragrance as she walked down the sidewalk. One part of her was absurdly sad that she hadn’t gotten to see him again. But that was nuts. She should be happy—it would save her the embarrassment of feeling like a love struck teenager again. She hated feeling like that, and she knew anyone who bothered to look could see it every time she was around him.

Barely looking enough to cross the parking lot, she hurried to her car, where her key was halfway to the lock when she first heard the voice. “Lisa!” It stopped her cold for a long split-second, but somehow her brain told her if she just ignored it, it would go away.  She fiddled with the keys. “Lisa! Hey!” Jeff said, jogging up past the other cars to hers.

Casually as if she really had just heard him, she pushed a piece of hair behind her ear, telling herself he was just any other guy. “Oh, hi there.” But not one thread of her believed that lie, and with one look, the thought scattered like blossoms in the wind. Why did he have to increase her core temperature to scalding with one simple little glance? It was maddening.

“I just…” He glanced back at the station. “Um, we didn’t get a chance to talk earlier. I was just wondering how things are going.”

Well, they’d be better if I could think straight
, her brain said as her gaze, trying to escape from the blue pools, focused instead on his arms. With no jacket covering them and the T-shirt stretched across them, they were making the signals in her brain fire backward. “Oh, fine. It’s fine.” She tried to unlock her car again, but her hands were shaking so badly, she finally gave that up for fear he would notice.

“You looked kind of upset when you came in.” He leaned onto the side of her car and crossed his arms as his gaze held only on her. At this rate she was going to suffer a complete meltdown. “I was hoping nothing was wrong.”

“Oh, y-yeah. Well, the captain… I was trying to get in touch with him, and he wasn’t returning my calls. So, I was kind of…” Returning calls. Something about that phrase jammed into her other thoughts as her memory snapped to a little pink piece of paper crumpled and lying by a trash can. “I… umm…” This was a disaster. “I got your message the other day.”

“You did?” he asked, and his arms uncrossed so his hands could find the pockets of his jeans. “Oh. I figured I must’ve left it on the wrong machine or something because you know, you never called back.”

Nervously she wound the hair over her ear, willing the earth to be kind and swallow her whole. “Yeah. Well, I’ve been kind of busy.”

“Yeah,” he said, and with one glance she knew he had gotten the message she was sending. The ache in her heart followed his gaze down to the pavement. Then he looked up and caught her gaze in the depths of his. “Well, I’d better let you get back to work.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, feeling the middle of her soul rip in half at the hurt in his eyes.

“See ya.” He turned and started across the lot as she willed herself to be strong and let him go. However, there was a little
, tiny voice that said this time he wouldn’t be coming back.

Insanity times two washed over her. “Jeff!” she finally called as he crossed the lot, and she wondered what in the world she was doing as her feet started after him. “Jeff, wait!”

Right in the middle of the driveway, he stopped, turned, and the hurt on his face smashed into her heart. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

“Um, I was just wondering if you’re…
hungry,” she said, battling for words and air. “I mean I only had half a sandwich for lunch, and I’m starving.”

A sad hint of that lop-sided smile traced across his face. “I don’t want to keep you. I know you’ve got things to do.”

“No. Well, yeah, I do, but I may pass out from malnutrition if I don’t get something in my stomach, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

His smile increased. “No, we wouldn’t want that.” However, she saw the anxiety wrap around him and lace through his eyes. “So, what? There’s a couple of nice places down the block.” Then he looked down at his clothes, and she felt the apprehension pouring from him.

“You know what I really want?” she asked, throwing propriety to the wind. “A hot dog.”

Disbelief jumped right through his apprehension. “A hot dog?”