Controlled Burn (8 page)

He had to believe it was because she felt genuine affection for them. Maybe she’d come to Boston with the intention of pushing them into selling the house and getting her hands on a slice of that valuable real estate pie, but he couldn’t be sure. What he could be sure of was the fact she was seriously
bonding with her grandparents and their genuine well-being would be her primary consideration going forward.

“We can at least get the decorations out,” Marie said.

“I’ll go drag the boxes out of the garage,” Rick said, thankful to have something to do. “We can put it in the stand and give it some water, plus we can inspect the lights. Jess, you want to give me a hand?”

She looked
startled for a second, but recovered quickly. “Sure.”

“The storage loft in the garage doesn’t have a light because I need to replace the bulb socket and keep forgetting. I just need you to hold a flashlight for me.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d made the request. There were windows at either end of the loft and enough light filtered in so he’d managed to drag the Halloween decorations out
and put them away without a flashlight. It was just like the plywood frames for the bushes all over again. He didn’t need her help. He was just using it as an excuse to spend time alone with her.

It would be awkward to back out now, so he waited while she shoved her feet into sneakers and put a sweatshirt on for the short walk to the garage. After unlocking the side door, he flipped on the
main lights and led her to a narrow wooden staircase at the back of the garage. The loft was basically just plywood over ceiling joists, but it was dry and a lot easier to access than the attic space in the house.

“Wow, there’s a lot of stuff in here,” Jessica said as the flashlight beam danced around the boxes, plastic totes and miscellaneous junk stacked high.

“Yeah, but it’s more
organized than it looks. Stuff that probably should have been thrown out fifteen years ago is in the back, under the eaves. The closer you get to the center, the more recently the stuff’s been used. The front’s mostly decorations for the various holidays.”

Suddenly Jess squealed in a choked, horrified way that made it sound as if she was being strangled, and Rick turned, hoping she hadn’t
cut herself on anything. Non-adventurous, indoor sort of people tended to go a long time between tetanus shots.

But when he saw her face, he couldn’t hold back the laughter. She must have strayed too far into the corner because she had a mess of cobwebs in her hair and across her face and chest.

“Where’s the spider?” she asked in a small voice.

“What spider?”

She narrowed her
eyes at him. “What do you think made the cobwebs? A stray cat?”

“They’re probably old. Like a spider starter home, and it’s already moved on to something bigger and better.” He set down the box and moved toward her. “Are you afraid of spiders?”

“Not usually, but I’d rather not have one on my face. And I hate cobwebs.”

“Stay still. I’ll get them off.” He wiped the sticky strands
off her face first, his fingertips skimming over her soft skin. Her lips parted slightly when he touched her, and he found himself staring at her mouth.

She shivered slightly, but he couldn’t be sure if it was from his touch or if she was still freaked out about the spiderwebs, so he quickly picked the few off her sweatshirt and wiped them on the corner of a box.

There were more in her
hair, and those weren’t as easy to get out. Most of them he was able to lift off with his fingers, but a few he had to kind of scrape out by running strands of her hair between his thumbnail and the knuckle of his index finger.

After brushing the last of the cobwebs off on the box, he ran his fingers through her hair to make sure he’d gotten it all. Her hair was as silky as it looked, and
he loved watching it slide through his fingers in the dim light of the loft. And what the hell. She hated cobwebs, so he did it again, just to make extra sure.

“I think you’re just playing with my hair now,” she teased as the last strands slipped free.

“Maybe.” He grinned. “You never know, though. Spiders can be sneaky bastards.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

Her voice was soft and
he heard the invitation in it. This time when he buried his fingers in her hair, he didn’t slide them free again. He pulled her closer and watched her lips part.

And when she lifted onto her toes, her head tilted back in obvious invitation, he lowered his mouth to hers. Her hands ran up his arms and over his shoulders, pulling him close, while he gripped her hip with one hand and kept the
other entwined in her hair.

He dipped his tongue between her lips and she opened to him with a sigh that made his entire body tighten in response. Kissing her was everything he’d imagined it to be, and he’d spent a
lot
of time thinking about it. Deepening the kiss, he felt a rush of satisfaction when she moaned against his mouth.

Then her fingernails grazed the nape of his neck and for
a few seconds all he could think about was getting her naked and kissing every inch of her body. But on the heels of that thought came the awareness that they were in a filthy storage loft and he was
not
supposed to be putting his hands on her. Or his mouth.

Reluctantly, he broke off the kiss and took a step back. She opened her eyes, her gaze soft with desire. Hooking her bottom lip with
her teeth, she looked at him as though she’d also forgotten they were surrounded by boxes, dust and cobwebs.

“Shit.” He ran his hand over his hair and blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t have done that. We should forget it happened.”

“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that anytime soon.”

She said the words in a light tone, but he could see the confusion in her eyes. “I’ll take that as
a compliment, but we both know this is a bad idea.”

Jessica tilted her chin up, looking him in the eye. “Is it?”

“Don’t you think so?” His mind coughed up the whole list of reasons why he should keep his hands off of this particular woman...but maybe he was wrong.

“I guess you’re right. It’s not like you and I could go anywhere and I wouldn’t want Joe and Marie to feel like they’re
caught in the middle.”

Well, damn. That had definitely been on his list of reasons not to kiss her and the fact she agreed meant he probably wasn’t wrong. “Yeah. So we’ll forget this happened and try not to do it again.”

“Like I said, I’m pretty sure I won’t forget it, but I agree we should try not to do it again.”

At least she looked as disappointed as he felt. “Let’s get these
Christmas boxes inside so Marie can start the festivities. And try to stay out of the cobwebs, okay?”

“Ha-ha. You’re a funny guy, Rick Gullotti.” She gestured at the rows of boxes. “Hurry up before the spiders figure out we’re wrecking the joint.”

Chapter Seven

They met with Joe and Marie’s doctor on Tuesday, in a very cramped office that made Jessica feel slightly claustrophobic. She was just glad Rick had to work because she wasn’t sure the room would have held them all. She was also afraid she wouldn’t be able to concentrate with him there after that kiss, but mostly it was the small room.

Or maybe it wasn’t actual
claustrophobia, but the magnitude of being there and trying to help these two people she barely knew but had almost instantly fallen for to figure out what they were going to do with their lives.

Managing investments for her clients was a high-pressure job. Not even for a second did she ever forget there were families depending on that hard-earned money and she took that responsibility very
seriously. But she’d never had an emotional connection to a client before, and it was making her stomach feel queasy.

Once introductions had been made, the doctor didn’t waste any time getting down to the business at hand. “It’s time to consider downsizing. From what I’ve heard, that house is going to be too much for you pretty soon.”

Jessica listened to the doctor, but she was watching
Joe and Marie through the corner of her eye. They were sitting in chairs directly across from the doctor, but she’d been given a chair wedged in slightly ahead and to the side of them, so she could see them both.

And they didn’t look very happy. Joe looked as if he might get stubborn about it, but her grandmother’s mouth trembled until she pressed her lips together.

“Maybe if somebody
lived with you, it would be different,” the doctor continued. “But you’ve had a stroke, Joe, and you fell the other day. And Marie, with your blood pressure and that arthritis flaring up more and more often, do you want to be trying to keep up with that house? Going up and down those stairs?”

“Rick lives with them,” Jessica pointed out.

“Rick being the third-floor tenant?” When she nodded,
he started tapping his pen lightly on his legal pad. “Does Rick clean the house? Is he on hand to run up and down the stairs for them at any hour? Can he hear if one of them calls for help?”

“Maybe we could get those necklaces with the buttons you push in an emergency.”

“I’m not wearing any damn necklace,” Joe muttered.

“And Rick’s a firefighter,” Jessica continued, figuring that
was a fight for another time. “He knows CPR and, well, whatever else firefighters have to learn when it comes to first aid, which is probably a lot.”

“A firefighter.” The doctor nodded. “So he works long shifts, then. They moved to a 24-hour shift recently, didn’t they?”

“Well yes, but...” She let the sentence trail away, not sure what she should say. Or if she should say anything. Her
intention had been to determine what was in Joe and Marie’s best interests, not to help them further entrench themselves in a house they possibly shouldn’t be in anymore. She thought she’d be able to stay impartial, but maybe she couldn’t.

“What about you, Miss Broussard?”

“Call me Jessica, please. And what about me?”

“She lives in San Diego,” Marie said. “She’s just visiting so
we can get the paperwork straightened out. We want you to meet her and know you can contact her personally in the future, instead of our son.”

Jessica belatedly realized the doctor had been asking her if she would be able to take care of her grandparents, and she was thankful Marie had jumped in. She wouldn’t want to say no directly, but it really wasn’t feasible. Her life was in California.
She had a home and friends and a business there.

And her father, she thought, wincing at the fact he’d almost been an afterthought.

“Look, this isn’t a decision you have to make today.” The doctor finally stopped tapping his pen and leaned back in his chair. “It’s a dialogue I like to have with my patients
before
it becomes an urgent issue. It gives you a little time to work through
it in your minds. Maybe imagine yourself in a cute little assisted-living condo in a social community. No worrying about mowing the lawn or shoveling snow or doing repairs on anything. No stairs.”

They didn’t have to worry about most of that, Jessica thought, since Rick took care of everything for them. But no matter how much they liked him or he liked them, her grandparents shouldn’t be
dependent on their tenant when it came to whether or not they were capable of staying in their house. As she’d told him, he might fall in love and go off to have a family of his own. And he was a firefighter. Something could happen to him on any given day. If he got hurt on the job and was laid up, she had no doubt Joe was the kind of guy who’d try to make do on his own rather than ask for anybody
else’s help.

“I think it would make more financial sense, too,” she heard herself saying, and everybody turned to look at her. “The upkeep and utilities for that house must be astronomical, especially the heating costs. Between the value of your property and the savings you’d see, you’d probably be very comfortable.”

“I’m comfortable right where I am.” Joe crossed his arms, glaring at
the framed medical certificates over the doctor’s head.

Marie sighed. “He said we don’t have to make the decision right now, but it’s something we’ll have to think about.”

“You’re both in pretty good health, all things considered,” the doctor said. “But wearing yourself out taking care of a house that’s substantially larger than the two of you need could change that.”

Once that
conversation hit a dead end, Marie and Jessica were sent out to the reception area so the doctor could take a look at Joe and make sure there were no lingering concerns from the fall he’d taken. Then they did the paperwork to remove David Broussard from their forms and make Rick and Jessica their emergency contacts, with her listed as the next of kin.

As they walked out of the office together,
the mood seemed a little grim, and Jessica wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t sure there was anything she
could
say. She’d come here with the intention of treating Joe and Marie like clients. After explaining their most beneficial option was to sell the house and move into something more sensible in both a management and financial sense, she would help them implement the plan and then keep her
thumb on the process long-distance from San Diego.

But they weren’t clients. They were her grandparents and they didn’t want her there to make spreadsheets and bar graphs. All Joe and Marie wanted was to get to know her. They wanted a granddaughter and if she pushed too hard, she’d disappoint them.

With a heavy sigh, Jessica climbed into the backseat of Marie’s car. Judging by the increasingly
volatile voice mails from her father, she was already letting him down. The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint her grandparents, too.

Looking out the window, she watched the neighborhood go by as they drove back to the house in silence. Maybe what she needed was another sweaty, stress-busting workout with Rick. But thinking about Rick made her think about kissing him.

Shit.

Not exactly the first word a woman wanted to hear after a kiss that had raised the bar so high she wasn’t sure she’d ever be kissed like that again. But he said he shouldn’t have done it and they should forget it.

She was trying like hell, but that just wasn’t going to happen.

* * *

“God
damn
this fucking job.” Chris Eriksson whipped his helmet so hard it bounced off the brick
wall of a delicatessen and rolled back to him.

Rick sat against the front bumper of L-37 with his elbows propped on his knees and his head hung low. What an incredibly shitty way to kick off the tour. “We saved a kid, Chris.”

“Maybe.
Maybe
we saved the kid. And
if
he wakes up, they get to tell him his mom and his baby sister are dead because the douche bag driving was shooting up heroin
at ten-thirty in the morning.”

Rick tried to think of something to say. It was part of his job to keep the guys’ heads right, but he had nothing. The toddler wearing a pink nightgown under an obviously handed-down blue coat hadn’t been strapped into her car seat correctly and she’d been DOA. The mother probably wouldn’t be declared until the emergency room, but she wasn’t going to make it.

They’d focused on the boy, extricating him from the mangled wreck sitting in the middle of a major intersection while the EMTs administered Narcan to the driver. That bastard was going to make it, while the boy was touch and go, and emotion swelled in Rick’s throat. Their job was to save everybody they could, and they did, and let the justice system deal with the aftermath. But sometimes it
was a hard pill to swallow.

When Chris sat against the truck’s tire and dropped his head into his hands, Rick didn’t miss the way Aidan and Scott closed ranks in front of him. They looked like they were shooting the breeze, big bunker coats dangling from their hands, but the news cameras across the street wouldn’t be able to capture the firefighter sitting on the ground.

Danny Walsh
joined Rick on the bumper. “Victims have cleared the scene. They’re bringing in the ramp trucks now.”

Rick nodded. The guy who’d been driving the sanitation truck was an acquaintance of his, and he knew an ambulance had taken him, too. He hadn’t been hurt when he T-boned the car and drove it into a pole before he could stop, but he’d been so shaken up there was nothing else they could do
with him. And they’d have to run blood tests in the hospital for the paperwork.

They watched Jeff Porter walk over to Chris and hold a bottled water out to him. After pulling his T-shirt up to scrub at his face, the other man took it and unscrewed the cap. Jeff put his hand on his shoulder for a moment and then picked up the tossed helmet to set on the truck.

Chris and Jeff both had
kids, and scenes like this one tended to hit them particularly hard. He knew they’d eventually turn their minds to the boy who would hopefully survive, but right now all they saw was the little girl who hadn’t.

Danny pulled out his phone and looked at the screen for a few seconds before cursing and shoving it back in its holster. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“You won the lottery
and we’re all retiring on your dime.”

“Jesus, that sounds nice. Cobb just got another phone call about the damn decorations. We’re the only house that doesn’t have our decorations up yet and there’s been some question about our community spirit.”

Rick snorted. The freaking Christmas decorations were turning into a major pain in the ass. Usually hanging them was no big deal, or even an
enjoyable way to break the monotony. But when they’d changed up the way tours were scheduled, everything got messed up, including it being a lot easier to leave odd jobs for one of the other crews to take care of. Throw in a busy early winter and the decorations were still sitting in boxes in the storage room.

“The guys are pretty emotional right now. I don’t know if hanging Christmas decorations
would help cheer them up or make them focus even more on losing a kid today,” Rick said.

Chris was on his feet now, talking to Jeff, Aidan and Scott. He’d seen Gavin and Grant talking to a couple of the cops earlier, though he couldn’t see them now. Those two were younger and tended to bounce back emotionally a little faster so maybe he could pawn the job off on them.

“Cobb wants it
done today,” Danny said. “Said he doesn’t give a shit if the entire city burns down. He hates talking on the phone and doesn’t want another complaint call.”

“We’ll see how they are once we’re back at the house. Routine helps. And food doesn’t hurt. I think they’ll be okay by afternoon.”

“Even if it’s Christmas related, busywork’s better than sitting around dwelling on it, too.”

“I agree,” Rick said, standing and stretching his back. “We’ll be here a while yet, but let’s get them moving.”

Routine did help and as the guys moved around the accident scene, cleaning up and repacking the trucks, Rick felt his anger at the situation seeping away. Maybe hanging Christmas decorations wouldn’t be a bad way to spend the afternoon. It was fairly mindless work, but it was also
hard not to feel festive when light strings were involved. And people in the community would come to watch and share stories, which served as a nice distraction.

As he worked, Rick found himself thinking about the upcoming holiday. He’d work Christmas Day, since it was his usual shift. But even when shifts rotated, he often worked the holidays, covering for guys with kids whenever he could.
If possible, he went to his parents’ house for Christmas Eve to celebrate with them and his brother’s family. If not, he visited with Joe and Marie.

He’d bet money Jess’s plans for Christmas Day were already weighing heavily on Marie’s mind. They’d been alone in their house for decades, making do with celebrating with friends. In the past they’d traveled to his sister’s house or one of her
brothers to visit with their nieces and nephews until spending hours in the car at their age sucked the festivity out of the occasion. But now they had a granddaughter and it didn’t sound as if Davey was a really festive kind of guy. Would Jessica stay that long? Or come back to the East Coast to spend Christmas with them?

According to Joe, Marie had wanted to get the Christmas tree just
to share the experience with Jessica, but they weren’t going to put any pressure on her to spend the holidays with them. Because Davey was such an ass, they didn’t want to make her feel in any way as if she was in some kind of family tug-of-war game.

Maybe he should get her a present just in case she was around. A nice wool scarf, maybe. It was a good gift for a friend of the family and God
knew she needed cold-weather stuff. But kissing her complicated things. Would she see the gift as a token because of their mutual relationship with Joe and Marie, or would she take it as a sign of something more from the man who’d kissed her?

That was a question for another day. Rick climbed up in the cab of L-37 to back it up a few feet, out of the way of a ramp truck, and tried to put Jessica
out of his mind. Things were definitely changing around him, but he had a job to do.