Fully Ignited (Boston Fire #3) (8 page)

Lydia answered the door, a smile on her face. “Hi, Jamie. Come on in. Did you have any trouble finding the house?”

“Not at all. Aidan’s directions were perfect. And I suspect I could have knocked on any door and said I was looking for your dad and I would have been pointed in the right direction.”

She laughed. “You’re totally right.”

Jamie held up the container from the market. “I brought some fruit pastries. They’re store-bought, but trust me when I tell you it’s better than if I’d made them myself.”

“Those look delicious.” Lydia took the box. “And I’m glad they’re store-bought. If the guys start getting a taste for real homemade stuff...well, let’s just say I don’t want the bar set too high.”

They were laughing together when they walked inside, and Jamie realized the front door led straight into the living room. The entire family stopped talking and looked when they entered. Of course her gaze went immediately to Scott and she returned the smile he gave her.

“Hey, Jamie.”

“Hi,” she replied, and then she tore her gaze away from him even though she could have happily looked at him for hours. Then she said hi to Aidan, who emerged from the kitchen long enough to wave to her.

“I’d stay and visit, but I’ve been assigned to lettuce shredding duty for the salad,” he said before disappearing back into the kitchen.

A man who was obviously Scott’s dad stood and walked toward her. “I’m Tommy Kincaid. Welcome to my home.”

He was a big man and Jamie guessed that, even though he was going soft around the middle, he was probably still as strong as an ox. Most of Scott’s looks had come from his dad, she saw, though Tommy’s hair was mostly gray. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She smiled. “Probably almost as much as I’ve heard about you.”

“This is Ashley,” Lydia said, and Jamie shook Scott’s oldest sister’s hand. Ashley had the same dark hair, though slightly lighter than Scott and Lydia’s, and she was shorter, too. Probably took more after their mom. “And you’ve met Danny.”

“Nice to see you again, Jamie. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well, I think.”

He smiled. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

She had no doubt he got daily updates. Not so much through any official channels, but from the other guys at the station and particularly from Scott and Aidan.

“We’re going to eat in a few minutes,” Ashley said. “I made a lasagna, but if you don’t like that, I can whip up something else on the side.”

“Who doesn’t love lasagna?” Jamie replied.

“I knew I was going to like you,” Tommy said.

The entire time, Jamie was keenly aware of Scott’s presence in the room, so she actually jumped a little when she heard his voice. “How come you’ll whip her up something on the side, but if I don’t like something, I have to make a bologna sandwich?”

“Because you’re a pain in the ass.”

Tommy waved a hand at the couch. “Sit down, Jamie. Do you watch sports?”

“I’m not a big sports fan,” she admitted, and she wasn’t surprised when he frowned at her. “The guys have been trying to explain hockey to me, though, and I do own a Boston Bruins sweatshirt.”

“Good enough. How long have you been in Boston?”

She had to think about it. “Almost two years, I guess. It doesn’t feel like that long.”

“Hell, you must be about ready to drive the truck.”

“No,” she and Scott said at the same time, and he chuckled.

“Oh, come on,” Tommy said. “Boston’s a fun place to drive.”

“She finally stopped screaming when I make left turns,” Scott said, winking at her.

She laughed, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be able to hear the tires squealing over the sound of the sirens.”

“You going to sit down, son, or are you going to keep hovering?” Tommy demanded, craning his neck to look at Scott.

Since Tommy was in an old recliner and Danny was in an armchair with his leg up on an ottoman, the only place left to sit was on the couch with her. She shifted to one end, leaving plenty of room, and he really didn’t have a choice but to sit at the other end.

Part of her wanted to laugh at the stupid situation they’d put themselves in. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they’d been naked in her bed. Now they were sitting on opposite ends of a couch, barely looking at each other.

The other part of her, of course, wanted to crawl across the couch and curl up on his lap.

“So tell me, what made you want to be a firefighter, Jamie? Family business?”

She shook her head. “I’m the first firefighter to shake out of the family tree. It was a career day presentation when I was in middle school, sir. A firefighter came in to talk to us about it and...the rest is history.”

She glanced at Scott and he raised an eyebrow as if to ask if she was going to share the rest of the story. No, she wasn’t about to go into how offensive men could be about female firefighters when talking to somebody of Tommy’s generation. On the surface, he seemed perfectly happy to make her feel welcome, but in her experience, if given the chance they usually had a laundry list of concerns. And they quite often didn’t realize those concerns—women weren’t brave enough or strong enough or the guys would get in fights over her or they’d be bossy and make them clean too much—were offensive to the women they were talking about. The guys she served with didn’t have a problem with her, so she didn’t feel a need to open the door to Tommy wanting to justify that old-timer’s attitude.

“You’re not only the first woman in Engine Company 59,” Tommy said, “but you’re probably the first person who’s ever told me those career day things were worth a damn. I remember the first time Ashley dragged me in for one of those.”

Jamie listened to him tell the story, laughing in the right places, but she was conscious of Scott sitting only a few feet from her. He chuckled a couple of times, but mostly he was very quiet and still. It wasn’t normal for Scott to be that still, so she assumed he was having as much trouble figuring what “act naturally” should be as she was.

And it was probably why Danny kept looking at Scott as though he was trying to figure out if something was wrong with him. Luckily, none of them knew Jamie well enough to know she probably looked a little off, too.

“Food’s ready,” Ashley called from the kitchen a few minutes later.

Scott and Tommy both stood and together hauled Danny to his feet. Once his crutches were tucked under his arms, he smiled at Jamie and rolled his eyes. “I can get up by myself, but they think it’s funny to move me around like a doll.”

They let Danny go first, and he thumped his way to the dining room with Tommy on his heels. Scott gestured for Jamie to go next, and as she passed by, he put his hand on the small of her back. She paused, very briefly, savoring the warm pressure for a few seconds.

“Thought about that pudding all day,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

Before she could tell him he was welcome to stop by for chocolate pudding anytime, his hand fell away. Rather than risk a lull in the conversation in front of them coinciding with her saying something mildly suggestive to Scott, she kept her mouth shut and followed Tommy into the dining room.

Ashley was directing traffic around Tommy, who was already seated at the head of the table. The dining room wasn’t very big, so there wasn’t a lot of room to play with. “Danny, you sit on the end on that back side so your leg’s out of the way. I’ll put your crutches in the corner. Lydia and I will be getting up to serve, so we should be on this side.”

“I’ll sit in the middle on the far side, next to Danny, so I’m out of the way,” Jamie said.

“I’ll be the third,” Scott said. “Aidan can sit next to Lydia.”

Jamie walked behind Tommy’s chair and pulled out the middle chair. As she sat, Scott pushed it in for her before sitting next to her. It was sweet, and she wondered if the others would notice the gesture, but then she saw Aidan doing the same for Lydia. Apparently it was how they did things.

There was a salad at every place setting and everybody dug in, so Jamie did the same. They all talked as much as they ate, and they made sure she was pulled into the conversations. Maybe because she was there, most of the talk was about the fire department, with Tommy occasionally breaking in to tell them how he did things back in the day.

The salad bowls were replaced by plates of the most amazing lasagna, and she looked across the table at Lydia and Ashley. “If you guys always eat like this, you’re going to have to tell me your secret for still fitting in your jeans.”

“We only eat like this when Ashley cooks for us,” Lydia said. “Or, trust me, I wouldn’t be able to.”

“Ash won’t be fitting in her jeans much longer,” Danny said, and his wife blushed.

“Funny.” She looked at Jamie, her cheeks faintly pink. “I don’t know if anybody told you, but I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations! No, nobody told me. That’s really wonderful news.”

“It is. I originally didn’t want anybody but Danny to know because I’m a little superstitious.”

Lydia laughed. “Jamie’s already noticed that about us.”

“It’s hard to keep secrets in a firehouse,” Jamie said, hoping her cheeks didn’t turn the same shade as Ashley’s had.

“Well, I’m still not sure who knows and who doesn’t.”

“Rick knows,” Scott said, and Jamie looked sideways at him when she heard the tension in his voice. “I don’t know who else heard.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Ashley said, her voice high with a too-chipper, false note. “Superstitions don’t trump science.”

Jamie wasn’t sure what was going on, but there was a low-level buzz of tension around the table that hadn’t been there before. She put a forkful of lasagna in her mouth and chewed slowly so she couldn’t unknowingly say something that made it worse.

Danny leaned closer to her. “We’d just found out when I got hurt. Tommy, Lydia and Scott were the only ones we told, partly because we didn’t feel right not telling them and partly because she was having random any-time-of-day sickness and her shifts at the bar were becoming a problem.”

She wasn’t sure how that tied in with Scott sharing the news. “That must have been scary for everybody.”

“It was,” Scott said in a flat voice. “When Danny didn’t come out, I tried to go back in and Rick wouldn’t let me. I told him Ash was pregnant and I couldn’t go home without Danny. He still didn’t let me go back in.”

“Enough,” Tommy barked. “We’re all here and we’re having a nice meal. Put some in your mouths.”

“Dad,” Lydia said.

Scott turned slightly toward Jamie and she could see the anger in his expression. “We only talk about the good days.”

The silence as everybody went back to the lasagna was deafening, and Jamie wished she could think of something to say that would restore the easy banter they’d started with. She shifted her right leg, though, moving it sideways until it pressed against the length of Scott’s. He didn’t pull away and, through the corner of her eye, she saw the muscles in his jaw relax.

“Hey, did you two pick a wedding date yet?” Ashley asked, and everybody instantly picked up. Jamie knew she was the oldest of the three kids, so maybe she’d had to learn young how to keep the peace between two temperamental siblings and their dad.

“Not yet,” Lydia said.

“You have to pick a date. People keep asking me and I have to tell them I don’t know.”

“I guess anybody who needs to know the date will know it when we do.”

“Do you want a big wedding or a small one?” Jamie asked, because weddings were a fun thing to talk about.

“Small,” Lydia and Aidan said at the same time Ashley said “Big,” and they all laughed.

“So, Jamie, when are you going to come in the bar again?” Tommy asked, and Jamie felt as if she were under a spotlight when everybody looked at her. “I hear you’ve only been in once.”

“I’ve actually been in three times, but the first two were quite a while ago and I didn’t know anybody.”

“And did the third time scare you off?”

“No, sir. I just haven’t had a chance to come back.”

He pushed back his empty plate and rested his hand on his stomach. “You’ll have to come in more often.”

“I might. I haven’t had a burger yet and I’ve heard yours are good.”

They sat around the table and talked while Ashley and Lydia cleared the plates and loaded up the dishwasher, refusing any help from Jamie. Tommy told them of the E59-L37 station’s history, which she found interesting, even though it was obvious the others had heard the stories before.

After decaf coffees and pastries, Jamie cursed herself for eating so much lasagna. It was a good thing she’d decided to brave the roads and drive because it would have been a long, agonizing walk home. She didn’t even want to think about the stairs.

When it was time to go, she thanked Tommy for the invitation and Ashley for making the lasagna. “It’s a good thing we don’t work tomorrow because I’ll probably still be full.”

“You’re not walking, are you?” Tommy asked. “Scotty can walk you home. Make sure you get home safe.”

Dammit.
That would have been a great excuse to sneak some alone time with him. “I drove, but thanks.”

Lydia walked to the door with her, so all she could get from Scott was a casual wave. “See you Tuesday.”

“Thanks for coming,” Lydia said when they were out on the porch. “The family can get a little hard to take at times, but we all mean well.”

“I had a great time,” Jamie said honestly. “I miss my family, so hanging out with yours was nice.”

“You really should stop by the bar,” she said. “It’s pretty low-key when Scotty’s not punching people, which he hardly ever does anymore.”

Unless somebody insulted her, Jamie thought. “I will.”

About fifteen minutes after she managed to drag herself up all the flights of stairs to her apartment, her cell phone chimed. She thought instantly of her friend Steph, and felt a pang of guilt. She needed to touch base with her, but usually Steph was the one to initiate the conversations because of her work hours and the customer traffic at the pizza shop.

But it wasn’t from Steph. It was from Scott.
I hope that wasn’t too bad.