The Fireman Who Loved Me (7 page)

Chapter Seven

M
elissa ripped the little black dress off her body and glared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. What were you supposed to wear to dinner at a fire station with a man who’d nearly torn your shirt off? She didn’t want to wear something that said,
Hey, big guy, come rip this off my body.
On the other hand, she didn’t want something that said,
Don’t even think about it.
Besides, Ella Joy would set the bar so high that anything less than a G-string would barely register with the guys. She had to reach a minimum level of hotness. The little black dress just didn’t cut it. And tonight she had no intention of wearing her glasses.

She chose a slinky, silvery sweater that clung tightly to her curves and made her eyes glow like emeralds. A forest-green suede skirt and knee-high boots completed the outfit, which she hoped said,
I wouldn’t say no if you treat me right, and maybe apologize for insulting my profession.
She’d worn this same combo to a fund-raiser for journalists imprisoned overseas, and a radical environmentalist had hit on her. So it had a proven track record, though in a very different crowd.

“Grans? You ready?”

“Ready as rain,” answered Nelly. Downstairs, Melissa saw her grandmother was sporting her very favorite sweater, which Nelly’s sister, now deceased, had knitted for her seventieth birthday. It was made from a Guatemalan design, and Nelly loved to wear various buttons attached to it: “Respect Mother Earth.” “Promote Whirled Peas.” Melissa thought she looked like an elderly bomb-throwing revolutionary. Or at least a troublemaker.

“You look shocking, Grans.”

“Thank you.”

“We’d better go. We have to make a stop on the way.”

“Stop? Where?”

Melissa had deliberately left this until the last moment. “We have to pick up Ella Joy.”

“What? That tramp is coming? Who invited her?”

“I did. And please don’t call the anchor of the Sunny Side of the News a tramp.”

“More like the Slutty Side, with that one.”

“Language, Grans!” Did everyone’s grandmother’s talk like this?

“Melissa, you don’t have the sense God gave a peanut. You want to lose Brody to her?”

“Oh, come on, he’s going to ignore both of us and make a beeline toward you!” Melissa gave her grandmother a little hug and shuffled her out the door.

But Nelly would not be distracted. “It’s not that you aren’t a hundred times prettier than Miss Fancy Schmancy, but she’s got that killer instinct. If she sees a man interested in you, she’ll go for his jugular. Remember Alice May? How she nearly stole Leon out from under my nose?”

“A, he’s not interested in me. And B, Ella’s not some jungle cat. There will be plenty of men to go around. Maybe Ryan will be there.”

Nelly brightened. “That’s right! Whichever one Ella likes, you go for the other one.”

Melissa pretended to consider that approach as she helped her grandmother into the car. “I suppose I could, but that would interfere with my plan to eat dinner and mind my own business.” She closed the car door before Nelly could answer, and took her time walking to the driver’s side. Once inside, she added, “And be nice to Ella. Don’t forget she’s worth two ratings points, and two ratings points could get me fired.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That place would fall apart without you.” The rest of the drive was taken up with a litany of complaints about how little Channel Six appreciated her Melissa, and it was only when Ella Joy slid in the backseat that Nelly was finally rendered speechless. And no wonder.

Ella was dressed in a red vinyl pantsuit the exact color of a fire engine. It looked like a slick, shiny coat of all-body nail polish. Dazed, Melissa wondered if Ella had already had such an item in her closet, or if she had bought it just for this occasion. Either option seemed absurd. Ella’s honey locks were curled and piled on her head, and her smoky eye shadow made her eyes look huge and luminescent. Melissa shifted uncomfortably in her sweater, which in the last two seconds had gone from slinky to deadly dull.

Maybe Grans had been right, after all. If she wanted any chance with Brody, she should never have invited Ella. Not that she was after Brody, not at all. They had nothing in common. Except that she couldn’t get that crazy kissing incident out of her mind.

It didn’t matter. What chance did regular mortals have next to someone like Ella? She’d have to be content with her original plan. Eat her dinner and mind her own business. The only entertainment would be watching the firemen fall over themselves bowing down to the goddess of Channel Six news.

S
an Gabriel Fire Station 1 was a square, concrete building smack in the middle of town. Melissa had seen it in news reports, but since she wasn’t on the daily news beat herself, she had never actually been there. The firefighters kept it immaculate and had even planted geraniums in planters out front. A fresh-faced young fireman, who looked about twelve, was busy watering the flowers, and at the sight of Ella exiting the car he dropped the hose. It went snaking across the driveway, spewing a rooster tail of water in front of them. Ella gave a little shriek, and jumped behind Nelly.

Melissa bent down and picked up the hose. She handed it back to the firefighter, but he didn’t budge. He stood, openmouthed, as the water streamed onto the driveway. Finally she stood directly in his line of sight. “Hi,” she said brightly. “We’re here at the invitation of Ryan Blake. This is my grandmother, Nelly McGuire. And this is—”

“Ella Joy.” He said it in a voice of awe. “We . . . we watch you all the time, you’re the bomb.”

Ella must have decided that the receiving of adulation was worth getting her strappy sandals wet. She moved from behind Nelly to greet the fireman. “Aren’t you a doll? We do our humble best, and it’s so nice to know it’s appreciated.” Bestowing her hand on the dazzled young man, she nearly bowled him over with a huge smile.
Humble best
, thought Melissa.
Where on earth had she come up with that?

“And just call me Ella. This is Melissa, my producer.”

“We’re so . . . honored to have you . . . all of you.” Finally he managed to tear his gaze away from Ella, and remembered his manners. “Mrs. McGuire, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Stud . . . I mean, Fred. Stud’s my nickname. Because I’m not, really. A stud, that is. Not compared to the others. Come on in, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew. They’re going to be so stoked!” He dropped the hose again and took Nelly’s arm. “How are you doing, ma’am?”

“Not very well, young man. Frankly, I could use a glass of water.” Nelly did not look pleased with events thus far.

“Right away.” He ushered Ella in front of him, with a kind of formal bow that he could have learned in dancing class. Since he seemed oblivious to the abandoned garden hose still pumping out water, Melissa hung back to turn it off. The faucet was behind a camellia bush, which left a streak of dirt on the sleeve of her silver sweater. Yet another sign that she might as well give up hope of the evening being anything other than the Ella show.

She caught up with the rest of the group as they passed through the garage-type area with four gleaming fire engines of various kinds. Fred was racing through the tour, clearly eager to present his prize guests to the rest of the squad. “That’s Engine 1 and that’s Truck 1. When the engine, truck, and pumper go out together on a call they’re called Task Force 1. Engine 1 takes a four-man crew and carries five hundred gallons. Truck 1’s brand-new, it’s got a state-of-the-art hundred-foot aerial ladder. I can’t go up in it, I’m afraid of heights, but man, you should see the captain. Ryan Blake’s our inside man, plus we have a top man, an AO, Apparatus Operator, and a tillerman, or tiller person I should say, for Truck 1. We have a pumper and an ambulance too. We clean and polish them up every day, we take a lot of pride in our rigs. And our captain’s a stickler. But it pays off, because if you get messy in one area, you might get sloppy in others, and then it’s a safety issue. This station’s a sparkle corps house.”

He paused proudly.

“What’s that?” Melissa asked, when it appeared she was the only one paying attention to his spiel.

“It means every firefighter in California wants to be at this station. Only the best of the best get to come here. We get a lot of action, lot of fires, but we have the best safety record anywhere. And everyone wants to work for our captain. He’s a legend, you know.”

Melissa, too curious to resist, broke the flow of his commentary. “Do you mean Captain Brody?”

His face lit up. “Yeah, that’s him, have you heard of him? He’s saved hundreds of lives in his career, that’s why he’s a legend. There’s nobody like him. That’s why everyone wants to transfer in here.”

“Hundreds of lives,” breathed Ella. “What a hero. We should do a story on him, Melissa.”

“Oh, he’d never let you. He doesn’t like publicity at all.
60 Minutes
wanted him on, and he wouldn’t even talk to them.”

“I’ll just have to try to persuade him,” cooed Ella in a tone that made Melissa want to wring her neck.

“Sure, I bet he’d talk to you. You’re even more beautiful in person, and you’re the hottest anchor on TV.”

Nelly gave a dry little cough. “I’m awfully thirsty.”

“Oh sure, ma’am, my bad. I get kinda carried away sometimes. I’ll show you more about the rigs later. Come on and meet the others!”

They followed him down a narrow hall, then turned left toward a large common room.

“That’s the training room up ahead,” said Stud. “At least that’s what it’s called officially. We call it the TV room. Workout room’s around the corner. This is where we sleep during our shifts. We work twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off, twenty-four on, then get four days off. Sometimes it feels like we live here. ”

Looking back over her shoulder, Melissa saw a series of small, cell-like rooms with beds. Did Brody sleep in one of those? The thought made her shiver.

The training room contained comfortable couches, armchairs, and an enormous TV set mounted on the wall. It gave on to a large kitchen with a long table lined with two benches. Several firemen were kicking back watching a football game—
what else?
thought Melissa. One man stood at the stove, cooking, and another was busy laying out paper plates and handing out sodas.

The excitable Stud burst out talking as soon as he stepped into the room. “Look who came to dinner, guys!”

A roomful of heads turned and then snapped in a general double take. The firemen who were sitting down leaped to their feet. Everyone gaped at the fiery beacon of Ella. She was red meat before a pack of hungry dogs, a red flag before a herd of bulls. It wasn’t just the fact that Ella was a semi-celebrity, thought Melissa, watching the scene. It was the way she’d dressed, like a cartoon figure of lust, created to appeal to the most primitive part of the male brain.

“Ella Joy! . . . From Channel Six . . . We watch you every night . . . The Sexy Side of the News! . . . You are the bomb . . . You read the news better than anybody . . . Can’t you get rid of that jerk who’s always talking over you . . . It’s Ella Joy, dude! Right here, in our station! Wait’ll the 5s hear about this.”

Ella Joy stood laughing, soaking it in like a hummingbird feeding on sugar water. This was the kind of moment she lived for, and she looked so delighted, Melissa didn’t begrudge it to her at all. Nelly, on the other hand . . . Nelly quivered with fury, muttering a word Melissa sincerely hoped was not “tramp.”

She scanned the group with superhuman speed, her heart racing.

No Brody. Disappointment formed a hard lump in her throat. So maybe she had been counting on seeing him here. It was better this way. She could concentrate on her secret mission of getting the Bachelor Firemen to come on the news. As soon as the noise died down a bit, she broke in. “Hi everyone, it’s so nice of you to invite us. This is Nelly McGuire and I’m her granddaughter, Melissa. Is Ryan Blake here?”

“Hoagie! Get your butt out here!”

A vision stepped out of the kitchen. Melissa went actually, literally breathless as he ambled with a loose-hipped, relaxed stride toward them. Those eyes . . . bluer than a sunny summer sky . . . those perfect features . . . that sexy walk. It felt as if time had stopped . . . as if the world slowed down to admire him as he passed. Dazed, Melissa watched him make his way along the benches, and suddenly she felt deep sympathy for Fred. If she had a hose, it would have slipped right through her fingers. The closer he got to them, the more breathtaking he looked, and when he finally stood before them, Melissa could have sworn she heard a chorus of heavenly angels crooning overhead. But wasn’t she supposed to be mad at Ryan, who had refused to show up for his date with Nelly?

Ryan took Nelly’s hand in both of his. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Miz McGuire, and I want to say how sorry I am about the other night. I just hope I can make it up to you tonight with some home cooking.”

“Well, aren’t you the sweetest thing. As a matter of fact, I was feeling sickly myself that night.”

“The captain told me. Is this your beautiful granddaughter?” His summer-blue eyes smiled into Melissa’s.

That did it. She was going to faint at this gorgeous man’s feet. She opened her mouth, hoping something would come out, anything, but it took Nelly’s fierce hand squeeze to get the words flowing.

“Hi, I’m Melissa.” And that was the end of the flow.

“So you’re the granddaughter.” He cocked his head at her, a speculative look in his eye. Her mind raced. What had he heard about her? Had Brody said something? What? And how could she find out?

Ryan turned back to Nelly. “Would you like something to drink, Mrs. McGuire?”

“A glass of water,” she said firmly, with a venomous glance toward Fred, who was lost in the crowd around Ella Joy.

“Coming right up. Why don’t you come sit down over here.” He led Nelly and Melissa to a place on the bench that had obviously been prepared specially for Nelly, with a dusty-looking cushion and a bouquet of daisies in a plastic cup.

“My, you boys think of everything. I hope you’re going to sit here next to us.”