Heat Exchange (5 page)

“Guys on night tour probably ate the shit with a spoon,” Scotty mumbled as he scraped half the butter off his bread and wiped it on Rick’s slice.

Danny ignored the jab, but he made a mental note to talk to Cobb and Gullotti later about the possibility of growing discontent in the house. The crew that manned Ladder 37 on the opposite shifts as Gullotti’s wasn’t pulling their weight when it came to domestic matters and that needed to be nipped in the bud. If these guys had to scrub the toilet, they all had to scrub the toilet.

“Did I hear a woman yelling in the bay earlier?” Jeff Porter asked, stretching across the table to spin the lazy Susan until it stopped on the seasoned salt, which he put on everything he ate.

“Lydia stopped by,” Scotty said. “Looking for me.”

“Ah. I thought maybe somebody had a new ex who wasn’t happy about the ex part.”

Danny sprinkled pepper on his stew, but on the inside he cringed at the word
ex
. Not in a million years had he ever thought it could happen, but now it looked as though he was on the road to having an ex-wife and it hurt. Ashley was his wife and he wanted her to stay that way.

“Must be almost time for Karen to go,” Jeff said. “Right, Rick? This is the longest you’ve dated anybody that I can remember.”

“I like Karen,” Rick said around a mouthful of stew.

“I do, too,” Grant said. “She’s pretty and funny. And wicked smart, too.”

They all looked at Grant, and red crept up his neck. He’d taken a big bite of potatoes and carrots as soon as he finished talking, so he chewed awkwardly as they stared, and then swallowed hard.

“I didn’t mean anything by that,” he said. “I meant that Rick should keep dating her because she’s pretty and funny and stuff. Even if they broke up, I wouldn’t make a move. Plus she’s kinda old. I mean for me.”

That made a few of them wince, and Jeff laughed. “Stop talking and eat your stew.”

“Damn right you wouldn’t make a move,” Scotty said. “You don’t date the other guys’ ex-girlfriends. Or ex-wives or sisters or...hell, mothers or daughters. You don’t fish in the station’s pond.”

Danny happened to be looking at Aidan when Scotty spoke, so he saw the way his mouth tightened and the tops of his ears turned red. But it was only a few seconds and Danny wondered if maybe he’d imagined it.

Grant gave Scotty a skeptical look. “At the rate Gullotti racks up ex-girlfriends, we’ll either have to break that rule or go looking for women out in the boonies somewhere.”

Danny shook his head. “That’s one rule you don’t want to break because that’s drama nobody here wants. Relationships get messy and that kind of personal friction can tear a house apart.”

“How did you end up married to Scotty’s sister, then?” Grant asked. “She’s Tommy Kincaid’s daughter, even. Isn’t that like a double rule-breaking?”

The last thing Danny wanted to do was talk about his marriage, even if it was currently a good example of the kind of drama he was talking about. So far things were still good between him and Scotty, but if things went any further south between Danny and Ashley, Scotty might feel a need to choose sides.

“I was actually up in Lynn at the time and met Ashley at a wedding for some mutual friends. I met Tommy and the rest of the family after about a month, I guess, but I didn’t transfer here until after Ashley and I were engaged.”

Silence filled the kitchen after he spoke and Danny knew why. Each of them was remembering that he and Ashley were separated and that there was a possibility of friction between him and Scotty if there was a divorce and it turned messy.

But that wasn’t going to happen because he wouldn’t let it. If Ashley wanted a divorce, he’d sign the papers. She could have the house. She could have whatever she wanted, and he wouldn’t fight it. He loved her too much to drag them both down into hostility and court battles.

The ache in his chest he’d suffered off and on since the day Ashley told him she needed space flared up, and Danny took a breath to steady himself. Being emotional never helped any situation. And it certainly wasn’t going to help this awkward silence that was threatening to ruin everybody’s appetites.

“So everybody’s current on the house fund for the month,” he said, changing the subject. “Everybody take a look at the list before the end of tour and add anything you can think of so we can put together a grocery run.”

As Danny expected, the guys all started talking about things they were almost out of, and he was free to eat his stew in peace. It was good stew, but now it tasted like sawdust and stuck in his throat.

If only his own house was as easy to manage as his firehouse.

Chapter Four

O
NCE
AGAIN
BEING
behind the bar in jeans and a dark green Kincaid’s Pub T-shirt didn’t just stir up mixed emotions for Lydia. It put all of her feelings in a blender and spun them around on the highest speed setting.

On the one hand, there was probably no place else in the world she was as comfortable. The bar was practically her second home. On the other hand, she’d expected to grow up and leave it behind someday, and almost had. Being there was a confusing mash-up of warm nostalgia and cold panic that she was taking a giant step backward.

She’d almost gotten away once before, when she was married to Todd. They met at a benefit hockey game—he was a probie at a nearby firehouse at the time—and he’d said all the right words. They got married in a small civil ceremony six months later. When he rented them an apartment she thought was too far from both his firehouse and Kincaid’s, he’d told her it was a nice neighborhood with great schools for the children they’d have. And as he steered her toward leaving more and more of the responsibility for the bar in Ashley’s hands, she believed him when he said it was important to him that she make a beautiful home for their family.

It had taken her almost three years to recognize that he was systematically isolating her from the community that considered her family and him still a newcomer. Since she was trying to make a home for children Todd wasn’t around to make—a fact she was thankful for now—she wasn’t behind the bar at Kincaid’s, listening to stories about the guy who froze up on the ladder or who was using his job to get laid.

Of course, nobody wanted to be gossiping about Tommy Kincaid’s son-in-law so, though her dad and siblings hadn’t really liked Todd, they’d never heard anything concrete enough to merit interfering with her marriage. But they’d supported her when she moved home and divorced him. He’d moved to Worcester and she’d gone back to the pub.

But every day she’d left her dad’s house and walked to Kincaid’s for her shift, she’d felt as if she was spinning her wheels. There was nothing left for her there. She had zero interest in ever being involved with another firefighter. And, whether or not it was justified, she’d divorced one of them. In a climate of sticking together and seeing things through, the fact she hadn’t done that in her marriage made some people look at her a little sideways. She’d finally gotten fed up and, in a desperate attempt to change her life, moved to New Hampshire.

And now she was back. And even though she could tell herself it was only temporary, it didn’t feel that way. It felt more like stepping back into her life after a two-year vacation.

“Hey, doll, can I get another Bud Light?” Lydia turned to the customer sitting at the bar and cocked her head, giving him a look. “Uh, sorry. Can I get another Bud Light, please? Ma’am?”

She laughed and got him his beer. She wasn’t answering to doll for anybody, but being too much of a bitch cut into the tips. Over the years she’d learned how to get her point across without driving customers away.

The sound of a glass smashing on the floor caught not only Lydia’s attention, but that of everybody in the bar. There was no heckling, though. Just silence as the nonlocal customer who’d knocked his glass off the table looked at her like a deer caught in headlights.

“You gotta kiss Bobby,” she called to him.

The guy’s eyebrows drew together. “What? Who’s Bobby?”

She pointed at the framed and signed photograph of Bobby Orr that hung on the wall. It had its own track lighting and was bolted to the wall so well it would take somebody hours and power tools to steal it. It was the heart of Kincaid’s.

“You want me to kiss a picture?”

“You don’t have to kiss the glass. Just kiss your fingertips and tap them on his cheek.” She showed him, stopping just short of touching the glass because kissing Bobby for no reason might be bad luck.

The story, no doubt embellished by years and alcohol, told of two young men hired before the bar’s grand opening, back in the day. They’d been setting up the beer mugs the day before they’d opened and each dropped a couple of glasses. One of them, rumored to be a fine young hockey fan, had laughed and kissed the picture of Bobby Orr the owner had just finished bolting to the wall.

“Help me, Bobby, or I’ll have all my wages docked before I’ve earned any.”

After work, one of them had landed in the hospital with a burst appendix. The hockey fan, however, had won enough off a scratch ticket that night to buy a used Camaro. Lydia wasn’t sure how much of the story was true but, since the first morning the bar had been in business, very few had taken the chance.

“You must be kidding.” The guy shook his head. “I don’t really get into the whole jinx thing. Sorry.”

Chad, the young dishwasher, who was already sweeping the broken glass into a dustpan, looked at the customer with big eyes. “You must not be from around here.”

“Hey, it’s up to you,” Lydia called. “But in 2011, a customer broke a plate and she chose not to kiss Bobby.”

“And she died a horrible, gruesome death, right?” the customer asked, his mouth curved up in a smirk.

Lydia shrugged one shoulder. “Not that I know of. But she did trip on the sidewalk outside and need eleven stitches in her knee. And she had to beg a ride to the hospital because it turned out she parked illegally and her car was towed while she was having lunch.”

“Is she serious?” he asked Chad.

The kid nodded. “I didn’t work here yet, but I heard about it. You should just do it, sir. Better safe than sorry, you know?”

With skepticism written all over his face, the customer slowly stood and walked across the bar with everybody watching. Then he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to Bobby Orr’s glass-covered cheek.

A cheer went up and then everybody went back to what they were doing before the glass broke. Lydia winked at the customer. “Refill’s on the house.”

A few minutes later, her phone chimed and she leaned by the cash register to read the message. Strictly speaking, employees weren’t supposed to be screwing around with their phones, but she figured if her old man didn’t like it, he could tend his own bar.

It was from Ashley.

Everything going okay?

Guy called me doll and Bobby got kissed.
Just another day at KP.

There was a long pause while her sister typed a response.

Let me know if anything comes up.
I
can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.
Really.

Having stood behind the Kincaid’s bar while going through a marriage ending, Lydia did have an idea of how much her sister appreciated it. And it was so much worse for Ashley.

Danny Walsh was one of them. Not just a member of the firefighting community—the brotherhood—but he was family. He’d become tight with Scott and Aidan, and Tommy thought the world of him. He was loved and respected, and people were no doubt having some trouble wrapping their minds around why Ashley wouldn’t want to be married to him anymore.

Not that it was really their business but, in Lydia’s experience, that wouldn’t stop them from having opinions. Opinions they’d be all too happy to share with Ashley while she was trying to work. Lydia could handle this, she thought. For Ashley’s sake. And once her sister felt strong enough to step back behind the bar, she’d be free to go.

Based on how her pulse kicked up every time the door opened, that day couldn’t come fast enough. She didn’t want to admit it—even to herself—but she was looking for Aidan, and that little dip of disappointment she felt every time it wasn’t him alarmed her.

What kind of idiot would stand there and think about how hard it was for both her and her sister to be married to firefighters while lusting after a firefighter?

Lust
being the key word, she decided. As long as she kept it to a very private sexual attraction that nobody else knew about, there was no harm, no foul. She was simply a woman who hadn’t dated in a while having a purely physical reaction to a handsome guy with a hot body and a naughty grin.

Of course, she wouldn’t blame him if he avoided the place for a few days. She’d been pissed off at Scotty and, since he’d walked away, poor Aidan had gotten the overflow. She’d been bitchy with him and he didn’t deserve it. On the other hand, maybe it had been a good thing. If it kept Aidan out of her sight, she wouldn’t have to figure out why seeing him was having this kind of affect on her all of a sudden.

It was no big deal, she told herself, setting Kincaid’s coasters in front of a couple who sat at one of the tables. All she had to do was tend the bar, bide her time, keep her pants on and then get the hell out of Boston.

* * *

“
M
AYBE
I’
M
NOT
too old to date a woman named Bunny,” Aidan said, setting the weights back on the rack.

Grant Cutter, who’d been spotting him, tossed him a towel. “Too late.”

Sitting up so he straddled the bench, Aidan wiped the sweat from his head and bare torso. “What do you mean too late?”

“Scotty wanted to go to some club and his girlfriend would only go if Bunny went, but she didn’t want to be a third wheel. You didn’t answer your phone, so he called me and made me go.”

“Aren’t you a little young?”

“So was Bunny.” Grant frowned. “But not
too
young. Not that young, I mean.”

“Relax.” He hadn’t been serious about wanting to date her, anyway. He was more just giving voice to the fact he really wanted to get laid. “I knew what you meant.”

“And I think Bunny’s out of the picture anyway, since Scotty’s not seeing Piper anymore.”

Aidan frowned. “Since when?”

“I guess when he left her place this morning, she told him not to bother coming back.”

“Huh.” He’d only seen Scotty for a few minutes that morning. They had a full crew, so Cobb had sent Scotty to another house to cover for a guy who called in sick.

“She was asking him about his benefits and then she asked him if the insurance would cover her getting a nose job if they got married. He said he wasn’t getting married anytime soon and then she said if she got knocked up, he’d have to.”

“So he was running like his ass was on fire when he left there this morning,” Aidan said, shaking his head. Sometimes Scott made some noise about trying to find the right woman and settling down, but they’d all known Piper wasn’t her. Especially if, as Grant implied, she was as young as her friend Bunny.

The younger guy looked at the clock for what seemed like the thousandth time, and Aidan gave him a questioning look. “You going somewhere?”

“I have a date tonight. Like a real date, not a wingman thing. Her name’s Nicole and she’s pretty awesome.”

“Does she know you went out with Bunny last night?”

Grant looked down at his shoes and shook his head. “She knows I went out with Scotty and some friends. She didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have lied to her if she’d asked. And it wasn’t really a date with Bunny. I was just extra, you know.”

“Relax, kid. I’m just messing with you.”

Grant kept on talking, telling him where he met Nicole—at his nephew’s ball game—and pretty much her entire life story, but Aidan half tuned him out. Calling the other guy kid had yanked him back to the moment Lydia had looked him in the eye and called him that.

“
Good effort
,
kid.
”

He didn’t believe it had just popped out of her mouth. She’d been considering what he’d said and had plenty of time to think about her response while looking at him. And even when he’d been seventeen and she’d seemed so much older at twenty-one, she’d never called him that.

No, Aidan was pretty sure it had been deliberate, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around why.

The alarm sounded and both of them were on their feet immediately. They met the other guys on their way through the kitchen, but there was no talking as they listened to the call. A motor vehicle accident involving an SUV, a pickup and a cyclist, with injuries. Witness unable to confirm if it was steam or smoke on-scene.

Once they’d each weighed themselves down with fifty-plus pounds of gear and hit the sirens, they rolled out, E-59 first with L-37 right behind. They always rolled together—the pumper truck with various water hoses and wrenches, and the ladder truck with the variety of ladders, tools and rakes. As soon as they cleared the bays, the doors closed and they were off.

They arrived on-scene to find some very pissed-off people yelling at each other. There was no steam and no smoke, and the injury appeared to be a scuff down the side of the cyclist’s leg. It didn’t stop him from swinging his helmet at one of the other pissed-off, yelling people, trying to hit the guy in the head.

“Whoa!” Jeff Porter yelled, wading into the fray. One of the senior firefighters with Ladder 37, he was a big man with a big voice that mixed equal parts authority and menace.

Everybody stopped talking, until the guy in the button-down shirt and tie waved his hand at the crumpled nose of his SUV. “Who’s going to pay for this?”

“I ain’t your insurance company, son,” Porter barked. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but I want this fixed.”

“I ain’t a body shop, either.” Porter looked at the others. “Anybody hurt?”

The cyclist shook his head while the woman who’d presumably been driving the pickup glared. Porter repeated the question and she shook her head.

“Look at my vehicle,” SUV guy said, gesturing again at his front end. “Look at it!”

“Maybe if you’d been looking at the front of it instead of your phone, you would have braked,” the woman said.

Aidan exchanged looks with Cutter, Walsh and Cobb as he leaned against the truck to watch. There was nothing to do here but leave them to the cops and tow trucks, once Porter was done playing peacemaker.

“How’d you get involved in this?” the big guy asked the cyclist.

“I was behind this dumbass when he rear-ended that dumbass and I didn’t want to cool down, so I went out around. This dumbass flings his door open and down I go.”

“What kind of moron goes around a car on the left?” SUV guy demanded.