Spark Of Desire (17 page)

A chill dripped down her spine. He wanted what he thought she was. A helpless female. Someone to protect. “I’ll do my best to stop being so enticing. Are we still going to work together?” she asked.

“I want to if you want to.” He stepped forward, but again stopped short of touching her. “I really like you, Jessica. I like you more all the time. I like you so much that I don’t want to jeopardize your dream. Especially not since I can wait. In a few months we can start over. For real this time.”

How noble of you, she thought. Putting me ahead of yourself. Tears pricked her eyes. If he’d offered the decision to her, she knew she’d have made the same choice, but she had the sinking suspicion the postponement of their relationship would end up being permanent. She nodded. “All right. Should I pencil you in for December?”

“I knew you’d understand.” He reached out and clasped her shoulders in a very brotherly way. “Can I take a look at those exam practice books you’ve been reading?”

Jessica gestured to the table behind him. “They’re over there. I have to use the bathroom.” That wasn’t true. She had to get out of the room before the swirl of emotions engulfed her.

Retreating to her cramped bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror until she knew she wouldn’t cry. He’d answered most of her questions. It was even flattering. He didn’t look at her so he wouldn’t be tempted. Never had a man had that response to her. The weights were moved to the garage because he couldn’t trust himself alone with her behind closed doors. Also flattering. Nobody could know why he kissed her and why he couldn’t do it again because he didn’t want to wreck her plans. Gallant of him.

That didn’t explain why he’d been so reluctant to have her meet his friends.

Washing her face, she went back out to deal with him. More relaxed and calm than he’d looked all day, he sat at her dining table bent over one of the books, studying the table of contents. He had everything in the world to feel relaxed and calm about. Her stomach felt tied in knots because she still had to choose between a career and a man.

“I have one question,” she announced, standing at the edge of the living room.

He looked up.

“Why didn’t you want me to meet your co-workers?” She clenched her teeth against the emotions that wanted to rise up again. She couldn’t let that happen because she didn’t have another excuse to run out of the room.

“What?” He blinked at her, confused. Good, for once she’d thrown him off track.

“You won’t take me to the station to check out the tools, and you wanted to get rid of me before they showed up to play cards at your house.”

Kevin shifted. “Well, two reasons. First of all, you saw how Dan was. He’s always like that. He’ll hit on any woman in the vicinity. He’s a Lothario. I didn’t want him to get all smarmy and charming with you.”

“Jealous?” She noticed his language changing. He had a better vocabulary than to use a word like ‘smarmy.’ Over the years she’d noticed people’s vocabularies changed when they were stressed. It almost pleased her that she could stress him.

Kevin scowled. “I am not. I just didn’t want him to confuse you.”

“Confuse me?” she repeated. It sounded like jealousy to her. It had sounded like it outside, too. This one, she decided she should let go. By his face, he was working to come up with an answer, and if he had to work that hard, it wouldn’t be the truth. He wasn’t about to admit he was jealous of his friend Dan. “What’s the other reason?”

“They would take one look at us and know something was going on.”

“Like they did today?”

Kevin shrank into himself like a pouty little boy. “I guess. I mean, I’m sure there’ll be rumors.”

“Since there’s nothing going on, the best way to prove it to them is to be very professional. I can meet you at the station on your next shift, and you can show me the tools. Then they can see that there’s nothing going on between us.” She lifted her chin, challenging him to refuse her.

“I guess.” Picking up one of the books, he held it out. “You know this one has a whole section on tools, right?”

She faltered. “It does?” That one she hadn’t looked at much. It hadn’t looked as interesting as the other two.

“There’s a whole chapter here.” He flipped it open about midway and she could see rows of illustrations from across the room.

“Oh.” Her breath was getting short the way it always did when she got nervous. What she wanted was to make him agree to meet her at the station so he would see her on that turf and she could prove to him she could do it. That was her best chance to prove her professionalism to him and, if the opportunity presented itself, to his captain. She wouldn’t be the protective one causing problems at a fire scene. Her father always told her to pick her battles and this one looked like a good one. “But it would be better for me to see the real thing, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess,” he reluctantly agreed. “If you really want to.”

“You’re on duty Sunday. I have something I need to do in the morning, but I’ll be free about three. I’ll come to the station about four. All right?” She dared him to say no.

“Fine. Can we look at this here first?” He pointed at the books in front of him.

Crossing the room she sat down in the other chair at the table. She didn’t know how happy she should be to win, but she was. If she wasn’t going to get him to love her, she was going to make him respect her.

Chapter 9

It took another hour to get Kevin out of her apartment. Sitting next to him at the table had been agonizing. The act of concentrating on the book between them sapped her strength. She still wanted him to kiss her again. Every time his arm or hand had brushed her, it felt like an electrical shock.

She dropped onto the couch and reached for the phone. But who could she call?

Mindi would get hysterical again, and Jessica didn’t feel up to that right now.

Julie, Sonya and Diana would listen, but they didn’t know the whole story.

Bobbie fell under the tell-no-one restriction Kevin had given her.

She dialed her parents’ house and hoped her father would pick up. Sometimes he did, when she was lucky and she needed him.

“Hello?”

No luck today. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, hi, honey. How are you?”

If she played this right she might get something worthwhile out of her mother without revealing anything that would make her crazy. “I’m really tired. I just had a long talk with Kevin.”

“About what, dear?”

“Our relationship.”

“Oh. That doesn’t sound good.” Her mother sounded unusually understanding tonight. Jessica suspected she’d been waiting all her life for her little girl to come to her with man trouble. “What happened?”

Jessica groaned. What hadn’t happened? “He’s afraid that if people find out about us it’s going to cause me problems at work.”

“Why would it cause you problems at work to be dating a fireman? You work in a bookstore.”

Jessica slouched into the couch. “It’s complicated, Mom.”

“It sounds to me like he doesn’t want to make a commitment.”

Jessica shuddered. Commitment? Was her mother already marrying her off? “I think you’re jumping the gun, Mom. I’ve only been seeing him for two weeks.”

“Is he seeing anyone else or are you exclusive?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s seeing anyone else. With his work schedule, I doubt he has time.” Jessica thought over the last two weeks. She’d seen him about every day he had off, and Bobbie said he didn’t date anyway. Maybe they were exclusive, if only exclusively screwed up.

“So you’ve been spending a lot of time together.” Her mother sounded smug. She was marrying them off in her mind.

“Yes, but mostly we’re working out.”

“Working out?”

“Lifting weights, running, stuff like that.”

“That doesn’t sound very romantic. Does he ever do things with you that you want to do?”

Oh good
,
now she’s up to our marital problems
. “That is what I want to do, Mom.” Calling her mother for someone to talk to had been a terrible mistake. Her mother would never be the objective observer Jessica needed.

“You want to lift weights?”

“Yes, Mom. I want to lift weights.”

Her mother rephrased the question. “Do you want to lift weights because he wants to or because you want to?”

Divorce
. Her mother had already managed to get as far as divorce because of irreconcilable differences. Kevin didn’t want to get involved until after the exam, and her mother had their entire relationship plotted out to a bad end. “Because I want to. Mom, I am capable of separating my wants from his.”

“I can’t understand why you would want to lift weights. You did that for a while in college, didn’t you? When you wanted to be an ambulance driver?”

“Paramedic, Mom.” Jessica picked up a pillow and started combing her fingers through the fringe. In college, between dropping out of pre-med and before committing to a miscellaneous biology major, she started training for fire service. She’d sorted out a class load with the help of her advisor and started weight training. Her mother’s handwringing had ended that, too.

“I still don’t understand what the difference is,” her mother said and giggled.

“You would if Dad were having a heart attack,” Jessica snapped. “The difference between an ambulance driver and a paramedic could be life or death.”

“Jessica!” her mother scolded. “You don’t wish ill on your father.”

“I’m not wishing ill on Dad.”

“Your father is in very good heath for a man his age,” her mother continued as if she hadn’t heard. “He has many, many good years left to him. You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking such a thing.”

“I’m not thinking anything bad. It was an example. You weren’t listening to me again.” Jessica threw the pillow across the room. “I said you would know the difference
if
Dad had a heart attack. I didn’t say I wish Dad would have a heart attack.”

“I should think not,” her mother huffed.

“Good Lord, Mother, why do you think I’m training to be a paramedic? If I wanted to tote people back and forth to the hospital I’d just get a job with the ambulance company instead of working my butt off to get into the fire department.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Her mother cleared her throat. “Training to be a paramedic? Is that what you’re doing with your fireman?”

Jessica had said it deliberately, but not deliberately, and hated herself for it. When her father told her to pick her battles, he’d been referring to her mother. Jessica’s mother was the only person who could drive her to the point of yelling. Once, when she was about fifteen, her father had come to her room after one of their pitched battles. He’d sat on her bed and told her, “Your mother only fights with you because she wants what’s best for you. That doesn’t mean what she thinks is best will always be the best, but it does mean she loves you. You’re old enough now to start recognizing when she’s right and when she’s wrong and when it’s worth fighting about. You have to learn to pick your battles, Jessica.”

He’d been right. She’d learned to pick battles at school and at work. She could deal with Julie and irate customers. She could handle her boss and total strangers on the street. But fifteen years later, she could still not handle her mother, and she was still fighting back at every challenge. And fighting dirtier as she got older.

“Honey, I can’t believe you’re thinking about doing something so dangerous,” her mother started fussing.

Jessica stopped listening. Her mother would fume for a while, say goodbye and start leaving little bombs on Jessica’s answering machine. Statistics, grisly stories. She had done wonders after Jessica decided to go pre-med. How many pre-med students never made it through the program. How difficult internship was. How long it would take. The works. Jessica really shouldn’t have called her mother.

But her mother had been her last hope. She had no one else to talk to.

* * * *

Kevin wiped his damp palms on his uniform pants again and stared down the road. She’d said four o’clock. It was two minutes till and she was punctual, if not early. That should please him. He’d always hated people who couldn’t be counted on to show up on time, but he’d been dreading this meeting since she brought it up. Since Bobbie brought it up three weeks ago. Jessica would walk through the door and all the guys in the place would start sniffing around her like wild dogs around fresh meat.