was excited because he called or because she was training to join the fire department. Pulling on some sweats, she left her apartment for a quick run around the neighborhood.
* * * *
“So who’s your new girlfriend?” Dan asked before Kevin had even gotten out of his car.
“I don’t have a new girlfriend.” Kevin slammed his car door, cursing himself for ever involving Bobbie in this.
“Bobbie said you were helping some woman train to take the exam. Since one and one usually equal two, she must be cute.”
“She is not cute.” Kevin almost bit his tongue. It was sort of a lie. She was good-looking, but if he admitted that to them, they’d never leave him alone.
“Kevin the celibate has a girlfriend?” Doug Reynolds asked, walking out the back door of the station. Once more he'd managed to shave his entire head except for the spot directly under his nose.
Kevin kept his eyes on the ground. Doug was too perceptive and too mean. Jack would have known when to back off, but Jack was still out with his sprained wrist, playing house with Kate, and that’s why Kevin was doing stupid things like offering to train strange women for the department test. This was all Jack’s fault. “I do not have a girlfriend.” Kevin walked past them to the station. “I’m just helping her out.”
“Why? You’ve never done that before.” Dan and Doug trailed him into the locker room.
“She works at the bookstore, and I know her pretty well.” That was an outright lie. He’d talked to her on a couple of occasions, but he didn’t know her at all. “She mentioned that she wanted to be a paramedic.”
“And why wouldn’t she? It’s the coolest job in the station,” Dan said.
“Unless you get to be captain.”
The three men turned around to face the captain in the doorway.
“Come on, you clowns.” The captain jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Time for PT. Marshall, hold up.”
Dan and Doug ducked out of the locker room, leaving Kevin alone with the captain. Kevin pulled on his sweat pants, racking his brain for why the captain wanted to talk to him alone. He couldn’t remember doing anything unusual last shift.
“Kevin.” The captain sat down on the bench bolted to the floor in front of the lockers.
That was a bad sign. The captain never wanted to have heart-to-hearts like this. Either he’d screwed up bad, or somebody else had and he had to clean it up.
“I understand you’re going to help a woman train for the department exam.”
Kevin’s mouth went dry. It wasn’t against regulations to help outsiders train. A couple of guys he knew almost made a hobby of it. The department encouraged women to join too. Was that why the captain wanted to talk to him privately? Did he want him to discourage Jessica? Kevin knew he couldn’t do that to her. Not after the look in her eyes when she realized he had offered to help her.
“I don’t quite know how to say this.” The captain steepled his fingers under his nose. “There isn’t really a regulation against couples being in the department, but if the two of you are an item, it’s going to be harder for her to get in.”
Kevin blinked. A couple? His heart started beating again. They weren’t going to ask him to break her. They assumed he had an ulterior motive. Which he didn’t. He hoped. “We’re not a couple.”
“There’s nothing between you?”
“No.” Kevin wondered if he was lying again.
“Then why the heck are you training her?” The captain stared at him, baffled. “You’ve never shown any interest in recruiting for the department before.”
Kevin shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I figured I could use a refresher.” He needed to think of a good answer for that question. Too many people were asking it.
“Ha.” The captain slapped Kevin’s shoulder. “Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up, get a move on. They’re waiting.” He stood up and walked out the door.
Kevin followed the captain out to the back courtyard for calisthenics. He couldn’t be attracted to Jessica. She wasn’t his type.
But if she wasn’t his type, why couldn’t he get the sound of her laughter out of his mind?
Chapter 3
Jessica stood in front of Meechan’s Kitchen watching the road for Kevin. She was at least ten minutes early, and she wouldn’t recognize his car if it ran her over, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking. Her head felt as if it would never stop spinning. Three days ago she’d been shelving reference, bemoaning her fate, and now she was about to start training to join the fire department. Diana and Sonya waved from the other side of the street before strolling into the grocery store. This morning she’d borrowed all three of the study guides from the store, but they were sitting in her car at her apartment. She’d got home from work and not bothered to even go inside before hurrying down here to be too early. Since he offered to help her, she hadn’t been able to sleep from the excitement, and she almost had herself convinced it was the fire department and not the firefighter that was keeping her awake. She saw him walking down the street and stepped into the middle of the sidewalk.
There was a woman with him, tall and thickly built with short curly blond hair, and she was laughing. Jessica suffered an unwelcome stab of jealousy. When Kevin said he’d asked a female friend to help, she’d envisioned a hatchet-faced, grizzled woman with a gray crew cut, not a pretty blonde. Jessica envied how the other woman carried herself with such grace and confidence. Jessica had always felt a little uncomfortable with her size. This woman seemed to have no such problem. She also seemed to have no problem chatting with Kevin, who grinned and shook his head at something the woman had just said.
“Jessica, you’re here.” Kevin smiled. “This is Bobbie Kelly. I told you she might help us out.”
“Hi, Jessica.” Bobbie shook her hand. “Why do you want to be a firefighter?”
Jessica blinked. She’d been considering the question in quiet moments, expecting someone to ask, but hadn’t expected to be asked so soon. “I want to help people?”
Bobbie raised one eyebrow. “What, don’t you like sirens?”
“That’s a perk.”
Bobbie laughed.
“Ladies, can we go inside?” Kevin asked.
“Ladies? Marshall, do you have a fever? I don’t get that out of you unless I’m wearing a dress.”
Kevin rubbed his forehead and reached for the door handle. “Come on. All the good tables are going to be gone.”
Meechan’s was a neighborhood fixture. Most of the residents ate at least one meal a month there, if not more, despite the cramped dining room and lack of air-conditioning. The three of them jostled around a too-small table. Jessica hung her purse from the back of her chair and noticed Bobbie hadn’t carried one. She wasn’t sure if it mattered or not, but it made her uneasy.
Bobbie picked up a menu from the rack on the center of the table and studied it. “Nice place here, Marshall. You always take me to the best greasy spoons.”
“Kelly, quit complaining.” Kevin put his elbows on the table, looked at their position relative to her, and dropped his hands into his lap.
Jessica noticed Kevin didn’t look at a menu. Regulars knew it by heart. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed him in here before. Glancing around the packed dining room, she saw all the usuals. The woman who tried to bum a cigarette off every person she saw every time she saw them, even when they’d repeatedly told her they didn’t smoke. The old man with the fedora he wore rain or shine all year long and doffed to every woman