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“I am started. Keep or toss last week’s News-week?”
He shook his head.
“No, Mimi, this is all very amusing, this part about cleaning my house,” he said, chuckling. “But just put down those magazines and take your clothes off.”
Chapter Two
“Excuse me?”
The sweepstakes-entry envelope—Gibson St. James, you could be our next million-dollar winner! —slipped from her hand to the floor.
“You can take your clothes off now,” Gibson said matter-of-factly.
He leaned back into the cushions of the armchair, grimacing slightly as he eased his body into a semi-comfortable position.
“M-My... clothes?”
He hadn’t figured her for stupid.
“Yeah, your clothes. Take them all off. Go right ahead.”
“But, but, but,” she sputtered.
“This isn’t something I’ve had much experience with,” he reassured her, in case she was just as new to this as he was. “Sure, I’ve been to my share of bachelor parties, but I don’t believe in paying a woman for my pleasures. Never had to and, before I got myself all banged up in that fire, I thought I never would. But maybe the chiefs right—it’s been a long time, I don’t get out much, and you’re exactly the kind of woman I like. Blond, curvy and mile-high legs. You can go right ahead and take off your clothes now. Take your time if you’re nervous, but let’s give it a try.”
Mimi felt her mouth open and close, open and close. If she had thought about it, she would have concluded she looked like a goldfish gasping bubbles in an aquarium. But she wasn’t thinking about what she looked like—she was thinking about the assumptions Gibson St. James was making.
There were a couple of possibilities and neither of them were good.
She was thinking about her own shock and outrage and how he had a way of looking at her that made her feel her clothes were already lying in a heap around her ankles.
“You...uh, you think I’m a stripper, don’t you?” she asked, deciding to tackle the least dangerous possibility first.
“Yeah, but I don’t think you’re doing such a good job if you’ve been in my house for ten minutes and you’ve still got every stitch on. That keep-or-toss gimmick was pretty cute though. But I should warn you that most men wouldn’t really appreciate its subtlety.”
“I am not a stripper!”
“Oh, I know, I know. The proper term is exotic dancer. Okay, I apologize for not showing proper respect for your profession.”
“I’m not an exotic dancer.”
“Are you going to try to persuade me this is performance art?”
“I’m not here to take off my clothes,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Really? Then just what are you here for?”
She stared heavenward. Counted to ten. Counted to twenty because counting to ten didn’t make her any less aggravated.
“I told you once, I’ll tell you again. The chief sent me. I tried out to be a firefighter but I failed the physical exam. He says if I get you back down to the station house, he’ll let me try again. Understand now?”
She waited for the apology.
It didn’t come.
Gibson’s reaction was swift and merciless. He laughed. And continued laughing even as Mimi thought the floor might reach up and swallow her whole.
“You? A firefighter? You’re kidding me, right?”
“You don’t have to be so amused.”
“The chief doesn’t believe in women firefighters,” Gibson said, sobering. “And besides, you don’t have a firefighter’s body.”
“And what exactly does a firefighter’s body look like?”
Gibson held up his hands to make a box.
“You would need to be a little wider muscle-wise... in places you’re not very wide. And you’d have to be smaller...in places you’re not very...”
Mimi followed his eyes to her breasts. Her very big breasts. For the zillionth time in her life, Mimi confronted the truth that her body type was more Dolly Parton than Kate Moss. She had plenty of unfashionably feminine curves and she had never apologized for her lack of supermodel angularity.
Mimi liked being a woman. Liked all the parts of womanhood that she supposed a more politically correct woman might reject.
She liked her lipstick—usually choosing a pink champagne that set off her pale complexion perfectly. She liked getting her nails done—regard—ing it as a luxury, particularly after a long day working at the diner.
She liked to play with new hairstyles, go shopping with girlfriends, try out makeovers from magazine pictures, giggle over the new soap-opera hunk, and leaf through bridal magazines on a rainy afternoon even though the closest she’d ever gotten to the altar was when she was her best friend’s maid of honor.
As a woman, Mimi was used to getting a lot of male attention, although she attributed this more to her job than her appearance.
She had been a waitress for five years at Boris’s, a diner that was on the cloverleaf intersection of highways that led to nowhere and everywhere and brought in customers, mostly truckers, from all over North America.
She had developed certain skills as a waitress: The ability to juggle five full dinner plates without losing a morsel of food. The talent of running nonstop for a two-hour lunch rush with a smile on her face. The skill of remembering coffee preferences for a full counter—coffee with cream, with half-and-half, with sugar, black, with sugar substitute.
And most importantly, she’d cultivated the full-fledged genius for deflecting unwanted flirtation. In a way that left a male customer smiling—but definitely put in his place.
She did it all the time.
And she did it now.
“Mr. St. James...”
“Gibson.”
“Gibson. I think before you ask me to take my clothes off one more time, you should call the chief first. Once he explains why I’m here, I’m sure you’ll be the one asking me to keep my clothes on.”
She could say this with complete confidence because she knew the chief. Knew him well. And not just his weakness for cream pies and his aversion to broccoli and lima beans.
Gibson narrowed his eyes.
“All right. I’ll call him. But in the meantime, you just stand right there and don’t—”
“But, Gibson, these dishes need washing!” she called cheerily from the kitchen. “Haven’t you had anybody in here to clean up since you left the rehab institute?”
“Haven’t wanted anybody,” he muttered.
“Stripper?” the chief shrieked. “You called Mrs. Pickford’s granddaughter a stripper?”
“I didn’t actually call her a stripper until after I asked her to take off her clothes and she refused,” Gibson explained, casting a quick glance in the direction of the kitchen. He could hear running water, banging cabinet doors and Mimi’s annoying rendition of a popular love song.
It wasn’t that she was off-key. No, she had perfect pitch.
It wasn’t that the song was bad. Whoever wrote it had done a dandy job.
It was that she was so darned cheerful!
“You asked Mrs. Pickford’s granddaughter to take her clothes off? In front of you?”
“That’s how strippers usually do it.”
The chief bellowed over the phone so loudly that Gibson had to hold the receiver away from his ear.
“Who is Mrs. Pickford?” Gibson asked when the chief’s voice had dissolved into a whimper.
“She was my high-school English teacher. Everybody’s high-school teacher. Clearly you don’t remember her. When did you move down to Chicago?”
“Ten years ago.”
“She might have already retired by then, but still, I’m surprised you never heard the stories about her.”
“So the woman you sent me is the granddaughter of a former English teacher. I don’t see the problem.”
“Mrs. Pickford was the most extraordinary disciplinarian. If she knew that I put her only granddaughter in the position of having her honor impugned, she would...she would...”
“Give you a week’s worth of detention?” Gibson interrupted the chief’s sputtering.
“Please, Gibson, this is a serious matter,” the chief said, sighing mightily. “I didn’t send Mimi Pickford to your house to take off her clothes for you. I sent her there to take care of you. I’m worried about you. I need you back on the force.”
“I’m none of your business anymore,” Gibson said with surprising amiability. “I resigned. And why does she want to do this anyhow?”
“She took the physical exam for recruiting.”
“You set her up on the obstacle course?” Gibson asked, thinking of the thirty-minute test he had taken to join up.
He had aced it, of course, but he had been a firefighter in Chicago for ten years and that was a tougher job on a slow Monday than anything the chief could cook up.
And Gibson had worked out every day—running, weight-training, jumping rope—knowing that every drop of sweat was worth it.
But no one could get through that obstacle course without training. Especially a petite woman with soft curves better suited to...
He groaned as he thought of his mistake. There was scant comfort in the notion that any other man would have thought the same thing.
“I should have talked her out of it, but she was the only one to come in,” the chief said. “She failed, of course, but she’s just like her grandmother.”
“An extraordinary disciplinarian?”
“No, Gibson, she’s strong-willed. Both of those Pickford women are. If Mimi wants something, a man better cooperate or get out of her way. She wants to be a firefighter. Although the town of Grace Bay’s gonna lose a great waitress.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gibson said dryly. “I’ve never been in Boris’s.”
“Then you’re missing something. You can walk in there at the end of a long, hard day and somehow with just a smile she’ll make a solitary meal seem like a party. And, if you apologize, she might talk to you if you need it. And Gibson—? You might need it.”
Gibson closed his eyes.
“I told her that if she got you back here, in ship-shape condition, I’d give her a second shot at the physical,” the chief continued. “I don’t think her talents are in firefighting, but maybe she’ll see what she’s good at—helping people. And I’ll get you back.”
“I gave you my letter of resignation.”
“Goodbye, Gibson,” the chief said. “Oh, and by the way, please apologize to Mimi for your misunderstanding. If you don’t, I’m going to get a call from Mrs. Pickford. And I don’t have to tell you that such a call will not make me happy.”
The chief hung up before Gibson could tell him, yet again, that he wasn’t coming back. No, no, never coming back.
Gibson stared at the bachelor mess that was his house. He had once, before the big fire. been rather proud of the way he managed. He’d kept it clean. He’d kept it neat. He’d taken pride in his home. Now, it was a disaster area. He rubbed the two-day—three-day? could it be four-day? —stubble on his jaw.
Now he was a disaster area.
He sighed heavily and felt it. In his ribs. He touched the tenderness. He shifted his weight, ignoring the howling of his nerve endings, and sat up. Tried to put his weight on his leg.
It wasn’t going to work.
He’d have to crawl. Like he always did. But he wasn’t going to do it in front of her.
“Ms. Pickford, could you come here?”
“Yes, Gibson?” she said, waltzing into the living room with a dish towel thrown over her shoulder, holding up the dirty grill from his stove burner with a smidgen of distaste. “You can call me Mimi, by the way. Since we’re going to be together a lot.”
“I’ll call you Mimi this once. Because it’s going to be the only time. Because you’re leaving. Now. But I wanted to apologize to you before you go. I was wrong. You’re not a stripper or an exotic dancer or any number of other things I assumed, and it was wrong of me to think the chief had sent you to me for the purpose of taking off your clothes. Don’t let your grandmother know I made this mistake.”
“Oh, I won’t. But I’m not leaving.”
“I’ll call the police.” .
“What are you going to tell them?” she demanded, putting one hand on her hip. “That I’m breaking and entering and scouring your filthy kitchen sink?”
“Get out!” Gibson shouted, Suddenly dropping all pretense of civilized behavior. It hurt his ribs to shout, but it felt good nonetheless to lay down the law to this relentlessly cheerful woman. “Party’s over. Get out of my house!”
“I won’t go. I want to be a firefighter and this is what I have to do to make it happen.”
“It’s not a joke.”
