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With a whispered “Sorry” she stepped away from him.
Amid giggles and screams, the preschoolers had cleared the way.
Still unable to figure out quite what had happened, Danny stood, tugging Buttons to heel as a way to distract himself and get his reactions back under control.
Alice swept up beside him. “Perhaps we’d better let Fireman Sullivan put the medal around his own neck.”
“Good plan,” he muttered. Stephanie was still staring at him as if she’d felt the earth move. Or maybe she’d been offended by his reaction to having her in his lap. Or maybe she knew he wanted her there again without such a big audience.
Somehow they managed to make the exchange, their fingers barely brushing as she handed him the medal, which sent off a new round of sparks. He reversed his earlier conclusion. It had to be the dry air and static electricity that was giving him jolts with a high-powered charge. Not Stephanie.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Alice said, her voice as soft and sweet as ice cream as he looped the ribbon around his neck.
“No problem,” he lied.
“If you’re not doing anything this weekend, Stephanie and I are planning to paint the kitchen on Saturday. You know, spruce up the place after the fire.”
His head whipped around to nail Stephanie with a frown. “She shouldn’t be painting. She’s—”
“If you and some of your friends were to drop by, that might be a good idea.”
He got a seriously uncomfortable feeling in his midsection. He was being manipulated. He knew it and still he couldn’t figure out how to avoid the inevitable. He couldn’t let Stephanie expose herself to paint fumes. Not while she was pregnant. Who knew what that would do to the baby?
Grimacing, he swallowed hard. “I’ll be here.”
Alice smiled in a way that suggested she’d known all along he was a sucker.
“No, wait!” Stephanie protested. “I don’t want you to—”
He ignored her. “Bye, kids. Thanks for the medal.” They waved to him, and he made a hasty retreat out the door with Buttons on a short leash.
Naturally Stephanie didn’t leave it at that.
“Danny, wait!”
Running away wasn’t an option. He’d just been awarded a medal for bravery, hadn’t he? So he halted at the fence gate. He could still make a quick getaway if she’d gotten the wrong idea about him. About them. There wasn’t any them. There couldn’t be.
“I don’t want you to help paint the kitchen.”
“You shouldn’t be exposed to the fumes.”
“There’ll be ample ventilation.”
“I doubt your father would agree with that.”
“It’s not my father’s problem. It isn’t yours, either, and I don’t appreciate you trying to boss me around.”
“Me?” His hand covered his chest in mock surprise. “I never bossed you around in my life. Even if I tried, you wouldn’t listen.”
“You’ve always tried to boss me around, ever since I was a little kid. But you’re right about one thing.”
He frowned. Stephanie rarely conceded he was right about anything. “What’s that?”
“I don’t listen. Now will you please forget about coming in to paint on Saturday?”
He considered her request. He wanted an excuse to stay away but her health and that of the baby came first. “If you won’t listen to me, will you at least ask your doctor? Listen to him?”
“To her.” At the sound of recorded music coming from inside the school, she glanced back over her shoulder. “All right, I guess that’s fair. I’ll check with my doctor.”
A compromise. That felt like progress. Maybe he’d found a way out. “You’ll let me know if she says no so I can help out?”
She gave a weary shake of her head. “You certainly are pushy, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” He grinned. “That’s why the ladies find me so irresistible.”
With an audible sigh, she rolled her eyes.
“Gotta go. Keep me posted, huh?”
“Sure. And, Danny, I’m sorry about what happened in there.” She looked at him with her clear hazel eyes, the sparks of amber tamped down for the moment.
Danny decided to play it dumb. He knew what she was talking about. His reaction to her being in his lap. But he wasn’t going to admit anything. It would take the jaws-of-life to pry the truth out of him. “It’s okay. I just didn’t think I deserved a medal, is all.”
She tilted her head, a quirk she’d developed when she was puzzled by something.
The time was ripe for his escape before she asked any questions. “Come on, Buttons. Gotta go.”
Stephanie stood on the walkway as Buttons trotted out of the gate beside Danny and they both got into his SUV. Inside the school, the children were singing “Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” Stephanie felt as though she’d just been washed down the waterspout.
She couldn’t have imagined the sparks that had flown between them when she’d landed in Danny’s lap. In all the years they’d known each other, he’d never once given her a hint that he was attracted to her. Until today.
Not that it mattered. He’d made it pretty obvious he didn’t like kids. They made him nervous. He’d been uncomfortable the whole time he’d been inside the preschool, despite the fact he’d easily handled the children’s questions, and they’d warmed up to him immediately.
Very soon she’d be having a baby, who would quickly turn into a kid. Whatever his physical reaction might be to her awkward plop into his lap, Danny Sullivan wouldn’t be interested in pursuing a personal relationship with her. Not in this lifetime.
Given Edgar’s reaction to her pregnancy, she was all too familiar with a man’s aversion to paternity.
With a weary sigh, she headed back into the school as the kids began the final chorus of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” She’d have to find her own way back up the spout and learn how to stay there without getting washed down the next time a few raindrops came into her life.
Chapter Three
Carrying his uniform on a hanger, Danny headed into the station house shortly before the 8:00 a.m. shift change. The wide doors to the bay area yawned open revealing two fire engines, a ladder truck and a paramedic unit gleaming bright red in the overhead lights.
No hose lay stretched out drying, there was nobody hurrying to wipe down the trucks after a run. It looked as though B shift had had a quiet night.
Maybe C shift would be luckier and catch a good fire before their twenty-four hours were up.
The fire department’s administrative offices occupied the first floor of the main station—a fairly new building in town—with sleeping quarters, the kitchen and dining area on the two floors above that.
Danny made for the stairs but the sound of jingling bracelets brought him up short. He winced, a premonition of doom settling over him.
“Danny, there’s something I want you to take a look at.”
Turning, he eyed Emma Jean Witkowsky, the station’s dispatcher and resident gypsy fortune-teller, with suspicion. As usual she was all decked out with dangling earrings and an armful of silver bracelets. Her long skirt swayed at her calves and she clanked with every step she took.
“I gotta get changed before the shift starts,” he said.
“This will only take a minute. There’s something strange going on with my crystal ball. I thought maybe you could make sense of it.”
“I’m not really into crystal balls. Or fortune-telling.” Particularly Emma Jean’s version, which was invariably wrong.
She ignored his objection, shoving open the door to Dispatch and stepping inside.
With a shrug, Danny followed her. How long could it take to look into a stupid crystal ball and duck back out again?
“I just bought this new ball via the Internet and I think there’s something wrong with it,” she said, slipping behind the counter that separated visitors from an array of computer terminals and phones. She placed a globe on the counter and slowly removed the blue silk hankie that covered it. “Tell me what you think.”
Disinterested, he glanced at the glass ball…and nearly choked.
Looking back at him was the image of a grinning hamster with big red lips and long eyelashes. Beside it a typed note read, “Your love life is on the upswing.”
Danny was torn between laughter and an urge to throttle Emma Jean. “Thank God you haven’t gotten a prediction right in the past five years.”
Affronted, she widened her eyes. “I foretold Logan Strong and Janice getting together, didn’t I? And Mike Gables and—”
“Enough!” He backed toward the door. “Leave me out of your fortune-telling. And for God’s sake, could everybody please forget about that hamster? Next time, I’ll let the damn thing suffocate.”
He wouldn’t, of course. Not when somebody like Stephanie made him want to revive a stupid rodent or die trying—all to impress a beautiful woman.
BY AFTERNOON, DANNY was bored out of his gourd.
Engine 62’s only action so far had been to tag along on a paramedic call to old Mrs. Trumblebird, who managed to have palpitations or a wastebasket fire every week or so. Today she’d been short of breath. Mostly Danny thought she was lonely but the ambulance hauled Abigail off to the hospital anyway. She’d be pampered for a couple of days and maybe her family would visit her.
Heck of a way to spend your golden years.
After logging an hour on the stationary bike, then showering, he wandered out in back of the station. Tommy Tonka was sitting in the driver’s seat of Big Red, a vintage 1930s fire engine the adolescent had helped the department restore. Today he looked glum.
“What’s up, kid?”
He lifted his bony shoulders. “Nuthin’.”
Danny swung up into the seat beside him. “Funny, from the look of things, I would have guessed your best friend died.”
Head bent, shoulders slumped, the sixteen-year-old slid his hands around the steering wheel. When it came to anything mechanical, Tommy was a near genius. Personality wise, he was definitely on the slow side.
“I got dumped,” he said.
“By that pretty redhead you brought to the Founder’s Day Parade last fall?” The two of them had ridden down Paseo Boulevard in Big Red with the Station 6 crew and their wives, Tommy looking so proud of himself Danny thought the kid might burst with it.
“Yeah. Rachel. She’s dating a jock now. Varsity basketball.”
“That’s rough.” Leaning back, Danny propped one foot on the dashboard. “So what are you gonna do about it?”
“What can I do? Heck, he’s a big school hero, scores twenty points a game.” Mimicking Danny’s position, Tommy scooted lower in the seat and propped his size twelve tennis shoe against the dashboard. The laces were untied and the sole looked like it was about to come off.
“I’d bet you have a lot more between the ears than this other guy has. You can figure out a way to get her back—if you want to.”
His face flushing, which emphasized a bad case of acne, Tommy slid his gaze across to Danny. “You know how to turn me into a jock before the spring dance?”
“Uh, that’s kind of a hard one.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” Dejection drove his shoulders lower.
“But hey, you can’t just give up if that’s what it will take to get Rachel back. Nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough.”
Tommy didn’t look convinced.
Mentally trying to pluck a rabbit out of the hat, Danny said, “You could go out for the triathlon.”
The boy’s head snapped up. “You want me to do what?”
“You can swim, can’t you? And ride a bike? And I know you can run.” In each case, Danny gave a dispirited nod. “Then all you have to do is put them together. There’s a junior division in the upcoming firefighters triathlon. You could train with me.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been out for any kind of sport, not even Little League. My mom never had the money for fees or uniforms, stuff like that.”
“It’s okay. We’ve got weight-training equipment in the basement. We’ll get you some decent shoes, and I’ve got an extra bike you can use. At the very least, it will keep your mind off your troubles. What have you got to lose?”
The faintest spark of hope appeared in the kid’s eyes. “You think I could—”
“Damn right you could.” He grinned at the boy and got a tentative smile in return. “And if I know anything about women—which I do—Rachel’s gonna fall all over herself trying to get back together with you. Brains and brawn are a tough combination to beat.”
“Then, could I maybe start now?”
Suddenly the boy looked so eager, Danny almost laughed. Instead he clamped his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and gave a little squeeze. “Now sounds like a perfect time.”
Danny wasn’t entirely sure what he’d gotten himself into. But he did know what it was like to be raised by a single mom. There was never enough money to go around. Pinching pennies was a way of life. And it hurt like hell not having a dad like the other kids.
For Danny, Harlan Gray had filled some of that void.
He couldn’t help but wonder who would be the man Stephanie’s baby would turn to.
Silently cursing the guy who had gotten Stephanie pregnant, then dumped her, Danny jumped down from the fire truck. With an effort, he battled back old memories of anger and helplessness, and a fury that made him want to punch out that stranger’s lights.
“Come on, Tommy, my man. Let’s see a little hustle, a little en…thuu…siasm!”
He jogged off ahead of the boy, into the station and down the stairs to the basement. He’d pedal another hour on the bike to bleed off his anger while Tommy worked out. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d be able to sleep tonight without worrying about Stephanie and her baby.
SHE HAD TO STOP PEERING out the kitchen window trying to catch a glimpse of Danny.
