Page 5 of Hot Response
“Coupon from Mrs. Cobb.”
Gavin snorted, knowing that would only escalate Walsh’s grumbling. Their chief’s wife got sick of him grumbling about grocery costs, even though they all had to contribute to the house fund, so she’d taken up coupon clipping. Now they had super turbo dish soap and a freezer full of Hot Pockets.
As they droned on about how embarrassing it was to hold up the entire line while the cashier scanned the coupons Cobb’s wife had sent in to work with him—all sorted into a pink wallet-type organizer with panda bears on it—Gavin’s mind wandered.
Straight back to Cait Tasker and that mouth of hers. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what her reaction would be if he cut off the attitude-loaded words coming out of her mouth by kissing her and maybe catching that soft bottom lip between his teeth.
Knowing her, he’d end up in the back of her ambulance and she and her partner would stop for lunch on the way to the hospital.
Chapter Two
Cait stood in front of the small, shabby cape with dirty blue vinyl siding she was once again calling home, trying to brace herself before she went in.
She’d only lived in the house for a few years, between her mom marrying Duke—whose real name was John, which had inexplicably led to John Wayne jokes and the nickname back when he was a child—and moving into a shitty apartment with two broke friends as soon as she graduated from high school. She’d worked hard and eventually moved into a much smaller apartment with a similar level of shittiness, but without the roommates she’d come to like less than she had before living with them.
Then, almost eight months ago, Duke had a heart attack and he didn’t make it. Her mom and her sixteen-year-old half-brother, Carter, hadn’t handled it well. Her older sister, Michelle, was in Texas with her Air Force husband and had her hands full with a toddler. Cait had given all the help she could from arm’s length, but she’d eventually had to come to grips with the fact her mom wasn’t coping with being widowed a second time. It was a scared phone call from her brother that had been the final straw. Since she’d already been looking to lease or buy a less-shitty-than-her-apartment condo, she let her place go andtemporarilymoved back in with her mother.
Now it was six months later and it wasn’t going well.
But it was too cold to stand outside all night, wishing she was someplace else. A nightclub with friends, dancing and drinking and checking out the hot guys would be nice. Or maybe she’d finally get around to stopping by Kincaid’s Pub, which was supposed to have damned good food and was a favorite of the local firefighters. It was owned by a retired firefighter from Gavin Boudreau’s house, actually, and the owner’s son and son-in-law were on the same crew, too.
And she’d managed to circle right back around to the one guy she was trying not to think about anymore today. With an aggravated sigh, she walked into the house and almost ran into her brother, who was crossing the kitchen to the fridge. Carter’s hair, as dark as her own, needed cutting again and one more thing got added to her to-do list before she even got her shoes off.
“How was your day?” she asked him as he sidestepped around her.
“Fine.” He didn’t stop walking or look up from his phone. The only indication he gave that he’d even heard her was the one word spoken in a flat tone.
On another day, she might have pushed him—forced him to put the phone down and have a conversation with her—but she was tired and not in the mood to get in a war of words with another guy today. Especially since she was already starting to feel guilty about the earlier exchange with Gavin. Whether he pushed her buttons or not, she shouldn’t have taken her bad mood out on him.
Carter rummaged in the fridge for a few seconds before heading to the living room with a drink and his phone.
Her mom was at the counter, where she usually was when Cait came home. Every day, after her workday as a bank teller ended, Patty changed into one of Duke’s old sweatshirts over leggings. “Hi, honey. I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, so I didn’t start dinner yet. It won’t take long, though.”
Cait had sent her a text message when she left the garage, but her mom rarely had her cell phone with her in the house. It was probably at the bottom of her purse, which was hung on the hook under her mom’s heavy winter coat, chiming out reminders nobody could hear.
“I’ll help,” she said, but she wasn’t surprised when her mom shook her head and told her to go relax.
Patty had always enjoyed cooking and they’d often worked side by side in the kitchen but, since Duke’s death, she’d become adamant about doing it herself. Cait had figured out a long time ago that it was one of the few aspects of being the sole head of the household that Patty felt confident about—feeding her children was something she could handle—so she didn’t argue with her.
Instead, she turned her attention to one of the household chores her mother definitely didn’t handle well, which was dealing with the pile of mail tossed on the kitchen island.
And, oh, joy, it was credit card statement time again. One of the first fires Cait had to put out when she moved back in was stopping the auto-payments to the credit card company from Duke’s savings account. The automatic withdrawals meant the statements could go unopened, to deal with another day. Her mother probably would have let it go on forever if Cait hadn’t gotten pushy about her financial situation. Now, every month, Cait looked over every item on the statement, watching for problems and trying to keep a rein on the retail therapy habit her mom had developed. It was a double whammy because she got the retail therapy by buying things for Carter he didn’t need—or deserve—just to make him happy for about two and a half minutes.
“Mom, we need to talk about this gym membership.”Again.“Neither you or Carter have used it a single time since the last time we talked about it.”
“I told you it was Duke’s. He liked to go alone, and I think he went more to hang out with his friends than to work out. I won’t use it, but it just keeps renewing itself.”
So it was basically just setting forty of her mother’s dollars on fire every month. “It needs to be canceled.”
“I tried once. The gym has a website, but I didn’t have the information to sign into his account. And I told you last time you asked that I’ve been meaning to ask Carter if he’d be interested in it, but I keep forgetting. I’ll ask him.”
Cait took a long drink of her coffee to drown the words she wanted to say to her mother. If Carter had any interest in going to the gym, he probably would have gone with his dad. He wasn’t likely to be more interested now that his dad was gone. But she could tell by the way her mother ducked her head and lifted her shoulders a little that she wasn’t feeling very strong at the moment, and Cait knew pushing the issue now would only end in her mother’s tears and her own increasing frustration. Especially if they had to go through the grueling process of trying to guess the answers to her stepfather’s security questions. That hadn’t been fun and the only saving grace was that Duke seemed to reuse the same few passwords on a lot of sites.
Instead, she reached for the notebook that was never far from her laptop—which pretty much lived on the island with the mail since she rarely used it—and opened it to the page where she kept the list of credit card transactions that required further action. After writing down the company name and all the details, she finished scanning the statement and was relieved she didn’t find anything else amiss.
Then she flipped to the most recent page in her never-ending to-do list and addednag Carter about stopping at the barber shop after school. That was a hard one because one Saturday morning of every month, Duke and Carter would go out to breakfast and then spend a couple of hours at the barber’s, getting their hair trimmed and engaging in the male version of salon gossip. While most of Carter’s acting out got on her nerves, since much of it was aimed at getting one over on their mother, she knew this one really hurt him.
“They’re saying we might get snow later this week,” her mother said as she snapped spaghetti in half and dropped it into the pot of boiling water. “We should hire somebody to shovel the driveway and the walk. One of the kids in the neighborhood, maybe.”
