Page 15 of Heat Exchange
What kind of idiot would stand there and think about how hard it was for both her and her sister to be married to firefighters while lusting after a firefighter?
Lustbeing the key word, she decided. As long as she kept it to a very private sexual attraction that nobody else knew about, there was no harm, no foul. She was simply a woman who hadn’t dated in a while having a purely physical reaction to a handsome guy with a hot body and a naughty grin.
Of course, she wouldn’t blame him if he avoided the place for a few days. She’d been pissed off at Scotty and, since he’d walked away, poor Aidan had gotten the overflow. She’d been bitchy with him and he didn’t deserve it. On the other hand, maybe it had been a good thing. If it kept Aidan out of her sight, she wouldn’t have to figure out why seeing him was having this kind of affect on her all of a sudden.
It was no big deal, she told herself, setting Kincaid’s coasters in front of a couple who sat at one of the tables. All she had to do was tend the bar, bide her time, keep her pants on and then get the hell out of Boston.
* * *
“MAYBEI’MNOTtoo old to date a woman named Bunny,” Aidan said, setting the weights back on the rack.
Grant Cutter, who’d been spotting him, tossed him a towel. “Too late.”
Sitting up so he straddled the bench, Aidan wiped the sweat from his head and bare torso. “What do you mean too late?”
“Scotty wanted to go to some club and his girlfriend would only go if Bunny went, but she didn’t want to be a third wheel. You didn’t answer your phone, so he called me and made me go.”
“Aren’t you a little young?”
“So was Bunny.” Grant frowned. “But nottooyoung. Not that young, I mean.”
“Relax.” He hadn’t been serious about wanting to date her, anyway. He was more just giving voice to the fact he really wanted to get laid. “I knew what you meant.”
“And I think Bunny’s out of the picture anyway, since Scotty’s not seeing Piper anymore.”
Aidan frowned. “Since when?”
“I guess when he left her place this morning, she told him not to bother coming back.”
“Huh.” He’d only seen Scotty for a few minutes that morning. They had a full crew, so Cobb had sent Scotty to another house to cover for a guy who called in sick.
“She was asking him about his benefits and then she asked him if the insurance would cover her getting a nose job if they got married. He said he wasn’t getting married anytime soon and then she said if she got knocked up, he’d have to.”
“So he was running like his ass was on fire when he left there this morning,” Aidan said, shaking his head. Sometimes Scott made some noise about trying to find the right woman and settling down, but they’d all known Piper wasn’t her. Especially if, as Grant implied, she was as young as her friend Bunny.
The younger guy looked at the clock for what seemed like the thousandth time, and Aidan gave him a questioning look. “You going somewhere?”
“I have a date tonight. Like a real date, not a wingman thing. Her name’s Nicole and she’s pretty awesome.”
“Does she know you went out with Bunny last night?”
Grant looked down at his shoes and shook his head. “She knows I went out with Scotty and some friends. She didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have lied to her if she’d asked. And it wasn’t really a date with Bunny. I was just extra, you know.”
“Relax, kid. I’m just messing with you.”
Grant kept on talking, telling him where he met Nicole—at his nephew’s ball game—and pretty much her entire life story, but Aidan half tuned him out. Calling the other guy kid had yanked him back to the moment Lydia had looked him in the eye and called him that.
“Good effort,kid.”
He didn’t believe it had just popped out of her mouth. She’d been considering what he’d said and had plenty of time to think about her response while looking at him. And even when he’d been seventeen and she’d seemed so much older at twenty-one, she’d never called him that.
No, Aidan was pretty sure it had been deliberate, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around why.
The alarm sounded and both of them were on their feet immediately. They met the other guys on their way through the kitchen, but there was no talking as they listened to the call. A motor vehicle accident involving an SUV, a pickup and a cyclist, with injuries. Witness unable to confirm if it was steam or smoke on-scene.
Once they’d each weighed themselves down with fifty-plus pounds of gear and hit the sirens, they rolled out, E-59 first with L-37 right behind. They always rolled together—the pumper truck with various water hoses and wrenches, and the ladder truck with the variety of ladders, tools and rakes. As soon as they cleared the bays, the doors closed and they were off.
They arrived on-scene to find some very pissed-off people yelling at each other. There was no steam and no smoke, and the injury appeared to be a scuff down the side of the cyclist’s leg. It didn’t stop him from swinging his helmet at one of the other pissed-off, yelling people, trying to hit the guy in the head.
