Page 13 of Heat Exchange
“Lydia stopped by,” Scotty said. “Looking for me.”
“Ah. I thought maybe somebody had a new ex who wasn’t happy about the ex part.”
Danny sprinkled pepper on his stew, but on the inside he cringed at the wordex. Not in a million years had he ever thought it could happen, but now it looked as though he was on the road to having an ex-wife and it hurt. Ashley was his wife and he wanted her to stay that way.
“Must be almost time for Karen to go,” Jeff said. “Right, Rick? This is the longest you’ve dated anybody that I can remember.”
“I like Karen,” Rick said around a mouthful of stew.
“I do, too,” Grant said. “She’s pretty and funny. And wicked smart, too.”
They all looked at Grant, and red crept up his neck. He’d taken a big bite of potatoes and carrots as soon as he finished talking, so he chewed awkwardly as they stared, and then swallowed hard.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” he said. “I meant that Rick should keep dating her because she’s pretty and funny and stuff. Even if they broke up, I wouldn’t make a move. Plus she’s kinda old. I mean for me.”
That made a few of them wince, and Jeff laughed. “Stop talking and eat your stew.”
“Damn right you wouldn’t make a move,” Scotty said. “You don’t date the other guys’ ex-girlfriends. Or ex-wives or sisters or...hell, mothers or daughters. You don’t fish in the station’s pond.”
Danny happened to be looking at Aidan when Scotty spoke, so he saw the way his mouth tightened and the tops of his ears turned red. But it was only a few seconds and Danny wondered if maybe he’d imagined it.
Grant gave Scotty a skeptical look. “At the rate Gullotti racks up ex-girlfriends, we’ll either have to break that rule or go looking for women out in the boonies somewhere.”
Danny shook his head. “That’s one rule you don’t want to break because that’s drama nobody here wants. Relationships get messy and that kind of personal friction can tear a house apart.”
“How did you end up married to Scotty’s sister, then?” Grant asked. “She’s Tommy Kincaid’s daughter, even. Isn’t that like a double rule-breaking?”
The last thing Danny wanted to do was talk about his marriage, even if it was currently a good example of the kind of drama he was talking about. So far things were still good between him and Scotty, but if things went any further south between Danny and Ashley, Scotty might feel a need to choose sides.
“I was actually up in Lynn at the time and met Ashley at a wedding for some mutual friends. I met Tommy and the rest of the family after about a month, I guess, but I didn’t transfer here until after Ashley and I were engaged.”
Silence filled the kitchen after he spoke and Danny knew why. Each of them was remembering that he and Ashley were separated and that there was a possibility of friction between him and Scotty if there was a divorce and it turned messy.
But that wasn’t going to happen because he wouldn’t let it. If Ashley wanted a divorce, he’d sign the papers. She could have the house. She could have whatever she wanted, and he wouldn’t fight it. He loved her too much to drag them both down into hostility and court battles.
The ache in his chest he’d suffered off and on since the day Ashley told him she needed space flared up, and Danny took a breath to steady himself. Being emotional never helped any situation. And it certainly wasn’t going to help this awkward silence that was threatening to ruin everybody’s appetites.
“So everybody’s current on the house fund for the month,” he said, changing the subject. “Everybody take a look at the list before the end of tour and add anything you can think of so we can put together a grocery run.”
As Danny expected, the guys all started talking about things they were almost out of, and he was free to eat his stew in peace. It was good stew, but now it tasted like sawdust and stuck in his throat.
If only his own house was as easy to manage as his firehouse.
Chapter Four
ONCEAGAINBEINGbehind the bar in jeans and a dark green Kincaid’s Pub T-shirt didn’t just stir up mixed emotions for Lydia. It put all of her feelings in a blender and spun them around on the highest speed setting.
On the one hand, there was probably no place else in the world she was as comfortable. The bar was practically her second home. On the other hand, she’d expected to grow up and leave it behind someday, and almost had. Being there was a confusing mash-up of warm nostalgia and cold panic that she was taking a giant step backward.
She’d almost gotten away once before, when she was married to Todd. They met at a benefit hockey game—he was a probie at a nearby firehouse at the time—and he’d said all the right words. They got married in a small civil ceremony six months later. When he rented them an apartment she thought was too far from both his firehouse and Kincaid’s, he’d told her it was a nice neighborhood with great schools for the children they’d have. And as he steered her toward leaving more and more of the responsibility for the bar in Ashley’s hands, she believed him when he said it was important to him that she make a beautiful home for their family.
It had taken her almost three years to recognize that he was systematically isolating her from the community that considered her family and him still a newcomer. Since she was trying to make a home for children Todd wasn’t around to make—a fact she was thankful for now—she wasn’t behind the bar at Kincaid’s, listening to stories about the guy who froze up on the ladder or who was using his job to get laid.
Of course, nobody wanted to be gossiping about Tommy Kincaid’s son-in-law so, though her dad and siblings hadn’t really liked Todd, they’d never heard anything concrete enough to merit interfering with her marriage. But they’d supported her when she moved home and divorced him. He’d moved to Worcester and she’d gone back to the pub.
But every day she’d left her dad’s house and walked to Kincaid’s for her shift, she’d felt as if she was spinning her wheels. There was nothing left for her there. She had zero interest in ever being involved with another firefighter. And, whether or not it was justified, she’d divorced one of them. In a climate of sticking together and seeing things through, the fact she hadn’t done that in her marriage made some people look at her a little sideways. She’d finally gotten fed up and, in a desperate attempt to change her life, moved to New Hampshire.
And now she was back. And even though she could tell herself it was only temporary, it didn’t feel that way. It felt more like stepping back into her life after a two-year vacation.
