Page 66 of Heat Exchange
He seemed startled by the question, but he recovered quickly. “I guess the easy answer is yes, but I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I became a firefighter because of the accident. Or maybe I would have anyway, even if that never happened.”
“What was it about the accident, though? I mean, you’d seen firefighters on TV and in movies, I’m sure. Why did seeing them in person make a difference to you?”
He shook his head. “It’s really hard to explain, but it wasn’t about them at all. It was about me. I was always trying to be who my family expected and failing, and then the accident happened and I took charge. I was confident and somehow, even without knowing what to do, I was in my element. It was like for the first time, I was my true self. Does that make sense?”
It did, Lydia admitted to herself with a sinking feeling. She’d known a lot of firefighters in her life, and they chose the job for a lot of reasons. Some because it was family tradition. Some, like her ex, wanted to be heroes. Luckily, there weren’t a lot of those guys around because they washed out pretty quickly. Most wanted to help people and serve their communities.
For Aidan, it was obviously a calling. Putting on that bunker coat and running toward what others ran away from was a part of who he was.
These feelings she was developing for him—feelings that made her think she might rather keep doing what she was doing than go back to her apartment in New Hampshire—didn’t pick and choose which parts of him to like. But her head had a say, too, and it still shied away from allowing her to love another firefighter.
And then there was the fact that, even if she managed to reconcile herself to his job, there was no way their relationship could progress until it was out in the open.
“You’re thinking about something wicked hard,” Aidan said, giving her a questioning look. “Something bothering you?”
Something like both of them dancing around the fact they weren’t just burning off the excess chemistry anymore but neither of them could admit it because that would raise a whole lot of questions they couldn’t answer.
“Nope.” She smiled. “I was just curious how you ended up with Boston Fire, I guess. Scotty’s fourth generation, which you obviously know. It’s what the men in my family do. But you come from a totally different background.”
“I don’t remember if I was into fire trucks or anything before the accident, but I know from the time I was eleven on, there was nothing else I ever wanted to be.”
And that was the hard part. The firefighter community drove her nuts, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a deep, lifelong respect and admiration for the men and women who did the job. And because of that, and the look in Aidan’s eye when he talked about it, she knew she couldn’t ask him to give it up.
“Oh, I like this part,” Aidan said, and she realized she’d lost him to the movie again. The two main characters—a man and a woman—were sparring with staffs as part of a training and selection process, and after a few minutes, Aidan turned back to her. “Do you know how to use one of those?”
“I’m not sparring with you,” she told him. “That’s not my idea of foreplay at all.”
“Bummer.”
“But if Ididspar with you, I’d totally kick your ass.”
He grinned, his eyes lighting up at the challenge. “They don’t have sticks like that at my gym, but they’ve got gloves. We could go a few rounds and give each other a workout.”
Even as she thought that sounded like a fun date, his expression dimmed and she realized he was thinking of Scotty. Obviously they went to the same gym, and there was also no way Aidan could take Tommy Kincaid’s daughter there without every guy in a five-house radius hearing about it.
“We don’t need to use gloves for a workout, you know,” she said, not in the mood to watch him beat himself up about her brother.
It worked. “Are you asking me to choose between sex andPacific Rim?”
Good point. “We can fast-forward through the science guys and still have time for a quickie workout before I leave.”
“I do love the way you come up with a plan.” He picked up the remote control and turned his attention back to the TV, his thumb hovering over the fast-forward button.
Lydia laughed and moved closer so she could snuggle with him now that they were done eating. If only she could come up with a plan for having a real relationship with him as easily as she came up with plans for a secret fling.
Chapter Sixteen
AFEWNIGHTSLATER, Aidan sat at the bar, sipping Sam Adams out of a cold bottle and watching Lydia work. And he watched with the awareness he could happily do this forever.
He’d finished up his shift and hit Kincaid’s for a meal—the grilled chicken sandwich tonight because a man couldn’t live on burgers alone—and a beer. After visiting with Lydia and the other regulars for a while, he’d head home. Maybe do some laundry or clean the bathroom. And then Kincaid’s would close and Lydia would show up. She usually didn’t stay more than an hour or two, because of Ashley, but they made the most of that time and it was enough.
Almost. The few occasions she’d stayed over and he’d slept the entire night with her butt pressed to his hip before waking up to her sleepy face made him want more of them.
If he pressed her to stay, she always defaulted to Ashley. If her sister got up in the middle of the night or early morning and she wasn’t home, she’d worry. And she’d already gone to bed, so it was too late to text her and tell hernotto worry.
Aidan knew that was a bunch of crap. He was pretty sure if Ashley woke up in the middle of the night and Lydia wasn’t there, Ashley would assume she was at his place. It was more likely some boundary wall Lydia had built to keep up the pretense they weren’t really having a relationship. If they weren’t having a real relationship, she didn’t have to worry about the fact he was a firefighter or that some apartment in New Hampshire she shared with a virtual stranger and a cat was her future.
He still believed, however, that the best way to convince Lydia otherwise was not to try to convince of her anything. If he pushed too hard, she’d dig in.
