Spark Of Desire (7 page)

“Well what?” Kevin snapped back.

“Why can’t you take her to the station?”

Jessica held her breath, waiting for the answer. She’d been so caught up watching him not lean on the table she’d forgotten there was a discussion going on. By the look on Kevin’s face, he’d forgotten too. Why wouldn’t he take her to the station? Was he embarrassed by her already?

“They’ll eat her alive.”

“So? They’re gonna do that anyway.”

“No,” Kevin said. He focused on the ketchup bottle. “We’ll go to hardware store in the plaza by the bookstore and look at what they’ve got.”

“That’s stupid. Sears won’t have an SCBA tank.”

“SCBA tanks aren’t on the exam.”

“How do you know? You haven’t taken the exam in sixteen years.”

Kevin turned to Jessica, ignoring Bobbie. “Why aren’t you asking what an SCBA tank is?” His blush had become a deep red and there was a vein throbbing on his temple.

“Because I know.” Jessica pressed back into her chair. He seemed to dislike her again. She wished he’d make up his mind. If he would make up his mind, she’d at least have an idea where to start making up hers.

“I’ll take her to my station if you’re embarrassed,” Bobbie snorted.

“What makes you think I’m embarrassed?”

Bobbie rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Jess. We’ll go over everything until you’re comfortable. Mr. Shy will have to get over it.”

“I’m not shy.” Kevin turned to Jessica. “Really, I’m not shy. I just don’t think it’s going to be useful to drag you into the station prematurely.”

Bobbie put her hand beside her mouth as if she didn’t want Kevin to hear what she was saying and then stage-whispered so he couldn’t help overhearing. “He doesn’t want the guys to see you until he’s ready.”

Kevin groaned. His face glowed red by now. “I’ll meet you at the bookstore tomorrow, and we’ll walk down to Sears. What time do you have lunch?”

“Ten.”

“In the morning?”

Jessica nodded. She had to go at ten or wait until two, but she didn’t feel like explaining that to him.

“Fine.” He stood up and pulled out his wallet. “I’ll meet you tomorrow at ten.”

“It’s not going to help,” Bobbie sang.

Kevin dropped some bills on the table. “I’ll talk to you later.” He walked out.

Jessica stared at the door long after he left, wondering who he was going to talk to later. Her or Bobbie? “He was really mad,” she said.

“No, that wasn’t mad. Mad is much quieter. He was flustered, and it was funny. Kevin doesn’t get flustered. He’s pretty level. This is going to be a blast.” Bobbie grinned. “You can come to my station to play with the toys.”

“Thanks.” Jessica stared out the door, wondering if Bobbie had read him right. He’d looked more angry than agitated. Or had she been too flustered to know what he felt?

Bobbie sipped the last of her drink. She put down the empty glass and started turning it on its ring of condensation. “He’s never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“Helped anybody train to get into the department.” Bobbie didn’t look up from her careful glass spinning.

“Is that unusual?”

The waitress stopped by with the check and picked up Kevin’s empty glass.

“It is for Kevin. He’s quiet. He keeps to himself. Doesn’t date. I tried.” Bobbie grinned, but Jessica thought she saw something odd in it. “For a while I thought there was something wrong with me, but it’s him. I’ve known him for four years and never heard of him seeing anyone. I have to wonder why he picked you out of the crowd.”

Jessica shrugged. “I went to Ireland.” How could a smart, attractive guy like Kevin manage to stay home on a Saturday night? He should be beating women off with a stick, or a crowbar.

“Really? He’d probably be into that. He’s into all the traditional music. He’s a classic firefighter. Irish Catholic, tough, stubborn. You know the type.”

Irish Catholic, tough, stubborn. Why then did he keep changing his mind about her? Why did it matter? “How old is he?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Not sure. Sometimes he looks older than God and sometimes he’s a big kid. I know he’s been in the department for about sixteen years and the earliest you can join up is twenty-one.”

“So the youngest he could be is thirty-seven.”

“Something like that.” Bobbie stood up and flipped over the check. “That rat.”

Jessica looked at the check and the bills Kevin had left on the table. “What?”

“He paid for lunch. What a guy, huh?” Bobbie dropped a single on the table. “He’s cheap, too. You always have to watch his tips. Hey, are you free Monday?”

“I’m off all day.” Jessica stood up and collected her purse.

“Good. Meet me at the gym at nine. I can show you the machines and get you started. Time’s short, you know?”

Jessica nodded and followed Bobbie out. As she walked home, she considered Kevin. Irish Catholic, tough and stubborn. Never trained anyone for the department exam before, but offered to help her out of the blue. “Pretty level”, but he’d been half crazed throughout the encounter, and he’d vanished to the men’s room forever, apparently to wash his face. She still wasn’t sure why she’d tried to provoke him. Had she just wanted him to look at her? Acknowledge her? Anything? Was she turning into a child, acting out to get attention?

At her car, she stopped to collect the books she’d borrowed and walked up the rickety stairs to her apartment. She’d been trying to get the landlord to fix them since she moved in two years ago. As she unlocked the door, she heard the phone ring. Throwing open the door she dived for the phone before the machine picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, honey. We got your message. What’s the big news?”

Jessica sank onto the couch. Last night, in a split second of courage, she’d called her parents intending to tell them she planned to take the fire department exam. Unfortunately, her courage deserted her now when her mother decided to return the call. “News?” She stalled.

“You left us a message saying you had news. What’s going on?”

Last night she had hoped her father would answer the phone. He’d be much easier to deal with about this than her mother. Of course, the way Mindi was acting, she should be glad both her parents were in Florida. “Well…” Jessica opened her mouth to say she had started training to take the fire department exam, but that’s not what came out. “I met someone.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really,” Jessica said through her teeth. So far, she told herself, it wasn’t a lie. She had met someone. Two someones so far. She couldn’t help how her mother took the news. Right?

“Tell me about him. What’s his name? How old is he? What does he do?”

“His name is Kevin Marshall. He’s a firefighter.”

“Oh honey, you always did like firemen.”

“I want to be a firefighter, Mom.” Jessica started picking her fingernails. Her mother had never gotten over the idea that her little girl wasn’t very little or very girlie.

“But honey, it’s so dangerous, and it’s very hard work.”

Jessica remembered now why she’d dropped out of pre-med. Her mother repeating over and over again “it’s such hard work.” She pictured her mother the way she always had, a tiny woman wearing a pastel blouse with a lacy collar, matching slacks, and a permanently perplexed expression on her face. “But Mom, I want to be a paramedic, and you can’t do that without being a firefighter.”

“Honey, I thought you called to tell me about your new boyfriend.”

Jessica gritted her teeth. This is where it curved into lie territory. “Is Dad there?”

“No, he stepped out. I’ll tell him you said hello.”

Jessica kept her groan away from the phone. Her father would have at least listened. He’d been more than willing to put her through med school. He’d encouraged her to go to Ireland. He didn’t think anything was too difficult.

“Did you get your birthday card?”

“Yes, Mom. Thank you.”

“When are you going to come visit? You’re probably going to be busy with your new boyfriend this summer.”

“Probably.” By not correcting her mother she’d managed to lie without opening her mouth.

“You must really like him. How old did you say he was?”

“He’s kind of old. He’s thirty-seven.”

“Baby, that isn’t old. Your father is twelve years older than I am.”

Jessica looked at the family picture hanging on the wall over the television. It had been taken three years ago before her parents moved to Florida when Dad retired. Mom in a pastel pink lace-collared blouse. Herself wearing a burgundy blouse. Dad standing behind them in a black suit with a blue- and red-striped tie. Her dad had been thirty-five when she was born, but her mother had been twenty-three. Twelve years difference.

Kevin wasn’t that much older than her.

“Hello? Jessica?”

“What?”

“You were daydreaming.”

“Just distracted for a minute. How’s Aunt Rose?” Jessica launched her mother on a topic that should keep her occupied for the rest of the conversation. She didn’t want to have to make up more lies about Kevin. At this point, she could dig herself out with very little suffering, but the longer her mother went on, the worse it got.

Eventually she’d have to tell her parents what she was doing. She couldn’t just pop up one day with a badge, but she might as well find out if she could do it first. No reason to panic her mother before she knew if she could handle the training. She was going to be spending most of her summer with Kevin. Flipping open one of the study guides, she listening to her mother babble about her friends at the retirement village. Her mother could believe the white lie about Kevin for a few more weeks. It would make her happy. Give her something to brag about with the other women. If, by her next doctor’s appointment, she was still training, then she would tell them.

Handling her parents was going to be the easiest part.

Figuring out Kevin was going to be a bit trickier.

Chapter 4

When Jessica stopped next to her cart of reshelves, Julie looked up from the magazine rack she was kneeling in front of. “I didn’t do it,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Whatever you’re about to yell at me for.”

“I’m not here to yell at you.” Jessica checked her watch. “You haven’t seen Kevin, have you?”

“Kevin?
Fire Apparatus Journal
guy? No. Is he coming to take you to lunch?”

“He’s meeting me here, and we’re going to Sears.”

“Oh. Hardware stores are so romantic.”

Jessica leaned on the cart. “It’s study. I need to look at tools for the exam.”

“You started studying?” Julie stood and scooped up a pile of magazines.

“Last night. Except for the tools, I don’t think I’m going to have much trouble with the written exam. I took one last night and got an eighty-six.”

Julie started putting away the magazines in her arms. “Let me know if you need any help. I can quiz you. Mindi’s still freaking out, isn’t she? Sonya said she and Diana had to drag her away yesterday.”

“They did.”

“It’s not like she didn’t know you wanted to do this.” Julie walked into another aisle with her pile of reshelves. “I knew, and I haven’t known you since college.”

Jessica stared out the window. The sun scorched the parking lot. The summer was shaping up to be a lousy time to do any physical training. She’d gone running this morning before work and at five-thirty it had already been hot. What if her mother and Mindi were right? What if it was too hard?

“Hey, are you going to look like this?” Julie held out a weightlifting magazine. The woman on the cover wore a bathing suit made of two three-inch strips of silver material, and she arched her back so the suit ran in a taut line from between her legs to where it tied at her neck.

“Yuck.” Jessica opened the magazine to the photo spread of the cover model. She always had her back arched as much as possible. Her long blond hair showed about an inch of dark roots and her breasts were as perfect and pert as Tupperware bowls. Her shoulders, arms and legs showed hours of hard work. She looked like she could lift a Clydesdale. “I hope not. You could shoot arrows off her spine.”