Chapter Three
“I’m out of my tea bags. Can you run to the market and grab me a box?”
Frowning, Cait walked to the pantry and rummaged around the shelves, searching for a box of the herbal tea her mother liked to drink before bed. “You shouldn’t be out of them already. It’s only been a week.”
“I was talking about the tea at work and Del wanted to try it, so I brought a box in to her. They have it at the market and it’ll only take you a few minutes.”
Running to the store would be easier than listening to her mother complain in a few hours when she didn’t have the tea she’d managed to convince herself was the only reason she was able to fall asleep at night.
It wouldn’t be a big deal at all if it weren’t one of the many small reasons Cait had decided to move back in for a while. Unable to cope with lists and planning and making a weekly trip to a chain grocery store, her mom and Carter had been living off almost daily trips to the corner market. They were throwing together quick, often unhealthy meals, while burning through crazy amounts of money. It had taken Cait a while to get them back on track, but now they limited trips to the market to cravings, her mom’s lottery tickets and occasional half-gallons of milk, the way convenience stores were supposed to be used.
“I’ll go,” she said, “but make sure you put the tea bags on the grocery list so we don’t forget them next weekend.”
Cait worked every other weekend, so on her off weekends, they did a “big” shopping trip together. On the Saturdays she worked, her mom did a smaller shopping trip for meats and produce, shopping from a list she and Cait kept on the fridge, but they’d had to work up to that. Not due to a lack of ability on her mom’s part. The woman had raised three kids while working a full-time job. But she and Duke had always grocery shopped together and doing it alone had been too hard for her at first.
And that was why Cait had made the decision to move back home—because it was temporary. She knew her mom would get her feet back under her emotionally. It was just taking longer than either of them had anticipated.
“Carter, we’re going to the market,” she said to her brother, who’d been sitting on the couch, staring at his phone for so long, Cait wasn’t sure if she should go check his vitals.
“Have fun,” he muttered.
“No, I mean you and me. Let’s go for a walk.”
When he sighed and rolled his eyes, but got up and slid his phone in his pocket without arguing, Cait was surprised. It was the closest he’d come to admitting he might not mind a few minutes of his sister’s company.
“How’s school going?” she asked when they reached the sidewalk. Both of them had their hoods up against the cold breeze, and his hid his face from her.
“Okay. Better, I guess. I didn’t get to see my friends much over vacation.”
Christmas break had been tough on him, she knew. Not only did he have to navigate the emotional minefield that was their first Christmas without his dad, but his friends had all been dragged into their own families’ holiday activities, so he hadn’t had much online distraction.
She didn’t ask him about homework. Or if his room was clean or he’d done laundry. Not only was she forcing her mom to handle the teenager wrangling—with blessedly fewer nudges each week—but she didn’t want to butt heads with him right now.
“Is whatshisname still seeing that girl?”
He turned to give her a seriously? look and she laughed. After a few seconds, he laughed with her, before shaking his head and looking forward again. “Whatshisname and that girl broke up and now he’s seeing that other girl. That girl’s pissed and keeps putting bad pictures—like when she’s looking down at her paper and has like three chins and shit—of that other girl on Snapchat.”
She let the language slide, reminding herself her baby brother was sixteen and probably knew—and said—more curse words than she did. “What does that other girl do about it?”
The drama of whatshisname, that girl and that other girl lasted until they got to the market, and Cait was relieved to see glimpses of the funny, open kid he’d been before the teenage hormones and losing his dad double-teamed him. But as soon as they walked inside, she heard the subtle buzz of his phone in his back pocket and, just like that, his attention was gone.
That was okay with Cait. They’d had a nice walk and she’d take the win, though she wished she’d worn gloves. Blowing into her cupped hands to warm them up, she headed off toward the aisle where the tea would be, assuming Carter would follow her by way of whatever smartphone sonar teenagers used to walk and stare at the screen at the same time.
She walked around the corner, going wide so she didn’t bump into a display of poorly stacked soup cans, and almost collided with another shopper. Words of apology died on her lips when she realized it was Gavin Boudreau.
Of all the markets in all the world, or something like that.
His jaw tightened for a few seconds when he realized who she was. “Hey.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a hey, watch where you’re going hey or a hey, how you doing hey. But she realized she was still standing there with her hands cupped in front of her mouth, staring, so she dropped them to her sides. “Hey.”
“I don’t remember seeing you here before.”
With his brow furrowed almost to scowling level, it would have been easy to misconstrue his words as some kind of challenge. But she knew this was the kind of market that was frequented by the same neighborhood people, day after day, so the expression was probably more confusion than anything. “My mom lives a couple of streets over. I lived there for years and I don’t remember seeing you here.”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood my entire life, but my sister usually got sent to the store for my mom because she didn’t keep the change.”
“Seems strange we haven’t crossed paths before.” She didn’t really see any point in telling him she’d moved back temporarily. He’d probably assume she was visiting her mother and ran to the store for her, and there was no reason to disabuse him of the idea.
“Maybe we have, but didn’t know it.”
She was pretty sure she’d notice a guy like Gavin, whether they’d had words on the job or not.
Carter made one of those annoying teenage sigh noises, like an audible eye roll, catching their attention. But he didn’t look up from his phone. He was just trying to nudge Cait along, and then he’d follow behind silently, because the sooner they got home, the sooner he could be back in front of his video games.
“Carter, this is Gavin Boudreau,” she said, just to annoy him and force him to interact with another human being for a minute. “He’s a firefighter. Gavin, this is my brother, Carter.”
To her relief, he lowered his phone in his left hand and reached out with his right to shake Gavin’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.” When the handshake was over, Gavin tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I think I’ve seen you around.”
“Probably. I’m here a lot.” When Gavin nodded, Carter faded backward and Cait didn’t need to turn her head to know he’d gone back to his phone.
When Gavin turned his gaze back to Cait, she saw that brow furrow again and, afraid he was going to pick up where they’d last left off, gave him an obviously fake smile. She might feel bad about the argument they’d had, but she didn’t want to get into it now. “Good to see you again.”
Since she was walking past him, she heard the muttered yeah under his breath, but kept on going. It was hard to chalk her slight breathlessness and quickened pulse to being aggravated by Gavin’s presence, but she tried. She refused to believe she was still attracted to him. Not after the ma’am.
Or at least that’s what she told herself while grabbing two boxes of her mom’s herbal tea off the shelf.
“That guy was totally checking out your ass when you walked away.”
She jumped at the sound of Carter’s voice, then glanced around to make sure nobody was within earshot. “No, he didn’t. Especially with you standing right there.”
“Yeah, he did.”
When he lifted his phone, she snatched it out of his hand and stuck it in her pocket, sick of watching him look at it. “I doubt it, since we don’t even like each other.”
“Whatever,” he mumbled. Then he gave her a defiant look. “He might not like you, but he likes your ass.”
“I swear, Carter...” She let the threat die unspoken, just giving him a stern look before heading for the register.
But, yeah, she couldn’t help thinking about the possibility as she walked away. And it made her smile.
* * *
Cait Tasker had a great ass.
Gavin already knew that, of course, but only to a point. But he’d never seen that ass in worn denim that hugged her curves in a way her uniform pants didn’t.
But since he was about two minutes from walking into his mother’s kitchen, he forced himself to stop thinking about her ass and instead focus on what an ass he’d felt like when he turned and saw her brother watching him watch her. Feeling like a total creep, he’d given the kid an awkward smile and practically fled toward the register at the front of the store.
Real smooth, Boudreau.
He jogged up the back steps of the house he’d grown up in, waving to Mrs. Crawley next door. He wouldn’t dare to guess out loud at her age, but she had to be pushing a hundred and twenty, he thought. She’d been old when he was three and she’d dragged him home by his earlobe for pissing on her petunias.
Hell, he couldn’t even remember how many times over the years she’d caught him up to no good. His earlobe throbbed just thinking about it. But the day he’d gotten his first assignment with the fire department, she’d baked him a batch of the most disgusting maple cookies he’d ever tasted. And he’d eaten them and smiled because he’d been raised right and she felt as if she’d been a part of it.
He loved this neighborhood, which was a big reason he lived within walking distance. His big brick apartment building didn’t have the charm of this row of single-family homes, but it was close enough so he still felt like a part of the community he’d grown up in.
The back door opened straight into the kitchen. His parents had talked for years about remodeling the kitchen, but once they had the money to make the plan a reality, they bought a convertible Cadillac instead. His mom didn’t give a damn about her cabinets being outdated when they were cruising down the coast with the top down.
She was at the counter, preparing dinner, and he leaned around to kiss her cheek without interrupting the meatball-making process. “Are those the good kind or the bad kind?”
“The good kind.” No onions, then, just for him and over his dad’s objections. “Your sister said she ran into you and made you feel bad about neglecting me, so you might stop by. I was hoping.”
He was the worst son ever born in the history of the planet. Maybe the history of the entire universe. And still she didn’t put onions in the meatballs, just for him. “Ma, you know—”
Her soft laugh cut him off. “You know I’m just messing with you. If I ever feel neglected, you know damn well I won’t be shy about picking up the phone. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll show up on your doorstep.”
“But not at the firehouse, right?” Being the youngest on his truck was challenging enough without his mommy showing up to lecture him about not calling or coming to dinner.
She laughed again, though this chuckle had a far more maternally sinister undertone than the first. “I guess you should make sure I never feel neglected.”
“I stopped at the market on my way.” He pulled the container of coffee ice cream out of his pocket. It was the only flavor of ice cream his father wouldn’t touch—practically the only food he wouldn’t touch—so it had always been a special treat just for her. “I’ll put it in the freezer for you.”
“I don’t care what anybody says, Gavin. You’re a good boy.”
He laughed and went through the doorway into the living room to find his dad. Taking down the wall and making the first floor more open-concept had been part of the kitchen remodel that became a Cadillac instead.
“Hey, Pops.”
“Thought I heard you in there.” He put out his hand for the fist bump that had replaced kissing his old man on the cheek around the time he’d starting growing hair in strange new places.
Gavin took his usual seat on the sofa, knowing based on the meatball progress that it would be a little while before it was time to help his mother with setting the table and serving the food.
“How’s work?” his dad asked, turning the news down a few notches.
“It’s good. Now that the Christmas insanity is behind us, it’s mostly accidents and people trying to stay warm when their heat’s out. How about you?”
“Just pushing papers.” He’d worked for the water and sewer commission since Gavin was a kid, and rarely talked about his job. But since paperwork was Gavin’s least favorite thing on the planet, he could only imagine his dad simply didn’t find it worth talking about.
They talked sports for a few minutes, and then his dad turned up the TV again so they could watch the guy on the screen talk about sports. Other than a few derisive snorts, there was no talking during the sports segment so when his phone chimed a new text message from his pocket, it sounded loud.
He was just going to silence it and set it to vibrate so it wouldn’t interrupt dinner, but the preview showed a tiny photo and curiosity got the better of him. His dad was engrossed in the news, so he pulled up the message.
It was a group text, to his entire crew. He opened it to get a better look at the picture of a phone in a bright pink case. And displayed on that phone was another picture.
Of him checking out Cait’s ass.
And just in case none of the guys could come to that conclusion on their own, her brother had added a helpful caption. TFW a guy checks out ur sister’s ass in front of you.
“Shit.”
His father cleared his throat. “Problem?”
“Uh, no. Sorry.” Obviously he was lying, since he knew better than to swear in his mother’s house, whether she could hear him from the kitchen or not. “Just a work thing.”
And by work thing, he meant that work was going to be a nightmare of ribbing about his interest in the EMT who clearly didn’t like him. The text had originated from Jeff Porter. And Jeff had a daughter about Carter’s age, and he’d bet that was her phone and that she was part of the circle of friends he’d sent the picture to.
The word shit bounced around his head again, though he was smart enough not to let it out of his mouth. Forget vibrate. He silenced the phone entirely because there was going to be a shitload of crap coming his way and there was a strict no-phones-during-visits-with-Mom rule. He’d rather catch up on the ribbing when he was home with a beer in hand, anyway. It was going to be a long time before he lived this one down.
Before he put the phone back in his pocket, he pinched the picture and zoomed in on Cait, though.
She really did have a great ass.
* * *
Tuesday morning got off to a slow start, so Cait and Tony lingered at the garage, socializing with others before climbing into the ambulance to go in search of good coffee, and to be ready to respond should a call come in.
“Bailey had a little bit of congestion this morning, so she stayed home,” Tony explained as he responded to yet another text from home before stowing his phone in his pocket. “And I do mean a little bit, but she got to Rob first, so you know how that goes.”
Cait laughed. His husband was definitely not the strict parent of the two, and their six-year-old daughter had him wrapped around her little finger. And four-year-old Riley was as smart as his big sister and would figure it out soon enough.
Cait didn’t have a lot of experience with children, but Rob would bring them by the station sometimes if they were in the area and she thought they were probably the cutest kids on the planet. Along with her nephew, of course. Noah had been born in Texas and she’d only seen him in person a couple of times, but he was blood. And he also looked a lot like his auntie Cait had as a baby, so she couldn’t leave him off the cutest-kids list.
“You better not give me Bailey’s germs,” she warned as she buckled her seat belt. “The last thing I need is to bring them home and get my mother sick. Or Carter. He’s bad enough now. If he gets a man cold, I might have to smother him in his sleep.”
It never failed. As soon as they were close enough to the best coffee in town to start looking for a place to park, a call came in.
A sidewalk fall with reported head injury. Tony flipped on the lights while Cait responded to dispatch.
“It’s our buddy,” Tony said as they pulled up at the address.
Cait rolled her eyes as she snapped on a pair of gloves. Victor worked the night shift, or so he claimed, so he did his drinking during the day. A lot of it. Based on the number of interactions they had with the guy, she doubted he was any better at holding a job than he was at holding his liquor.
“Victor,” she said in a friendly tone to the man standing on the sidewalk looking confused while a Samaritan held a wad of napkins to the cut on his head. “How you doin’?”
“I told them not to call an ambulance,” he grumbled. “Least they sent the pretty one, though.”
“Thanks, Victor, that’s really sweet,” Tony said, earning a scowl from their patient.
“I don’t need no help.”
“There’s blood, so you should let me look.”
The laceration wasn’t bad, and the helpful bystander told her he hadn’t lost consciousness. She checked his pupils and he answered her questions to the best of his drunken ability. When sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer, Victor frowned and pushed her hand away.
“You call for backup?”
She laughed. “You won’t even let us treat you properly. Why would we call more people to stand here and argue with you?”
In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of the approaching apparatus and turned her head.
It wasn’t Ladder 37, though, and she was taken off guard by the strength of her disappointment. It was stupid to be bummed she wouldn’t get a glimpse of Gavin, or maybe even a wave. Not that they were friends, but the man had checked out her ass.
And it was even more stupid to be so obvious about it in front of her partner, she thought when Tony cleared his throat.
Cait turned back to Victor as the truck that wasn’t Gavin’s rolled by, deliberately avoiding Tony’s gaze. “You should probably have some stitches, Victor. Or a couple of staples.”
“Shit, I got a staple gun somewhere.”
“Different kind of staples.” She poked her finger at his chest to make sure she had his attention. “Do not staple your own head.”
“Ain’t no difference,” he mumbled.
“There’s a big difference.” Not the least of which was sterility. “No staples. No superglue. No epoxies.”
“Let us give you a ride in,” Tony said, using his compassionate-but-stern voice. “They can clean up your wound and make sure it doesn’t get infected.”
“I ain’t giving those doctors money to wash my head. I can do it my own damn self. And I’ll pour a little whiskey on it. That cheap shit my old lady buys will kill any kind of infection.”
He probably wasn’t wrong, but Cait wasn’t ready to give up yet. “They have those warm blankets you like. You know the nurses will give you a couple straight out of the warmer while they patch up that cut.”
Victor shook his head. “Just gimme the papers to sign. It’s too cold to stand out here yapping with you two.”
Tony took care of that, and Victor was in the process of signing his name to the statement he was refusing transport AMA when a shoe flew past Cait’s face and bounced off Victor’s jaw.
And there was the wife.
Cait took a step back as Tony bent to pick up the clipboard Victor dropped. She didn’t want any part of a domestic.
“Get your ass in the house,” Victor’s wife yelled. “The kid down the street came running in, yelling for me and telling me you were layin’ on the sidewalk with blood everywhere. I had to leave before she got my top coat done. My whole manicure’s ruined because you have two left feet.”
The injury probably had more to do with his blood alcohol content than a lack of grace, but Cait had tried to reason with Victor’s wife before and it hadn’t gone well. And the woman still had one shoe left.
“Did he sign it?” she asked, keeping her voice low while the couple yelled obscenities at each other.
Tony looked at the paper. “Good enough.”
“You get yourself to the hospital if that cut doesn’t heal up right. Wash it out. No staples or glue.”
He waved a hand in their general direction as his wife tugged on his shirt, trying to drag him toward their house. They’d almost made it up the front steps when Tony pulled the ambulance away from the curb and she heard him laugh softly to himself.
“What are you chuckling about over there?” she asked, assuming he was thinking about Victor and his wife.
“I’m imagining what might have happened if that had been Ladder 37 going by.”
Immediately her brain coughed up the image of Gavin watching her ass that her brother had so helpfully sent her a screen cap of, as if just seeing it on his phone wasn’t enough.
She hadn’t deleted it, though.
Cait decided she’d try denial first. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You might be a hard one to read, Cait, but I know you pretty well and you, my friend, have let a certain firefighter get under your skin. I saw your face when that truck went by. You were disappointed it wasn’t Boudreau’s.”
“That’s stupid.”
“It might be stupid,” Tony said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“I don’t even like him,” she said, but then she surrendered to the inevitable. “Why the hell can’t I get him out of my head?”
Tony limited his gloating to a quick, triumphant glance. “You don’t really know him all that well, so my guess is pure chemistry. He’s young and hot and, considering your dating situation of late, that makes him your type.”
“He’s cocky. That’s the opposite of my type.”
“Maybe your subconscious wants to shake things up a bit.”
“Then my subconscious can add itself to the list of things making my life more difficult right now.”
Truth be told, her subconscious was already on that list, thanks to the dream she’d had the night before last. She’d woken up overheated and yearning, with a quickly fading image of a very naked Gavin smiling down at her.
And that pissed her off. If she was going to have sex dreams about a pain-in-the-ass firefighter at night, the least her subconscious could do was let her savor them for a while. Maybe then she could spend a little less time during the day thinking about him.