Chapter 9
Don’t piss off a firefighter. They’re the ones that’ll make sure your ass stays alive when it counts.
-Fact of life
Tai
“What are we doing?” Charlie Bronx, the fire inspector for the city of Kilgore, asked.
“I want you to go in there and find something to write that bitch a ticket for,” I said, pointing at the building for Jenner’s Heating and Air.
Charlie frowned.
“Why?” He asked.
I relayed what I’d walked in on yesterday before the dinner with my brother.
His mouth dropped open.
“You’re shitting me,” he gasped.
Charlie was a good man.
He was married to his high school sweetheart, who happened to be a cop. He and his wife were happily married with five kids, and one on the way.
He was the epitome of ‘in love’ and he cherished the hell out of his woman.
He was brought up on a farm outside of the city limits and had a protective streak a mile long that had him wanting to protect every woman he met, most of all his wife.
It was the one thing they always fought about.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not. Listened to that bitch say those words. So callous and rude. I wanted to reach through the phone and ring her fucking neck with my bare hands.”
A woman gasped beside me, and I glared.
“What?” I asked.
She shook her head and hurried away, pushing a baby stroller as fast as her legs could carry her.
“Women don’t like it when you curse in front of their kids,” Charlie teased.
I shrugged.
“I’m in the bourbon district,” I said. “What the fuck is she doing here with a kid anyway?” I asked.
The Bourbon District was a strip of shops that centered around alcohol. Bars, liquor stores, and restaurants.
Right in the middle of it was Jenner Heating and Air.
“Well, let’s do it,” Charlie said.
I gestured to the boys and they piled out of the truck and headed in my direction.
We all crossed the street at once, and we stopped just inside the entrance of the front lobby.
“Well, hello,” the woman behind the front counter said pleasantly. “What can I help you with?”
Charlie stepped forward and offered his hand to the woman.
She took it, shaking it like only a woman could. Just barely giving him her fingers and shaking once before dropping it.
“We’ve received some complaints on the fire code of this building by a customer, and we’re here to inspect the building for any possible violations,” Charlie said.
He handed over a packet of papers to the woman, who took it with a shocked face.
“Well, okay,” she said after scanning the papers. “That’s fine. Let me know if you need anything.”
The boys and I spread out, and it didn’t take long for me to find four violations on my own.
When we met back up, I handed over my sheet of the area I’d inspected.
Then I’d looked at the sheets PD, Fatbaby and Drew handed over.
My mouth kicked up into a grin as the boys and I left without another word.
“You gave her a violation on the toilet paper being a fire hazard?” I asked PD with laughter in my voice.
He grinned.
“It was under the heater in the hall closet. Definitely a fire hazard if I’ve ever seen one,” PD explained, not an ounce of sorrow in his voice.
“Bitch deserves it,” Charlie said as he finally joined us. “Her husband owns the business, and she had the nerve to ask me if you were single.”
I lifted up my lip in a silent snarl.
“Wouldn’t touch that bitch with a ten-foot pole,” I grumbled. “She better hope she doesn’t have a fire here that requires more than someone pissing on it to put out. She inadvertently pissed off the whole fire department with the way she spoke about Mia.”
Charlie nodded.
“That won’t affect the way you do your job,” PD said. “Nor will it affect how I do mine. It just means that we won’t go back in after her cat.”
I laughed.
A delicate sniff from behind us had me turning to see a woman standing there…the same one from earlier that I’d cursed in front of.
“Can we help you, ma’am?” Fatbaby asked.
The woman sneered.
“No,” she said. “But you should be careful about what you say on public streets. There are ears everywhere.”
I didn’t necessarily get the thought that she was talking about anything other than the cussing until the chief called me into his office later that afternoon.
Knocking on the door, I waited for the ‘enter’ to come.
It didn’t.
In its place was a terse, “In. Now.”
“Shit,” I sighed.
The sound of his voice didn’t mean good things for me.
Although Allen had nothing on Jack when he was in a rage. So as long as I kept my cool and didn’t mouth back like I was known to do, I should be fine.
“Sit,” Allen said the moment my feet crossed over the threshold.
I did, ignoring the mannequins in the seat next to me that looked like they were fucking.
It was something we’d send the newbies or the paramedic students in to do.
They had one objective. “Don’t get caught.”
So the students would come into Allen’s office, rearrange the various mannequins that were stored in the corner, and get out without Allen knowing.
We didn’t bother to tell them that Allen had his office wired. It was fun to watch the students think they’re getting away with something.
We got to watch from the other room, laughing the entire time.
Allen was also a good sport about it. He didn’t care as long as we weren’t being ‘mean’ to the recruits and students.
The two mannequins on the chairs next to me were facing each other, one looking as if the other was riding him. Hands were placed perfectly, and the mannequin that was supposed to be the man on the bottom had his head thrown back as if in the throes of ecstasy.
“I got a call today about you,” the chief said.
I winced.
The woman pushing the baby.
Perfect.
“Yes,” I said.
He sighed at my evasive answer.
“Let me read what she had to say,” he said, putting on his reading glasses. “Wouldn’t touch that bitch with a ten-foot pole. She better hope she doesn’t have a fire here that requires more than someone pissing on it to put out. She inadvertently pissed off the whole fire department with the way she spoke about Mia.”
I waited to hear what else he had to say.
It wasn’t much.
He stared back at me with the same unwavering gaze.
So I explained. For the tenth time.
“Goddammit!” Allen said, slamming his hands down on the desk. “You can’t fuckin’ say stuff like that, even if it’s true!”
I sat back, surprised by his outburst.
He was always so in control. To see him not was a sight to see.
“I never said it was true. I talk a good game, but that bitch will get the same great service that my own brother would get if it came down to it,” I told him honestly.
“You don’t like your brother,” Allen said with a smile, taking his seat.
I snorted. “I love my overbearing, always whining about my life, prick head of a brother. It’s just at times I forget that I do, and act accordingly.”
He laughed.
“Get out of my office, Taima. Don’t say shit like that anymore,” he ordered.
I saluted him half-heartedly. “Sir, yes sir.”
He flipped me off and I walked between the two chairs.
The mannequins fell off, landing with a thump on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Huh,” I said.
The new position put the ‘woman’ on top, her knees up by the ‘man’s’ ears.
“I’ll have to try that position tonight,” Allen laughed.
I gave him a thumb’s up and left with a smile on my face. One that quickly fell off the moment I got into the main room of the fire house.
“What’d he want?” Winter asked.
Baylee, her partner, was sitting directly in front of her. They were playing a card game that looked confusing as hell.
“He wanted to yell at me for some bitch overhearing a comment I made today while we were inspecting that lady’s business,” I explained.
Winter narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh,” Drew said. “You don’t know that Taima, your favorite brother-in-law, has a crush?”
I pushed Drew, nearly toppling him out of his chair.
He righted himself with a laugh.
“Shut up,” I said.
“Why?” Drew asked. “It’s true.”
It was.
I was falling fast and hard.
“Why is it always the broken ones?” Winter asked. “She’s a nice woman, after all, but she has some work to do before she’s ready to take you on.”
I scowled. “What are you talking about?”
Winter gave me a glare.
“That girl,” Winter said. “What was her name? Randi?”
I blinked.
I hadn’t thought about Randi in a very long time. In fact, until Winter brought her up, I knew it’d been years since I’d even heard her name.
“What about her?” I asked, taking a coke out of the fridge and bringing it to the table where I took a seat and watched the game being played.
Bowe was busy cooking our dinner, and I watched absently as he stirred something in a pot that was boiling on the stove.
“You went to jail because of her,” Winter said.
“I went to jail because that bitch of a mother of hers was trying to sell her on the street for drugs,” I growled.
“You hit a woman,” she countered.
I shrugged. “That wasn’t a woman. That was a monster.”
“Hmm,” Winter said. “What about Ella?”
“What about her?” I asked.
“You didn’t go to jail for her, too?”
I laughed.
“Winter, I was a street punk who had a vendetta against all things asshole. You may think that I ‘go for the broken ones’ but I don’t. I was just trying to help them. They didn’t deserve to be treated like they were trash. They deserved to be treated as normal human beings.” I growled.
“So what, you were some modern day version of Robin Hood?” PD asked, poking his big head in on the conversation.
I nodded.
“That must be it,” I said through clenched teeth.
“So what is it that you’re doing with Mia? Do you like her?” Baylee asked.
I nodded. “I do.”
“And you want to be with her?” She continued.
I nodded again.
I seemed to be doing a lot of nodding.
Mia was making me into a simpering idiot, though.
I had done nothing but think about her for the last three months, and now here I was, falling head over fucking heels for her, and she may or may not even feel the same way.
“Then go for her. Put in the work. The pain is worth the gain and all that shit,” Baylee teased.
I snorted. “Thanks. I’ll have to remember that.”
The tones dropped, and we all halted in our conversations.
“Engine one, medic one,” the dispatcher said. “There is a structure fire at the Azalea Hills Trailer Park off…”
We all got moving.
I wasn’t a medic today, I was on the engine, so I walked to my bunker gear and slipped my feet into it easily…expertly.
I’d done it so many times that it was like second nature by now.
PD followed suit on one side of me and Bowe on the other.
“They better not burn my sauce,” Bowe grumbled.
I snorted. “They can cook better than I can. So you have a fifty-fifty chance of it being all right when you get back.”
Bowe shot me a glare.
“You better be right, or you won’t be getting any lasagna.”
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” I said, then called louder to the ladies. “Y’all keep an eye on the sauce. Don’t let it burn.”
I got thumbs up.
Turns out it didn’t matter anyway.
When I got back, lasagna was the very last thing on my mind.