The Night Belongs to Fireman (12 page)

“Yep,” she said cheerfully. “I probably owe you about fifty gallons of ice cream by now.”

“I don't want ice cream. I want a favor. You know the kids across the street? The ones with the single mom who always needs help?”

“You mean the little ninja speed demons? Oh no.”

“Oh yes. You offered, Liz.”

“I never offered babysitting!”

“It's not babysitting. It's . . . ninja sitting.”

“Can I actually sit
on
them? Because that would be a different story.” She giggled. “Fine. What night are we talking about?”

“Well, that's the thing.” He explained the situation in terms as vague as possible. A two-week special project that required his USAR and martial arts training. But Lizzie wasn't buying it; she had a sixth sense for anything related to personal drama.

“This involves a girl, doesn't it?”

“Does it matter?”

“If it's Courtney, count me out.”

“It's not Courtney. I told you we broke up.”

“Yes, but I know her, and I know she wouldn't put up with someone breaking up with her.”

“Believe me, it's over.”

“So it's someone different. Someone you like? A lot?”

Fred let his silence do the talking, and it seemed to work.

“So if I agree to help you, your love life might improve?”

Again, he let Lizzie think whatever she liked. But once he started working for Rachel, any personal involvement would be completely unacceptable.

“I'm taking your silence as a desperate plea for help in the romance department. And so I consent to your request,” Lizzie said graciously.

“You're a saint.”

“As long as you let me meet her.”

“You're a saint
and
a blackmailer.”

He had a much harder time explaining the situation to the Sinclair kids.

“Someone needs my help,” he told them seriously, after he'd gathered them into his practice studio. “When someone needs your help, you can't just walk away. At least, I can't.”

“But you help people all the time,” whined Kip. “And what about us?”

“You'll be fine. I'll be back before you know it.”

They all stared at him stonily. “That's one of those bullshit things grown-ups say,” said Tremaine bitterly.

“Hey,” said Fred gently. “I know it's tough.” Maybe their father had said the same thing, right before shipping out for the last time. “But I'm not going off to war. I'm just going to help a friend for a few weeks. My sister's going to house-sit and she'll hang out with you. She knows a few self-defense moves, so you can spar with her. Maybe even teach her a few things. And I'll call your mom every few days so you know I'm okay. How's that?”

When he threw in ice cream sundaes, they finally seemed to forgive him.

He collected enough clothes for a few weeks and took care of some bills. Before he left the house, he did a quick Google search to refresh his memories of Rachel's kidnapping. At that time in his life, when he was thirteen, he'd just gotten his first girlfriend and had been preoccupied with finding time to make out with her behind the half-pipe in the park.

Rachel had been going through a very different experience. She'd been snatched on her way home from a neighbor's house. Her bike was found later, mangled in the bushes. She'd been held for almost a month. The kidnapper had taunted Kessler by sending the local media distorted video clips in which he wore a Freddy Krueger mask. One of them had shown Rachel tied to a chair, blindfolded. In the video, the masked man had brandished a pair of scissors near her face. She didn't make a sound, not one. In the end, all he did with the scissors was cut her hair, thick black locks falling to the dirty floor.

How an eight-year-old had found the courage and daring to escape was pretty much a miracle, the reporters kept emphasizing. One article interviewed people close to the family about a year after her escape. Everyone agreed that Rachel wasn't the same girl anymore. She didn't talk for months after her escape, and when she did, she spoke slowly and cautiously. One doctor, who admitted he hadn't treated her, speculated that she might have trauma-induced brain damage. The stories painted a picture of a previously boisterous tomboy who was now afraid to go outside. The fact that the kidnapper had never been caught haunted the family.

No one knew how it affected little Rachel.

The story tore at Fred's heart and made him want to rip that evil man limb from limb. Rachel shouldn't have to live with that sort of fear hanging over her. No one should.

And if he could do something about it, even something as minor as hanging out with her until her father testified, he would.

R
achel's guest suite had its own bathroom, Jacuzzi jets in the bathtub, and a remote control for the curtains. Everything was decorated in shades of sage green and ivory, like a photo spread in one of the magazines Fred's mother kept in the bathroom. A plush carpet cushioned the bedroom floor, and the bed itself was covered in a silk comforter as light as mist.

He'd never experienced anything like the luxury Rachel took for granted. The Breen household had been chaotic and loud, and the brothers had been hard on the battered furniture. He'd shared a room with his brother Zee until his senior year. At the firehouse he slept on something little better than a cot. And he'd never given much thought to his own home decor.

What must Rachel have thought of his utterly ordinary living quarters? Then again, who cared? He'd never aspired to be Martha Stewart.

“I've been thinking about how to make this work.” Rachel appeared at his side with a pile of freshly washed towels. He jumped.

“You know, I think this carpet's a security risk,” he told her. “It's too damn quiet.”

“Want me to wear a bell?”

Sure. And nothing else
. Damn. He really had to do something about this crazy attraction. “Not you, silly. Anyone who tries to sneak in.”

She laughed. “Wait until I show you the multilayered security system. You won't be worried about the carpet. Besides, knowing my father, this carpet is programmed to recognize people's body weight and set off an alarm if it doesn't match someone on the approved list.”

He eyed the ivory pile beneath his feet. “Remind me not to gain any weight.”

“Anyway, about the ground rules.”

“Right. Ground rules.” He took the towels from her.

“First of all, I was thinking we should wipe the slate clean, so we're starting over on a professional basis.”

“Makes sense.”

Her shoulders lost some of their tension. He wondered if it would be “professional” to offer her a neck rub. Probably not.

She went on. “Neither of us wanted this arrangement, but if we're very clear about our respective needs, we should get along okay.”

Needs
. Did she have to mention needs? Especially while she was wearing black yoga pants that showed off every curve of her legs?

“I don't have needs,” he said firmly, trying to convince himself. “I'm here to do a job, that's all.”

“Yes, but if you think about it, we're going to be living together for at least two weeks. Like roommates,” she added. “When I roomed with Liza, Cindy, and Feather, we had a weekly meeting to air any issues we had.”

“I'm not going to have issues.” He tried not to laugh at the idea. “I have brothers and I work at a firehouse. We never air any issues. Except after Double D's meatballs. We have to air the whole place out then.”

“That's gross.” At the look of horror on her face, he gave in to his urge to laugh.

“You have no idea.” He looked at the pile of towels she'd given him. “What's all this for, anyway?”

“Hand towel, bath towel, bathrobe, washcloth, just the basics.”

He scowled down at the pile. “Do I have to use them all? I'm more of a single-towel kind of guy.”

“You don't have hand towels? What do you dry your hands on?”

He shrugged, walking into the sunny tiled bathroom to deposit the towels on top of the toilet tank. Apparently that was the wrong place for them. She immediately hung a smallish towel and a washcloth on the rod next to the sink. The urge to tease her again came over him. “I dry my hands on whatever's available. If nothing else, the bath mat.”

“The
bath mat
?” In the midst of hanging the bath mat on the side of the tub, she clutched it in horror.

“Of course, I don't always have a bath mat around. So sometimes I use my own hair. Or my ass cheeks.”

“
What?
”

He lost it, breaking into laughter. “We've really got to work on your gullibility while I'm here. Maybe I should charge your father extra for that.”

She pinned him with wide, suspicious violet eyes. “So you don't dry your hands on the bath mat?”

“No, that part was true.”

He kept his face deadpan, giving nothing away. She took a step closer, and the hair on his arms prickled. He tried really hard not to think about getting her naked in that Jacuzzi tub.

“Well.” She gave him a sly smile. “Please don't dry your hands on the living room carpet. The housekeeper would have a fit.”

He laughed out loud. So Rachel could give as well as she got. Oh yes, this was going to be more fun that he'd thought.

“We'll put it in the ground rules. What about the bedspread?”

“Definitely not, but I'll consider the sheets.”

Oh damn. Did she have to mention the sheets? The atmosphere in the bathroom tightened, as if someone had sucked some of the air out of the room. He felt a little light-headed. She must feel it too; her cheeks flushed and she ran her tongue across her lips.

He took a quick step backward and bumped against the sink.
Keep it professional
. He wasn't here to flirt, he was here to work. “How about you show me the security now?

R
achel shook herself
out of her trance and practically ran out of the bathroom. She was going to have to work on her immunity to Fred. Something about his sunny sense of humor really got under her skin. No one ever teased her. People tended to tiptoe around her, not joke around with her. Joking around with Fred felt good. Really, really good.

She reminded herself that he was working for her father, and only for a couple of weeks, and that she'd been the one to declare their relationship purely “professional.”

Regaining her cool, she showed him around the rest of her apartment, the spacious living room, the tricked-out office, the entertainment room, the kitchen. It took quite some time to demonstrate all the security measures her father had instituted.

Fred paid close attention as she showed him the hidden alarms, the reinforced glass in all the windows, the bullet-proof drapes, the motion sensors.

“Every time I leave the apartment, I set the alarm that activates the motion sensors. It would be highly unlikely that anyone could come in here undetected.”

“Is it hooked up to a monitoring system?”

“Yes. There are cameras all through here.” She waved at the upper corner of the living room, where a discreet wall sconce disguised one of the cameras. “They deactivate when I turn off the alarm system, but any panic button or a voice code will reactivate them. Marsden has access to the video feed and so does the security team at Cranesbill. That's my father's place in Marin.”

He waved his hand in front of the wall sconce, which was cast from imported Italian bronze. “How do you know someone isn't watching right now?”

“Because I turned off the alarm. All the cameras are dead.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

Rachel shrugged uncomfortably. She'd made her father promise not to ever invade her privacy by activating the cameras himself. She chose to believe he'd honor that vow, but did she know for sure? “I've never put it to the test, put it that way. But my dad promised and I believe him. Anyway, he's a busy man. He has better things to do than spy on his daughter. He just wants to know that all measures are being taken.”

Fred didn't look convinced. “Maybe it's time we put it to the test.” He put his hands to the top button of his jeans.

“What are you doing?” Alarmed, Rachel grabbed at his arm.

“Stand back,” he said with mock seriousness. “This is man's work.”

“What . . .”

Turning his back to the camera, he unbuttoned his jeans. From where she stood, a step or two to his right, she caught only a side view, but enough to be struck dumb, like one of those nightmares in which everything moves in slow motion. By the time she gathered the words to protest, he'd already pulled down the top of his jeans, revealing the upper half of his muscular rear.

Fred was mooning the million-dollar Kessler security system.

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the sky to cave in. Her father would never tolerate a gesture of disrespect like that. If any of the security team saw it, not a second would pass before they'd be pinging their boss, shooting him a still shot of his daughter's new bodyguard's ass.

But nothing happened.

“How long would it take?” Fred asked cheerfully.

She pried one eye open to see that he'd refastened his jeans, and was settling them back into their comfortably butt-hugging position. “What?”

“For your father to be notified, and for you to get a call. What else would you be waiting for? You look like a bomb's about to drop.”

“It wouldn't take long,” she admitted. “By now you'd be fired.”

“First of all, I doubt that. Your father got the message. Second, now you know.”

“Know what, that you have a cute butt?” she shot back.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that a fact?”

Fizzy energy shot through her. Joking around with Fred was better than playing Ping-Pong while sipping Bellinis on a cruise to Mexico. “What I saw of it was all right.” She sniffed. “I didn't get the full view.”

“I'm not getting paid enough for the full view.” He winked. “Though I did dance at a bachelorette party once. Just think, if you and your friends had hired some fireman strippers instead of renting a limo, we might never have met.”

She pretended to consider that. “There's always next time. Liza's getting pretty serious with her boyfriend. Anyway, even though what you did was completely inappropriate, I'm glad you did it. You proved my dad isn't spying on me.”

“Not really. Just that he's not spying on you at the moment.” Fred made a circuit of the room, peering at all the electronics nestled in corners and potted plants. “It must be a strange feeling to think you're being watched all the time.”

“You get used to it, I suppose. I knew the bathroom was safe, because my father wouldn't be that invasive. I tend to take long baths.”

A sudden stillness made his shoulders rigid, as if she'd said something disturbing.
Long baths
. Did the mention of her taking a bath make him tense up?

“And I spend a lot of time naked in bed,” she added innocently. “Same situation there.”

Fred cleared his throat as he inspected a small statue of a shepherdess. “That's cool.”

She smiled privately. Fred wasn't the only one who could put something to the test. Their chemistry was still there, and not only on her side. Even though so much had changed between them, at least their attraction hadn't disappeared.

“Do you have any guns in the apartment?” Fred was all business again.

“Yes, I have a .357 Magnum and a concealed weapons permit. But I don't like carrying it with me, so it's usually in that drawer there.” She showed him the ornate little vanity with the hidden drawer where she kept her weapon. “I have an identical one at work.”

“Why don't you carry it with you?”

“Because I'm a horrible shot. Marsden tried to teach me and I did get better after a while. But not nearly good enough. It would be more likely that someone would grab the gun away from me before I could get off a shot.” Learning to shoot had been a nightmare. She didn't like the pistol's violent jerk and the deafening retort gave her terrible anxiety that lasted for days. And that was with ear protection. If she had trouble with the gun under the controlled circumstances of a shooting range, how would she manage in a crisis situation? Even her father had eventually agreed they were better off not relying on her skill with her revolver.

“Have you had any training in self-defense?” Fred was asking.

“Are you kidding? Of course, starting from the age of about twelve, from a former Mossad agent. Mr. Eli gave me Krav Maga lessons for years. I can handle myself pretty well, but I've gotten rusty since I went off to college.”

“I could work with you on that while I'm here,” Fred offered with a studied sort of casualness. She imagined the close contact a martial arts lesson would require. Pictured his hard body next to hers, adjusting her stance. He'd have to put his hands on her, probably, so she could practice a counterattack. She swallowed hard.

“I don't know if we'll have time,” she said awkwardly. “I have a lot of appointments this week. And then there's Greta.”

“Right. Of course.”

A
few days
of living in close proximity to the most distracting, fascinating girl Fred had ever known forced him to develop a few survival techniques. He knew she liked to start the coffee so it perked while she showered. As soon as he heard her stirring, and knew she'd be emerging from her bedroom dressed in those silk pajamas designed to drive a man insane, he zipped out of the apartment to walk Greta. He spent the entire walk trying not to imagine her preparing for her shower. Sliding the silky fabric over her taut, ivory-skinned torso. Leaning in to test the water, like a naked nymph. What color would her nipples be? Pale pink, and tasting like rose petals? Or a deep, erotic brown? Usually, by the time he reached the little park where Greta relieved herself, he'd gotten a grip on himself.

But being with Greta reminded him of the way Rachel lavished kisses and cuddles on her dog. He'd never envied a canine before. Not that Rachel wasn't kind to Fred as well. His favorite brands of Pop-Tarts and microwaveable dinners had mysteriously appeared in the cupboards. When she discovered his weakness for survival reality shows like
Man vs. Wild
and
Naked and Afraid
, she'd ordered them all on Netflix. That's the way she was. Reserved on the surface, but with a hidden vein of thoughtfulness that could really get to you.