The Protector

  “It will be good to have you around. If I’m out when you swing by, help yourself to dinner. I’m buried in turkey; Dave and I barely made a dent in it. There’s no need to try and get to the grocery store tonight to replace perishables.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Give Gage a hug for me? I like him.”

  At least someone in her family did. Gage’s lingering animosity toward Jack had polarized her family. “I’ll do that.”

  Rachel hung up the phone, then looked around the kitchen trying to decide what to do. She had prepped herself to have Gage answer the door, to smile and keep her emotions to herself. She even searched out the TV Guide in case he didn’t want to talk. For him, she’d tolerate a football game.

  Gage called her sticky, sometimes as a compliment, sometimes with a touch of irritation in his voice. She stuck no matter how hard he tried to shake her off.

  He thought it was because her overactive sense of doing good wouldn’t let her leave him alone. She didn’t tell him he was essentially a nonpaying patient. He’d be ticked and she really didn’t want to explain the notes she kept out of habit. How did she explain she was just worried enough to want to stay close without sounding paranoid?

  She needed Gage. She was thirty-five, and the last few years had drained her more than she would admit even to family. The old stuff she had buried from her childhood was back disrupting her dreams. Her sister Jennifer’s cancer had pushed the subject of mortality back to center stage, and she just wanted a chance to stop moving for a while and catch her breath. With Gage, there was a reason to stop. As much as she helped him, he helped her. He listened.

  She picked up his jacket from the chair at the kitchen table, caught the faint smell of his aftershave, and rubbed her hand on the fabric as she walked to the closet to hang it up.

  Where was he?

  A check of the garage showed his car was missing. Knowing Gage, the odds were good he had stayed local. Rachel found her keys and locked his house. Shoving her hands in her pockets, she set out searching.

  Three

  Cassie? Open up. I know you’re in there. I can see the lights are on.” Jack tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. She was going to ignore his thumping on the door. The blinds on the front window had been lowered and the door had stained-glass panels preventing a look inside, but the lights were on and her car was still here. So much for wondering what she’d think about unexpected company.

  The street was deserted. The chill in the November evening made Jack wish he’d thought to wear more than a windbreaker. Her bookstore was in the old section of Lincoln Hills’ downtown, nestled between a candy store and a bike shop. The businesses were part of one old brick building sharing a common roof and parking lot. He’d leave, but he was beginning to worry and he hated that feeling.

  Jack heard a sudden scramble inside to throw locks. The front door opened so fast he saw Cassie wince as the corner of the door caught her left foot. She wasn’t wearing shoes. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He heard the loudness of the Christmas music playing and felt stupid. Deaf, why hadn’t he remembered the obvious? She was now partially deaf.

  And she was still gorgeous. Her hair had grown back. She’d always looked a bit like a pixie, but now her face was framed by curling brown hair. The suppressed pain had disappeared from those dark chocolate eyes.

  She had gone with the oval frames for glasses that had a thin band of gold at the top, and they drew more attention to her spectacular eyes. Thankfully the fire had just brushed her face and those burns had long ago disappeared under the skill of a surgeon’s knife. Overall, it was a great face. He leaned against the doorpost, enjoying it.

  “Jack. You were looking for me?” Cassie asked, her words breaking into his thoughts.

  “I missed you.” He saw her blink and realized what he’d said. “At the party. We missed you at the party.” She grinned as he dug himself out of the quicksand of words he hadn’t meant to say. “Sandra insisted you needed a care package.”

  “That’s for me?” She looked at the sack he held. “All of that?”

  He felt like laughing at her stunned expression. “I caught a look at some of what she was packing. I sure hope you haven’t had dinner yet. It started with ribs and went on from there.”

  “Smokehouse Eatery ribs. I’ve dreamed of them. Come in, please.” She reached out and caught his jacket sleeve, tugging him inside.

  She stepped out of the way, then closed the door behind him.

  The bookstore had been transformed since the last time he visited. Not that he often entered bookstores, but hers was worth a visit. It showed her touches. Whimsical. Rare books. Rare toys. The bold red fire engine sitting on the corner of her worktable had to be from the 1950s.

  Cassie stopped at the counter and leaned over to nudge down the music volume. No radio or CDs for Cassie; she had a stack of vinyl records on a turntable. “White Christmas” ended and “Jingle Bells” began. It set a festive mood.

  Jack made a place for the sack on the table that dominated the center of the room. It was custom built to be her come-and-linger table where she put out coffee and cookies for her customers. He slid his jacket over the back of a chair.

  It was obvious she’d been sorting and shelving books. Several books with colorful jackets were spread out in a semicircle on the floor beside the glass-enclosed shelves. Curious, he studied the two turned his direction: Wings for Victory, with its World War II vintage B-52 and parachuting soldier, and Gene Autry and the Redwood Pirates, the horse and its rider racing up a trail. Popular children’s books from another decade.

  “I think you’d like Uncle Wiggily in the Country.” Cassie pointed to the book nearest him on the floor. “It’s got pictures in it.”

  He shot her a smile. “That book looks older than I am.”

  “1940. The jacket is in good condition, and the color-plate pictures are excellent.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Ninety.”

  “That’s highway robbery.”

  Her laughter was a delight to hear. “If I wanted to hold it a while and sell it as part of a set, I could get in the low three figures.”

  Cassie rolled down her long sleeves and looked down to catch the buttons at the cuffs. “Was Cole at the party?”

  Jack wanted to tell her not to roll them down for his sake. But he didn’t know how she felt about the scars, if they made her self-conscious or embarrassed. If he said nothing, did he make it worse than if he acknowledged them? They looked a great deal better than the day the doctors first removed the gauze to air the burns.

  “Cole was there, most of the firefighters, a good percentage of the dispatchers. The place was packed.”

  She glanced back up and smiled. “I’m glad. Charles and Sandra have been getting squeezed lately with the station closing right after the movie theater. They not only lost the business of firefighters stopping by the restaurant before and after their shifts, but Charles lost the extra income he earned working paid on call with the station.”

  “He seems to be weathering the transition. And Sandra is happy to have him off the fire runs.”

  A new record dropped and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” began to play.

  Their conversation had already veered through its normal course of subjects and she looked to be searching for a new topic. They were casual friends, the kind you could be comfortable around, the kind with whom you could share a laugh and a smile when paths crossed. There was respect, trust, humor…and not much that was personal beyond work.

  His plans to change that hadn’t worked out as he hoped. Cassie had been in and out of the hospital with the surgeries, and he’d walked into a summer of crises in his family that had absorbed his time and attention.

  He hadn’t wanted Cassie catching grief because of him. So he flirted a bit when he saw her at a fire scene or a fireman’s gathering, made a beeline to sit beside her when they ended up at the same certification training, but oth
erwise let the relationship drift as casual friends. He should have never let the distance between where they lived, the schedule clashes, what other guys in the small community of firefighters would say keep him from asking her out.

  He was paying for it now. He wanted her feeling comfortable to talk about her plans, to stretch beyond that and talk about the holidays, family, what it was like to have dreams about a fire…but he didn’t know how to begin. Stalling, Jack reached over and picked up one of the cars on the table destined for her rare toys shelf. “They don’t make cars like this anymore.”

  The Model-T was heavy, made of metal, its black paint still shiny. The tires were thick rubber, the steering wheel an aged white plastic. He turned it over and found stamped on the bottom the signature Hubbley Toys of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

  “Raise the hood and check out the engine.”

  He did and smiled with pleasure. It was accurate down to the grillwork. “Now these are collectibles.”

  “I think so.”

  She liked old cars. It was a small thing, but he hadn’t known it.

  “Have you eaten yet?” Cassie asked.

  Jack looked up from the car he held. Cassie pushed away from the counter and disappeared through the side door to the storage room. She came back with plates and napkins. “Say you haven’t even if you have. I hate to eat alone.”

  “Cassie, I never turn down barbecue spareribs.”

  She moved books from the table to a blue plastic tote, clearing a space for them. “Just stack the pink pages and drop them back into the in-basket on the desk. They’re on-line customer wish lists. I’ll get back to them later.”

  “Business is good?”

  “It’s in the black. At the prices these books command, I only need to sell a few a month to cover the overhead.”

  When he’d visited her at the hospital he often found her on-line doing deals or researching the value of books she had found, using the hobby as a distraction against the ever present pain. She hadn’t been much for TV beyond CNN and old Westerns.

  Dealing with the burns, the surgeries, the painful recovery—day after day she had kept moving forward. He’d sat on the weight bench opposite her in the hospital rehab and told her jokes as she struggled to lift a three-pound barbell through twenty-rep exercises. He learned a lot about her ability never to quit. This business was yet another way to move forward. He was proud of her.

  The papers moved to safety, Jack started unloading the sack.

  She looked tired. As Cassie quietly fixed her plate with a sample of the items Sandra had sent, he could see now what Cole had referred to. There were lines around her eyes and the good mood and lightness in her voice couldn’t hide the fact she was relieved to sit down.

  He waited while she silently prayed. He knew she was a Christian. It hadn’t taken more than a couple visits to the hospital to see her faith was more than words with her. Her Bible on the bedside table, a few of the books she read were on prayer, and the radio had been tuned to a Christian station. Cole believed too, and Jack had at times interrupted some very serious conversations between the two of them.

  He found the subject of religion a difficult one. In the last few months four in his family had chosen to believe, and it was no longer a subject he could avoid. Jack didn’t understand it. Jesus seemed to be the serious myth that people believed in at Christmas, Santa Claus the childish one. It was the season for children to think someone really did come down the chimney with gifts and for the adults to set aside reason and believe there was a God who had become a man.

  Cassie lifted her head, ending her silent prayer, and reached for a napkin.

  “You’re looking forward to Christmas.”

  Cassie flashed him a grin as she nudged the box of Christmas decorations on the floor with her foot. “How could you tell?”

  He had always loved the color and excitement of the Christmas season, the stocking stuffers, and the excuse to give gifts. It was harder this year with Jennifer sick, harder to retain the smile when there was a chance this would be her last Christmas.

  Cassie’s gaze sharpened as she must’ve caught something in his expression. He didn’t want to talk about his sister’s cancer, didn’t have words to keep the emotions he felt in perspective. He spoke before she could. “You need a Christmas tree.”

  She looked at him a moment, then nodded, accepting the redirect. “I’m going to put a big one in the window and decorate it to the point it wants to topple under all the lights and ornaments. I’ve got a set of handmade glitter ones that are messy but look beautiful.”

  Jack seized on that comment. There weren’t many obvious ways to put himself back into her world and he would take any opening he could find. She would need help with the Christmas tree.

  “Has anyone heard from Ash?”

  He wished he could give her a positive answer. He wanted to shake the guy for worrying her this way. Jack knew how close partners got. He had watched Ash and Cassie tease each other mercilessly during speed drills and hose hauls, but let someone else suggest their team wasn’t the best and the two of them would turn as one to reply. He envied them both. “No one has heard from him.”

  Cassie pushed aside her disquiet and picked up the first sparerib on her plate. “Knowing Ash, he’ll be back when he’s ready and when I least expect it.”

  Jack didn’t think Cassie and Ash had been more than good friends, but he knew they were very close. When your life depended on the person at your side, the trust went deep. And it went both ways between Ash and Cassie. Jack didn’t understand why Ash had left without a word.

  Cassie closed her eyes as she tasted the first sparerib. “Oh, these are good.”

  Jack turned his attention to his. “It’s the sauce.”

  “And the smoke and the time and Charles’s magic touch.” She finished the first one and licked sauce off her fingers.

  Jack reached over and wiped a spot from her chin. “Messy.”

  She laughed. “You can try and clean me up later. Somehow I don’t think I’ll have to worry about leftovers.”

  “You didn’t have dinner.”

  She glanced at the box on her desk. “Pumpkin pie.”

  “Good priorities.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll stop asking questions so you can eat dinner now.”

  The laughter reached her eyes as she picked up another sparerib. “Appr’ciate it.”

  Jack relaxed. Cassie hadn’t changed, not all that much. Her eyes still reflected her thoughts; her emotions still came easily to the surface. “I miss having you at the fire scenes.”

  She studied him over her dinner. “I miss being there.”

  The first time he met her he’d been working with Company 81, Cassie for Company 65.

  He was facing a grease fire in a restaurant, all his guys committed, with fire leaping to the business next door. Company 65 arrived and he yelled at her as he did any other guy, tagging her number from the back of her helmet, no idea who she was, sending her and Ash into the smoke next door to confirm the building was clear.

  When she dumped water over his head to cool him down before cleanup started, he’d taken a mouthful of it as he realized C. Ellis was a woman. She’d laughed so hard at his expression she started to hiccup, then went back to hauling out smoldering bench padding to the street. Jack shook his head like a wet dog and followed her back to work.

  “I can image the mop-ups are a bit more boring now,” she teased.

  “No one to talk literature with,” he agreed, smiling.

  Cassie put everything she had physically and then some into whatever job she was doing. His biggest caution had always been that she save some of that energy for the end of the fire.

  He’d heard that when she returned to her fire station she’d crawl away, crash with a book, and ignore the world to get her energy back. He enjoyed teasing her about that at a scene while they were doing cleanup.

  She’d always been one to laugh at his jokes and h
is gag gifts. She was quieter now, more reflective, and the experience she lived through was there just below the surface. But she was coming back with the same steel that had driven her to excel at her job. He was grateful. She’d had her life upended, but she found the strength to deal with it.

  He wasn’t sure how he’d handle it if he were put in a similar situation. He wanted to be a firefighter ever since he’d seen the fire in his bedroom as a young boy. His parents had encouraged the dream with trips to the local fire department and to the firefighter museum. The car crash that had killed his parents— It had been the fire department first on the scene to try and save them and Jack had never forgotten that. He’d gotten into the fire academy as soon as he could qualify. Being a fireman wasn’t a job as much as it was an identity.

  “Do you have plans yet for Christmas?” Cassie asked.

  “Working. We’ll probably have the O’Malley gathering the weekend before.”

  “I’ve heard about those O’Malley bashes.”

  They were legendary for the fun, family, and food. “If it’s one thing the O’Malleys know how to do well, it’s have fun.”

  “I envy you the big family.”

  He’d love to talk her into coming with him. He looked at her, started to ask, then bit his tongue. If Cassie said no to the invitation, he wanted enough time to convince her to change her mind, and the clock above the door was taking away his options for having such a discussion. It was 8:10. Jack didn’t want to leave but knew he’d have to if he was going to get to the fire station on time.

  Cassie saw the direction of his glance and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “You’re working tonight?”

  “I told Greg I’d cover part of his shift so he could get away early in the morning. His family is having a weekend reunion.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “I wish now I hadn’t said yes.”

  She chuckled and pushed the frosted pastry his way. “Take dessert with you.”