Small-Town Fireman

“Now who’s exaggerating,” Half Decaf goaded. “I could have fit that fish in my pocket.”

“Mixed luck out on the water?” Karla asked, setting a stack of menus in the center of the table. “Your coffee’s part of the catch, but we’ll whip up breakfast if you’re in the mood for a bit more.” She’d worked for ten minutes to come up with the perfect, nonintrusive way to hint that they might want to consider ordering breakfast.

“You cook as well as you pull a latte?” Double Shot asked, looking doubly charming as he extended a hand. “I’m James Shoemacher.”

“Jim Shoe,” Half Decaf cut in. “Call him Jim Shoe.” He said it again, pronouncing it like “gym shoe” and pointing to his gleaming white leather sneakers just in case she didn’t catch the joke. Shoemacher looked weary, as if years of repetition had rendered him immune to the gag.

The same way she’d grown wearily resigned to explaining, “No, that’s Karla with a K” over and over. She shook Shoemacher’s hand—one that didn’t look like the kind that had done any time with night crawlers and a hook—and felt an unlikely kinship with the man. “Karla Kennedy.” She nodded to the sign in the window. “Karl’s my grandfather. And I don’t do the cooking, but I can sure vouch for it.”

“Shoemacher Realty. Industrial properties.” Hmm...real estate. How fortunate was that? “And I’ve been up so long,” he went on, “it feels like I ought to have lunch. Can you do a panini?”

“Sorry, no panini maker here, Mr. Shoemacher. We don’t really do a lot of lunch fare.” She almost laughed, picturing what Karl would think of the uppity term for a grilled sandwich. “But I’m sure I can set you up with a grilled cheese.”

She expected him to grimace, but he smiled instead. “Do that,” he replied. “But call me Jim.”

As she pulled out her order pad, Karla decided she might have to eat her words about never making any business contacts in Gordon Falls. “Okay, one grilled cheese for Jim. Any of the rest of you need something more than your coffees?”

Half the group ordered a full breakfast, while three of them made a big show of checking their watches and smartphones, too busy to dally over eggs and toast.

“If you three need to head out, I’ll go get your cleaned catches wrapped up and iced for the trip home.” Dylan had told Karla he was adding that extra service—and evidently it had been a good idea.

“Dave’s will fit in his coffee cup, I bet,” one of them snickered.

“Hey, at least I caught something,” Dave replied. “So far all you caught was grief from your wife.” That brought a laugh from the whole group.

“Dylan, we enjoyed our morning,” pronounced Half Decaf, who had introduced himself as an accountant from a big firm Karla only barely recognized. “I’ll have my assistant set us up for another later in the season.” He sent a smile Karla’s way. “And I’ll be sure to leave time for breakfast.”

Dylan shot Karla a grinning thumbs-up as he headed out the door with the exiting half of the group. So far, the first-ever Coffee Catch seemed to be a success.

“Dylan said this was your idea?” Jim asked when Karla brought their food orders to the table. At Grandpa’s suggestion, Karla had asked Emily to come in a bit early so that Karla could give the fishermen her nearly undivided attention, only slipping out to make the all-too-occasional coffee drink for another customer. The executives seemed to enjoy the exclusive service—which had been the point all along.

“Seemed a nicer way to end an early morning than just getting back in the car,” Karla replied. After a second, she quipped, “The espresso machine is too heavy to roll down to the dock.”

“Smart and funny.” Jim nodded to his two companions. “And all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m from Chicago, actually,” Karla explained. “Just finished culinary school. I’m helping my grandfather out while he’s laid up from hip surgery.”

“Culinary school. That explains a lot. So, Karla, what do you want to do after you finish helping Grandpa out?”

It seemed like a hundred years since anyone had asked her that question. Everyone in Gordon Falls only inquired how long she planned on staying—nobody seemed to care that she had shelved big plans to do time behind the counter. “I want to open a downtown breakfast eatery. A coffee shop like this, only a bit less...” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence without seeming to put down her grandfather’s beloved establishment.

“Rustic?” Jim finished for her.

Karla felt her face flush. “Well, yes.” She didn’t want to insult Grandpa’s place, just wanted to explain—especially to someone like him—that her dream had a lot more style and sophistication.

“It’s a well-used real-estate term. Useful when explaining grilled cheese to the panini crowd.”

She managed to laugh at that. “I get it.”

“It’s a very good grilled cheese,” Jim added. “Takes me back, you know?”

“I’m glad you liked it.” She looked at the other men. “Your breakfasts all okay?”

The other two nodded behind full mouths. “Hmm.”

Jim pulled out his wallet and handed Karla one of those top-level charge cards. “I’ll get this, boys.” He also pulled out a business card. “When you get ready to open that place, Karla Kennedy, you give me a call. I’m good at spotting people who will go far in this world.” He pointed at her. “You may just be the best catch of the day.”

Karla slipped the business card in her pocket and smiled. She’d been moaning to God in her prayer journal last night that being cooped up in Gordon Falls was feeling like a colossal detour. This morning, however, felt like God’s personalized reminder that she could pursue her dream even while out here. The card in her pocket—and the contact it represented—served as a deposit on the future she had beyond the counter at Karl’s.

The massive tip Shoemacher added to the meager breakfast tab? Well that was very nice, as well.

* * *

“So.” Jesse Sykes, a fellow volunteer fireman at the Gordon Falls Volunteer Fire Department, pulled on a gray T-shirt and shook his still-wet hair as they stood in the locker room later that afternoon. “How was the big rig gig?”

Dylan yawned—it was tiring to pull a shift as a volunteer firefighter right after a full morning of playing host to a bunch of city visitors. It was 3:00 p.m. and he’d been up for eleven hours already. “Not bad, actually.”

Jesse took one last swipe at his hair before tossing the towel he held into the large canvas laundry bin in the corner. They’d just finished a demonstration at the high school, so it wasn’t as if they’d just come in off a fire, but the heavy gear could make a guy sweat in January, much less June. “Today was the day you took them to Karl’s afterward, right? How’d that go?”

“It’s a nice perk—no pun intended.” Dylan rubbed his own hair dry. “Puts just the right cap on the morning, especially if the fish haven’t been biting, which they weren’t this morning.” One of the worst parts of the charter fishing business was that the satisfaction of his customers sometimes depended on the participation of Gordon Falls’ finned inhabitants. This morning the fish had not been cooperative.

“Came in empty-handed?”

“Not completely, but there’s always—” he made quotation marks with his fingers in the air “—the big one that got away.” He laughed. “A lot of them got away this morning. Makes it hard to keep the customers happy, you know?”

“I can imagine.” Jesse smirked. “Hey, I think the coffee thing’s a pretty clever idea, actually. A way to add to the experience no matter how the fish are biting—and a bit more sophisticated than coffee in a thermos. Anything you can do to pull in the high-end crowd is always a good thing, right? You’ve got bills to pay.”

Dylan shut his locker door and spun the lock. “Those boat loans don’t care that I’ve just about run through my savings getting this thing up and running. As for the coffee, the whole thing was Karla Kennedy’s idea, actually.”

“Karla? Karl’s granddaughter?”

“She’s studying restaurant management, or something like that. I’d have never thought of it, being a ‘coffee in the thermos’ kind of guy.” He smiled ruefully. “Although I did like whatever it was she made me the other day. Had cinnamon in it, and frothy milk. I gave up all that stuff when I stopped working downtown, but now I think maybe I might go back to some of it.”

“So you talked shop with clever little Karla Kennedy.” Jesse hoisted a bag over his shoulder. “There’s brains behind those big blue eyes.” He waggled one eyebrow at Dylan. “Reeling in more than the fishermen, are we?”

“She’s not my type and I don’t think I’m hers.” Dylan leaned against the locker he’d just shut. “Karla’s definitely a city girl. I get the feeling she can’t get back to Chicago fast enough. You should have seen her charming up my customers—she definitely prefers a high-end kind of guy.”

Jesse fished a watch out of his pocket and put it on. “You’re a high-end kind of guy. You just do it in a down-home kind of way now.”

“You just contradicted yourself, Sykes.” Dylan sat down on the locker-room bench and began tightening the laces on his work boots.

“Not necessarily.” Jesse tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, wait a minute—I thought you told me this morning’s fishermen were guys in their forties.”

“They were.” Dylan tied off the knot.

“So I highly doubt Karla was fishing for dates from them.”

“I didn’t say she was flirting with them.”

“Maybe not with words.” Jesse set his bag back down. “Look at you. You didn’t even realize you were jealous.”

“Cut it out, okay?” He was not jealous of the attention Karla had paid those businessmen.

“Likely she was just being nice. You know, making business contacts. You said she wants to open her own place back in Chicago, right?”

“She mentioned it a few dozen times.”

“So she talked to you. A lot. And she made you coffee. And you said she gave you a free lunch the other day. Do the math here, buddy.”

Dylan didn’t even bother to reply. He only shot Jesse a glare as he stood up to go.

“Man, we have to get you out more. You’re spending way too much time with fish instead of females.”

Maybe I like it that way. “Ever since you started ‘ring shopping’ with Charlotte, you’ve become impossible, Sykes. Well, more impossible than usual.” Jesse had been the firehouse’s most proclaimed bachelor until a pretty, young Chicagoan named Charlotte Taylor had bought a property right out from underneath him. Jesse got himself hired to help Charlotte renovate that cottage, and it was safe to say the relationship had gone far beyond contractor-client since then. “You going to pop the question soon?”

Jesse’s smile gave the answer even though he replied, “That, mister, is privileged information.”

“Good for you. Really, I’m glad for you.” He was—he and Jesse were good friends—it was just that the wave of happy couples in Gordon Falls was getting a little hard to bear. Starting with Fire Inspector Chad Owens, there had been four weddings and an engagement in recent years, and Jesse was about to make that number five.

Dylan hoped that would signal an end to the discussion, but no such luck. His buddy sat back down on the locker room bench. “Look, Dylan, you gotta put yourself back out there. You can’t let Yvonne keep doing this to you—I can’t stand to watch it. Just because she went after someone with deeper pockets doesn’t mean every woman sees you as short on cash.”

How many versions of this lecture was Sykes going to give him? Dylan glared at Jesse again, hoping to signal his reluctance to hear any more on the topic.

“I mean it. You’re doing fine for yourself. You are long on charm, buddy. Give yourself more credit. You’re a catch. There are other fish in...”

Dylan rolled his eyes and held up one hand. “Stop with the fishing metaphors. Please, I’m begging you.”

Jesse squared off at him. “Tell me you’re over Yvonne.”

“I am,” Dylan declared as he bent down over his second boot, trying hard not to sound as annoyed as he felt.

Jesse shook his head and blew out a breath. “Nope. Make me believe it.”

Dylan tied off his second boot so ferociously the lace broke. Determined to put an end to this once and for all, he stared hard at Jesse and growled, “I. Am. Over. Yvonne.” He tried to remember that the other fireman had his best interest at heart. Still, no one could ever call Jesse Sykes subtle. For all his good-hearted companionship, the guy was an interpersonal bulldozer.

“And Karla Kennedy is...” Jesse circled his hand in the air, cuing Dylan to finish the sentence.

Just say what he wants to hear and he’ll go away. Dylan shrugged his shoulders. “Kind of cute and very smart.”

“Very cute and super smart.” Jesse pointed at Dylan. “C’mon, you said she dubbed you ‘Captain’—that’s a dead giveaway right there. The woman has eyes for you.”

Of course it amused him that she’d begun to call him Captain, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Sykes. The guy needed no encouragement. “I’ve sworn off women with hard-driving ambitions. Besides, she’s going back to Chicago as soon as she can manage it.”

“Maybe not, if you give her some good reasons to stay.” Jesse slid his bag back onto his shoulder. “When’s the next Coffee Catch thing?”

He almost didn’t say, worried his pal would show up and do something everyone would regret. A talented tenor, Jesse had a regrettable habit of breaking into song at inappropriate times. “Next Tuesday.”

Thankfully, Jesse turned toward the locker room door. But not before calling “More fat-walleted businessmen?” over his shoulder.

“Nuns.”

Jesse spun around to stare wide-eyed at Jesse. “What?”

It was the truth, but Dylan immediately realized he should have made up something else. Jesse would never let something like this go. “The sisters of Saint Cecilia’s,” he explained, applying his “don’t get started” face. “They’re on retreat. They booked a fishing expedition and evidently they like good coffee.”

Jesse clapped his hands together, walking back toward Dylan. “Ha! Buddy, you’re in. Nuns. They’ll love you. Not a speck of competition in sight. It’s a sign from above, I tell you.” He laughed. “Fishing nuns. Only you, McDonald, only you.”

Dylan felt compelled to defend the good sisters. “Hey, they sound like nice people. They’ll probably be a lot less trouble than this morning’s captains of industry, that’s for sure. Those guys were high maintenance.” He paused and blinked. “Can a guy be high maintenance?”

Jesse picked at the denim shirt Dylan had on. “It’s not like you’d ever know.”

Chapter Four

Karla wasn’t surprised when Dylan showed up at her counter Thursday morning. He wore a wide smile, so it was safe to say he felt the Coffee Catch experiment had gone as well as she did. “What’ll it be today, Captain?”

His eyes narrowed just a bit as his smile widened. “I have to say, that’s growing on me.” He wore a navy blue shirt that did splendid things with his tanned complexion, despite the fraying around the edges. The rugged attire definitely suited him, even if no one would ever call Dylan McDonald a clotheshorse.

“Oh, well—” she applied a mock scowl “—we can’t have that, now, can we?” Karla turned the crank to shoot a burst of steam through the espresso machine, clearing out the piping for whatever Dylan would get this morning. “I was thinking hazelnut this morning. Less sweet, but smooth.”

“Maybe a banana nut muffin to go with that?”

“Excellent choice.” As Karla began making the drink, it struck her how much she’d been looking forward to Dylan’s visit this morning. She was proud of her idea for the Coffee Catch, satisfied that it had worked out so well for everyone involved, including her. “So, who’s coming Tuesday?”

Dylan got a funny look on his face. “Nuns.”

“What?”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “Why is everyone so surprised that the sisters of Saint Cecilia’s want to go fishing?”

He had a point. “I guess I shouldn’t be. Lots of people like fishing, I suppose.”

She’d said that wrong; his expression perked right up, catching the disdain she’d neglected to hide from her voice. “But not you.”

Karla busied herself with the hazelnut syrup. “Well, no. It’s not my favorite.” As the words left her mouth, she realized just what she’d let herself in for. When she looked up from the mug she was filling, Dylan’s hands were planted on his hips.

“I’m going to have to take offense at that. Fishing is wonderful. This is Gordon Falls, after all. Fishing is practically our national pastime.”

She poured the steamed milk into the mug to mix with the fragrant coffee. “I don’t think a town can have a national pastime.”

“Don’t get technical. I know Karl fishes. You can’t tell me your grandpa never took you fishing.”

“Oh, he did. Lots of times. It was sort of fun when I was little.” Why hadn’t she had the sense not to get into this discussion with someone like Dylan?

“Then what made it not fun when you were bigger?”

There wasn’t a safe way to answer that. There were times when peaceful afternoons out on the river made for good memories. It was just that as she grew up, those long stretches out on the water too often ended up in tense arguments between her father and grandpa. “It wasn’t the fishing, so much as the fishermen.” She slid the steaming mug toward him and lifted the dome off the glass plate where the muffins sat piled.

Dylan caught the plural. “Obnoxious brother?”

“Oh, no, I’m an only child of an only child. Let’s just say Dad and Grandpa don’t always paddle their boats in the same direction.” That felt much kinder than the memories of arguments she’d tried hard to forget ever happened. Some of those trips were the first times she’d become aware of her difficult position between her father and grandfather. She loved them both, but most times they had such a difficult time loving each other. It was one of the reasons she’d consented to come out here when Grandpa needed help—leaving Dad and Grandpa alone with each other was always a dicey proposition.

“Oh.”

She was glad Dylan seemed to catch on to what she was saying. This wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted to relay in any detail.

“Water isn’t always a peacemaker, is it?”

Funny thing was, it always had been for her. Even when the prospect of going out with Dad and Grandpa held the good chance of a fight, she went anyway. “I like the water. It’s why I like Chicago. Back home, I get out to Lake Michigan whenever I can.”

“The lake is nice, but I found it too big. Give me a river any day.”

She looked at him curiously. “You used to live in Chicago?”

Something flashed behind his eyes before he answered. Chicago was evidently a sore subject. She watched him measure out his words the same way she’d just done. “It wasn’t for me.” There was a long story behind that short answer.

“So you came here.”

Dylan took a sip of the coffee she’d made, nodding his approval. “Oh, I like this better than the last one. Maybe even better than the first one.” He glanced at her for a long moment. “I should have come here all along, but I let other people convince me of what I wanted.” Then he took another sip, a longer one, making Karla wonder if he was buying himself time to decide how much he was going to say. “Don’t ever do that.”

“I’ve got my own dreams clearly in sight.” She patted the Small Business Strategies textbook where it sat on the counter. The look in his eyes made her add, “And now it looks like you do, too. Captain of your own destiny, as Grandpa would say.” The “as if” expression on his face made her wonder if that was why he seemed pleased and annoyed at the “Captain” title. His fishing business meant much more than a paycheck to him, she could see that.

“I’ve poured everything into Gordon River Fishing Charters. It’s going to work out because I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work out.” He turned up one corner of his mouth in a half smile, half grimace before adding, “Even marketing.”

“I imagine you will,” she replied. The determination in his eyes made that easy to believe.

Dylan took another sip and then set down his mug. “Are you working Saturday morning?”

“No, my dad takes over on Saturday mornings.”

“Then that settles it. You’re going fishing.”

Karla let out a moan. “Don’t you have a charter or something? Boy Scout field trip?”

“As a matter of fact, this is my only free Saturday this month. I think you need to go fishing.”

“No, really—it’s not my thing.”

Dylan picked up the coffee mug again, hoisting it up in front of her face as if it were Exhibit A.

“You got three tries out of me. I think it’s only fair I get three hours out of you. Five-thirty to eight-thirty Saturday morning.”

“Five-thirty a.m.? You want me to get up at dawn on my day off?”

A playful grin crept across his face. “It’s not like you won’t have enough coffee.”

“There isn’t enough coffee in the world,” she complained, leaning against the counter. “Is the sun even up then?”

“Just barely. It’s the best time to be out on the river.” He pointed to the Commercial Baking recipe book open on the back counter behind her “Besides, anyone who wants to be a baker ought to be ready to rise before the sun, right?”

“Let’s see—” Karla looked up at the ceiling, squinting in mock consideration “—the smell of freshly baked bread greeting the sunrise, or the smell of fish? It’s such a tough choice.”

“Let’s see,” Dylan matched her tone, “standing in a cold, dark kitchen staring at an oven or the thrill of landing a prize fish in the glorious setting of a river at sunrise? It’s such a tough choice.”

“Hey, that sounds like marketing talk to me. What did you do before you came out here to launch your dream job?”

All the light left his handsome face. “I sat miserably doing nothing that really mattered.”

“Ouch. Sorry to bring it up.”

He ran a finger around the rim of the mug. “You couldn’t have known. Most of the world hasn’t caught on to the soul-killing nature of institutional cash-flow analysis.”

Karla stared at him. “Wait...you had a corporate job?” She tried to imagine Dylan in a suit and tie, but couldn’t.

“I’d rather not talk about it.” He looked up. There was so much going on behind his eyes. “I’d rather take you fishing.”

Her curiosity got the best of her. “Okay, three hours. I bring the coffee—you never bring the subject up again after Saturday. Deal?”

“Deal.”

* * *

Dylan put his hand to the doorknob of the firehouse conference room Friday night like a man greeting his execution. Meetings. To his mind, there wasn’t anything more joy crushing than a committee meeting. His aversion to meetings had been solidified back at his former office job, and Dylan wasn’t in any hurry to build on it. If Chief Bradens hadn’t personally asked him to serve on the firehouse’s 150th Anniversary Committee, there wasn’t a soul in Gordon Falls who could have made him be here. No soul except Violet Sharpton. Dylan couldn’t rightly say if Bradens had sicced the feisty old woman on him, but Violet had nevertheless cornered him after Sunday services last week saying they “needed new brains in the room” and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Chief Bradens on his own was a force to be reckoned with, but when tag-teamed with Violet Sharpton? Well, Dylan was smart enough to know when he was licked.

Lord, I don’t mind telling you I’m in no mood for whatever lesson You have in store for me here. Death by committee isn’t the way I’d choose to go.

The rectangular meeting room table was all filled except for one seat: his. Normally a pretty prompt guy, Dylan just couldn’t bring himself to hustle to this meeting and as such was five minutes late. He’d happily have supported the firehouse’s 150th anniversary any other way, and planned to jump on any opportunity to escape into a more task-oriented role. If only that didn’t look like the slimmest of possibilities. Dylan was so absorbed in his exit strategy that he almost didn’t register the biggest surprise in the room: Karla Kennedy sat between Vi and her grandfather.