Tall, Strong & Cool Under Fire

When she opened her eyes again, she saw her daughter’s new best friend looking at her. She supposed he did deserve an apology.

Rising Lisa brushed her hands against her shorts, a tingle of nerves unaccountably zigzagging through her. She wasn’t accustomed to thinking of herself as anything except CeCe’s mother. The firefighter wasn’t looking at her as if he thought of her as anyone’s mother.

Lisa cleared her throat, nodding toward CeCe. “I’m sorry if she was any trouble.”

She looked flustered, Bryce thought. He liked the slight tinge of pink that came into her cheeks. Looking down at his talkative new friend who had an iron grip on his hand, he grinned.

“CeCe? No, she wasn’t any trouble at all. I was just about to give your daughter a tour of the fire station.” His grin extended to include CeCe’s mother as well. “I’m sure the tour group could be expanded by one if you’re interested.”

“Thank you, but no.” Lisa saw CeCe’s face fall. Though she was completely right in turning down the invitation for more than one reason, Lisa still felt guilty. She always did whenever she denied CeCe anything. Wanting to give her daughter the world, the guilt that accompanied any refusal was something she continually had to wrestle with.

“But Mommy—” CeCe began to protest.

Lisa remained firm. She had to. “We’re in the middle of moving in and everything’s a big mess. I can’t spare the time right now, honey. Besides—” she suddenly remembered “—I have the movers all combing the neighborhood for you.”

Confusion puckered the small brow. “Why do they want to comb me, Mommy?”

Bryce bit back a laugh. “It’s just an expression, honey.” Very gently, he withdrew his hand from the small grasping fingers then raised his eyes to Lisa. “I can put the tour on hold, if you’d like. Consider it a raincheck.” He saw her open her mouth to protest. “Everyone should get to know their neighborhood firehouse. We’re not just for fires anymore.” He winked at CeCe, clearly winning her heart by becoming a coconspirator. “And on rare occasions, we even offer baby-sitting—um, big girl sitting services,” he amended seeing her small brows rise in indignation.

CeCe Billings was, he thought, what his grandfather had been wont to call “a pistol.” He wished the old man was still around to meet the little girl. On second thought, his grandfather would have probably attempted to make a play for CeCe’s mom. The man had retained a twinkle in his eye until the day he died at age ninety-three.

Bryce hoped the condition was hereditary and that he’d be half as spry when he got to that age.

Lisa wished she had on something other than a tank top and shorts, but she had a feeling the man would make her aware of his gaze even if she were wearing sack cloth and ashes. She raised her chin, determined to retreat as quickly as possible.

“That’s comforting to know, but I’m sure we won’t be bothering you again, Mr.—um—”

“Walker.” He put out his hand to her. “Bryce Walker.”

“I already told you, Mommy,” CeCe reminded her.

Lisa hesitated, not wanting to waste any more precious time. Across the street, her mother and the movers were undoubtedly still searching for CeCe. She had to get back before her mother decided to call the police. Her mother had never believed in taking the slow approach to anything and was a firm believer in getting the system to work for her any way it could.

But the firefighter was being awfully nice about having CeCe bend his ear and he had looked after the little girl for her. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened if CeCe had just continued to wander off on her own.

So, with one foot out the door, holding her daughter firmly by the hand, Lisa extended her free one and slipped it into his. His grip was firm, hard. Warm. And his eyes were definitely unsettling, reminding her just how long it had been since she’d looked at any man as something other than a customer.

“I’m Lisa Billings.” Her throat felt inordinately dry. She had to remember to stop and drink something once in a while, she told herself. All morning long, she’d worked like a whirling dervish, trying to get the new house organized. She had a limited amount of time before she had to get back to working on the store. The opening day was close. “Thank you for minding CeCe.”

“It was a pleasure.”

He was still holding her hand. And her attention. Fighting self-consciousness, she withdrew her hand from his. Uncoupled, she saw that he was nonetheless following her, step for step as she began to edge away.

“CeCe says you’re new to the city.”

She gave CeCe a reproving look. She was going to have to see about getting her daughter to be a little less forthcoming.

“We are.”

He wondered if it was his imagination that made him think she looked a little uneasy, talking to him. “And the state.”

“That, too.” She glanced at her daughter again, making it across the threshold this time. Just how much did CeCe tell this man about them?

He was still on duty until this evening, so he couldn’t very well take off with her, although there was something about her that tempted him to do just that.

So instead, Bryce lingered in the doorway. “Well, since I seem to be one of the first citizens of Bedford you’ve encountered—and you’ll probably be too tired to cook after the movers leave—maybe you’d like to have some dinner?”

“I’m sure I’ll have some dinner.” Lisa tossed her answer over her shoulder, turning away with CeCe.

“I mean, with me,” he added.

She never broke her stride as she looked at him. “I wouldn’t dream of putting you out.”

“You wouldn’t be,” he called after her.

But she was already hurrying across the street, her hand firmly wrapped around CeCe’s, leaving him to stand in the doorway of the station, feeling a little confused, rather like an adolescent who had just been rejected by the prom queen. It wasn’t anything he knew from firsthand experience.

“First time for everything, eh, Walker?”

He thought he was alone on the floor, having left the others in a hot poker game in the main room upstairs. Surprised, he turned around and saw Jack Riley standing next to the truck, laughter in his eyes. He and Riley went way back to a time when both their voices were higher and their permanent teeth hadn’t come in yet.

He might have known this would amuse Riley.

“Though I’d never thought I’d see the day when a woman would turn you down.” Jack laughed to himself, coming forward. “Hell, my mother would go out with you if you just showed a little interest.”

Closer than brothers, they had trained together and signed on for the same station when the time came. Bryce hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, still watching Lisa and CeCe.

“No offense, but I’m really not interested in having my neck separated from shoulders by your father.” There was no disguising the affection he bore for both of Riley’s parents. Riley’s father had been his own father’s best friend, and had willingly taken on the role of surrogate father to Bryce and his younger brother when they’d needed one.

Joining him in the doorway, Riley studied the departing form that had caught his friend’s attention. “Doesn’t look like your usual type.”

Bryce raised a brow. “Meaning?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s got a kid.” Riley knew better than anyone how Bryce felt about family. He paused, taking a different route than the obvious. “How do you know she’s not married?”

CeCe turned at the island and waved at Bryce. He waved back. “Her daughter didn’t mention a father.”

Riley shrugged carelessly. “Doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, Walker. Maybe she’s just mad at him.”

Bryce merely shook his head. He watched as, reaching the opposite street, Lisa and CeCe make their way to the second house from the end of the block. Funny how he’d missed the moving truck earlier. Now that he was aware of it, it was as obvious as an elephant standing in a front yard.

“You had to be there,” he told his friend.

“Sorry I wasn’t.” Riley leaned over a little farther as the woman waved over four burly men in beige coveralls. The latter came trotting over obediently. He would, too, Riley thought. “Nice rear view.”

Bryce knew Riley meant nothing by the comment. Riley was all talk and as honorable as the day was long when it came to women’s feelings. Still, he couldn’t help the rejoinder that came to his lips. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Riley grinned. “Only when she insists on it. Do I detect a chivalrous note coming through?”

Bryce saw another woman hurrying to Lisa, her arms outstretched. CeCe leaped into them. That had to be G-Mama, he decided. “No more than usual.”

“Oh, but this one’s a little different than usual,” Riley observed. “Like I said, she doesn’t seem to be your type.”

The reunion over, the three women went into the house. Bryce turned away. “And my type being?”

“Stringless. Absolutely stringless.” Riley nodded toward the house. “In case you didn’t notice, this one looks like she’s full of strings.”

Maybe he had been paying a little too much attention just now. Bryce laughed it off. “Hey, don’t get carried away, Riley. As you so delicately pointed out, the lady doesn’t even want to have dinner with me.”

Riley knew Bryce better than that. There wasn’t a time he could remember Bryce being easily put off. “Do I detect the call of a challenge?”

It was time to change the subject. Bryce indicated the rooms upstairs. “No, but I can see the dinner bell going off and ten hungry firefighters deciding to string you up because you didn’t make dinner when it was your turn to cook.” He flicked his thumb and forefinger at the date on the calendar that graced the side wall. Riley’s name was written in in the appropriate space.

Riley dragged his hand through his wayward chestnut-colored hair. “Hell, I forgot about that.” He caught his lower lip between his teeth as he looked up at his friend. “The refrigerator still empty?”

Bryce looked at him innocently, as if he didn’t know what was coming. As if they hadn’t danced this dance before a number of times. “Last I looked.”

Riley raised his eyes hopefully to Bryce’s face. The latter’s expression was deadpan. “You wouldn’t want to take my turn, would you?”

“I took your turn,” Bryce reminded him. “Last time, remember? And the time before that,” he added before Riley could protest. “The men are beginning to think you can’t cook.”

Riley sighed. He knew his limitations. “The men are right.”

Riley’s mother ran a restaurant and her cooking attracted people in droves. How this talent hadn’t been passed on was beyond Bryce. Even he had picked up a considerable number of pointers during the years he and his brother had lived with the Rileys. Riley, however, was just slightly beyond the boiling-water-without-burning-it-stage with no progress in sight. “No time like the present to learn,” Bryce commented.

Riley gave him a dark look. “That’s not what you’ll say when you’re at the hospital, having your stomach pumped.”

Bryce glanced over his shoulder toward the doorway, impulse pushing forward an idea. “Tell you what, I’ve got a few things to pick up at the grocery store myself. I’ll do the shopping for tonight. But then you’ve got to do the rest.”

It was only fair, he knew, the men each taking turns. But Riley really wished they’d give the assignment to someone who was better at it than he was. “Get something simple.”

“You read my mind.”

Riley watched his friend leave and thought of the expression he’d seen on Bryce’s face when the woman had turned down his offer.

“Only part of it, Walker,” he murmured to himself. “Only part of it.”

Bryce tucked the coloring book that was beginning to slip back more securely under his arm.

It wasn’t like him to go where he wasn’t wanted so he wasn’t altogether certain just exactly what he was doing here, standing on Lisa Billings’s doorstep, ringing her doorbell, flowers in one hand, a bag with a loaf of bread in the other and a coloring book tucked under his arm. There was also a broom leaning against the wall where he’d rested it.

He had a number of excuses ready to offer her when she asked, but explaining it to himself was a whole different matter. He wasn’t sure if he could.

It wasn’t as if he lacked female companionship. Now or ever. As Riley enjoyed ribbing him, he had more than his fair share of women ready to make themselves available to him.

There was no conceit involved. Bryce figured that women were attracted to the uniform and to resistance, both of which he possessed. He’d been a firefighter for eight years and as for the other, that had been an ongoing thing from the very first time he ever kissed a woman. He wasn’t interested in commitments and forever. He was already committed to his work and because of that, it precluded any other long-term relationships that might be headed to the altar. Any woman he ever went out with knew he was not the marrying kind. Not from any desire to remain free or to sample as many women as he could, but from a very humane standpoint. He’d been thirteen years old when his father died in the line of duty, sacrificing his life while trying to save two children from being burned to death. And then Bryce had watched, day in, day out, what that sacrifice had done to his mother. It took away the laughter from her eyes and for a while, had sent her into a depression so deep, nothing and no one could reach her.

Even when she recovered, she was never the same after his father died.

To him, marriage was a pledge in which two people promised to live the rest of their lives together. It was only natural to assume that life would be for as long a time as could possibly be managed. That didn’t mean taking on burning buildings on a regular basis, which was what he did for a living. A firefighter risked his life every day, risked the happiness of those he loved every day, pitting his life against a force of nature. And sometimes, he lost. The way his father had.

The tears Bryce saw in his mother’s eyes for a full year following his father’s death at the age of thirty-four made him silently vow never to put anyone through what his mother had suffered.

Since his heart had been set on being a firefighter from the very first time his father had brought him down to the station, Bryce thought it only right to make a choice. A home and family, or a career, but not both. So he followed one dream and gave up the other. Most of the time, it seemed like a fair tradeoff.

But every so often, he caught himself wondering what it would have been like if he had followed the other path. If he’d gone into engineering homes instead of saving them, or harnessing nature instead of battling it.

Talking to CeCe had made him wonder again. But he told himself that it was only a passing thing and that coming here this evening, after he’d gone off duty, was merely motivated out of a sense of neighborliness.

He rang the doorbell and waited. There was no response on the other side of the door, no music coming through an open window, no sound of shuffling. Maybe they’d gone out to get something to eat, he speculated. The moving van and its four men was gone.

Deciding to give it one last try, Bryce reached for the bell again when the door abruptly opened. Instead of Lisa, he found himself looking down at a woman who could have been mistaken for a slightly older version of the woman. Rather than shorts, she had on a sundress and her short, stylishly cut dark blond hair had a ribbon of gray running through it.

But she looked up at him with Lisa and CeCe’s blue eyes. “Yes?”

“I’m not sure if I have the right house, but do Lisa Billings and her daughter, CeCe, live here?” Even if he hadn’t been certain that he had the right house, one look at the woman would have assured him that he did. Still, it seemed a good enough way to begin.

Cecilia took swift measure of the handsome young man at the front door. She made decisions quickly. In her life, there hadn’t always been much time for debating.

She liked his mouth. The lines around it indicated that he was given to smiling frequently. It was a good trait. And his eyes were kind. You could tell a great deal about a man by his eyes. Her husband had had kind eyes. CeCe’s father hadn’t, but she’d found it a difficult thing to convey to Lisa at the time. You had to let your children make their own mistakes, no matter how much it pained you to watch.

“Yes.” Cecilia saw the broom leaning against the wall. The young man seemed to come with an odd assortment of things. He was holding flowers in his hand and there was some sort of thin book held flat against his side by his arm. She couldn’t begin to guess what he had in the bag. “You are selling brooms, perhaps?”

Bryce shifted his weight. It wasn’t often he felt self-conscious. “No, I—”

Curious who her mother was talking to, Lisa hurried over to the open door. “Who is it, Mother?” Peering around the door, she stopped short. “Oh God, it’s you.”

Intrigued, Cecilia stepped back from the doorway, allowing the visitor better access. “You know him?”

She hadn’t expected him to actually come over, Lisa thought. He must have watched her leave with CeCe. “It’s the fireman I told you about, the one who I found with CeCe.”

Interest transformed into something akin to pleasure. A smile bloomed on Cecilia’s face as she took hold of his wrist, drawing him into the house. “Ah, please come in, yes?”

Lisa’s immediate response was, “No,” but it was already too late. Her mother was shutting the door, after pulling the firefighter inside.

Chapter Three

There’d only been just enough time for him to grab the broom before Bryce had found himself being pulled into the house by the diminutive woman who had clamped her hands around his wrist. She was surprisingly strong, given her size.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently, trying not to laugh. Obviously her mother and her daughter were a lot freer spirits than Lisa Billings was.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bryce saw CeCe come running into the room. The moment she saw him, she clapped her hands together in pure delight. Her grin was wide and welcoming.

Unlike, he noted, her mother’s expression. Nobody had to tell him that Lisa wasn’t happy about this turn of events, or the lack of immediate support she had.

CeCe fairly bounced in front of him, her eyes shining. “Hi, Bryce.”

Lisa didn’t want CeCe getting too friendly with the intrusive firefighter, even if this was just a onetime visit.

“Mr. Walker,” she corrected.

A little of the sunlight in CeCe’s eyes abated. Bryce was quick to wave Lisa’s admonishment aside. Too many children called him by his first name for CeCe to be singled out this way.

“That’s too much of a mouthful for someone her size, Lisa. Bryce is fine.”

Lisa didn’t like him calling her by her first name. It made this conversation entirely too personal. Besides, she had the feeling that he was conveying more to her than just a name preference when he said that Bryce was fine, but there was no way she was about to allow herself to be drawn into any sort of wordplay over that.

In the larger scheme of things, it was all a moot point. It wasn’t as if the man was going to be someone they interacted with on a regular basis. As soon as she managed to usher him on his way, she didn’t expect to ever see Bryce Walker again, barring a fire somewhere in the immediate area.

But before she could say anything, her mother was taking charge of the situation.

“Well, then, Bryce,” Cecilia said, smiling at him, “we were just about to sit down to dinner. Perhaps you will join us?”

For a second, the air left her lungs. Lisa felt completely outflanked. She knew from experience that sending her mother a glaring look would be utterly wasted on the woman, so she didn’t even bother—as much as she wanted to.

Instead she drew herself up and sent the withering look in Bryce’s direction. The last thing she needed at the tail end of a trying day was an invasion by an unwanted guest, no matter how handsome he was.

“I’m sure Mr. Walker has to be somewhere else, Mother.”

He returned the withering look with a long, slow appraisal that started at the top of her head and wound its way down to her bare toes. Lisa felt as if she suddenly had nothing on and felt all the hotter for it.

“No,” he assured her quietly, “as a matter of fact, I don’t.”

Triumphant, Cecilia hooked her arm through Bryce’s. She looked back at her daughter. “See?”

A thread of satisfaction wound through her words that she didn’t bother to hide. As far as Cecilia was concerned, Lisa had been hiding behind her work and her family in an effort to barricade herself away from the rest of the world and deny the fact that she had a heart that could still be hurt. If nothing was risked, nothing was gained.

Cecilia glanced at the broom Bryce was still holding. “By the way, what is all this you bring with you?”

“Yes,” Lisa seconded the question, her eyes sweeping over the bag he held in his other hand. “Just why are you dragging a broom around? Are you moonlighting as a broom salesman?” Maybe if she insulted him, he’d go away.

But instead of being insulted, he flashed a grin at her. “You and your mother think alike.”

Not hardly, Lisa thought, swallowing a groan. To her surprise, he presented the broom to her.

“It’s for you. A housewarming gift,” he explained when she only stared at it.

She raised her eyes to his face, wondering what he was up to. “I already have a broom. And a vacuum cleaner,” she added, in case he had one waiting in his car.

“Lisa, if the man wants to give you a broom, you must be polite and take it,” Cecilia told her kindly, taking the broom from Bryce as if he had just presented her with the crown jewels of England.

Bryce couldn’t read Lisa’s expression, but he figured he could take a calculated guess what was going on in her mind. Being a firefighter made him sensitive to highly volatile situations.

Time to defuse the moment, he thought. “Actually it’s an old tradition.” Lisa looked at him blankly. “The broom’s symbolic,” he told her. “You give someone moving into a new home a broom to sweep away any evil spirits that might still be lurking around, left over from the old tenants. And the loaf of bread—” he handed the bag he’d brought to Lisa “—is so that you never go hungry.”

She vaguely remembered hearing or reading about the tradition. But Bryce didn’t strike her as the kind of person who went in for old-fashioned customs. Looking at him uncertainly, she glanced inside the bag. It was a loaf of bread all right. Closing it, she looked at the bouquet he was still holding.

“And the flowers? What are they for?”

This part was a last-minute inspiration. As her mother watched approvingly, he offered the flowers to Lisa with a flourish. “To make you smile.”

“Oh.” It was a simple bouquet of daisies, but it left her flustered and at a loss for words. Her mouth curved slightly without her even realizing it as she accepted the bouquet and looked down at the clustered, bouncy petals. Daisies, to pick apart one by one, murmuring “he loves me, he loves me not.” “I see.”

“It works!” CeCe announced with enthusiasm, grinning broadly. Then the grin began to fade away as she looked skeptically at the broom her grandmother was holding. She lowered her voice in a hushed whisper, inclining her head toward Bryce. “Does that mean we have evil spirits to sweep away?”

He saw the beginning of fear in her eyes. He’d meant to charm the mother, not frighten the daughter.

“They’re all gone already,” he told her solemnly. “It’s the fire department’s job to send any evil spirits packing a whole month before anyone new moves in. This—” he tapped the handle with his finger “—is just to remind them to stay away. Forever.”

“Oh.” Relieved, CeCe released a sigh that seemed twice as large as she was.