Charlotte Maclay - Between Honor And Duty

“Be careful,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I always am.”

Turning again, he raced to the ladder truck, stepping into his heavy, fire-resistant bunker pants that he’d earlier stacked on the floor beside the truck, and he slipped his feet into his boots. He pulled his suspenders up in one fluid motion before reaching for his heavy turnout jacket. At the same time, he swung into the backward-facing seat where his helmet was waiting. The truck vibrated as the engineer started the motor and the smell of exhaust fumes filled the bay.

Seconds later, they were speeding out of the fire station behind the two fire engines, heading north on Paseo Boulevard, sirens screaming.

Logan kept his eyes on Janice’s stricken face until the truck rounded the corner.

The vow he’d made never to make a woman dread the sound of a siren was a good one.

Still, he couldn’t help wishing someday a woman like Janice Gainer would be waiting for him when he got off a shift, to rejoice in his safe return.

The second day of school and already Janice missed her children. It had been bad enough when Kevin had gone off to kindergarten, but then she’d had Maddie to keep her company. Now the silent house mocked the maternal trauma of sending her youngest child to school.

They were both growing up so fast.

She went into the laundry room to take the clothes out of the dryer only to discover the barricade of towels she’d arranged around the bottom of the washing machine had sprung a leak. A puddle of water spread out across the vinyl no-wax floor.

“Oh, damn,” she muttered. Ray was supposed to have fixed the plumbing months ago. She couldn’t go on indefinitely trying to mop up the mess. Eventually the flooring underneath would get wet and rot. She’d have to call a plumber.

The doorbell rang, and she rolled her eyes. Who on earth—

In a peevish mood, she marched to the front of the house, peered through the peep hole in the door, and suddenly her heart felt lighter. Forget her vow to become independent, to stand on her own two feet. She hadn’t felt this giddy since her high-school days when her prom date showed up, and it wasn’t entirely because she needed a handyman around the house.

Opening the door, she resisted the urge to hug Logan Strong. Barely. “You, sir, are an answer to a woman’s prayers.”

A wicked smile slanted his lips, and he arched his brows. “I am?”

“Absolutely. Assuming you know anything about plumbing and you’re here to work on my honey-do list.” Or take her out to dance the whole night through.

He laughed, that warm chuckle that seemed to rumble through his chest and skitter along her flesh like a tropical mist. “Darn, and here I thought you had something else in mind.”

Janice flushed. At some very conscious level, she had been thinking of something else—something forbidden—but she didn’t want to admit that, certainly not to Logan. “I’m sorry. I mean, you said you might come back to…”

“I meant to come a couple of days ago, but I was studying for the engineers’ exam that’s coming up soon.”

“Then you really don’t have to—”

“Fixing busted plumbing is one of my all-time favorite things to do.”

“It is?” She looked at him incredulously.

“Sure. It falls on my list of favorites somewhere between cleaning out backed-up sewers and crawling through an attic crawl space on a blistering hot summer day.”

Delight fluttered in her midsection at his teasing tone. When was the last time she’d actually had fun with a man? So long ago she couldn’t remember.

“Do you suppose there’s a way I could clone you? Renting you out to distraught housewives would solve all my financial problems.”

With a welcoming smile, she opened the door and he stepped inside. Although he wasn’t a giant, he was tall enough that she suspected he’d played high-school basketball. And he was lean, like a runner, with great shoulders and well-defined biceps apparent beneath the stencilled T-shirt he wore, a souvenir of a recent 10K run in Paseo. Today he was wearing khaki shorts. His knees weren’t at all knobby, she noted. Instead, his muscular legs were worth writing home about.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

A vivid imagination on her part. Or maybe she was suffering from an extended case of celibacy. Since Maddie’s birth, she hadn’t been much interested in sex. To her relief—and occasional dismay—Ray hadn’t pressed her. Now one look at Logan and that’s all she could think about—hot, sweaty bodies. His and hers. Tangled sheets. An explosion of—

What she needed to think about was the swimming pool the plumbing had created in the laundry room.

“The washing machine.” Her breath caught in her throat, making her voice sound husky. Hardly an appropriate reaction when discussing a home appliance. “The connection has sprung a leak. Ray was supposed to—”

“Show me.”

Mentally chastising herself for mentioning her late husband in a critical way, she led Logan to the laundry room off the kitchen. She told herself if Ray hadn’t been so busy with his second job, he would have fixed the plumbing. But deep inside she knew that was a lie. He’d never been good around the house. She’d had to beg to get a new garbage disposal installed. The paint was peeling on the outside of the house, but Ray had never been interested in sprucing up the place. Only the garden, with rosebushes and beds of annuals, looked nice. That had been her own doing. She’d sunk a shovel into the dirt herself, added mulch and whatever else it took to make flowers bloom. Ray hadn’t seemed to notice.

Just as he’d stopped noticing her.

Logan leaned over the back of the washing machine. “You’re right. Looks like the hose has developed a split and the clamps are corroded. I’ll need some parts from the hardware store.”

“I can pay—”

“No, I’ll take care of it. It’s the least I can do.”

His odd tone sent an unwelcome shiver down her spine. “Why is it the least you can do?”

He didn’t meet her gaze. “I was on the roof with Ray when he fell. I owe him…and I owe you.”

Janice’s stomach knotted on that news. She hadn’t asked the details about Ray’s death, hadn’t wanted to know. And didn’t want Logan here out of obligation. But she did want him here. His presence pervaded the house with a new energy, a force that was more than simply filling the silence that had been troubling her. He radiated strength of character. Competence. And a subtle sexual power she couldn’t remember experiencing before.

The uncomfortable knot tightened in her midsection, and she couldn’t find the words to respond to his comment. Instead, she said, “I have to go pick up Maddie from kindergarten in a couple of minutes.”

He shoved aside the pile of towels she’d used as a dam. “Leave this Johnstown flood to me. Once I get the parts, it won’t take long to fix.”

She met his gaze, his eyes a deeper hazel than usual, almost brown, and unreadable. Or at least she didn’t want to translate the message she saw there for fear she’d be wrong and make a fool of herself.

“It won’t take me long to pick up Maddie. I’ll be back in just a few minutes. The tools are in the garage if you need them.” Janice fled. She’d never thought of herself as a coward. But she couldn’t describe her flight in any other terms.

At some very basic level, Logan frightened her. Or more accurately, her reaction to Logan scared the bejeebers out of her. She’d never felt this way about any man, including Ray, with hot and cold shivers racing across her skin, the confusion that should be limited to inexperienced adolescents. She’d been a married woman for almost ten years. Such nonsense, so many raging hormones, should have been well behind her.