Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay Read online

  Hank nodded. It was a good answer. “I like it. What about women?”

  “I get one of two responses. Either they say how cool it sounds and how much they want their niece, sister, mother, and aunt to take it, or I get silence.”

  He filled in the blank in his mind. “That’s what you don’t want to get.”

  “Yeah. That means it’s too late, and they should have already known what to do in the past.”

  “In Darling Bay?”

  “Everywhere. In every town. One in five women will survive rape or attempted rape, and ninety-seven percent of rapists won’t ever stay a night in jail.”

  “Well, heck.” Hank stretched out his hands, looking at the knuckles. “I hate that so much I can’t even stand it.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “What?” She sounded startled.

  “People have to ask you that.”

  “Strangely enough, no.”

  “How long have you been doing it?” Hank had been seeing the flyers up around town for at least the last four months—Daring Darling Defense, a silhouette of a woman standing proudly upright in front of a darkened door.

  “Seventeen weeks.” Samantha sounded proud. “But it’s going really well.”

  “Until you knocked out your attacker.”

  Samantha barked a short laugh. “Yeah. Crap. He’ll be back. Right?” Her eyes were worried. “Right?”

  “Maybe?” Hank hated to lie, even when he should.

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “A guy with that coloring?”

  “You mean pink and white?”

  “He left out of here gray. That’s not a good sign for either his heart or his lungs. He might be out a while.”

  Samantha pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around them. “No. I need him.”

  “He’s your only guy?”

  “I have another one, Wally, but he’s so skinny that the women just toss him around like a teacup.”

  “Wally Atkins? Isn’t he over sixty?”

  She looked chagrined. “Well, it’s pretty easy for the more advanced to block him.”

  “Block him? They’ll kill him.”

  “I know.” She sighed, blowing a breath out. A brown curl swung next to her face and Hank tried not to notice how her chest rose in her T-shirt with each breath. That rack of hers had only gotten better with time. “I need to come up with a better plan.”

  “I’ll do it.” Hank knew as soon as he said it that he wanted it. He wanted to help. To save her. Okay, to save her business. But wasn’t that kind of similar? Even while his inner voice told him he was just falling into the same old pattern, he said, “I’ll help. If you want me to.”

  “You’d train to be an attacker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any idea what that entails?”

  “Beyond being beaten up by a bunch of angry women? No.”

  “First of all,” she raised one finger, “you’ll have to realize that it’s not a bunch of angry women. It’s a bunch of women appropriating their much-deserved autonomy, realizing that they don’t have to rely on a man to take care of them. It’s a bunch of women figuring out they’re as strong as or stronger than many men, and that they can learn how to use their bodies to their fullest potential in terms of protection.”

  “That sounds a lot better.”

  “And two, you’ll have to learn how to wear the suit and come at a woman.” She made a stabbing motion at the bridge of her nose as if she was pushing invisible glasses back up.

  “I can do that.”

  “Can you?”

  Hank rubbed his face. He wanted to. He shouldn’t want to. He should just stay out of Samantha Rowe’s way. For his own sake. “Yes.”

  “What if I came at you right now?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if I tried to hit you? Would you even be able to fend me off, let alone push me to the floor or against a wall?”

  The unbidden image of him pushing her against the door of the engine, his lips on hers, filled his mind.

  Samantha came off her seat and launched herself at him, her arm swinging. She stopped just before her fist made contact with his cheek. Hank scrambled sideways and almost fell out of the open door of the rig. Holding on with one hand, his foot twisted on the outer step, he took a quick look around to see if anyone had seen his more-than-ungraceful lurch from the seat.

  “No,” said Samantha, folding herself back onto her seat.

  “No, what?” Hank pretended he’d been making a move to check the radio in the front. He turned it off and back on, waiting for the power-up beeping to stop before he said, “Was that a test?”

  “You failed.”

  “What? Because of my lightning-fast reflexes?”

  “Because you didn’t come at me.”

  “Hey, now.”

  “You have to be able to come at a woman. With no holds barred. You can’t be afraid to hurt her.”

  “Um. I would be afraid to hurt her. I’m bigger and stronger than ninety percent of the women I saw coming out of the studio, and Greta Wagner doesn’t count—she’s a professional bodybuilder.”

  Samantha looked startled. “I knew she was stronger than she was letting on. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What you’re training them to do is to feel a man’s strength, the force of someone coming at them with all their might, and then getting it done anyway. Fighting back. And winning.”

  “What if they don’t win? How do you keep them safe so that your attacker doesn’t hurt them?”

  She shot him a quick, amused look. “Oh, yeah. You’re going to be fun to train. Are you sure about this? You think you can handle it?”

  Handle being around Samantha Rowe? For hours and hours? No way could he handle it. He didn’t want to handle it. But he found himself nodding anyway. And if he got to help one woman feel safer as a result, he could call that a well-spent day.

  “Good,” she said. “Are you off-duty tomorrow?”

  He nodded again, dumbly.

  “Come by the center at nine?”

  Hank said, “I’ll be there.”

  Boy howdy, would he ever. And damn it, just like that, the fire was back in him when he thought of Samantha Rowe. The years he’d spent getting over her were gone up in a puff of smoke that smelled like flowery shampoo.

  He didn’t even want those years back. When it came right down to it, he didn’t mind as much as he should. When Tox and Coin climbed back onboard, Coin flinging two pizzas onto the spare seat so recently vacated by Samantha Rowe’s delicious backside, he didn’t even care that they’d bought pepperoni again, instead of the sausage he preferred.

  It was all good.

  He was going to see Samantha Rowe tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, get to tackle the heck out of her and not get in trouble for it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SAMANTHA BROUGHT INSIDE the bag of lemons she’d just picked from her sister Grace’s backyard tree.

  “I got twenty. And man, do some of them look funny. You have some lemons out there that have screaming little sour faces, did you know that? Is that because it’s winter or something?”

  Her sister smiled at her. “I forgot to rein you in. Sorry. I was just going to make a little lemonade. Five would have done.”

  “Hand me the squeezer-thingie. We’ll just make a crap-ton.”

  “Is that the technical measurement?”

  “Yep,” said Samantha. “I know this from when I worked on the swamp boat in Louisiana.”

  Grace bumped her hip, moving her from in front of the oven where an apple-cinnamon pie was about to come out. “I don’t get what a boat in a swamp has to do with lemons.”

  Samantha plunked all the lemons from the bag into the sink and began to rinse them. “We were famous for it. Alligator sightings and the best spiked lemonade in the bayou.” She fell silent as she remembered the smell of the swamp, the green earthiness of it, rising from all arou
nd, the sharp scent of the lemons cutting through it, and the fogginess in her head when she woke up every morning in the little hanging bunk she and two other waitresses shared on the riverboat. The almost constant morning hangover, only alleviated by liberal application of the spiked lemonade the boat tour was so famous for.

  She’d lost months on that boat. Nothing to show for them but a higher tolerance for vodka, and her tolerance had already been too high.

  Grace said, “Well, I guess you can use the lemonade skills for the rest of your life, anyway.” Her voice was kind, and Samantha appreciated it. Her sister had been pretty judgmental when she’d first come back around, and why wouldn’t she be? Samantha had been a wreck for ten years of her life, for every year she spent in her twenties. When she’d finally gotten clean and sober, it had taken a while for Samantha to believe it of herself, let alone for anyone else to. Now it wasn’t so much a hard thing as it was a thing. Her thing. She didn’t drink today. That’s what she knew. Hopefully she wouldn’t drink tomorrow, either. But she didn’t think about it.

  She thought about today and the sugary tartness of the lemonade she was making. As she sliced the first of them, she could feel her mouth start to pucker.

  It felt good, being here. With her sister.

  “Is Tox stopping by?”

  Grace shook her head and sliced the pie. “No. He’s working.”

  “Oh, of course. I knew that. I saw him earlier, actually.”

  Grace looked up. “Really? Where?”

  “At the community center.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jim Hinds fainted during a class.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Should be fine.” Samantha had gone by to see Jim after talking to Hank. At the hospital, Jim had seemed shaken and pale, but in good spirits. Not in similar spirits was his wife, who’d been furious. Jim had told Samantha he would be out for a couple of months while he figured out what was wrong with him, but Allie Hinds had followed her into the hall and had told her that her husband wouldn’t be attacking any more women for Samantha.

  It was too bad. Jim not only hit hard, he laughed hard, too. Her students felt safe with him. Sure, he was terrifying the first time he came at them for real, but then, when they stood their ground, and he had to fall down or back off or run, he was the first to congratulate them when he took off his helmet.

  “He’s not going to be able to come back.”

  “Oh, that’s no good. Hey, be careful with that knife, would you?”

  Samantha held it up. “Lady, I know how to fight off men armed with machetes. You think I’m scared of a little kitchen knife like this?” She set the next lemon on the cutting board and promptly sliced through the tip of her finger.

  “Ow.” The blood came fast as Samantha held it up to look at the damage. “Double ow. Maybe triple.”

  Grace laughed.

  “I can’t believe you’re laughing at me right now,” Samantha said as she wound a paper towel around her finger. “I’m probably dying.”

  Grace straightened her face, and Samantha could tell it wasn’t easy. “Do you think you need stitches?”

  Samantha peeked under the towel. “Not more than one or two.”

  The grin on Grace’s face fell. “Really truly?”

  “No. I’m probably fine. It’ll stop bleeding in a second.” She paused. “Or I’ll bleed to death because my sister doesn’t care.”

  Grace, looking reassured, shrugged. “I warned you about that knife. Tox has been sharpening them every time he comes over.”

  “Why doesn’t he just move in? Now that you’ve got your child, and by that I mean me, out of the house?” Samantha had recently rented an apartment over the bagel shop. The fact that she got a discount on rent for working the register a couple of mornings a week had sealed the already-sweet deal of the bay-facing one bedroom.

  Grace placed a piece of pie on a paper plate and carefully covered it with saran wrap. Samantha knew she probably didn’t realize that she was as transparent as the plastic—that piece of pie would be Samantha’s piece to take home with her. The rest of the pie would go to the fire station. If Samantha didn’t like the big, loud Tox as much as she did, she’d probably be sickened by it.

  Instead, she found herself wondering what it must be like to have that kind of relationship with someone.

  And most disconcertingly, she found herself wondering about Hank.

  Grace slipped in front of her, making short work of slicing the lemons and using the hand-press to get the most liquid out. “Just sit. Keep me company.”

  “What’s the lemonade for, anyway? You’ve never been that into lemonade.”

  Grace colored prettily and Samantha groaned. “You’re taking that to him, too? Martha Stewart, huh? I think you need to add a vanilla bean and a spring of wild rosemary to that, don’t forget.”

  “You were just trying to pair us off into the same living arrangement.”

  “That’s different. I want him to live with you and for him to mow your lawn for you.”

  Dreamily, Grace said, “Oh, he mows my lawn, all right…”

  Samantha held up her hands. “Enough. That’s way more than I needed to know, anyway. Hey, what if I asked Hank Coffee to help out at Darling Defense?”

  Grace blinked. “Really?”

  “To be my attacker when Wally can’t be there,” she clarified.

  Grace shook her head. “Are you sure about that? Do you want me to tell you what I really think?”

  “I want your opinion. Of what you think he would be like to work with. That’s all.” Samantha took a deep breath. She loved her sister with all her heart, and sometimes she just wished that for once, Grace could not try to manage things.

  She watched Grace take a matching breath as she put down the knife. “Tox adores him. Wait. Let me correct that. Tox doesn’t adore anyone—”

  “Except you.”

  “—okay, but he really trusts Hank. He says he’s a good listener.”

  “I remember that about him.”

  Grace slapped the top of the counter. “Right, right, I forgot for a minute. You freaking dated him, when, in junior college?”

  Samantha nodded. “Way back when we were too stupid to figure anything out except how to drop any class that started before noon.”

  “And that’s why he was all moony after your accident. That’s right. Why are you asking me, then? You know him way better than I ever could. I, for example, never slept with him.”

  Samantha opened her mouth and then closed it. She hadn’t slept with Hank back then. For some reason, that made the memory of him more…special. It felt stupid, and she wouldn’t admit it to her sister, but Hank had been better than just some guy she’d randomly hooked up with while drunk at a frat party. She’d really liked Hank, with his lanky limbs and shy brown eyes and that mop of scruffy surfer-boy hair, dark with blond highlights colored by the sun.

  And then Vicente had come along, bragging on his arrest record—who else but a rebellious teenager grown into a looking-for-excitement woman would fall for that?—and roaring out on his Harley. Young Samantha, idiotic Samantha, had dumped Hank almost unceremoniously. She’d taken him out, yeah. To a little bar in town, the Wooden Duck, if she remembered right. She’d bought him a beer and had told him that there was someone else. He’d looked upset. She hadn’t had enough alcohol yet that night to wipe that out of her mind.

  Then Vicente had pushed through the bar doors—because, again, the idiotic Samantha had thought she could get everything done in one place, break up with one guy, meet up with another. She’d left with Vicente that night, wrapping one arm around his waist, waving with the other hand back at Hank.

  How would her life have been different if she’d jumped off Vicente’s motorcycle while it was still in the lot, if she’d raced back to be with Hank, instead?

  But no. Samantha leaped before she looked. She decided to do things before weighing the consequences. Sometimes that turned out g
reat. Once she’d ended up waitressing for six months at a surfer bar in Molokai, sand between her toes.

  And once, she’d ended up in rehab after an overdose.

  They say it took some people a long time to hit rock bottom. Samantha knew she’d been lucky. Her bottom had been no place to stay, no job, nowhere to go, her sister finally refusing her calls. She’d come close to dying herself that time, and she didn’t want that ever to happen again.

  So yeah, jumping off that motorcycle would have earned her some road rash, but might have saved a lot of heartache over the years.

  “He offered to help with the classes. After the ambulance took Jim away.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What could I say? I think he’d be perfect, if he can learn to hit a girl.”

  Grace shuddered. “I hate it when you say that.”

  “People hit girls,” said Samantha. “It’s better if women know how to hit back if necessary.”

  “Remember when you were tutoring kids? You helped them write their college essays. Wasn’t that a nicer job? More easy on the…hands? And body? I hate that you’re taking punches.” Grace measured the sugar, and Samantha knew she wouldn’t ever go over or under the recommended amount, whereas Samantha liked to pour in as much extra sugar as she could, until the liquid wouldn’t take any more. She’d learned it from their mother, who loved sweet things, just like Samantha. Their mother had died of cancer before she’d been able to do all the things she’d wanted to, and Samantha had recovered slower than the aptly-named Grace, so much more like their prosaic, sensible father.

  Samantha pulled the paper towel more tightly around her finger. “We do the same job, if you think about it.”

  “Huh. Acupuncture as self-defense? Or are you looking at it the other way around?”

  “You punch people with needles to be more healthy. I needle people until they throw punches in order to be more safe.” Samantha felt pleased with her turn of phrase, awkward though it was.