Mr. January Read online

  In the midst of that, Rafe, Daniel, Hank, and Max strode in just as Adam had known they would. Big men, decked out in fire gear.

  “Like I told you, it’s been handled,” Adam greeted them.

  “You know the drill,” Adam’s best bud, Rafe, replied.

  Adam’s crewmates tromped into the kitchen to make sure the fire was out and check for fire within the walls.

  Samantha and her kid returned to their booth. She handed him his backpack.

  “Mind if join you?” he asked.

  When the little guy grinned, she shrugged. “Okay.

  Adam slid in beside him, putting him across from Samantha. He’d heard about her—divorced, moved to Guff’s Lake six months ago, house-sitting Lucy Marks’s place while the older woman wintered in Palm Desert.

  She was a looker—short black hair, long, wispy bangs, big eyes, and a sexy mouth that made him think of pleasure. But he didn’t get involved with single mothers. He never had, mainly because most of them were looking for husbands. And judging by the relationships Adam had screwed up, he figured he’d make a lousy husband and father.

  “Was it a big fire?” the boy asked. He had his mother’s big eyes.

  “It could have been,” Adam said. “But it’s all good now.”

  William nodded somberly. “What happened to your arm and leg?”

  Adam shrugged. “I hurt them fighting a fire.” With his wrist still screaming, he figured he’d set himself back. That really teed him off, and not only because he wanted back on regular duty. Until he healed, he couldn’t take the physical exam he needed to qualify for lieutenant.

  Between the management class, the written and physical exams, and the interview, the whole process would take roughly four months. Time he couldn’t afford to make up later, not if he wanted his father to see him promoted.

  To finally make him proud. Adam wanted that just about more than he’d ever wanted anything.

  His buds returned to the restaurant, stopping at the booth where Adam sat.

  Every one of them looked Samantha over.

  “Hello. I’m Rafe Donato.” Flashing the twin dimples that had women falling all over him, Rafe shook her hand.

  “This is Samantha and her son, William,” Adam said by way of introduction. “I just met them myself. Samantha makes all that stuff in the front case.”

  “So you’re the talent behind those scones. I’m Max Meier.”

  Max also shook her hand. Women said his brown eyes were soulful, and Samantha looked as if she bought that hook, line, and sinker.

  Adam didn’t like it, but what did he care? “These two other guys are Daniel and Hank.”

  Lanky Daniel grinned, and Hank, the station’s newest and most solemn firefighter, nodded.

  Each of them shook hands with her kid, who was all eyes.

  Other diners came over to say hello. Adam didn’t miss the looks women gave him and his buds. They were used to that.

  A moment later, Rafe checked his watch. “We’re a little over an hour until the end of our second shift. We should go.”

  The crew’s back-to-back shifts started at eight a.m. on Mondays and ended at eight a.m. on Wednesdays, when another crew took over.

  “Good to meet you, William. Samantha.” Rafe nodded to Rosemary and the waitresses. “I’ll see you ladies for breakfast shortly.”

  As they filed out, Adam swore he heard collective female sighs.

  Although, Samantha seemed immune to his crewmates’ charms. Adam wasn’t about to examine why he felt relieved.

  “We should leave now, too,” Samantha said. “We still have another delivery to make, and then William needs to get ready for school.”

  Already standing, the boy cupped his groin and danced from foot to foot. “Mom, I gotta pee.”

  Samantha gave Adam a kids, what can you do? look and then slid quickly from the booth. “Hurry, before you have an accident.”

  “I don’t wanna use the girls’ bathroom.”

  “Well, I can’t go into the men’s.”

  “I’ll take him,” Adam offered.

  Unsure whether she should trust this man she’d just met with her son, Samantha hesitated. “That isn’t necessary.”

  “I gotta go right now,” William insisted.

  “He’s a good guy,” Janna added from a nearby table where she was pouring coffee.

  Samantha relaxed. Anyway, there was no time to argue. Adam ferried her son toward the men’s room. “Sit tight, Sam,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll be right back.”

  *

  Sam. Adam had called her Sam. Samantha sat back in the booth and sighed. She didn’t go by the shortened version of her name anymore, hadn’t since high school. Even her parents called her Samantha.

  She kind of liked hearing it again on Adam’s lips. Not that she was interested him. She wasn’t she assured herself.

  By the time he brought her son back, she was up and waiting with her coat on and holding out William’s.

  “Thanks, Adam.” She helped her son into his parka.

  “No prob. Be good, sport.”

  “I will.”

  “Hey, I’ll be back at work next week. If you ever want to visit the fire station, give me a call and I’ll show you two around.” Adam wrote his cell number on the back of his card.

  “Really?” William looked as if it was Christmas morning.

  Samantha preferred to steer clear of the firefighter she was attracted to, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint her son. “We just might take you up on that.”

  A tour to please William, and that would be that. As they headed toward the car, she pushed the firefighter from her thoughts.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Wednesday morning, Adam crossed the walkway of the bungalow where his father had lived, just as he did each morning on his days off. Nella, the home health nurse, had already come and gone. As usual, she’d tacked a note for Adam on the front door. His father was stable, had taken his meds and been shaved, washed, and fed.

  Adam knocked once. Without waiting for a reply, he wiped his feet on the mat and walked into the living room.

  The same faded drapes that had hung on the window since the old man had moved in after the divorce some fifteen years ago were drawn against the weak sun. Adam figured Nella had attempted to pull them open and the old man had ordered them left closed, preferring darkness and gloom.

  Sprawled in his La-Z-Boy in front of the tube, he was watching the Today Show. The TV tray with its pitcher of fresh water, a glass and straw were within easy reach. Nasal cannula, the tubes that fed his body the air his lungs could provide only on a limited basis, rhythmically sucked precious oxygen from a nearby cylinder.

  “Hey, Pop.” Favoring his uninjured arm and foot, Adam sat down carefully on the saggy couch against the wall. “How you doing this morning?”

  Frowning, his father muted the TV. “As shitty as ever.”

  Emphysema caused by a pack-a-day habit and smoke inhalation from fires he’d battled before the SCBA—self-contained breathing apparatus—had become mandatory, had stolen his ability to talk as much as he once had. But the bitterness had been with him for sixteen years now, since the day life had thrown a curve ball that had destroyed the family forever.

  Now he was dying. He hadn’t touched alcohol in five years. Shortly after his diagnosis three years ago, he’d also quit cigarettes. By then, it’d been too late. The doctor had given him eight months, max.

  He still had an appetite, though. Eyeing the red, black, and gold Rosemary’s Breakfast Nook logo on the bag Adam had brought from the café when he’d stopped for breakfast earlier, he licked his lips. “You going to give me that, or what?”

  Adam pushed to his feet, stifling a pained grimace as his wrist and ankle hollered at him to tread slowly. He dropped the bag on the TV table.

  Without ceremony or thanks, the old man opened it and pulled out the blueberry muffin tucked inside. His favorite. The oxygen cylinder tick-tic
k-ticked as he ate the entire thing. When he finished, he sat back, wiped his mouth, and briefly closed his eyes.

  “Yesterday, I met the woman who makes those things. Samantha Everett,” Adam said.

  “Is that so?” For the first time this morning, interest gleamed in his father’s eyes. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s about my age, with a five-year-old son.”

  “Married, then.”

  Adam shook his head. “Divorced.”

  “Like you and me.”

  Adam’s divorce had been nothing like his father’s. Grief, bitterness, and booze had destroyed his parents’ marriage. Adam’s had failed because he’d been too young and had done stupid things.

  “Is she built?” With his hands, his father air-sketched a curvy body.

  “Pop.” Adam rolled his eyes.

  “Well?”

  “She’s not bad.”

  Understatement of the year. Adam remembered the way Sam’s jeans had hugged her slender legs, and the red pullover sweater that had clung to her ample breasts. He swallowed.

  Over the past twenty-four hours, he’d thought about her way too much. It was a relief that by the time he’d ventured into to Rosemary’s this morning, she’d already left.

  His father gave him a shrewd look. “That good, huh?” He shook his head and chuckled. “I’ll bet she didn’t look twice at the likes of you.”

  Usual Richard Healey fare, and Adam barely cringed. “You didn’t ask, but the management class and studying are going okay.”

  “I didn’t ask because I don’t understand why you’re wasting your time and money.”

  He didn’t believe Adam had the smarts to get promoted. Determined to prove him wrong, Adam straightened up tall. “You’ll see, Pop. Someday, I’ll make Captain, just like you did.”

  Wearing the wistful look that signaled he was back in the past, Richard didn’t appear to have heard. No doubt, he was thinking about the good old days. Before he’d lost himself in a bottle.

  Before Marcus.

  “Your brother would have made a fine lieutenant….”

  Did he have to bring up Marcus every freaking day? The question crowded Adam’s throat, but he bit the words back. Although his brother had been gone sixteen years, since Adam was fourteen and Marcus was seventeen, his father was still in mourning.

  For years, Adam had been, too. He’d worshipped his big brother and missed him to this day. He always would. In a strange way, he blamed himself for Marcus’s untimely death. But life went on, and over time, Adam had realized that no one was to blame.

  He’d moved past the tragedy. Except when he visited his father. Then the guilt set in and the regret for his own mistakes. For being a handful of a kid and causing all kinds of trouble. In contrast to Marcus, the golden boy and apple of their daddy’s eye.

  If Adam had been a better son, towing the line and making decent grades instead of barely skating by, maybe his father would have stayed sober after Marcus’s death instead of drinking himself into a stupor every night. He wouldn’t have taken early retirement from his job as Captain of the Guff’s Lake Fire Department. He might even still be married to Adam’s mom.

  Not that Adam begrudged his mother for remarrying. She and Jack had been happily married for ten years now and had relocated to Carmel, California.

  The old man had never remarried. Once he retired from the department, he’d stayed drunk most of the time. It was a wonder he’d made it this long.

  His father returned to his show and upped the volume to extra-loud.

  In other words, dismissed, over and out.

  What else was new? He’d never especially liked Adam and certainly had never respected him.

  But if Adam made lieutenant…. He wanted to make his father proud. Just once before he died. So he could fix this one, pivotal relationship he’d ruined.

  He had to get that promotion.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said over the TV.

  His father’s attention never strayed from the screen. He made a dismissive gesture. “Suit yourself. Be sure to bring me a muffin.”

  *

  “Are you sure you have time for this?” Jana asked as Samantha slowed to avoid a pothole on Kirkdale Road, one of the few roads that ran from one end of town to the other.

  Despite the gray day, the rolling, winter-brown fields, scattered homes, and distant Siskiyou Mountains made for a pretty drive.

  Being Thursday, Jana’s day off, and they were headed to Deb’s Knitting Store on the south side of town for their weekly knitting lesson.

  “Probably not, but if I don’t do something besides bake and take care of William, I swear, I’ll wither up and die,” Samantha admitted. “Besides, the sweater I started last week needs serious help. I’ve ripped out the stitches twice so far, and I probably need to rip them out again. At this rate, I won’t finish until summer.” She gestured at the knitting bag in the backseat. “See for yourself.”

  Jana pivoted around, grabbed the bag, and put it on her lap. She pulled out the lopsided mess. “Love the soft yellow, but you weren’t kidding. This is pretty bad.”

  What could Samantha do but laugh? “Eventually, I’ll get it right.”

  “That’s what I admire about you. Once you make up your mind to do something, you stick with it. I wish I could be more like that.”

  They were approaching Guff’s Lake now, the city’s namesake. Nestled in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains, the spectacular natural lake and the trails, woods, and resort around it, drew tourists and locals alike for hiking and fishing.

  “You definitely don’t want to be like me,” Samantha replied. “You get a regular paycheck and all those tips. Plus you’re dating a guy you really like.”

  Uncharacteristically silent, Jana studied the ends of her shoulder-length, blonde hair—a sure sign something bothered her.

  Uh-oh. As Samantha braked for a red light, a light drizzle began to fall. “Don’t tell me. You and Jon broke up.”

  “Not yet. He even brought me out here to the lake the other night.”

  “In the winter? Wow. I’m impressed. Are you saying he kissed you under the ash tree?”

  Local folklore claimed that if a couple kissed under the lofty, centuries-old ash tree growing half a dozen yards from the lake, they would find true and lasting love.

  “That could’ve been his plan, but we never even made it out of the car before things got hot and heavy. We ended up rushing back to my house. He stayed over.” Jana bit her lip. “You know that means it’s only a matter of time before we break up.”

  The light turned green, and Samantha drove on. “I thought this time you were going to wait awhile.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t help myself.” Jana gave a what-can-you-do shrug. “That’s another thing I admire about you. You have a lot more self-control around men.”

  “It has nothing to do with self-control. If you’d suffered through what I did, you wouldn’t want anything to do with dating or relationships, either.” Although after meeting Adam Healey the other day, Samantha had begun to rethink that.

  No. She wasn’t. She had a son to raise and a business to grow. Not to mention an ex out there, who could show up at any time to claim his parental rights. After nearly three years without any contact from Jeff, that seemed unlikely. All the same, Samantha’s stomach tightened into a worried knot.

  “Have you talked to an attorney yet?” Jana asked, as if she’d read Samantha’s mind. “You should. The sooner, the better.”

  “You sound like Betty Randall. I agree, and I will hire someone, but I doubt waiting a few more months will make much difference. Except to me. I want to have enough saved to pay the attorney fee up front.”

  “Do me a favor, find someone anyway and ask to make monthly payments. Getting the ball rolling will cut out some of the stress in your life.”

  After struggling for three years to pay the bills she and Jeff had piled up during their three-year marriage—and was still payin
g on several—Samantha had sworn off debt of any kind. “I admit I sometimes worry about Jeff showing up someday. But he’s been out of the picture for nearly as long as our marriage lasted. I doubt he’ll show up anytime soon, or even at all.”

  And yet, some sixth sense warned her not to get caught off-guard.

  They were almost at the knitting shop before Jana spoke again. “You may have sworn off men, but after what happened at breakfast the other morning….” She fanned herself.

  Samantha frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “You and Adam Healey. You just about swooned, and he seemed pretty darn interested, too.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Samantha protested. “As for Adam, I watched his stuff while he dealt with the fire. Then Rosemary offered him coffee and a snack, and he happened to sit down. End of story.”

  “Well, he sure didn’t check me out, or anyone else except you. What’s the harm, Samantha? Adam’s gorgeous, and he’s a decent guy. Besides, you’re single, he’s single….”

  “As it is, I barely have time for sleep. Our knitting lessons are my one indulgence. And don’t forget about William.”

  “I know, I know. You’re focused on him and your business. At least take Adam up on his offer to show you and William around the fire station.”

  “I plan to, sometime next week.” Relieved to see the sign for Deb’s Knitting Store just ahead, Samantha signaled and slowed down. “Here we are.”

  She pulled into the small parking lot in front of the building and maneuvered into a space.

  Determined to forget all about Adam Healey, she grabbed her knitting and headed inside for an hour of fun and relaxation.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  When it came to boring, data entry ranked down there with scrubbing toilets. Seated at the station’s computer desk in the main floor business office, Adam rolled his shoulders. After hours at the hunt-and-peck chore, his wrist throbbed and his eyes were starting to cross.

  Not that he was complaining. Being at the station again, hanging with the Captain and the eleven other crewmates he loved and trusted like brothers, felt good. Living together forty-eight hours a week and watching each other’s backs during fires and medical calls had bonded them tighter than most people ever got.