Page 28 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

He handed her the sheet of paper. At the top, its title, written in round handwriting, read, “In Case of Emergency, Call These Numbers. Aka How Not to Starve at Freddie’s House.” A list of restaurants and phone numbers followed, with short descriptions such as “killer egg rolls” and “chicken salad = eww.” One of the notations caught her eye.

“‘For a hot date, try the fudge cake’?” she read aloud.

He snatched the list away. “My sister likes to ruin my life on at least a biweekly basis. How’s pizza?”

“Perfect.” They settled on ingredients, finding themselves perfectly in harmony on the issues of green peppers—only if they were the last vegetable on earth—and pepperoni—it couldn’t be considered pizza without some. He opened the fridge and retrieved two bottles of beer, while she tried very hard not to notice his butt. And failed.

“Like a glass?” he offered as he dialed the number of the pizza place. She shook her head. “I’ll order. Go ahead into the living room and I’ll be there in a second.”

She, Greta, and her bottle of microbrewed beer wandered into the living room. She sank onto Fred’s comfortable couch and surveyed his decor. Clearly he’d spent little on his furniture and a lot on the big plasma screen TV mounted on the wall. The house definitely felt like a bachelor pad, although the neighbor kids had left their mark with a few abandoned Transformer toys. He had no security whatsoever; in fact, one of his windows was open, letting in the evening air. No screen, she noticed. Someone could climb right in.

Oddly, it didn’t make her nervous. The house felt safe to her. Or maybe Fred’s presence made it feel safe. After all, he’d practically made a second career out of rescuing her.

As Fred came into the room with a tray filled with wooden bowls of chips and salsa, she gave him a big smile. “That looks perfect. Chips, pizza, and ice cream, my favorite kind of meal.”

Fred sat on the armchair kitty-corner to the couch. Greta trotted next to him and fixed a determined gaze on his face.

“Ignore her,” she told him. “Greta, stop begging.” She gave her dog a subtle hand signal.

Greta gave her a reproachful look and dragged herself dramatically to a corner.

“She’s such a drama queen,” said Rachel. “I don’t know if that makes for a good rescue dog or not. I figure she might like all the applause.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. How does she handle physical discomfort?” Fred offered her a torn-off paper towel. She thought of the linen napkins at Cranesbill, and the housekeeper’s likely look of horror at the thought of eating off a paper towel.

“She spent a week starving in a sewer pipe before I got her.”

An appalled look widened Fred’s eyes. “Poor girl. But that might be a problem because rescue dogs need to be able to work around rubble.”

“Yeah, I should test her on that.”

“We could take her to a fire station where they do USAR training, for earthquakes and so forth. They have big piles of concrete and an overturned train set up. We could see how she takes to it.”

“Maybe.” Depending on how safe it was from prying media eyes. She carefully brought a chip to her mouth, holding the paper towel underneath it to avoid spills. He noticed her caution.

“Don’t worry about dripping on the floor. The … uh … the kids do it all the time. Any stains are entirely their fault.” He gave her a ghost of a wink, and she relaxed a bit. If this was her one tiny sliver of “normal life,” she wanted to take full advantage and find out all about him.

“How old is your sister?”

“Twenty-three. But she’s been hopelessly spoiled by having four older brothers, so she’s more like twenty, on a good day.”

She stared. “There are five kids in your family? Are you the oldest?”

“Oh no.” Fred scooped up salsa with a chip. “I’m the second youngest. All my brothers are older. They’re all in the military. Two in the Army, one in the Marines. I’m the only one who stayed around, so I get to walk Lizzie through her heartbreaks. I have a stash of chick flicks and extra pints of ice cream in the freezer.”

“That’s a bit of a cliché, don’t you think?”

She thought he’d be offended by her comment, but he wasn’t. He tilted his head and thought about it. “Maybe it is, but it seems to work for Lizzie. She spends the night and rants about clueless guys, we eat ice cream and watch a movie and that seems to do the job. Whatever works.”

Rachel thought Fred’s sympathetic company was probably all Lizzie really needed, but she didn’t point that out.

“How about you?” Fred asked. “Brothers or sisters?”

“None. Well, I had a stepbrother and sister for a short time, but that marriage didn’t last. I never saw them after my father and their mother divorced. It was nice while it lasted, though.” She’d never told her father, not wanting to make him feel bad, but she’d cried herself to sleep for weeks after that particular divorce. Her stepsiblings had wanted nothing to do with her anymore, which had hurt her terribly.

---