Hard to Resist

chapter FOUR



IT WAS AFTER DARK by the time Kat and Samantha entered their apartment with two large bags of toys and clothes. Chuck had calmly loaded Kat’s car with all the personal belongings Samantha kept at his house—clothes, toys, hair ribbons and even a beanbag chair. She would need some familiar things around her, he’d explained.

Samantha dropped the lighter bag she carried and sniffed disapprovingly. “It smells funny.”

“It’s just cleaning stuff,” Kat said. “And look, look who’s here to greet you!” Bashira came trotting out of the bedroom and straight to Samantha, meowing plaintively. Ethan must have brought over the kitten while she was gone. Kat appreciated his thoughtfulness, especially when she herself had forgotten about the kitten.

Samantha and Bashira had been inseparable before the fire. But to Kat’s surprise, Samantha barely looked at the kitten and made no move to pet him or pick him up. She walked past him, through the combination living/dining room and into the bedroom. Then she turned back, her mouth set mulishly.

“Mommy, I don’t like this place.”

“It needs work,” Kat agreed in a light tone. “But we’ll get it fixed up. Anyway, it’s just temporary, until we can find some place that’s a little bigger.” She carried an armload of Samantha’s clothes toward the bedroom, then realized she had no coat hangers. Every time she turned around, she discovered something else she needed to buy.

“Is this my room?” Samantha asked, shadowing Kat.

“Yup. There’s a big pecan tree right outside your window.”

The child was unimpressed. “Where’s your room?”

“I’ll sleep in the other room.”

“I want you to sleep in here.”

“Hmm, it’s an awfully small bed for two people.”

“I don’t care.”

Kat ruffled Samantha’s wavy brown hair, so like her own. Looking at her daughter was sometimes like looking in a mirror from twenty years ago. “All right, I guess for the first night that’s okay. But you’ll like this place once you get used to it. In fact, there’s a little girl who lives right next door, who’s about your age. Well, a little older, but I bet she would play with you.”

A spark of interest flared in Samantha’s eyes. “What’s her name?”

“Her name’s Jasmine. I think she goes to your school.”

“Jasmine Veracruz?” Samantha was definitely interested.

“Yes, that’s her name. Do you know her?”

“She’s a third-grader.” Samantha said this as if being a third-grader was the most exalted position in the world.

“We’ll ask her over to play soon, okay?”

“Okay.” Samantha sat on the bed, bouncing slightly. “I wish I had my bunny quilt.”

Kat could see Sam was close to tears, and her own throat felt tight. She sat down next to Sam and put her arm around her. “It’s hard, losing all our stuff. But try to remember, Sam, that what we lost are just things. Things can be replaced. What’s important is that we’re both alive and we weren’t hurt. The firemen did a good job getting everybody out of the building.”

Sam said nothing.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea. At the grocery store today I bought brownie mix. Why don’t we try out our new oven and bake some brownies?”

Samantha brightened slightly. “Okay.”

“We can make two pans. And in the morning we can take one of them to the fire station, to thank the firefighters who rescued us.”

Kat was pleased that Samantha didn’t immediately oppose the idea. She did seem to be thinking it over, though. “Is that where they have the fire trucks?”

“Yes, and all the firefighters live there. They cook and eat and sleep in that house, like a family, just waiting for a fire to happen, so they can rush over as fast as they can and put it out.” At least, she thought that was how it worked. Frankly, she didn’t know much about firefighting. She would benefit from a tour of the station, too. “They’re very brave people, and I think it’s important that we show how much we appreciate what they do. Okay? Is it a plan?”

“Okay,” she said without much enthusiasm.

* * *

ETHAN HAD BEEN WATCHING his apartment—Kat’s apartment—off and on all evening and he was starting to feel like a voyeur. His heart pounded every time he thought about that kiss. He was frustrated beyond measure that he couldn’t go over there now.

Earlier, Tony had said something about a darts tournament at Brady’s. He decided to head over and see what was going on. It had to be better than sitting around here, feeling antsy.

Brady’s Tavern had been across the street from Fire Station 59 for as long as anyone could remember. It had withstood Prohibition, the Great Depression and Oak Cliff’s ever-changing liquor laws.

During all those years, Brady’s had been the place for Oak Cliff cops and firefighters to hang out after hours. The two groups were often at odds, but for some reason at Brady’s they all got along. The cops talked about their cases while shooting darts; the firefighters talked about great fires from their fathers’ era while they played shuffleboard.

Ethan wasn’t much of a barfly, but Captain Campeon had not-so-subtly indicated that a little off-shift camaraderie at Brady’s might help the rookies bond with their more seasoned brethren.

The place was hopping this Saturday night. A few heads turned to look as Ethan entered, but no one greeted him. He wasn’t a regular, not yet, and only a few of the faces were vaguely familiar.

Then he saw Bing Tate. He waved a greeting, but Bing pointedly turned away as if he hadn’t seen.

Well, he wasn’t going to let Tate ruin his mood. He’d kissed Kat Holiday, and nothing was going to detract from that.

Finally, he spotted Priscilla, sitting at a high table by herself. She was watching the shuffleboard table, as if it were the final round of the world championships.

Ethan crossed the sticky plank floor to join her. “What’s up?”

She jumped, startled—obviously having missed his arrival. “Oh, hi. Nothing. Tony and I both got eliminated from darts during the first round.” Her gaze drifted back toward the shuffleboard game. “I nearly hit one of the spectators with my first throw. Tony went home already. What are you doing here? I thought you’d be with Kat.”

“The pizza thing didn’t work out. Is the shuffleboard that interesting?” He only recognized one of the players. His name was Roark Epperson, and he was an instructor at the fire school. He was also one of the top arson investigators in the country and the lead on investigating the warehouse fire that had killed three of their own.

Priscilla’s head snapped back. “No, but due to a distinct lack of anything else interesting going on, shuffleboard won my attention.”

“So Captain Campeon’s plan to build camaraderie isn’t exactly working, huh?”

Before she could answer, an obviously inebriated man sidled up to the table. “Hey, babe, wanna rematch? Jus’ you and me?” He leered at her. “Dartboard’s free.”

“Um, no, thanks.”

“Well, then, be that way, Ice Princess.” He turned and staggered away.

Otis Granger, who happened to be on his way to the bar, overheard the last comment. “Prissy, did he just call you Ice Princess?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

Otis laughed. “I like it. Ice Princess.” And he laughed the rest of the way to the bar.

Ethan couldn’t help but like Otis. He was cheerful and had an easy laugh, and he’d been one of the first to start to thaw toward the rookies. But he did enjoy tormenting Priscilla.

Priscilla sighed. “If this is camaraderie, I can live without it.”

* * *

THE DIRTIEST JOB at Fire Station 59 was cleaning the bathroom. Once again, Ethan had drawn the short stick, but he accepted the chore stoically, as he did whatever task he was given. Such was the lot of a rookie.

Tony was off the hook for chores today, since he had to study for a test in order to keep his paramedic certification current, but Priscilla hadn’t fared much better than Ethan. She had to mop the floors. She wielded the mop as if it were the handle of a butter churn. Sometimes he had a hard time believing anyone could be as ignorant of housekeeping skills as Priscilla was. But it wasn’t something she’d had much practice with. She’d grown up in a Highland Park mansion, with multiple servants, and though she tried to shake off her upper-crust background, sometimes it showed.

“Those ladies on the TV commercials always make mopping look so easy,” Priscilla grumbled, as she bounced her mop across the gray bathroom tiles.

Ethan agreed. Likewise, mildew did not disappear with one swipe of the sponge. He had to put a brush and some muscle into it.

“Visitors on the premises!” someone yelled.

The visitor could have been anyone, from a chief making a surprise inspection to a wife dropping off a set of keys or a cell phone to a forgetful husband. Ethan was only slightly curious, and he figured if it concerned him Captain Campeon would call him.

The captain wasn’t shy about that sort of thing.

Then he heard the word “brownies” mentioned, and he dropped his scrub brush and washed his hands. If a family member or a nice neighbor had baked brownies for the fire station, he wanted in on it. If he waited even five minutes, they’d be gone.

Priscilla shook her head as she squeezed her mop head, getting more water down the leg of her navy blue pants than into the bucket. “You guys are so predictable. Mention brownies and your brain short-circuits.”

She flicked him with mop water as he passed. “Hey, bring me a brownie, will you?”

“If there’s an extra.” He headed for the dining hall, where a half dozen of his comrades were already gathered as someone wielded a knife over a pan of brownies.

Standing off to the side was Kat.

Ethan froze in the doorway and drank in the sight of the woman who’d invaded his dreams the night before. She had Samantha with her, clinging like a newborn monkey, hiding her face against Kat’s pink T-shirt.

Ethan couldn’t really blame her. The feeding frenzy unfolding before her eyes was enough to frighten a grizzly bear.

He stepped into the room and cleared his throat. Conversation stopped and Kat fixed her eyes on him, her full lips slightly open. The other guys, who apparently knew these were the two Ethan had helped to rescue, waited to see what she’d say.

“We brought brownies.”

“I see.”

“We wanted to thank you—all of you,” she added hastily, blushing.

Ethan was charmed by her shyness. She obviously didn’t want anyone to think she was singling Ethan out for special treatment. The guys parted like the Red Sea, as he approached. “Hi, Kat. Samantha, is that you? I can’t tell with you hiding your face.”

His cajoling had no effect, except to make the little girl clutch at her mother’s shirt even more. Her knuckles were white.

“We really appreciate sweets,” he continued awkwardly. “Especially chocolate.” He looked down at the pan.

Empty.

Kat looked, too. “I guess I should have brought two pans.”

With guilty mumbles everyone else ambled out of the dining hall, making excuses about work to do. Soon it was just Ethan, Kat and Samantha, who still hid her face.

“Did you get a brownie, Samantha?” Ethan asked.

“Samantha,” Kat urged, when her daughter didn’t respond, “Mr. Basque is talking to you. Think maybe you could answer him?”

“I don’t like brownies,” Samantha answered, her voice muffled. She refused to turn her face away from her mother. “Mommy, can we go now?”

Not a great start, but at least she wasn’t screaming.

“Don’t you want to take a tour of the fire station?” Kat asked. “Captain Campeon said he would show us around. I bet he would let you sit in the fire truck.”

That was a bit of a surprise to Ethan. Eric Campeon, still finding his footing as a newly minted captain with his first command, had made it clear he didn’t like civilians hanging out at the station. But then, Campeon didn’t like much of anything. The guy never smiled. Ethan had a hard time picturing Campeon catering to a mom and her little girl.

But apparently he would never get the chance to see it, because Samantha was having none of it. “I just want to go,” she said, sounding more agitated.

Ethan searched for something to say, anything to ease the little girl’s discomfort. Finally, inspiration struck. “Do you like puppies, Samantha?”

“No.”

“Oh, she does so like puppies,” Kat said impatiently. “She’s just being contrary.”

“We have some puppies out back. Daisy, our mascot, had a litter.” Apparently Daisy had once had free run of the place, despite a “no dogs” rule enacted by the department a few years ago. But Campeon had put an end to that when he’d taken over. That was just before Ethan had been assigned to work at Station 59.

Samantha had no response to the puppy suggestion, but at least she didn’t reject it outright.

“They’re Dalmatian puppies,” Ethan added. “You’ve seen 101 Dalmatians, right?”

“Only about fifty times,” Kat said. “Come on, Samantha. Let’s go look at the puppies.”

Samantha allowed herself to be led out of the kitchen, down a hallway and out a back door to a small fenced yard. Inside the yard was a spacious dog run, with a concrete floor and an insulated shelter and misters to keep Daisy cool during the hot months. The guys had spared no effort or expense in giving Daisy the best quarters possible, once she’d been banished outside.

Inside the run, spotted puppies were everywhere. They were about five weeks old now, at that cute stage where they were galumphing around with too-big clumsy puppy feet, curious about everything. Ethan opened the door to the run and they poured out into the yard—and straight for Samantha.

Samantha climbed Kat like a tree. “Mommy!” she shrieked with alarm, as Kat picked her up. Samantha was small for her age, probably no more than forty pounds.

“Samantha, honey, they won’t hurt you.”

Ethan, realizing he’d made a tactical error in letting them all out at once, hastily herded them back to their anxious mother, leaving just one outside the run. He scooped up the little female and held her out for Samantha to see.

“How about we visit with just one at a time?”

Despite her fright, Samantha did appear interested. Kat put her down, and she sat on the grass as Ethan set the puppy down close to her. Puppy and child eyed each other suspiciously. Then the puppy toddled close, and Samantha reached out to pet it. With the slightest encouragement, the puppy was all over the little girl. Ethan watched as Kat sighed with relief.

The two of them retreated to a picnic table. Ethan, Tony and Priscilla sometimes took their meals out here, when the tension inside the firehouse got a bit thick.

“Who does she belong to?” Kat asked. “Daisy, I mean.”

“All of us, I guess. She used to belong to John Simon.” He waited to see if she recognized the name.

Kat nodded. “One of the men killed in the warehouse fire. I read about it in the paper. What a terrible tragedy. He was from this station?”

“All three were. John Simon, David Latier and Lamar Burkins.” He spoke their names like an invocation. They were imprinted on his brain as deeply as they would be on the new firefighters’ memorial the city was planning.

Kat’s eyes dropped, and she shook her head as if she couldn’t even stand to think about it. After her recent brush with death, he wasn’t surprised. “That must have been awful for you guys. I’m so sorry.”

“It happened before I was assigned here,” Ethan said. “Tony, Priscilla and I filled the vacancies.” Which was a bit unusual. Normally, three rookies wouldn’t be assigned to the same station. But no experienced firefighters wanted to be transferred here. Firefighters were a superstitious lot. And when the old captain had retired after the tragedy and word got around that Eric Campeon was to assume his position, the department couldn’t get anyone with experience to move there voluntarily.

The deaths had rocked the firefighting community to the core. Ethan would never forget the day he’d learned of the tragedy. He’d still been in training, and classes had been called off for the rest of the day. One of his fellow trainees had been so unnerved by the event that he’d quit. It had been years since a firefighter had been killed in the line of duty in Dallas. Three at one time—it was almost too much to take in.

“Did they catch the arsonist?” Kat asked.

Ethan shook his head. “Roark Epperson, the lead arson investigator, is still looking into it. It’s not the arsonist’s first fire. He’s been at it for close to a year now, and his fires are getting more and more ambitious.”

They lapsed into silence briefly, watching Samantha play with the puppy. The little girl had lost the tight, wary look on her face, and she actually smiled when the puppy pounced on a ball.

“That’s a sight I haven’t seen lately,” Kat said. “A smile.”

“She’s not bouncing back?”

“That timid, sullen, terrified little girl is radically different from the Samantha I thought I knew. She seems to be afraid of everything, but mostly of having another fire. I just don’t know what—” She cut herself off as her voice choked with tears. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear about this.”

“Yes, I do.” Ethan couldn’t help himself. He reached out and brushed a tear away with the pad of his finger. “I’d like to help.”

“You can’t take on the responsibility for every person you help in a fire,” Kat said. “You’d be spreading yourself pretty thin.”

“Let me worry about how thin I spread myself. What about if I do a safety inspection of your new digs? We can make a game of it. We can appoint Samantha as your official fire safety marshal. I think we have toy badges and hats for that sort of thing—I can check.”

Kat hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. What if talking about fire makes it worse? Last night, she was so afraid she made me sleep with her.”

“The more she understands about what causes fires and how to prevent them, the more secure she’ll feel.” Ethan knew that firsthand. He’d previously worked in construction. At one job site, he’d been up on a high floor of a skyscraper installing drywall, when suddenly smoke had engulfed his work area. He’d been forced to grope his way to a stairwell, scared out of his mind. He’d never wanted to be that frightened again, and that was what had first given him the idea of joining the fire department. Know the enemy.

“That’s what my staff psychologist said, too.” Kat drew a deep breath in and sighed, gathering control of her emotions.

There were no more tears, for which Ethan was extremely grateful. He could face a wall of flame, a room of smoke and fierce temperatures. But not a crying female, not when he didn’t know how to help.

The door banged open and Captain Campeon appeared, looking like a thunderstorm personified. “Basque, what are you doing out here?”

“Showing our guest some hospitality, sir,” Ethan answered without hesitation. One thing he’d learned about the captain—he hated timidity or any show of weakness.

“Put that dog back where it belongs. Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes, sir,” Ethan said, throwing a wink toward Kat, who’d started moving toward Samantha the moment Campeon had appeared. Samantha looked toward her mother, her face tight again, obviously not liking the raised voice.

“Sorry, this is my fault,” Kat said, taking Samantha’s hand while Ethan grabbed the pup and returned it to its mother. “I didn’t mean to keep anyone from his job. I know you all have important work to do.”

Oh, yeah, scrubbing grout was a real public-safety must-do. Ethan wanted to argue that nothing was her fault, that Campeon was being his usual stiff-necked jerk. But firefighters who valued their careers didn’t argue with their captains in front of civilians—or at any other time, for that matter.

“I’ll walk you back to your car,” Ethan said. He wanted just another minute or two with Kat, minus the captain staring down his nose at them.

Campeon stepped forward. “Would you still like that tour of the fire station?” he asked grudgingly.

Kat looked down at Samantha, who shook her head. “I think maybe we’ll save that for another day.”

Campeon nodded his understanding.

“My car’s right there,” Kat said to Ethan, pointing toward the parking lot. “You don’t have to walk us. But, Ethan…?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe the safety inspection is a good idea.”

He nodded, suddenly tongue-tied, with Campeon staring poison darts at him. Then Kat and Samantha were gone.

All right, then. He was making headway. Samantha still looked at him as if he were the Creature from the Black Lagoon and refused to talk to him, but at least she hadn’t gone into a screaming panic when she saw him this time.

Feeling pretty good, as if he could tackle all the mildew in a small tropical country, Ethan reentered the common room—only to be greeted by an ugly mob.

“Ohhh, Ethan,” Otis Granger trilled in his best falsetto. He’d put a string mop over his head. “Will you show me your big fireman muscles?” He batted his eyelashes and pretended to swoon.

“Ohhh, Ethan,” Jim Peterson said, attempting a breathy Marilyn Monroe imitation. “I just love the way you swing that hose!” At this, four or five other guys fell into hopeless hysterics.

“All right, you guys, break it up. I just wanted to show the little girl Daisy’s pups, okay?” He endured a few more catcalls and off-color comments before facing a really scary proposition—Priscilla, in chocolate withdrawal.

She stood blocking his way into the bathroom hallway. “Where’s my brownie?”

“I didn’t get one, either. Talk to those piranhas in there. They’re the ones who reduced a pan of brownies to crumbs in less than thirty seconds.”

“And they were good, too,” someone taunted.

“Crumbs? We left crumbs? I don’t think so,” another firefighter added.

“I’d rescue a woman every day of my life, if she’d bake for me,” Otis called out. “But not you, Prissy. We know you wouldn’t bake.”

“Naw, she’d hire someone to bake for her.”

Priscilla yelled out a good-natured response, after which things died down and everyone returned to their tasks.

“Why do they have to be such jerks?” Priscilla wondered aloud as she resumed her ineffective mopping.

Ethan actually laughed. “Count your blessings, Pris. Last week they were ignoring us, looking right through us. This week they’re harassing us. I think it’s a step up.”