Boston Fire: Heat Exchange Part 5

The cyclist shook his head while the woman who'd presumably been driving the pickup glared. Porter repeated the question and she shook her head.

"Look at my vehicle," SUV guy said, gesturing again at his front end. "Look at it!"

"Maybe if you'd been looking at the front of it instead of your phone, you would have braked," the woman said.

Aidan exchanged looks with Cutter, Walsh and Cobb as he leaned against the truck to watch. There was nothing to do here but leave them to the cops and tow trucks, once Porter was done playing peacemaker.

"How'd you get involved in this?" the big guy asked the cyclist.

"I was behind this dumba.s.s when he rear-ended that dumba.s.s and I didn't want to cool down, so I went out around. This dumba.s.s flings his door open and down I go."

"What kind of moron goes around a car on the left?" SUV guy demanded.

"What kind of moron runs into a big-a.s.s bright red pickup?" the cyclist shot back.

Porter looked at the police officers and shook his head. "Good luck, guys."

"That was a waste of time," Cutter said when they were back in the truck.

"You never know," Aidan replied. "Besides, the time it wasted is less time until you can get ready for your hot date with Nicole."

That perked the kid up. "True. You got any plans for tonight?"

"Nope." Just going home to his empty apartment, where he'd try to convince himself that being able to walk around in his boxer briefs, belch without apology and scratch whatever might itch was a payoff for being alone.

ASHLEY CHECKED THE RINGER volume on her phone and then rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. It was turned up all the way, just as it had been when she'd checked it an hour before.

Danny wasn't going to call tonight.

Even though it was her own d.a.m.n fault, she put her hand over her queasy stomach and fought back another wave of tears. She was going to dehydrate if she kept it up.

She'd pushed him too far. Even as she pushed at him, hoping for a reaction, she'd known on some level she was going too far, but she hadn't stopped. While she was afraid of the possible consequences, she was even more afraid of living the rest of her life in what had come to feel like an emotional vacuum.

When she said the worst of it-that she wasn't happy and wasn't sure she wanted to be married to him anymore-she'd been hoping she'd finally break through his wall of reserve. She was starving for an emotional response from him, even if it was anger.

Instead he'd accepted what she'd said with nothing more than a clenched jaw and left.

When her cell phone rang, Ashley almost knocked it off the couch in her rush to grab it. Her heart was pounding, but it was her father's number on the screen. Her thumb hovered over the b.u.t.ton that would reject his call, but some subliminal part of her brain refused to forget the fear she'd felt the night Fitzy Fitzgibbon had called to tell her Tommy had had a heart attack and was in an ambulance. She'd answered every call from her dad since then.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"What are you doing?"

As usual, the question sounded demanding and a little judgmental rather than conversational, and she bristled. "I'm folding laundry."

That wasn't entirely true. She'd dumped the basket of clean clothes on the couch, but she hadn't so much as matched a sock yet. Mostly she was staring at a repeat of some crime drama on the television while thinking about her husband.

"You and your sister need to come over in the morning," he told her.

"Why?" She tried not to wonder whether Danny would be upstairs in her brother's apartment tomorrow morning, but she couldn't help it. Unless he'd changed his shift schedule, he wasn't on day tour tomorrow and there was a possibility she'd run into him. While she wanted to see Danny, she didn't want to see him with her entire family present.

"What do you mean why? My daughters can't come visit me? I barely got to talk to Lydia at the bar, and there's something I want to talk to her about."

Ashley could hear the underlying annoyance in his voice, and she wondered how her sister had managed to p.i.s.s their old man off already. "I'll tell Lydia when she gets home."

No, she wouldn't, but she'd leave her a note. Between lying awake dwelling on her screwed-up marriage and not working nights at the bar, her sleep patterns were scrambled and she was waking up with the sun. To keep from turning into a zombie, she was going to bed earlier than she had since middle school.

"How are you doing?" her dad asked, and his voice was as close to tender as it could get.

"I'm doing okay."

"Are things any better? Between you and Danny, I mean."

"We're working on it." Another lie, this one slightly bigger than the last. "It's going to take time."

"You take too much time and you'll get used to being apart, and I know that's not what you want."

It wasn't what she wanted, but what her marriage had become wasn't what she wanted, either. As tempting as it was to call Danny and tell him she was sorry-that she'd temporarily lost her freaking mind-and that she wanted him to come home, that wasn't going to solve the problem. When the relief faded, she'd still want something from Danny he seemed incapable of giving her.

"I'm not going to rush this, Dad. If we're meant to be together, it'll work out."

She heard his snort loud and clear over the phone. "You make it sound like kind of destiny c.r.a.p. It won't just work out. You have to work at working it out."

Ashley bit down on the sarcasm burning to be let loose. Mr. Marriage Counselor, he wasn't. "I know."

"He's a good man, Ashley."

Tears blurred the television screen. "I know that, too."

"Good. I'll see you in the morning, then."

As usual, he hung up without giving her a chance to say goodbye, and Ashley tossed the phone onto the coffee table. Then she flopped over onto the pile of clothes and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to cry again, dammit.

But her father's voice wouldn't get out of her head. "He's a good man, Ashley." And the pile of laundry had nothing of his. Her shirts. Her underwear. Her socks. None of his, which for some reason made her feel incredibly alone. And this time there was no stopping the tears.

Chapter Five.

LYDIA WALKED UP the cement front steps of the Kincaid family's three-decker the next morning and paused in the shade of the deep porch. Not surprisingly, Ashley had declined to accompany her on this trip, which was the answer to a summons from their father.

She'd seen him at Kincaid's, but they hadn't really had the chance to catch up. It wasn't an easy place to have personal conversations without withdrawing to the windowless, claustrophobic office Lydia avoided whenever possible.

Not that they'd be having a heart-to-heart. Tommy Kincaid wasn't much for those, and he probably wouldn't ask much about her life in New Hampshire. Quite frankly, she wasn't sure why he'd asked her to stop by at all.

She knocked and then walked in without waiting for an answer. Her dad would be in the battered leather recliner that was so perfectly molded to his body, n.o.body else could comfortably sit in it.

Their first-floor unit was definitely stuck in the '80s. Her mom had started making some noise about updating it, but then they'd gotten the diagnosis that changed their lives. And, because her parents weren't the kind of people who did doctors, they'd gotten it too late. Lydia wasn't sure if it was some kind of shrine to her mom or if her dad was just lazy, but nothing had been changed since then that hadn't worn out beyond use or been broken.

She went into the living room, wishing she'd stopped for a coffee along the way. At this hour, there would probably be a couple of inches left in her dad's coffeepot, but it would be cold. And unless she'd seriously misjudged his ability to adapt to an ever-changing world, he didn't have a Keurig yet.

"Hey, Dad."

"There's my girl." He lifted his face so she could kiss his cheek, setting the remote control on the arm of the recliner so he could squeeze her hand. "It's nice having you back behind the bar. You always did have a way with the customers."

"At least somebody thinks so," she said, thinking of her job in Concord. Beer and burgers just came more naturally to her, she guessed, sitting on the couch.

"I heard you showed up at the house yesterday to cause a scene," he said, and she realized that was the motive behind the summons. She was here for a lecture.

"I did not show up there to cause a scene. I went there to talk to my brother. There's a difference." She didn't expect him to see it, though. In his mind, personal business didn't belong on the job.

"It's none of your business, Lydia."

She'd made a decision before leaving Ashley's that she wasn't going to let her dad get her back up, but she could already see it wasn't going to be an easy resolution to keep. "Since I had to quit my job and dip into my savings to pay ahead on my rent, I think Ashley's marriage is very much my business. And that's above and beyond the fact you're all my family. That's supposed to matter, too."

"Mind your mouth," he said, which was code for don't tread too closely to calling me out for things I do wrong.

"You don't think it's a little rude to have Danny staying here?"

He considered it for a few seconds, and then shook his head. "He's not staying with me. And, even if he was, he's been part of this family for a long time. You want me to see him out on the streets?"

"Oh, please. There are a lot of options between staying under your roof and being out on the streets."

"He's staying with Scotty, not me."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "Again, under your roof."

"Your brother pays rent. He's allowed to have a guest."

Losing her temper with her father never got her anywhere but in a shouting match she couldn't win, so she tried to swallow some of her anger. "I know he rents the second-floor apartment, but you're still his father and you still own the house. I think you guys could have taken into consideration how awkward it might be for Ashley, having Danny living here."

"He's not living here. He's just...what do they call it? Couch-surfing. He's just crashing until Ashley comes to her senses." As if he could sense the storm of words she was about to unleash on him for that bit of bulls.h.i.t, her dad just kept right on talking. "And speaking of renting, we've been renovating the third-floor apartment. It's almost done."

"Yeah? You going to rent that to Danny, maybe?"

"No, I was thinking you could rent it."

Oh, h.e.l.l no. "Why would I do that?"

"You can't stay with your sister forever."

The word forever pinballed around in her mind and she suffered a rare moment of being struck speechless. He couldn't possibly believe she'd come back to Boston to stay. She knew Ashley had told him she just needed a little time and Lydia was going to cover for her. At no time did either of them imply she was moving back for good.

"And you might get in the way of her and Danny getting back together," he continued, just making it worse.

Lydia had gone toe-to-toe with her father many times over the years. Ashley might be older, but she was always willing to step back and let her sister do the talking for her and their younger brother. Lydia knew her father would never lay a hand on any of them in anger, so she'd never had any fear of getting in a shouting match.

There was still a line, though-only so far she could push before it became serious disrespect-and Lydia wasn't sure she could get into this without crossing that line.

"It's important for a couple going through a tough time to have plenty of alone time," he continued.

"Yeah, you're the person we all go to for marriage counseling," she muttered.

He gave her such a hard look, she actually dropped her gaze to her hands. They weren't supposed to bring up the fact that children weren't deaf and they all knew Mom was on the verge of throwing Dad out when she got sick. Even when they tried to be quiet, her dad had a voice that carried through the walls and they'd all known. Then the cancer came and n.o.body ever mentioned those times again.

"I'm here for Ashley," she said quietly. "And if Ashley wants alone time with Danny, she'll let me know. If they try to reconcile, I'll do whatever I can to help make that happen."

He seemed satisfied, and he picked up the remote control again. Once the channel surfing started, the conversation was usually over. "You should go upstairs and smooth things over with your brother. I don't like when you kids fight."

Both of the Kincaid men in one morning? She was tempted to claim she had to get to work, but that probably wouldn't work on the guy who owned the business. "I'll talk to him later. He might not even be up yet."

"He's up. No reason to put off the conversation."

With a sigh that let him know just how she felt about his demands, Lydia pushed off the couch and walked through the house to the back. Stepping out onto the back deck, she leaned against the railing for a few minutes, just breathing in the fresh air.

She wasn't sure if it was their zodiac signs or the stars being misaligned when she was born or some kind of magnetic opposition built into their DNA, but she and her father had never been able to communicate. They loved each other. That was never in doubt. But they drove each other bats.h.i.t crazy like n.o.body's business.

Once she'd calmed down enough so she could probably have a reasonable conversation with the other family member who had a knack for driving her bats.h.i.t crazy, Lydia went up the wooden steps to the second-floor deck and knocked on the gla.s.s slider that led into Scott's living room.

She was looking at a very dead plant in a ceramic black bear by her right foot when the door slid open. "What kind of loser can't keep pansies alive?"

"I don't know much about pansies," a deep voice said, and Lydia jerked her head up to look into the pretty blue eyes of Aidan Hunt.

Aidan enjoyed the way Lydia's eyes widened when she saw him standing in the doorway instead of her brother. She blushed, which made her cheeks pink, and her lips parted slightly.

He liked looking at her mouth.

"Oh. I thought you were my brother."

"I figured as much." He stepped aside. "Come on in. He's in the shower right now, but he shouldn't be too much longer."

Unlike the first-floor apartment, the second floor had been freshened up since the last time she'd seen it. Mostly cosmetic, with laminate floors instead of the old carpet, and new paint. And Scotty didn't own much, but what he did was good quality. Like the leather sofa and love seat in front of a huge flat-screen television.

"I'm here on the old man's orders," she told him, moving to the fridge.

Aidan managed to be in the perfect spot to check out her a.s.s when she bent over to see what Scotty had on hand. "Sometimes it's easier to go along than to argue with him."

"So Scott and Ashley tell me." She grabbed an orange juice and closed the door. "I haven't gotten the knack of that yet."

"It's good for him." Aidan leaned against the kitchen island and crossed his arms. "To be challenged, I mean. Not many people talk back to him."

She took a swig of the juice and screwed the cap back on the bottle. "Is Danny here?"