Falling for the Fireman

Oh, I suspect you can. “She bothers me. You should see the colors she’s gonna paint that place. It’ll be like working across the street from a life-size game of Candy Land.”

“It will, won’t it?” George chuckled. “It’ll be nice to see that building full of life again, don’t you think? My dad used to take me over to that store for root-beer floats when I was Nick’s age. Best treat in the world. Not like all the sugar water they call soda pop now.” George’s beefy hand came down onto Chad’s shoulder. “Don’t be the guy to stop Jeannie Nelworth from reopening her candy store for the holidays. It’d be giving the Grinch a run for his money.”

“She’s got to be careful.”

“She’ll be careful, Chad. She’s got more reason to be careful than all of us put together with what she’s been through. I’m kind of proud of her, actually, getting back into the swing of things so quick and taking on such a big project like this. She’s got spirit, that woman. Can’t knock Jeannie Nelworth down for long.”

That was it. The fact that Jeannie Nelworth was so unsinkably cheerful, that she bobbed right back up after every blow like some over-buoyant bath toy was exactly what bothered him about her.

Chapter Three

The restaurant down the street had blocked its secondary exit with a Dumpster again. Why didn’t some of these businesses take his inspections more seriously? A knock on his door startled Chad out of his paperwork. He looked up from the report he’d been writing to see Nick Nelworth standing in his doorway. “Hey, Mr. Owens. Chief Bradens said you had something to ask me.”

Jeannie’s son had that legs-too-long amble of every teenager, but it was the way he always hung his head that caught Chad’s attention. George was right; life had beaten Nick down a lot more than the boy would let on. The kid had lost his dad to a car crash in the first grade, and then his home had burned—all before he even hit everything high school would throw at him. How could Nick hope to have anything but a dark outlook on life, even with his mother’s high-voltage optimism? From what Chad remembered, mothers and thirteen-year-old sons barely spoke the same language as it was.

He didn’t really know Nick, hadn’t known him at all before the fire, but felt an instant recognition now. Anyone could easily see the kid was quietly unhappy. And why not? Chad recalled hating every minute of middle school, and he’d had none of Nick’s traumas to overcome. Annoyed as he was at George’s scheming, Chad couldn’t tamp down an urge to help the boy. “Hi there, Nicholas. How’s it going across the street?”

Nick rolled his eyes—those same big eyes of his mother’s. “Mom’s all weird about it. She’s talking really fast and forgetting where she put things.”

The image of Jeannie Nelworth bouncing around her store hadn’t left his mind since the meeting. “Your mom’s excited about the place?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Plug wandered in, nuzzling Nick’s hand. “Whoa, Plug, that doesn’t belong to you. Don’t go getting Mr. Owens’s forms all slobbery.” Nick raised his hand out of Plug’s reach—which didn’t take much effort, because Plug never jumped up for anything—and put the handful of forms on Chad’s desk. “Mom said to give you these…and these.” He reached into his back pocket and reluctantly produced six very bright, very sparkly yellow pens. The promotional kind with “Sweet Treats” written on them in the pink swirly script that was Jeannie’s logo. Nicholas looked about as eager to be handing those out as Chad would be to use them. “They have the new address on them and the website.” He said in the monotone of a boy repeating an instructed script. Chad wondered if there was anything more repugnant to a thirteen-year-old boy than to be the distributor of sparkly pens.

Chad scooped the pens up, noting with horror that yellow glitter came off onto his fingers. “They’re very…yellow.” He raised an eyebrow at Nick, hoping to let the boy know he wasn’t expecting an endorsement of anything so cute.

“Yep.” Plug began inspecting Nick’s hand and back pocket, evidently thinking glitter might prove tasty. “They are.”

Chad slid out of his chair and came around to the front of his desk. He squatted down to scratch Plug between the ears. “Can you keep a secret?” Nick hunched down as well, and Plug rolled over on cue, to make sure they didn’t miss scratching his big belly. “Don’t tell your mom, but I’m not a fan of glitter. On anything.”

The boy’s eyes widened, then narrowed in a laugh. “Me, neither.” Hadn’t Jeannie given a thought to what a boy’s life was like surrounded by all those perky pastels?

“Perfectly understandable. Not that I have to ask, but man-to-man, what’s your position on yellow polka dots?”

The boy looked as if he were asked to reveal state secrets. “You mean Mom’s car?” he nearly whispered. After a long pause where both of them looked at the offending vehicle, Nick said, “Someday I’m gonna have to learn to drive in that thing.”

Chad could feel Nick’s embarrassment even as he tried to hide it. He was a grown man who never cared what people think, and he’d surely hesitate to climb into Jeannie Nelworth’s Jeep. He was surprised to discover his hand had landed on the boy’s shoulder. “I feel your pain, kid.” He said it in a teasing tone, but he actually meant it. He wanted Nick Nelworth to know one person understood his predicament and how hard the world was as a thirteen-year-old boy. “Maybe we can talk her down a couple of shades by the time you hit fifteen.”

Nick laughed. “Man, I hope.”

The more relaxed look on Nick’s face refused to let Chad keep his distance. Kids were not his strong suit. He gave the safety talks every year at school and did the driver’s ed pre-prom speech about drinking and driving, but that was more because he had the time to do these things. With all the other crew volunteers, he viewed this as payback for staying off the engines. Not only that, but life had handed him too many reasons to make fire prevention a personal cause.

But this? Even George had to know this one-on-one teen stuff was way out of Chad’s job description. “Plug’s getting too fat, even for him.” He rubbed the hound’s round belly, eliciting a lazy canine moan of satisfaction. “He needs more exercise, don’t you think?”

“He’s pretty big, that’s for sure.”

“Plug needs to walk off a few pounds, wouldn’t you say? How many days a week are you free after school?”

“I’ve got math club Tuesdays and Thursdays, but nothing the other days.”

“George and I are too busy to give Plug any regular exercise. Do you think you could help us out by walking him? Twice a week, maybe? For pay, of course…say, seven dollars a week?” Plug was George’s dog, technically. George should be doing this. Chad should not be anywhere near this, and yet here he was and nearly glad of it, besides.

“I think. That is, if Mom says it’s okay. She’s gonna be up here every day working on the store, anyway.”

Chad tried to ignore Nick’s eyes, and what they did to the spot below his throat. He stood up before something stupid came out of his mouth. “George already asked your mom. You’re hired. When can you start?”

“Now.” Nicholas shot up beside him. “I could start right now.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that. Which is why I happen to have Plug’s leash right here on my desk.” Chad nudged the hound with his foot. “With this kind of enthusiasm, we’ll get you fit and trim in no time, Plug.”

Nick attached the leash after giving Plug a friendly scratch under the chin. When he looked at Chad again, the boy’s face was the complete opposite of the bored reluctance it had been when he first entered the office. George would never let him forget how right he’d been about the idea of hiring Nick Nelworth.

“Thanks. We’re off!” With a wave, Nick trotted out of the office door with a slightly confused Plug lumbering behind him. From the window he could see Nick stood up straighter, walked without most of that lanky teen shuffle and generally looked delighted. Plug even went so far as to wag his tail—something Chad hadn’t seen in months.

He thought they’d take off up the street, but evidently their first stop was across the street to Sweet Treats. If Chad’s guess was right, Sweet Treats would start carrying dog biscuits when it opened, and Plug would be a regular customer.

The next day, Jeannie sat in the front window of Sweet Treats. She wasn’t calling it “the building that would become Sweet Treats” anymore, for the space had already become the store in her mind. She was assessing how a stack of yellow paint chip choices looked in the afternoon sun. Buttercup definitely outshone Sun-kissed, but Lemon had a vitality to it she couldn’t resist. She’d nearly settled on “Lemon”—it was a candy flavor, after all—when a lumbering movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention. Plug was sauntering across Tyler Street by himself.

It only took a second or two to figure out Plug’s motives; his red leash—the dog’s only nod to the classic firehouse Dalmatian—was clamped firmly in his slobbery jaws and he was heading straight for Sweet Treats. A determined, albeit slow-motion quest for Nicky. Jeannie couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. Sure, Nicky had told her he and Plug really enjoyed their walk yesterday, but Plug obviously hadn’t checked the clock to know Nicky wasn’t due out of school for another hour.

Her laughter turned to a gasp when a car whizzed by too close behind Plug. He swiveled his head after the speeding car, but didn’t seem to register the possible danger of being out in traffic. Had the hound ever been in the street other than watching the engines come and go from the firehouse? She could count on one hand the number of times she’d even seen him moving. Mostly Plug sat still, as he was doing now. Only now he just stood in the middle of the street, staring into her doorway as if willing Nicky to appear there.

When a second car went by, barely slowing down as it slipped between her shop and Plug, Jeannie sucked in a breath and moved. Opening her door, she called, “Go on home, Plug,” and pointed back to the firehouse. The trio of big red engine bay doors were shut. How had he gotten out? “Get back out of the street before you get hit.”

Plug cocked his head to one side in an all-too-human gesture of bafflement. “Plug, go home!” Jeannie found herself enunciating as if to a small child or someone who didn’t understand English. This was why she’d never owned a dog—you could never reason with a pet. Unreasonable sons were just about all she could handle right now. “Home, boy!”

While he didn’t sit down, he didn’t turn to go home, either. Plug just stood there, as if waiting for her to catch on that he had no plans to cut his excursion short, escorted or not.

Jeannie looked up and down the street, hoping to catch one of the volunteer firemen out looking for him. Gordon Falls boasted a full complement of volunteer firefighters, but George and Chad were often the only two in the building. Those on call only came rushing when those horrid sirens went off because that’s how a volunteer fire department worked.

Still, shouldn’t someone have noticed Plug leaving? Seeing another car heading down the street, Jeannie realized she was the only one to come to the poor hound’s rescue. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what to do, Jeannie settled on squatting down and tapping her knee the way she’d seen Nicky call him. “Well, fine then. You come here. Come, Plug. Come on, boy. Come on over here and get your fool self out of the street.” Plug took two steps toward her. “Come on, boy!” She’d let the dog stay here for the hour until Nicky could deliver him back over if the firefighters didn’t come looking for him first. She surely had no plans to walk out there and haul him back to the firehouse herself.

No, sir, she would not haul Plug back herself. She couldn’t stomach the thought of walking to the firehouse for any reason, much less a dog. Today was not the day to tackle her fear.

Other people found the red doors charming; iconic, even. Every time Jeannie looked at those huge red doors, they just seemed like hungry red mouths opening wide to eat her alive. Nope, she wouldn’t face those today.

“That’s right, come on over here and you can wait for Nicky.” At Nicky’s name, Plug picked up the pace to something that could almost be called a trot, finishing his trek across Tyler Street. He looked up at her with that comical face of his, those too-big eyes and those floppy ears, and announced his arrival by dropping the leash on the sidewalk in front of her. Then, after a pathetic growly sound which she suspected loosely translated to “Phew!” he placed his big nose on her knee and depositing a dark spot of drool on her pant leg. “You silly old thing,” she said, unable to stay annoyed once she started petting his massive, velvety ears. “Don’t you know enough to stay out of traffic?”

She didn’t like the look Plug gave her in response. His droopy eyes seemed to say “Silly yourself if you can’t walk across the street to take me home.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she countered. “You’re not tricking me into…” Into what? Doing the thing she’d managed to avoid for weeks now? She could sit through a presentation on fire safety but couldn’t set foot in a firehouse? Who really was the silly old thing here?

No, Lord, I’m not ready. Jeannie knew she was being ridiculous, even irrational, but the thought of going near the firehouse stirred up panic in her throat. She didn’t want to be this way. She’d tried being logical, thinking of “fire safety” as a worthy community goal, but that only made things worse.

Fire was the enemy. There had been a fire during her husband Henry’s death in a car accident, as well. Looking at the aftermath of her house fire became just like being at the crash site the morning after Henry died.

I’ve been strong lots of other places. I even bought this place looking right at the fire station—wasn’t that strong? After all, weren’t these men the reason she had the ability to start over?

“You know it’s no accident you chose this building,” Abby had declared the day Jeannie signed the mortgage papers. “Some part of you needs the firehouse nearby.”