Saved by the Fireman

“Everything’s safe. He told me to tell you he’s going to come back and do the upstairs bathroom wiring once you let him know the plaster is down.”

Jesse’s eyes lit up. “Demolition. My favorite part.”

She cringed. “Somehow I’m not fond of the idea of you going at my bathroom with a sledgehammer.” My bathroom. Funny how little things like that made her heart go zing today in a way that almost made up for her lack of incoming paychecks.

“Oh, I’m not going at it today.” He held Charlotte’s eyes for a dizzying moment. “You are.”

Charlotte nearly toppled her teacup. “Me?”

“It’s a thing of mine. First swing of demo always goes to the customer. If they’re around, which you most definitely are.”

“I’m sending a sledgehammer through my bathroom wall?” She’d seen such rituals on the home improvement networks, but she didn’t think stuff like that actually took place on real jobs.

“Actually, it’ll be more like a crowbar to the feet of your bathtub. Since you agreed to re-enamel it, I’m pulling it out today. Are you ready to start talking about color?”

Charlotte felt as if she’d been waiting a decade to pick the color of something, even though that was far from true. Colors—and how they went together—were a wondrous obsession for her, and part of the lure of the textile industry. Still, this choice felt new and exciting, in a way she couldn’t quite define. She snatched the top issue from a pile of home decor magazines that were sitting next to the teapot. “I already have one picked out.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Jesse walked up the last of the stairs. “Let’s see.”

She thumbed through the magazine to the dog-eared page, then held it up to Jesse to see. “That sink? The buttercream color with the brass fixtures? That’s it, right there.”

Jesse took the magazine. “Good choice. For a minute there I thought you were going to show me something purple or zebra striped. The guy who does the re-enameling work is good, but he’s not a magician.”

For a moment, Charlotte tried to imagine a zebra-striped claw-footed bathtub. Such a thing should never exist. “I have much better taste than animal prints for bathroom fixtures. He can do the sink to match, can’t he?”

Jesse peered closer at the photograph. “It won’t matter. You’ll need a new sink no matter what—the newer fixtures won’t fit on a sink like you’ve got. I’ll bring you some catalogues with sinks that come in a color close to that tomorrow. When you pick the style and finish, Jack will make sure the bathtub matches perfectly.” He looked up at her. “You’re going to want one of those old-fashioned circle shower curtains, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. And in the brass finish. Not that cheap nickel finish.”

“That brass finish is exactly that—not cheap. Are you sure?”

Parts of her were completely sure. Other parts—the edges of her chest that turned dark and trembling when she allowed herself to think of how her perfect life plan had been upended—balked at the extra price. Still, how many times in life did a girl get to pick out bathroom fixtures? Ones that would last for decades? A woman’s bathroom was her sanctuary, her private escape from life’s tensions. Hers had to be just right—especially when nothing else in life was. She nodded. Did he find that charming or annoying? His expression was unreadable, and she was growing a little nervous knot in her stomach. “I’ve even got the shower curtain and window treatment fabric picked out.”

“You’re going to be fun to work with, you know that?”

“I hope so.” She really did. There was something so immensely satisfying about bringing the cottage back to life. As if the house had been waiting for her, holding its structural breath for her to come and pour her ideas inside. Charlotte had engineered some major achievements at Monarch, but those hadn’t given her any security, had they? This cottage offered security, right down to the soul-nurturing buttercream color of her soon-to-be-reborn bathtub.

Jesse returned to his bag, making all kinds of rattling noises until he straightened back up with a crowbar, a pair of safety glasses and the daintiest pair of work gloves Charlotte had ever seen. Her astonishment must have shown all over her face, because Jesse waved the gloves and admitted, “These are from my mother. Don’t ask.”

She wanted to. The gloves were adorable, white canvas with a vintage-looking print of bright pink roses. They looked like garden gloves from a 1950s issue of Better Homes and Gardens. “I love them.” Then, because she couldn’t hold the curiosity in any longer, “Your mother sent these?”

He ran his hands down his face, but it didn’t hide the flush she saw creep across his cheeks. “I said don’t ask.”

Charlotte pulled her knees up onto the chair and hugged them to her chest, utterly amused. “Do all your customers get adorable work gloves on their first day?” Jesse’s mix of amusement and embarrassment was just too much fun to watch.

“Was there something about ‘don’t ask’ that wasn’t clear here? Or do you want me to take away your crowbar and just have at the bathtub on my own?”

“No!” she cried, leaping off her chair. The thought of starting, of finally getting this project underway, whizzed through her like electricity. She lunged for the gloves and the crowbar, but Jesse dodged her easily.

“Wait a minute, Ms. Taylor. If we’re going to demo together, there are some rules. I can’t have customers getting hurt on the job or letting their enthusiasm run away with their good sense.”

Charlotte planted her hands on her hips and squared off against Jesse, even though he had a good six inches on her five-six frame. She raised her chin in defiance. “I never let my enthusiasm run away with my good sense.”

The irony of that played out in Jesse’s eyes the same moment her brain caught on to the idiocy of that statement made by an unemployed woman about to launch a major renovation project. He just raised one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth turning up in an unspoken, “Really?”

Charlotte used the distraction to pluck the crowbar from Jesse’s hand. “Until now,” she said, turning toward the door that led into what would be the dining room.

“Took the words right out of my mouth.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_0a20a2b6-da20-5c36-a323-dfa4c2459707)

Jesse watched Charlotte wiggle her fingers into the work gloves Mom had sent along. If they weren’t so perfect for Charlotte, he’d have never agreed to something so unprofessional as a gift of fussy work gloves. Only these fit Charlotte’s personality to a tee. Mom had won them in some social club raffle, and they were far too small for her arthritic hands, anyway. With a pang, Jesse wondered if Mom had been saving them for Randy’s wife. Randy’s ex-wife.

He’d wanted Constance and Randy to succeed, but even he could see she wasn’t the sort of spouse who would continue to endure the kind of hours Randy kept. Jesse wanted his work to be a passion, surely, but not an obsession. That was part of why he loved the firehouse—it served as a constant reminder that there was more to life than a paycheck. There was a certain poetic justice in spending his work hours constructing when so much of the firefighting battled destruction.

Charlotte’s wide-spread and wiggling floral fingers pulled his thoughts back to the present. He should have remembered pulling the bathtub would be a tight squeeze in this narrow bathroom—he was so close to her he could smell the flowers in whatever lotion she wore. Something sweet but with just a bit of zing, like her personality. Jesse held out the clunky safety glasses. “Time to accessorize.”

He hadn’t counted on her looking so adorable, standing there like an enthusiastic fish with those big brown eyes filling the gogglelike lenses. Her smile was beyond distracting, and she looked so utterly happy. He’d been grumpy for days after he “lost” the cottage—for that matter he got grumpy when he lost a basketball game at the firehouse—but she managed to keep her bounce even when losing her job, not to mention her beloved grandmother. What about her made that kind of resilience possible?

He straddled the antiquated pipes that ran up one side of the bathtub, pulling a wrench from his tool belt to detach them from the floor. Best to get to work right away before the urge to stare at her made him do something stupid. Well, stupider than presenting her with fussy gloves and a baby crowbar. “Pry up that flange while I pull from here.”

“Flange?”

Yep, stupider. More every minute. “The circle thing around the bottom of the pipe. Wedge the crowbar into the waxy stuff holding it to the tile and yank it free.”

She was a parade of different emotions as she got down on her knees and thrust the crowbar under the seal. Anxiety, determination, excitement, worry—they seemed to flash across her face in split-second succession. He liked that she was so emotionally invested in the place, but it bugged him how transparent her feelings seemed to him. “Go on,” he encouraged, charmed by the way she bit her lip and the “ready or not” look in her wide eyes. “You can do this.”

Charlotte gave the fixtures a determined glare, then got down on her knees and thrust the crowbar under the seal. The yelp of victory she gave when the suction gave way and the ring sprang up off the tile to clatter against the pipe was—and he was going to have to find a way to stop using this word—adorable. She brandished the crowbar as she sat back on her haunches and watched him go through the process of unhooking the bathtub from its plumbing. He could have done this alone more quickly—maybe even more easily—but this was too much fun. Getting this porcelain behemoth down the stairs to his truck would be the exact opposite of fun, but he’d called in a few guys from the firehouse to help with that, even though they wouldn’t add to the scenery the way Charlotte’s grin currently did.

She ran a hand along the lip of the deep tub. “Mima would have loved this tub. You were smart to talk me into saving it.”

The expensive Jacuzzi model she’d had her eye on seemed like a ridiculous indulgence he would have talked anyone out of buying. Especially when this one could be so easily repaired. “Tell me about her.” The question seemed to jump from his mouth, surprising her as much as it did him.

Her eyes lit up with affection. “Mima? She was ‘a piece of work,’ Grandpa always used to say. Her real name was Naomi Charlotte Dunning, but when I was little I couldn’t quite say Naomi, so I just said ‘Mi’ at first. Then it became ‘Mima’ and that stuck. I’m named after her. She was a great woman. Grandpa had Alzheimer’s like Melba’s dad, and Mima was a hero in how she took care of him. When he died, I know she grieved and was scared to go on without him, but she found her courage. So much so that she decided to scatter some of his ashes all over the world. And I mean all over the world. She’d been on almost every continent, and left a little bit of Grandpa everywhere she went.” She shrugged. “It’s hopelessly romantic, isn’t it?”