Husband Needed

He shot her a devilish smile, one that was slow and sultry. “They just have a thing for a man in a uniform.”

“You’re not in a uniform now,” she noted with a telling look at his bare legs.

“So you noticed.”

“It’s hard not to,” she muttered. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No. Are you?”

Since she was fanning herself with the grocery receipt, she could hardly say yes. Instead she said, “I’m not the one wearing shorts.”

“More’s the pity,” Jack replied, his gaze traveling down her legs.

It was all Kayla could do not to tug on the hem of her skirt. The look he’d just given her made her feel as if she were wearing black fishnet stockings instead of perfectly respectable tights. “I’m leaving,” she firmly declared. “You’re clearly too stubborn to have anything happen to you, so I’m sure you’ll be fine on your own.” Not that she thought he’d be on his own very long.

“Hey, come back tomorrow and we’ll do this again,” Jack called out after her.

The sound of the door slamming was his only reply.

“So, buddy, tell me again why I had to spend my morning off patching this hole in your wall? Or maybe we should start with how you put a hole in the wall in the first place,” Boomer Laudermilk told Jack the next morning. Boomer was a ten-year veteran of the Chicago Fire Department, the same as Jack, and was one of Jack’s closest friends.

“It was a simple misunderstanding,” Jack replied.

“Yeah, right. Like the time the captain caught you short-sheeting his bed.”

“Something like that.”

“Which still doesn’t tell me much.”

“I smashed the tip of my crutch through the wallboard.”

Boomer’s bushy, blond eyebrow lifted almost to his hairline. “In a bad mood, were you?”

“I thought she was breaking in—”

Boomer interrupted him. “She? You didn’t tell me there was a woman involved. Man, I shoulda guessed. There’s always a woman involved where you’re concerned. So what happened this time? You fall for a female cat burglar?”

“I haven’t fallen for anyone! Certainly not a bossy errand girl named Kayla, even if she does have the best legs I’ve ever seen and incredibly big baby blue eyes that show her every emotion.”

“Uh-oh, buddy, this doesn’t sound good.”

“She’s got a kid,” Jack declared, as if that said it all.

“Is that a problem?”

Jack shrugged.

“Don’t your parents run a day care center?” Boomer asked.

Jack nodded.

“Then I’d think you’d be used to kids.”

“You’d think wrong. My folks are good with kids. Not me.”

“So what are you going to do about this Kayla woman you’re not falling for?” Boomer asked.

“Damned if I know.”

Kayla was running late when she got to Jack’s apartment Thursday afternoon. It didn’t help that she’d had to stop three places before finding Jack’s stupid imported ale and the right brand of salted beer nuts. On her way out yesterday, she’d given Ernie the Doorman the rejects. Ernie had responded by smiling at her, or at least she’d assumed the slight movement at the corner of his mouth was a smile—he wasn’t exactly the demonstrative type.

Now Jack was another matter entirely. He certainly let you know how he was feeling. She’d called a cleaning service to stop by this morning, only to have them call her back and say that Jack had thrown a fit and refused to let them in. It had taken Kayla fifteen minutes to calm down the cleaning service owner, a necessity since Kayla often worked with them. No, she was not feeling kindly toward Jack at the moment.

And those feelings took another nosedive when she saw the note taped to his front door. It had her name on it, as well as the name of the pizza place around the corner. Apparently Jack didn’t believe in using blank paper for writing when he could make do with odds and ends.

Along with her name, he’d written half a dozen errands for her to run—including buying a five-dollar lotto ticket, picking up the latest video releases, buying a package of men’s white jockey shorts in size thirty-four as well as a bottle of pricy perfume.

It sounded as if the man had something special planned.

So why did that bother her? Why should she care what he did with Misty or Mandy or any other woman? She didn’t care. It just irked her that he’d written the note as if she were a peon and he the great lord ordering her about. Not to mention her aggravation at the way he’d treated the cleaning service people this morning, after she’d gone to all that trouble to get him squeezed in. If Jack thought she was cleaning up after him, he was sadly mistaken.

She rang the bell and pounded on the door. When that got no response, she was about to get out her key when Jack finally answered the door. Seeing how pale he was, she asked, “What happened to you?”

“What do you mean what happened to me?” he growled. “I broke my damned stupid leg, that’s what happened. And then I was kept up most of the night with women calling me, trying out their phone-nurse routines, asking me what I’d do if I couldn’t work as a firefighter anymore. What the hell kind of question is that to ask a man?”

Since he was weaving on the crutches like a drunken sailor on shore leave, Kayla said, “Maybe you should sit down—”

“I’m fine,” he growled.

“You don’t have to snap my head off,” she said, inexplicably hurt by his curtness. “I was just trying to help you...”

“I don’t need any help.” His words were gritty with anger and frustration. This was only his third day in the cast and already he was going nuts.

“Right. I can tell you’re doing just peachy on your own,” Kayla mockingly noted, waving her hand at the living room strewn with clothes, newspapers, dirty dishes and empty bottles and cans. “Why did you send away the cleaning people?”

“Because I don’t want strangers around. Besides, I told you I hate people fussing over me,” he growled.

“Yes, well, I hate people fainting on me,” she retorted, “and that’s what you’re going to do if you don’t take it easy.”

“I’ve never passed out in my life.”

“There’s always a first time, big boy.”

“Listen, little girl,” Jack shot back, “don’t order me around!”

“Hey, don’t yell at me because your girlfriends kept you up all night” was her immediate comeback.

An x-rated reply was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back because the truth was that Kayla had been the one who had kept him up all night—in every sense of the word. Jack hadn’t been able to get her off his mind and that was driving him out of his mind.