Chapter 6
Chapter Six
K atie wasn’t avoiding Frank. She’d been busy.
First, there were her duties as a sister. Connie wasn’t crying into her beer any longer, but she was starting to remember some of the less shitty things about The Creep.
Like an idiot, Katie was convinced that if she could just keep her sister distracted, Connie would skip over the go-back-to-him stage of her on again-off again relationship. Distraction took time.
Then, there was her job. Her third graders weren’t going to teach themselves their multiplication tables. (Well, Hakim was, but that kid had entered third grade reading at a seventh-grade level. He was on his own smarter-than-smart track.) People liked to think that teachers came in when the first bell rang and left at the dismissal bell. Those people were wrong. There was arriving bus duty, lunch duty, recess duty, departing bus duty, after-school parent meetings, teacher meetings, planning for the next unit, and always a backpack full of daily work to take home and grade. She definitely wasn’t eating bonbons with her feet up on her desk.
Lastly, she had to wash her hair.
Okay fine. That last one was weak, but she obviously needed to shake her brain back in place because, since the firehouse, there hadn’t been a night when she didn’t slide her fingers down her panties and get off to Frank Hartigan. Or a morning when she didn’t make strategic use of the detachable shower head. Or an afternoon before Connie got off her shift at Radio Shack. Or?—
The blaring sound of the school’s fire alarm jolted her off the thought path she didn’t want to be on in the first place and back to the school’s playground. A group of students were huddled around the vent that blasted excess heat from the school’s boiler out into the it’s-fall-but-it-feels-like-winter air. Gotta love autumn in the Northeast, where it’s sunny and fifty degrees one day and a break-out-the-ice-scraper thirty degrees the next.
“Come on girls,” Katie called to the huddled students. “We have to go meet the rest of our class at our designated spot on the sidewalk.”
“But it’s a drill,” Casey said. “There’s no actual fire. It’s just stop-drop-and-roll day.”
Someone had totally been listening at the door of the teacher’s lounge again in order to know that faculty-only information. Every year, the administrators tried to keep the date quiet so the kids would get to practice for a fire without actually know they were practicing. It rarely worked out that way, because the kids were expert level eavesdroppers. However, the fire safety presentation put on by the Waterbury Fire Department—and the plastic fire hats they gave out—was always appreciated, even without the surprise factor.
“I’m too cold to move,” Angi said as she ruined her own argument by wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing.
“The sidewalk.” Katie nodded her head to where the rest of the kids and teachers were gathering. “Let’s go.”
The pack of girls groaned but marched with Katie across the gravel, past the merry-go-round and pair of metal see-saws, to stand with the rest of their class until the ‘all-clear’ double beep sounded. When they all filed back inside, the warmth made everyone let out sighs of appreciation. Katie led them into the cafeteria, where the firefighters had already set up on the small stage on the west end of the room.
The usual suspects from the community engagement division were up there, along with the addition of Spot, the one-eared Dalmatian from her dad’s station. who was doing happy spins at seeing all the kids. The guy from community engagement who held the end of Spot’s leash was doing his best to keep the hyperactive pup from diving off the edge of the stage but it wasn’t looking good for him.
Scanning the stage, Katie looked for whoever from her dad’s station had drawn the short straw to give the fire prevention speech to the kids.
Her skin sizzled with sudden anticipation half a second before someone walked up beside her and Frank said, “Figured you wouldn’t be able to avoid me here.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she said as she pivoted to face him. “I’ve been busy.”
It wasn’t fair that she had to tilt her chin up just to glare at him while he stood with his hands behind his back, watching her like she was the most fascinating woman in the world. She was tall enough that, most of the time, she almost eye-level with whichever guy had decided to try her patience—which was exactly what Frank was doing. Oh, he might think he was flirting with her, but she was immune to his charm. Just because her Pinto’s passenger door didn’t squeak loudly enough to be heard four blocks away anymore didn’t mean she was softening to him. She was an ice block that the man couldn’t melt.
Then he did the grin thing, and she defrosted a little.
It was only a few degrees, but it was enough to make her breath catch and her heart speed up.
And when he leaned down so his lips were close to her ear?
Her heart went from ‘racing on Tatooine’ fast to ‘warp speed in the Millennium Falcon’ fast.
“Sounds like someone needs some help relaxing,” he said, his words brushing against the shell of her ear.
In an instant, she was so not-relaxed that she wasn’t sure she’d ever relax again. Her cheeks flushed. Her brain was going a million miles an hour and stuck in neutral at the same time. Every single nerve in her body was alert and zeroed in on Frank. The man was a menace, an absolute, without a doubt, menace.
“Lucky you,” he continued, his low voice curling around her as sure as a touch. “I’m very good at helping people relax.”
It took everything she had to not give in to the promise he offered. She was an arctic iceberg, a Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake fresh out of the freezer, a toilet seat first thing in the morning in February. There was nothing in the world colder than she was.
“So I’ve heard,” she said, keeping her gaze locked on Spot, who was now lying on his back, tummy exposed, in hopes that the kids would storm the stage and start petting him. “Your reputation is all over the bathroom walls at Marinos.”
So she exaggerated. It wasn’t written so much as it was told, like a tall tale making its way from woman to woman throughout Waterbury. The story of the well-hung, redheaded firefighter who‘d made them feel things they’d only read about in their Candlelight Ecstasy books, was legendary. There was no way it was actually true. But that didn’t stop the belief that, if you wanted to get well laid, Frank Hartigan was the man willing and able to do it.
Frank winked and her heart fluttered—obviously against her will, or better sense.
“Just getting ready for you,” he said.
“Why, because I’m the one woman in Waterbury who doesn’t want you?” she asked, her voice breathier than she wanted it to be at that moment.
“No.” He winked at her. “Because you do.”
Katie would have responded if she could, but every thought in her head jerked to a stop. Luckily, she was saved from him realizing this by the principal, Mr. Cyrus, walking out on stage.
“Settle down children,” the principal said, ignoring Spot’s baleful glances. “We’re about to begin.”
“That’s my cue,” Frank said before turning on the mic that she’d been too distracted to notice he was holding. “Hello Joyce Kilmer Elementary. I’m Firefighter Frank Hartigan, Lieutenants Kazmer and Stanton are on stage, and the star of our show today is Spot, the station five dog.” The kids, who’d all turned in their chairs to see him at the back of the room, clapped and there were a few requests to go pet Spot before Frank continued. “We’re here to talk to you about something that could save your life. But before we start, we’re going to need a volunteer.”
Chaos erupted. The kids hollered and waved their hands in the air to be picked—no doubt hoping they were volunteering to hold Spot’s leash.
“The volunteer needs to have brownish red hair,” Frank said.
About three-fourths of the kids’ hands went down.
Katie side eyed him. What was he up to?
“And they need to be wearing blue,” he said.
More hands went down.
Glancing down at her baby blue blouse with a pussy bow, and matching loose, flared skirt that her mom had made from a McCall’s pattern, her stomach started to twist up.
He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
“And they need to be about…” he lifted his hand so it was level with the top of Katie’s head “this tall.”
He did. The total butthead did.
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh of resignation as the remaining kids whose hands were still up let them fall.
“I’ll get you back for this,” she muttered while the students chanted “Miss Mad-i-gan, Miss Mad-i-gan.”
He didn’t look the least bit worried that she’d have her revenge. “Agree to meet me after school so we can plan Fitz’s party, and I’ll let you off the hook.”
He held out his hand to shake on it. She didn’t notice how big his hand was, or how long his fingers were, or wonder, even for the shortest of seconds, whether it was a man’s hands or feet that equated the size of his cock. She didn’t want to know—not when it came to him. She could never find out and still die the happiest of women, in her icy fortress of solitude.
Anyway, she’d already said she’d plan the party with him. She’d have to meet with him eventually. Agreeing with him now just got her the added benefit of not having to make a fool of herself in front of the entire school.
“Fine. I agree,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
She reached out and shook his hand. A sizzle of awareness skittered across her skin, like a warning of very good bad things ahead. She didn’t yank her hand away, but her move was sudden enough that there was no way he didn’t realize the effect he had on her.
“Perfect,” he said, flashing the grin at her. “There’s only one thing. I’m off today, so I’m not at the station. I’ll meet you at the mall, at the Sears’ entrance.”
Realization that she’d been set up hit her full in the face. “What are you doing here if you’re not even working?”
“Getting you to have an Orange Julius with me,” he said, with no remorse.
“I’m only going to talk about the party,” she grumbled. “It’s not a date.”
“Of course it’s not.” He shrugged, as if she were silly to even consider he’d think it was a date. “I’ll even let you buy.”
Then he was making his way through the cafeteria, telling the kids that he changed his mind about volunteers but not to worry, there would be time after the presentation for anyone who wanted to pet Spot to have a turn. Not surprisingly, the cafeteria erupted into cheers.
And by the time he reached the stage to start his spiel about stop, drop, and roll, the kids were all eating out of his hand—which she would not be doing at Orange Julius. She wouldn’t. She was not going to fall for his Hartigan charm. It was not a date.