The Fireman Finds a Wife Read online

  The only problem was, well, she didn’t exactly have one of those handy.

  “I wanted to explain,” she said, “about what happened at the door.”

  He shook his head, cutting off her words. “There’s no need,” he said. “I’m just glad you got the all-clear from your sister and from the EMTs.”

  “My sister is a pediatrician. I’m not a child.”

  “No,” he said. “Of course you’re not.”

  Something in his tone arrested her, but before Summer could decipher it or determine just why this man seemed to make her so—was it uncomfortable or just aware?—he’d hefted his bag and was headed to the door. He left a packet of materials on the foyer table next to a bouquet of flowers she’d cut from her garden just that morning. The cover design on the new resident’s packet, with a picture of a fire truck said: Welcome Home to Cedar Springs, North Carolina.

  As she watched him back the fire department’s sport utility vehicle out of her driveway, Summer didn’t feel welcomed, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she was letting an opportunity slip away.

  Chapter Two

  At Manna, the Common Ground soup kitchen, Vanessa Gerard peered at the recipe Summer handed her.

  “Summer, I can’t cook. Honestly, I can’t. I burn water when I try to make a cup of tea.”

  “Vanessa, it’s easy. See, just five ingredients and they are all right here. The mise en place has already been done. And there are just four steps, easy peasy.”

  “The meeson what?”

  “It means all the ingredients are already prepped. So you don’t have to chop or measure anything. Just follow the steps on the recipe.”

  The brown-skinned woman with the long braids didn’t at all look reassured. “We’re supposed to be helping these people,” Vanessa said, “not giving them food poisoning.”

  Summer laughed and gave the soup kitchen volunteer a comforting pat on the back. “You’re not going to give anyone food poisoning. And you’re going to be shocked at how well they turn out.”

  Vanessa had been coming in a couple of times a week to get out of the house. But this was her first time actually working in the kitchen. She usually served meals to the people who came to Manna at Common Ground. Many of them were homeless and came in for a meal before checking in at the homeless shelter, which was one of four community outreach programs operated by the Common Ground ministry.

  The faith-based ministry known as Common Ground was formed by the pastors of three diverse congregations. Its mission was to strengthen Christian ties, unite the churches and to work together in community outreach and service.

  Still looking doubtful, Vanessa eyed the recipe. “If you say so.”

  Confident that the casseroles would be just fine, Summer went to check on the progress of her cookies, and then one of the other volunteers. Just a handful of the volunteers at the soup kitchen came in on regular schedules—a fact she quickly ascertained, so she never knew how many people might be available to help cook on any given day.

  That was one of the situations that Ilsa Keller, as director of the soup kitchen, should have addressed. When Summer suggested setting up a schedule, she’d been told that things operated just fine and essentially to mind her own business.

  For the Wednesday lunches and dinners, Manna needed at least four helpers in the kitchen, because of the extra baking required for the coffee fellowship after the weekly Bible study. At the volunteers’ meeting last month, when Summer noted that Wednesdays were especially strained and could use a dedicated roster of volunteers, Ilsa had shot her down until someone else said the same thing. And then the soup kitchen director had been forced to promise she would consider their suggestions.

  But when only two volunteers showed up today, Summer talked Vanessa into assisting in the kitchen.

  She grabbed a couple of heavy potholders, and then from one of the two double industrial-sized ovens, pulled out a tray of white chocolate macadamia cookies and an oversized flat pan filled with red velvet bars. She would whip up the creamy vanilla frosting for the bars after they’d cooled and she got the chicken soup on simmer.

  “Summer, there’s someone here to see you,” Mrs. Davidson trilled from the doorway.

  Startled, Summer glanced up. “Me? Here?”

  The plump woman with the face, voice and disposition of everyone’s favorite auntie, smiled. “Yes, dear. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  What him would be calling on her, and at the soup kitchen no less?

  She placed the baked goods on cooling racks and slipped off the gloved potholders. “I’ll be right there,” she told Mrs. Davidson. But the woman was already gone.

  Pulling the ever-present tube of lip gloss out, she touched up her mouth using the bottom of a baking pan as a mirror, making sure she didn’t have flour or some other ingredients on her face, then headed to see who’d come calling.

  Summer was stunned to see him.

  Cameron Jackson, the city fire chief, was at the soup kitchen and had come to see her?

  She blushed at the thought that two days ago he’d carried her when she’d actually fainted on him at her front door.

  Summer almost didn’t recognize him as he stood waiting in the dining hall, near the brick fireplace, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt sporting the Cedar Springs Fire Department logo. He looked like a regular guy, a handsome one, but a regular guy. Gone were the starched and pressed dress blues of his fire chief’s uniform. His blond hair looked slightly tousled, as if he’d just run his hands through it.

  She looked around to see if someone else might possibly be waiting for her, but they were the only two people in the room. As she approached him, he stepped forward.

  “Chief Jackson. This is a surprise.”

  “Please, call me Cameron.”

  “Cameron.”

  She said the name tentatively, as if not quite sure she wanted to commit to the familiarity of it. She had pretty much spent the last two days trying to get him out of her mind—to no apparent avail.

  She’d also tried to put out of her mind the conversation she’d had with her older sister the night of “the incident.” Spring had called to check in and see how things had gone. And she’d insisted that Cameron was interested in Summer, interested that way, not just as a new city resident.

  It had taken a couple of days but Summer had finally stopped thinking about him. And now here he was.

  Spring’s words came back to her: He wants to take you out, silly. On a date.

  Summer didn’t see it that way. Spring insisted that Summer also hadn’t seen the way the fire chief looked at her Monday afternoon when he thought no one was watching, the way he’d gently cradled her and seemed to take a slightly more than professional interest in her.

  Summer had countered that his interest was in making sure one of the small city’s new residents didn’t die on him. Spring just tsk-tsked, and told her to take a chance.

  But Summer didn’t date. And she surely wouldn’t start with someone as...well, as male as Cameron Jackson.

  He was muscular, not bulked up like a bodybuilder, but he possessed a strength and a sturdiness that said he was used to being a protector. She’d already noticed his dark blond hair, and now she took in his eyes, an easy blue that was comforting in an odd way—odd, because she didn’t need any comforting, at least not now.

  “May I call you Summer?”

  She noticed his eyes also seemed to light up when he talked.

  “Y-yes. Everyone calls me Summer. My sisters are Spring, Autumn and Winter. Our parents had something of a twisted sense of humor. We were teased about it when we were younger. But now...”

  Realizing that she was babbling, she closed her mouth, clasped her hands together and stared at the floor.

  “I brought something for you,” he
said, walking toward one of the long dining tables. The tables were already dressed for the evening meal with linens and functional centerpieces—clear bowls filled with apples, oranges and bananas for their guests to help themselves.

  Her heart tripped a bit. He brought her a present?

  “Well, for you to use,” he said, clarifying as if she’d spoken the question aloud.

  Oh, dear. Had she?

  “We’ve been collecting food over at the station houses,” he said. “I’ve tried to set a standard without preaching at the crews. Every time one of the guys uses profanity, he has to pay up with a canned good or non-perishable item that gets donated to Manna. I figured that would be an easy way to get the message across about the language while doing something helpful for the community.”

  Summer glanced down at the half-filled brown paper bag.

  “Congratulations. Looks like it’s working since you only have a few items.”

  Cameron groaned.

  “This is just what I carried in,” he said. “There are three big boxes in the truck.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Oh.”

  An awkward silence fell between them. Summer didn’t know what to do with her hands. She’d been so long removed from the dating scene that she had no clue about how to act. Plus, Cameron made her nervous, like a filly not yet acquainted with the new trainer at a stable.

  But the manners she and her sisters learned at Lovie Darling’s School of Raising the Seasons kicked in when Summer’s feminine wiles deserted her.

  “Would you like...”

  “I guess I should get...”

  They both started at the same time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You go first.”

  He put his hands in his jeans pockets and rocked back on his feet. “I was just going to say, I’ll go get the other donations.”

  “I was going to ask if you’d like a cup of coffee. I just took cookies out of the oven.”

  His face lit up.

  “If you think I’m going to pass up that offer, you need to think again,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  As Cameron hauled the boxed items to the kitchen, Summer put on a fresh pot of coffee and plated up a few of the white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

  He wants to take you out, silly. On a date.

  Her older sister’s words echoed in Summer’s mind. Was that why he’d come himself instead of sending someone to deliver the donations?

  * * *

  By the time he got everything stowed in the receiving area of the big kitchen, she was waiting with steaming mugs of coffee, a plate of cookies...and a crowd. There with Summer was Mrs. Davidson from the Common Ground office, and a petite woman he didn’t immediately recognize.

  Trying to get a few moments alone with Summer Spencer was more difficult than herding cats. If he hadn’t seen a spark of interest in her eyes, he would think she was trying to shield herself from his attention.

  After she’d fainted in his arms and he’d taken some good-natured teasing at the station house about beautiful blondes falling down at the mere sight of him, he’d discreetly asked around and found out that she had just recently moved home to North Carolina from somewhere farther south, in Georgia. Instead of settling in at what was known as the Darling Compound, she’d purchased her own home.

  The part he hadn’t bargained on was that Summer Spencer, the delicate blonde with the sad eyes and the killer baking skills, was a Darling, of the Darlings of Cedar Springs. The very wealthy, very cultured, pillars of town society Darlings.

  “Chief Jackson, this is Doris Davidson and Samantha Burns, one of our volunteers.”

  “Oh, the chief and I know each other,” Mrs. Davidson said. “How are you today?” she asked before taking a sampling of a cookie.

  “Just fine, Mrs. D.”

  The woman named Samantha wore an apron that had the Common Ground logo on the front. “Hello, there. Are you the chief of police or something?”

  “Fire chief,” Cameron said.

  “Oh, my goodness, Summer. These are excellent,” exclaimed Mrs. Davidson. “Would you be willing to make a couple dozen for me for my book group? I host next week and I was just going to get something from Sweetings. These are so much better.”

  “You know I will, Mrs. Davidson,” Summer said. “Just tell me when you need them.”

  She offered a small paper plate with two cookies to Cameron. “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black,” he said.

  Vanessa Gerard joined them a moment later. “I got the pans in the oven,” she said. “It was easy. I may try that at home.”

  “Told you,” Summer said. “We’re taking a little break,” she said, serving up another plate with cookies to Vanessa. “Would you like coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Vanessa said. “Trying to cut back. Howzit going, Chief Cam?”

  “Well, Vanessa. What about with you?”

  She lifted a brow, gave a slight shrug and said, “It’s going.”

  “You’ll let me know?” he asked.

  Vanessa gave an exasperated sigh. “I always do, chief.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” Cameron said.

  Summer noted the easy familiarity between them and the nickname Vanessa used. A stab of jealousy or possibly disappointment shot through her. She had no claim on Cameron Jackson so she wasn’t at all sure from whence it sprang.

  Mrs. Davidson, not recognizing the bit of tension that seemed to suddenly envelop the room, piped up. “I declare, Summer, the best thing that ever happened to Manna at Common Ground was you showing up when you did.”

  Not willing to acknowledge her private reaction to Cameron and Vanessa, Summer gave Mrs. Davidson a sunny smile.

  “Yes,” Vanessa said. “Mrs. D is right. Because if you hadn’t walked in here, they were going to dragoon me and that would have truly been a disaster in the making.”

  Cameron glanced at his watch, then put down his coffee cup. “Summer, may I have a word with you?”

  She glanced at the other three women as if looking for validation. “Uh, sure.”

  Vanessa took in the boxes neatly stacked on the receiving bench. “Did you bring those, Chief Cam?”

  When he nodded, Vanessa snagged another cookie from the cooling rack then reached for a clipboard dangling under the counter on an unseen hook. “That’s something I can do—log in donations.”

  “Come along, dear,” Mrs. Davidson told Samantha Burns. “Break’s over. We have quite a bit to do before our guests arrive.”

  With thanks to Summer for the cookies and their goodbyes to the fire chief, the two hustled off. Vanessa went to tend to the donations from the fire department and Cameron steered Summer back toward the dining hall for a few words in private.

  His arm brushed hers as he held the door open and Summer’s breath caught at the unexpected contact. If he noticed, he didn’t let on. He was probably just happy she didn’t pass out on him again.

  She told herself to stop acting like a ninny. She was twenty-eight years old, not sixteen.

  In the dining hall, he pulled out a chair at one of the tables and held it out for her to be seated. Appreciating the small gesture, Summer murmured a “thank you” as he settled in the seat next to her.

  “I wanted to see how you were doing,” he said.

  Oh, great, she thought. He thinks I’m an invalid. Inexplicably, she wanted to explain.

  “Thank you again,” she said, “for what you did the other day. It was a reflex, I think. I thought something was wrong. You all caught me by surprise.”

  Cameron smiled. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The abrupt change of topic more than startled her.
r />   “Dinner? Us. Together.”

  She shook her head slightly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  She wanted to explain. Dinner meant they would be out together. On a date. But Summer couldn’t date. Didn’t date. And the explanation she’d been all ready to give him fled from her brain, right along with her courage.

  “I’m...” she swallowed and got a hold of her tongue if not her suddenly racing heart. “My husband might not approve.”

  Chapter Three

  The stricken look on his face convicted her.

  “You’re married?”

  His gaze dipped to her left hand resting on the table. Self-conscious, she put both ringless hands in her lap.

  Taking a deep breath, Summer decided that being open and honest about her situation was her best course of action.

  “Chief Jackson, I want to explain something to you.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. But a moment later, he sighed and released the defensive gesture.

  Offering a tremulous smile, Summer got her thoughts together. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to open up on this, she needed to. Enough time had passed, and moving home to Cedar Springs was her big step toward reclaiming her life.

  “Seeing you and your men on my doorstep,” she began, “was a shock. A bad shock to my system. I’d truly forgotten about the new resident’s home safety check I’d requested.”

  She swallowed, took a ragged breath and then offered up a little prayer for strength.

  “The last time men in uniform came to my front door, it was to tell me that my husband had been killed.”

  His eyes widened and he reached for her hands in a comforting gesture. But before he could offer the obligatory, “I’m sorry” condolences, she rushed on.

  “It’s coming on two years,” she said. “I moved home to start a new chapter in my life. I sold our place in Macon and bought the house here, a house where I could make new memories instead of dwelling on the past. Seeing you, the three of you,” she quickly clarified, “standing there looking official, well, it just derailed me a bit.”