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Bracing myself, I open it.
And… yup. Bad news.
11
JEREMY
I wander into the firehouse, coffee in hand and a smile on my face. I can’t help it. I love teasing the librarian.
… And I’m getting dangerously attracted to her.
The sight of her in that damn bikini last week imprinted on my brain and the afterimages have been flashing in front of my eyes ever since. Long blond hair tumbling over bare shoulders, that creamy skin, little hot pink triangles covering up just enough to leave me wanting more…
I’ve dreamed about that bikini in the nights since. And they were very good dreams.
So maybe that’s why I keep teasing her. I’m like some six-year-old who can’t get enough of teasing some girl he has a crush on.
But it’s not a crush, I remind myself, not really. I don’t want to date her. I just find her attractive, that’s all. Anyway, she seems to actively hate me, so it’s not like there’s much of a future there.
Still… she’s fun to tease.
“You look happy today, Chief,” Mikey says.
“Beautiful morning, good coffee, gonna bring my dog in after lunch. What’s not to be happy about?”
The look on his face tells me I’m about to find out. “There’s an email you should see from the town council,” he explains. “Someone’s making a bid on the Addison, someone who’s actually willing to pay for it, unlike us, so now we have competition.”
“Wait, what?” I put the coffee down on my desk and turn to face Mikey. “They basically promised us that building.”
“They basically promised it to the library too, remember?” Mikey scratches his chin. “That’s kind of the thing with the town council. It’s not a done deal until it’s a done deal if you know what I mean.”
A wave of reluctant empathy for my neighbor rolls through me.
“Anyway,” Mikey continues, “there’s a council meeting tomorrow night. We’ve been invited to present our case to the public, along with Blaze and this other person.”
Back to reality. I scrub my free hand over my face. “How likely are they to get it, do you think?”
Mikey shrugs. “The email didn’t say much, but they’re talking about making it into some kind of retail space. The council has been pushing for more businesses in the downtown area, so they’re gonna like the sound of that. And if it’s the kind of business that can bring more people to town and more tax revenue, then the public’s gonna like it too.”
“You don’t think the fact that we regularly save people’s houses from burning down isn’t a point in our favor?”
“Oh, sure,” Mikey agrees. “But the fact is that we’re doing okay as it is. Expanding the station makes life better for us, but it’s not like we can’t do our job without it. Plus I ran into the town’s comptroller a couple of nights ago. He thought the town might be able to cough up some cash to build an annex in the back lot. It doesn’t face the main street, so it doesn’t have much value as retail space. He thought we could get for below-market.”
“Even so, where are we going to get the money to build a whole new wing?” I ask.
He just shrugs in response.
In my head, I’m ticking off reasons why the space is more than just a luxury for us. It’ll help us recruit more firefighters with more experience, who will have better morale knowing their community values them, better rest means better reaction time, more space to store equipment, yadda yadda yadda.
“Gah. Sounds like there’s a PowerPoint presentation in my future,” I grumble. I love the firefighter parts of being in charge of the station, but I don’t love the administrative stuff that goes along with it.
“Cheer up.” Mikey grins. “Maybe we’ll have a big fire.”
* * *
The next night I walk into the town hall meeting room. I check in with the tech person, who makes sure that the presentation I have loaded onto a USB stick can be projected onto the screen behind the podium and tells me to hand him the drive when I go on stage.
I spent most of yesterday and today putting together my presentation for the public meeting. It was boring and tedious, and I almost did wish there was a big emergency that could have gotten me out of it, but there wasn’t. Fortunately.
