Spark Of Desire. Christa Maurice

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СКАЧАТЬ bear his ribbing or his pity.

      “I don’t know yet,” he said. “Sometime before this day next year.”

      Jessica laughed. “Sudden decision?”

      “I guess so. A friend of mine just proposed to his girlfriend, and I realized I was spinning my wheels.”

      Jessica decided she could listen to his voice all day. It sounded like velvet, and not the modern synthetic stuff, either. Antique velvet. Soft and smooth and warm. Probably single, too. Not that it mattered, as old as he was. “I can understand that. Are you planning on going in high season or low season?”

      “What’s that?”

      “High season runs from about April to September or October, I forget. Everything’s open and the weather’s nicer, but the prices are twenty or thirty percent higher.” Jessica finished test study guides and started on vocational study guides. “Low season you get better prices and fewer crowds, but you risk bad weather. Wet, cold, really unpleasant. After a while you start to feel like a mushroom.”

      “You went to Ireland?”

      “About three years ago. It was incredible.” She sighed, remembering the trip, taken at one of those points in life when everything seemed possible. Slouching down on the stool, she reached for the lower shelves. “I’d love to go back.”

      “Why don’t you?”

      She shrugged, not turning around to look at him. “Lack of money, lack of get-up-and-go, don’t really want to go alone again. You know?”

      “You went alone?” He sounded shocked. Most people were.

      “Yes.”

      “But you went with a tour group.”

      “No.” She tucked her hair behind her ear again and put the LSAT books back into alphabetical order.

      “How?”

      Jessica turned around to look at him. With his expression more animated, he seemed younger. Maybe thirty-five. She smiled. In younger days, he must have been a lady killer. Ten years ago she would have been a week getting her tongue untied if she’d tried to talk to him. “I bought a ticket, got a train pass, and stayed at hostels every night.” Every time someone reacted this way it reminded her of what an accomplishment it seemed to most people.

      “Wow. Weren’t you worried? A woman traveling alone.”

      Jessica stood up. “I’m not exactly a little girl.” Standing beside him, she decided he must be about six foot, which made him two or three inches taller than her. She was nobody’s idea of a delicate female.

      “I guess not.”

      She sat down again. “I’m the store bouncer,” she added. Men always got that expression on their faces when they took a good look at her. That She could beat me up! look. Not that she thought she could beat this guy up. He was in good shape, on closer inspection. His shoulders were nice and broad. Not like an over-muscled gym diva, but he could certainly pin her in a wrestling match.

      A sudden, unexpected heat raced up her throat at that thought. She focused on the CPA test guides, hoping it would go away before he noticed.

      “Jessica?”

      She looked up. The general manager, a thin nervous man, fidgeted in the aisle beside her.

      He crouched. “I’m sorry about this.”

      “What is it, Eric?”

      “It’s Julie.”

      Jessica rolled her eyes. At least this topic distracted her from the thoughts of wrestling that had been flashing through her mind. “Now what?”

      “It’s just the usual. Could you talk to her?”

      “I’ve talked to her. She isn’t doing anything wrong,” Jessica grumbled.

      “I know, but if you could just tell her to back off. You know how Darla is.” Eric twisted his hands together between his knees.

      “Yeah, and I know how Julie is too.” Jessica shook her head. “I’ll talk to her.”

      “Thank you.” Eric sighed, relieved at having handed off that confrontation.

      Jessica watched him walk away. She had to get out of this job before the death match between Darla and Julie burned a hole in her stomach.

      “Who’s Julie?”

      Jessica jumped. She hadn’t forgotten about the customer with the deep dark chocolate voice, but the sound of it right behind her brushed across her cheek like a touch. “Julie? She’s the magazine clerk who won’t let sleeping dogs lie if she doesn’t like them.”

      He nodded. “I think I know the type.”

      “I like her. It’s just not fun to ride herd on her sometimes.”

      “So why do you get to ride herd anyway?”

      “I have the great fortune to be her manager. They warned me she was unmanageable when I got the job.” Jessica pulled out her other favorite book to look at while shelving this section. The professional training section had three different firefighter exam books and two emergency medical service exam books. That’s what she really wanted to do. She’d watched every hospital-based show on television since she was old enough to sit still for an hour. In college, she’d started out pre-med and become disenchanted. Besides, she didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse or even a tech. She wanted sirens.

      “You planning on taking the test?”

      Jessica didn’t jump this time, even though he’d leaned over her shoulder, presumably to get a better look at the book. “Maybe. I’ve always wanted to be a paramedic, and to be a paramedic, I have to be a firefighter first.”

      “Move to Cambridge and you won’t have to join fire service.”

      Jessica snorted. Julie had been clipping all the articles about the Cambridge EMS fight from the papers for her. One side said it was better service to have two separate departments giving the same service, plus it was cheaper because the EMS service was contracted. The other side said the fire department ended up responding to many of the calls anyway, negating the savings, so it would be better to just send the department in the first place. So far, they’d managed to decide to wait and study the problem more. “They’re going to have to bring it into fire service eventually. The fire department is faster and better. If I get in there, I’ll have to join up in a year.”

      “The fire department is more expensive.”

      Jessica closed the book on her lap. “People don’t tend to care about that when they’re in the middle of a cardiac arrest.”

      “They care at the polls when they’re voting new taxes.” He smiled as if he was enjoying the debate.

      “They also remember which politicians wanted to cut costs on public safety.”

      “So СКАЧАТЬ