Katie

September 8, Friday

Twenty screaming five-year-olds broke from their orderly line and ran across the playground.

“Walk, please!” Katie Tilman laughed at herself. Getting her students to comply was a lost cause, but she had to try. She couldn’t blame them for being excited. The big red firetruck had all its lights flashing and several crew all geared up. Still, she had to try.

“Oh, come on. What kid can resist? Public Safety Day is always a fun event.” Cinda Gable pointed to her first-grade class, gathered around the police car.

Katie pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled. She knew she should remember Cinda—they were only a year apart in school—but Katie had left Orchard Creek just before she turned fourteen. Eleven years had passed.

She dutifully laughed at Cinda’s comment and hurried to catch up with her kindergartners. Half of her students joined the line waiting to play with the truck’s sirens. The other half stood behind a firefighter who was training a hose on a target that looked like flames painted on a piece of plywood with a hole in the middle.

She did a quick head count—hard to do with everyone moving around—but she managed. One of the playground monitors caught Katie’s eye, then pointed her finger at the group waiting to play with the sirens. Katie shot the woman a relieved smile and refocused on the guy with the hose.

He’d shut off the flow of water and was squatting, telling the kids how the truck could hook up to a fire hydrant so they could pump water on a fire.

“That’s why you should never park in front of a hydrant,” he said.

“Because ‘mergency trucks are big!” A little boy with blond curls stood with his arms crossed over his chest and a wide smile on his face. Katie was pretty sure he was from the first-grade class.

The firefighter tipped his head back and laughed. He turned to face her and Katie caught her breath. Even in the shadows cast by his helmet and visor, she couldn’t miss those bright blue eyes, or the wink he dropped.

“I’m sure they’ll all remember that in ten plus years when they start driving.” Well, if that didn’t make her sound like a complete stick in the mud. “Please tell me you’re showing off and not letting them play with the hose. I’m not sure they all have changes of clothes here, and…”

She stopped as the man rose to his feet. From across the playground, he’d seemed big, and now she had to keep looking up and up to see his face. Or attempt to. Between his height, the angle of the sun and his helmet, his features were cast in shadow, but she couldn’t miss those eyes.

His hands were still wrapped around the hose nozzle in a way that at any other time might have sent Katie’s head into not entirely polite places. Now, she was at work, and instead of sexy thoughts, her brain imagined a bunch of soaked children and the inevitable angry parents.

“Awww, bet me they all do.” Another wink. A scruff of a beard covered his chin and framed a full mouth, but the rest of him was a mystery. “Everybody knows kids are gonna get wet and messy today. We usually let them have a go—with help, of course. Don’t want anyone knocked on their…ahhh…bottom. What d’ya say? You go first?”

He held out the hose nozzle to her and Katie backed away. “Oh… Umm… No… I couldn’t. I’d get all wet.”

His lips curled up in a smile and heat rose in her face. He gave a shrill whistle and shouted something to another firefighter who sat on top of the truck. An instant later, something hurtled toward them. He caught it one handed and held it out to her.

“We have smaller ones for the kids. This one will be too large for you, but it’ll keep you from getting doused. C’mon, teach, give it a try. That’s what today’s all about.”

Her students were staring at her. She couldn’t very well refuse—how would it look to them? She hefted the beat-up yellow coat, then shrugged into it, sure she was putting it on wrong.

“Okay. How do we do this?”

He cracked another grin as he helped fasten the coat, giving her a glimpse of his face. Good grief, the man was handsome under that helmet. Then he straightened up and faced the students.

“All right y’all, pay attention. Your teacher and I are gonna show you how this works. Then you’re going to line up and see Cadet Stewart right there who will get you into a coat. You ready?”

A chorus of squeals and giggles and shouts of “yes” filled the air. He had the students’ full attention, and the crowd was growing as some of the other children finished with the sirens and joined them at the fire target.

“When it’s your turn, you’ll stand right here.” He pointed to a spot about a foot from where Katie stood. She took a step forward. “Good job. I want you to put your feet a little wide—not too wide, just about shoulder distance.”

He looked back at Katie until she moved her feet apart. “Perfect. Now, the water comes out of the hose really hard. There is a lot of pressure there. It takes a lot of strength and practice to handle it. So I’m gonna be your buddy. That means I’ll stand behind you, like this.”

He stepped behind Katie and she held her breath. He leaned in so close his visor brushed against her hair, then spoke softly near her ear. “I’m going to have to put my arms around you for this. Are you okay with that?”

Her brain whirled in so many directions she couldn’t find words. All she could do was nod. This man had asked consent to touch her instead of assuming. He was remarkably good with children. She missed the next thing he said to them, but caught something about how he would show them where to grip the nozzle.

“This is a one-inch hose,” he continued. “It’s the smallest we have, but it can still be hard to handle. The nozzle is a straight tip—which is what we use to hit specific spots, like the hole in our target over there.”

He shifted the hose to one hand and stepped a little closer. “Here we go.”

His other arm came around her and Katie was surrounded by the smell of smoke and a clean, crisp scent that had to be his cologne. He pointed to the nozzle and guided her hands. This guy could make a mint doing this at a bar or someplace like that. On her school’s playground, with her students watching, Katie was struggling to keep her mind out of the gutter.

Then his hands tightened over hers and the hose jumped as he opened the nozzle. The stream soared over the target and the children laughed.

The man’s chest rumbled with his own laughter and he leaned down to her, bringing the scent of his cologne even closer. “It’s stronger than you think, isn’t it? Use your core, it’ll make it easier to control.”

In a complete fog, Katie tightened up and found he was right. Instead of feeling like the hose was trying to lift her arms away from her body, she was able to bring it down and get the stream right into the target.

“That’s it!” His breath was hot on her ear, but that had to be her imagination. “Just like that. Hold it steady. Now count backwards from ten.”

Everything in Katie was at war as she mentally started a countdown. This felt like flirting. Serious flirting. If she were anywhere but at work, she’d be flirting right back.

She got to one and his hands twisted, the flow of water stopped, but the hose still felt like a live thing in her hands. “There’s always tension in the hose,” he said. “Great job. Thanks for being such a good sport.”

Her class cheered as she stepped away. One of her students, nearly swimming in even the children’s size coat, rushed forward for his turn. Cadet Stewart helped Katie out of her borrowed coat.

“We’ve got three kid-size coats,” Stewart said. “If you help, we can get the next two students ready while this one takes his turn. Then we’ll just kind of assembly line it from there.”

Katie watched as Cadet Stewart demonstrated how to fasten the coats. Everything went quickly after that. The firefighter kept up a steady stream of encouragement that was always cheerful. The playground monitor brought the rest of her class over and took the ones who had already had their turn up to the front of the truck.

“I’m next!” The boy with the blond curls took his place in front of Katie and held his arms out for the coat. Cadet Stewart took over and thanked Katie with a smile. She did a quick check—all her students were in the care of a playground monitor. She could relax for a minute and process whatever the hell had happened between her and the firefighter.

“You look like you’re in a daze.” Cinda gestured to the picnic tables under the trees and the two sat. “You okay?”

Katie forced a smile. “Yeah, that was just…” She didn’t have words for whatever that was. Even if she did, she didn’t want to be sharing them with the first-grade teacher.

“Amos is a bit like a big kid himself,” Cinda replied. Katie’s stomach did a flip flop and she swallowed hard.

“Amos? As in…Kimmel?” She looked back at the tall man now squatting next to the little blond boy. “That is Amos Kimmel?”

Oh no. No. No. No.

Amos had been best friends with her older brother, Miles. She’d had the most crushable crush on the boy with intense blue eyes and a laugh that had rung in her dreams for years after she’d left. She’d kept those feelings to herself, mostly, but it wouldn’t have taken a genius to see it.

How did Amos of all people become a firefighter? Miles had been staunchly anti-establishment—police, fire, it didn’t matter. Just like their father. If they wore a uniform and worked for the “gov’ment”, he didn’t like them. And neither did his friends.

The Amos she’d known had been thin and a little awkward. His firefighting gear might make him appear larger than life, but the arms around her earlier, and the wall of chest she’d felt behind her, said he was not skinny now.

“Didja see me, Miss Cinda? Didja see?” The blond boy jumped up and down in front of them, talking rapid fire about Mister Amos and how he was going to grow up to be a firefighter someday. Or maybe police, like Miss Drea. Or maybe he’d become a vet like Papa Brian. Or a ranch manager like his mama.

“Yes, Kyle,” Cinda replied. Katie recognized the patient teacher voice and took the opportunity to make some polite comments before going to gather her class. Unsurprisingly, none of the students were interested in the police cars or the road equipment after the excitement they’d already had. They were thirty minutes from the half-day pickup time and many of them were getting tired.

She herded everyone back to class and encouraged them to take turns talking about their favorite part of the day while they gathered their things and got ready to go home.

After her last student had gone, Katie went back to the playground, now filled with the older children. She looked toward the fire truck and tried to tell herself it had nothing to do with catching another glimpse of Amos.

It took her a minute to spot him. He’d taken off his coat and removed his helmet and now sat perched on top of the engine. Katie’s mouth went dry. His blue uniform T-shirt pulled tight across his shoulders and heavy lines of tattoos coursed down both arms. His dark hair was cropped close—she remembered him with longer hair that flopped into his eyes, he’d always been flicking it back.

She’d spent enough afternoons doing her homework at one end of the kitchen table while Miles and Amos had hunkered together at the other end, supposedly working. She pushed those thoughts away. Miles was the last person she wanted to think about. Well, the second last. Their father took first place in that category.

She hadn’t chosen to move away. She had just graduated eighth grade and Miles had barely passed tenth. That summer, without any warning, their mother had packed Katie’s and her brother’s things and the three of them had left Orchard Creek. For the next several years, they’d moved around wherever their mother could find work and cheap housing.

Jan Tilman’s intentions may have been good, but the reality was, nothing changed with Miles. No matter where they moved, he found the same crowd and fell into the same habits. Miles’ behavior had gotten worse, not better, and Katie needed to stop this little trip down memory lane. She hadn’t talked to her brother in years, and didn’t want to. After college, she’d never imagined she’d move back here, but in all the time away, she’d never found a place that felt like home. She’d missed the mountains and the woods.

When she’d seen that Orchard Creek had an opening for a kindergarten teacher, she’d jumped at the chance. In the four weeks she’d been back, she’d found a few familiar faces and a lot of familiar names. She never imagined that Amos would still be here. Or that he would have grown up so fine.