Between Honor And Duty. Charlotte Maclay

my mother once told me that after three children, it becomes a crowd and they all entertain each other. I thought of us kids as a mob scene, but we did have some good times together.”

      “Did you want more children?” Before the words were out, Logan knew he should have bitten his tongue. “I’m sorry. Under the circumstances, that was a really thoughtless question.”

      “No, it wasn’t.” She shrugged. “I did want more children. Being a mother is one of the few things I do really well. But Ray wasn’t all that happy about Kevin—we hadn’t been married long—and then when I got pregnant with Maddie…” She let the thought dangle.

      Logan frowned at that. He’d like to have kids of his own, but without a wife that wasn’t likely to happen, and he couldn’t imagine a man not being thrilled by any child that was his. “I’d say if Maddie hadn’t come along, then both you and Ray would have missed out on something special.”

      Her wistful smile nearly undid him. “I know,” she said softly. “I told him that the day Maddie was born.”

      As they stepped through the doorway into the bay area, her gaze scanned past the parked fire engine to spot her children. Kevin was back to the restored fire truck, turning it into a jungle gym. Maddie was nowhere in sight.

      “Maddie!” Janice called. “It’s time to go.”

      “Maybe she’s already out at your car,” Logan suggested.

      “More likely she’s discussing puppies with Buttons.” She cupped her hands and shouted for Maddie again.

      This time the child appeared from around the back of the fire station, Buttons faithfully at her side. The guilty look on the little girl’s face was as obvious as if someone had painted a big letter G on her forehead.

      “What have you been up to?” her mother asked.

      Maddie hung her head. “Nuthin’.”

      “And what are you hiding behind your back?”

      Slowly, the child extended her hand. “A pencil.”

      Logan stepped forward to retrieve the item. It wasn’t a pencil but rather a thick purple felt pen like the ones the department used for white-board sessions. Harmless, he thought, until he examined Buttons more closely.

      “Janice, I think you’d better come take a look at this.”

      Cocking her head to the side, she scrutinized Buttons. “Oh, Maddie, what have you done?”

      The child puffed out her lower lip. “I liked Buttons’ spots and I thought he’d look nice with more spots.”

      “Purple spots?” Janice choked out, barely able to contain her laughter.

      Logan was in the same fix. His stomach muscles ached from holding back a howl of his own.

      The fire tone shattered the lighthearted moment. Over the loudspeaker the distorted voice of Emma Jean, the dispatcher, announced, “Engines 61 and 62, Ladder 67. Structure fire, Broadway and Twenty-fifth—”

      Before the directions were finished, Logan had turned away. But the quick touch of Janice’s hand on his arm, as soft as a butterfly landing, halted him. He glanced back, seeing the echo of fear in her soft, brown eyes.

      “Be careful,” she whispered.

      He nodded. “I always am.”

      Turning again, he raced to the ladder truck, stepping into his heavy, fire-resistant bunker pants that he’d earlier stacked on the floor beside the truck, and he slipped his feet into his boots. He pulled his suspenders up in one fluid motion before reaching for his heavy turnout jacket. At the same time, he swung into the backward-facing seat where his helmet was waiting. The truck vibrated as the engineer started the motor and the smell of exhaust fumes filled the bay.

      Seconds later, they were speeding out of the fire station behind the two fire engines, heading north on Paseo Boulevard, sirens screaming.

      Logan kept his eyes on Janice’s stricken face until the truck rounded the corner.

      The vow he’d made never to make a woman dread the sound of a siren was a good one.

      Still, he couldn’t help wishing someday a woman like Janice Gainer would be waiting for him when he got off a shift, to rejoice in his safe return.

      Chapter Three

      The second day of school and already Janice missed her children. It had been bad enough when Kevin had gone off to kindergarten, but then she’d had Maddie to keep her company. Now the silent house mocked the maternal trauma of sending her youngest child to school.

      They were both growing up so fast.

      She went into the laundry room to take the clothes out of the dryer only to discover the barricade of towels she’d arranged around the bottom of the washing machine had sprung a leak. A puddle of water spread out across the vinyl no-wax floor.

      “Oh, damn,” she muttered. Ray was supposed to have fixed the plumbing months ago. She couldn’t go on indefinitely trying to mop up the mess. Eventually the flooring underneath would get wet and rot. She’d have to call a plumber.

      The doorbell rang, and she rolled her eyes. Who on earth—

      In a peevish mood, she marched to the front of the house, peered through the peep hole in the door, and suddenly her heart felt lighter. Forget her vow to become independent, to stand on her own two feet. She hadn’t felt this giddy since her high-school days when her prom date showed up, and it wasn’t entirely because she needed a handyman around the house.

      Opening the door, she resisted the urge to hug Logan Strong. Barely. “You, sir, are an answer to a woman’s prayers.”

      A wicked smile slanted his lips, and he arched his brows. “I am?”

      “Absolutely. Assuming you know anything about plumbing and you’re here to work on my honey-do list.” Or take her out to dance the whole night through.

      He laughed, that warm chuckle that seemed to rumble through his chest and skitter along her flesh like a tropical mist. “Darn, and here I thought you had something else in mind.”

      Janice flushed. At some very conscious level, she had been thinking of something else—something forbidden—but she didn’t want to admit that, certainly not to Logan. “I’m sorry. I mean, you said you might come back to…”

      “I meant to come a couple of days ago, but I was studying for the engineers’ exam that’s coming up soon.”

      “Then you really don’t have to—”

      “Fixing busted plumbing is one of my all-time favorite things to do.”

      “It is?” She looked at him incredulously.

      “Sure. It falls on my list of favorites somewhere between cleaning out backed-up sewers and crawling through an attic crawl space on a blistering hot summer day.”

      Delight fluttered in her midsection at his teasing tone. When was the last time she’d actually had fun with a man? So long ago she couldn’t remember.

      “Do you suppose there’s a way I could clone you? Renting you out to distraught housewives would solve all my financial problems.”

      With a welcoming smile, she opened the door and he stepped inside. Although he wasn’t a giant, he was tall enough that she suspected he’d played high-school basketball. And he was lean, like a runner, with great shoulders and well-defined biceps apparent beneath the stencilled T-shirt he wore, a souvenir of a recent 10K run in Paseo. Today he was wearing khaki shorts. His knees weren’t at all knobby, she noted. Instead, his muscular legs were worth writing home about.

      “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

      A vivid imagination on her