Fireproof, p.1
Fireproof, page 1
Fireproof
Delancey Stewart
Copyright © 2021 by Delancey Stewart
All rights reserved.
This book was inspired by the True North Series written by Sarina Bowen. It is an original work that is published by Heart Eyes Press LLC.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Mason
2. Heather
3. Mason
4. Heather
5. Mason
6. Mason
7. Heather
8. Mason
9. Heather
10. Mason
11. Heather
12. Mason
13. Heather
14. Mason
15. Heather
16. Mason
17. Heather
18. Mason
19. Heather
20. Mason
21. Heather
22. Mason
23. Heather
24. Mason
25. Heather
26. Mason
27. Heather
28. Mason
29. Heather
30. Mason
31. Mason
32. Heather
33. Mason
34. Heather
35. Mason
36. Heather
37. Mason
You Will Also Enjoy…
Acknowledgments
1
Mason
Colebury, VT
“So you’ve used one of these before, right?” My new boss, a lively, dark-haired woman named Zara, was eyeing me skeptically from behind a coffee machine that looked more convoluted than the new milkers I’d brought in for my goats.
I hadn’t. But I might have suggested that I had during the short interview process where Zara and her co-owner, Audrey, gave me the impression that they were desperate enough to hire just about anyone with a heartbeat and half a brain, so long as he was willing to learn.
“Technically, no,” I said. I hadn’t straight-out lied about it before, and I wouldn’t do it now. “But I pulled a few shifts helping out back in the service.”
Zara turned to face me fully, crossing her arms over her chest and giving me a grin. “Did they have a temperamental Astra in the coffee mess when you were a Marine, Mason?” She patted the complicated-looking machine that occupied much of the front counter.
I took a quick look around the interior of the Busy Bean, the place I’d hoped to begin some secondary employment today in order to bring in a bit of the money that the farm wasn’t currently making. And then I realized I really needed to show Zara why I’d be an asset here, whether I’d made fancy coffee before or not. I needed a flexible side job, one that would still let me take care of things at the farm, and the hours here worked well.
“No,” I said slowly, making a point to relax my hands and shoulders—I had a tendency to clench them and I knew it added to what my sister called my “resting murder face,” which apparently held fast to my expression about ninety-six percent of the time and freaked people out. I blew out a breath, forcing myself to relax. “But I’m a quick learner, Zara, and I hope you’ll give me a chance.”
“Relax, Mason. Having you here—even if it’s just another body to run plates out front—is great. We’re desperate.” She grinned at me, and I did relax a bit. “When we first interviewed, you said something about improving efficiencies. Audrey and I both think we could use some of that military efficiency around here. Got anything in mind? I mean, I know it’s your first day.”
I nodded. It was early, and the smell of coffee and baked goods was beginning to warm the air. The sky outside the plate glass windows grew brighter, and I knew we didn’t have a ton of time before the Bean opened for the day. I hoped to still be here by then.
“Let’s hear it,” Zara said, and she stood just a hair taller, as if she was bracing herself for an assault.
I could be intense, I knew that, and I forced my posture to remain relaxed, tried to keep my voice light.
“Just a couple. For one thing, the menu board—“
“Be careful now, that’s Kieran’s baby. He doesn’t work here anymore but he still likes to come in and beautify the board. That one’s his.” She was looking at the huge sunflower that was, admittedly, beautiful but that dominated the board to the point that the menu was an afterthought.
I smiled, holding my hands up in front of me, palms facing her. “It looks great,” I said. “But it’s not about looks. There’s a lot of stuff up there, and some really loopy writing that takes a few minutes to figure out.” The menu board was a dense swirl of color, the actual offerings of the Busy Bean competing for space around the art.
Zara continued to stare over her shoulder at the board.
“If you simplified the board, customers could figure out what they want a little faster. It might not seem like a lot, but when the line is to the door, seconds count.”
She raised one shoulder, as if suggesting I go on.
“You might also get a hot water tap here, next to the sink. Getting hot water from the espresso machine for non-espresso drinks forces everyone to wait for the pressure and steam to rebuild here.” I indicated the spout of the machine. “And time is money for a little shop like this, right?”
Her eyes had gone a tiny bit wider. “Right,” she said slowly, glancing at the machine as if it had said something in response. “So you do know a bit about this machine.”
“I did some reading.”
She nodded, looking wary, and I knew I had to be careful. This place was Zara’s baby—and Audrey’s. But I could help here, and I didn’t think making coffee would be that hard to learn.
“I’ve got one more suggestion,” I said, and she looked up at me now, a smile lifting one side of her mouth.
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve got a lot more than that?” she asked.
A low chuckle escaped me. She was right, but just because routine and efficiency were the things that kept me sane didn’t mean everyone wanted to hear about them. “I’ll just give you one for now,” I said.
“Hit me.”
“You have a lot of regulars. They shouldn’t have to wait in line if you already know what they want.”
She nodded. “We’ve talked about that. But part of what people come in here for is the personal attention, the banter at the counter, the atmosphere.”
“No reason they can’t get all that while picking up their drinks at the far end of the counter. You could have them prepay, if you wanted to, or put in a text-ordering system. Or both.”
Her nose wrinkled. “It’s just a lot of logistics,” she said. “I’m not sure we’re ready to invest in stuff like that.”
I nodded. Maybe they weren’t, but it didn’t have to be complicated. “I get it,” I said. “But it could be as simple as keeping a tablet there with the shop’s quick-order email account pulled up. Folks can email before they leave the house or from their cars.”
“So you’re going to manage the line and check email when we’re slammed?”
I’d come in lots of times before starting today, watched the way things operated behind the counter when they were busy. And when they weren’t.
“When you’ve got two people up here anyway, one of them can be designated to check. Keep notifications on the device, and there’s an audio cue that an order has come in.”
Zara didn’t look sold. She glanced up at the clock and then out at the door. “I like you, Mason,” she said. “Even if you do look like you kind of want to kill me sometimes.”
“I assure you, I don’t.”
She laughed. “I know. But Amelia told me to give you shit about your resting murder face.”
Amelia. Of course my sister would have been in here talking about me. It was like we were two halves of one personality—she got all the bright, shiny, social genes, and I ended up with the logic, practicality, and focus. Not that she was flighty or ditzy. She wasn’t. But sometimes she seemed to overlook reality in favor of maintaining an upbeat outlook. I was a little more realistic.
“Of course she did.”
“Anyway, let me show you how this bad boy works, and this morning we’ll just have you pulling espressos, okay? Nothing fancy. Master the shots and we’ll move on.”
I gave her a single nod. A plan. Good.
As Zara went through the steps of making a simple espresso, I noted them all, both in my mind and in the book I kept shoved in my pocket.
“You’re not going to have time to refer to your notes,” Zara said, glancing over her shoulder as I made notes.
“Won’t need to. Writing them down solidifies them in my mind.”
She didn’t say anything else for a few minutes, and we went on. By the time she was ready to open the doors, I could make a shot perfectly and with precision.
“I’ll show you how to steam the milk when the early rush ends,” she said, smiling at me with a bit more confidence now that she’d seen I wasn’t going to completely flub the basics.
As we served the first few customers, Zara introducing me brightly to each one as the new barista, I fell into an easy rhythm that relaxed me. Every other thing in my life might have been hanging by an uncertain thread—the farm, my uncle, my mental state—but the efficiency and routine involved in making shot after shot of espresso felt like certainty. This made sense.
At least until Zara shot me a strange smile and said, “You know, Mason, every barista we’ve hired so far has fallen in love and left us. You planning to do the same?”
“There’s not a chance in hell, Zara.”
I’d already figured out that my life worked best alone, and I had no plans to change that.
2
Heather
Washington D.C.
I could tell by the way the building across from mine was turning a deep gray-orange that it was well past time to leave the office, but I felt anchored to my desk, reliant on its solidity. My desk, I knew, had very few surprises for me. And I wasn’t sure I could handle one more surprise.
“Hey.” Morgan stepped into my office. He was technically my boss, a tall man with red hair and broad shoulders. He was also a friend—I’d had dinner at his house, sipped wine with him and his partner, Sam, more times than I could count. “You ready to go?”
Morgan had taken to checking on me at the end of the day, making sure I had someone to walk out with. I appreciated it but wished I didn’t need it.
I’d been a steady, solid career lobbyist at one point, fighting for the right to education for kids who couldn’t fight for themselves. Now I required babysitting, evidently.
“Yeah,” I stood, leaning down to retrieve my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk. My legs ached from sitting too long, and my body felt worn out, pulled too thin. “Let’s go.”
Morgan was watching me, a look on his face like the one he got when we were reading a brief about something particularly distressing happening in the school system. His pity face.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I snapped at him.
“Heather,” he said, his voice kind. “It’s wearing on you. I can see it.”
“It’s over now, so . . .” The trial. My testimony. The verdict. It was all over. So my life was supposed to be getting better now. The stress of testifying against the popular senator who’d been my biggest champion at one time should have been dissipating. Things should have been calming down.
“But it’s not. You’re not sleeping,” Morgan said, clearly referring to the dark circles I’d tried to cover with concealer. “You’ve lost weight.”
My clothes did seem to be hanging in a way they hadn’t before.
“And you’ve got this look in your eyes like a koala that just fell out of its tree.”
I stopped in the doorway at his side, frowning at him. “Really? Is that a look you’re pretty familiar with?”
He smiled in the easy way he had, lifting one shoulder and bumping me with the other. “I can imagine it,” he said. “That poor little fat bear bouncing a couple times on the hard ground and then having to look up at the branches of that towering Eucalyptus like, ‘Oh shit. I have to climb that fucker again?’”
Despite the ache in my bones and my mind, I laughed. “I guess I feel that way a little bit, yeah.”
“How many emails did you get today?” he asked, glancing at me sideways as we made our way to the front of the office, switching off lights as we went.
He wasn’t asking about typical work-related emails. I got a lot of those. He meant the nasty, hate-filled emails I’d been receiving ever since I’d agreed to testify against the senator about what I’d seen when I’d worked late one night with a group of others at his office. Basically, him with a staffer who was definitely not his wife.
I would never have even mentioned the indiscretion. Men cheated. I’d learned that lesson a couple times in life—my parents, my high school and college boyfriends. But then the news hit about similar indiscretions this particular senator had made with several women, some of them underage. Because he was a supporter of education reform, the allegations against him were particularly unsettling. As he was my best ally in the senate, the case was devastating to me personally. And since I mentioned to Morgan what I’d seen, he pushed me to testify.
It had been the right thing to do, but my life was a disaster as a result.
“Seven,” I said, sighing. “Only one of them mentioned dismembering me in my sleep, and there were only two that suggested I was just a jealous slut.”
We chuckled humorlessly about the emails, texts, and snail mail I received regularly now. I had known the senator was popular—he had a huge base of loyal supporters who were sure he could do no wrong. And his conviction had enraged them. Their anger had been pointed at those who’d helped to secure the verdict since the trial began.
“Texts?”
“Four.”
“You changed your number, right?”
“Didn’t matter.” I had changed my number. The people who desperately wanted to reach me, to put me in my place, to frighten and harass me, had somehow found the new one quickly.
Morgan walked me down the steps of our building and out onto the darkening street. Without me asking, he took my arm and turned me toward my apartment building.
“You live the other way,” I reminded him, wondering if maybe tonight he’d get sick of babysitting and just send me home. I didn’t want him to, and I hated how scared I was.
“I like a walk after work,” he said lightly. “And making Sam wait for me is a good thing. I don’t want him to think I’m too whipped.”
“You’re completely whipped.” I elbowed him as we walked.
“Just don’t tell him that. A man likes a challenge.”
I smiled up at my friend, thankful for his constant presence and good humor. I needed both lately.
“Here we are, my lady.” Morgan made a silly bow as we came to a stop in front of my building and his phone began jangling in his pocket. He glanced at it. “Oh, no.”
“What?” I faced him.
“Maybe tonight was the wrong night to make Sam wait. We have reservations. Gotta run!” He kissed me on the cheek and then turned, hurrying down the street.
“Thanks, Morgan,” I called, fishing my keys out of my pocket.
“Get some sleep, Heather.” His voice came back to me as he turned the corner.
I nodded and turned toward the doors, where I found I was tired enough to spend a whole minute trying the wrong key.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself, pulling the right one from the ring and trying again.
“You shameful little slut.” A deep, gravelly voice hit me from just over my right shoulder, and I spun to find a man standing there, scowling at me, his eyes burning with hatred.
I didn’t say anything back. This wasn’t the first time I’d been confronted on the street. I hastened to get the key working in the lock, glancing around for Morgan, who was long gone.
“You think you can bring down a good man like Senator Andrews and get away with it?”
Shit, shit, shit. My hands were shaking so intensely I couldn’t make the key fit. Sweat trickled down my back beneath my light shell.
“It’s people like you,” the man went on, his tone scathing, “who take everything this country stands for and shit all over it. Who find a good God-fearing man like the senator and do everything you can to sully his good name, to bring him down to your level.”
My insides had clenched so tightly I felt like adrenaline was literally shooting out of my fingertips as I fumbled the keys and watched with horror as they fell to the concrete in front of me.
“You should be careful, you little whore,” the man said, leaning in so close to me I could feel the spittle hitting my shoulder as I bent down to retrieve my keys. I cast a wild glance around the street again, but there was no help in sight. I was alone, it was almost dark, and this man was so close to me I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. “Someone might just get it into their head to take out the trash,” he said.
