Four Weddings and a Fireman by Jennifer Bernard Read Free Book Online Page B

his huge body and drew glances from whichever girls in the bar hadn’t already checked them out.
    â€œDid anyone ever tell you you’re priceless?”
    â€œNo one who owns a pair of balls.”
    â€œAsk Roman. He went all the way to battalion chief. See if he thinks it’s worth the agita.”
    Roman wasn’t much more help. “It’s the kind of decision a guy has to make for himself,” he said as he bustled around the kitchen of Lucio’s Ristorante Autentico Italiano. “Yeah, it’s more responsibility. You can’t be friends with the guys in the same way as you were before. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean you, not me. I was a captain before I was a captain, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œYeah, I can see that.” Roman had the most commanding presence Vader had ever witnessed. He’d probably told his mother how to diaper him correctly. “I like hanging out with the guys, but I’m getting older.”
    â€œAnd wiser?”
    â€œWouldn’t go that far.”
    Roman chuckled and poured olive oil into a stainless steel pan. “If you decide to go for it, come back and I’ll give you some tips. Most guys don’t make it the first round, you know. Most have to take the exam a ­couple times before they pass.”
    â€œHow long did it take you?”
    â€œOnce. But like I said, I was—­”
    â€œRight. Born a captain. Look, don’t mention this to Sabina yet, would you? I’m trying to keep it quiet at the station.”
    â€œI’ll try, but if she pries it out of me with sweet—­”
    Vader held up a hand. “You can stop right there.”
    If only he could talk to Sabina about this, he thought as he left the restaurant. This, and so many other things. Cherie, his mother, his money worries. But even though Sabina had been his best friend at the station before she got married to Roman, he’d never told her about his mother’s situation. She’d probably be stunned that he’d kept it to himself. Everyone thought he was such an open book—­and he liked for them to think that. Everything that happened to him away from home, including risking his life at a four-­alarm fire, was a relief compared to his worries about his mother.
    And if that wasn’t fucked up, he didn’t know what was.
    For a relaxing vacation join the fire ser­vice! Learn how to carry a hundred pounds of gear on your back while breathing through a mask! Hold the lives of your fellow firefighters in your hands and trust them not to get you killed!
    As he reached his truck, his cell phone buzzed.
    â€œYo, Stud.”
    Fred answered with exaggerated hacking. “I’m sick, dude. You have to fill in for me.”
    â€œFill in for you where? We’re off today.”
    Fred coughed with so much force that Vader pulled the phone away from his ear, as if the germs could fly through the atmosphere. “Firefighter for a Day. Can’t do it. Don’t want to infect anyone.”
    Vader rolled his eyes. He knew fake coughing when he heard it; he wasn’t a trained paramedic for nothing. “Fine. Who’s the winner? Give me the address and I’ll head over.”
    â€œFifty-­eight Gardam Street,” said Fred, then hung up in a hurry, before Vader a chance to say he knew exactly where that was, and exactly what Fred was up to, and that he really didn’t appreciate it.
    Or did he? When it came to Cherie, he wasn’t sure of anything.
    Ten minutes later he strode up the front steps of Cherie’s three-­story house on Gardam Street. Cherie and her brother Jacob had signed a lease on the old Victorian for practically nothing, when it was a falling-­down wreck. They’d poured time and money into it, so at least it was no longer a death trap, although the graceful front veranda still sagged in the middle and a ­couple of the shutters hung crookedly.