Page 13 of Airhead

“If you want grandchildren, go be pushy with any of the your dozen other children.”

“Oh I will,” he said, without even a hint of shame. “Doubt not, Pumpkin, that I will.”

Good. Great. Perfect. Let the rest of her siblings feel her pain. Maybe their parents would get lucky with one of the others, but they sure wouldn’t with her. No way.

“I’ll plan the party with Frank,” she said, steeling her resolve. “But you aren’t getting any grandchildren out of it—not a single one.”

Her dad grabbed another cookie. “Whatever you say, Pumpkin.”

She did say it. Swore it. Vowed it. Nothing was going to happen between her and Frank Hartigan. Not even a single, measly, little kiss.

Chapter Six

Katie wasn’t avoiding Frank. She’d been busy.

First, there were her duties as a sister. Connie wasn’t crying into her beer any longer, but she was starting to remember some of the less shitty things about The Creep.

Like an idiot, Katie was convinced that if she could just keep her sister distracted, Connie would skip over the go-back-to-him stage of her on again-off again relationship. Distraction took time.

Then, there was her job. Her third graders weren’t going to teach themselves their multiplication tables. (Well, Hakim was, but that kid had entered third grade reading at a seventh-grade level. He was on his own smarter-than-smart track.) People liked to think that teachers came in when the first bell rang and left at the dismissal bell. Those people were wrong. There was arriving bus duty, lunch duty, recess duty, departing bus duty, after-school parent meetings, teacher meetings, planning for the next unit, and always a backpack full of daily work to take home and grade. She definitely wasn’t eating bonbons with her feet up on her desk.

Lastly, she had to wash her hair.

Okay fine. That last one was weak, but she obviously needed to shake her brain back in place because, since the firehouse, there hadn’t been a night when she didn’t slide her fingers down her panties and get off to Frank Hartigan. Or a morning when she didn’t make strategic use of the detachable shower head. Or an afternoon before Connie got off her shift at Radio Shack. Or⁠—

The blaring sound of the school’s fire alarm jolted her off the thought path she didn’t want to be on in the first place and back to the school’s playground. A group of students were huddled around the vent that blasted excess heat from the school’s boiler out into the it’s-fall-but-it-feels-like-winter air. Gotta love autumn in the Northeast, where it’s sunny and fifty degrees one day and a break-out-the-ice-scraper thirty degrees the next.

“Come on girls,” Katie called to the huddled students. “We have to go meet the rest of our class at our designated spot on the sidewalk.”

“But it’s a drill,” Casey said. “There’s no actual fire. It’s just stop-drop-and-roll day.”

Someone had totally been listening at the door of the teacher’s lounge again in order to know that faculty-only information. Every year, the administrators tried to keep the date quiet so the kids would get to practice for a fire without actually know they were practicing. It rarely worked out that way, because the kids were expert level eavesdroppers. However, the fire safety presentation put on by the Waterbury Fire Department—and the plastic fire hats they gave out—was always appreciated, even without the surprise factor.

“I’m too cold to move,” Angi said as she ruined her own argument by wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing.

“The sidewalk.” Katie nodded her head to where the rest of the kids and teachers were gathering. “Let’s go.”

The pack of girls groaned but marched with Katie across the gravel, past the merry-go-round and pair of metal see-saws, to stand with the rest of their class until the ‘all-clear’ double beep sounded. When they all filed back inside, the warmth made everyone let out sighs of appreciation. Katie led them into the cafeteria, where the firefighters had already set up on the small stage on the west end of the room.

The usual suspects from the community engagement division were up there, along with the addition of Spot, the one-eared Dalmatian from her dad’s station. who was doing happy spins at seeing all the kids. The guy from community engagement who held the end of Spot’s leash was doing his best to keep the hyperactive pup from diving off the edge of the stage but it wasn’t looking good for him.

Scanning the stage, Katie looked for whoever from her dad’s station had drawn the short straw to give the fire prevention speech to the kids.

Her skin sizzled with sudden anticipation half a second before someone walked up beside her and Frank said, “Figured you wouldn’t be able to avoid me here.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she said as she pivoted to face him. “I’ve been busy.”

It wasn’t fair that she had to tilt her chin up just to glare at him while he stood with his hands behind his back, watching her like she was the most fascinating woman in the world. She was tall enough that, most of the time, she almost eye-level with whichever guy had decided to try her patience—which was exactly what Frank was doing. Oh, he might think he was flirting with her, but she was immune to his charm. Just because her Pinto’s passenger door didn’t squeak loudly enough to be heard four blocks away anymore didn’t mean she was softening to him. She was an ice block that the man couldn’t melt.

Then he did the grin thing, and she defrosted a little.

It was only a few degrees, but it was enough to make her breath catch and her heart speed up.

And when he leaned down so his lips were close to her ear?

Her heart went from ‘racing on Tatooine’ fast to ‘warp speed in the Millennium Falcon’ fast.

“Sounds like someone needs some help relaxing,” he said, his words brushing against the shell of her ear.