"Holy s.h.i.t." Scott set his beer on the table with a thump and leaned back in his chair. "You're in love with Lydia."

Aidan flipped him the bird. It was all he was capable of at the moment.

"You love my sister. You a.s.shole."

"Way to be sensitive, Kincaid," Danny muttered.

"What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do now?" he demanded, throwing up his hands. "When I thought he was just bangin' my sister, I could be totally p.i.s.sed off. But if he really loves her and his f.u.c.king heart's broken, then...he's my best friend, so what the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do with that?"

"You could hug him," Danny suggested.

Aidan glared at him, but the knot in his throat and his chest was loosening and he gave a hoa.r.s.e chuckle. "No hugging."

"If you cry, Hunt, I'll hug you right here in front of G.o.d and everybody, so suck it up."

Aidan was surprised when that got a laugh out of him. He'd thought it would be a lot longer before he was able to laugh at anything. "I'll do my best not to cry into my beer."

They were all quiet for a few minutes, listening to the music and staring at their drinks, until Scott gave him a serious look. "Am I right?"

After so much lying, it was hard but still a relief to look his friend in the eye and admit it. "Yes, I love Lydia."

"Like real love?"

"Like the marriage, babies, dog, minivan, white picket fence, matching rocking chairs and thinks she's gorgeous in ratty sweats kind of love."

"s.h.i.t."

Aidan nodded. "That pretty much sums up my life at the moment."

"But she doesn't love you?" Danny asked.

"She doesn't love firefighters."

"What does that mean?" Scotty asked. "Her entire family's firefighters, for chrissake."

"It means if I worked at Home Depot or turned wrenches or anything else for a living, she probably would have moved in with me by now."

"Todd was an a.s.shole," Walsh said.

"It goes a little deeper than her ex-husband, I think, though he's a huge part of it."

"She always had a hard time with Dad," Scotty said. "Even though she's the middle child, she kind of took over the mom role when Mom died, and I think being the woman of a firefighting household before she was even a grown woman was tough on her. It made some of the day-to-day issues experienced wives deal with seem larger than life, I imagine."

"It's tough even when they are grown women," Walsh said. "I'm sure Ashley and I being separated helped sh.o.r.e up Lydia's beliefs about being married to firefighters, too, especially since that's why she came back in the first place."

"Speaking of that," Aidan said, running his finger down the condensation on his bottle, "has she said when she's going back?"

"Ashley hasn't said anything to me about it."

Scotty shrugged. "Again, she's not speaking to me. Thus ill.u.s.trating one of the many reasons you don't want your best friend sleeping with your sister. Everything's fun and games until the breakup, and now you're an a.s.shole, I'm an a.s.shole and my sister has a broken heart."

Walsh nodded, then lifted his beer as if in a toast. "Yeah, but at least your sister's broken heart will heal."

After a few seconds, Aidan couldn't hold back the laughter anymore and Scotty laughed with him. It was a start, he thought. He'd be thankful for these glimpses their friendship would survive and use them to ride out the rough times, when Scotty was still throwing him att.i.tude. They'd be okay, though.

But he knew the weeks wouldn't feel any less long and lonely because, at the end of the day, he didn't have Lydia anymore.

THEY THREW LYDIA'S pity-slash-farewell party at Ashley's house because Danny had pulled a night tour and she had enough room for them all to sleep if they had too much to drink.

It was a good thing, Lydia thought, since they'd all jumped that hurdle at least an hour before. Some more than others. She was sipping her vodka-and-raspberry seltzer because the last thing she needed on top of unbearable sadness and heartbreak was a hangover.

"We should go put a bag of flaming dog s.h.i.t on his deck," Courtney said. She obviously had no fear of hangovers because she was drinking laps around Lydia, with Ashley and Becca somewhere in the middle. "Do people still do that?"

"A big bag of flaming dog s.h.i.t," Becca said. "One of those paper leaf bags that's like four feet tall. And we can go sneak around people's backyards and steal their dog s.h.i.t until it's totally full. Then we'll put it on his deck and set it on fire."

"Courtney, you can't do that," Ashley argued, pointing a finger in her general direction and leaning close. "Only you can prevent dog s.h.i.t fires."

"He's a firefighter," Lydia said. "He'd just put it out, anyway. And we'd get arrested."

Courtney made a shocked face. "They'd never know it was us."

"I hate to break it to you, but Ashley and I were born and raised in this neighborhood, so us dragging around a giant paper bag and stealing people's dog s.h.i.t from their backyards is not going to go unnoticed."

"That's not fun at all." Becca sighed. "What are we going to do, then?"

"I'm going to go home," Lydia said. She'd probably go after the weekend, to give Ashley a few more days to acclimate, but then her time in Boston would be over. "I'm going to curl up with my roommate's cat and a big bucket of ice cream and watch movies that make me cry. And then I'm going to find another job and get on with my life."

"No." Courtney shook her head. "We can still make this work. You know everybody, so if somebody asks why we're in their backyard, you can just tell them you're cleaning up the dog poo for them. Like community service."

"You're shut off, Court," Ashley told her. "And whatever you do, don't ever drink without one of us with you because I think you'd make some really bad decisions."

"I think Lydia going back to New Hampshire is a bad decision," she shot back.

"So do I," Ashley said. When Lydia gave her a questioning look, she shrugged. "You asked me why I helped you and Aidan get away for the weekend when I'd been worried about your relationship blowing up in your face. I'd figured out you two might actually be good together and if I helped you guys get away, you'd fall in love and stay here and marry him and work at the bar with me."

"That was never the plan, Ash." But, judging by the ache that intensified in her chest, her heart had decided somewhere along the way that it was a d.a.m.n good plan.

Her sister shrugged. "Sometimes plans change."

"And sometimes plans get canceled," Courtney mumbled. "Even great plans that would have been doing your dog-owning neighbors a huge favor. It was going to be a valuable community service."

"We're not setting anything on fire," Lydia said. "We're going to leave Aidan alone, which is what I should have done from the first day I came back to Boston."

Maybe if she'd left him alone, the way she told herself to do that first night at the bar, she wouldn't be facing the rest of her life with a huge hole in it she wasn't sure anybody else could ever fill. Before Aidan, she hadn't known she was missing anything. But now it would never be the same because she missed him so much she could barely breathe.

"Maybe you should ask him to move in with you," Becca suggested. "He can make you cookies."

"Why would he make me cookies?"

"Because I like cookies."

Lydia nodded. "Of course."

The other three women immediately launched into a lively debate on what the best kind of cookie was. She didn't really care, so she drained her gla.s.s and debated on having another drink.

Asking Aidan to move in with her had crossed her mind, but she'd never been able to muster the nerve to ask him how he'd feel about moving to New Hampshire. To her, that didn't mean transferring to a firehouse in Concord. It meant giving it up and she couldn't ask him to do that. Not since the day she'd seen how very much the job meant to him.

Maybe he'd do it, too. He might be willing to walk away from Boston Fire for her, but at what cost? He couldn't change the man he was and, if he did, was he still the man she loved?

She'd been asking herself that for days and never got an answer but a headache to go with her heartache.

With a sigh, Lydia decided against another drink. What she really wanted was ice cream and she knew for a fact there was a half gallon of Rocky Road in the freezer, but she probably shouldn't go get it. If she did, she'd have to share and, when it came to ice cream, she didn't play well with others. Plus, if there was any chance of her friends getting sick as part of their revelry, she thought she'd do her sister a favor and leave the chocolate ice cream out of it.

"You okay?" Ashley asked, and she realized they were all staring at her.

"Uh, yeah? Do I not look okay?"

"Becca just said she likes walnuts in her peanut b.u.t.ter cookies and you didn't say anything. That's not like you."

"n.o.body wants walnuts in their peanut b.u.t.ter cookies," she said, because it was easier than explaining to three drunk women why ranking cookie types wasn't high on her list of things to do tonight. "Actually, there shouldn't be nuts in any cookies."

"You don't like nuts?" Courtney asked and, of course, all three of them broke out in a case of the giggles.

She managed a smile, but she couldn't giggle with Aidan so front and center in her thoughts. Not a second went by that she didn't think about and miss him. She ached for him, day and night, and there was a little voice in the back of her mind constantly questioning if going back to Concord was the right choice.

Kincaid's Pub was in her blood. No matter where she found a job, it wouldn't be the same. She had a feeling that Ashley and Danny would be starting a family soon, and she didn't see how it would even be possible for her to miss any of her niece's or nephew's lives, to say nothing of Ashley needing to cut back on her hours. She'd missed Courtney and Becca and would miss them even more when she left. And she wanted things to be good between her and Scotty again, but that wouldn't happen with physical distance between them.

Most of all, every time she tried to picture the rest of her life without Aidan, it was depressing as h.e.l.l. Somehow he'd gone from the s.e.xy guy she wanted to scratch some itches with to the man who made her laugh and held her hand and who looked at her like she was the only woman who'd ever made him smile like that.

But Aidan was a package deal. With him came a lifetime of being a firefighter's wife. She'd raise children who were proud of their dad, but afraid for him every time he went to work. He came with a brotherhood and a code of conduct and expectations.

To get the guy, she had to take the whole set. Aidan Hunt not sold separately. It was a risk she wasn't sure her heart could afford.

Chapter Nineteen.

THE KNOCK ON Aidan's door the following evening jacked his heart rate up like a shot of adrenaline to the chest, and he practically jogged to the door. Anybody else he could think of besides Lydia would have sent him a text first.

But when he opened the door, he saw the wrong Kincaid standing in the hall. Tommy had never been to his place before and Aidan felt panic rising in his throat. Fear for Lydia, followed immediately by fear for Scotty. "What happened?"

Tommy frowned at him. "What happened? I knocked on your door and you answered it with no pants on, that's what happened. Who the h.e.l.l does that?"

"s.h.i.t." He stepped back into his living room, knowing he wouldn't get a lecture if there was bad news waiting to be delivered. "Sorry. Come on in and I'll grab some sweats. It scared me when I saw you because you've never been here, so I thought you had bad news."

"I've never been to your place because most of the time you've always been at my place or at the bar."

"Good point." Aidan grabbed a pair of sweatpants out of the clean clothes basket and pulled them on. "You want a drink or something?"

"Nope." He sat down at the kitchen table and gestured for Aidan to sit across from him.

Uh-oh. He was about to get a stern talking-to from Tommy, which wasn't usually an enjoyable situation. Before sitting down, he grabbed a soda from the fridge just in case he was there awhile.

"What's going on with you and Lydia?" Tommy asked once he was seated.

Aidan clenched his jaw, breathing in deeply through his nose. If ever a conversation required him to think before he spoke, it was this one. "Last I heard, she was going back to Concord."

Tommy nodded. "Tomorrow."

If he knew that, Aidan didn't see the point in asking him the question, but he didn't say so. "That's pretty much what's going on with me and Lydia."

"You just going to let her go? That's it?"

"She doesn't want to be married to another firefighter, Tommy. I can't change that."

"Okay. You're right about that, because you can't change her." He nodded. "She's so much like her mother, it drives me crazy sometimes. Most of the time, actually. Let's talk about you, then. How do you feel about my daughter?"

"I love Lydia, sir. Absolutely and completely."

"Did you tell her that?"

"I, uh..."

"So, no. You haven't told her you love her."

Aidan picked at the label of his soda bottle with his thumbnail. "Why make it harder? I'm pretty sure she's in love with me, but she doesn't think she can be happy with me. Don't you think me telling her I love her will just make it worse for her?"

"So what? She's leaving you. How about what's worse for you?"

"I probably deserve it. If I was capable of being who she wants me to be, I could keep her. So that's on me."

"And who does she want you to be?"

Aidan hesitated for a few seconds. This had to be painful for Tommy because even though a lot of the blame could be placed on her ex-husband, Tommy had to know being his daughter played a substantial role in how she felt about it. "She wants me to be somebody who's not a firefighter."

Tommy nodded slowly, considering his words. "And that's not something you're capable of?"

The words threw him for a loop. How could Tommy Kincaid, of all people, suggest it was that easy? "I...don't know"

"Have you thought about it?"

"Maybe. A little. But when I was eleven, you told me that being born to take charge in emergencies and to save lives is a special thing and not everybody's got it. If I throw it away, how do I live with that?"