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Hot Dish

Annabeth Albert

ChapterOne

Stu

“Aparamedic guy came to check on you,” Shelby reported as I emerged from an unplanned afternoon nap. In my defense, I’d had a heck of a week, and I’d been up late last night finishing a painting.

“Who?” I blinked, brain bleary from the too-long nap.

“The one who is our neighbor.” Shelby rolled her eyes at me. My daughter was getting all too good at that skill as we approached her freshman year of high school. “He’s also on the ambulance crew that helped the night of Magnus’s fire.”

She kicked up a leg, showing off her healing scrape. Our next-door neighbor, Magnus, had suffered a catastrophic house fire earlier in the week. Shelby had been the one to discover the fire when she went to her job as Magnus’s dog sitter, and we’d both suffered minor injuries prior to the arrival of the first-responder crews.

“Oh right. Percy.” The night of the fire had been so chaotic I’d almost forgotten that our neighbor had been one of the paramedics to respond to the call.

“You know his name?” Soren scoffed from his seat at the kitchen table. Our house was small but cozy in a neighborhood of other older, working-class homes, and the kitchen shared space with the dining room. From the looks of his ham sandwich and chips, Soren was having a late lunch or a giant snack.

“Mount Hope is a small town.” I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes like Shelby. Soren was about to be a junior and was so very, very sixteen these days. “Tony, your football coach, is dating Caleb, a firefighter. Percy works with Caleb, hence we’ve been at the same event a couple of times. And he’s our neighbor.”

Those were facts, but I hadn’t mentioned Percy was a major silver fox, maybe ten years older than my forty. Even if we’d lived in Manhattan, I would have made it a point to know his name. And if I spent way too much time looking out the window when he did yard work, well, that was another thing I’d keep to myself.

“This is why we should have stayed in Berkley.” Two years into living in Mount Hope, Soren had yet to forgive me or his mother for the move. However, when my ex-wife needed to return to Oregon to take care of her aging parent, I hadn’t hesitated to move as well. Keeping our blended family together was more important than mine and Soren’s love of the Bay Area. “Too much small-town gossip. It’s weird, everyone knowing everyone else’s business.”

“Well, I like it here.” Shelby was ever our peacemaker. “We should do something to thank the first responders from the fire.”

“We should.” I agreed, if only to have an excuse to ogle Percy’s lanky muscles up close, along with whatever other eye candy was lurking around the fire station. “What were you thinking? Take cookies by the station?”

“Everyone else likely sends cookies.” Shelby had a typical teen fixation lately on “everyone else” and not wanting to be “boring.” “How about we do a casserole? Like those stuffed pasta shells I made last week. Everyone loved that one.” She smiled hopefully at me.

“That sounds like a decent idea,” I allowed. Shelby had spent the summer binging cooking competition shows and honing her culinary chops. Not only were the results tasty, but she usually doubled the recipes to split them between households, giving her a chance to practice her math skills as well. “You can make two casseroles again, so we get dinner out of it too.”

“And you could drop the second one off with Percy to take in on his next shift.” Shelby was also a born organizer, but I didn’t hate the idea of a reason to knock on Percy’s door.

“Good plan.”

Thus, one trip to the grocery store and one marathon cooking session with Shelby later, I found myself knocking on Percy’s front door. Like my house, his had a narrow concrete front stoop rather than a porch, and I felt more than a little silly and exposed standing in the open, holding the wrapped casserole. And that was before Percy opened the door wearing only a pair of loose-fitting athletic shorts and rubbing his eyes.

“Oh no.” My shoulders dropped. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s okay.” Percy waved away my concern. He was tall and lean with rugged features and closely cropped silver hair. If not for the shorts and bare, fuzzy chest, he could pass for an old west sheriff. “I sleep weird hours. As do you, apparently.”

“Apparently.” My face heated more than was reasonable for the July evening. “Sorry that I was napping when you stopped by earlier.”

“No problem.” He opened the door wider. “Come in so I can grab a shirt before I give the neighborhood something to talk about.”

“Okay,” I said in lieu of what I really wanted to say, which was that he didn’t need to put a shirt on for me. I was only too happy to look at his fuzzy chest and flat stomach. However, Percy was already pulling on a T-shirt advertising the annual Mount Hope first responder pancake breakfast. “And the nap comes with the territory of being an artist. And an art teacher with the summer off and a lack of routine.”

“Understandable.” Percy gave me an easy smile. His extroverted, chatty nature had been on full display at the social events we’d both attended. “I’m glad to see you up and around. No lingering effects from the fire?”

“No. But Shelby and I wanted to say thank you to your crew. You saved us a trip to the emergency room.” I’d been treated on the scene for smoke inhalation while another paramedic had bandaged Shelby’s leg.

“You’re welcome.” He shrugged, an easy roll of his broad shoulders. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“Well, we made you a casserole.” I held up the metal pan. We’d forgotten to buy a disposable pan, so I’d simply used one of ours. “Stuffed shells. You can take it with you on your next shift if you want. It freezes well.”

“You brought me a hot dish?” His forehead creased as he cocked his head.