Free The Tattooed Lady by Leigh Michaels

 
    *****
     
    Beth settled her sunshade in place and retied
her shoes, waiting for Ginny to finish her stretches. “Come on,
girlfriend. Let’s get going.”
    Ginny stood on one foot and bent her other
knee till her heel nearly touched her thigh. “You weren’t so
impatient to get out on the path and start sweating last week.
What’s going on?”
    “Nothing. I just want to get our walk in
early so I can have dinner ready by the time Josh gets off
duty.”
    Ginny straightened her knee, retied her
trendy scarf at the throat of her pink warmup suit, and started off
down the walking path. “Everything all right between you and
Josh?”
    Of course Ginny would go right to the heart
of things. She had an uncanny gift for that. Beth shrugged, trying
to make the gesture look careless. “What could go wrong?”
    “Well, it wouldn’t be unheard of for the
honeymoon to be over. Three months of marriage does that to a lot
of couples.”
    “Not us,” Beth said. She picked up the pace a
little and told herself that the tightness in her breathing was
just because she hadn’t been patient enough today to warm up her
muscles before starting to walk. It had nothing to do with the
extra five pounds she’d acquired since her Christmas wedding. And
it also had nothing to do with the fact that Josh had volunteered
to swap a shift and fill in for another firefighter today, even
though this was their three-month anniversary.
    “You’ll forgive me if I mention that your
voice sounds a little hollow when you say that.” Ginny waved at an
acquaintance a hundred yards away, on the next loop of the walking
path. “It’s none of my business, of course. And I’m not trying to
get rid of you, Beth, but maybe you should start taking walks with
Josh sometimes instead of with me.”
    “He’d rather go for a run. He says it’s
efficient – he gets more exercise in a shorter time frame.”
    “You mean he thinks walks are boring?”
    No, Beth thought almost bitterly. He thinks I’m boring.
    Ginny was watching her with narrowed eyes. “I
hear they’ve hired a new firefighter at the station. A new female firefighter.”
    “She scored highest of all the new
applicants, Josh said. And she passed all the tests.”
    Ginny raised an eyebrow. “But before they can
get hired, don’t they have to – like – pick up another firefighter
and carry him out of a building?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And she did that? Wow. What does this woman
look like, King Kong?”
    “I haven’t seen her yet,” Beth admitted.
    “What’s stopping you? I make it a point to
check out every new teller at the bank, just so I know exactly who
Joe has hired lately and whether any of them are likely to put the
moves on him to spend lunch hours in the vault.”
    “That’s a sexist attitude.”
    “It sure is,” Ginny said comfortably. “And if
Joe hired tellers on the basis of their attractiveness, it would be
worse than sexist, it’d probably be illegal. But I’m not the one
who hires them – and there’s nothing wrong with a woman keeping an
eye on her husband.”
    “It’s easy for you. You have a good excuse
for going into the bank every few days.”
    “Like you can’t come up with a reason to stop
by the fire station to see your husband? What kind of a wuss are
you, girl? Take over some snacks for the guys. They love your
chocolate-chip cookies.”
    “Everybody loves my chocolate-chip cookies.” Including me, which is one of the reasons I’m out here sweating
this afternoon. How many miles would she have to walk to get
rid of that extra five pounds, anyway? And would it make any
difference?
    That’s thinking like a loser, Beth
told herself. And I’m not a loser.
    Not yet, anyway .
     
    *****
     
    Their three-month anniversary dinner was
ready by the time Josh’s shift was over. A creamy asparagus soup –
almost like the one they’d shared on the last night of their
honeymoon – was simmering on the stove, the yeast rolls were in the
oven, and the