Katy sighed, feeling a little better. Considering who and what he was, she really shouldn’t be surprised by her sudden and powerful attraction to Chief Wolfe. Having grown up surrounded by magical men, plain old ordinary mortals had always seemed so . . . ordinary. And because Atlantean warriors were the strongest, bravest, most loyal and noble men ever to walk the Earth, those very traits also made them the safest. Innately protective, not only would they never brutalize a woman, they would go after any man who did.
Just like the men in her family.
“Okay, that settles that problem,” she said as she opened the side door, looked around to make sure the coast was clear, then shot over to the other ambulance and climbed inside. “Now that I know who you are, Mr. Wolfe with an E, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t make this attraction mutual.”
Katy stilled as that liberating notion settled around her like a warm, gentle hug. She’d done her suffering. Now things—her life, her purpose, her security and peace of mind—could fall into place as intended.
She grabbed the jump bag, unzipped the side pocket and dug out the wallet and cell phone, then stared down at them with a crooked smile. Catching Gunnar’s interest should actually be relatively easy, considering the breadth of her knowledge. From the time she’d first started looking for The One in her early teens, she had also started studying all the males in her extended family—paying especially close attention to their love lives.
So, knowing which female traits men found attractive and which ones sent them running in the opposite direction, all she had to do was stop acting like a silly schoolgirl and start being her strong confident self again. And since the Highlander genes she’d inherited from her daddy didn’t know the definition of defeat, by the time a new permanent chief was installed three months from now, Gunnar Wolfe should be hers for the taking.
* * *
* * *
Gunnar glanced up from his paperwork at the sound of a soft knock, then stood up and silently held out his hand, palm up.
His visitor forked over his wallet and cell phone. “Gretchen wouldn’t have needed anything in the jump bag once she was in the ambulance, so all your deepest, darkest secrets are safe.”
“Is that your way of saying I’ll only have to write you a check every month?” Gunnar said dryly, slipping the wallet in his hind pocket without bothering to open it.
Those long-lashed, fog-gray eyes took on a gleam. “Yep, but I’ll do you a solid and only take half your pay.”
Gunnar used the excuse of checking his phone for messages to hide his surprise—no, shock—that she hadn’t gone through his wallet. What woman didn’t rifle a man’s wallet when given the perfect opportunity? Hell, he would have checked out every card, picture, and scrap of paper in hers.
Whereas Katy MacBain was either too good to be true or . . . uninterested—the latter not boding well for a four-month-long fantasy that had, at exactly 6:25 this morning, rocketed from sensual curiosity to full-on fascination.
Or maybe she was interested. He thought about the way she met him so directly, those gray eyes challenging and full of warmth. She wasn’t cowed by him in the slightest, and she might actually be—dare he hope?—flirting right now. “You’re quite the racketeer, Miss MacBain,” he said, unable to control what he feared was a goofy grin.
“Oh, not me, Chief. I’m the straightest arrow you’ll ever find,” she said brightly. Instead of leaving, she took a seat across the desk from him and treated him to a full-wattage smile. “Of course, I did hope that returning your belongings all safe and sound would help my cause.”
Gunnar eyed her for several seconds, wondering if she knew what effect that smile had on men. “You can drop the chief when we’re in station,” he said as he also sat down. “In fact, no titles for anyone unless we’re on scene. Just first or last names or both, depending on your mood.”
Her smile vanished with her surprise. “Seriously?”
“Apparently Gilmore set that rule the day he formed the squad,” Gunnar explained. “He told me he felt that eliminating reminders of everyone’s position in the hierarchy would create a more relaxed and cohesive team.”
“And does it?” she asked, clearly skeptical.
He shrugged. “I’ve only been here two weeks, so I don’t know. And personally, I don’t really care, so long as when I tell someone to do something, they do it.”
“Okay.” The gleam returned. “So long as you also don’t care if I call Gretchen ‘Sunshine.’”
Gunnar snorted and picked up his pencil. “So long as I’m not here the first time you do.”
“Um, speaking of Chief Gilmore,” she said, making him look up and study her. “Did he ever mention having campfires at the station in the evenings?”
Gunnar set his pencil on the desk, then clasped his hands together over his stomach as he leaned back in his chair. “There haven’t been any since I showed up, and there’s no evidence of a fire pit.”
Katy leaned forward. “During my interview for this job, I mentioned that, in Pine Creek, I’d arranged for us to have campfires at the station and invited the townspeople to join us. The fires became so popular that we ended up having one most evenings from spring through fall, as well as several bonfires throughout the winter. And when Chief Gilmore told me right on the spot that I had the job, he said he’d like to start having campfires here, too.”
For the life of him, Gunnar couldn’t imagine why. “Go for it,” he said, straightening and picking up the pencil again.
She shot to her feet like she’d been electrocuted. “Great. Thanks. You’re going to love them,” she said as she turned to leave.
“Just make sure there’s a water hose nearby if the tones go off.”
She stopped at the door and beamed him another smile. “I have a brother who’s an amazing metalsmith, and before I left for Colorado, I asked if he would make another fire pit like the one he made for Pine Creek Fire & Rescue. Only this time, he added a thick dome cover that pivots out from the bottom to smother the flames if we have to leave the station empty.”
Gunnar recalled seeing a website showcasing Brody MacBain’s metalwork when he’d been checking out her family. The ex-Marine was four years older than Katy and one hell of an artist. Which was no small feat, considering the man had returned home two years ago carrying a Purple Heart in place of the body parts he’d left in Afghanistan.
“Any preferences on where I set the pit?” she asked.
He waved her away without looking up. “Put it wherever you want.”
Gunnar waited until she was gone, then leaned back in his chair again and stared at the empty doorway. He still didn’t know why the woman had fallen off the radar for two entire weeks, but judging from what he’d seen of her so far, whatever had sent her into hiding couldn’t have been overly traumatic.
Only enough to make her break a promise to her very best friend, a quiet voice whispered, but he dismissed it. Women had their own logic, and he’d long ago accepted his faulty comprehension.
He grinned then, recalling Katy’s disbelief when he’d ignored her complaint about Gretchen stealing her patient, and his grin broadened as he remembered her expression when he’d asked for his wallet and cell phone after their little water rescue. No doubt, this woman wasn’t like anyone he’d ever met. Even more surprising, he couldn’t imagine being bored in her presence, a thought he’d never had about any woman.
And Aunt May wondered why he still wasn’t married. Was having to watch her brother’s insidious, nearly decade-long suicide not explanation enough? Because spending his formative years with someone trying to numb a broken heart with booze certainly had the poor bastard’s son questioning the sanity of anyone who handed over that kind of power to another person.
And Gunnar liked to think he was at least intelligent enough to not turn into his old man.
He became aware of
voices coming from the parking lot. At first, he ignored them, but their increasing volume eventually drew him to the window, where he saw a white late-model pickup backed up to the patch of tree-studded lawn near the front of the station. Katy stood in the bed of the truck, arguing with four firefighters—three of whom scowled up at her, while the fourth held the tailgate closed.
Obviously believing their new team member was deaf, Captain Ike Russo bellowed as he held the tailgate with one hand while gesturing toward the opposite end of the parking lot with the other.
More curious than concerned—although quick to start in barking, Russo wasn’t a biter—Gunnar decided to wait and see how Miss MacBain “handled” her first face-on encounter with her male coworkers. That is until he saw Paul Higgins reach out and forcibly stop Skip Mason from climbing up into the truck bed.
Gunnar gave a muttered curse and headed out the side entrance of his office, not the slightest doubt in his mind as to why Michael Gilmore had abandoned his precious creation. For a seemingly intelligent man, how could he not have known better than to throw a bunch of adrenaline-hyped alphas together, much less expect them to play nice? Christ, Skip Mason clearly believed there wasn’t a vertical cliff he couldn’t scale, a mangled car he couldn’t get inside of, or a woman he couldn’t charm out of her clothes.
Which was probably a good part of the reason Gilmore decided to leave before his final hire—a six-foot-one, real live suntanned goddess—showed up for work. Gilmore was adding a flame to a powder keg.
Though Gunnar would put money on the flame.
“Is there a problem?” he asked when he reached the tense assemblage.
A brightly given “absolutely not, Chief” came from the bed of the truck, at the same time, he got at least two yeses accompanied by several nods.
“I remember Mike mentioning something a couple of weeks back about having campfires,” Russo said with one last scowl at Katy before turning it on Gunnar. “But I don’t recall him saying anything about having them in front of the station, where anyone walking by can see us sitting on our keisters while on the clock.”
“And he sure as hell never said anything about inviting townspeople to join us,” Paul Higgins added. “So they can tell us to our faces what cushy jobs we have.”
“Did you really say she could put it out here?” Russo asked, gesturing toward the lawn.
Had he? Gunnar recalled Katy asking if he cared where she set up the pit, but all he could remember after that were those fog-gray eyes and that killer smile. He looked up at her. “Is there a particular reason you want to place it where the good citizens of Spellbound Falls, such as that gentleman this morning, can see their hard-earned tax dollars paying firemen to sit around a campfire?”
“Precisely so they can see us,” she said, her eyes taking on a familiar gleam. “We’d be better served to invite the complainers to join us than to send them scurrying down the street.”
What the hell? No, she couldn’t possibly be scolding him for coming to her rescue this morning. First off, he’d been protecting her feelings, and secondly, he was her chief.
“If we want the taxpayers to support us,” she continued, apparently unintimidated by his scowl, “then we need to help them understand our jobs. And the best way to do that is by showing them that, even if it appears we’re just sitting around doing nothing, we’re usually rehashing our last training session”—that gleam intensified—“and becoming a relaxed and cohesive team.” She glanced around at the others, and he wouldn’t blame every man for falling in line right that moment. “Every mom who brings her kids to visit, and every person who hangs out with us waiting for the alarm to go off, will be an ally at the town budget meetings instead of an adversary.”
Son of a bitch, now she was giving them civic lessons.
And Gunnar suddenly knew why she’d been hired.
“Put it exactly where she wants,” he said and turned to head back inside. He broke into a grin at the stark silence dogging his footsteps.
It had bugged him that Gilmore had given the final paramedic slot to a green newbie who had no business being on such a highly skilled squad. But now he knew that, instead of an old lecher hoping to pretty up the place, Gilmore was a genius. He’d already had a station full of experienced firefighters and medics. What he hadn’t had—and obviously knew he needed—was a skilled citizen liaison. And who better to get those citizens to support his costly creation than a woman who, as a real estate broker, had regularly talked people into signing away their lives on thirty-year mortgages?
That the woman also prettied up the place was merely a bonus.
Gunnar entered his office with a snort. Gilmore must have thought he’d won the lottery when Katherine MacBain showed up for her interview looking even more beautiful in person than she did on paper. After deciding she was perfect for the specialized position, the man had simply gotten around Katy’s lack of experience by getting her further training. And now that he had access to the books, Gunnar had found where the determined bastard had taken liberties with several accounts to pay for the expensive wilderness school he’d somehow managed to get Katy into within a week of hiring her.
So, hell yes, she could put that fire pit on the sidewalk if she wanted, if for no other reason than he wanted to see her in action. He just wondered if Miss MacBain realized she would be trying to win over taxpayers by inviting them to hang out with a bunch of antisocial jackasses.
Including himself.
Chapter Six
Unable to make himself leave, despite having no reason to stay, Gunnar sat in his darkened office later that evening, putting a dent in the bottle of single malt scotch he’d found in a file drawer while staring out the window at Spellbound Falls Fire & Rescue’s first community campfire—which appeared to be enjoyed by Katy alone.
He still couldn’t decide what he thought about the woman now that he’d finally met her. On the one hand, he could see Katy and Jane being best friends, bonding over growing up in a small mountain town, both of them appearing a bit . . . parochial. Jane he could understand, seeing how she’d been raised by nuns. And he supposed growing up in an equally sheltering clan might make Katy somewhat naive for her age.
But on the other hand, the two women were polar opposites. Jane topped out at five-foot-five. She was only now starting to shed some crazy “I’m just a nobody orphan” image of herself, and her idea of a good time appeared to be sticking her nose in other people’s business.
Katy, however, didn’t seem to have any doubt who she was, to the point she’d gone after a job for which she hadn’t been even remotely qualified. Probably it had surprised her that she’d gotten it, just as much as it had her family.
It had certainly surprised everyone on SFF&R, having been repeatedly warned in the last two weeks to be ready to pick up the slack when the new rookie hire arrived. Which could explain Gretchen’s behavior, though he also assumed the woman was never easy, even on a good day. Gunnar smiled at the thought of Katy calling the older medic “Madame Sunshine.” More like Madame Thundercloud.
Still, Gilmore might have been well-intentioned, but he hadn’t done Katy any favors by making it seem like she was hired for reasons other than her competence, at least based on the quiet whispers he’d heard around the station today.
Of course, the joke was on them. After telling them to put the fire pit exactly where she wanted, he’d gone back inside and stood at the window again, half expecting the men to simply walk away. But to his amazement, Russo had opened the tailgate, and every last firefighter had scrambled into the bed of the truck—causing Katy to scramble out of their way—and wrestled that heavy steel monster to the ground and over to the spot on the front lawn she’d indicated.
It had to be that damn smile. He didn’t doubt that, the moment he’d left, Katy had given the men the exact same smile she’d given him not five minutes earlier. It would have been just
as sincere, too. Warm. Killer. And he would bet the title to his Lear it had been accompanied by a gleam in those fog-gray eyes.
Oh yeah. He might have gone a bit overboard in prepping the crew for Katy’s arrival, but at the end of the day, Michael Gilmore was a freaking genius.
And Gunnar was beginning to worry that chasing halfway around the world in search of a wilderness angel had instead landed him in the realm of a beautiful, beguiling enchantress.
Although he probably should reserve judgment until he found out if that smile also worked on women. He lifted his glass to his mouth with a snort. He doubted it would win over Madame Sunshine, as he’d never seen the battle-hardened medic so much as crack a grin, not even once, since he’d been here. No, Conroy was more a smile killer.
Gunnar chewed his cheek as he watched Katy pivot on the tree stump she was using for a seat, one of five she’d dragged out of the back of her truck and set in a half-circle around the pit. She looked toward town for several minutes before turning back and taking a poker to the roaring fire she’d built an hour ago. After a while, she set down the implement and rested her chin on her knuckles, staring into the cavorting flames, which sent ember fireflies up into the black night.
Now that they were out of reach of that smile, the men—and Gretchen, of course—showed their apparent disapproval of Katy’s little scheme by boycotting her campfire. Even Welles was conspicuously absent, which proved how determined the kid was to be accepted as part of the team, as the overenthusiastic intern hated missing anything that involved actual flames. About the only time the boy wasn’t underfoot was when he was chasing after his little sweetheart of a girlfriend.
Gunnar hoped the young couple managed to keep at least some of their clothes on this summer, so that instead of having to tell his parents he wouldn’t be the first recipient of the Bottomless Forward Bound Scholarship because he was going to be a father, Welles would be heading off to the University of Maine in Orono the first week in September. And rather than wondering how she possibly could have gotten pregnant, Jaycee would be happily ensconced in a nearby dorm as the second recipient of the dozen full scholarships some anonymous citizen had generously offered to underwrite every year in freaking perpetuity.
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