Roger’s pallor turned decidedly green. “Savannah, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Really.”
“Well, good. Because you didn’t.” She breezed past him, scooping up the duffel bag she’d left on the living room floor as she marched a straight line through the cozy foyer.
“Wait! We can keep this just between us, right?” he called out, clearing his throat in a poor effort to cloak the wobble in his voice.
But Savannah barely looked back from the door frame as she beat feet toward the front door and, more importantly, her freedom.
She’d never needed a man before, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to start by getting weepy over this sorry excuse for one.
“There’s nothing between us anymore, Rodge. Have a nice life.”
Chapter Three
Cole leaned against one of the brick partitions in front of Station Eight’s engine bay, staring out at the Monday-morning sunrise with slivers of unease stuck between every last one of his ribs. The emotion itself was odd enough. Not only was the view beautiful, with the sky painted in deep purples and dusky, light-edged pinks that would soon give way to a gorgeous summer day, but he’d channeled the better part of a decade into making certain his feelings walked the straight and narrow, all the time, every time. The last eight years had shown him enough bad-to-worse scenarios to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, yet Cole had always made damn sure to keep himself calm, cool, and on the level for each and every one.
Then again, he’d probably tapped out his lifetime supply of emotions nine years ago when he’d left Harvest Moon. Being forced to choose between farming and firefighting had been gut-twisting enough.
Realizing his old man would choose farming over family? Yeah, that shit had shown Cole exactly how dangerous emotional investments could be. Whatever sap had waxed poetic about how it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was chock full of horseshit. Not letting your emotions rule you in the first place usually landed you at the same damned endgame anyway, just minus the messy feelings and the busted heart.
Win-fucking-win.
A set of boot treads sounded off on the concrete pathway leading around the firehouse from his left, sending Cole into high alert even though he didn’t move a muscle. Shift change wasn’t until seven A.M., and although a lot of guys started trickling in around the 6:30 mark, no one ever arrived at six like Cole. Not even Captain Westin. But the footsteps were lighter than average, although their cadence was determined and sure, and his pulse tripped in recognition two seconds before their owner came into view from the side of the building.
He should’ve figured his pain-in-the-ass rookie would be the exception to every goddamn rule standing, both on the books and off.
In hindsight, giving Savannah a put-up-or-shut-up on Friday had been a risky strategy. But if she expected to be treated with kid gloves, either because she was a woman or because her brother had gone through the ranks at the FFD, Cole needed to know now. Before anyone’s time got wasted. Because as badly as he wanted the spot on squad—and fuck, he really did—the only thing he wouldn’t do to get it was scrimp on another firefighter’s training. Of course, if Savannah’s response to his ultimatum was anything to go by, Cole was going to need boxing gloves instead of kid gloves.
How the hell was he supposed to push her to be a good firefighter when all she did was ball up her fists and push back?
Cole bent one knee, propping the sole of his foot against the bricks as he took a long draw off the cup of coffee in his palm. “Guess it’s a good thing you don’t value your sleep. We don’t usually get much around here.”
Savannah’s jump was accompanied by an impressive stream of swear words. “Jesus, Everett! Give a girl a coronary, why don’t you?”
His conscience took a slap shot at his gut, but he countered with a matter-of-fact shrug. The guy in him might feel like a bit of a dick for startling her on purpose, but the firefighter in him would’ve startled Jonesey the exact same way, and for the exact same reason.
If Cole wanted to train Savannah right, he was going to have to forget she was a woman. No matter how sexy she looked with the flush of surprise currently covering her face.
“It’s not my fault you’re startled,” he said, modulating his voice to its most even setting and hoping the tiny, dark part of him that had noticed her blush would take the hint and follow suit.
Savannah huffed her disagreement, crossing her arms over the front of her dark blue FFD hoodie as she shifted her weight from one boot to the other on the concrete. “Okay. I’ll play. How is it my fault that you scared the crap out of me?”
Damn. The guys were going to eat her alive, and him along with her if she didn’t at least take the edge off her attitude. Not to mention she’d learn jack with a side of shit about being a firefighter with that giant chip weighing her shoulder down.
“Because you let me. I might’ve startled you, but I’m not the one who wasn’t paying attention,” Cole pointed out, and ah, that made her brown eyes go wide. “You’re going to need to put your head on a permanent swivel if you want to get anywhere as a firefighter.”
Her hands found the hips of her faded jeans, locking in nice and tight. “Call me crazy, but I don’t see anything around here that’s on fire.”
“And how would you know if you weren’t even aware enough to see me standing right here in front of you?”
Savannah opened her mouth. Closed it. Examined her surroundings in a full three-sixty. And finally, they were getting somewhere.
“I didn’t see you standing there, no,” she admitted slowly, the heel of her boot scraping softly against the concrete as she turned back to face him from her spot a few paces away. “But I would have noticed something as overtly dangerous as a fire.”
Of course Cole should’ve known better than to think she’d cave completely. He pushed off the bricks, gesturing to the empty street in front of them and the still-sleeping city block beyond. “Immediate danger doesn’t always look like you think it will, and a fire isn’t the only threat at any given scene. You need to see everything, even if you think it’s not significant.”
“Just because I didn’t see you impersonating a ninja over there doesn’t mean I missed everything,” Savannah said, and ooookay, it was time to take the bloom off this rose once and for all.
“Really. Then what color are the awnings over the windows of the bakery behind you?”
She paused, and he had to give her credit. Her instinct had her trying to dial it up in her mind rather than swinging around to look. “Red,” she finally said, lifting her dark brown brows at him in a nonverbal ha!
Cole took another sip of coffee, his gut twitching with remorse at how badly he was about to piss her off. His eyes flicked to the awnings across the street, the scalloped edges of all three fluttering in the early-morning breeze. Maybe he should just let her have a tiny victory before she started what was bound to be a grueling first day. A win might soften up her sharp edges, at least a little bit.
You don’t need to soften up her edges, jackass. You need to make a firefighter out of her, and fast. Your spot on squad depends on it.
“Guess again.”
Savannah swung around, her eyes flashing and her argument clearly at the ready . . . right up until she realized the red awnings were over a hardware store, not a bakery.
“I got the color right,” she said, and Jesus, they were going to have to do this the hard way, every step of the way.
“It doesn’t matter. You still got the details wrong.”
Her lips pressed into a hard seal. “Bakery, hardware store . . . who gives a shit? It’s just an awning.”
Something dark and hot snapped free from deep in his chest, and he took a step toward her without thinking. “You really don’t get it, do you? That awning could be the closest fire hydrant, or the only unobstructed exit in a burning house, or the window that gives you the most direct route to the spot where a person is trapped. It could be the busted fire
escape that’ll trap you inside a building, or a million other things that normal people look right past every day. But you’re not a normal person anymore, Nelson. If you want to be a firefighter, you need to stop arguing and start fucking listening.”
For a second that coalesced into a minute, the only sounds Cole could distinguish were his heartbeat slamming in his ears and the muted shush of the occasional car gliding down Church Street, half a block away. God damn it, Savannah might’ve needed a little comeuppance, but he knew better than to let his emotions take ownership of his mouth. Rising to the call of her tenacity wouldn’t get them anywhere good, and he had to lock that shit up and focus on his strategy if he wanted her to learn anything.
“The hardware building is two stories,” Savannah finally said, her voice softening in tone but not intensity. “Four windows across the second floor, like there’s an office above the shop space.”
Cole blinked, and holy shit. She challenged every reasonable word he’d offered up, but the minute he blew his stack, she decided to actually hear him?
“Good,” he said, because as crazy as her response seemed, hell if he was going to lose the opportunity to actually get somewhere with her other than the end of his rope. “What about the building next to it on the Bravo side?”
Savannah’s brow furrowed, but still, she didn’t turn. “It’s another storefront. Brick, with glass double doors and big display windows facing the street.”
At least she was well-versed in how the FFD referred to the four sides of a structure. The military terminology threw off more than a few rookies. “Is it attached to the hardware store?”
“I . . .” Her eyes squeezed shut, the intensity of her thought etched on her pretty face as her lips parted, and a bolt of heat shot all the way through his belly, destination: south.
“I don’t know,” Savannah admitted. She opened her eyes and angled herself toward the street to uncover the answer, which gave him the perfect opportunity to send a cease-and-desist memo to his dick. Sure, firefighters sometimes broke the no-fraternizing rule with members of the opposite sex in the same house—as a matter of fact, Cole knew not one but three firefighters who’d been involved with female paramedics they worked with every shift. Just because it was frowned upon didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
But Savannah wasn’t just any housemate. She was the housemate he needed to train in order to prove his worth and take his spot on squad.
And that was exactly what he was going to do.
Cole cleared his throat and blanked his emotions, grabbing his game plan by the throat. “The stores are all attached,” he said, pointing across the stretch of neatly kept asphalt. “A lot of the buildings downtown are older structures that have been renovated. The storefronts on this street used to be row homes, back when the developed part of the city wasn’t quite so big. But then as the downtown area grew, more people wanted to live in the quieter sections of Fairview. So these homes were converted to offices and small businesses, like the hardware store, the dry cleaner, and the real estate office over there on the end.”
“Wow.” She scanned the storefronts one by one before pivoting on her heel to face him fully again. “You know an awful lot about Fairview. Did you grow up here?”
“No.” Ah, hell. That had come out a lot gruffer than he’d intended, although he sure as shit wasn’t going to get gabby on the subject, not even to apologize.
But if Savannah noticed the heavy coating of ill-temper he’d slapped over his answer, she either wasn’t letting on or didn’t care. “So fire obviously spreads faster in buildings like these because they’re attached.”
Cole embraced the change in subject as if it were a long-lost friend. “Yes, but it’s not so much because they share walls, although that doesn’t help.”
“What could possibly be worse than sharing walls with a burning building?”
“You mean other than sharing attic space and your roofline with one?”
Savannah made her understanding known with a soft swear. “I guess I hadn’t thought of that. So is there rhyme or reason to noticing this stuff? I mean, I know you said to see everything, but aren’t some details more important than others?”
“Some details will serve you better than others, yeah.”
“Like exits instead of awning colors?” she asked, a sassy smile forming on her lips.
Touché. “It’s still important to see everything. You just need to learn how to filter through what you see so you can call up what you need, when you need it.”
“Okay. How do I do that?”
His laugh lasted a solid five seconds before he realized she was as serious as a sledgehammer. “Practice,” he said. “It takes most rookies a good couple of months to get the hang of really assessing a scene. For now you can start by taking a closer look at your surroundings wherever you go, both when you’re on shift and off.”
Savannah lifted a brow, tilting her head at him just enough for the sun to showcase the strands of lighter brown and gold hiding in the darker fall of her ponytail. “Great. So are you going to give me anything I can use today, Obi-Wan?”
Cole threw back the last of his coffee, but mostly just to hide his smile. Training her might take everything he had, but he wasn’t going to hesitate to get the job done the right way, with calm determination and as little fanfare as possible.
No matter how much she tested his patience or tempted his emotions.
“Sure. Don’t be late for roll call. You’ve got a hell of a first day in front of you, candidate.”
* * *
Savannah smoothed a hand over the front of the navy-blue uniform pants she’d just tugged into place, making sure the FFD T-shirt that went with them was tucked in just as neatly. As far as she could tell, the locker room was one size fits all just like at the academy, and no way was she going to risk not being ready for roll call for lack of a place to change. Savannah had heard some of the guys move through the main space a few minutes ago, although the row of bathroom stalls where she currently stood was far enough removed from the locker bays and the adjacent shower room that she’d been unable to pick up anything distinct.
She hadn’t seen Everett since he’d scared the hell out of her on the sidewalk nearly an hour ago, then irritated the hell out of her by pinning the blame on her alleged weakness rather than his underhanded intentions. In hindsight, his point about being more aware of things was pretty valid, but he didn’t have to speak in riddles or make her feel like she didn’t have the sense God gave a rock while he was at it. She’d just spent an entire year gutting her way through the academy. She might’ve missed the damned awning thing, but she wasn’t exactly a waste of space.
Unless her brain called up the slow and sexy smile Everett had covered with his cup of coffee just before he’d walked away from her. Because that had reduced her to a non-speaking, non-thinking pile of whoa Nelly, even if she was ninety-eight percent certain he hadn’t meant for her to see it.
Boy, had she seen it.
Savannah shook her head, grounding herself back in the firehouse locker room as she tightened her belly and blanked out the heat blooming between her hips. Considering recent events with Rat-face Roger, the last thing she needed was a man, even temporarily. Not that she’d choose Everett if she did. He wasn’t her boss or anything, but still. Talk about the world’s biggest occupational hazard.
Speaking of which . . .
“Nerves of steel,” Savannah whispered, mentally tacking on you idiot as she reached for the duffel hanging on the hook in front of her and flipped the latch on the bathroom stall. Everett hadn’t assigned her a locker on Friday, nor had anyone else, and while there were a handful of empties peppered in between the labeled doors, Savannah knew far better than to assume. For now, her duffel could stay right where it was on her hip. She’d find a place for her things after roll call.
Oh God. After a year’s worth of grueling work and a lifetime’s worth of wanting the job that went with it, she was about to r
eport for her first roll call.
“Hey! There you are,” came a feminine voice from over Savannah’s shoulder, and ugh, maybe she did need to start working on that awareness thing. Scooping in a deep breath to counteract the jackhammer of her heart against her rib cage, Savannah turned, finding herself face-to-cute-as-a-button-face with the redheaded paramedic she’d met in passing on Friday.
“Hi. Um, Harrison, right?”
The redhead nodded, her smile turning into a full-blown grin as she stuck out her hand to shake Savannah’s. “Or Rachel. Take your pick. I’m not choosy.”
“Nelson. Savannah,” she added, falling into step with Rachel as the paramedic started walking toward the door leading out of the locker room.
“Welcome to Eight, Nelson. I’ve got to be honest, I’m pretty excited to see another woman join the ranks around here. I’m hoping the added estrogen will help balance out some of the fart jokes and Xbox tournaments that tend to break out when things get really slow.”
“You guys have Xbox tournaments?” Savannah’s head sprang up in interest, sending Rachel’s laughter into a groan.
“Argh, not you, too?”
Savannah bit her lip, but hell. No point in going for anything other than full disclosure now. “I’ve got three brothers, so . . . yeah, sorry. I’m pretty fluent in video games and action movies.”
“Three brothers, huh? Well, you’ll definitely fit in around here.” Rachel tipped her head at the door leading out to Station Eight’s main living space, tucking back the handful of curls that broke free from the loose knot at her nape. “The firehouse is essentially a big square, with the hallway running the perimeter. The engine bay and locker room are on this side of the building, and Captain Westin’s office and sleeping quarters are on the other. The main living area, with the kitchen and the common room, is in the middle, and the bunks are off the back of the house.”
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