Fearless

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Totally small-time, I’m afraid. My first day as a candidate ended up in back-to-back false alarms and a minor car wreck where I used my skill set to direct traffic. We did deliver a baby on the shoulder of the highway the shift after that, though, and I got to assist. So I guess that was the first call where I actually got to contribute.”

  “You helped deliver a baby, huh? That’s pretty cool,” she said, her bright eyes marking the words as genuine.

  He nodded. “Probably a lot more for me than the lady having the baby, but yeah. Mom and baby did great. It was a pretty cool call to help out on.”

  “All three of my brothers had small-time calls as their first, too. Medical assists for heart attacks and stuff like that. Of course, my father’s first call was a house fire. His company ended up saving three people.” Savannah laughed. “That’s Duke for you, though. He had his boots on the ground and his ass in gear every chance he got, I swear. A firefighter through and through.”

  Something panged through Cole that he couldn’t name, and so much for losing his unease. “He sounds like a good man.”

  Her smile didn’t slip, but it did become more wistful. “He’s the best. I just hope I can keep making him proud, you know?”

  Yeah, he knew. “Believe me, you’re doing fine,” he said instead.

  “Fine?” Her smile took on a sexy edge, totally at odds with the soft wisps of hair falling loose from the knot at her nape and the overly boxy T-shirt she wore over the gray boy shorts she’d pulled from her bag. She was a study in opposites, in all the things he’d never expected. Christ, even sitting here with the bitter reminder of his father barely in his rearview, Savannah still made him laugh.

  “How about excellent?” Cole asked. He put his carton of Chinese food on the coffee table in favor of curling his fingers around her ankle.

  “Mmm.” She frowned, all show. “Keep talking.”

  “Determined.” His fingers trailed up to the bend in her knee, pressing just hard enough to turn her exhale into a sigh.

  “You have my attention,” she said.

  “Good, because I’m just getting started.” Cole took advantage of his hold on the back of her knee, drawing her closer. “You’re smart.” He wrapped his hands around her waist, pulling her into his lap so they sat face-to-face. “The job is important to you. It’s in your blood.” He skimmed his knuckles over the blush spreading over her sun-kissed face. “And you’re passionate. You don’t stop until you get what you want.”

  “I’d be a lot less successful if you didn’t have my back.”

  Cole’s shoulders bumped against the couch cushions in surprise. “Helping candidates become good firefighters is part of the job. Plus, in case you’ve forgotten, Westin needed me to make sure you were straight before I could take my spot on squad.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not why you did it. Any one of you guys on engine could’ve helped me become a good firefighter. Crews, Donovan—hell, I even learn something from Jonesey on practically every shift. But you’re different. You don’t just want to train me. You trust me. You see me. Of everyone at Eight, somehow you get why I need to prove myself the most.”

  “I get why you need to prove yourself because I had to do the same thing. I still do, every single day,” he said, and damn it, he really needed to lock up the emotion suddenly threatening its way past his throat.

  The only change to Savannah’s expression was the crease forming between her dark brows. “I don’t understand. Everyone in the house knows how ambitious you are and how much you put into the job. Why would you need to prove yourself?”

  Cole paused. It would be all too easy to give in to the defenses currently shrieking at him to shut the fuck up, and he ran through the strategies in his head that would get him there. He could distract Savannah with a quick smile and a slow kiss. He could make a sweeping generalization about how all firefighters had to prove their worth in order to make it. He could even steer the conversation back to her career instead of his to effectively snuff out the subject.

  But for the first time in nine years, he didn’t want to shut up. Savannah had trusted him with her family history and with all of her feelings—good, bad, and sloppy. As tough as she was, she’d trusted Cole to actually see her, not just to help her become a good firefighter, but to discover even the parts of her she didn’t fully recognize.

  And more than anything, Cole wanted to trust her back.

  “A few weeks ago, you asked me if I was from Fairview, and I told you I’m not. I was actually born and raised on a farm in Georgia, about a hundred miles outside of Atlanta.”

  Savannah’s body stilled over his with obvious surprise. “Your accent,” she whispered.

  Of course she’d picked up on that. “Yeah. It pops out every once in a while if I’m jacked up over something, but for the most part, I’ve lost it.” Cole didn’t want to add that the change had been intentional. She’d make that logic leap soon enough.

  “You’re awfully far from home.” Her words arrived without judgment or fanfare, loosening something dark and heavy from the center of his chest.

  “I might have been born and raised on that farm, but I belong in Fairview. Station Eight is my only home.”

  For a second, the words stuck in his throat, and Cole stopped. Yes, he trusted Savannah, but he’d never given up the true nitty-gritty of his departure from Harvest Moon to anyone, not even Alex or Brennan. He’d walked away nine years ago, vowing to forget. Maybe the past, and all the emotions that went with it, was too far gone to reveal.

  But then Savannah leaned in to cup his face, her hands so strong and so sweet that Cole felt them everywhere. “Hey. Remember that night in the library?”

  His heart pounded. “Yeah.”

  “We might work together, but we’re not at Eight right now. We’re just sitting here having a conversation, Cole. Me and you.”

  The simplicity of her expression, soft yet utterly fearless, made the words spill right out of him.

  “For three generations, my family has farmed the land at Harvest Moon. My grandfather cultivated every field with his own hands. He even built the house I grew up in.” Wide-planked floorboards the color of honey, the smell of fresh-baked bread floating through the windows. Funny how Cole could call it up so easily even though he’d never, ever go back. “From the time I could walk, my father started grooming me to take over the farm with my brothers.”

  “You have brothers?” The emotion on Savannah’s face was unmistakable. Considering the affection she’d clearly shown for her family as she and Cole had swapped stories all day, it didn’t shock him that she’d latch on to that.

  “Two. Ben is older and Jonah’s the baby.” Which just went to show how much time had really passed since Cole had left the farm. Although Jonah had barely been sixteen when Cole had emptied his emotions into that screaming match with their father and then packed his bags, his brother was twenty-five now. An adult. A stranger. “We were supposed to run the farm together as a family, just like my father had with my granddad. My old man had it all planned out. It never occurred to him that one of us might not be made for it.”

  “When did you know you were a firefighter instead of a farmer?” Savannah asked, and the way she inherently understood that Cole had known he was a firefighter before he’d ever left Harvest Moon made it all too easy to let the rest of the story parade on out.

  “When I was eighteen. A buddy of mine enrolled at the fire academy in Atlanta right after high school.” Cole had spent years feeling like a square peg aiming to fit into a hole as round as a nickel, but after thirty minutes on the Atlanta Fire Department’s website, he’d known exactly where he wanted to be. But sharing that little game-changer had been so much easier said than done.

  “I almost left then,” he continued. “But I was torn. My father might’ve been gruffer than most, but I had a decent life. I loved my parents and my brothers, and even though I didn’t want to fulfill the family legacy, I never hated the farm. Ben had al
ways been a natural—any idiot with two eyes and half a brain could see that he belonged there, and even though Jonas was a lot younger, he was following in my old man’s footsteps, too. I felt guilty for being the odd man out and not loving the livelihood that was in my blood the way they all did, so for three years, I stayed anyway.”

  “That must have been tough, working on the farm even though your heart was somewhere else.” Savannah brushed a hand over his forearm, and the touch grounded him as much as the simplicity of her words.

  “I tried,” he said, his chest squeezing under the steel band of the memory. “I really did. For those three years after high school, I threw everything I had into running Harvest Moon with my father and Ben.”

  Cole could still chart the calluses on his hands, still remember the way the sky looked as the sun broke over the horizon, different from how it would look as it set fourteen hours later. “But then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I thought—” He broke off, hating this part of the story the most even though it burned to finally be set to words. “My father understood what it meant to love his livelihood all the way down to his bones. I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled that I wanted to leave, but I was his son. I thought if I just explained to him that I wanted to be a firefighter the same way he was a farmer, he might understand.”

  But Samuel Everett was a tough old man who’d been raised by an even tougher old man. There’d been plenty of room for honest work and hard punishment when an Everett screwed up, but as far as Cole’s father had been concerned, emotion only went in one direction. And that was if you ever let it show at all.

  Cole closed his eyes. Forced in a breath. Came out with the rest. “Needless to say, my strategy to appeal to his emotions pretty much imploded. We had a huge argument, and he told me that if I left Harvest Moon to become a firefighter, I’d be dead to him. But I was twenty-one and angry and stung as hell that he’d pick that farm over me when I knew deep down that I didn’t belong there. So I pulled out a map and picked the farthest place from Georgia that I could afford to get to by bus, and two days later, I enrolled at the Fairview Fire Academy.”

  Realization colored Savannah’s eyes, sending them wide. “That’s why you know the city so well. You wanted a place to belong.”

  Cole nodded. No point in holding the rest back now. “When I got on that bus, I vowed to leave everything in my past behind me. I dropped my accent and learned the city even better than I’d known the farm. Then I swore I’d become the best damned firefighter I possibly could, no matter what it took. When I landed at Eight after I graduated from the academy . . .” Emotion twisted, low and deep in his belly, but Savannah didn’t flinch at the sight of it on his face.

  “They became your family,” she said. Slowly, she slid her hand from beneath his, her palm rasping over the stubble on his jaw as she moved it up to cradle his face. “I’m so sorry that what happened in your past hurt you. I can’t even imagine it. But I’m not sorry that you’re the man you are, Cole. You’re an incredible firefighter.”

  “Am I?” The emotions he normally kept on lockdown combined with the frustration that had been building ever since his dicey conversation with Oz, forming a potent cocktail of nothing good in his bloodstream. “Ever since my first day on engine, all that’s mattered to me is the job and my family at Eight. But for the last twenty-four hours, the only thing I can think is that one of them isn’t who he seems.”

  Savannah shifted back over the couch cushions, her stare laced with confusion. “Did you talk to Oz about those reports yesterday while we were on shift?”

  He nodded, relaying the details of the conversation he hadn’t been able to share while they’d been at the firehouse for fear of being overheard. A muscle tightened in the curve of Savannah’s jawline as Cole finished with Oz’s threat to his spot on squad.

  “What an ass,” she hissed. “God, we have to do something.”

  The unease in Cole’s chest bubbled. “What, exactly? While we might be able to argue that there are aspects of these fires that don’t match the reports, Oz can still play the other side of the coin and say he wrote up all the pertinent facts. His time on the job speaks to his credibility, and not a little.”

  “Okay, but there’s got to be at least enough here for arson to open a case. I could talk to my brother—”

  “No.” The word fired from Cole’s mouth with more intensity than volume, but he still had to struggle for the inhale that came after it. “There’s a chain of command in arson, just like in every firehouse. If you tell Brad you suspect someone in your house of arson—that you even have an inkling—he’ll have no choice but to follow that chain. The brass over there won’t hesitate to shit-can both of us if we’re wrong.”

  “We’re not wrong,” she argued, and Christ, even all fired up and fighting him, she was beautiful.

  “I don’t think we’re wrong, either,” he said, even though the admission burned an exit path through his mouth. “But going off half-cocked isn’t going to get us anywhere we want to be; plus, we didn’t even have permission to be at that second scene after the fact. We have to be smart about this.”

  Savannah paused. “What’s your plan?”

  Cole’s stomach knotted behind his FFD T-shirt. He’d struggled with the answer to that million-dollar question ever since Oz had walked away from him on the basketball court yesterday, but as much as Cole hated the betrayal of it, he couldn’t turn the other cheek.

  “Having each other’s backs is the most important rule at Eight. It’s the first thing we’re taught as rookies, and it’s the thing we live by above all else.”

  A chirp of shock fell past Savannah’s lips. “You’re not seriously suggesting we should have Oz’s back here.”

  “No,” Cole said. “But I am suggesting that we should trust Captain Westin to have ours. Sending this up the chain of command in our own house is the only way to deal with this, Savannah. Westin may run a tight ship, but he’s a fair man.” He skimmed a hand through his hair to offset the emotions threatening to steal his control. This was the right play. The only play. “I trust him to have my back on this.”

  For a long minute, Savannah said nothing. Cole knew she thought Westin was a good captain, but the truth was, she’d been on engine for a scant month, where she’d known her brother since birth. Her family ties were rooted deep. But so were Cole’s, and if the two of them came in too hot on this, it was going to blow up in their faces.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” He stared, unsure he’d heard her properly.

  Savannah—being Savannah—met him head-on. “If you think the best strategy is to keep this in-house and go from there, then I respect that. Let’s do it.”

  Cole released a breath, realizing only after the fact that he’d been holding the lungful nice and tight. “You can trust Westin.”

  “Oh, I’m not agreeing to this because I trust Westin, Cole.” She looked at him, her eyes brimming with nothing but truth. “I’m doing it because I trust you. My gut is screaming that this is arson and that Oz is involved. But Station Eight’s golden rule is to have each other’s backs. You told me you’ve got mine, and I know I’ve got yours. We can go to Westin next shift.”

  In that moment, Cole knew two things. The first was that Savannah really did mean what she’d said with every ounce of her being. She trusted him to have her back, and she’d fight to have his in return, no matter what.

  The second was that he was falling in love with her for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Savannah flipped her keys in her palm, her feet on the threshold of her brother’s apartment even though her mind was a million miles away. Okay, maybe not a million. Maybe, more specifically, just ten miles across Fairview. At Cole’s place. Where the rest of her had not only spent the last day and a half, but wanted to stay a lot longer.

  And rather than scaring the hell out of her—or at the very least, motivating her to be cautious like she damn well knew it should—her desire to be with Cole
only made her feel right in a way that she hadn’t since she’d left Texas.

  He saw her for exactly who she was, and he trusted her. He didn’t just make her feel good enough.

  When she was with him, she felt as if she belonged.

  The story of what had happened between Cole and his father had yanked at Savannah’s heartstrings yesterday, but the whole thing made so much sense. He understood her need to prove herself because his need to do the same was just as strong, his career equally important to him albeit for different reasons. She’d known in that moment exactly why his response to this whole Oz thing—hell, to everything—was so measured and controlled.

  For nearly a decade, everyone at Eight had been his only family. The house was the one place he belonged. Risking that, even in the face of something as major as these hinky reports, was a huge deal.

  But she’d meant every ounce of what she’d said. Just as he’d trusted her with what had happened in his past, Savannah trusted Cole to make the smart move in the here and now. They both had a metric ton on the line, but she trusted him with her career.

  Maybe even with her heart.

  She squeezed her keys in her hand, hard enough to feel the pinch on the soft skin of her palm. “Girl. This is crazy,” she whispered, her fingers shaking as she moved to unlock the door to Brad’s apartment. She might’ve spent the last day and a half living off cold leftovers and hot sex, but things between her and Cole couldn’t get serious. More serious than they were. Oh God, she wanted to get serious.

  If they were caught together, the fallout would be epically bad.

  Time to stow your endorphins, Nelson. Savannah might be wrapped up in the world’s biggest afterglow, and she might care for Cole outside the bedroom more than she had any right to, but she wasn’t a complete waste of space. She was tough, God damn it. She could handle whatever came her way, no matter how difficult.

  Except for maybe her brother.

  “I’m not gonna pretend to be your keeper, sweet pea, but you’ve been gone far too long for me to not break somebody’s legs.” Brad crossed his arms over the front of his beat-up Texas A&M T-shirt, raising a brow at her from where he stood in the kitchenette, and shit. Shit! How had she not thought her obvious absence wouldn’t translate to . . . well, the obvious.