“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Drew, would it?”
The boy’s eyes widened again, but for an entirely different reason. He was in deep shit and he knew it.
“Drewwwwwwww!” A girl in her mid-teens rounded the side of the ice-cream cart and clutched her hands to her chest at the sight of the boy, safe and sound. “Oh thank God you’re okay!” She dropped to her knees and hugged the rascal fiercely before shoving him out to arm’s length and narrowing her gaze. “You almost gave me a heart attack, do you know that? Don’t ever run off like that again or it’ll be next summer before you even see another chocolate malt, understand?”
Drew actually rolled his eyes and hooked a thumb in her direction. “Don’t worry, she always says that. This is my Rose.”
Erik crossed one arm over his chest and rested the other elbow on it so he could hide his amusement behind a loosely fisted hand. He liked how the kid referred to her as his. Kind of like how Erik thought of Olivia as his Livvie. The little man was not more than three feet high, but was definitely a little alpha in the making. A man had to respect that.
“I’m his babysitter,” Rose corrected in Drew’s direction then said to Erik, “and his parents will kill me if they find out I lost him. Are you going to report me or something? I swear I won’t let him leave my side, even if it means handcuffing him to me. Oh God, not that I have handcuffs or anything. What I mean is—”
Holding his hand up, Erik put the girl out of her flustered misery. “No harm, no foul.” Then he crouched down and spoke so that only the boy could hear, or so he made it seem. “Listen up, little man. You can’t take off on Rose like that. A real man never leaves a woman he cares about unprotected, even if she can take care of herself. You’ve got a good eye, you’re observant, so you might notice something someday that keeps you and Rose out of danger. But you can’t keep her safe if you don’t stick with her. Got it?”
Drew puffed out his chest and gave Erik a stiff nod as well as any soldier he’d had under his command. “Got it.”
Rose mouthed a thank-you as Erik stood up, and then he watched as the two walked away, arguing over the deservedness of chocolate malts. He hoped she caved and the kid got his ice cream.
Shit, how much time had passed? A cursory glance at his watch told him it was now fifteen minutes past. Gritting his teeth, Erik gave the area a wide sweep with his gaze, searching for a stunning blonde with the face of an angel and a body made for sin…and came up empty.
Goddamn it, he swore that if she wasn’t here in the next—
“Looks like you’ve been waiting a while. Did she stand you up?”
The feminine voice came from behind and a little to the left and held a distinctly amused lilt. Relief flooded his system faster than a dose of adrenaline shot straight into the bloodstream. Erik cracked a smile, then did his best to school his features with the help of dragging a hand over his afternoon stubble. Without turning around or looking back at her, he said, “Yeah, it’s starting to look that way. Probably just as well, though.”
“Oh?” He felt her take a step toward him, stopping behind his left shoulder. “Why do you say that?”
“I think she was only using me for my body.” She gasped dramatically, and he barely contained his laughter. “I know,” he continued, “it shocked me, too. I thought she liked me for the important things.”
He’d never seen her playful side—didn’t even know she had one—and that she showed it to him now felt like a huge fucking win. Unable to resist any longer, he turned to face her and take her in.
“And what are the important things?”
Erik stepped in to her until she had to lift her face to maintain eye contact with him. Then he used a sex-roughened voice to say, “You know, like my collection of pre–Civil War coins and freakishly extensive knowledge of Sumatran orangutans.”
Amusement danced in her eyes, and in order to prevent breaking character, she bit the center of her full lower lip. An act he very much wanted to do for her. “What a coincidence,” she said, her tone a mix of seduction and innocence that had him harder than a fireman’s Halligan. “Those are two of my favorite subjects. It’s been such a long time since anyone’s showered me with”—she peered up at him through thick lashes—“Sumatran orangutan facts.”
Christ, even her playful side liked to kill him. “Sweetheart, I’ll shower you with whatever facts you want,” he said with a wink, “as long as I get to use my hands while I’m doing it.” Erik watched as her pupils dilated in response, filling him with satisfaction. “You’re late.”
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s such a beautiful day I decided to walk, but it’s been so long since I’ve been down here, and I underestimated the time necessary to—”
“I don’t care, Livvie. Long as you’re here, I don’t care what held you up.” Grabbing her hips, he sank his fingers into her soft body, wishing like hell he had access to her skin. He lowered his head to take her mouth in a scorching kiss hello, but she braced her hands on his chest and leaned back to deny him.
“Not so fast, Lieutenant. This is only our first date, remember? You agreed to take things slow, and what you were about to do was not taking things slow. Now come on, I’m dying to see the new ocean tank since they redid it.” With that, she skirted around him and sashayed her sweet ass toward the front doors, tossing him a come-hither look over her shoulder.
Oh, fuck me. Olivia had finally figured out who truly held the power in their relationship, and it appeared she planned to use the knowledge for evil and torture him with denied access to her body. Well, shit. There really was a first time for everything. Crazily enough, a wicked grin broke over his face as he followed after her. His Livvie was full of surprises, and the date was just getting started…
…
“It’s surprising that something so long and hard can feel so smooth and soft, like velvet against my palm,” Olivia whispered to Erik. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling when she heard him disguise a strangled groan with a sharp cough. Keeping her hand flat beneath the surface of the water in the Shark and Ray Touch Tank, Olivia gave him an innocent look over her shoulder. “Such an amazing contrast, don’t you think?”
“I’ve witnessed a lot of amazing things today,” he said, following the exhibit’s rule of speaking quietly.
His amber eyes bore into her with the heat she’d purposely ignored all afternoon, difficult that it was. Unfortunately, when he looked at her like that, she had no control over her body’s tendency to blush. Thankfully they’d kept their aquatic explorations light and casual since entering the building—well, that was until she hadn’t been able to resist the stingray double entendre—or Olivia would have flushed herself into a dead faint by now.
Returning her attention to where her fingers skated over the graceful ray, she reflected on how much fun they’d had together. When he called her last night to set up the arrangements, she’d been at Angie’s for a much-needed girls’ night of wine, mud masks, and chick flicks. Olivia had already given her friend the lowdown on all things Erik Grady—thanks to that third glass of Cabernet—so when her phone screen lit up with the man’s name, Angie insisted Olivia answer. From what she remembered, the exchange had been a madcap conversation between Erik, herself, and a none-too-quiet, overly opinionated Angie.
In the end, Erik had agreed to Olivia’s (Angie’s) idea of an afternoon at the aquarium based on Olivia’s (Angie’s) point that he wouldn’t be able to use his “mad seduction skills” in a place where the walls were made of glass and little kids outnumbered the adults four to one. But he’d made his own concession, saying that since she’d picked the first activity, he could choose another one—keeping with the “in public” theme—for after the aquarium, to which she also agreed (Angie forced her to accept).
She hadn’t given it much more than the occasional curious thought, but now that they’d concluded her portion of the day, Olivia wanted to know what he had up his sleeve.
“So what
now?” she asked as they stepped from the dimly lit aquarium into the brightness of the early evening sun.
“Now I take you out for dinner.”
Olivia’s giddiness faltered. It never registered that their date would extend into the dinner hour, making his choice for a public outing rather obvious. Not good. She hated going to restaurants on dates. It didn’t matter how many people occupied the dining room, it still felt intimate in a way that made her overly self-conscious and socially inept.
Until recently, she’d never thought of dating as one of life’s many gauntlets. Her courtship with Brett had started organically, rather than formally, her freshman year in college, so she’d never gone on a real, honest-to-goodness date. When she finally got up the nerve to “put herself out there” a few months ago, she accumulated failed first dates like a string of social experiments gone wrong. She had all the right elements for success, but one ingredient kept reacting poorly with every subject.
Turned out that mentioning her former husband in casual conversation made for an uncomfortable environment. Of course, none of them had come right out and said as much, but they didn’t have to. It was in the way their eyes sought out random things to focus on, and in the way they fidgeted in their seats and subtly checked the time whenever she said Brett’s name.
Like any logical person, she thought all she had to do was remove the part causing the problem. She decided to give dating another try, only this time, she would omit Brett and mention of her marriage at all costs. It solved the original problem, however, once things turned physical, Olivia hadn’t been able to separate what she’d shared with Brett years ago from the physical intimacy she’d attempted with her dates.
Until her last failed attempt led her to the delectably irresistible Erik Grady. He’d been the first man ever to make her feel something other than guilt in his arms. Now she was finally having fun on a date with a man she could also be intimate with, and he wanted to switch to a stuffy, formal, uncomfortable restaurant setting. Not an awkward-dating-woman’s idea of a good time, but she could get through it.
“How do you feel about bar food?”
It took a few seconds for his question to worm its way through the fog of her wandering thoughts. “Excuse me?”
“Bar food.” He pointed to the aquarium’s waterfront bar and restaurant, The Reef. “Personally, I love their lobster salad BLT sandwiches. I thought we could grab something easy and watch the activity in the harbor. You know, people watch or whatever.”
Olivia took a good look at The Reef through the eyes of her new idiosyncratic dating rules. It was little more than a large white party tent with a bar and outdoor seating set up along the edge of the inlet. The dining furniture was no-frills, black wrought iron with aquamarine blue table umbrellas for providing shade, and brushed metal Samuel Adams buckets that held the condiments and other essentials.
They’d have a perfect view of the activity on the Harborwalk and could watch the numerous tourist boats as they passed in front of the eyesore that was the Boston Marriott Long Wharf in all its timeworn glory.
Casual. Outdoors. People watching. Relief flooded her system and she offered him a smile to match. “That sounds great.”
Erik glanced down to where she’d unknowingly pressed a hand to her stomach, concern etched in his brow. “You feeling okay?”
“Yes,” she said a little too emphatically. With a nervous laugh, she did her best to recover. “Trying to keep you from hearing it growl. I forgot to eat lunch and now I’m starving.”
“Not on my watch. Come on.”
Erik intertwined his fingers with hers as though they’d done it a hundred times and led her across Aquarium Plaza where they were soon seated right along the edge of the harbor. He ordered the lobster salad BLT and she chose the Margherita flatbread, and they both decided on starting with a bowl of the famous “chowdah” made with sustainable clams.
For a long time, they simply enjoyed their meals and the view in silence. Not an awkward or uncomfortable silence but one of easy companionship, simplistic and oddly natural for two people who were more strangers than acquaintances. It gave her time to reflect on their time together so far.
She’d been surprised to see him talking with a little boy and his distraught babysitter when she arrived. At the time, she wasn’t sure if they knew each other, but she managed to get close enough to glean the situation from what she could hear. He’d been so sweet with the boy, giving him advice on how to be a man, the kind of advice Olivia imagined Erik might give his own son someday.
The scene had tugged at her heartstrings and even her uterine-strings, if such a metaphor existed. It’d been years since she felt the pangs of longing for children of her own, but at one time she’d had them on a pretty regular basis. She’d wanted to start a family with Brett, but “kids weren’t written into the family plan” until well after the five-year mark. The goal was to ensure career and financial stability “before bringing anything new to the table.” It had been one of the biggest points of contention and strain in their marriage.
Olivia wouldn’t have pegged Erik as a kid magnet. He was just so…intense. Plus stubborn, domineering, and heavy-handed to name a few of his more prominent traits. But he was also intuitive, caring, and incredibly charming. He’d crouched down to the child’s level and spoken to him in a way that made sense without sounding like a condescending adult. That babysitter would never have to worry about her ward leaving her side again because, instead of giving him a lecture he’d no doubt forget all about as soon as they walked away, Erik gave the boy a purpose and a desire to see it through. It was one thing to lead men into the fray but quite another to get a five-year-old to do something without protest.
Apparently, Erik had no problems leading in either situation, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d have such an easy time with a whole pack of unruly children, like when classes visited the fire station. Angie was a teacher. Maybe she could set it up so Angie’s class did a tour of Rescue 2 and Engine 42 and then tag along for maximum amusement.
“How did you get your call sign?”
Erik propped an elbow on the table, took a long drink of his beer, then let the bottle dangle from his fingers as he answered. “Dozer gave it to me during Basic. I had a piece of paper with a quote on it—something I’d learned during a short-story unit in English class—that I kept for motivation. To remind me of how I wanted to perform and someday lead.”
“What was the quote?”
“It says, ‘For the strength of the pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the pack.’”
“By Rudyard Kipling,” she said.
A brilliant smile broke over his face, that lone dimple winking at her through the light scruff of his beard. “You know it.”
She nodded. “It’s a great quote. I can see why you chose it. Do all call signs hold so much meaning? I thought they were more or less playground names, like the kind kids get stuck with when something notably embarrassing happens.”
The warm sound of his amusement slid into her ear and tightened her belly. She wanted to hear more of it; she wanted to make him smile and be the one he smiled at. His mirth could easily become her addiction.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “Some of them are given out for things like that, and a lot of times we get other handles for things that can’t be repeated in polite company—or any company other than ours, for that matter. Strictly barracks banter. Either way, no one picks his own call sign. It’s not like we’re in the UFC and get to pick out catchy nicknames that go between our first and last names. They’re given to us mostly by our peers and, love it or hate it, it becomes part of your identity.”
“Interesting,” she said, smiling. “What about your friends?”
“Theirs are pretty straightforward. Dozer bulldozes through anything in his path, on or off the battlefield. Ashton is called Smoke because he’s always been a bit of a pyro. He was my sapper, someone specially trained to facilitate movemen
t in combat. If it needed to go boom and it didn’t, he’d send it into orbit with the snap of a finger. There’s a running joke that if he hadn’t joined the army, he would have been an arsonist, which makes his current career choice pretty ironic.”
“Remind me to never piss him off,” she said wryly.
“Smoke’s the least of your worries. He’s the easygoing, fun-loving one in the group. Now Sean—better known as Bowie—he’s a little harder to read. He has a great dry sense of humor, so unless you know him well, it might be unnerving when you hear him threaten to take one of his favorite knives and gut me like a fish.”
Olivia gasped, a piece of her flatbread frozen halfway to her mouth. “Jesus, are you kidding? Is he balanced?”
Laughing, Erik said, “For the most part, yeah, he’s balanced. If that ever changes, though, I’ll slip him your card, Doc.”
“You do that. What about Preacher? Is he actually a member of the clergy?”
“No, but his dad is. Tyler’s a bit of a paradox—he’s got levels of demons the rest of us don’t have that started long before he joined the service.”
Olivia frowned, her heart immediately going out to the man she’d never even laid eyes on. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, I worry about him sometimes, but I keep a close eye on him.” Erik crumpled his napkin and dropped it on his plate. “Still, even with whatever he has going on inside that head of his, Preacher’s one of the most loyal and compassionate men I’ve ever known.”
“Did he get his name because of what his dad does for a living?”
“Indirectly, I suppose. Mostly it’s because he’s like a goddamn sage. He’s always doling out advice when people need it, whether they want it or not. And the kid’s always fucking right, which means he’s perfected the ‘I told you so’ look, the righteous prick.”
Hot for the Fireman Page 11
