Hot Response

by Stacey, Shannon

  It was a group text, to his entire crew. He opened it to get a better look at the picture of a phone in a bright pink case. And displayed on that phone was another picture.

  Of him checking out Cait’s ass.

  And just in case none of the guys could come to that conclusion on their own, her brother had added a helpful caption. TFW a guy checks out ur sister’s ass in front of you.

  “Shit.”

  His father cleared his throat. “Problem?”

  “Uh, no. Sorry.” Obviously he was lying, since he knew better than to swear in his mother’s house, whether she could hear him from the kitchen or not. “Just a work thing.”

  And by work thing, he meant that work was going to be a nightmare of ribbing about his interest in the EMT who clearly didn’t like him. The text had originated from Jeff Porter. And Jeff had a daughter about Carter’s age, and he’d bet that was her phone and that she was part of the circle of friends he’d sent the picture to.

  The word shit bounced around his head again, though he was smart enough not to let it out of his mouth. Forget vibrate. He silenced the phone entirely because there was going to be a shitload of crap coming his way and there was a strict no-phones-during-visits-with-Mom rule. He’d rather catch up on the ribbing when he was home with a beer in hand, anyway. It was going to be a long time before he lived this one down.

  Before he put the phone back in his pocket, he pinched the picture and zoomed in on Cait, though.

  She really did have a great ass.

  * * *

  Tuesday morning got off to a slow start, so Cait and Tony lingered at the garage, socializing with others before climbing into the ambulance to go in search of good coffee, and to be ready to respond should a call come in.

  “Bailey had a little bit of congestion this morning, so she stayed home,” Tony explained as he responded to yet another text from home before stowing his phone in his pocket. “And I do mean a little bit, but she got to Rob first, so you know how that goes.”

  Cait laughed. His husband was definitely not the strict parent of the two, and their six-year-old daughter had him wrapped around her little finger. And four-year-old Riley was as smart as his big sister and would figure it out soon enough.

  Cait didn’t have a lot of experience with children, but Rob would bring them by the station sometimes if they were in the area and she thought they were probably the cutest kids on the planet. Along with her nephew, of course. Noah had been born in Texas and she’d only seen him in person a couple of times, but he was blood. And he also looked a lot like his auntie Cait had as a baby, so she couldn’t leave him off the cutest-kids list.

  “You better not give me Bailey’s germs,” she warned as she buckled her seat belt. “The last thing I need is to bring them home and get my mother sick. Or Carter. He’s bad enough now. If he gets a man cold, I might have to smother him in his sleep.”

  It never failed. As soon as they were close enough to the best coffee in town to start looking for a place to park, a call came in.

  A sidewalk fall with reported head injury. Tony flipped on the lights while Cait responded to dispatch.

  “It’s our buddy,” Tony said as they pulled up at the address.

  Cait rolled her eyes as she snapped on a pair of gloves. Victor worked the night shift, or so he claimed, so he did his drinking during the day. A lot of it. Based on the number of interactions they had with the guy, she doubted he was any better at holding a job than he was at holding his liquor.

  “Victor,” she said in a friendly tone to the man standing on the sidewalk looking confused while a Samaritan held a wad of napkins to the cut on his head. “How you doin’?”

  “I told them not to call an ambulance,” he grumbled. “Least they sent the pretty one, though.”

  “Thanks, Victor, that’s really sweet,” Tony said, earning a scowl from their patient.

  “I don’t need no help.”

  “There’s blood, so you should let me look.”

  The laceration wasn’t bad, and the helpful bystander told her he hadn’t lost consciousness. She checked his pupils and he answered her questions to the best of his drunken ability. When sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer, Victor frowned and pushed her hand away.

  “You call for backup?”

  She laughed. “You won’t even let us treat you properly. Why would we call more people to stand here and argue with you?”

  In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of the approaching apparatus and turned her head.

  It wasn’t Ladder 37, though, and she was taken off guard by the strength of her disappointment. It was stupid to be bummed she wouldn’t get a glimpse of Gavin, or maybe even a wave. Not that they were friends, but the man had checked out her ass.

  And it was even more stupid to be so obvious about it in front of her partner, she thought when Tony cleared his throat.

  Cait turned back to Victor as the truck that wasn’t Gavin’s rolled by, deliberately avoiding Tony’s gaze. “You should probably have some stitches, Victor. Or a couple of staples.”

  “Shit, I got a staple gun somewhere.”

  “Different kind of staples.” She poked her finger at his chest to make sure she had his attention. “Do not staple your own head.”

  “Ain’t no difference,” he mumbled.

  “There’s a big difference.” Not the least of which was sterility. “No staples. No superglue. No epoxies.”

  “Let us give you a ride in,” Tony said, using his compassionate-but-stern voice. “They can clean up your wound and make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

  “I ain’t giving those doctors money to wash my head. I can do it my own damn self. And I’ll pour a little whiskey on it. That cheap shit my old lady buys will kill any kind of infection.”

  He probably wasn’t wrong, but Cait wasn’t ready to give up yet. “They have those warm blankets you like. You know the nurses will give you a couple straight out of the warmer while they patch up that cut.”

  Victor shook his head. “Just gimme the papers to sign. It’s too cold to stand out here yapping with you two.”

  Tony took care of that, and Victor was in the process of signing his name to the statement he was refusing transport AMA when a shoe flew past Cait’s face and bounced off Victor’s jaw.

  And there was the wife.

  Cait took a step back as Tony bent to pick up the clipboard Victor dropped. She didn’t want any part of a domestic.

  “Get your ass in the house,” Victor’s wife yelled. “The kid down the street came running in, yelling for me and telling me you were layin’ on the sidewalk with blood everywhere. I had to leave before she got my top coat done. My whole manicure’s ruined because you have two left feet.”

  The injury probably had more to do with his blood alcohol content than a lack of grace, but Cait had tried to reason with Victor’s wife before and it hadn’t gone well. And the woman still had one shoe left.

  “Did he sign it?” she asked, keeping her voice low while the couple yelled obscenities at each other.

  Tony looked at the paper. “Good enough.”

  “You get yourself to the hospital if that cut doesn’t heal up right. Wash it out. No staples or glue.”

  He waved a hand in their general direction as his wife tugged on his shirt, trying to drag him toward their house. They’d almost made it up the front steps when Tony pulled the ambulance away from the curb and she heard him laugh softly to himself.

  “What are you chuckling about over there?” she asked, assuming he was thinking about Victor and his wife.

  “I’m imagining what might have happened if that had been Ladder 37 going by.”

  Immediately her brain coughed up the image of Gavin watching her ass that her brother had so helpfully sent her a screen cap of, as if just seeing it on his phone wasn’t enough.
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  She hadn’t deleted it, though.

  Cait decided she’d try denial first. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You might be a hard one to read, Cait, but I know you pretty well and you, my friend, have let a certain firefighter get under your skin. I saw your face when that truck went by. You were disappointed it wasn’t Boudreau’s.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “It might be stupid,” Tony said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “I don’t even like him,” she said, but then she surrendered to the inevitable. “Why the hell can’t I get him out of my head?”

  Tony limited his gloating to a quick, triumphant glance. “You don’t really know him all that well, so my guess is pure chemistry. He’s young and hot and, considering your dating situation of late, that makes him your type.”

  “He’s cocky. That’s the opposite of my type.”

  “Maybe your subconscious wants to shake things up a bit.”

  “Then my subconscious can add itself to the list of things making my life more difficult right now.”

  Truth be told, her subconscious was already on that list, thanks to the dream she’d had the night before last. She’d woken up overheated and yearning, with a quickly fading image of a very naked Gavin smiling down at her.

  And that pissed her off. If she was going to have sex dreams about a pain-in-the-ass firefighter at night, the least her subconscious could do was let her savor them for a while. Maybe then she could spend a little less time during the day thinking about him.

  Chapter Four

  “So then she brings me her phone and tells me I’ll never believe who popped up in her Snaptalk or whatever it’s called.”

  Gavin rolled his eyes, wishing Jeff would tell the story of the Snapchat picture a little bit faster. As soon as he got upstairs and saw that some smart-ass had put a printed and framed copy of the photo on top of the table the television sat on, he’d known this twenty-four-hour shift was going to feel like days.

  “As soon as I saw that hair sticking up, I didn’t even have to zoom in to know it was Boudreau.” They all laughed while Gavin self-consciously smoothed a hand over the crown of his head. Stupid cowlick. “I told her I wanted a copy, but she said she couldn’t save it or whatever or the other kid would know, so I had to take a picture of her phone.”

  “So your daughter and the EMT’s brother are friends?” Aidan asked.

  “They have friends in common, I guess. He included her because he knows her dad’s a firefighter, though he doesn’t know who I am, or that I know the guy he’s taking pictures of.”

  “She didn’t tell him?” Gavin asked.

  “Nah. She just sent back an LOL or whatever it is the kids say.”

  So there was a very small chance Cait didn’t know he’d watched her walk away. There had been no OMG, he’s Ladder 37 with my dad from Jeff’s daughter to her brother. And maybe Carter didn’t want his sister to know he was taking pictures of strangers—and her—and sending them to his friends to make fun of on the internet, so she might not even know the photo existed.

  “I would have looked, too,” Grant said, making a yeah, I’d hit that face toward the framed picture. “I mean check out—”

  He let the words die when Gavin gave him a look, but the other guys laughed. “She’s hot. I checked out her ass. End of story.”

  But it wasn’t the end of the story, of course. They didn’t miss even the slightest opening to crack a joke about pictures, asses, EMTs, markets or pretty much anything, since they didn’t even care if the jokes made sense. He did his best not to give them a reaction, but it got old fast.

  It was almost a relief when the tones sounded for a second alarm and they ran for the apparatus bay.

  For some reason yet to be determined, a truck’s engine had caught fire. The driver panicked and drove it into the corner of a house, and now the truck and the house were on fire.

  They got set up and waited to see if they’d be sent in now, as relief for the crews already on it, or held for the overhauling. It didn’t look too bad and he knew they’d already gotten the mother—who’d been knocked unconscious in the initial impact—out of the building, so Gavin assumed they’d go in after and poke around, making sure it was fully extinguished and no longer a hazard.

  He glanced over to where they’d staged the EMS for fire standby. And, of course, it was just his luck to see Cait and her partner standing next to their ambulance in their turnout gear.

  She was totally focused on the house, her profile to him. Her dark hair was pulled back into the ponytail she always seemed to wear and she had no makeup on, though he wasn’t sure if that was by choice or she just didn’t for work. Either way, he liked it. She was a beautiful woman, even if she was a pain in the ass.

  “Do you think if you stare at her long enough she’ll turn around so you can check out her butt again?”

  Gavin tore his gaze away from Cait and turned to scowl at Scott. “You need some new material, Kincaid.”

  “I bet if we stand here long enough, you’ll give me some.”

  They did end up standing around for longer than Gavin liked, especially in fucking January. But eventually the fire was knocked down and the building deemed stable enough for them to go in and make sure it was fully extinguished.

  He glanced over to see if EMS was still on scene. The paramedic unit was gone but not the EMTs, and he caught Cait looking at him. Their eyes met and he wasn’t sure what to make of it, so he gave her a cocky smile, since that seemed to annoy her. Sure enough, she rolled her eyes and turned back to face her partner.

  They went inside and poked and prodded at the house, looking for potential hot spots. Gavin was pulling Sheetrock upstairs to check for fire in the walls when another call came over the radio.

  Possibility of a second victim in residence. The six-year-old boy got sick and was dismissed to his mother before lunch, according to the school. His name is Hunter. Current location unknown.

  He froze for a few seconds, processing that information, and saw Jeff do the same at the other end of the hall. The neighbor who’d told the first crew on the scene that the mother was in the house must have seen the kids all leave for school, but not noticed the mom leaving and returning home with the boy.

  “Okay,” Jeff said calmly over the radio. “Likely locations for a sick kid would be the couch, his bed, the bathroom or maybe Mom’s bed. Listen hard and check the usual hiding places.”

  They called out his name, listening for even the faintest cry for help. Gavin ran down the hall, glancing into rooms until he spotted the decor of a six-year-old boy. A quick look got him nothing, and Jeff was right on his heels.

  “I’ll check under the bed and in the closet. Go to the master bedroom but be careful because it’s fucked up.”

  Hunter must have tried to get to his mom when the truck crashed into that corner of the house because he wasn’t in the bed. Through the lingering smoke and Sheetrock dust, Gavin saw a pale white hand sticking out from a tall, heavy bookcase. Books and smashed knick-knacks were everywhere, so as he updated the others, he had to dig to find the boy.

  His head was bleeding and he was so white—even in the lips—that Gavin was afraid he was dead. He had an open compound fracture in the leg and he’d lost a lot of blood, but he had a pulse.

  “I need a paramedic now,” he told the others.

  * * *

  The paramedic had been released to a cardiac arrest call, so Cait checked her gear and grabbed her bag. “I got this.”

  They never talked about it, but Cait always took the lead when a call involved kids about the same age as Tony’s kids. He did his job, but it was tough on him and the emotional fallout worse for him if they lost a child.

  “Be careful,” he said, staying behind in case she needed something from the truck.r />
  “Always.”

  Danny Walsh met her at the front door and guided her through the house to the upstairs master bedroom. It was like something from a carnival house of horrors. The floor was slanted toward the crumpled outside wall, and the ceiling was half caved in. A couple of firefighters were lifting a bookcase off her patient and she started to move, but Gavin—who was kneeling next to the boy—held up a hand.

  “Let them out first. I want as few people in here as possible. It doesn’t feel solid.”

  She stepped aside and let the two guys out. It only took them a few seconds, but they were valuable seconds and she felt her impatience growing. Finally, she was at the boy’s side and she swept aside some books and broken glass to kneel beside him.

  She radioed in to request the first available paramedic and then heard shouts from somewhere in the house, followed by a pounding of boots.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as she opened her bag.

  “Reflash.” She glanced up at him, and his mouth was set in a grim line. “The house is on fire again. Below us. They want us out.”

  “He can’t be moved yet.” If she didn’t get a tourniquet on his leg, he was going to bleed out. And she hadn’t even assessed his head injury.

  “I’ll pick him up and carry him out.”

  “If you do that, he’ll probably die. I need a few minutes.”

  “We might not have a few minutes.”

  “Then go.”

  She didn’t even have to look up from her patient to gauge his reaction. The fuck that echoed through the room was enough.

  “I want you out of here.” His voice was harsh, almost raspy. “Tell me what to do and I’ll take care of him.”

  There was too much to do, and they didn’t have the time for her to explain it. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Tasker.”

  “I’m not leaving him, Boudreau, so if you wanna go, go. Don’t waste your time barking at me.”

  His gaze locked with hers, his mouth set in a grim line. “I won’t go without you.”

  For a long moment, she felt the weight of her decision being potentially life or death—his life or death versus the child’s life or death. They’d been ordered out. If they moved the boy now he’d die.