Up In Flames (Flirting with Fire Book 2)

by Jennifer Blackwood

  Cold shoulder didn’t even begin to describe what she’d given him since their run-in one night at a bar. Ever since they were teens, Reece had had a thing for Sloane. He’d never told her because she was Erin’s friend, and he’d been dating his high school sweetheart, Amber, at the time. He’d been engaged to Amber, but when he had left to train for the hotshot fire crew in Bend, he’d come back to nothing. After that, his faith in dating hadn’t been salvageable.

  Fast-forward to last year when he’d seen Sloane sitting alone on a barstool at Henry’s. She’d been drunk out of her mind. He hadn’t thought much of it—just that he’d give her a ride home because he didn’t want some dickhole to take advantage of her. And then when he’d dropped her off, she’d made a pass at him. And he’d responded in what was probably the worst way possible: by lying and saying she was the furthest thing from his type. He had never regretted passing up a drunken chance with her, but when he’d tried apologizing the next day, the damage had already been done. As evidenced by the drink she’d thrown in his face.

  “Hey, you forgot to add that I care about a cold beer and Sunday football,” he retorted. Her claim was ridiculous, of course. He cared about his family and friends. That didn’t matter to Sloane, though.

  She ignored him and washed her hands in the sink. “You’re all set. I’ll prescribe something for the pain.” After drying her hands, she scribbled on a medication pad, tore off the paper, and handed it to him.

  “Thanks. And can you do me a favor?”

  “Besides stitching you up?”

  “Don’t deny you liked jabbing me with a needle.”

  Her lips twitched in response. “What do you want?”

  “Can you not mention this to Erin? It’ll just freak her out.” Tell his sister and it was sure to get back to his mom. And the last thing he wanted to do was put his family into a full-on panic. His mom was especially on his case about safety, and he’d be hearing an earful from her if and when she found out.

  She didn’t bother to answer his question, just smiled sweetly and said, “Have a good day, Reece.” And with that, she breezed out of the room.

  That didn’t bode well.

  Sloane Garcia made her way to the nurses’ station. Reece Jenkins. In the emergency room as a patient. The thought made her hands tremble, because even though she couldn’t stand the man, she’d never want to see him actually hurt. She sat down in the rolling chair and typed notes into her computer, documenting the visit.

  Out of the corner of her eye, a pair of dark blue scrubs moved her way. Sloane glanced up from the computer to find Keisha. A Cheshire-cat grin spread across Keisha’s face when she peeked around Sloane to see who was buttoning his shirt in triage room three. “Is that Reece Jenkins?”

  “The one and only.” She stared at the computer, finishing up her paperwork.

  “Please tell me you caused him pain and agony.”

  “Only a little.” Okay, so she’d been a little rougher than necessary with a couple of stitches, but she’d kept it on lockdown. She was a professional. Even if the sight of Reece’s face made her want to throat-punch something (preferably him), he still deserved quality care, even if he was repulsed by her.

  Ugh. A year later and she still couldn’t get his words out of her head. Add that to the fact that he’d made the rounds through her entire nursing unit, and it didn’t do much for the good ol’ ego.

  “I don’t know how you did it. I would have slipped a little with my needle. Maybe gone straight for the carotid.”

  Sloane shook her head and laughed. Keisha was one of the many women who’d fallen victim to Reece Jenkins. He had a type—women. Or really anything with a pulse. And he’d made his way through her nursing unit with surprising efficiency. Except for her, that was. She wasn’t jealous, of course, because she’d grown up with the dude. She knew all his nasty habits. Like the fact that he chewed chips abominably loud, and he always had to be in control of the remote. A man who needed that much control over stuff would not last one minute in her apartment.

  Whatever. No need to let this mess with the good day she’d been having. Even if it did skyrocket her blood pressure to think that he’d been shot. A few inches lower, and he’d be going to a different part of the hospital. One that patients didn’t return from. The thought made her blood pound in her ears.

  But thoughts of Reece soon slipped to the recesses of her mind, because she had bigger things to worry about, like the next trauma victim currently being wheeled into the ER.

  Chapter Two

  Two hours later, Reece made his way back to the station. By now, word would have traveled about his injury. But when he arrived, he was relieved to see that everyone was going about their business. Hollywood was cooking chicken in a skillet—God help them all. Jake, who had escorted Reece back to the station, busied himself with helping to make sure Hollywood didn’t burn down the station. Collins, another firefighter who was usually on A shift, was sitting at the kitchen table, filling out some sort of paperwork. Reece assumed he’d been called in after the incident.

  “Heard you had a rough morning,” Collins said, looking up from his papers.

  “Just another Sunday.” One that he would like to never repeat. Reece pulled out one of the rolling chairs at the table and sank into it stiffly. He’d been in fistfights before and had his ass kicked in training, and even that didn’t compare to the sharp sting in his shoulder. As soon as he found a somewhat comfortable position, heavy footsteps sounded from deep inside the station.

  “Jenkins. Get in my office,” Chief Richards bellowed from down the hall. From the sound of it, he was more pissed off than usual. Not a surprise. This close to retirement, everything rankled the guy. Reece breathed in the wrong direction at a morning meeting, and it pissed him off. So the incident this morning was sure to add fuel to the fire.

  Reece wasn’t one to get reprimanded at work. He did his job, and he did it well. In fact, he could remember only two times in his life when he’d been in deep shit. The first was when he’d forgotten to open his mom’s food truck on Black Friday (he’d been out on a date), and the second was two hours ago when he’d messed up on that call.

  He prided himself on keeping it together while he was on the job. That was the one time when he felt capable, when he had a handle on life. An unblemished record in his ten years of service proved as much. Well, not now. He was sure this was going straight into whatever file Chief kept on him.

  He strode down the hall to the battalion chief’s office. Most people who had an office at the station decorated their desks with photos of family, kids’ artwork, and achievement awards. Chief Richards prided himself on zero clutter. Ever since he’d transferred from Station 12 a couple years back, the chief kept his desk completely bare, except for his computer and a tumbler of coffee. Although Reece would be hard-pressed to say that the cup didn’t contain a little something else.

  Reece clasped his hands together as he stared at Chief Richards, who glared at him from across his desk. Didn’t even give him a chance to clean himself up after their engine parked in the bay. Instead, the chief had called him into his office like he was a delinquent kid being sent to the principal’s office.

  The chief squinted at him, looking like he was trying to x-ray him for damage. “You okay?”

  Reece nodded. “Just grazed my shoulder. No muscle damage.” His scorpion tattoo might look a little crooked after the skin healed, but nothing he couldn’t get touched up. So lucky.

  Seeming pleased with that answer, Richards launched into the tirade Reece had steeled himself for. “What the hell was that, Jenkins?”

  “You’re going to have to specify, sir.” There was a lot that had gone wrong. Starting with his piss-poor decision, the PD taking forever to show up, and the fact that he hadn’t bothered with the proper protocol by making sure the place was safe to enter first. It was a circus act of a call. And he’d paid the price for it—luckily, not the ultimate price.

  “I expect
this from a rookie. You’re our engineer. You’re supposed to make good judgment calls, keep your men safe.”

  Reece didn’t bother to argue with him. The man was right—he’d made a crap call. And he’d keep his trap shut since the chief’s vein was throbbing in his forehead. Reece felt like a piece of shit for putting his brothers in danger with his actions. The whole thing shook him up. People said that their whole lives flashed before them when faced with a life-or-death situation, but all Reece had experienced was splintered wood and the regret that he hadn’t snagged a Krispy Kreme doughnut from the kitchen that morning. He pushed those thoughts away. He didn’t need to be spooked on the job. If there was one thing he couldn’t afford, it was to hesitate. Seconds were the difference between bringing out a person alive or waiting till the ME arrived.

  “It won’t happen again,” Reece said.

  “You’re damn right it won’t. You’re up for a review, and I can make a recommendation to send you to another station. Seems you’re too comfortable here.”

  Reece’s gaze shot up to the chief’s. Richards stared at him, irritation clear in his brown eyes. Reece had worked at this station for almost a decade. The thought of going anywhere else, away from his men—well, that just wasn’t an option he was willing to consider.

  “Chief.” Reece would like to say he was surprised by this, but that’d be a lie. The chief had had it out for him since day one, always nitpicking everything he’d offered during their morning shift meetings and criticizing the way he wrote up his reports. He didn’t know any other person who was that specific about comma splices.

  “You may have had it easy before I came to this station, but your free ride is over. Either put in the hard work, or you’re free to transfer. I’ll be watching your performance. Closely. Take the rest of the day off. I’ve brought Collins to fill in for you.”

  Reece didn’t expect to work the rest of his shift. Especially when he was hopped up on painkillers. But being dismissed by the chief was the cherry on top of this day.

  “Yes, sir.” That was all he could say, because telling him to screw off probably wasn’t the best choice. So instead, he nodded and stood.

  “Jenkins?” the chief called as Reece was about to exit his office.

  “Yeah, sir?”

  “With your little stunt, I think it’s wise to get in as many hours as possible, maybe do a little community building.”

  He took a calming breath before turning around. He didn’t bother to tell the chief he already volunteered his time outside of the station. Richards didn’t care about what he did on his off time. “What would you suggest?”

  “Were you going to participate in Four for Four?”

  Reece shrugged and winced. He’d need to take another aspirin when he got to his locker. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  The annual firefighter auction, where the community came together to bid on firefighters like they were slabs of meat, was saved for the rookies. The highest bidders had a firefighter by the balls for a month, or until they completed four tasks from their honey-do list. Hence the name Four for Four. Although most chores were finished within a couple days. He’d never heard of anyone’s sentence being drawn out the entire thirty days. Reece didn’t want anything to do with the auction. The department had more than enough Portland firefighters sign up, so they’d stopped asking for volunteers weeks ago.

  “Clear your schedule. You’re going.”

  Reece gritted his teeth. There was a time and place to put a foot down. This was not one of them—not when the chief was dangling his job in front of him like this. “Looking forward to it,” he said.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Whatever Chief Richards was getting at, there was no way he’d run Reece out of his own station. He’d earned his place here. Worked with his best friends. He’d rather run himself into the ground than put in for a lateral transfer.

  Reece made his way out of the chief’s office and went to the bathroom to splash water on his face and finally get a chance to scrub off the dirt the hand sanitizer in the rig hadn’t cleaned off. He kept his hands under the scalding water and breathed deeply through his nose.

  The door swung open a few seconds later, and Jake appeared in the doorway. “How many days of detention do you have?”

  He chuckled and shut off the water. “Asshole.” It might as well have been detention. Putting him in the bachelor auction? He hadn’t done that in years. Didn’t want to be subjected to some bored housewife who wanted to inconspicuously snap pics while he washed her car. He’d been a good sport about it when he was a rookie, but he was well over that phase.

  “What’d he want?”

  “I have to work a special event this weekend.”

  “Four for Four?”

  Reece only nodded.

  Jake let out a low whistle. “Damn, he really does have it in for you. Make sure to put on some extra cologne. I hear the ladies love that.”

  “Why are we friends again?”

  “You’re just jealous because I’ll be in the audience instead of up on the stage.” Jake went to clap him on the back and stopped in the air, seeming to remember Reece’s injury.

  “You’re actually going?” Reece asked. On Reece’s days off, he wouldn’t be caught dead at the station or doing anything work related. He loved his job but also needed distance in the form of SportsCenter and his PlayStation.

  “Erin wants to go. Says it’d be fun to donate to a good cause.”

  Good. Maybe he could convince his sister to bid on him so he wasn’t at the mercy of some stranger.

  “Enjoy your day off,” Jake said, striding back into the kitchen as the smell of something burning on the stove filled the air. “Damn it, Hollywood. Get liberal with the olive oil before you smoke us out,” came Jake’s muffled voice down the hall.

  “I swear I just stepped away for a second,” Hollywood responded. But everyone knew that even if he hadn’t stepped away, the chicken would have burned. Hollywood would be a great candidate for that Worst Cook Ever show. Reece always thought those people were faking it, but then he’d met Hollywood, who could burn water.

  Reece chuckled under his breath. The last place he wanted to go was home. So he took his time with changing and then reluctantly grabbed his jacket and keys from his locker, making his way out of the station.

  Chapter Three

  There were two things Sloane loved about Portland: that her two best friends lived here and that her weird little city had the best coffee in the world. So what if she’d never traveled outside the continental United States? She’d still make this claim no matter where she went. Currently, she was gulping mouthfuls in between checking on patients.

  “You need to head home, Sloane. It’s thirty minutes past your shift,” Tina, her shift supervisor, said. Tina was the resident mom, always making sure that her nurses were taken care of. It was one of the many reasons Sloane loved Portland General. She’d been fortunate enough to be hired on after nursing school, and they’d even paid for her to become a nurse practitioner.

  She nodded to Tina, bone-weary. After the day she’d had, all she wanted to do was snuggle under a bunch of blankets and read a good book. “I will. I just want to check in once more on a couple of patients.”

  Changeover was the most dangerous time for patients. They ran a tight ship here, but Sloane didn’t like to take any chances. She popped her head in on Zachary, the twelve-year-old who was receiving fluids after severe dehydration from the flu. She stared at the monitor. All his vitals were stable. Then she moved to the next room, where there was a four-year-old who’d had the misfortune of taking a spill out of a second-story window.

  Her patients were stable and as comfortable as they could manage. She’d done her job.

  “Girl, go home,” Tina said, shooing her down the hall and to the nurses’ station near the front of the building.

  “Fine. I’m leaving.” She grabbed her coat and made a show of putting it on. “I’ll see you on Wedne
sday.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Sloane wrapped her scarf around her neck and disappeared through the sliding doors out into the chilly November night. The trees had long since shed their leaves, and the bare branches reminded her of fractured bones as they were backlit by the full moon.

  It’d been snowing earlier that day when she’d stepped outside on her lunch break, but it had melted off by the time her shift ended. Not surprising. Rarely did snow stick in the Portland area, but when it did, it made for a glorious winter wonderland, and also the busiest times at the hospital.

  She made her way to her car in the staff parking lot, and once inside, she blasted the heat until feeling came back into her chilled fingers. Instead of driving across town to her apartment, she headed down the 405 to catch Front Street to take her to the Northwest District. She was meeting up with her best friends, Erin, Madison, and Jake, tonight at Brodie’s Tavern. It was a new brewery downtown that early reviews touted to have beer rivaling some of the big names in the area. She didn’t think many could match a Deschutes IPA, but she’d be willing to try it. Plus, after the day she’d had, she could use one . . . or four . . . right about now.

  She still couldn’t believe she’d stitched up Reece, of all people. She’d been mulling it over for hours. Even though her fingers itched to text Erin what had happened to her brother, she took HIPAA laws seriously. Plus, Jake was a tattletale. He’d totally spill the beans to his girlfriend. So she saw that as a win-win.

  Sloane managed to find a parking space on a side street a few blocks from her destination. Even with Thanksgiving a couple weeks away, the whole town was in Christmas mode, wreaths hanging from storefront windows, garlands winding up lampposts. Salvation Army bells rang in the near distance. Sloane took a deep breath, and a white puff of smoke erupted from her lips on her exhale. She loved winter. Loved the feel of the cold air against her skin. The luxury of a cashmere scarf bundled against her neck.