by Radclyffe
Ali knew she sounded angry. She was angry. Beau was suffering from exposure and a degree of hypothermia that could easily have resulted in cardiac irregularities and vascular compromise. She’d fainted in the locker room. It might have been worse. Ali was angry at herself for not having seen Beau’s condition, for not appreciating that one of the emergency personnel had been compromised.
Beau jutted her chin. She didn’t need a lecture, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to have someone else define her job or her limits. Especially not Ali Torveau. “In case you didn’t notice, I had other things to think about.”
“Wrong, Firefighter Cross. Your responsibility ended when you came through the door of my trauma bay. You had nothing to think about then except ensuring that you were not impaired.”
Beau pushed off the stretcher, landing so close to Ali they were almost nose to nose. “I’m not just a stretcher bearer.”
Ali thought she could actually see sparks flare in Beau’s eyes. The woman had incredible eyes. She also had an incredible ego to go along with them. “I know that. But reckless endangerment, even when it’s your own life, is not acceptable in my unit.”
“Does everyone always follow your rules, Dr. Torveau?” Beau whispered, those beautiful lips lifting into a taunting grin.
“In here they do.” Ali refused to look away, even when the susurrant note in Beau’s voice stirred a ripple of heat in her belly. She held Beau’s gaze a moment longer, just to prove she was unaffected by Beau’s appeal. Then she deliberately turned aside to retrieve one of the containers she’d set on the crash cart. “Here. Hot coffee. Drink it.”
Beau regarded her steadily, the grin never wavering. “Is that another order?”
Ali blushed. “Yes.”
“All right.” Beau let her fingers skim Ali’s as she took the cup. “I’ll let you win this round.”
“This isn’t a contest.” Ali backed up a step. “You should take a hot shower before you go back outside. Use the one in the locker room.”
Beau sipped the coffee, captivated by the hint of dusty rose climbing from the base of Ali’s throat. Christ, Torveau was hot. Beau could imagine Ali’s breasts painted a similar hue as she approached orgasm, could almost taste her unique flavor. Her throat went dry. “I could use an assist this time.”
Ali snorted. “Thank you, but not a chance.”
“One of these days you’ll say yes.”
“No,” Ali said softly, “I won’t.”
“Are you ever wrong, Dr. Torveau?”
“Yes,” Ali replied, pulling the curtain aside, “but not about this. Get warmed up. And be careful out there.”
Chapter Five
Beau climbed into the rig and buckled up while Bobby pulled out of the ER turnaround. They rode in silence for a couple of minutes.
“You pissed?” Bobby finally said.
“Nope.”
“You score?”
“Not yet.” Beau replayed Ali coming into the locker room, helping her up, holding her. Her defenses had been down and Ali had gotten closer to her than most of the women she went to bed with. Even though her head knew the whole scene had been completely professional, her body had other ideas. The image of Ali opening her pants gave her a rush and she silently cursed. The last thing she wanted was to be horny all day in a station house full of firefighters. It wasn’t like she could suddenly disappear to take the edge off, even though the way she was throbbing she probably wouldn’t need more than a few well-placed strokes. She couldn’t remember the last time just being around a woman turned her this inside out. Hell, making a woman come didn’t rev her up this much. Fuck.
“What?” Bobby asked.
“What what?” She was edgy and irritated, and goddamn it, she didn’t like it.
“Fuck. You just said fuck.”
“Next time you feel the urge to get all motherly, just stuff it, okay?”
“Okay. Okay.” Bobby pulled into the station at Sixtieth and Woodland in West Philadelphia. “You feel all right?”
Beau glared at him. “What’s next? You gonna want to have my baby? I’m fine. Jesus.”
“How do you think that would work? The baby thing? I mean, would you have to fuck me or—” Bobby laughed and jumped out before Beau’s punch could land on his shoulder. “Man, you’re really bitchy. She must have shut you down hard. You want to pay up now, ’cause you know you’re going to lose.”
“Give me two weeks,” Beau said with more confidence than she felt. She couldn’t think of a good reason why Ali Torveau would want to go out with her, but she couldn’t bring herself to give up. Not when her body still hummed with the innocent touch of Ali’s fingers on her skin.
*
“I see the hot studly one was back again,” Wynter said as she joined Ali in the small staff lounge down the hall from the trauma admitting area. She dropped onto the mustard yellow sofa, put her feet up, and lay back with a groan.
“Who would that be?” Ali said, pretending to be engrossed in the Journal of Trauma she’d been staring at for the last ten minutes without registering a single word.
“Well, I suppose if I were of a different bent the big blond might be an option, but since he’s not my cup of tea, that leaves the really hunky one with the blue eyes.”
“Hunky? Did you really just use the word ‘hunky’?” Ali didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t need any further reminders of just how attractive Beau was. “What are we now, fifteen?”
Wynter smiled sheepishly. “What can I say. Hormones. My body wants things it is incapable of doing anymore. It’s horrible. Poor Pearce. One minute I’m bitching at her for just breathing too loud in bed, the next I’m demanding she make me come immediately, no questions asked.”
Ali laughed. “I bet she’s not complaining.”
“She probably doesn’t dare.” Wynter fixed Ali with a stern gaze. “And you’re avoiding the question. That was her, wasn’t it? The one who asked you out the other night?”
“Umm,” Ali said noncommittally, flipping a page in the journal.
“Just out of curiosity, why did you say no?” Wynter rolled onto her side and pillowed her head on her arm. “I mean, I might be big as a house and insanely happily married, but even I can appreciate her virtues.”
“Virtues? We must not be thinking of the same woman,” Ali said. “It takes a little more than a walking orgasm with gorgeous eyes to interest me. Besides, I already told you. She can’t imagine anyone saying no to her, because probably no woman ever has.” She flipped another page. “Until today.”
“She asked you out again?” Wynter said.
“Umm.”
“Hey, Ali,” Wynter said gently. “What’s the real reason you said no? You haven’t dated anyone in a long time.”
Ali finally looked at the woman she considered her best friend, a woman with whom she’d shared countless late-night conversations and celebrated triumphs and tragedies, both personal and professional. And still, she’d kept so many secrets from her. The habits of a lifetime were so hard to break, and right now, struggling with the unexpected responses Beau had evoked, she couldn’t expose more of herself. Not even to Wynter.
“She’d be perfect if all I wanted was sex,” Ali said lightly.
“That might not be so bad, once in a while,” Wynter teased. “Besides, a date isn’t a proposal of marriage.”
“Definitely not with that one.” Ali tossed the unread journal aside. “I’ve thought about it. Just having a little fling. No strings, no expectations. It’s not my usual thing, and I’m not sure I’d be any good at it.”
Wynter sat up. “What’s to be good at? You go out with her, and if she’s interested and you’re interested, you get naked with her.”
“Yeah, right. Is that how it went with Pearce?”
Wynter colored, the pink hue to her ivory skin making her look young and fresh and innocent.
“I almost kissed her the very first time I laid eyes on her. Thank God I didn’t,
because my next move would have been to rip her clothes off. Or mine.” Wynter rolled her eyes. “And we were in a bathroom in the campus center, for crying out loud. Talk about fifteen.”
Ali laughed, but she instantly flashed back to the locker room and Beau Cross’s naked torso. The scars still bothered her, made her ache to undo whatever past hurts had caused them. That feeling she could understand—she was a doctor, after all. She spent almost every waking moment in a battle to save the fragile human body from destruction. Desire was another thing altogether. She couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that she wasn’t attracted to her, and she wasn’t happy about it. She couldn’t ever remember wanting a woman she didn’t know at all. But then all the women she had known, she hadn’t wanted—not truly wanted—enough to risk letting them close.
“I’ll think about it, okay?” Ali said to make Wynter happy.
“That’s the spirit. Live a little.”
“You just want a vicarious thrill,” Ali grumped.
“True. And as your best friend, I expect all the little details.” Wynter dropped her head back on the sofa and sighed. “And please hurry, while I can still enjoy it.”
“Why don’t you grab one of the empty on-call rooms and take a nap. I’ll wake you if we need you.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re giving me a backache just looking at you. Go. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
“I will, if you promise to go out with…what’s her name, anyhow?”
“Beau Cross, and that’s blackmail.”
“Uh-huh. It is. So is that a yes?”
“You’re relentless.” Ali sighed. “If she asks me again—I’ll think about it.”
Wynter heaved herself up off the couch and kissed Ali’s cheek. “Okay. That’ll work.”
Ali shook her head, wondering how Wynter had won that concession. Hopefully, Beau had already moved on to greener pastures and she wouldn’t be faced with the decision of whether or not to honor her half-serious promise to Wynter. Thinking about Beau turning her attentions elsewhere elicited a stab of disappointment. That was enough of a warning to make her hope she’d seen the last of the dangerously charming Beau Cross.
*
“Cross,” Captain Jeffries called from his tiny closet of an office when Beau and Bobby rejoined the squad in the common room on the first floor of the station house. “See you a minute?”
“Sure, Cap,” Beau called. “Let me just grab a cuppa coffee.”
The other five men and one woman on duty with her sprawled on the sofa and overstuffed chairs in front of the big screen TV mounted on the wall. The scene was as familiar and comfortable as a night at home with Jilly. Until she’d moved in with Jilly three weeks before, this room or one just like it had been more home for her than her apartment. That had just been a place to crash and store her clothes when she wasn’t working or spending the night with someone. She loved her parents and her brothers, and she adored Jilly most of all, but they didn’t know her life the way these people did. They hadn’t shared the exhilaration of risking their lives to save someone or the tragedy of failing. They didn’t know what it was like to ride the edge. They didn’t know her. She paused as she reached for the coffeepot in the tiny kitchen in the corner opposite Captain Jeffries’s office.
Her fellow firefighters knew her as far as their common experiences allowed, and her sister knew her from the history they shared, but no one knew all of her. Moving in with Jilly made her realize how effectively she’d partitioned her world into safe, neat little compartments. Sometimes those compartments seemed to close in on her, reminding her just how alone she really was. Shrugging away the unfamiliar melancholy, she poured her coffee and dumped artificial creamer into it until the oily black turned a pasty yellow, just the way she liked it. Her life was like that too—just the way she liked it, and that’s how she wanted it to stay.
Sipping her coffee, she tapped on the half-open door to the eight-by-ten room where Jasper Jeffries, a thirty-year man, presided over Station House 38. Jeffries regarded her from his seat at a cluttered desk in one corner of the jam-packed room, his smooth, dark features serious. Beau didn’t know him well yet, but from his expression she sensed she was being appraised. “Captain? You wanted to see me?”
“Come in and close the door, Cross.”
While procedure around the station house was usually pretty relaxed, Beau quickly set her coffee on a nearby file cabinet, closed the door, and came to attention in front of his desk.
“That was a nice save out there today,” Jeffries said.
“Thanks, but I had a lot of help. If the squad hadn’t gotten lines on that vehicle as quickly as they did, we might’ve lost them both.”
Jeffries folded his hands on his desk. A heavy gold ring on his right hand glinted with the Marine Corps insignia. His graying black hair was still military-short and his posture was as straight as if he were standing on the parade ground. “Might’ve lost you too.”
“I had that situation under control, sir,” Beau said.
“No way you could have made the extraction without going in?” His gaze locked on hers. “Couldn’t have waited another minute for them to winch the vehicle onto land and secure it?”
Beau knew what he was questioning and why. Water rescues, like most other rescue scenarios, were supposed to follow a set pattern. In the case of a victim in the water: reach, throw, row, and go—meaning extend or throw the victim a lifeline or use a boat to reach them. Actually entering the water—go—was a last resort. “In my opinion, the victims were in imminent danger. That boy would have drowned in another thirty seconds. I had to go in.”
Jeffries nodded. “Captain Lambert says you’re an exemplary firefighter.”
Beau stiffened. If Jeffries had called her previous captain, he must have doubts about her. “Are you unhappy with my performance, Captain?”
“Charlie Lambert says you’re fearless.”
Beau didn’t say anything. Sooner or later, Jeffries would make his point.
“I just want to be sure fearless doesn’t turn into foolhardy,” Jeffries said. “A reckless firefighter puts everyone in danger. Another few minutes in forty-five-degree water and we’d have been rescuing you. You still look a little blue around the edges.”
Beau clenched her jaw and swallowed a curse. She’d guessed wrong. Torveau had called the station house and turned her in after all. So much for thinking she’d detected a spark of interest from the surgeon. Torveau might have helped her out, but she had only been doing her job. There was nothing personal in her attention. But goddamn it, she’d played by Torveau’s rules, and what had it gotten her? Not a thing. Beau felt like an idiot, and she had no one to blame but herself. She should have known better.
“I would never do anything to put a civilian or a firefighter at risk,” Beau said tightly.
“Good. Damn cold out there today.”
“Yes sir.”
“You get warmed up?”
Beau still wore the scrubs she’d changed into after taking a hot shower at the hospital, so denying she’d been both wet and freezing was pointless. “I’m fine, yes. I grabbed dry clothes at UHop.”
“Why don’t you take a pass on the next few calls. Grab something to eat. Make sure everything is copacetic.”
“Yes sir.” Beau couldn’t argue. She recognized an order couched as a suggestion when she heard one. She couldn’t believe Jeffries was sitting her down as if she weren’t capable of doing her job. “Anything else, Captain?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, nice work out there today.”
“Thank you,” Beau said automatically, although the praise felt empty. She’d have to work harder to prove herself now. But then, what else was new. She’d been proving she could measure up most of her life.
Beau carefully settled her expression into one of unconcern as she retrieved her coffee cup and stepped out of the captain’s office. After dumping the coffee in the sink, she strode straight through the
common room and down the hall to the locker room. She changed into navy blue uniform pants and a dark T-shirt, but instead of lacing on her boots, she pulled her gym shoes from the bottom of the locker. She rummaged through an equipment closet by the back door, found a basketball that miraculously still had air in it, and went out into the parking lot behind the station. Like every other firehouse she’d ever been to, this one had a basketball hoop bolted to the back of the building. She dribbled away from the hoop for fifteen feet, spun, jumped, and pumped the ball at the hoop. The ball dropped through cleanly and she caught it on the bounce, dribbled, cut, spun, pumped. Sank another one. Head down, she drove around invisible opponents, cut away from blockers, jumped and shot through the outstretched arms of the defense. Her breath left tiny clouds of white in the chill air. Her shirt stuck to the center of her back when she broke a sweat.
She dropped twenty baskets before she could get the image of Ali Torveau out of her mind. Another ten before the edge of her anger, and beneath it, burning disappointment, even started to abate. Why hadn’t Ali trusted her? Why hadn’t she respected her judgment?
“Goddamn it,” she muttered, cutting left toward the basket, driving underneath, and leaping to dunk the ball. When she came down, Bobby grabbed the ball and dribbled backwards away from her.
“You’re pretty short to be dunking like that,” he said, taking a shot. The ball rolled around the rim and finally dropped through.
Beau retrieved it, passed it back to him, and caught his missed shot on the rebound. “Always been a pretty good jumper.”
“Better than pretty good. How come you never play pickup? Hey, you could play on the league team. We could use a forward like you.”
“I don’t like team sports.” Beau tossed the ball to him and started toward the building.
“What’s got you steamed up?” Bobby asked, catching up to her at the brown metal door.
