by Lisa Childs
“What your sister and I are doing isn’t any of your business,” Wyatt pointed out. At least he was sure that Fiona had never wanted her brother to know. Or she wouldn’t have if she’d known how furious their liaison would make Matt. She wouldn’t have risked her brother hating her.
Or maybe she would have, if she’d thought that ultimately she could protect him. There were so many dangers from which she would never be able to protect her brother. Car accidents. Illness. Heartbreak.
“It’s all about my business,” Matt insisted. “That’s why she’s sleeping with you. She wants you to make sure I don’t get a spot on the Hotshot team.”
Wyatt shook his head. “This has nothing to do with that.” Because it wouldn’t matter what anyone did; Matt couldn’t make the team unless he was qualified. And he would never be qualified.
“Matthew,” Fiona said as she rushed into the room. “What are you doing here so early?”
“You sent a text that you wanted to talk,” Matt said. “Is this what you wanted to talk about? About how far you’ve gone to mess up my life again!”
“Matthew, I’m trying to make sure you don’t mess up your life,” she said. “Or risk it…”
“See,” Matt said. “She admits what she’s doing with you. Why do you keep lying?”
Wyatt saw the betrayal on the kid’s face. He’d trusted Wyatt. He hadn’t ever actually listened to him. But he’d trusted him, and by getting involved with Fiona, Wyatt had betrayed that trust. Before he could say anything, Matt turned and ran down the porch steps and out to where he’d parked his beat-up old truck at the curb.
“Go after him,” she urged him. “Make sure he’s okay.”
Wyatt turned toward her. He wanted to talk to her—wanted to call her on her admission. Of course he’d known she was using him. But…
“Please,” she said. “Talk to him…”
She was right. Wyatt needed to talk to the kid. Needed to calm him down. He nodded his agreement, but as he turned away, he realized that whatever they’d had was over.
She loved her brother too much to risk his hating her. She wouldn’t want to see Wyatt anymore, let alone sleep with him.
He should have been relieved, but the tension was back in his body, forming a tight knot in his guts. That was just sex, though. That deep need and desire for her.
It wasn’t love. He wouldn’t be the fool Braden had been and risk his heart on anyone. As soon as he saw his boss again, and saw the misery on his face, Wyatt would be happy he’d made his escape—that he was in no danger of falling for Fiona.
12
THE DOOR TO her office opened with a creak. Fiona looked up quickly, but disappointment extinguished her faint hope. It wasn’t Matthew standing in her doorway.
He hadn’t talked to her in the week since he’d discovered Wyatt sneaking out of her house. Neither had Wyatt…
Maybe she was even more disappointed that it wasn’t him who’d come to see her.
“Don’t look so thrilled,” Tammy said as she leaned against the doorjamb. She wore red today and looked exceptionally beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” Fiona replied. “I’m just very busy.”
“Bullshit.” Tammy called her on it with the honesty borne of years of friendship. “You’ve been moping around for a week. It’s Friday night. You’re not working anymore.” She came around her desk and opened the bottom drawer where Fiona kept her purse. She pulled it out by the strap and plopped it down in front of her. “You’re leaving. Now.”
“I have things I have to finish up—”
“Bullshit!” Tammy said again. She reached across Fiona and pushed the power button on the monitor; the screen went black.
Like Fiona’s mood.
“You need to get out of this office,” Tammy insisted. “You need some fresh air and sunshine.”
Her friend was right. Fiona needed to stop sulking in her office. She wasn’t actually accomplishing anything but wallowing in self-pity.
She stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Where are you taking me?”
“The club…”
“So much for fresh air and sunshine,” she murmured. Not that the sun would be out much longer; it was already beginning to set outside her office window.
Tammy chuckled and slung her arm around Fiona’s shoulders. “Okay, I should have said alcohol and sexy men.”
Fiona tensed. There was only one sexy man she wanted to see. Was he mad at her? Did he believe what Matthew had—that she’d only been using him?
Guilt tugged at her. That was what she’d been telling herself. So was she a user or a liar?
“Stop thinking about the firefighter,” Tammy admonished her.
She’d given Tammy a blow-by-blow of that horrible morning, and she’d kept her updated that neither man had contacted her again.
“I’m thinking about Matthew,” she said—which was true, too. “I don’t know if Wyatt caught up with him. I don’t know what they talked about. And Mandy hasn’t seen him, either,” Fiona said. Which was no surprise, since their mother didn’t even know where he was staying. If she did, Fiona could have tracked him down and talked to him. Maybe she could have convinced him that she had only his best interests at heart.
“That’s why I need to talk to Wyatt,” Fiona continued. “I need to see if he knows where Matthew is and if he’s okay.” She had no doubt that Wyatt would know. And she would have called and asked him for those whereabouts, but she’d been afraid to call him. She was worried that he was furious with her—as Matthew was.
She’d gotten used to her brother resenting her. She didn’t want Wyatt to hate her, too.
“You want to know more than that,” her friend said, calling her out on another lie.
She wanted to know if Wyatt was mad at her—if that was why he hadn’t called or texted or stopped by to see her.
“Wyatt is Matt’s mentor,” Tammy continued. “Is he even able to tell you what they talked about?”
“Matthew’s twenty,” Fiona reminded her. “I doubt any of that applies any longer.” She wasn’t even sure why or how Wyatt had become his mentor—or as her mother called him, his big brother.
Tammy shrugged. “Their relationship is still built on trust. Wyatt might not want to betray that.”
The problem was that Matthew already thought he had.
“I would be happy to just know if Matthew’s all right,” she said.
“You’d know if he wasn’t,” Tammy insisted. “Someone would have called your mother.”
Only if they needed to call his emergency contact. And for all she knew, that could have been Wyatt, too. But if Wyatt had been called for that reason, he would have let her or Mandy know. She knew him better now than she had before. She knew that, even though he acted cocky and funny, he cared about his friends. And he considered Matthew a friend.
She nodded. “You’re right.”
“What was that?” Tammy asked, cupping her ear and tilting her head as if she was hard of hearing.
So Fiona obliged with a shout and repeated, “You’re right.”
“I love the sound of that.”
“But not about the place we should go,” Fiona added.
“You don’t want to go to the club?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t want to see the fake firefighter again?” Tammy sighed. “Might be awkward for me to see the police officer, too.”
Fiona thought the male strippers had only been an opening-night draw, but she didn’t correct her friend’s assumption that they’d be there. Instead she said, “I know another place we can go.”
Tammy narrowed her brown eyes. “For fresh air and sunshine?”
“No,” Fiona said. She gestured at the window and the darkening sky outside it. “Looks like the ship has already sailed on sunshine. I have something else in mind for us.”
Tammy arched a brow.
“Alcohol and sexy men,” Fiona said.
Tammy clutch
ed her close again. “There’s my girl bouncing back.”
“And the best part about this place is that we’ll probably be the only women.”
Tammy whistled in appreciation. “I love it! I love that we’ve been friends so long that you’re starting to think like me.”
The guilt she’d already been feeling—over how she’d used Wyatt—intensified. She had purposely misled Tammy into believing that she was ready to go out and meet men.
But then Tammy stopped and stared at her, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “But if we’re such good friends, how come you never told me about this place before?”
“I just found out about it myself,” she admitted.
“What’s it called?”
“The Filling Station.” She tensed, afraid that Tammy might realize why she wanted to go there—if she was aware of its proximity to the local firehouse.
But her friend just smiled. “Sounds like I might get filled up tonight—with one of these sexy men you’ve promised will be there.”
She wasn’t sure who would be there. But she hoped Wyatt would be—and that he would give her a chance to explain. Now she would just have to come up with an explanation…
*
“IT’S MY EX-WIFE’S wedding day,” Braden said. “But for some reason you look like the one who needs cheering up.”
“I’m fine,” Wyatt insisted. He tried to force his usual cocky grin, but his face hurt from the effort to smile. It was too difficult with the ache in his heart—in his body. He ached with missing Fiona. But he forced thoughts of her aside, as he’d tried to do all week, and focused on his friend. “Hey, we could go somewhere else if you’d rather…”
The Filling Station was louder than usual tonight with a euchre tournament taking place at the same time as a heated pool match in the back.
“Like the club where you got mistaken for a male stripper,” he said.
Braden shook his head. “Hell, no. I’m not going back there.”
“Technically I’m not sure we can,” Wyatt admitted. “Since we took part in a brawl.”
Braden snorted. “Brawl? That suggests we were actually able to fight back. Instead we got beat down…”
“And clawed up,” Wyatt reminded him. He was glad that, for a moment, he was able to get his friend’s mind off the wedding he shouldn’t have been invited to attend. Now if only he could get his own mind off Fiona…
But she never left it. It was almost as if he could hear her. He glanced around and then he saw her, and he realized why the pool match in the back was so heated. Two men shoved at each other while a woman leaned over the table to take a shot.
He would recognize the sweet curve of that ass anywhere. It wriggled beneath the tight fabric of her little skirt.
“Speaking of brawls,” Braden murmured.
The two men stopped shoving and started swinging. A brunette grabbed Fiona and tried to pull her away. But the men, locked in a wrestling move now, stumbled toward them and pushed the women back against the table. Trapping them there…
Wyatt cursed and jumped to his feet. Braden followed close behind him. He rushed up and grabbed one of the swinging men while Braden grabbed the other. The fists kept flying—this time nearly hitting him.
He ducked. And the man he’d grasped wriggled free and spun toward him. He dodged another blow.
“Hey, I got this,” Braden said. And there was a particular gleam in his eyes. He needed this fight.
But Braden wasn’t in the brawl alone. Cody and Dawson Hess, another Hotshot, rushed forward and stepped in, aiding their captain. So Wyatt turned his attention to Fiona, lifting her from the table and out of danger.
Dawson dropped his guy and reached for the brunette—pulling her away from the action, as well. He murmured something, but Wyatt didn’t hear, or care, what he said. Fiona had all his attention.
“What is it with you, woman?” he asked.
Her arm had naturally looped around his neck, as it always had when he carried her off to bed—either his or hers. And she stared up at him through her thick, black lashes, feigning innocence. “What? I didn’t start that fight.”
“No,” he agreed. She hadn’t swung a punch, but she was the reason the men had started fighting—for her attention.
“Why can’t men stay away from you?” he asked.
“I’m irresistible?” she said, as if she wasn’t sure of the answer.
He was. She was definitely irresistible. Staying away from her for the past week had not been easy. He’d been tempted to act as crazy as Howard and blow up her phone with texts and voice mails. But he’d resisted.
He felt too damn guilty over her concern about her brother. If only he could be honest with her…
But he wasn’t authorized to discuss any of the applicants. Not even with the applicants. Matt hadn’t liked hearing that, either—back when he’d first told Wyatt that he’d applied to the forest service.
Someone bumped into his back, knocking him forward. He tightened his grasp on her. He didn’t want to lose her again. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. And, amid catcalls and whistles, he carried her from the bar.
But even once they stepped out the door, he didn’t release her. He kept carrying her. Maybe he would never let her go…
13
WYATT WAS THE irresistible one. He was the real reason that Fiona had gone to that bar—because she’d hoped to see him again. She had needed to see him again.
Seeing wasn’t enough, though. She needed to touch and kiss him, too. But he hadn’t carried her to his vehicle or hers. He hadn’t carried her to one of their houses, either.
He had carried her to the fire station.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.
“Because it was closest,” he replied as if his answer should have been obvious. But why did it matter what was closest? Especially if he was only rescuing her. Then he would have only needed to carry her away from the fight, not around the corner.
Maybe he wanted to talk to her—probably to give her a piece of his mind about how she’d manipulated him. Heat rushed to her face—from shame, not embarrassment. But he already knew why she’d done it. For Matthew…
She wanted to ask him about her brother—to make sure that Matthew was all right. But if he wasn’t, Wyatt would have contacted her. He would have told her.
And there was something she wanted to do more than talking about her brother or anything else. She tightened her arm around his neck and pulled his head down. She brushed her lips back and forth across his—teasing with butterfly-soft kisses.
He groaned and caught her bottom lip between his teeth. He nipped it lightly, then traced her lips with the tip of his tongue.
She moaned and clasped her hands behind his head, pressing his mouth to hers. She deepened the kiss, parting her lips wide, so he thrust all the way inside. Her tongue tangled with his. He drew back, or tried, but she sucked him deeper. Then she released him to nip at his lower lip.
He groaned. Then he dropped the arm from beneath her legs, so she slid down his body—her softness over his hard muscles. His hand at her back kept her clutched tightly against him, so tightly that her heels barely reached the floor. Holding her like that, flush against his body, he began to walk again. He moved through the garage of the fire station, past the bright yellow fire engines, to a room at the back.
He hit a switch with his fist and bathed the small, cement block room in light. “It’s not pretty,” he murmured. “But it was close.”
It was an office. Similar to Captain Zimmer’s. But the name on the desk placard was Wyatt’s. Specifically: Assistant Superintendent Wyatt Andrews. He had an office at the firehouse, too.
Before she could ask him about it and his title, he leaned down and kissed her again—as if he couldn’t get enough of her lips. “I couldn’t wait…”
Neither could she. She had questions she wanted to ask him. But he had already answered the most important one to her right now; he wa
nted her as much as she wanted him.
“I needed to taste your mouth,” he said as he slid his tongue inside again. But he set her on her feet—finally—and stepped back.
She murmured a protest at the separation. But his hands were there, on the buttons of her blouse, undoing them. She’d left her coat at the bar, but Tammy would remember it.
Tammy! She’d left her friend in the middle of a fight. “I should go back,” she murmured in faint protest, “and make sure my friend is all right.”
“The brunette?”
“Yes.”
“Dawson had her,” Wyatt said. “He’s used to extracting people who’ve gotten themselves into danger.”
“Like you?” she asked.
“I’m getting better at it,” he said, “thanks to the practice you’ve been giving me. For someone who likes playing it so safe, you’ve been finding a lot of trouble lately.”
She couldn’t deny it. She had been getting into trouble. And the biggest danger stood in front of her, parting her blouse. He pushed it off her shoulders and dropped it to the cement floor.
Usually she would have worried about the fabric wrinkling. But he was touching her, tracing his fingertips along the cups of her lace bra. And she couldn’t care less about wrinkles anymore.
All she wanted was him.
He must have left his coat at the bar, too. He wore only a Forest Service Fire Department T-shirt and jeans. She dragged the T-shirt up and over his head and dropped it as carelessly to the floor as he had her blouse. Then she reached for his zipper. His erection pressed against the denim, demanding release. She obliged.
He sucked in an audible breath when her fingers slid over the tip of his cock—which had pushed out of his boxers. “Fiona…”
He lifted her again. And in the process he pushed up her skirt. It rolled up around her waist, leaving her ass bare but for the thin strap of her G-string. His hands slid over her butt.
“I love your ass,” he murmured. And he easily snapped that lace string so that her underwear fell away, too. She clutched at his shoulders. They were so broad, so strong as he held her effortlessly—just as he’d carried her effortlessly for a block.
She wriggled and arched her hips. Tension wound so tightly inside her that her body begged for release. She opened her mouth to utter the plea for it—for him—when he kissed her again.
