Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (9 page)

“Don’t make me think about that. Tell me what to do about it, instead. Tell me how to stop a crush.”
 

Lexie pressed her lips together. Then, as if reminded she had lips, she applied ChapStick while she stared at Bonnie.
 

Patiently, Bonnie waited.
 

Instead of answering the question, Lexie said, “What’s your fundraiser plan?”
 

“No, Lex, I need a man plan. I need a get-this-man-out-of-my-system plan. Who cares about the fundraiser? We’ve got that all worked out.”
 

“This is relevant. Go with me here. What’s your fundraising plan? Something delicious? Humiliating? Funny?”
 

Bonnie sighed and sat back, wincing as the hard plastic of the chair dug into her back. “Maybe all of those. Remember when we were kids, we played Truth or Dare?”
 

“Of course. I hated that game.”
 

“It was fun,” protested Bonnie. Okay, it was fun if you lied and avoided being dared to do anything. “What if we coordinated a pay-for-play Truth or Dare?”
 

The door to dispatch opened, and Bonnie felt her knees heat up. Caz. Of course.
 

“Hey, you,” said Lexie. “Come in, we were just talking about you.”
 

Oh, jeez…

Caz’s voice was low and he didn’t meet Bonnie’s eyes. “I’m looking for the chief. Do you know where he is?”
 

Lexie said, “Am I in trouble for something?”
 

Caz looked surprised. “Um, no…”
 

“Good.” Lexie hit a few keys. “His MDC says he’s at the coffee shop. Lousy chief that he is. Didn’t even offer to get me a cup.”
 

“Okay…”
 

“Now, get in here. What do you think of Truth or Dare? Can you explain to me why Bonnie here thinks it’s a good idea? The only thing I can think that would be fun about it is if we got firefighters and medics up there and dared them to kiss pigs. Oooh, or each other.” Lexie’s eyes widened as she looked between the two of them. Bonnie predicted she’d have to kill her soon, probably before the afternoon was over.
 

Caz said, “We talked about the game, but—”

Bonnie interrupted, “Hey, didn’t we have to wash the blankets on the rig? I mean, no one used that last one, but it did hit the floor, and we can’t have—”

“I already did it. They’re sanitizing now.”
 

“You see?” said Lexie triumphantly. “He’s on it. Now. Caz. Old buddy. Old pal. What would you do if someone dared you—for money—to kiss Bonnie over there right on the smacker?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was the last question he’d thought he’d be asked in dispatch. Bonnie had
told
Lexie?
 

“Really?” He shoved his hands in his uniform pockets and threw a glare in Bonnie’s direction. “I can’t believe you—”

“I’m just teasing,” said Lexie. “
Sheesh
. Okay, so let me talk this out, so I’m sure I understand what the plan is. All right. So we get two firefighters up there on the stage after the dinner portion of the evening.”
 

“Neither of whom will be me.” Caz had to look away from Bonnie and the way she bit her lower lip when she was nervous. He couldn’t be totally sure he wouldn’t reach over and touch that same lip with his forefinger. Right in front of Lexie. Good grief, Bonnie Maddern acted on him like a nerve agent. She should come with a warning placard. A red light should have been flashing outside Dispatch’s door, to show people it wasn’t safe to enter.
 

“Shhh. You don’t have to go first, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, two firefighters up on stage. Okay, they choose whether they want a Truth or a Dare. Then we hold a mini-auction. Whoever collects the most money each round is off the hook, and the other person has to either tell the truth or do the dare in front of everyone.”
 

“Exactly,” said Bonnie. “So that means that if the dare is take your shoes off and get a pedicure, Guy Mazanti will work extra hard to raise money in the crowd so his opponent will have to do it instead of him.” Everyone knew Guy Mazanti couldn’t stand having his feet touched, or even, really, looked at.
 

“Oh, man, I love the pedicure idea. And I’d like Coin to lose that one, please. I want to see his toes a pretty, pretty pastel pink. With flowers. And maybe rhinestones and glitter!” Lexie looked delighted.
 

Caz could admit that it would probably raise money. It was a cute idea. If he were a citizen going to a benefit put on by firefighters, he’d probably be into seeing them laughingly humiliated, too.
 

It’s just he didn’t want to be one of them up there on the stage. “Sounds good. Sounds funny. And since we’re organizing it, we won’t have to be on stage.”
 

Bonnie looked at him gratefully, her eyes wide with relief. A man would ride a horse a long way to get a gorgeous blonde to look at him that way, Caz realized. He might even ride a bike to see her, a bike that hadn’t been ridden since he was a seventeen-year-old with nothing better to do than mess around on bikes all day.
 

“Nice try,” said Lexie. “This is my show, and you two will be the grand prize.”
 

Caz scrambled to think of something that would dissuade her. “What about the chief? Barger would be great up there. What if we dare him to shave off that mustache?”
 

Lexie gave him a look of horror. “We don’t want to see what he’s got under there. No. He’ll have to do something else for a dare. He
is
going to be our opener, though.”
 

Bonnie said, “You think you can make him do that?”
 

“Please. This is dispatch. We tell
all
y’all what to do. Speaking of which, I need Truth or Dare posters. A bunch of them. Make them big.” The 911 line rang, loud and jarring. Lexie answered, looked at the address, and waggled her fingers at them, shooing them out.
 

“Must be ours,” said Bonnie, pushing her way into the hall.

Caz followed her jog to the app bay, unable to keep his eyes off the way her sweet little rear swayed. In the rig, he got in the driver’s seat without discussion. He hit the lights and pulled out, headed to the accident Lexie had just dispatched them on. “So, let me get this straight, Mad,” he said. “We’re being put on poster duty?”
 

In his peripheral vision, he could see Bonnie smile. “I believe we just got put on that, yes.”
 

“I haven’t made a poster since…” He took a sharp turn onto 8
th
. “Since high school.”
 

“What was the poster for?”
 

“What?” He whooped the siren. “I don’t remember.”
 

“Yes, you do.” She had not an ounce of doubt in her voice.
 

Caz cleared his throat. “Cheer club.”
 

“Cheer club? You mean for the cheerleaders?”
 

“It was a
club
. My girlfriend made me.”
 

“She made you!”
 

“I’m telling you, she was mean.”
 

Bonnie laughed.
 

“Mean like a snake,” Caz went on, easing carefully around the Darling Bay Trolley (often full of day trippers who didn’t take the time to look before stepping into traffic on their way to the beach). Then he hit the gas again. “Mean like a mama bear who’s lost her cub. She said use the puff-paint, I used the puff-paint.”
 

Bonnie’s laugh was like alcohol in his blood. He probably shouldn’t even be driving. He was over the limit.
 

“I like you so much better like this,” she said, still laughing. “I like you talking. You can be
fun
.”
 

It sobered him quickly. Kiss or no kiss, he was here to get the job done. He couldn’t forget that. He wasn’t there to have fun. His mother had been one for having fun, all the time, until she’d left. Fun was a way of lying to yourself, and Caz didn’t lie.
 

“Numbers?” he asked.
 

Bonnie peered at the computer screen, always hard to read in daylight. “861. Should be that red house, right there.”
 

Caz braked too hard. He wasn’t here to be
fun
. Not for her or for anyone else. The sooner he remembered that and got over this little infatuation or whatever it was, the better off he’d be.
 

“Caz, I didn’t mean…”
 

He opened the door and got out, shutting it behind him, closing it on whatever she had to say.

CHAPTER TWELVE

They ran four more calls before sunset. And no matter what she said, Bonnie couldn’t get Caz to open up again.
 

They’d had a moment.
 

No, not
that
moment—not the kiss at Bud’s Bar—even though that was something she couldn’t stop thinking about. And while the kiss was a highly interesting thing to think about, she knew it wasn’t the most important.
That
had been in the rig, when Caz had made her laugh. It was a small thing, but it was something she and Caz hadn’t had yet together. That camaraderie. It’s what made the department special. Bonnie’s ex-partners were her best friends. Riding the rig together was how you got to really know someone. You saw them save a life, and then you saw them lose someone—you saw them hold an old woman’s hand as they told her her husband wasn’t going to make it, and you saw them swallow back tears. And then, in the rig, you laughed about the roller-skating tourist who had just eaten it when he tried to skate past the boardwalk onto the sand. That’s what partners were for.
 

It was what she hadn’t found in Caz. Not until earlier today. Then he’d gone all prickly again, and while she guessed he would say it was her fault, she wouldn’t buy that. She hadn’t done anything except tell him she liked him more when he was laughing.
 

He’d been surly ever since. Such a
man
move.
 

The night went much the same way—they missed dinner for a call where a woman burned her left pinky while making hard-boiled eggs and even though she had a Mercedes in the driveway and a husband on the couch watching the game, she’d wanted a ride to the hospital, and she’d complained the whole way that they wouldn’t put their siren on. When they got back to the station, Tox’s dog Methyl had grabbed the ribs the engine guys had left out for them, and she’d eaten every single one, bones and all. Tox was surly with Hank and Coin, and Lexie hadn’t slept on her nap and was grumpy on the radio.
 

Everyone seemed to be in a bad mood, not just Bonnie. Bed was the best place for her. She hoped she got to stay there.
 

But in bed, Bonnie had never been so aware of how close Caz’s body was to hers, separated as they were by only a thin partition cubicle wall, open at the top. Unlike some of her other coworkers, he was normally quiet once he was in bed. Guy Mazanti snored like a semi-truck climbing a steep hill, all wheezes and groans. Hank was a fish-flopper, flipping to one side, then flopping to the next seconds later. Tox didn’t snore but breathed so deeply he seemed to suck up all the air in the dorm and then expel it in a huge sigh.
 

Caz, though, was always quiet. It made her nervous. There was usually a clank of his belt buckle as he took off his uniform pants and changed into his shorts, and then a squeak as he sat on the edge the bed. That was it. Nothing more. He didn’t even snore.

Tonight Bonnie hadn’t even realized she was waiting for him until she glanced at her watch for the tenth time. It was after midnight, and she still hadn’t heard the tell-tale squeak of his bed.
 

He was probably somewhere in the station,
doing
something. It seemed like he always had something in his hands—if it wasn’t work related, it was his whittling. Some of the older guys were threatened by his energy, she knew. The old-timers, the ones retiring within the next couple of years, the ones who had no motivation to promote to a higher rank—they were the ones threatened by men like Caz. Caz showed them that there
was
always something to be done around the firehouse. Even if they hadn’t run a call in twenty-hours, the ambulance could always stand some tidying if not a full wash down. There was always laundry. There was always,
always
stainless steel to polish. Old-school guys grumbled from their recliners about new bucks trying to impress the brass.
 

Bonnie knew, though, that Caz wasn’t trying to impress anyone. That should have been obvious to anyone who met him. He might be newish to their department, but not to the fire service itself. He was a man who liked to be busy.
 

But he usually went to bed at a normal time. It was weird. She kind of…missed him, missed knowing that inches away from her skin, on the other side of the particle board, he slept.
 

She didn’t miss him enough to get up and look for him, though. No way. That would just be…
 

Bonnie rolled over and whacked her knee on the wall. It was a good thing he
wasn’t
in bed or she would have just startled him right out of it. Shutting her eyes tight, she told herself to sleep. Five minutes later, she was still telling herself the same thing. Twenty minutes later, she gave up. What if he was actually hurt somewhere in the station?
 

Her eyes flew open and she stared into the darkness.
 

Ridiculous. Thirty-four-year-olds didn’t usually die randomly of heart attacks or sudden strokes.
 

But heck. It did happen. Every once in a very great while, a young guy would trip and fall down, dead. That forty-year-old man the other day, for example. Healthy except for his epilepsy, dead a week before his wedding.
 

It happened.
 

Caz could be out in the apparatus bay right now, struggling to breathe, in anaphylactic shock from some brand new allergy, literally dying for someone to save him.