Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes) (19 page)

Both in hand, I
started down the hall, prepared to defend myself if necessary. I rounded the
corner…and stopped. There, standing outside my new apartment’s door—the door
I’d planned to pass through on my way to my first quiet, relaxing
weeknight—were six faces I quickly recognized from Engine House One. Three were
in their casual uniform of black pants and grey logo tees, the rest were in
street clothes.

“There she is!”

“Hurry up, Liz!”

“We’ve been
waiting for like, fifteen minutes!”

“W-what are you
guys doing here? Oh my gosh, is my apartment on fire?”

Cam Bryant, one
of the younger guys, stepped toward me and snagged the keychain dangling from
my panic-stricken grasp.

“Good one, Liz.”
He turned, opened the door, and gave the other guys a wave in.

“Wait—what are
you doing?”

Instead of
answering, the guys resumed their prior conversation and funneled one by one into
the apartment. I scurried after them, leaving the door open behind me…with the
intent of driving them right back outside shortly.

“Seriously—where
do you think you’re going?”

Joe stopped his
conversation long enough to meet my gaze. “It’s a double-header, Liz. Dawn
always let us use her balcony for these.”

“But I’m not
Dawn!” I cried, my face growing warmer by the second. “And how did you know I
lived here now—?”

“Pizza’s here!”

I spun slowly on
my heel to face the latest arrival to my unwanted baseball party. Another
fireman, though he wasn’t in uniform tonight. “
You
.”

Torrunn pushed
the door shut with one foot, four pizza boxes in his hands and an angelic smile
on his face. “What?”

“You told them I
was here, didn’t you? After Bunni must have told you.”

“Well yeah,
since you didn’t bother to tell me yourself. Made sense, since you didn’t park
in the spa’s lot today.”

“Hey, look,”
someone said. “Liz has one of those funky-looking cats.”

I turned to spy
Fluffy, perched on the back of the couch, doing his favorite, unflattering
cleaning thing. “He’s not my cat.”

And seriously,
how did he bend like that? I looked back toward Torrunn, refusing to be
distracted. But he’d continued on into the kitchen.

“If he’s not
your cat,” the guy closest to it whom I didn’t recognize asked, “then why is he
in your apartment?”

I threw him a
dirty look. “Long story. You want a cat?”

“You know, I’ve
been thinking about—”

“Great, he’s
yours.” With that I hurried off after Torrunn.

“Okay, guys,” he
said, ignoring me as he pried open the pizza boxes now lining my countertop. “I
got one pepperoni, one pepperoni sausage, one meat lover’s, and one onion and
green olive.”

“Alright!” one
of the younger guys whose name I couldn’t remember exclaimed, and hopped up off
my recliner. Dawn’s recliner.
Somebody’s
recliner. The others soon
followed, cat and baseball game quickly forgotten.

Torrunn reached
into the cupboard like he’d been there a thousand times before, and produced a
stack of plates. “We’ve got the ‘za, now where are the beverages?”

“Right here!” Sam
LaRoque, another off-duty fireman, stepped into my foyer and pushed the door
back shut behind him. “Beer for us, Coke for you on-duty saps.”

It was all too
much. I marched into the kitchen, snagged Torrunn’s arm, and dragged him down
the hall away from all the commotion. Whooping and hollering echoed behind us
as my intentions were horribly misinterpreted.

“Would you mind
telling me what the hell you guys are doing here?” I hissed, stopping at the
end of the hall.

I took a quick
glance behind him to make sure my bedroom door was shut. It’d be just my luck
to have delicates in plain view or something. When I shifted my gaze back to
Torrunn, I found his brows pulled up into a V.

“What? We always
come here for double-headers. You heard Joe.”

“But that was
when
Dawn
lived here.
I
live here now, and
I
get to decide
whether or not to extend the invitation.”

His lips tugged
into a sheepish grin, a move that any other time would have had my heart skip a
few beats. But not tonight. Tonight, I was pissed.

“It was your
night to come to the engine house. We just saved you the trip.”

“How very
thoughtful of you. But in case you forgot, I need my—” Something caught the
corner of my eye. My massage chair, leaning against the entryway. The big jerks
had thought of everything.

Everything, that
is, except asking if any of this was alright with me.

My eyes narrowed
and shifted back to Torrunn. “Great. Well, you can just take that back with you.
No way I’m going to let you stay and piss off my new neighbors with all this
noise.”

“It’ll stop,
once the game starts.” Torrunn took in my indignant look, and his shoulders
sagged. “You’re really gonna kick us out?”

“I should.”

The cheerful sound
of my uninvited guests’ banter trailed down the hallway. It was a comforting
sound, one I’d actually been looking forward to hearing from this group all
day. I just hadn’t planned on the sound being
here
.

I looked toward
the living room, and watched as a few of the guys snagged pieces of ‘za from
the kitchen counter.
So what if they were here instead of there?
came a
little voice in the back of my head. I was still in the company of friends. And
perhaps it wouldn’t kill me to be a little spontaneous for once.

My gaze shifted
back to Torrunn, his chocolate eyes repentant. “But then the beer might get
warm.”

Relief washed
over his face. “And there’s nothing worse than warm beer.”

“Oh, I can think
of worse.” Like being alone in a hallway with the object of your incessant
infatuation. The space was too small, his appeal too strong. Time to head back
to the living room. I turned and started back.

“Yeah? Like
what?”

“Um, like having
a house full of people stop by before you’ve had a chance to clean up.”

“Oh come on, you
just moved in. We wouldn’t expect it to be spotless so soon.”

Click
.

I turned back in
time to see Torrunn stepping through my bedroom door.

My bedroom
door
? Oh my God. “W-what you doing?” I cried, dashing in after him.

“Looking for a
place to put the massage chair. You don’t really want to do it in the middle of
all that noise, do you?”

I ignored the
double entendre and reached for his arm, but all I caught was a fistful of air.
“This is
my
room. No way am I letting everyone in here. We can just set
it up in the hallway.”

“Oh come on,
Liz,” he said, scanning the room. “There’s plenty of room in here! The guys are
used to messy spaces.”

I’d forgotten
how indecisive I’d been trying to pick out my clothes this morning. My bed was
made, but hanging over its banister were a few extra pairs of pants, two tops
and… Wait, where was the bra? I knew I’d swapped out a pink lacy number for the
black no-nonsense one I had on. I crossed the room to gather every loose
garment in sight.

“Had I known I
was going to have company,” I growled, “I would have had the place spotless.”

“Now, where’s
the fun in that?”

I ignored his
comment and dropped to the floor, arms still full of clothes.
Where the hell
was that damned bra?

“Been studying
up on fashion trends?”

“Wha—?” I
glanced up to find Torrunn standing beside my dresser, a magazine I’d been flipping
through this morning in one hand, and my pink bra dangling from his index
finger on the other.

I sprang up,
dropping the rest of the clothes, and snagged the closest end of the bra. “Give
me that!”

Torrunn held on,
an amused grin on his face. “Yeah, probably best if you put this away before
the others come in. Might give them the wrong—”

“Torrunn?”

Our gazes locked
and eyes widened at the sound of a third voice coming from the door. Him
finding my bra had been mortifying. But turning to find his girlfriend—the one
I suspected was trying to scare me off with all these darned fires—standing in
my doorway, her face the color of a tomato and fists buried in her hips? Well,
that was a hundred times worse.

Karma back to
bite me, like I should have known it would.

CHAPTER
17

I set my drink
down at my new web designer friend Jessica’s usual table in the back corner of
JJ’s coffee shop, and mumbled a thank you for the earlier invite to join her at
lunch. So far at the spa I’d survived the ‘morning after’, but Bunni was in a
foul, foul mood. The less I was there today, the better.

“You’re welcome.”
She looked up from a magazine she’d been reading and smiled. Her brows pulled
together as she took in my haggard expression. “Yikes. Rough day?”

“More like rough
month.” I slumped down into the seat across from her and let out a sharp breath.
The force momentarily lifted my bangs up and off my forehead.

“Oh, I’ve seen
that look before. And it’s got man troubles written all over it.”

“That’s putting
it mildly,” I grumbled, then took a long sip of my iced mocha. “Have you ever
had a thing for someone who was unavailable?”

A short laugh
burst forth from my companion’s lips. “Oh, yeah. Been there, done that, bought
the t-shirt.”

“And how’d that
turn out?”

Jessica held up
her left hand and waggled her fingers before me. “With an engagement ring.”

“Oh my gosh! I
swear you didn’t have that on when we met last week.”

“I didn’t,” she
said, her face now glowing. “Nate took me up to see his parents in Michigan over the weekend, and dropped to one knee as his mother brought out our dessert.”
Her brows furrowed. “Come to think of it, I never did get to eat any of that
peach cobbler.”

“Who cares about
cobbler when you’ve been given a rock like
that?
” I couldn’t help but
reach out and pull her hand closer. The band was platinum, the diamond a
good-sized square cut. “Oh, Jessica. It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

“I know. Nate
couldn’t have picked a more perfect ring.” She joined me in admiring the stone
for another second or two, then drew her hand back. “Sorry, I totally didn’t
mean to change the subject like that. So, you have a thing for some guy and
he’s off-limits? What is he, married? In jail? A priest?”

I laughed. “No,
no, nothing like that. It’s just, well, he’s a client of mine.”

“Uh, huh...”

“And I have a
strict policy about not dating clients.”

Her right brow
arched. “Is this a company policy, or some crazy rule of your own?”

“My rule. I’m
trying to be ethical, you know? And even if I didn’t have that rule, he’d still
be untouchable—he’s dating one of my co-workers.”

“Wow, you sure
know how to pick ‘em.” She winked at me.

“Tell me about
it. I wish I could just hurry up and get over this ridiculous crush. Then maybe
I could move on.”

“Or maybe things
will work themselves out on their own.”

Jessica took a
drink from her chai, then proceeded to tell me how she met her fiancé, Nate.
He’d actually pulled her over when she was racing to the hospital the day her
roommate was in a terrible car accident. Later she found out that he’d also
been a responding officer to that very accident. Jessica suspected foul play
from the start, but the police refused to look deeper into the accident. Nate
came by her place and proposed they work together to solve the crime off the
books and undercover. At the time, she had no intention of falling for him, no
matter how cute he was. Nor did she know he was already seeing someone.

“Eventually I
find out that he’s got this girlfriend named Katie, who suspected he was
cheating on her with his ‘new undercover partner’. I swear she was a total psycho.
Bumped into me when I was out for a walk with Nate’s dog one afternoon, and
actually threatened to break my nose if I didn’t stay away from him.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Her
paranoia eventually got the best of her. Thankfully, they broke up before Nate
and I shared our first kiss.”

She stared off
across the coffee shop then, a dreamy look in her eyes. I couldn’t help but
envy her fairytale ending. Too bad it wasn’t going to happen like that for me.

“So, tell me
about this guy,” Jessica said, her gaze shifting back to me.

After a moment’s
hesitation, I did. All of it. Our first encounter at the gas station, him
showing up at the spa my first day, the way he’d looked out for me when I had
to go to the City County Building for questioning. It felt so good to get it
all off my chest, and even better to have someone listening who wouldn’t judge
me since she’d been in the same boat herself.

When I’d
finished, Jessica sat back and crossed her arms. “Sounds to me like you’re not
the only one feeling the pull of attraction.”

“Where in my
story did I say anything like that?”

“Liz, he
convinced how many of his buddies to drive over to your apartment last night?
Six? Eight? You don’t find that kinda odd?”

No way was she
right, and no way was I going to allow that spark of hope to grow. “They said
they were there to watch the game.”

Jessica threw me
a look like I’d tried to convince her two plus two equaled five.

“What? They’re
all pretty desperate for back massages. At least I got one of them to take an
ugly cat off my hands.” She threw me a confused look. “Don’t ask. Anyway, if
that was his motivation for stopping by, it totally backfired on him.”

“Why’s that?”
she asked.

“Because his
girlfriend showed up before the first pitch. She’d called over to the firehouse
looking for him, and when they said he’d gone to Dawn’s, she knew exactly where
to look. It was bad enough, her storming in demanding to know where he was. But
then when she found us standing there in my bedroom playing tug-o-war with my
lacy, pink bra…”