Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes) (5 page)

“This is our
supply room,” Dawn said, pulling the door open and waving me inside. “It’s also
our laundry room, and the staff break room. When you have a break in your
appointments, it’s your job to help put supplies away. We get deliveries from
UPS or FedEx several times a week, so try to stay on top of that.” She stepped
closer, though we were the only two in the room, and lowered her voice. “We all
look forward to delivery days, if you know what I mean.”

“What?” I asked
with a grin. “Hot delivery guys, or something?”

Her grin
broadened. “Not guys, guy. And yeah, you could say th—”

“Dawn!”

A door opposite from
where we stood slammed open, and a shrilled-voiced platinum blonde, shaped like
a life-size Barbie doll clad in fuzzy kitten slippers and an animal print smock,
hurried towards us. “Dawn, is it true? You’re
leaving
us? How will we
ever
get along without you?”

I stared at the
woman, unsure which surprised me more: her appearance, or the false sincerity
in her voice. And damn, I wanted to hear more about this hot delivery guy.
Like, was he single, did he have all his teeth, was he looking to have a
handful of kids?...

“Oh, it’s just
temporary. Little one isn’t happy with Mommy standing on her feet for so long
each day.” Dawn gave her swollen belly a rub. “I’ll be back before you know it.
And Xavier will still be here, of course.”

“But who’ll
cover your clients while you are away?” she asked with wide eyes, then tucked
her chin slightly. “You know, my offer still stands—”

Dawn reached out
and put her hand on the woman’s slender shoulder. “And I truly appreciate the
offer, Bunni—it really is sweet of you.”

Bunni?
No
way I heard that right.

“But we could
never
find a replacement for you in the nail station! Me, on the other hand, well,
I’m much easier to replace. Speaking of which,” she turned and waved both hands
in my direction, “I’d like you to meet Liz. Liz, Bunni. Bunni, Liz.”

I thought about
extending my hand, but Bunni didn’t seem the hand-shaking type. Plus the look
of contempt on her face had me wanting to keep my appendages close lest she try
to break one off. So I gave a little elbow-pinned-to-ribcage wave instead. “Nice
to meet you.”

Bunni gave me a deliberate
once over. “Uh, huh.”

“Liz is a total godsend,
I’m telling you,” Dawn continued. “She walked in on Friday afternoon as Xavier
and I were discussing me taking a few months off and guess what? Liz just
happened to be out of a job,
and
she’s a certified massage therapist!”

Bunni’s violet—yes,
violet—eyes narrowed. “How lucky for us.”

“I know, right?
And don’t worry.” Dawn turned away to retrieve a black half-apron from the
stack of folded linens beside the room’s washer and dryer. “I’m sure she’ll take
good care of Tory for you.”

“Tory?” I asked.

Bunni trotted
after Dawn, her eyes suddenly bright with panic. “You can’t be serious!” she said
under her breath, and glanced back at me. “Can’t Xavier just work him in while
you’re gone?”

The whole hushed
voice thing may have worked if she’d been standing further than five feet away.
And we weren’t standing in a room already so quiet you could hear a hairpin
drop. I turned my gaze to the floor, to keep from rolling my eyes.

“Seriously? You
know how Tory feels about men working on him in dark rooms.”

Bunni’s gaze
shifted from Dawn to me. Judging by the evil eye she was now giving me, I got
the feeling that someone was feeling a bit insecure about me and this boyfriend
of hers. Lord knows I’d never do anything inappropriate to her beloved Tory, or
anyone else for that matter.

But after the
shitty greeting, I couldn’t help but mess with her just a little. So I
smiled…and gave her a wink.

* * * *

At eleven I ran
out to grab some lunch and move my car before it got towed. I’d already run
back and forth, plunking over a dollar in quarters into the meter, before Tony stopped
me and asked what I was doing.

“Meters? Oh, no,
no, no. We have an employee lot, on the north side of the building—Brittany can get you a parking tag.”

A helpful tidbit
that would have been nice to know before I’d wasted all those quarters, but c’est
la vie. Dawn was a bit preoccupied all morning, so I could only imagine she
missed a few things. But since she’d just handed me the keys to her kingdom,
albeit temporarily, I wasn’t going to get too worked up over a few bucks.

I drove to a
nearby Wendy’s and headed inside to eat and decompress. Oh, and study, because
tucked carefully into my oversized purse was one of Dawn’s most prized possessions:
her little black book.

And this wasn’t
just any appointment calendar—this was her client
bible
. It held the
name, gender, appointment frequency, massage preferences, and common ailments
of each and every single one of her clients. I still couldn’t believe she’d
entrusted it to me! (Though, when she said she’d kill me if I lost or damaged
it in any way, I don’t think she was kidding.) So I spent my lunch break in a
quiet corner of the restaurant, engrossed in the book, and careful not to
dribble my raspberry vinaigrette dressing on its pages.

Yep, salad for
me today. And probably for the foreseeable future, if I wanted to keep my
curves in check. Especially now that I was back on the prowl, if you could call
it that. I was much more comfortable talking to people’s backs and feet in the
massage room than their faces in broad daylight.

Well, that
wasn’t exactly true. I could talk all day to my close friends, but when it came
to dating? Well, let’s just say if the corporate lingo for disasters was still
‘opportunities’, I’d had a decade of amazing ‘opportunities’.

But now that I
was in the big city, I was determined to turn my relationship luck around. Too
bad most of the time I spent here would be at work. Tough to be on the lookout
for hotties when you’re with clients all day. And Heaven knows I wouldn’t be
looking at the client list for any potential dates.

Not that it
mattered—so far today my clients had been all women ranging in age from twenty-five
to eighty-three. Thanks to the few quick peeks I’d taken at Dawn’s notes before
each had arrived, I’d avoided triggering any cries of pain or shouts of
annoyance. Even better was the fact that no one balked upon learning that Dawn would
be off for a few months. Fingers were crossed that trend would continue.

I turned another
page and came across my last client scheduled for this afternoon: Torrunn
MacKay.

Torrunn? What kind
of name was that?

I speared a few more
lettuce leaves, then chewed on both them and that unique name. According to
Dawn’s notes, he was a firefighter who came in weekly to have his back worked
on.
Must have rescued one too many heavy damsels in distress over the years
,
I thought with a grin. Or somebody had let his physique go after making the
force and struggled with the constant physical exertion. Either way, something
told me I’d probably have my work cut out for me with this one.

Hmm, maybe if I
wowed Torrunn with my massage skills, I’d be able to convince him to set me up with
one of his cute, single coworkers. And who doesn’t love a man in uniform?

CHAPTER
5

“Liz, your next
client is here.”

“Thanks.” I
glanced up from our break room table, Dawn’s sacred client notebook open before
me, and locked gazes with Brittany. “This one’s Torrunn?”

“Oh,
yeah
.”

Brittany waggled her eyebrows and ducked back out the door. Waggled them even more than
when she’d announced the UPS guy was bringing up our supplies. And he was a
mighty fine specimen, if I do say so myself.

Huh. Not the
response I’d expected. Okay, so maybe fireman Torrunn
hadn’t
let himself
go.

Truthfully, his
shape didn’t matter—I’d worked on people of all shapes and sizes. Though, I did
hope he was a little less furry than my last client. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all
about chest hair. But the middle-aged banker who’d just left had a back so
hairy I about needed hedge-trimmers to find it.

After washing my
hands, I headed back to the massage room and then paused just outside the door.
Always best to listen before barging in on a client, to avoid embarrassing
encounters. I could just make out the sound of ocean waves lapping some faraway
shore. I closed my eyes, and let the soothing sounds wash over me, then rapped
lightly on the door. “All set in there?”

“Yep.”

I stepped
inside, closed the door quietly behind me, and shifted my gaze to the massage table.
A long, still figure lay prone upon it, covered from the waist down by a
single, white sheet. And for just a moment, I forgot to breathe.

The body before
me was, in a word, beautiful.

With his face
hidden in the headrest, I freely drank in the view. Torrunn had thick dark hair,
kept short yet stylish. Muscular arms lay relaxed by his sides, a dusting of
dark hair on their lower halves visible from where I stood. His legs were parted
slightly, the small mounds of his heels giving way to the straight lines of
lean legs.

My eyes roved along
his long, lean legs toward the next swell of the sheet—a squeezable butt if I
ever saw one. And trust me, I’d seen enough in my day to know which were worthy
of squeezing. Not that I ever would. No, not ever with a client.

But no one said
I couldn’t enjoy the view, and this was a massage therapist jackpot.

It took me another
moment to register why he looked so much different than all of my earlier
clients, even aside from the amazing physique. And then it hit me—the table’s slate
blue blanket, which usually sat atop the thin white sheet and served to blur
the outlines of my clients, was missing. A quick scan of the room found it neatly
folded and set upon the room’s small side chair beneath what clothes my new
client had been wearing.

Apparently,
Torrunn ran hot.

I swallowed hard
and forced my gaze to travel north of his alluring arse, beyond the edge of the
sheet. His slender waist gave way to a smooth, V-shaped back that my hands
itched to roam. A fire and rescue tattoo decorated his right shoulder blade,
and as I drew closer to get a better look at its detail, I discovered a
smattering of freckles along the top of his muscular shoulders.

Freckles. Lord, I
had a weakness for freckles.

“So you’re
Dawn’s replacement?” he murmured.

His low, deep
voice snapped me out of my distracted ogling. I cleared my throat and prayed
that it’d clear my head as well.

“Yes. Sorry if it
sounded like I was sneaking up on you.”

Which,
pathetically, I had been. Unintentionally, of course. It just wasn’t every day
I had freaking Michelangelo’s David lying on a table before me.

“I’m Liz, and
I’ll be filling in for Dawn while she’s on maternity leave.”

“I wondered how
much longer she’d make it. Poor girl looks like she could pop any time.” His
right arm slid off the table and out toward me. “Well, nice to meet you, Liz. I’m
Torrunn.”

Amazing body or
not, it was the low, sexy timbre of his voice as he said my name that had my
stomach doing somersaults like some silly schoolgirl’s.

“Nice to meet
you, too, Torrunn.”

I reached out to
take his hand in mine…and was nearly blinded by the bolt of static electricity that
arced between us. Our hands jerked apart, and I bit back a curse. Half a second
later, embarrassment set in.

“Oh, my gosh, I’m
so sorry!”

A low chuckle drifted
up from the face cradle as his arm returned to its previous spot. “Don’t worry
about it. But if you were trying to make sure I wouldn’t confuse you for Dawn,
you can stop now. I’ve got it.”

“No, no, it’s
just a lot drier in this old building than my last place. I’ll have to try a
different pair of shoes tomorrow or something,” I added in a mumble, then shook
my head. Time to get serious. I reached down to the massage oil pump strapped
to my hip and pressed it once, twice, three times. Ah, nothing like routine to
get myself focused on the task at hand.

“Well, I hope it
works,” he said. “Any bigger a current, and the room might have caught fire. No
offense, but I try to avoid fires when I’m off duty.”

“Avoiding fires?”

My eager hands reached
out and glided across his back. His broad, smooth, oh-so-solid back. The kind
of back you’d love to rake your nails across while tangled in the sheets with
its owner.

Oh my God,
where’d
that
thought come from?

I cleared my throat
and tried to rein in my pathetic hormones.

“That means
you’re either a firefighter or a pyromaniac. Judging from this artwork on your
shoulder, though, I’m guessing firefighter.”

“What, I
couldn’t be both?”

I laughed softly
and shifted my hands on his sculpted left shoulder. As my thumbs settled into
their usual routine, my gaze instinctively shifted, to the wall clock’s second
hand—without it, I’d go long on every appointment.

“Sounds like
someone’s watched
Backdraft
a few times too many.”

“Busted,” he
said. “Though, not because I’m a Baldwin fan.”

“Whoa, that was
William
Baldwin. Gotta clarify, or everyone will think you mean Alec. And after
The
Hunt for Red October
, anyone who’s anyone loves Alec Baldwin.”

Torrunn chuckled.
“Touché.”

While his back
may have looked sleek on the surface, beneath its skin lurked a minefield of
knots. I leaned in harder, determined to ease his pain. Because with this many
knots, the poor guy had to be hurting.

“So, fire guy, is
your back always this big a mess, or did you do something over the weekend to
throw it out of whack?”