Up by Five (4 page)

Which meant he should be very worried about the fact that the pull to hug Gabby was so strong.

Gabby wasn’t the typical damsel in distress at all. She saved people. She made them feel better. She made them safe. People needed
her
.
And she wasn’t the oh-Conner-you’re-so-amazing type.

She was neither of the types that typically drew him.

But he still wanted to wrap her up and take care of her.

He took a deep breath. “Let’s get Sierra over here.” Before he did something stupid. Like hugging her anyway and getting decked.

Punching some guy in the face…now
that
he could see Gabby doing. On her knees giving a blow job, not so much.

Though he’d spent the last thirty-some-odd hours thinking of exactly that.

“Katz!” he shouted to Sierra, his eyes on Gabby.

She pulled the oxygen mask off and stood from the back end of the ambulance. The plain-white cotton blanket they’d wrapped around her slipped off and she turned to toss it into the rig.

Conner froze.

She had, obviously, been in bed when the smoke alarms went off and she’d done the smart thing and had
not
taken time to change clothes or grab personal possessions.

The thin pink tank top with the spaghetti straps clung to her, curving over two small but firm breasts and hugging her flat stomach. The short-shorts were gray and also thin and ended only two inches below the curve of her tight ass. Her legs were long and smooth and Conner suddenly couldn’t swallow.

Holy shit.

She might not need or want him, but his body suddenly thought it needed and wanted
her
.

He’d only ever seen her in uniform, or in jeans and T-shirts at Trudy’s. And they weren’t the fitted T-shirts with sequined logos calling attention to her breasts like a lot of women wore. They were plain old T-shirts.

“Oh my god, Gabby, there you are!” Sierra enfolded Gabby in her arms, hugging her tight. “Are you okay?”

“You knew this was her apartment building?” Conner asked, stepping forward with a frown. Of course Sierra would have known that. He knew the girls were friends outside of work.

“Yes, of course.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Conner demanded.

Sierra scowled at him. “Because I went to intubate a three-year-old when we got here and I’ve been busy since.”

“You should have said something.”

Sierra kept her arm around Gabby’s waist, but she turned to face him. “To you? Why? I told Cody.”

Conner felt his frown deepen. Cody had known? And he hadn’t said anything to Conner?

“And then I saw her working on a couple of vics, so I knew she was okay,” Sierra said.

“She needed treatment,” Conner said, his voice accusatory though he wasn’t sure why.

Sierra shrugged. “Gabby’s smart. If she was working, I assumed she was okay to be working.”

“I was okay to be working,” Gabby broke in. “Those people needed help more than I did.”

“Mac had you on O2,” Conner pointed out.

“Precautionary,” Gabby said. “After everyone else was treated. I’m fine. My sats are good.”

So the oxygen levels in her blood were good. That didn’t mean she was fine. But even as the thought passed through his head, Conner realized how dumb it was. That was exactly what it meant.

“Fine.” Sierra was here now. He could leave her alone. “So, um, Gabby…if you need anything, all you have to do is ask, okay?” he said. “I’m sorry about…all of this.”

She gave him a small sad smile. “Thanks. I’m glad no one was hurt. And like they say, it’s just stuff. But it was
my
stuff. So, yeah, this pretty much sucks.”

He nodded. He could imagine. “Well, I’m serious—anything you need.”

Her smile brightened and he felt stupidly pleased that he’d cheered her up somehow.

“Thanks, Conner.”

“Okay.”

He stood looking at her. Her hair was really long. And it looked thick. It was really shiny too and had a slight wave to it. She looked good with her hair down.

Sierra cleared her throat and Conner glanced at her. She gave him a what-are-you-doing look.

Right. What was he doing? Nothing. Leaving. He was done here.

But he didn’t feel like he was done.

He had no idea what else he thought he might need to do, but he didn’t feel done.

“You okay, Conner?” Sierra asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m…glad you’re safe, G.”

“Thanks.”

Her smile, even bigger than before, called his attention to her mouth again.

That along with the skimpy sleepwear and the surprising curves and the tousled hair…

One thing was clear—Gabrielle Evans was
not
just one of the guys.

She was a woman. And she did need something.

So, Conner did the typical Conner thing. “Okay, let’s go.” He stepped forward, grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around Gabby’s shoulders again.

“Let’s go?”

She looked up at him with her big brown eyes—he’d never noticed what color her eyes were before—and he caught his toe on the grass.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To my apartment.”

Gabby stumbled this time. “What?”

“I have a guest room. You need a place to stay tonight.”

“But, I—” She glanced at Sierra.

Sierra shrugged. “I have a couch. You know it’s all yours if you need it.”

“Yeah, Conner I’ll just—”

“Stay with me,” he said firmly, taking her elbow and starting for his truck.

“But Sierra—” Gabby glanced over her shoulder at her friend.

“Has a couch. I have a full guest room with a guest bath.”

“But—”

He sighed. This was his instinct—to take care of the women around him—and this was the right thing to do. Gabby needed a place to stay, and he had a place for her.

Plus, she was a safe woman to take care of. She didn’t
really
need him. She needed four walls and a roof. He could meet that need. But she didn’t need comforting, she didn’t need a hug, she didn’t need him to make her feel better.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” he told her, putting her in the truck on the passenger side.

“I don’t have any clothes,” she said weakly as he started to slam the door.

Conner paused. Right. No clothes. He knew she meant that was a problem, but it took him a bit longer to come to that conclusion.

“We can swing by Carl-Mart,” he said of the little-bit-of-everything store that had spun their name from the national chain of stores it rhymed with.

He started to close the door but she said, “Um.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t go into Carl-Mart like this.”

He’d been doing a really great job of keeping his eyes off of her long, bare legs, but with her comment, his gaze dropped.

Yeah. Long. Bare. Legs.

“I’ll run in.” The door shut before she could say anything more.

“Conner, this is really nice, but I’m okay at Sierra’s.”

That was probably what she should have said. Or something like it. But Gabby found herself amused and, okay, comforted by his insistence on taking her to his place. She settled back into the seat in Conner’s truck, tugged the blanket tighter around her and let him drive her to Carl-Mart.

Waking to the sounds of fire alarms going off in her home had been the scariest thing she’d ever been through. Trying to orient herself in the dark, graphic scenes from fires she’d worked as a paramedic flashing through her mind, desperately evacuating her neighbors, caring for injuries on people she knew—her heart had been in her throat. Then she’d looked over and seen the rig—
her
rig. Her crew. And she’d breathed. For the first time since being jolted awake by her screaming smoke detector.

Seeing Sierra and Ryan on the scene had calmed her and allowed her to take a deep breath and truly assess what was going on around her.

Then she’d seen Conner.

He was their leader. There was no question that they worked as a team. A fantastic team. They were all bright and skilled and totally committed. But there was something about Conner that was…bigger than all of that. The way he carried himself, how sure he was with everything he did, the command in his voice, his quick decisions. Working with him had always been a pleasure. When Conner was there, everyone was going to work their asses off, everything that could possibly be done was going to be done and everyone was going to be accounted for, from the oldest to the youngest victim, crew and staff, even pets. It was true he was a little crazy about it all—he’d once gone into a building after a goldfish. Still, it did give everyone around him an incredible sense of security.

When she’d seen him there, her on the victim side of things, she’d felt a sense of…
I’m okay
. She couldn’t explain it better than that. Conner was there and she mattered to him and that made her feel better.

And now that she realized he hadn’t even known she was there, that she’d been a victim of the fire, she knew he was overcompensating.

He hadn’t rescued her, he hadn’t treated her, he hadn’t fussed about Mac treating her—nothing. He hadn’t even known she was
there
.

So now he had to take her home and ensure she had everything she needed.

That was who Conner Dixon was. A person only needed to know him for about a day to know that, and she’d known him for two years.

Conner pulled into a parking space in front of Carl-Mart and turned to her. “What do you need?”

She thought quickly. “Probably a T-shirt, sweatpants and a toothbrush?”

He looked at her as if waiting for more. “That’s it?”

She shrugged. “I’ll shop tomorrow.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “It’s just that I don’t know any woman who wouldn’t ask for shampoo and soap and body spray.”

She blushed. She was trying to get through the night. “I guess I assumed you had shampoo and soap that I could borrow.”

His gaze ran over her hair and she felt her scalp tingle.

“I do. Yeah, of course.”

“And toothpaste?”

“Definitely. In fact, I have some extra toothbrushes.”

For his overnight guests, Gabby filled in mentally. “Then I just need stuff to wear to shop tomorrow, I guess.”

“None of the women I know would wear sweatpants to shop.”

She felt her face get hot again. Dammit. She was practical. Was that so bad?

“Just get me something to cover me up until I can shop for more stuff,” she said. “I’m not picky.”

“Okay.” He started to get out, then stopped. “Oh, do you, um…”

She waited.

He turned back. “Do you need…underwear or anything?”

She almost laughed at that. Womanizer Conner Dixon was hesitant to say the word
underwear
to her? But she couldn’t laugh. Because it simply further illustrated that Conner hadn’t thought about her as a woman and didn’t feel flirtatious toward her at all.

“No, it’s fine,” she said, trying not to let her irritation seep into her tone.
She
was the one who had downplayed her femininity around Conner for the past two years.

“No?” he asked. “What will you wear?”

“I’ll go without.”

Strangely, the air in the truck seemed to heat slightly. Conner’s gaze dropped to her breasts. They were hidden behind the blanket and certainly weren’t much to speak of in the first place—nothing like he was used to—but she still felt her nipples harden with the
idea
that he was looking.

“I, um…” He cleared his throat, then opened the door and got out. He paused before shutting it though. “Anything else?”

Gabby took a deep breath and willed her nipples to stop tingling and her ego to stop stinging from the clear contrast she was to the women Conner was used to spending time with.

This was Conner. He was taking care of her. She didn’t do well with people coddling her, but she recognized that it was important to him to feel like he was doing something to make things better for her.

“I’m starving,” she told him. It wasn’t
entirely
untrue. “Could you grab some crackers or something?”

He looked like she’d just told him he had superpowers.

“Yes, of course.”

Conner was back in the truck in fifteen minutes. He tossed her the Carl-Mart sack. “Put those on, okay?”

“Um.” She dug into the bag and pulled out a huge hot-pink T-shirt and an even bigger pair of turquoise sweatpants. He’d also added a travel-sized bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap in summer-floral scent, a box of crackers and a candy bar.

And not a plain old chocolate bar, but a dark-chocolate truffle candy bar.

Damn, the guy was good.

Except…“These are huge.”

He glanced over at the T-shirt she was holding up. “You think?”

She laughed, realized he was serious, and frowned. “Hey, what size do you think I wear?”

His gaze ran over her, then he shifted on his seat and started the truck. “I haven’t given it a lot of thought before,” he muttered.

She knew that. Of course she knew that. But it stung a little.

It was
good
, she insisted. Her efforts to stay off his girl radar had worked. But he thought she wore an XL T-shirt and sweats? Seriously?

“Just put them on, okay?” he asked, pulling out onto the street.

“I will as soon as I shower,” she told him, stuffing the clothes back into the sack.

“Now would be better.” He pulled up at a stoplight.

“What I’m wearing smells like smoke, my hair smells like smoke, I’ve got soot and dirt on me. I’m just going to ruin the new stuff.”

“Gabby,” Conner said, his voice tight.

“Yeah?”

“Put the damned things on. Please.”

She looked at him. It was clear he was clenching his jaw. “What’s with you?”

“I just need you to be more covered.”

“I’m wearing a blanket.”

“But I’ve seen what’s under the blanket.” He pulled away from the light.

“But—” Then his words sank in. He was thinking about what was under the blanket? And it was making him want her
more
covered. She felt herself grin. “What’s under the blanket is what’s going to be under the huge sweatpants, you know.”