“Then it’s not stealing, is it?” She knew the charge was running up and down both of them. His face transformed briefly to a large grin as he comprehended her statement.
He was total Erin-kryptonite, a little older than her and blonde. She loved blondes, possibly because they were the opposite of her. Her mom was a blue-eyed brunette, and her dad was from Haiti. Attractive blonde guys in high school had never given a mixed girl like her the time of day.
Erin sidled closer to him, pursing her lips. The idea of even thirty seconds in heaven with a cute guy had accomplished what one hour of yoga class had not. Why not start this long day with something good?
The man drew closer, his mouth inches above hers. She could see the details of his red lips, the tiny stubble on his cheeks as if he hadn’t shaved this morning. He started to lean, closing those inches that separated their mouths.
A knock interrupted them. “Anybody in here?”
Erin dropped back, noting his haggard countenance with some satisfaction. She went back to the door and pushed on the handle. “Two of us. Getting water.”
“Yeah, we’ve had problems with this door. How about we pull, and you push?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Erin braced herself and applied force to the handle near the lock. The man came to her side to help. Under the combined strength of four people, the door abruptly popped open. Erin had the furthest to fall and barely avoided sprawling on her face.
She only didn’t do a full-face plant because strong hands caught her around the waist from behind. Brief, warm contact with her former fellow prisoner. For a few short seconds, she was pressed against his hip and wrapped in those muscles she’d admired.
Alas, the intimacy of the moment was over quickly. He reluctantly released her, and she gave him a thumbs up. “That’s a lot of work for some water,” she quipped. She went back in and grabbed both cases of water, lifting them effortlessly.
There was no point in looking back. No one should ever obsess over what could have been when the next thing was coming shortly.
Besides, a little flirting did a body and mind good.
* * *
Fire Chief Noah Baker reflected that the highlight of his day was violating the etiquette rules of yoga class: Straight guys were not supposed to ogle the women in class.
Even if they were super-hot and half-naked in tight tops and shorts.
Even if said super-hot and half-naked cute woman might have fallen asleep in class and then hit on him when they were stuck in a storage closet.
It was unfair to call her cute; truthfully, she was stunning. Bronze skin, sable, frizzy, poufy hair tied back on her head, wearing form-fitting purple yoga tights and top, he’d failed to keep from salivating as they moved from sun salutations into the vinyasa meditation pose. He hadn’t been able to stop sneaking looks at her.
She did very little to help with his actual reasons for attending yoga. He preferred boxing, but today was going to be something of a trial with a long morning incident debrief and then more department business till late at night.
Too bad someone had opened the door before he took the kiss she’d been offering. Her smile a had been full of promise. It was unfair indeed to finish the class and rush to HQ to arrive an hour before his nine o’clock incident debrief.
Noah smoothed down his uniform of white shirt and black blazer, clinking slightly with the name badge, hardware, and uniform pips with the five bugles of Cleveland Fire Chief. Technically, he was fire chief of the municipal departments of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County—around fifty stations and over two thousand employees for two million citizens. The state had stepped in and forced a merger of the city and the county departments almost five years ago. That had catapulted him from battalion chief to fire chief, skipping the ranks in between because his predecessor, Chief Pegg, hadn’t been up to the task. Noah had been plucked out from Battalion 5 and told to salvage the mess three years ago at the age of thirty-six.
His office door opened, and his only female chief, Leslie McClunis, entered.
“Hi-ya, Chief Baker.” She sat in the visitor’s chair directly across from him. She would be moving to his left hand when her errant officers arrived.
“Ma’am,” he inclined his head. Of the nine battalion chiefs overseeing his stations, McClunis had been a pillar of support. Noah had a vision of a more diverse, gender-balanced future for the department. There were growing pains, but the next phase was at hand. In a few months, his new programs would begin, changing the face and mission of Cleveland Fire.
“Chief, I think we should crack their heads together and demote them both,” McClunis stated shortly. “Firehouse 15’s officers screwed up. I know we haven’t promoted a captain yet, but this was a disaster.”
“A disaster? I thought Firehouse 15 had the fastest response times in the department.” Firehouse 15 was part of McClunis’s Battalion 2, which specialized in high-rise fires with a ladder truck, an engine, and a medic/EMS ambulance.
“They did under Captain Matteo Soto, but after his retirement six months ago… his lieutenants are a problem.”
“Firehouse 15 improved its response times since he retired in January.” Noah held up the files of the two lieutenants from A-shift who had applied for the position of Captain of Firehouse 15, Aiden Clarke and Luna Rodriguez. “I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to promote her. This is the firehouse you recruited women into.”
McClunis scowled, never once to mince words. “I don’t do nepotism. We’d usually never consider someone who was barely eligible for captain if her uncle hadn’t been captain first. That’s bullshit. Clarke has three years on her.”
There was the meat of it.
During the merger three years ago, Chief Pegg had closed twenty firehouses to consolidate manpower. The city sections had exactly three women beyond McClunis, and the county section had thirty. Pegg had tried to split up the women from the county into firehouses which had never had a single female member. They quit en mass after Pegg demoted their female officers. Noah had salvaged the situation by redistributing the women into his fledgling firefighter-paramedic program, but nothing would induce them to return to the ranks.
