Linc bit back an angry reply. He shouldn’t blame Red for lousy timing. The whole prank had Vasquez and Brian written all over it. “Winterlands? Smoldering yam? That was you, right?”
His face fell. “It was a sweet potato.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Sure! A yam is...” Red’s brows bunched together, and a corner of his lower lip disappeared, snagged under a tooth. The thing in Linc’s belly spread, and even his balls were less pissed off about their sudden dunking.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” He grinned.
The brows drew tighter, like Red was too absorbed in the question to notice Linc’s amusement. “No, I actually used to know this.”
Linc waited, suddenly interested, but the longer the silence stretched, the more Red’s eyes started to dart nervously around him, much like they had the day before, as if he were trying to find an escape. Watching the distress spread over Red’s face was almost painful, and Linc’s instincts to help fired up immediately. “Did you get your kitchen cleaned up?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Mostly. There’s like this orange stain on the inside of the microwave that I can’t get off. I tried everything. Baking soda. Lemon juice. I even tried steaming a bowl of water in it to see if I could loosen it, you know?”
“You shouldn’t do that. It can explode. The surface tension traps the heat in the water until it superheats and then—” He made a noise like a small explosion and pushed his hands into the air in a burst.
Red’s eyes widened as he followed the movement. “That’s exactly what happened!”
Linc stiffened. Red was serious. He’d managed two microwave-related incidents in the last twenty-four hours. How was this guy living on his own? How had he not died in the first week?
Although, the unpacked boxes scattered around the apartment had said maybe the week wasn’t up yet.
A breeze wafted through the bay, making Red’s hair wave across his forehead. The spring air still held an edge of overnight chill, and Linc shivered as the damp material of his T-shirt stuck to his chest. Red’s eyes were wandering again, and his lip rocked back and forth under his teeth.
“Was there something you needed?” Linc said.
“What? Oh. Yeah. There’s, um—one sec.” Red spun and hurried back to a blue Mazda parked at the curb. He pulled open the back door and returned just as quickly, this time with something between his hands: a casserole dish, covered in a blue-and-white dish towel.
“I, uh—” Red’s cheeks turned pink under his freckles, and Linc’s pulse picked up at the sight. “I wanted to say thank you for...I know it wasn’t exactly an emergency, but—”
Linc gaped, flustered that he could react to something as simple as a blush. “Oh. You don’t have to do that. It’s our job.”
“No, I know.” The pink was turning a bright red, and the heat seemed to be radiating over Linc’s skin too, even though they weren’t touching. God, if they touched—
Red kept talking, the damn casserole still clutched in his hands. “But it...I wanted to. It’s not every day you have a fireman—” His gaze flicked upward, and Linc flinched for the split second their eyes met until it passed beyond his shoulder. “I mean, firepeople in your living room. I thought you might—”
“Scott!” Vasquez’s call rang out behind him. “Quit flirting and get back to work!”
“Oh, he wasn’t—I mean, we weren’t—” Red backed away, but Vasquez’s voice kept Linc rooted to the spot as she approached them.
“Hey! Sweet Potato! Nice to see you. Any more culinary mishaps?”
“Um—” Red glanced away, hands trembling around the dish. Linc lunged forward to catch it. Their fingers brushed for the briefest second, until cold radiated through his palms and into his wrists, distracting Linc from the sensation of their touch.
“What’s in here?” The pan in his hands was icy.
“Lasagna.” Red brightened, probably relieved he didn’t have to tell Vasquez about the exploding water bowl. Linc decided not to ask him why he happened to have entire casseroles of lasagna in his freezer just waiting to be handed out yet didn’t seem to know how to operate a microwave. God forbid he ever try to cook one of these things himself.
“That’s really nice of you,” Vasquez said to Red, then looked Linc up and down. “What happened to you?”
“The paint tray on the ladder wasn’t secured, and the bucket fell on him.”
Linc and Vasquez swung their attention back to Red, who was blinking and blushing while his mouth worked open and shut like a dying fish.
How long had he been standing there?
“Scott, do we need to review ladder safety?” Vasquez smirked.
