“Oh.” I blink in surprise, just as I see one of his hands slip from the windowpane and ghost along the slit in the fabric he was apparently so enamored with. “Well, that’s interesting.”
“How much do you like this skirt, Lila? Will you let me rip it off you?”
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but it’s a vintage J. Crew skirt—pure merino wool, by the way—that I found at the bottom of a half-price bin at a random Goodwill in Brooklyn. So, like, technically speaking, I definitely don’t want him to rip it.
Yet, somehow, I find myself leaning into him and whimpering a rather girlish, “Please, Captain…”
WAAAAHHHHH!
With a yelp, I throw myself backwards, nearly toppling out of the chair I’d been slumped in.
WAHHH! WAAAAHHHHH!
“What the hell?” I blink around blearily, trying to make sense of that horrible noise.
It takes me a full ten seconds to realize it’s an alarm, which is currently flashing white and red from a spot on the wall that I hadn’t noticed before.
An alarm.
Right.
Because I’m in a firehouse. Where I have a very important job to do. A job that has absolutely nothing to do with indulging filthy dreams about sexy captains named Hale Hargrove.
The problem is—
when I glance down at my lap, my skirt is hitched higher than I remember… and my body is still acting like Hale’s hand never left.
Chapter three
Chapter Three: Hale
Apparently, I’ve stumbled into a version of reality where a fairy princess now resides in my firehouse.
A fairy princess with a mane of blonde hair and bright green eyes. Freckles, too. Charming little constellations across the bridge of her nose and, as I noticed when she pushed up the sleeves of her blazer, dotted all over her forearms.
I had to admit, however, that the first thing I noticed about her was her legs. Long, toned legs that made her perfectly professional skirt look just a little bit too short. Immediately, I realized it had been way too long since I’d allowed myself any kind of release, because all I could think about for the first five minutes of the meeting was what those pretty pale thighs would look like wrapped around my…
Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter how gorgeous our new PR representative is.
What matters is that she’s here to make my life as difficult as possible. She waltzed into Station 47 spewing rainbows and butterflies out of her pouty lips, had Trent and Reyes eating out of the palm of her hand in five seconds flat, and now seems to have her heart set on turning my firehouse into the set ofKeeping Up With the Kardashians.
Part of me is relieved when the alarm starts blaring, because maybe it’ll spook her enough that she’ll decide she’d rather stay in her own home. Obviously, I understand why it’s beneficial for her to be here outside of normal business hours, but her presence will undoubtedly be distracting.
For the others, of course. For Trent, certainly, who has the attention span of a goldfish and could be lured into a sinkhole with a mere glimpse of side-boob. For Reyes, too, who has better self-control, but definitely has a thing for blondes.
Even in a nonromantic sense, she’ll be a distraction. Especially once she drags in that camera crew of hers. We have an extremely important job to do, and having a pretty little thing flouncing around with her iPhone shoved in people’s faces isnotgoing to end well.
So, with any luck, the fairy princess will come to her senses and realize she won’t get nearly enough beauty sleep living in a place that’s bursting with activity around the clock, and then she’ll fly away back to her castle.
In the meantime, however, I guess there’s an emergency to tend to.
I’m already halfway to my feet when the lights start flashing, muscle memory kicking in before my brain can fully catch up. I’ve been doing this job for over a decade, and I still get a little kick of adrenaline every time we’re summoned to action.
“Hell’s Kitchen, 48th and 9th Ave,” crackles the voice over the intercom hooked to my belt. “Kitchen fire. Commercial building. Reported contained, but spreading. No confirmed injuries.”
A kitchen fire in Hell’s Kitchen. If I was the kind of man who found humor in irony, I might even crack a smile.
