Chapter One
LEXI FLETCHER CURSED under her breath as she and fellow paramedic Trent Barnes rushed over to the burning apartment complex to take the older man off firefighter Jax Malloy’s hands. Crap, it felt like the flames were searing her skin—and they were a dozen feet away. Giving them a quicknod, Jax turned and ran back into the raging inferno engulfing the building like it wasn’t there at all. Then again, that’s what firefighters did. They ran into burning buildings when everyone else ran out.
The old man was coughing so hard Lexi thought he might pass out before they got him to their rescue vehicle. She and Trent draped his arms around their shoulders and hauled butt over to the ambulance. The moment they had the man on a gurney, Lexi reached for the oxygen mask while Trent checked his vitals.
“Contusion to the top of the head,” she said to Trent as she fitted the mask over the older man’s face. “Possible concussion.”
After Trent took the man’s pulse, the dark-haired paramedic moved up and began checking the man’s eyes, ears, and nose with a small flashlight. “Sir, I’m going to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to say anything out loud, just nod your head. Do you understand?”
The man kept the oxygen mask pressed to his face as he nodded. He was still coughing a little, but not nearly as badly as before.
As Trent went into the concussion protocol, asking about blurred vision and ringing in the ears, Lexi checked the man for other injuries. She kept one eye on the burning apartment building while she worked, praying there weren’t more people in there. The fire was bad enough for dispatch to call in two full stations worth of firefighters, pumper engines, ladder trucks, and rescue vehicles. That wasn’t counting the three other reserve rescue vehicles there to take care of the injured if needed.
While there were a lot of people who required medical attention, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Thankfully, a teenaged boy had smelled smoke and pulled the alarm then gone around banging on doors and shouting for everyone to get out before the fire had gotten too out of control. She had no idea who the kid was, but he deserved a medal.
There were still a lot of firefighters in there though, some going apartment to apartment checking for anyone who hadn’t been able to get out while others tried to vent the fire away from the structure. With a fire this size, both operations were extremely dangerous. Lexi tried to mentally keep a running count of how many firefighters had gone inside and how many had come out.
She worried about all of them, but she had to admit she paid special attention to the firefighters from Station 58. Those were her people. They worked together, lived together, laughed and cried together—they were her family. Until they were all out of there safe and sound, she was going to worry about them.
Lexi and Trent were lining the gurney up so they could slide the mobile bed and the old man on it into the back of their rescue vehicle when she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see two big firefighters coming out of the smoke and flames enveloping the front of the building, dragging an equally tall firefighter between them. Her breath caught. While it should have been impossible to identify anyone in the turnout gear the DF&R issued to every firefighter in the city, she instinctively knew those three were from Station 58. Worse, she feared she knew exactly who the tall guy in the middle was.
Since she and Trent had their patient ready to roll to the hospital, another paramedic team should have stepped up to tend to the injured firefighter, but every single rescue team had their hands full at the moment. Trent must have realized that, too, because he shooed her in the direction of the three men from Station 58.
“Go take care of him,” Trent said. “He’s one of ours, and Wayne isn’t in crisis.”
It took Lexi a moment to figure out that Wayne was the older man. When had Trent learned his name?
Nodding, she grabbed her emergency bag and ran toward the firefighters, waving her arm to get their attention. She reached them as Jax and fellow firefighter Tory Wilcox helped Dane Chandler to the ground and got his air bottle pack off his back.
Lexi dropped to her knees beside the big firefighter and quickly unfastened his helmet and slipped his SCBA mask off. She didn’t hear much in the way of escaping oxygen, meaning Dane had already been close to running out of air even before Jax and Tory brought him out. That scared the hell out of her. A firefighter was trained to leave a fire well before his tank approached empty. The only reason he would stay longer was to save a life, or if he was in trouble.
She skimmed Dane’s Nomex fire hood off next, once again struck by how incredibly handsome he was. Dark haired, with brown eyes the color of espresso, he had a strong jaw and the most kissable lips she’d ever seen. Lexi gave herself a mental shake, forcing herself to stop thinking about Dane as a man and instead focus on him as a patient and check for injuries. He seemed a little dazed, but she couldn’t see anything obvious.
“What happened to him?” she asked, glancing at Jax and Tory as they took off their masks.
“We were venting windows on the third floor,” Jax said, concern clear on his face as he started undoing the jacket of Dane’s turnout gear. “One second, he was standing right beside me, and the next the floor gave out under him and he fell all the way down to the second level—which was fully engulfed in fire at the time.”
Lexi’s eyes went wide.Crap.
Dane waved a hand and shook his head. Or tried to anyway. Lexi cupped his face in both hands and held him still. “You could have a concussion.”
“I’m fine,” Dane insisted with a frown. “I landed on the remnants of king-size bed. I even bounced when I hit.”
“Right,” Tory said sarcastically. “The part he’s leaving out is the fact that he landed on his head on the bed’s metal frame then had to smash his way through a flaming bedroom door on his way out.”
This kept getting better. Or rather, worse.
Dane shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. I have a hard head. Besides, there wasn’t much left of the door to smash. Get me another bottle, and I’m ready to go back to work.”
Both Jax and Tory snorted at that.
Lexi slipped her hands inside the top of Dane’s turnout gear and gently pressed her fingers against his ribs and stomach looking for tender spots. While she was somewhat distracted by all the muscles she felt there, she couldn’t miss the way he flinched as she glided her hands over his lower ribs. He did it again when she pressed her fingers into the muscles of his neck.
Jax saw the reaction, too, and didn’t have a problem calling his friend on it. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Except to the hospital in the back of my rescue vehicle,” Lexi added.
She slid her hands down to check out Dane’s chest and abs once more. It probably wasn’t necessary since she’d already figured out he wasn’t seriously injured, only heavily bruised. But she was a trained professional. That was her job.
