Flashing Melinda a grin, he headed for the exam rooms. Melinda smiled back, openly checking out his butt as he disappeared down the hallway.
“Stop that,” Lexi ordered. “He’s my partner.”
Melinda lifted a brow. “You planning to make a move on him?”
“No!” Lexi couldn’t stop the horrified look that crossed her face. “That would be too weird. Besides, I told you, I’m interested in Dane.”
Melinda shrugged. “Then there’s no harm in my checking out the goods, is there?” When Lexi frowned, her friend laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t put you in the position of seeing your coworker naked if he sleeps over at our place and gets up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I’ll make sure he puts on some clothes.”
Lexi shook her head. “Thanks for that image. I’ll probably never get it out of my head.”
“Not sure why you’d want to get a visual like that out of your head,” Melinda said. “He’s a hunk.”
Lexi fell into step beside her friend as Melinda led the way to the frenetic madhouse that was so much a part of everyday life in this part of the hospital. Off to the side, a handsome reporter was interviewing a gray-haired doctor for a local news station.
“What’s that about?” Lexi asked her friend.
Melinda glanced over at the men. “A little kid saved his family in a fire earlier tonight. He smelled smoke, woke up, and got everyone out before the place burnt to the ground. He’s a hero.”
There seemed to be quite a bit of that going on lately, Lexi thought, remembering the teen who’d pulled the alarm at the apartment fire Station 58 had responded to that evening.
“I’ve gotta get back to work,” Melinda said. “See you at home after your shift?”
Lexi nodded and waved, but her friend had already gotten swallowed up in the rush of people coming and going in the emergency room. Lexi stepped aside to make way for a nurse leading a man with an arm injury past, then she slipped into the area where the exam rooms were. Although, “rooms” was probably a misnomer. They were more like alcoves partitioned off from sight by nothing more than thin, opaque curtains. She’d check in on Wayne…and hopefully Dane.
Trent was talking to Wayne’s doctor when she finally figured out which alcove the older man was in. The doctor was as worried about a concussion as she’d been and decided to keep Wayne overnight. Other than that, he was fine. When Lexi mentioned Wayne’s apartment was almost certainly destroyed, the doctor told them he’d come up with a reason to keep the older man an extra night or two until he had somewhere to go. It wasn’t much, but it was something. At least Wayne was alive. That was the important thing.
“I’m going to check on Dane,” she told Trent. “See if he’s going to ride back with us.”
Finding Dane took a little while, but with the help of a nurse, she located him in an alcove at the end of the hall. She cautiously peeked around the curtain to see him pulling on his DF&R-issued T-shirt. She tried not to drool as she took in the muscular pecs and rippling abs.
He caught sight of her as he was tucking in his shirt, and flashed her a grin. “Doc said I’ll be fine. A couple eight hundred milligram Motrin and I’ll be good as new. Like I said.”
She smiled as she slipped around the curtain. While the alcoves were tiny to begin with, Dane’s presence made the area seem even smaller. Not that she was complaining. Especially since it meant they had to stand close together.
“I’m glad,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t right about insisting you get checked out by a doctor.”
“I agree. You were doing your job. I’m good with that,” he said. “Truth is, every firefighter needs an unbiased third party to step in and take decisions like that out of our hands because we’re rarely going to leave the scene of a fire, not in those situations.”
Lexi couldn’t argue with that. She loved the firefighters she worked with, but they could be a stubborn lot, male and female alike.
“Since we’re being truthful here,” he continued, “I want to say that I’m sorry if I embarrassed or offended you with that comment back at the apartment fire.”
She frowned. “What comment?”
He gave her a sheepish look “You know—that stupid line about strapping me down to a bed. It sounded a lot better in my head than it did coming out of my mouth.”
She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I know you were just messing with me.”
“Actually, I was trying to be charming.” He smiled, and her heart beat faster. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to catch your eye since you got to the five-eight, and when you started patting me down for injuries, I got a little stupid and said the first thing that popped into my head. Which, I admit, is never a good idea.”
She blinked. He’d been trying to catchhereye?
“You know,” she said. “You could have simply asked me out for coffee.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, that probably would have been smarter. But I was hoping to get an idea whether there was any mutual interest on your part before I officially asked you out. I didn’t want to bethat guy, you know? The one who pesters a coworker for a date and puts her in the bad position of having to worry about how her answer will affect her job.”
Lexi gaped. No wonder she hadn’t been able to get his attention. He’d been too busy being worried about coming on too strong with a coworker. Could this guy get any better?
