“A hero?” Hetal repeated.
“I’ll let her tell you. I need to get my report written so I can get home. Haven’t seen my wife for two days.” He smiled and waved as he walked away. “Nice meeting you. Don’t let Desai leave out the good parts.”
“What happened?” Hetal asked excitedly.
“Well, I did pull a young girl out of a fire last week, all by myself.” Riya couldn’t help but brag a bit.
“You did?”
Riya nodded. She left out the part where she had got in trouble for risking herself and how she hadn’t been prepared for that beam falling in front of her. And how her lieutenant was the one who had helped her. “Her foot was broken, and she couldn’t walk, so I carried her out.”
“So cool!” Hetal’s face shone with adoration. “I took a look at that link you sent me the other day.”
Riya tried to keep her face neutral. The way Dhillon had looked at her in the office that day was seared into her brain. It was as if he hated her for helping Hetal. She’d watched a lot of emotions cross his face over the years, but hatred atherwas definitely not one of them. Until then. She shook her head to clear it from her mind. It didn’t matter. Anything she and Dhillon could have had was long gone. She focused instead on the girl in front of her.
Hetal’s amber eyes shone bright with excitement, and she babbled on about the recruitment website Riya had sent her. Riya was reminded of the first time she’d helped in a fire as a paramedic. It was a high she couldn’t explain, but it was pure passion. She’d known in that moment that firefighting was her calling, and she’d never looked back.
Riya described the process from application to testing. Hetal bombarded her with questions, and Riya answered what she could. Clearly Hetal had done her research and was serious about this. Good for her. She wandered around, looking at all the equipment, asking more questions, fascinated with everything. Scout never left her side.
“We’re EMT-trained, so my background as a paramedic gets me to most scenes,” Riya explained.
They ran into Ian Walsh as he was leaving the locker room. He stopped and ran his gaze up and down Hetal’s body. Riya made a fist at her side—she’d love to punch him, but she held off.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“Back off, Walsh,” Riya said, staring him in the eyes.
“What’s the matter, Desai? Jealous?” He stepped closer to Riya as if he couldn’t see the hatred in her face, and Riya nearly choked on the scent of him. Cologne and more cologne.
“Hardly.” She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Step aside before I make you.”
“I’d love nothing better.” He smirked at her, and her skin crawled. She flexed her fisted hand, but he stepped aside and let them enter the locker room.
“What was that?” Hetal asked as they walked to Riya’s locker.
“That’s one of the downsides of the job. Men who think women are only good for one thing.” Riya shook her head. Every run-in with Walsh made her want a shower. “You’ll get that no matter where you work.” Though that didn’t excuse it.
Hetal nodded knowingly, and a small piece of Riya filled with sadness that this girl was aware of such misogyny at her young age.
Riya had just started taking off her turnout gear when Lieutenant Ambrose emerged from the showers, a towel around his waist.
“Lieutenant.” Riya snapped to attention. “I thought everyone was out.”
“You thought wrong.” He was rubbing his head with a second towel, but stopped as he spotted Hetal.
“We can go, give you a minute.” Riya started for the door but found Hetal frozen to her spot, unable to take her eyes off a half-naked Jeff, as if she’d never seen a man before. Granted, Ambrose was an attractive man if you liked the tall, muscular, dark-haired, blue-eyed, chiseled-abs kind of look. Not that Riya hadn’t noticed, but he was her boss, and quite frankly, she didn’t fall for every pretty face.
“Hetal!” Riya called out in an effort to break her trance. “Let the man get dressed.”
Hetal nodded, her eyes never leaving Ambrose. “Um, yeah. Sure.”
Ambrose smiled at Hetal, and Riya realized she had never in all this time seen him smile quite that way. It changed him completely. His features softened, and his youth became apparent. Maybe that was why. He was quite young to be a lieutenant: he needed to maintain composure to have authority.
“It’s okay, Desai. My locker is on the other side, anyway.” He shook his head and left them standing there, Hetal unabashedly watching him.
“No wonder you like this job.” Hetal looked back at Riya.
“Yeah, no. He’s my boss.” Riya shook her head. “And the rest are my colleagues, anyway. Not interested.”
