Ugh. Fine.
She pointed the fire extinguisher at the flames like the good little firefighter’s daughter she wished she was, and let it rip.
Well, hey now, this was actually pretty damn fun. Fire extinguishers were powerful.
She got it. Got why her dad and her brothers all enjoyed this. Heck, maybe she should set vibrator fires more often.
The flames died down thanks to the water and white powder burst. She double fisted it, the hose in one hand, extinguisher in the other. Even she wasn’t sure how she managed, but it involved her shoulder, some creative movement with her hand, and a bunch of badassery.
She let the hose work on the residual licks of heat as the wailing siren of a fire truck came closer.
“Y’okay?” the Australian accent guy asked, a touch breathy.
She looked at him and really wished she wasn’t wearing her Peppa Pig pajamas. The ones that matched her daughter’s jammies, which they both thought were super cute.
Because,ooooh, this guy was a good-looking one.
He was handsome, and she was single. She glanced at his left hand. No ring.
Bad. Bad Em. Focus on the issue at hand, not on the cutie pie.
Still, she couldn’t deny that this guy was a looker. Messy blond hair, dear-God-blue-eyes, and that freaking accent women all over the country wanted to tuck into a Sprite bottle and savor. He wore a white tank top that stretched tight across some nice muscles, with steamy swirls of tattoo ink all the way down his arms—though he wasn’t a gym rat. Pajama pants slung low on his hips, but she didn’t glance down past his waist because, about the time the flames started, she’d given up on sex in all forms.
“I’ll have a go.” He grabbed the hose. “Let me take it a sec.”
She let him. Mostly because he said it so cute with that accent of his and she was reconsidering her no sex manifesto.
“What a freaking disaster.” She rubbed between her eyebrows with her fingertips while he finished up with the flames. “I’ll never live this down.”
Even if it wasn’t her dad who came on the fire truck, he’d hear about it and then the holidays would never be the same. Thankfully, her brothers didn’t work at the fire station for her neighborhood. Yep, that’d been the requirement she gave the real estate agent when she’d begun her search.
This wasn’t her dad’s usual station, either.
Also, a requirement. But he floated between stations as one of the Division Chiefs so one could never really know.
“Ya did this?” Hot Blond Guy asked, still spraying the water into the dumpster even though the flames were gone.
She nodded. Willed her pulse to calm down a little. “Not on purpose.”
“I’ve started a load of fires,” he said, still spraying away. “Never intentional, either.”
This was sweet—the whole hey-I-also-start-fires schtick. And the way he saidneverlikenev-ah. Freaking adorbs.
Wait a second. Was he flirting with her?
She slipped her glance to him and, oh yeah. He was checking her out.
Her cheeks heated at the blatant perusal.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your night,” she said it, she meant it. Now what were the odds she could convince him never to say anything, ever, about what happened at the dumpster tonight?
“You should probably go back to your girlfriend.” Was she fishing for personal details? Yes, yes, she was.
“No girlfriend, I’m afraid.” His grin could’ve melted those piggy jammies right off her body. “Not at the moment.”
The way he said that? Implied…oh, she’d been out of the dating game for a helluva long time, but even she remembered how it felt to do this dance with a new potential someone special.
This guy probably stole the show wherever he went.
