2. Jake
2
JAKE
My head snaps up as soon as I hear the alarm blaring from the workroom next door. My jaw tenses. Fuck, already?
I spring to my feet, abandoning the coffee on the counter and heading across the room to check where the call has come from. At this time of year, we don’t usually see too much in the way of outbreaks—a few dumbass kids starting bonfires to celebrate the end of the school year, maybe, but that’s about as far as it goes.
And that’s what I’m expecting to see when I throw open the door to our operations room and lay eyes on the interactive map that takes up most of the wall opposite. We have alarms scattered through the forest, as well as connections to the residences around here—though most of them go uninhabited throughout the year. When the rich kids come out to party, they tend to cause some trouble for my brothers and me.
The light that’s flashing, though, is just a few inches away from our place on the map— that can’t be right. I would have noticed if someone had been stalking around, causing trouble and getting into something at this time of day…
I make my way toward the map, where the red light is flashing and the alarm blaring angrily, and slap the button to turn it off as I take a closer look. No, this isn’t one of our forest alarms—this is one of the residential properties. The one just over from us.
And it’s showing up as a risk right now.
I barely have a chance to take it in before Killian and Mason spill through the door behind me—Killian still damp from the shower, and Mason sweaty from the strength workout he was doing before they were interrupted.
“What the fuck is going on?” Killian demands, pushing a hand through his silver-streaked hair as he glares at me—as though this is my fault.
“House over from us,” I bark back. “Someone set off the signal. Could be a false alarm, but we need to get down there and check. Now.”
“The house closest to us?” Mason replies, screwing up his nose in confusion. “Nobody lives there, do they?”
“Not most of the year,” I concede. “But that doesn’t mean it’s empty. Someone could have broken in. Come on—get your shit together and let’s go.”
They nod. They know that, at a time like this, when it’s been weeks since we’ve last seen rain, a fire can spread fast—and that’s what we’re here to prevent. Grabbing our retardant jackets from where they hang on the walls, we pull them on and take off into the forest, toward the sound of the alarm.
I can hear it cutting through the still air, the birds around us singing furiously as though protesting the sudden explosion of noise. Sure enough, it’s coming from that damn house. I can’t remember ever seeing anyone living there, but whoever has turned up, they clearly don’t know what they fuck they’re doing.
“There’s a car outside,” Mason calls to me as he vaults the fence around the property. “Someone must have moved in…”
“And there’s smoke in the kitchen,” Killian points out. “Come on. Now!”
We bolt for the door, and I start banging my fists against it as Killian moves to the kitchen to see if he can get in through the window. The smell of smoke is acrid in the air, and I can hear movement inside.
“There are people in there!” I yell to Mason and Killian. “We have to?—”
But before I can finish what I’m saying, the door is thrown open, and I’m greeted by the sight of a woman wrapped in a towel that barely covers her oil-shimmering body—her eyes are almost bugging out of her head with shock, and a rush of redness runs up the base of her long neck.
“What do you want?” she asks, bracing her shoulders like she’s trying to stare me down—she looks scared. I barge past her, not caring for formalities when there’s something going down. I look toward the kitchen and see a blackened something-or-other sitting in the sink, still steaming where it’s clearly just been pulled from the oven.
“You really have to ask that?” I yell over the sound of the fire alarm. Killian and Mason spill into the house, and Killian quickly locates the source of the noise and deactivates it. She plants a hand on her hip, raising her eyebrows at the three of us.
“You don’t understand, I have my—I have other people to worry about,” she fires back, looking between the three of us. Now that the immediate threat has passed, I can’t help but notice how little she’s wearing—the towel that clings to her body barely meets at her curvy hip. Her strawberry-blonde hair is loose and damp around her shoulders, which are smattered with the same freckles that are on her face. She smells like something sweet and musky, probably whatever oil coats her skin right now. But what the fuck was she doing lazing around and beautifying herself when she was in the middle of starting a fire…?
“When your fire alarm goes off, yeah, that’s what we do,” I growl, taking a step toward her. She tightens her grip on the towel, and I see a flash of fear there. I force myself to take a breath—Mason’s always telling me to ease up on people when they’re in the middle of something.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “It was just an overbaked pie?—”
“You took a bath while you had this in the oven?” I counter, and Killian puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Jake—”
“No, man, she could have put the forest at risk,” Mason cuts in, moving to my side.
“You can’t be reckless like that, not out here,” I warn her, hardly able to keep the fury out of my voice. “I don’t know where you came from, but?—”
“Why do you care about where I came from?” she asks, and I see that flash of discomfort again. She shifts her weight, blocking the path that leads up the stairs, as though protecting us from something. And right at that moment, I hear a small voice come from behind her shoulder.
“Mommy?”
The voice cuts through the chaos, and all of us turn to look to the stairs. To my surprise, there’s a little girl standing there. She can’t be more than five or six, and she’s staring at the three of us as though we’re the big bad wolves who’ve wandered out of the forest to make her life that much scarier.
“Hey, baby, it’s alright,” the woman assures her, rushing over to her side and crouching down to put her arm around her. “Just a misunderstanding. These men were here to help us if we needed it, okay?”
The girl stares up at us. I can tell she doesn’t buy it. Much as I want to ream this woman out for being so stupid, I don’t need to freak out this kid more than we already have—it’s not her fault that her mom is reckless.
“Okay,” she mutters, and she draws against the woman protectively.
“Don’t let us catch you pulling anything like this again,” I warn her, narrowing my eyes at the woman still wrapped in the towel. “Anything you’re cooking, you’re in the room with it, you hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and she looks worriedly down at her daughter again, squeezing her close. “Can you—I’m sorry, I just want it to be the two of us?—”
“Come on,” Mason mutters to me, jerking his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Thank you for helping us,” she offers, clearly trying to soften me up. I eye her for a long moment. Shit, she’s young—can’t be much more than twenty-five, by the looks of it. Young to have a daughter that age, that’s for sure, and young enough to be making stupid mistakes that might have put the whole forest in danger.
I turn on my heel and stalk for the door, Killian and Mason behind me. Neither of them say anything for a moment as we step outside, and I’m so pissed that I’m glad they’re not trying to make me talk.
“Who the hell is she?” Mason wonders aloud as we start on the path back to our cabin.
“No fucking idea,” I shoot back. “But she’s going to be a problem.”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure I can handle her being a problem if she’s running around in a little towel like that the whole time,” Killian jokes. I shoot a look at him. I get it, he loves women, but that doesn’t mean he has to turn this bullshit into an excuse to ponder on how hot she is.
“That’s your problem,” I argue with him. “You can’t take anything seriously if there’s a hot woman around.”
“So you admit she’s hot?” he counters playfully. I don’t dignify it with a response. We all know she’s hot. Even though I was pissed at her, it was impossible not to notice that sheen to her skin, her soft curves barely contained by that towel.
“And besides, I don’t think it’s a problem that I noticed how hot she is,” he continues, digging his elbow into my side. “I think your problem is that you can never let yourself have enough fun to notice it. You’re a firefighter, you know how much women love that?”
I roll my eyes at him. He knows damn well that isn’t the reason we’re doing any of this, and I’m not going to pretend like I’m using it as some form of seduction for any women I come into contact with.
“If I wanted to use this job to pick up women, you think I’d be doing it in the middle of the woods?” Mason remarks, breaking the tension slightly. He’s always known just how to diffuse whatever disagreement Killian and I are in the middle of—that’s the middle child in him, I guess, always able to sense what needs to be said.
“Yeah, fair point.” Killian laughs as we turn onto the path that leads us back to our cabin. “But still. When the universe drops a hot woman in my lap, I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it, you know…?”
As they continue to talk, I look around to her place once more. I have to admit, though I’m not going to be thirsting after her like Killian is, there is a part of me that’s curious about what this woman is doing here. I’ve never seen that place occupied, not in the few years we’ve lived out here—why would she move into it now? And with a daughter? It doesn’t seem like the best place to raise a kid, but maybe if the alternative is something much worse, this is the best place for them…
But that’s none of my business. And if she keeps her head down and doesn’t land herself in any more trouble, then I don’t see any reason why we’d have to encounter each other again.
And I know that should be a good thing. But instead, I feel a tug of disappointment at my chest when the thought crosses my mind.
Maybe Killian’s got more of a point than I’d care to admit.