Chapter 14
14
ASHER
“Hey, Ash,” Zane called as I inhaled the mouthwatering scent of chili as I served myself a generous portion and added a dollop of mashed potato. “I’ve got a question for you.”
I made my way to the table in the center of the fire station’s staff room and sat beside him.“What?”
“How do you feel about going on a blind date?” he asked, grinning.
I stiffened. “Excuse me?”
He shoved a spoonful of chili in his mouth, making me wait until he’d finished to explain. “My cousin, Tiff, is in town. She’s thirty, single, and has a thing for men in uniform. You interested?”
I stared at him, stumped. I didn’t know how to reply. I should say yes. Seeing someone else might help get my mind off Summer, but then I recalled Kylie’s words, and I couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth and agree.
Fortunately, at that moment, an alarm blared through the station and Parks’s voice came over the intercom, instructing both fire and ambulance teams to report to a house a few blocks over.
I leapt to my feet, eager for an excuse to avoid replying. Maia and I hurried to the ambulance, checked everything was in order, and I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the garage behind the fire engine.
We followed them around several corners to an unassuming single story house. Flames issued from one of the front windows, but it appeared the fire hadn’t spread yet. The acrid scent of smoke filled the air.
While the fire crew got started with the house, Maia and I went straight to the couple standing beside the road. I frowned, recognizing the male as James, a guy I’d gone to school with. He wore only boxers, his slightly flabby belly on display to the world, and pale, red burn marks dotted his forearms.
I had no idea who the woman with him was, but one of James’s sweaters covered her torso and hung to the tops of her thighs. She certainly wasn’t his girlfriend, Tia, who worked with Heather Braddock at the local information center.
I scowled at James as I approached. I liked Tia. She was a nice person. And the fact James and this woman were half-dressed didn’t fill me with confidence that they’d been respecting the boundaries of his relationship.
“Is anyone else inside?” I asked.
“No.” James shook his head. “It’s just us.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Tia isn’t here?”
He flushed and glanced at the ground. “She’s working.”
“Right.”
Maia elbowed me and shot me a look, silently warning me to mind my own business. “What happened?” she asked. “Where are you hurt?”
Behind us, water was now being pumped through the broken front window, and the flames were already receding.
“Um, we had some candles lit,” the woman said, huddling against James’s side. Her face was pale, and I felt a pang of unwanted sympathy. Despite my disapproval of her choice to be with a man who was dating someone else, she’d had a shock, and it showed.
“We’d been using massage oil earlier, and some of it had spilled on the floor,” she continued. “We were, um, you know, and I accidentally knocked over a candle. It landed on the massage oil and caught on fire.”
“The oil was all over the bed too,” James added. “It went up so fast we barely had time to react.”
“Do you have any injuries other than burns?” I asked, doing my best to ignore my disdain and get into a professional mindset.
“I’m fine,” the woman said. “No burns or anything. Just scared.”
“That’s good.” I turned to James. “Show me the worst of it.”
He angled his right forearm to show me a darker mark on the inside of his wrist. “I tried to put the fire out, but it got too big too quickly.”
I inspected each of his burns. “The good news is that you don’t need to go to the hospital, or see a doctor. We can patch you up and after that, you’ll just need to change the dressings regularly and keep an eye on them for signs of infection.”
I treated his burns while Maia kept the woman company. By the time I’d finished, the fire had been put out. Liam walked toward us, his blue gaze flicking from James to the woman and back again.
“We’ll station someone here for a while longer, just to make sure there are no signs of the fire restarting,” he told James. “You should be safe to enter in a few hours though. If I were you, I’d get on the phone to your insurance company as soon as you can. We tried to limit the damage, but there’s only so much we can do.”
James nodded. “Thanks. I’ll call them as soon as we’re done here. I guess we’ll need to find some clothes.”
“Yeah.” My voice had no inflection. “You might want to get in touch with Tia too. You know, since her house is partly burned down and all.”
He grimaced and picked at the edge of one of his dressings. “I’ll do that. Just got to think of a good story first.”
“So you—” I stopped when Maia elbowed me again. I glared right back at her but shut my mouth.
“She doesn’t need to know what really happened,” James said. “It will only upset her more. I’ll figure something out, and it will be fine as long as no one contradicts me. But that’s all right. You guys have taken some kind of privacy oath, right?”
“Something like that,” Maia replied.
I strode away, anger burning in my chest. Tia deserved better. It was guys like James who made the rest of us look bad. Fuck him, and fuck the fact he’d been able to settle down with a lovely woman and yet was so willing to throw it away.
If I had the woman I wanted, you can bet your ass I wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
I packed away our gear and waited in the driver’s seat until Maia joined me.
“You have to rein your temper in, Ash,” she warned. “You can’t lose your shit at people just because you disapprove of their choices.”
“Come on.” I turned the key in the ignition. “You can’t say you don’t want to hit his smug face.”
She huffed. “No, but that’s not the point. I didn’t let my emotions get the better of me. We’re professionals. We have to act like it.”
“I know.” But that didn’t make me like it any better.
I drove back to the station and parked in the garage. Maia and I did a quick inventory and replenished the burn kit. As we were closing up the bus, the fire engine crawled into the garage beside us. It came to a halt and the crew spilled out of the passenger door.
Liam and I walked down the corridor to the staff room together.
“That was bullshit, right?” I said to him, quiet enough that Maia hopefully wouldn’t overhear. “Someone should tell Tia that James is cheating on her.”
“I agree.” He glanced over at me. “But you know we can’t.”
I grumbled. Yes, the nature of our callouts was supposed to be kept confidential, but there were ways around that.
“I’m going to do it,” I said.“Somehow.”
“Be careful, and don’t do anything stupid. You know how this town works. She’s bound to learn the truth soon anyway.”
As we entered the staff room, Zane slung an arm around each of our shoulders.
“So, what do you want me to tell my cousin?” he asked. “Does she have a date with a hot paramedic?”
Damn. I hadn’t avoided that after all. “Sorry, but no.”
He released me and circled around to look at my face. “Why not? She’s a great girl.”
“I just…” Am hopelessly hung up on someone else. “Don’t feel like dating at the moment.”
“But you’re always on the lookout for your forever girl,” he protested. “It’s one of the things I like most about you.”
“Not right now.” I turned away and busied myself making coffee.
“No,” Liam protested, snatching the coffee away from me. “Please, spare us.”
I rolled my eyes. “Coffee snob.”
He didn’t like the way I made coffee. I didn’t get what the big deal was. Coffee was coffee.
“Is everything okay?” Zane asked me, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “It really isn’t like you to turn down a date.”
I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t sure if I was all right. Not with Summer Braddock consuming my thoughts.