the decks wiped clean, the scuba gear checked. Not that he objected. On a sunny day, it was a helluva nice way to spend some time—with the added bonus of frequent female companionship as women dropped by to say hello.
Funny how this time he’d compared them all to a green-eyed redhead he’d met only briefly in the emergency room. And they’d all come up short.
Now, as he parked his pickup behind Station Six the next morning, he was ready to get back to work on his twenty-four-hour eight-to-eight shift. He wasn’t an adrenaline junky, but he needed some serious work to keep his mind off a libido that had a will of its own. He was kind of hoping they’d be training on the tower today. A few trips up and down that sucker hauling a mile of hose over his shoulder and he’d sleep just fine tonight. No fantastic dreams featuring a redhead to interrupt his Zs.
Dressed in his uniform, duffle bag over his shoulder, he went inside, taking the stairs to the third-floor living quarters two at a time.
“Hail, our hero!” Virtually all of the members of C-shift were waiting for him in the dining hall along with every guy on B-shift, about to go off duty.
Mike halted in his tracks. “What’s going on?”
Logan Strong, a C-shift member of the ladder truck company, produced a huge picture pasted on a three-by-four-foot poster board, a blowup of a newspaper photo. Mike squinted, trying to make out the grainy reproduction.
“The fair city of Paseo del Real—or at least the press thereof—has declared you a hero,” Logan announced, grinning broadly. “Congratulations.”
Oh, shoot! The picture was of Mike carrying Randy to the ambulance, the kid wearing his helmet. The headline read, Hero Rescues Child from Fiery Inferno.
“Ah, come on, guys. I didn’t do anything—”
“You got that damn straight,” Jay Tolliver said. “I could have been the hero if you hadn’t pushed your way inside before me. Think how many points I would have made with Kim if you’d let me go first.”
Mike lowered his duffle to the floor. “You don’t need any points with your new bride, Tolliver. She’s already nuts over you, though we’ve gotta question her judgment in that regard.”
Jay laughed, and so did the rest of the crew.
With a shake of her head that set her dangling earrings in motion, Emma Jean Witkowsky, the dispatcher, said, “I knew the minute I saw that picture in yesterday’s paper something good would happen. They’re setting up a trust fund for that sweet little boy so he can go to college.”
“We can always count on your psychic ability to tell us what’s going to happen—right after it happens,” Mike teased.
Lifting her chin, she set her jewelry in motion again. “It’s my Gypsy blood.”
Given her dark eyes and nearly black hair, it was entirely possible Emma Jean was a Gypsy, but Mike didn’t believe the psychic business for a minute. She was more often wrong than right, not that she’d admit it.
Crossing the room, Logan presented Mike with the photo. “I bet you made a deal with the photographer so you’d get the really big bucks at the bachelor auction this week.”
“Some of us hero-types don’t need any extra help. The ladies are crazy about me.”
“Yeah, and the feeling is mutual.”
Everyone in the room hooted and hollered, but Mike couldn’t deny that was true. He liked women, liked to see their eyes light up when he flirted with them—old ones, young ones, it didn’t matter. But he made it a point not to let any relationship go too far. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt a woman by leading her to expect more than he could give.
Ray Gainer, a fireplug of a man, arrived, duffle slung over his shoulder.
“Hey, you’re late,” Logan pointed out.
Gainer shrugged and gave everyone a sheepish grin. “Long ride back from Vegas.”
“Hot dog! That means Gainer’s buying the ice cream today,” someone shouted.
“No way! I lost my shirt this trip, and my wife’s gonna skin my hide if she finds out about it.”
The friendly bantering back and forth continued for a few more minutes, then the guys from B-shift headed home and Mike took the photo and his duffle into his room, stowing them both in his locker. Arnie Switzer, who slept in the room during B-shift, had left the place spotless as usual. Firefighters were good about that, neat and tidy, at least at the station house.
Firefighters also worked hours that were different from the rest of the world. Typically, they pulled three twenty-four-hour shifts a week with a day off in between, then they had four days off in a row. That meant a firefighter had plenty of time to moonlight on another job, or in Mike’s case, go scuba diving or hang out at the marina.
Closing the door on the locker, Mike gave some thought to the bachelor auction that was coming up. It was for a good cause, the burn unit at the hospital. Giving up a few hours of his free time wasn’t a hardship.
He smiled to himself. Maybe he ought to invite Kristin McCoy to the event and slip her a few extra bucks to bid on him.
Then again, she hadn’t exactly warmed to him. Given his luck, she’d use his money to run up the bid on Logan, a quiet, serious guy women couldn’t seem to resist. Mike didn’t want to waste his money promoting Logan’s love life.
KRISTIN KNELT in front of Randy, her heart nearly melting at the sad look on his face. His arms were wrapped tightly around a paper sack filled with clothing she’d dug up from the emergency supply—pants and shirts that were probably too big for his slender frame. He’d look like a lost waif, which is exactly what he was. The police hadn’t been able to trace the couple he’d been living with in the vacant house, the neighbors hadn’t had a clue who they were, and Randy still wasn’t talking.
The fire department had determined, however, that burning candles in the kitchen had started the fire. There hadn’t been any electricity in the house. Mike Gables had been right—whomever Randy had been living with were squatters. And they’d endangered a child. The worst kind of public enemies in Kristin’s view.
If she could take the boy home with her, she’d do it in a second. But that was against the rules. Besides, she couldn’t take in all the children she worked with no matter how much she might want to. There were simply too many.
“You’ll be staying here for a few days,” she tried to explain again. “Bud and Alice Gramercy are great foster parents. I know you’ll like living with them, and you’ll have lots of kids to play with.” The Gramercys operated a small group home for up to six kids at time, all of them loud and rambunctious as evidenced by the cacophony going on in the backyard.
“What about Suzie? Can she come too?”
“I’m afraid not, honey. The Gramercys already have two dogs. You can play with them.”
His lower lip jutted out about a mile. “Suzie’s my dog.”
“I know, but there isn’t enough room—”
“Where is she?”
