panic in her voice was real, and Brooke’s heart raced just as Dustin nudged her forward, whispering in her ear, “All yours.”
This was the job, and suddenly in her element, her nerves took a backseat. Here, she could help; here, she could run the show. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’re here now.”
“Well, then, get to it! Get my Cecile!”
“Where is she? In the house?”
“No!” She looked very shaky and not a little off her rocker, so Brooke tried to steer her to the curb to sit down, but she wasn’t having it.
“I’m not sitting anywhere! Not until you get Cecile!”
“Okay, just tell me where she is and I’ll—”
“Oh, good Lord!” The woman blinked through her thick-rimmed glasses, taking a quick look at the others, who stood back, watching. “She’s another new hire, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Brooke said. “But—”
“What number are you?”
Brooke sighed. “Seven.”
“Well, get a move on, New Hire Number Seven! Save my Cecile!”
“I’m trying, ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Phyllis, but Cecile—”
“Right. Needs my help. Where is she?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” The woman jerked her cane upward, to a huge tree in front of them. Waaaay up in that tree, on a branch stretched out over their heads, perched a cat.
A big, fat cat, plaintively wailing away.
Brooke turned and eyeballed Dustin, who seemed to be fascinated by his own feet, and that’s when she got it. She was going through some ridiculously juvenile rite of passage. “I’m beginning to see how they got to number seven.” Good thing she was used to being the newbie, because she hadn’t been kidding Zach yesterday. Little scared her, and certainly not a damn cat in a damn tree.
“Hurry up!” Phyllis demanded. “Before she falls!”
“I’ll get her.” Zach had separated from the others and walked toward the tree.
Oh, no.
Hell, no.
They’d wanted to see her do this, they were absolutely going to see her do this.
“Brooke—”
“No.” She kept her eyes on Phyllis. “Cecile is a cat,” she clarified, because there was no sense in making a total and complete fool of herself if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
“Yes,” Phyllis verified.
Okay, it was going to be absolutely necessary. Damn, she hated that.
By now, Barbie Firefighter Cristina was out-and-out grinning. Cutie Firefighter Aidan was smiling. Harry Potter look-alike Dustin was, too. Not Eeyore, though. Nope, Blake was far more serious than the others, she could already tell, though she’d have sworn there was some amusement shining in his gaze.
Zach was either wiser, or maybe he simply had more control, but his lips weren’t curved as he watched her. Quiet. Aware. Speculative.
Sexy as hell, damn him. Fine. Seemed she had a lot to prove to everyone. Well, she was good at that, too, and she stepped toward the tree.
“Brooke—”
She put a finger in his face, signaling Don’t You Dare, and something flashed in his eyes.
Respect? Yeah, but something else, too, something much more base, which would have most definitely set off one of their trademark chain reactions of sparks along her central nervous system, if she hadn’t been about to climb a damn tree. “I can do this,” she said.
His eyes approved, and even though she didn’t want it to, that approval washed through her.
So did that sizzling heat they had going on.
Oh, he was good. With that charisma oozing from his every pore, he could no doubt charm the panties off just about any woman.
But though it had been a while since anyone had charmed Brooke’s panties off, she wasn’t just any woman.
Reminding herself of that, she stepped toward the tree.
Chapter 3
ZACH WATCHED how Brooke handled herself and something inside him reacted. He didn’t know her, not yet, not really, other than that they had some serious almost chemical-like attraction going, but she was crew, and as such, she was family.
Except he felt decidedly un-family-like toward her. Nope, nothing in him looking at her felt brotherly.
Not one little bit.
The gang was being hard on her, there was no doubt of that, but he’d seen many new hires hazed over the years—six in the past few weeks—and it had never bothered him.
Until now. This bothered him. She bothered him, in a surprising way. A man-to-woman way, though that wasn’t the surprise. It was that he felt it here, at work.
People came in and out of his life on a daily basis. It was the nature of the beast, that beast being fire. Every day he dealt with the destruction it caused, and what it did to people’s existence. Hell, he’d even experienced it in the most personal way one could, when he’d lost his own parents to a tragic fire. He coped by knowing he made a difference, that he helped keep that beast back when he could.
What also helped were the constants in his life, and since the loss of his mom and dad at age ten, those constants were his crew. Aidan, his partner and brother of his heart. Eddie and Sam, fellow surfers. Dustin, resident clown, a guy who gave one hundred percent of himself, always, which usually landed him in Heartbreak City. Blake, whom he’d gone to high school with and who’d lost his firefighting partner Lynn in a tragic fire last year, a guy who’d give a perfect stranger the heavy yellow jacket off his back. Even Cristina, a woman in a man’s world, who was willing to kick anyone’s ass to show she belonged in it. All of them held a piece of Zach’s heart.
For better, for worse, through thick and thin, they were each other’s one true, solid foundation. They meant everything to him.
But the emergency community they lived in was a lot like the cozy little town of Santa Rey itself—small and quirky, no secrets need apply. Everyone knew that the constant gossip and ribbing between the crew members acted as stress relief from a job that had an element of danger every time they went out. Zach had always considered it harmless. But looking at it from Brooke’s perspective, that ribbing must feel like mockery.
She dropped her bag to the ground and walked to the tree.
She was going to climb it for the cat. And hell if that didn’t do something for
