friends would have taken one look at the picture and told her that capturing Ben’s smile for real should be her number one priority over Christmas. But anyone who seriously thought she’d take that advice didn’t know much about her. Callie was all about avoiding risk.
It was one of the reasons she’d wanted this job so much. She’d wanted to understand what made the firefighters tick, what allowed them to do a dangerous job and then go home to their families afterwards. She’d been too young to understand when her father had failed to come home from work one day, but she’d understood her mother’s tears and in time she’d come to understand that he’d never be coming home.
She’d learned afterwards that her father had been a hero. A police officer, called to an armed robbery that had gone bad. He’d saved two of his fellow officers but he had been unable to save his own wife and child from the mistakes and hardships that had resulted from his death.
It was the best reason in the world not to get involved with Ben, a man who took risks for a living, like her father had. He might be mouth-wateringly handsome and Callie had always had a soft spot for men with a hard exterior and warm eyes. But he was very definitely on her not-to-do list this Christmas. It was okay for the camera to register his smouldering eyes but she wasn’t going to think about them.
One of the firefighters let her into the station on a crisp, cold Christmas Eve morning. Callie made her way to the ready room, adding the two dozen mince pies she’d made last night to the pile of boxes of Christmas fare in the kitchenette. Then she sat down, her camera ready, waiting for something to happen.
* * *
No sprayed-on jeans this morning. If he’d known in advance, Ben might have thought that Callie in a pair of serviceable trousers, heavy boots and a thick red hoodie would be an easier prospect. But that would have been a mistake because she still looked quite terrifyingly gorgeous.
He’d made sure that the photo of himself, captioned ‘Hunk of the Month’, had been taken down from the ready room notice-board. Everyone had taken their chance to have a good laugh, and there was no need for Callie to see it.
She was sitting quietly in the ready room. Blending in, as he’d seen her do before. Watchful, observing everything. He’d bet the silver sixpence from the Christmas pudding that she’d already sized up the decorations and the small tree in the corner of the room, deciding how best they might be put to use in her photographs.
‘You’re here.’ He suddenly couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Yes.’ She turned her green eyes up towards him thoughtfully. ‘So are you.’
That got the patently obvious out of the way. Ben sat down.
‘Eve showed me her pictures.’
She reddened a little, seeming to know exactly which of the pictures he was referring to. ‘You know that she called the shots?’
‘Yes, Eve told me that you’d talked about it all at some length, and that she was happy with what you’d done.’ Ben liked it that Callie was unsure what his reaction might be, and that she actually seemed to care what it was.
She nodded slowly, obviously pleased. ‘She rang me and said she’d be happy for them to be included in the pictures for the calendar.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think they’re exactly the kind of thing we want. But I’m going to leave it until after Christmas and give Eve some time to think about it. Sometimes people say yes to a proposal and then change their minds when it becomes a reality.’
‘I’ll leave you to sort that out with her.’ Two weeks ago it had been unthinkable that he could leave Callie to negotiate directly with his team, but now... Maybe her photographs had worked a little magic on him as well.
‘You’re expecting to be busy today?’ She asked the question with an air of innocence and Ben smiled.
‘Yes, we’re often busy over Christmas.’
‘I’m hoping that you’ll agree to my going with the crew on a call-out. The station commander gave me the go-ahead and I’ve signed the waiver. But the final decision’s down to you.’
He’d been half expecting this. For someone who was so invested in how things looked, it was impossible that her own appearance didn’t mean something. She’d even ditched the bulky camera, replacing it with a smaller one that might easily be stowed away inside a jacket.
‘Can you earn it?’ The words slipped out before he could stop them. He usually put things a little more tactfully than that, wrapping it all up in talk about basic fitness and health and safety procedures.
If it was the little tilt of her chin that he’d wanted to see, she didn’t disappoint him. Neither did the defiance in her eyes.
‘Just watch me.’
CALLIE WOULD HAVE thought that four years working as a first response paramedic might have allowed some of the more basic procedures to go without saying. But it appeared that Ben took nothing for granted.
‘Don’t forget to stand where he tells you.’ Eve’s eyes flashed with humour as she whispered the words to Callie.
‘Sorry about this...’ The yard wasn’t the place to be in this freezing weather, and everyone looked as if they’d rather be in the ready room, making inroads into the stack of Christmas food.
Eve grinned. ‘It’s not you. He does it with everyone. Everyone he likes, that is...’
Right. This was obviously the hurdle that she had to jump to gain entry to the team. She could respect that, there was no such thing as being too careful when your job involved the kinds of risks that the crew faced every day.
‘Callie! Over there...’ Ben shouted, and she started. She was already standing well out of the way of the fire crew, and the point he’d indicated precluded any good photographic shots of the imaginary conflagration.
She ran obediently to her allotted spot and he nodded, seeming to be fighting back a grin. ‘All right. Thanks, everyone.’
The crew followed his lead, at ease now as they left their positions and started to meander back inside. Ben was suddenly one of them again, just another member of the crew, but Callie was under no illusions that as soon as the alert bell rang, he’d be their leader again.
‘Did I pass?’ She murmured the words to him as he strolled back across the yard towards her.
‘Yeah. Full marks.’ This time he allowed himself to smile. ‘Make sure you do the same when this is for real.’
This wasn’t for real? Full marks meant that she had a chance of going with the crew on their next call-out. That made it real enough.
They didn’t have long to wait. When the alarm sounded, Callie was on her feet with the others, pulling on the high-vis protective jacket with ‘Observer’ written across the back of it.
She was familiar with the sound of a siren
