Firefighter's Christmas Baby. Annie Claydon

He remembered that now. He’d been sitting in the ready room, after returning from the fire they’d been called to that afternoon. Watching as Callie had talked to a couple of the other firefighters. Suddenly she’d turned and pointed the camera at him.

      Perhaps it was Ben’s imagination, but he thought he saw the subtle winding-down process after a call where there had been no casualties and the fire had been successfully contained. And there was something else. His eyes looked almost startlingly blue under tousled hair that was still wet from the shower.

      ‘Do I really look like that?’ For the first time in his life it occurred to Ben that he looked handsome.

      ‘Yeah, on a good day. Sometimes you look a bit rough...’ Eve laughed at his protests, narrowing her eyes to squint at the photograph. ‘Maybe she’s turned up the blue tones a bit. She explained to me how you do that. She said that she could turn down the red of my scars a bit but when we’d talked about it I decided that she shouldn’t. All or nothing, eh?’

      ‘Good decision. You can be very proud of your photos, Eve.’ Ben looked at his own photograph again. None of the other blues seemed to be so prominent. Maybe it was a trick of the light...

      He decided not to think about it. Gathering up the photographs, he put them back into the envelope and threw it back into the box.

      ‘Here. If anyone wants to see these, you can show them.’ He led by example. If anyone on the crew wanted to see what Callie had made of him, they could have a good laugh over it.

      ‘Right, boss. Thanks.’ Eve put her envelope in the box with his and shot him a grin before she left him alone.

      What Callie had made of him. It was a thought that wouldn’t go away, because the photograph had hinted at the smouldering heat that invaded his thoughts whenever he looked at her.

      He shook the thoughts from his head. Christmas was only a week away and Callie would be back to take the photos for the calendar. He would be sure to thank her for her sensitivity with Eve and then he’d keep his distance. Ben didn’t trust himself to do anything else.

      * * *

      Callie had stared at Ben’s photograph for a long time before deciding to include it in his envelope. Perhaps it looked a like a come-on, betraying the way she saw him a little too clearly. But it was really just the way that the lens saw him. The camera was indifferent to him and incapable of lying. That image was all about Ben and nothing about her.

      Her 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.’

       CHAPTER THREE

      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