Red Hot. Lisa Childs

wasn’t with you at the bar,” he pointed out. Not that he would have noticed anyone but Fiona. He reached out to open her door for her. But he just held the handle, his arm stretched in front of her. Then he leaned closer and braced his other hand against the roof of her car, loosely encircling her. She lifted her hand and pressed it against his chest. “I thought you weren’t into firefighters...”

      She pushed against his chest, the warmth of her palm penetrating the thin layer of his shirt to his skin beneath. “I’m not...”

      Had he imagined earlier that she’d kissed him back? Had it just been wishful thinking on his part? Temptation tugged at him, joining the tension. He wanted to lean down a little farther and brush his mouth across hers—to see if she tasted as sweet as he’d thought. To see if he’d imagined the heat and the passion...

      Her breath caught as she stared up at him. Maybe she’d seen the hunger in his gaze. “That’s why I didn’t go home with you...”

      He stepped back and lifted his hands. “Hey, I just wanted to talk. I thought that’s what you wanted, too—to talk about your brother.”

      “I do,” she insisted. “Even if you don’t agree with me that the job he wants is too dangerous, you have to agree that it’s crazy Matthew quit school when he applied to the forest service. He might not even get in.”

      It was clear that she didn’t want him to.

      “The kid might have acted rashly,” he admitted.

      “And the whole firefighter thing,” she said, “that’s ridiculous enough. But to want to become a Hotshot, too...”

      Wyatt had a lot of pride in his job. And her disdain for it stung. “If you actually wanted to talk to me about this,” he said, “you should have come to my house.” He gestured back at the building. “Instead you came here to pick up exotic dancers.”

      Her eyes narrowed, and he braced himself for another slap or to dodge a blow as he had in the club. But she laughed instead. “I came here to talk to a friend,” she repeated. “She was the one preoccupied with the dancers.”

      And Fiona was preoccupied with her brother. He saw the worry on her face, and he’d heard it earlier in her voice. Beneath her anger with him, there was fear. “You can talk to me,” he said, “about Matt...”

      “Thank you.”

      Maybe he could get her to go home with him now—just to talk, of course. He opened his mouth to issue the invitation when a voice called out from the club. “Hey!”

      He turned to the bouncer.

      “Your friend’s in trouble in here.”

      He groaned. Braden was going to kill him. But maybe he’d also saved him—from doing something crazy, such as being alone with Fiona O’Brien. Because Wyatt knew that if they were alone—truly alone—he wouldn’t be able to resist temptation. He would have to kiss her again.

       5

      A DOOR CREAKED, jerking Fiona awake. She blinked her eyes open and tried to focus. The computer screen in front of her had gone black. How long had she been asleep?

      Her brother, Matthew, stood in the doorway to her office, watching her. Whenever she looked at him, she saw a child—the towheaded toddler she’d had to leave when her grandparents had been awarded custody of her. But he’d grown up. He was tall and so broad that he nearly filled her doorway. His curls had turned dishwater blond, and there was none of the adoration with which he used to look at her in his brown eyes.

      “This is what you want for me?” he asked with a shudder of revulsion. “A desk job so boring that you can’t even stay awake?”

      The desk job wasn’t why she couldn’t stay awake. She blamed Wyatt Andrews for that, as she did for so many other things—such as her younger brother’s attitude and poor decisions. Every time she’d closed her eyes the night before, she’d seen Wyatt’s face and his bare chest and sculpted abs...

      She’d even been able to feel his mouth moving sensuously, hungrily over hers. How could she blame her brother for letting Wyatt Andrews get to him when the man had so easily gotten to her, as well?

      “I haven’t told you to get a desk job,” she said. She knew that wasn’t for everyone. She couldn’t imagine Wyatt Andrews behind a desk—but she had imagined him last night—in other places. Like the backseat of her car...

      Her bed...

      Heat flashed through her, and she wished for a glass of ice water instead of the cup of lukewarm coffee sitting on the linen blotter on her driftwood-colored desk.

      Resentment tugged her brother’s mouth into a grimace. “It’s what you want, though.”

      “I want you to finish college,” she said. “And to choose a profession that’s right for you.” Not for Wyatt Andrews.

      Matthew stuck out his chest and stabbed it with his thumb. “Being a Hotshot,” he said. “That’s right for me.”

      “Why?” she asked. “I looked it up.” Years ago. “I know how dangerous it is—even more dangerous than being a regular firefighter.”

      It was also incredibly physically demanding—which explained why her formerly scrawny brother had started working out so strenuously. She’d thought that, too, had been his trying to emulate Wyatt. She just hadn’t realized how much.

      He shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand...”

      “Why you want to risk your life?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t understand that.” She stood up and came around her desk. But when she reached out for him, he stepped back. “Do you know what it would do to Mom if something happened to you?”

      Losing her husbands had nearly destroyed her. Losing her son definitely would.

      He snorted derisively. “Do you? You’re the one who never sees her.”

      “I see her...” But it was difficult because the woman continued to make poor decisions. She kept dating men like her late husbands. Men who drove too fast and drank too much. She’d probably buried a few of them, too, but had refrained from admitting it to Fiona.

      She wouldn’t have wanted to hear “I told you so.”

      Matthew’s mouth twisted into a grimace of disgust. “Then you know that Mandy would just drink an extra bottle of wine and forget all about me.”

      “I wouldn’t.” She reached out again, trying to stroke his hair as she’d done when they were kids. But he was too tall now. She could only squeeze his shoulder.

      His grimace became a sneer of resentment. “You did.”

      She shook her head and reminded him, “It wasn’t my choice to leave. You know that.” According to the judge, she had been too young at eleven to make her own decision. But even then she’d known herself better than anyone else had. And she’d known that Matthew, at five, needed her more than her grandparents did.

      He sighed. “I know. I know...”

      “And I never forgot about you.” She had visited as often as she’d been allowed and her mother had been able to afford. Her grandparents, who’d lived, and still lived, in Florida, had made certain the judge made her mother responsible for her travel expenses. They’d known it would keep her visits home to a minimum.

      He laughed. “Maybe it would be better if you had forgotten about me.”

      She gasped.

      “I’m just joking,” he said.

      But she wondered.

      “You do tend to forget that I’m not that little kid you left,” he said. There was