Red Hot. Lisa Childs

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       Extract

       Copyright

       1

      “ARE YOU GOING to a fire?” the receptionist asked as Fiona O’Brien hurried past her desk in the blue and beige lobby of The Northern Lakes Insurance Agency.

      Her briefcase swinging from her hand, she spun on a heel to turn back to Rita. “No, no fire...”

      But her pulse was racing as if there was one. She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. Unfortunately, the old adage about redheads had proven true in her case, no matter how hard she tried to control her temper.

      “I am going to see a firefighter, though,” she admitted.

      Rita arched a blond brow. “I would hope you’re seeing him for a date, but since your weekly delivery of insipid carnations came today, I know you’re still seeing the boring accountant.”

      Fiona cursed. She’d forgotten her date with Howard—although she wasn’t certain how when they went to the same place on the same night at the same time every week. Actually, she did know how...

      That damn firefighter.

      “So do you have a business appointment with the firefighter?” Rita asked.

      No. Wyatt Andrews had no idea she was coming to see him. Until the call she’d just taken, Fiona had had no idea and no desire to see Wyatt Andrews again, let alone talk to him. Not that she’d seen very much of him...

      Six feet plus a few inches or more of muscle and arrogance and attitude. Black hair that was too long—like the stares from his brilliant blue eyes. Fortunately, she hadn’t seen him that often over the past four or five years.

      Nor had she ever really talked to him.

      “So it’s not business?” Rita prodded her.

      Fiona shook her head and glared at the lock of hair that wriggled out of her bun to fall across her eyes. “There’s no way I would ever sell a life insurance policy to a firefighter. The risk is too great.”

      Rita moved her thin shoulders in a shrug and casually remarked, “Everybody’s going to die someday.”

      With her dyed blond hair and heavy makeup, the receptionist’s age was impossible to determine. So Fiona didn’t know if the other woman was too young or too old to care about death.

      “But firefighting is a hazardous profession,” Fiona said. “According to the statistics, a firefighter is far more likely to die than say...an accountant.” And that was why she hadn’t ever really talked to Wyatt Andrews on the few occasions she’d seen him. She had learned to not waste her time or her attention on a man with a death wish.

      “If you marry ol’ Howard, you might wish accountants died sooner,” Rita warned her, her pale blue eyes glinting with laughter. “He might bore you to death.”

      Fiona would rather be bored than scared to death. And what her younger brother had told her moments earlier on the phone had scared her to death—or at least to outrage. She wasn’t mad at him, though. She knew who’d put that outrageous, dangerous idea in his head: Wyatt Andrews.

      Since he had become her brother’s mentor six years ago, he’d had too much influence on Matthew’s life. Now he was even endangering Matthew’s life, or at the very least his future.

      That was why she had to see Wyatt Andrews again. Why she had to have a real conversation with him. Her temper reignited, and she spun back toward the door.

      But before Fiona could get away, Rita asked another question. “So if you’re not going to date him and you’re not going to sell him an insurance policy, why do you have to see this fireman?”

      “To tell him to mind his own damn business!”

      * * *

      “ANYBODY EVER TELL you to mind your own damn business?”

      Wyatt Andrews chuckled. Then he raised his hands, palms up, from the weights he’d been lifting. “Hey, it was just a suggestion!”

      “That I need to get laid?”

      Wyatt laughed harder at the outrage in his friend’s deep voice. Captain Braden Zimmer glared at him from across the firehouse workout room. It was all whitewashed cement block, no mirrors, no fancy mats. It was a serious room—because they had to be in serious shape. Their lives depended on it.

      “You’re the one who admitted you’re all tense and edgy,” Wyatt reminded him.

      A muscle twitched along Braden’s jaw, and he ran a hand over his brush-cut brown hair. It was still wet from his shower; he’d just finished working out when Wyatt had hit the gym. “Yeah, that’s the way I get when there’s a fire out there.”

      “But there isn’t a fire.” At least not one big enough for the forest service’s elite unit of firefighters to have been called. Wildfire season hadn’t even officially started yet. So the Huron Hotshots twenty-member team wasn’t together yet. Just the firefighters who worked the off-season out of the Northern Lakes firehouse—he, Braden and a couple of other guys.

      Braden glanced at the cell phone he clutched in one hand—probably checking for a missed call.

      “The alarm would have gone off,” Wyatt pointed out.

      “I sent Dawson out to check for smoldering campsites.”

      “It’s too early for camping. Too cold at night...” He shivered at the thought.

      “There are some die-hard campers,” Braden reminded him. “And they’re the ones who build the biggest fires.”

      “If there was a big fire, Dawson would have called,” he pointed out.

      Braden shrugged. “Maybe the fire’s just getting started...”

      “Maybe you need something else to focus on besides your job,” Wyatt suggested. “Like a woman...”

      Braden glared at him again. “That’s the last thing I need. And who the hell are you to talk? I don’t see you in a relationship.”

      Wyatt shuddered. “God, no.”

      A relationship was the last thing he wanted. Every guy he’d worked with who had settled down with a wife and kids had eventually left the job. Or in Braden’s case, the wife had left him.

      “That’s the whole point, Captain,” he told Braden. During the off-season, Braden was the captain of the Northern Lakes Fire Department. During the wildfire season, the retired captain resumed his position in Northern Lakes with a team of new forest service firefighter recruits, and Braden became superintendent of the Huron Hotshots team. In both positions, Wyatt was his assistant—one of two for the Hotshots and the only assistant for Northern Lakes. He was his professional wingman. Maybe it was time to make that personal, too. “You just got divorced. You don’t want a relationship. You just want to have some fun.”

      “Fun?” Braden snorted with derision.

      “You must’ve been married too long if you don’t think sex is fun anymore.” Another reason Wyatt never intended to get serious with anyone. Serious equaled boring.

      Braden gave him another look. It wasn’t a glare. It was more a pitying glance. Then he shook his head.

      “What?” Wyatt asked. Nobody had ever pitied him before. Envied?