Fan the Flames (9 page)

“Rory.” The chief met her at the back of the truck. “Good job. We'll make a firefighter out of you yet.”

“Thanks, Chief,” she said, a little uncomfortable with his praise. “I didn't do much.”

“You followed orders and kept your head. That's a lot more than most newbies.”

She gave him an awkward bob of her head, relieved when he left her to finish her circuit of the truck.

“Ror,” Ian called, climbing into the driver's seat. “Get the wheel chocks, would you?”

She pulled the chocks from their position under the rear tires, stowing them in one of the storage compartments. Once she retook her spot in the center of the truck cab, Steve climbed in after her, heaving his big body into place with a groan.

“I'm getting too old for this,” he complained, buckling his seat belt. “And I still need to pick up that elk tonight.”

“Do you need help?” Rory asked.

He shook his head. “That's what my kids are for. It'll do them good to work for their supper. My brother and nephews will help, too—both with the pickup and with the eating.”

“So?” Ian asked, giving her a nudge with his elbow.

With a confused look, she echoed, “So…?”

“How'd you like your first call?”

Rory considered that for a long moment, trying to sort through the muddle of emotions swamping her. “It was…terrifying, but satisfying at the same time.”

Both men chuckled.

“That's a good description,” Steve said.

Ian didn't say anything, but he reached over and squeezed her knee, adding a flare of heat and confusion to her already mixed-up mind.

* * *

They returned to the station after a quick stop to gas up the truck, and Steve gave Ian hand signals from the ground to help direct him in backing the truck into its spot. The two firemen who hadn't gone on the call had finished cleaning up from training, so it didn't take long before everyone was calling their good nights and heading to the parking lot.

Rory stared at Ian's Bronco, her stomach twisting. In the excitement of the call, she'd forgotten that he'd driven her into town. All she wanted to do was hide in her bunker and process the evening—or maybe just hide in her bunker, full stop. The processing could wait.

“Ready?” Ian opened the passenger door and waited for her to get into the SUV. With a sigh, she swung onto the seat, appreciating the relatively short climb in comparison to the rescue truck. He closed the door and rounded the hood while she watched him, feeling like a rabbit crouched in a woodpile as a coyote circled her hiding spot.

Shaking her head to clear it of her fanciful thoughts, she kept her eyes off Ian as he got into the driver's seat. Instead, she focused intently on fastening her seat belt, impatient with her ricocheting emotions. Somehow, just the act of getting into his vehicle had transformed the night back into a date.

“Does it ever make you nervous?” she blurted, desperate to put off the awkward silence she just knew was waiting to descend.

“Does what make me nervous?” Giving her a curious look, he cranked the engine.

“Driving. After seeing so many accidents.”

“Not really nervous.” He paused, thinking. “More cautious, maybe.”

She snorted. “Or maybe not. I saw how fast you were driving the rescue truck.”

With a grin, he said, “It's different heading to a call. Lives are at stake.”

“Plus, you just like to drive fast.”

That brought an actual laugh. “True.”

The silence hit, and Rory released a soundless sigh. She'd known it would get quiet and awkward sooner or later.

“You'd be good at this,” Ian said.

Turning her head, she eyed him curiously.

“You should sign up to be a volunteer firefighter,” he clarified. “You were calm and took everything in stride.”

Rory snorted. “If you'd have taken my pulse, you wouldn't have called me calm.”

“Doesn't matter what's happening on the inside. As long as you keep thinking, you'll be fine.”

“I'll consider it.” That would mean a heap of social interactions she'd managed to avoid all her life—training, team bonding, summer potlucks, Christmas parties. She winced, not able to stop the curl of panic rising in her stomach at the idea. “I'm not that great at, well, group activities.”

She expected him to laugh, but the look he gave her was thoughtful, instead. “I think you'd like it. They become your family.”

That wasn't the most appealing thought. Her last family experience wasn't anything she wanted to re-create. Since Rory didn't know how to share this in a way that didn't make her seem damaged, she just made a noncommittal sound and changed the subject. “The Riders are kind of like a family, too, aren't they?”

“Yeah.” His laugh didn't contain much amusement. “A dysfunctional family.”

Rory opened her mouth and closed it again, not sure how she'd managed to direct the conversation from slightly uncomfortable to completely awkward. “Julius?” she finally asked.

Ian was quiet long enough for her to think he wasn't going to answer, but he finally said, “Mostly. Plus Billy's been acting erratically, Zup's being sulky, Rave's flipping out about the stupidest shit, and someone's sneaking booze to Julius, like they're doing him a fucking favor or something.” He blew out a hard breath. “Sorry. About the swearing.”

“It's okay. I've heard worse.”

“You shouldn't have to hear that sh—uh, stuff.”

Sending him a sideways glance, she said, “You do know that you're encouraging me to volunteer for the fire department.”

“Yeah?”

“The fire department, containing firefighters, whose dirty mouths are second only to cops?”

His laugh was grudging but more authentic than the hollow sound he'd made earlier. “Okay, you might have a point. I think the Riders win for most profanity, though.”

“True. It really doesn't bother me though.”

His grimace looked to be part rueful and part pained. “Last time I babysat Steve's kids, I stepped on a Lego and let loose. Maya, his littlest one, started crying. The only way I could get her to stop was to promise I'd quit swearing. I'm trying, but it's fu—uh, really tough.”

The sweetness of his explanation twisted her heart. Rory had always thought of herself as unromantic, but the mental image of big, manly Ian attempting to comfort a little girl just made her melt.

Ian turned onto her drive, pulling up to the triple-locked gate and setting off the deer cameras in a battery of flashes. As Rory opened her door, he caught her arm.

“Wait,” he said when she looked at him, startled. “I'll unlock it. Give me your keys.”

“Don't be stupid.” She hopped out of the SUV, digging the keys out of her coat pocket. It just made sense for the passenger to be the one to get the gate. There was chivalry, but then there was plain inefficiency. Apparently, Ian didn't agree, since he got out of the truck as well.

As she opened each padlock and untangled the chains, he watched the area around them. After they pushed aside the gates, Ian jerked his head toward the Bronco.

“Drive through, and I'll shut these.”

With a shrug, she did as he asked. It was only when she was sitting in the idling truck, waiting for him to finish relocking the gate, that she realized he was going to be locked in the compound. Her spine stiffened, her fingers clutching the steering wheel. Did that mean he was planning on staying the night? Because that was not going to happen.

In a full-on panic, she opened the driver's door and jumped out of his Bronco, nearly crashing into him.

“You can't stay,” she blurted. Although she immediately felt a flush rise on her cheeks, she was freaked enough by the idea of someone—even Ian—invading her home, to ignore her embarrassment. “I'll unlock the gate again so you can leave.”

“Nope.” He stepped around her and got into the driver's seat. “You asked for one more night, and you got it. Time's up.” As she watched, anxiously chewing the inside of her lip, he drove the short distance to the shop parking lot and backed into a corner spot. Jack hurdled out of the darkness toward her. Sitting on her boots, he smacked his tail against her legs in his excitement. She automatically rubbed his ears. Giving a low moan of pleasure, he leaned into her touch.

“What am I going to do about him, Jack?” she muttered. “How do I get him to leave?”

A blissed-out groan was the dog's only response.

“I don't suppose you could bite him? Or just show some teeth and chase him off the property?” Her hopes on that front were dashed when Jack spotted Ian getting out of the Bronco. With an excited yip, the dog tore over to Ian, greeting him with as enthusiastic a welcome as he'd given Rory, the creator of his food. With a defeated sigh, she walked over to the pair.

“Let's go, then,” she grumbled, heading for the narrow path that led to the back entrance of the shop.

Once she'd unlocked the door and disabled the alarm, she took a long time removing her outerwear to give herself a moment to think. As long as he didn't see her alarm codes—and cut off and steal her thumb—it wasn't as if he'd ever be able to get inside without her permission. Plus, she did trust him.

Ian watched her slow-motion boot removal with a raised eyebrow before glancing around the back room. “Where do you sleep? Those chairs don't look all that comfortable.” He gestured toward a couple of straight-back wooden chairs next to her worktable.

“They're not.” Taking a deep, hopefully calming breath, she braced herself to open the door of her home to a stranger.

Rory caught herself—Ian wasn't a stranger. He'd be the first person besides her and her parents to ever step foot in the bunker, though, and the idea was strangely terrifying. With another bracing breath, she moved toward the shelves hiding her steel door.

He was quiet as she swung open the shelves. Although she didn't look at him, she knew he was right behind her, watching. Rory had the sudden impulse to check out his expression, but she quickly quashed the idea. She didn't think she could handle it if he was looking at her like he thought she was crazy.

Her body blocked his view of the keypad as she typed in the code, which made her feel a tiny bit more secure. After finishing the unlocking process, she opened the security door with a hand that shook. Oblivious to Rory's distress, Jack bolted past her and down the steps.

It was hard to move away from the yawning entrance of her real home to reset the shop alarm. Having the door open with someone there, even if that someone was Ian, made her feel raw and vulnerable.

It wasn't any better when they'd both crossed the threshold. Rory closed and relocked the door automatically. To cover up her insecurity, she waved Ian toward the stairs. He stood back and gestured for her to precede him. Too shaky to argue about who would go first, she started descending the steps with Ian at her back.

It felt as if it took forever to reach the bottom. When she turned on the living area lights, Ian's low whistle made her jump.

“This is great,” he said, moving past her to walk farther into the main room, his eyes scanning the space, his open examination making Rory even twitchier. Shifting the strap of his duffel bag off his shoulder, he dumped it next to her couch. “You could survive a zombie apocalypse down here.”

Her laugh sounded nervous to her ears, so she quickly swallowed it. “That's the idea. Zombies, nuclear winter, pandemic—one world-ending disaster is pretty much like another.”

Ian shot her a grin over his shoulder as he prowled around the room. “Well, however it happens, I know whose house I'll be visiting when the end comes.”

Although she smiled back, it was strained. Rory couldn't seem to make herself move from the base of the stairs. It was as if Ian had completely taken over her home just by being in it.

“Would you…um…” Her hesitation brought Ian's attention away from the display of throwing knives decorating one wall.

“What?”

Rory's gaze bounced around her living room like she was the one seeing it for the first time. “Could you not…uh, tell anyone? About my place?”

“Of course not.” He sounded a little disgruntled that she thought he might blab.

“Thanks.”

“I won't say anything.”

“Okay.”

He must have heard doubt in her voice, since he frowned. “Don't you believe me?”

“I do.” After a pause, she continued, “It's just that…well, you
are
a firefighter.”

“So?”

“You guys are the worst gossips in Simpson. Everyone knows that.”

Ian looked utterly offended. “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Okay, okay!” She held up her hands, palms facing out. “I believe you.”

His affronted scowl eased. “Why don't you want anyone knowing about this place? It's amazing.”

She shrugged, her frowning gaze fixed on the knives adorning the wall. “It's not very…well, normal, is it? Plus, my parents were really strict about not letting anyone in here. Even though they're gone, it's hard to break that habit.”

“Fu—uh, forget normal. This is Simpson, after all. You're not even in the top hundred weirdest people. Besides, this is great.” He swung an arm to indicate the entire living room and kitchen before refocusing on Rory. “
You
are great.”

The tension in her chest eased a little, although it didn't disappear completely. To distract herself, she took a step away from the stairs. “Want to see the rest?” She could almost hear her parents shrieking their objections from the grave, but she firmly ignored the voices in her head.

“Sure.”

There wasn't much else to see, but she showed him the small bathroom, complete with composting toilet, and her parents' former bedroom that she'd turned into a storage room.

“It's like you have your own Costco,” he said, eyeing her stacked cases of toilet paper.

“I don't actually think the world is going to end soon, but if something did happen, there are some things I wouldn't want to go without,” she said. “I like being well stocked. It's…comforting.”

“I get that.”

Despite his words, the way he was examining her supplies made her uncomfortable. She ushered him out of the room, shutting the door behind them, hiding what was probably another sign of her unbalanced mind.

“That's my room.” With a tip of her head, she indicated another closed door and then tried to hurry past it. Her efforts were for naught. Ian gave her a wicked grin and reached for the knob.

“Wait!” she said, moving to block his entrance, but it was too late.

He stepped into her room and stared. When he was quiet for a long moment, she closed her eyes, dreading his reaction.

“I don't think I've ever seen this much pink in one place. It's like falling into a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.”

“Okay.” By the heat in her cheeks, she knew her face was pinker than her bedroom. “You've seen it. Let's move on.”

Ignoring her efforts to shoo him out of her room, Ian took another couple of steps away from the door. He eyed the pink walls, the pink and white bed, the white dresser with pink accents and, to top it all off, the fluffy pink bunny perched on top of the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. “I'm guessing you haven't redecorated since you were…what? Eight?”

Her blush intensified. Dropping her gaze, she glanced around the room and then wished she hadn't. It really was an extreme amount of pink.

“What?”

Her eyes snapped back to his. “What?”

Leaning a shoulder against one of the four posts supporting the pink and white canopy, he watched her like a hawk would eye a chubby ground squirrel. “What's the story?”

Rory knew she should shut him down and get them both back to the relative sanity of the living room. For some strange reason, though, her mouth opened, and the truth popped out. “I just decorated this room a couple of years ago.”

The corners of his mouth tucked in, as if he was holding back a smile. “When you were twenty-three, then? So not eight.”

“Not eight.” Her face was going to burst into flames if she blushed any more. Good thing she had a firefighter in her room.

“You…hmm, like pink, then?”

“Yes.”

“A lot.”

“Yes!” Her humiliation turned a corner and morphed into anger. “I love pink, okay? Do you know what color my room was when I was a kid?”

He shook his head, watching her in apparent fascination.

“Brown. And beige.” The words kept tumbling out, as if Ian had opened the door to an overfilled closet in her brain. “And do you know what color almost all of my clothes were?”

This time, he just raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Camouflage. Mossy oak and desert sand, to be precise, depending on the season and where we were going to run drills that day. I'm a grown woman, and I like pink. So shoot me.”

Ian scratched his nose. She couldn't tell for sure, but Rory was fairly certain it was to hide his smile. When he lowered his hand, his face was completely serious. “That's probably not something you want to say in a gun shop. Well, in the bunker beneath a gun shop.”

“What?” Confusion killed a good portion of her indignation, and she deflated a little.

“‘So shoot me.' It's probably not a good habit to use that particular phrase with all these guns around.” A smile was definitely trying to break free.

“Out.” She pointed toward the door. A full-on grin slipped across his face as he turned to leave. With a huff, she gave his shoulder a shove. It didn't move him off balance in the slightest, but it did make her feel a tiny bit better.

He looked back at her, his expression growing serious. “It's okay to like pink, you know.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. She startled as his hand cradled her jaw, tilting her face so he could meet her eyes again.

“I mean it. Having a pink-loving, girly side doesn't make you any less of a gun-toting, zombie-smiting badass.” His smile was so tender that her eyes began to burn. “And I like both sides—all sides of you, actually.”

Looking into his beautiful, earnest face…she almost believed him.

Pulling away before she did something crazy, like tell him she'd been crushing on him for years, she squeezed by him and rushed back into the living room. The monitor on the desk caught her attention.

“Let's check tonight's camera footage,” she suggested.

Without waiting for him to respond, she sat in the desk chair and flipped the power button on the monitor. Ian leaned next to her, one hand on the back of her chair and one on the desk. Rory shifted in her seat. His position put him close enough to smell, a mix of leather and motor oil and wood-smoke and the clean, crisp scent of winter. All good things, but his scent made her too…aware. She started to rise.

“I'll grab a chair for you,” she said, but her upward movement was halted by his hand on her shoulder.

“I'm fine.” He gently pressed her back into her seat.

“Okay,” she muttered, although she definitely wasn't feeling okay with him hovering over her. Twitchy and too warm and off balance, yes. Okay, no.

Rory was happy for the distraction of checking the video. One by one, she scrolled through each camera's footage of the evening, but nothing of interest caught her attention. The photobombing coyote managed to get captured by the south camera, trotting along the outside of the fence line.

It was a relief to find no sign of the intruder for the second night in a row. After finishing her scan of the last camera's recording, she turned to Ian. His face was much too close to hers, and she jerked back to put some space between them.

“Um…” She couldn't think when she was staring at his mouth. Quickly shifting her gaze to meet his brown eyes, she didn't know if that view was any less distracting. Giving herself a mental shake, she forced her brain to concentrate on something besides the all-too-pretty Mr. Walsh. “I'll check the pictures caught by the deer cameras tomorrow. It doesn't look like there were any unwanted visitors while we were gone, though.”

“Good.”

“So…there's probably no reason for you to stay here,” she said, her gaze darting toward the base of the stairs and back to Ian.

“Are you trying to kick me out?” he grumbled, although there was a note of amusement running through his words.

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Won't work. I'm staying. I don't think this is over, and you shouldn't be here by yourself.”

“I'm not.” Rory gestured toward Jack, who was stretched out on the rug, snoring softly. One back leg twitched, as if he were dreaming about chasing ground squirrels, and then he settled.

“As ferocious as he appears”—his mouth quirked a little—“a dog is too easy to…subdue.”

His careful word choice almost made it worse. She cleared her throat, shoving away the mental image of someone harming Jack in their effort to break in. “I'm not easy to subdue. I'm also very well armed.”

He grinned. “I know. I'm still staying.”

“Fine.” The word was almost a groan. It was late, and she was tired. Having Ian there had kept her adrenaline hopping, but that nervous edge was beginning to fade, along with the last of her energy. “I'll dig out some blankets for you.”

Once the bedding was arranged on the couch, Ian eyed it. “You weren't kidding about the camouflage.”

With a snort, she shook the mossy oak pillowcase in her hands so the pillow dropped in the rest of the way. “I was not.” She tossed the pillow to the end of the couch, which was draped in a mossy oak sheet and two matching blankets. “Once you're tucked into bed, I won't even be able to see you.”

He laughed. “Your love for pink is starting to make sense.”

“Yeah.” Clearing her throat, she concentrated on straightening the pillow. “That's another thing to keep to yourself.”

When he stayed quiet, she looked at him. His teasing grin made her close her eyes, as if in pain.

“Ian,” she said through set teeth. “If you even whisper one word about what you saw in my bedroom, I will use each and every knife on that wall to cut you into teeny-tiny pieces and then feed you to the chickens. Understand?”

If her threat had intimidated him, his expression did not show it. In fact, she was pretty sure his smile had widened. “You're kind of hot when you're making very specific and graphic threats.”

She made a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. “I'm going to bed.”

Stalking away from him, Rory went into her bedroom and slammed the door. Although the sound from the living room was muffled, she was pretty sure Ian was laughing.