Hot for Fireman (9 page)

“And your clothes . . .” She risked a look at his chest. His naked, muscular, intoxicating chest that was so close she could lick it if she stuck out her tongue.

“You owe me for that. Shirt for a shirt. Come on, hand it over.”

What?
Did he expect her to . . . ? She jerked her head up to blast him, but right away caught that teasing look that came so easily to him. One blue eye gave her a slow wink.

“Totally inappropriate,” she told him, without conviction.

“Hey, I just survived a fiery inferno. Cut me some slack.”

“Fiery inferno? A dish towel caught on fire.”

“Don’t forget the roll of paper towels that made the ultimate sacrifice.”

She snorted. With the responsible part of her mind, she knew she ought to clean up this mess before customers showed up. But it felt so good to stand here with his hands on her shoulders. It felt so good to be teased again by Ryan. Ryan, who hadn’t burned to death in the fire Doug had set.

As soon as she saw Doug, she was going to tell him to forget the whole thing. Bad, bad idea.

They heard the creaky sound of the front door, followed by a series of light footsteps. Ryan took his hands away and stepped back. “I’d better put that jukebox back together.”

“But—”

“And you should clean up back here. And get those fire extinguishers taken care of.”

“But—”

He was already pushing open the swinging door. She winced as he disappeared into the bar and waited for the inevitable. And then it came. A cascade of female shrieks of appreciation at the sight of a shirtless Ryan. A “yeah, baby.” A “woo-hoo” or two. Lots of breathless laughter and some enthusiastic hooting and hollering.

The door swung open again and Ryan reappeared, red-faced and embarrassed. “Permission to go home and find another shirt, boss.”

“And ruin all the fun?”

“My pants got wet too. Can’t work in wet pants.” He put his hands to the button fly of his jeans.

“Go, go,” she squeaked, afraid she’d faint dead away if she saw any more bits of Ryan naked.

“Fire extinguishers,” he reminded her as he left through the back door.

Right. Fire extinguishers. Too bad they didn’t work on the kind of fire Ryan sparked inside her.

Chapter Nine

H
is old friend,
fire
. Ryan remembered with perfect clarity the last fire he’d faced. After the blonde girl had rung the station’s doorbell and he’d jumped into the plug-buggy, it had turned out the fire had been set by the girl’s aunt, who had a mental disturbance and was now defending the blazing house with a rifle. She’d aimed a bullet at the plug-buggy, nearly nailing Ryan. He had no idea Ginny, hiding inside, had been injured until much later. By the time the police arrived, the plug-buggy was destroyed. Ryan figured his career was too.

If it weren’t for Brody, it would have been. But Brody had allowed him a second chance.

It had been a year and a half since he’d felt the adrenaline rush that came with the living presence of a fast-growing fire. He loved fires. He respected fires. He didn’t fear fires, unless that full-body alertness could be called fear. Around a fire, every one of his senses became totally aware. No bit of information escaped his notice. Everything seemed to slow down into another dimension, one in which he had plenty of time to do what needed to be done.

He’d been told that he moved with unreal speed while fighting fires—or fighting, for that matter—but it didn’t feel that way to him. He felt he moved at his normal relaxed pace, but the world slowed down to meet him. Or maybe it was more that time wasn’t a factor when he was grappling with a fire.

He loved fire. Fire was like a soul brother to him. He understood fire at a gut level, the suddenness of it, its out-of-control nature, its fierce need to grow and consume. He had that same fire inside him. Sometimes the fire got out of its cage. Then it had to be hunted down and captured.

Putting out a fire always left him with a bittersweet sadness afterward.

In his little bungalow that night, he went from one window to the next until he’d opened them all. A current of cooling air flowed through the place, stirring the fringe on the floor lamp one of his exes had given him in the hopes that if she moved some furniture in, she would be next. He closed his eyes, feeling the evening wind on his face.

Fire.
Fighting that fire in the kitchen of the Hair of the Dog, without any equipment, any support, any of the trappings of a fire department, had been like a wake-up slap in the face. He was a firefighter. When he was eye to eye with a fire, things felt right.

The manual lay where he’d left it, on the floor next to his kitchen table. He walked into the kitchen and stood over it. This pile of binders stood between him and his rightful destiny. He nudged them with his toe. Between a fire that could potentially kill him and this hunk of paper, he’d take fire. But he didn’t have a choice.

He bent down and picked up a binder.

“N
o. Not again. Ryan nearly got burned.”

Doug loped next to Katie as she walked down the street later that night. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Katie noticed he didn’t sound very regretful. “Didn’t you know we were in there?”

“I didn’t see your car.”

“I left it at the oil change place.”

“I didn’t know that. I yelled into the bar, but no one answered.”

“We were up at the front by the jukebox.” Completely caught up in their own conversation, she remembered. About kissing.

“I should have checked better. I will next time.”

“No next time.”

“How’re you going to pay the bills then?”

Very good question. Another bill had arrived yesterday. Apparently they owed Southern California Electric for two months of power, and the company wasn’t at all happy about it. If the power got shut off, that would be it for the Hair of the Dog
.
They already kept the lights as low as possible. Any lower and customers would have to bring flashlights.

She could always fork over her grad school money, such as it was. But her entire savings would cover only a couple of weeks of bar expenses. That math felt like a nail in her coffin. She’d found grad school much less thrilling than anticipated, though she’d never confess that to her parents. She’d considered using the money to travel, but maybe instead it would pay for beer and electricity. Not too depressing.

Her cell phone rang.

“Katie, what happened at the bar today?” Her mother. Damn, she should have called before wild rumors started flying.

“Oh, nothing. Little fire. No harm done.”

“Oh. The bar’s okay.” Her mother relayed that fact to someone off the phone. There was that same tone again. Disappointment.

“I should have called you earlier. It took me a while to clean up, and—”

“Honey, it doesn’t matter.” Her mother cut her off. “I called to make sure you’re fine. For a moment I thought we were rid of the place for good. But nothing’s that easy, right?”

“Right.” There it was. Proof her parents would approve of her plan. Or at least her mother would. “Is Dad upset?”

“No, as long as you’re fine. He’s been working on that absurd mini golf course in the backyard. Ridiculous, but it keeps him happy. And it keeps his blood pressure down.”

“Can’t wait to see that.”

“It has garden gnomes in it. It’s beyond belief. He’s calling it Hair of the Gnome to keep it in the family. We’ll see you on Sunday.”

She hung up and realized they’d nearly passed the shop where she’d left her car that morning. Her Datsun sat forlornly in the back lot. Everyone had left for the night. Hopefully they’d left the keys under the floormat as requested.

“Everything okay?”

Katie glanced up at Doug. The neon light of the “Mr. Tune-Up” sign created a strange yellow reflection in his eyes. He looked mysterious, different, unlike the boy she’d grown up with. “Yeah, fine. My mom wishes the bar had burned down.”

“See? It’s a good plan, Katie.”

Maybe it was, after all. She barely knew anymore. Ryan’s lecture kept ringing in her ears, but if no one was put in danger . . . “I’ll set the fire myself.”

“Oh, come on, Katie. Give me another chance. I’ll do it in the middle of the night. I’ll check every single corner of the bar first. I’ll put 911 into my speed dial. The fire department will be there in two minutes.”

It sounded harmless the way he put it. But still, the sight of those flames licking at the hood over the range had really rattled her. “Why do you care? Are you turning into a firebug?”

“You stood by me when I was in the hospital. I want to make it up to you.”

He smiled like the sweet boy she remembered, before all the crap, the hospital, the guilt trips, the manipulations. Despite herself, she swayed toward him. In some ways Doug wasn’t so bad. He’d never even flirted with another girl. He was as faithful as a dog. So what if he tried to control her by playing the victim? Maybe it was because he loved her so much.

Her chest bumped against his ribs. No fire raced through her veins, the way it did with Ryan. Doug leaned his head down with puppy dog eagerness. No wave of dizzying excitement transported her into delirium. She saw a gleam of saliva inside his mouth, and noticed a hair follicle on his upper lip that had developed a pimple.

Nausea clutched at her stomach. She stepped back. No way could she kiss Doug. Never again could she kiss him.

“Sorry. I-I’m really tired,” she murmured.

“Sure. I get it.” Disappointment curled his mouth down at the corners.

“Sorry,” she said again.

“It’s fine. I’ll live.”

No thanks to her
, his tone implied. She shook off the familiar annoyance and walked to the driver’s side door of her car.

“What about the other thing?” he called across the empty lot. At least he was smart enough not to yell the word “fire.”

Katie felt under the floor mat and found her car keys. The resignation in her mother’s voice came back to her.
Nothing’s that easy, right?

She straightened up and looked back at Doug, who stood hunched under the streetlight where she’d left him. God, how she longed for something new. No more Hair of the Dog hanging around her neck. No more ex-boyfriend hanging around any part of her.

“I don’t know, Doug, I think it should be me.”

“You don’t trust me. I don’t blame you.” He hung his head.
Crap
. Was she messing with his self-esteem? She couldn’t kiss him. But if he really wanted to set the fire, why not let him? Maybe it would give him a confidence boost.

“Okay, you can give it one more try. But you have to make one hundred thousand percent sure no one’s around. I mean, seriously. Or I’ll never forgive you.”

He perked up so quickly, she realized he’d played her. “It’ll work. I promise. I have a plan.”

She started her car to mask her grumble of annoyance. The urge to scream out of the parking lot and leave Doug in the dust was nearly irresistible. Instead she stopped next to him like a good little girl. “Need a ride home?”

He perked up even more. “Thanks.”

One thought pounded through her mind as she drove him home. Would she ever escape?

I
t was the strangest thing. Ever since that incident in the kitchen, the Hair of the Dog was plagued with one fire after another. Ryan, with his sixth sense when it came to fires, managed to put out every one.

The second fire happened late one night soon after that first one. Ryan hadn’t been able to sleep after a long shift at the bar—and a long day of being around Katie. He’d decided to go for a late-night run. He loved running at night because the air wasn’t so brutally hot. As if drawn by some magnetic force, he’d modified his course to cruise past the Hair of the Dog.

Automatically he looked for Katie’s Datsun. Of course it wasn’t there. She was probably in bed by now. Did she sleep curled up in a ball, or did she fling her arms and legs every which way? What did she wear to bed? Anything? His pleasant fantasy broke off when he saw smoke seeping through the edges of the front door.

He knew right away the fire wasn’t fully engaged. From the lackadaisical quality of the smoke, it had probably just started. But still, the door would be too hot to touch, and he couldn’t risk opening it without his gear on. He ran around the back and kicked open the back door. He grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall—he’d checked it himself the day after the first fire—and ran through the dark interior toward the flicker of flame beginning to feel its strength.

It took only a few seconds to put it out. He turned the lights on and examined the area. An ancient floor fan lay on its side, a frayed, scorched electrical cord in two severed pieces next to it. He remembered someone complaining about the heat earlier that day. Katie must have set up this fan and forgotten to unplug it at the end of the day. It must have fallen, somehow catching the cord and sparking a fire.

He scolded Katie about that the next day. She merely pressed her lips together and listened stoically. Afterward, she went into the kitchen and banged some stuff around.

That girl did not like to be lectured. He didn’t enjoy doing it, but when someone was a magnet for disaster like Katie, and when the thought of that person being harmed, by fire or otherwise, made him unaccountably anxious, a lecture was required.

The next fire happened a couple of days later, very early in the morning. He’d gotten to work early to clean the espresso machine. In his opinion, a functional piece of coffeemaking equipment was essential for a place like the Hair of the Dog
.
He didn’t mind getting people drunk, but he wanted them to leave the place on their own two feet.

Knowing it would take hours to clean it properly, he’d arrived around six in the morning with a thermos of coffee and a bag of mini muffins. His head had been deep in the murky depths of the espresso machine when he heard an unfamiliar noise in the kitchen. It had taken a few minutes to extricate himself, then he’d hurried through the swinging door. A blast of heat stopped him in his tracks. The ancient, greasy old curtain at the kitchen window had caught fire.

And the fire extinguisher was nowhere to be seen.

Didn’t matter. He reached back inside the bar for his thermos and doused the flames with a waterfall of black coffee.

What the fuck was going on here?

He cornered Katie later that day, right before Happy Hour. “I think someone’s trying to set fire to the Dog.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Three fires in one week. That’s not normal.”

“Nothing here is normal.” She waved her arm at the motley collection of customers at the bar. Mr. Burwell was talking to his oxygen tank. Archie was writing a poem in tiny letters on a bar napkin. He’d been sulking ever since the real estate guy had hooked up with the office supply guy. Next to him, a sultry brunette checked her lipstick in a heart-shaped pocket mirror.

“I won’t argue with that. But you should consider hiring an overnight security guard.”

She snorted. “Sure. Right after I redo the floors and put in central air conditioning.”

He shook his head at her stubbornness. He knew Katie had a lot to deal with. Her family had dumped the bar on her and no one ever seemed to help her out. The Hair of the Dog took up all her time. She was so smart, she could be doing anything. Instead she was always here, pouring her fierce energy into a lost cause.

That night he decided to play security guard himself. He chose a spot in the shadow of the Dumpster in the vacant lot behind the bar. The nearest streetlight was on the other side of the lot, so he would be invisible to anyone sneaking up to the back door. After kicking aside an old Coke can and some broken glass, he wrapped himself in a blanket and sat down on the grass. He rested his back against the chain-link fence and settled down to wait. He had a good view of the back door, although until the moon rose it would be hard to make out any details. The quiet of the sage-scented San Gabriel night settled around him.

Why would anyone want to burn down the Hair of the Dog? One suspect popped immediately to mind. Doug, the bouncer and ex-boyfriend. He’d gotten a bad feeling about the guy from day one. Something about him didn’t sit right with Ryan. But what motive would he have for burning down the Dog? Revenge for getting dumped by Katie?