More Than a Fling [Uniformed and Blazing Hot 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (16 page)

“Why did she pick us?” Taylor Parke wanted to know.

“It’s not just our shift,” Tanner said, taking over the conversational ball. “She’s hoping to interview A, B, and C shifts from our firehouse as well as Stations 2 and 4.”

Nick scanned the room, looking for Rescue Squad 16’s lieutenant, Ryder Cox. He found the man taking a seat at the head of the rectangular table and their gazes locked. “She doesn’t know Rhett is Squad lieutenant at Station 2 yet, but she’ll be looking for an introduction to your brother if she finds out.”

Ryder nodded. “I’ve got no problems with that. You might want to warn her about him, though.”

Rhett Cox would be Alyssa’s perfect in to interview the firefighters and paramedics at Station 2. He was also known far and wide as one of the biggest players in Cherish.

Nick didn’t like the primal urge to protect and claim that twisted in his gut at the thought of Rhett Cox hitting on Alyssa. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

“Since when did you and Tanner hook up with a reporter?” paramedic Neil Ingram asked from his place behind the counter where he was dishing out the morning’s breakfast.

“We haven’t,” Nick lied.

“She’s a friend,” Tanner added. “Our next-door neighbor.”

“The same neighbor we’ll be putting up the fence for tomorrow?” Davon asked.

“Yeah, that’s her,” Tanner confirmed.

“A friend, huh?” Truck Company 29 firefighter Jax Darwin’s cobalt eyes sparked with knowledge. “Sounds to me like she’s reaping the benefits of your friendship, what with a new a fence and the inside track on interviewing us.”

“Hope the two of you are getting some benefits out of it, too,” Truck Company 29 firefighter and Jax’s best friend Corbin Spencer chimed in.

The room cracked up at the comment and a couple of the guys made provocative sounds.

“All right, people. Settle down.” Captain Stacy Knox came to the rescue, even if he was obviously biting back a grin. “I gave Nick and Tanner permission to invite this reporter here today. That doesn’t mean any of you have to talk to her if you don’t want to.”

“Are you going to talk to her, Captain?” paramedic Maddie Rafferty asked.

Nick watched as the captain met her gaze. A-shift rumor had it that the two had the hots for each other, but were keeping it under wraps. Fraternizing in the department wasn’t forbidden, but for a captain to hook up with a paramedic working on his shift could spell trouble in a number of ways.

Then there was Casper Wiley… Nick dragged his attention to Truck Company 29’s lieutenant. A-shift rumor also suspected Casper had the hots for Maddie, too. If the rumors ever came out as fact, the whole damn shift could be caught up in a shitstorm.

“I’m sure I will,” Knox answered Rafferty. “I’m all for a well-written piece that gives our fire service and my people the recognition it deserves.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Rescue Squad 16’s Chaz Sloan announcement was followed by several other mutters of agreement.

Behind him, Nick heard someone clear their throat.

“Especially when she looks like that.”

Corbin Spencer’s quietly spoken words traveled to Nick on the air, bringing with it another gut-clenching pang of that primal urge to protect and claim as the room fell silent again and he turned to see Alyssa standing in the doorway.

Chapter Seven

The guys on A-shift were crazy about Alyssa. Hell, even Maddie Rafferty thought she was superb. It hadn’t mattered how many questions she had asked during the three hours she spent at the firehouse or how personal she had attempted to get. They had all loved her. The trouble came in realizing he was falling for her, too.

Nick settled on a stool at the bar inside Sirens and ordered a crown on the rocks. It was barely noon. He might have been amused by the fact that a woman had driven him to drinking so early in the day if he hadn’t been scared shitless by the reason she had managed to pull it off. He and Tanner had left their house yesterday morning at the same time she had headed over to hers to change for work. After a completely sleepless night of lying in bed on one side of her with his mind reeling and another organ he had done his damnedest to ignore going all wonky on him, he had insisted he and Tanner take different vehicles to the firehouse.

The twenty-four-hour shift had been chocked-full of Alyssa. Even before and after the three hours she had spent at the firehouse interviewing his coworkers, she had occupied nearly every second of his thoughts.

He had done it again. After all these years, he had managed to fall for a woman.

It was her ass that had done it. He acknowledged how stupid that sounded the first moment the realization shot through his head. The trust she had put in him last night, even when she had been terrified, the way she had allowed him to pleasure her, and the way she had gazed up at him when he had flipped her onto her back had stolen his heart.

Hell, his heart had been gone before that and he damn well knew it. He didn’t understand how a woman had gotten her claws into him so quickly and so deep after all these years, but Alyssa Kinney had succeeded. Now he had to figure out what the hell to do about it.

“I thought I was the only one of us that started drinking this early in the day after a shift.”

Nick looked to his left as Taylor Parke took the empty barstool next to him. “I ran out of weights to lift and trails to hike. I figured I deserved a drink.”

That wasn’t exactly true. He had spent an hour at the gym after his shift ended and then three hours hiking his favorite trail before heading to Sirens. In the surrounding mountains, he could’ve found over a dozen more trails to hike or could have even headed back to the gym. Neither one had done him any good so far today, so he had decided to try something different.

Taylor gave him a knowing look as he placed his order with the bartender. “Not in any hurry to get home, huh? I can relate.”

Nick suspected Taylor probably could. The man and his best friend Jax Darwin had been in a relationship with Station 2 A-shift paramedic Carly Madison until a few months ago. Though the relationship was supposed to have been a secret for reasons Nick didn’t know, everyone on both A-shift crews at Stations 2 and 5 had figured out the three were an item. Then Carly broke up with Taylor and Jax. Nick didn’t have the whole scoop and didn’t want to pry, but from what he had gathered through the firehouse grapevine, Carly wanted to make the move from paramedic to firefighter. Taylor and Jax didn’t want her to. Carly refused to change her mind. Now both men were heartbroken and living with regrets. End of story.

Taylor nodded his thanks to the bartender as she served his drink and returned his attention to Nick. “Are you sure you want to avoid something with such potential?”

Nick played dumb as he lifted his glass for a sip. “How do you know my house has such potential? You haven’t been over since Tanner and I bought the place.”

Taylor gave him a withering look. “I was talking about that hot reporter that was at the firehouse yesterday and you know it.”

“Are you sure you want to let something that’s already showed so much potential get away?” Nick countered.

Taylor grimaced. “Ouch, dude. I mean, really, ouch.”

Nick felt bad. “Sorry, man. That was uncalled for.”

“You think Jax and I should’ve been supportive instead of trying to change her mind.”.”

Though Taylor had worded it as a statement, Nick knew he meant it as a question and, shit, he really didn’t want to answer it. He knew he wouldn’t have any qualms about dating a female firefighter, but he suspected that wasn’t really the root of the problem between Taylor, Jax, and Carly. “What I think doesn’t matter.”

Taylor turned on his stool to face him. “I’m asking. That gives you the opening to lay it on me.”

Nick sighed and took another swig of his Crown. “I don’t know Carly well, but I think she’ll make a hell of a firefighter.”

Taylor slowly nodded. “She’s pissed everyone found out she’s been seeing me and Jax.”

“She had to know the three of you couldn’t keep your relationship a secret forever.”

Taylor snorted. “Jax and I never wanted it to be a secret in the first place. It’s what she wanted. Just like what she’s doing now is what she wants. Jax and I want one thing. She wants something else. Jax and I want more. Carly wants less.”

As Nick listened to him, he started to wonder if the relationship was a one-sided case of another love done gone, but decided to keep that suspicion to himself.

“Look. I’m definitely not the right man to give anyone relationship advice, but if you and Jax are really as hung up on Carly as I think you are, maybe you owe it to yourselves to try to work things out.” Nick shrugged. “What have you got to lose?”

“As opposed to you keeping your distance from Alyssa right now because you’ve realized what you’ve got going on with her is turning into more than a fling and you think you don’t want it?” Taylor countered.

Fuck. The man had a point and Nick didn’t like it. Every man on A-shift had given him and Tanner shit about Alyssa before and after she left the firehouse yesterday. He and Tanner had told them there was nothing serious going on between the three of them, that what they had as a fling.

“I’ll answer that for you since I know damn well you’re not going to admit it. You’re scared. Hell, Jax and I are, too. We’re scared of losing Carly worse than we’ve lost her already and you’re scared to give your heart away again.”

Nick didn’t quite understand how Taylor and Jax could lose Carly worse than they had already, but he had to grudgingly admit the man was half right about his fears. He wasn’t scared of giving his heart away again. He was scared that the feelings he was experiencing would fizzle out like they had before. Forever wasn’t a guarantee. He had learned that a long time ago. That lesson had left him wondering what was the use in trying.

As he polished off his drink and motioned the bartender for another one, he found himself wondering now what was the use of living if he didn’t try.

* * * *

Alyssa finished the first human interest piece on the firefighters and paramedics of A-shift, turned it into Will Jackson for approval, and somehow managed not to let him see the party that blasted off in her head when he gave her the greenlight to complete the rest. She spent the next two weeks interviewing the shifts at Stations 2, 4, and 5, and writing their respective pieces. It helped having so much work to do, especially when she realized she was spending too much time with Tanner and Nick.

Things with the men had gotten…odd. The sex with them was still off the charts and a regular occurrence, at least as often as she let it. There were even times that the three of them hung out together without landing in the bedroom, or against the kitchen counter, or on the living room floor. It was the ambiance between them that had changed.

Because your feelings have changed.

Since she was pretty sure that was it in a nutshell and it terrified the living shit out of her, she worked hard for a few days to keep her distance from them. It was easy to do when they were on shift at the firehouse, but not so easy when they spent two full days next door. She purposely stayed out a late a couple of nights when she knew they were home and all but snuck her way into her own place when she ran out of things to do. When they asked her later where she had been, she claimed to be working late on the human interest pieces.

She told herself she hadn’t exactly lied to them and she wasn’t really avoiding them, either. Keeping her distance for a while would be a good thing for all of them. They had agreed from the start that what they had was a fling, a friends with benefits kind of thing, and the feelings she had been wrestling with lately had no place in an arrangement like that.

The day her first human interest piece ran in the paper, she considered going out to celebrate. Now she wished she had thought of it sooner. Kristy had already made other plans and Alyssa had been spending so much time with Tanner and Nick when she wasn’t poring over her work that she hadn’t made any other friends to hang with in Cherish.

She gave up and went straight home from work instead. She still had the bottles of white wine and vodka Tanner and Nick had brought on that first night. She would relax with those, whip up some dinner, and mull over a new idea for a story she planned to propose to Will Jackson.

Her house keys and today’s edition of the Cherish Times in hand, she walked up the steps to her front door and froze at the sight of the note tapped to the wood.

Come next door. We’re waiting for you.

She stared at the note for so long she wouldn’t have been surprised to look in the mirror and discover her hair had gone gray. She couldn’t very well ignore the note. Eventually, one of them would look outside, see her car in her driveway, know she was home, and wonder why she hadn’t granted their request.

You could go over there and tell them the truth.

Nope, that was not going to happen. Hell, how could she tell them the truth when she wasn’t even completely sure what the truth was? Their flingy, friends with benefits arrangement was getting screwed up, but was it only because of her, or did Tanner and Nick have something to do with it, too?