Jill Shalvis - Flashpoint

She glanced at her watch and then panicked. Tossing off the dream and the photos, she raced through her morning routine, barely getting a shower before rushing out the door, desperate not to be late on her first day at work.

The hammock by the firehouse was empty, and she ignored the little twinge of disappointment at not getting to gawk at Zach again. Not that she was going to gawk. Nope, she was going to be one hundred percent professional. And with that, she stepped inside.

“Well, look at you. You really came back.”

Danger, danger…sexy firefighter alert. Slowly she turned and looked at him, thinking, Please don’t be as hot as I remember, please don’t be as hot as I remember-

Shit. He was as hot as she remembered. He didn’t look tired this morning. Instead, the corners of his mouth were turned up, and his eyes-cheerful and wide-awake-slid over her, making her very aware of the fact that while she might have a little crush going, it was most definitely, absolutely, a two-way thing.

Which didn’t help at all.

“Guys,” he called out over his shoulder. “She’s here.”

“Number Seven showed?” This from a tall, dark and extremely drool-worthy firefighter in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Meet Aidan,” Zach said to Brooke. “He dated New Hire Number Two and she never came back, so he has orders to stay clear.”

“Hey, I didn’t plan on the shellfish giving her food poisoning,” Aidan said in his own defense. “But just in case…” He flashed a smile at Brooke, a killer smile that rivaled Zach’s. “We’d better not go out for shellfish.”

Several more men crowded into the hallway to take a look. Yeah, they really did make them good-looking here. Must be the fresh sea air. “Hi,” she said, waving. “Brooke O’Brien.”

The bell rang, and everyone groaned, their greeting getting lost as they headed for their gear.

“Aidan and I roll together,” Zach said, stepping into his boots. “With Cristina and Blake.” He gestured to two additional firefighters, the first a tough-looking beautiful blond woman who smiled, the other, male, tall and lanky, not smiling.

Zach shook his head. “Or, as we call Blake, Eeyore.”

Okay. Brooke wasn’t smiling, either, so she put one on now, but it was too late; they’d turned away.

“You’re with Dustin,” Zach called back.

Dustin, who looked like Harry Potter The Grown-Up Years, complete with glasses, raised his hand. “We’re the two EMTs on this shift. Nice to meet you. Hope you orientate fast.”

She hoped so, too.

Dustin gestured to the door, nodding to the two firefighters not moving. “This is Sam and Eddie. Their rig wasn’t called, so they get to stay here and watch Oprah and eat bonbons.”

They took the ribbing with a collective flip of their middle fingers, then vanished back down the hall.

“Actually, they’re scheduled to go to the middle school on Ninth this morning and give a fire safety and prevention speech to the kids,” Dustin told her with a grin. “They’ll eat their bonbons later. Let’s hit it, New Hire Seven. It’s a Code Calico.”

“Code Calico?”

But he was already moving to the door that led directly to the garage and the rigs.

Cristina brushed past Brooke and set her mug in the sink. “Good luck.”

“Am I going to need it?”

“With Dustin, our resident McDweeb? Oh, yeah, you’re going to need it.”

“What’s a Code Calico?”

Cristina merely laughed, which did nothing to ease Brooke’s nerves.

Blake poked his head back in the door. He’d pulled on his outer fire gear, which looked slightly too big on his very lean form. “Hey, New Hire. Hit it means hit it.”

So she did what was expected of her-she hit it. Dustin drove, while she took the shotgun position. “So really, what’s a Code Calico?”

Dustin navigated the streets with a familiar sort of ease that told her he knew what he was doing, not even glancing at the GPS system. “Want to take it?”

“Take it?”

“Be point on the call.” He glanced at her. “The one in charge.”

She sensed it was a test. She aced tests, always had. That was the analness in her, she supposed. “Sure.”

He pushed up his glasses and nodded, but she’d have sworn his lips twitched.

Huh. Definitely missing something.

When they pulled onto a wide, affluent, oak-lined street, she hopped out and opened the back doors of the rig.

“Gurney’s not necessary on this one,” Dustin told her.

Behind the ambulance came the fire truck. Zach and the others appeared, smiling.

Why were they all smiling? Before she could dwell on that, from between the two trucks came an old woman, yelling and waving her cane. “Hurry! Hurry before Cecile falls!”

The panic in her voice was real, and Brooke’s heart raced just as Dustin nudged her forward, whispering in her ear, “All yours.”

This was the job, and suddenly in her element, her nerves took a backseat. Here, she could help; here, she could run the show. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’re here now.”

“Well, then, get to it! Get my Cecile!”

“Where is she? In the house?”

“No!” She looked very shaky and not a little off her rocker, so Brooke tried to steer her to the curb to sit down, but she wasn’t having it.

“I’m not sitting anywhere! Not until you get Cecile!”

“Okay, just tell me where she is and I’ll-”

“Oh, good Lord!” The woman blinked through her thick-rimmed glasses, taking a quick look at the others, who stood back, watching. “She’s another new hire, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Brooke said. “But-”

“What number are you?”

Brooke sighed. “Seven.”

“Well, get a move on, New Hire Number Seven! Save my Cecile!”

“I’m trying, ma’am. What’s your name?”

“Phyllis, but Cecile-”

“Right. Needs my help. Where is she?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” The woman jerked her cane upward, to a huge tree in front of them. Waaaay up in that tree, on a branch stretched out over their heads, perched a cat.

A big, fat cat, plaintively wailing away.

Brooke turned and eyeballed Dustin, who seemed to be fascinated by his own feet, and that’s when she got it. She was going through some ridiculously juvenile rite of passage. “I’m beginning to see how they got to number seven.” Good thing she was used to being the newbie, because she hadn’t been kidding Zach yesterday. Little scared her, and certainly not a damn cat in a damn tree.

“Hurry up!” Phyllis demanded. “Before she falls!”

“I’ll get her.” Zach had separated from the others and walked toward the tree.

Oh, no.

Hell, no.

They’d wanted to see her do this, they were absolutely going to see her do this.

“Brooke-”

“No.” She kept her eyes on Phyllis. “Cecile is a cat,” she clarified, because there was no sense in making a total and complete fool of herself if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“Yes,” Phyllis verified.

Okay, it was going to be absolutely necessary. Damn, she hated that.

By now, Barbie Firefighter Cristina was out-and-out grinning. Cutie Firefighter Aidan was smiling. Harry Potter look-alike Dustin was, too. Not Eeyore, though. Nope, Blake was far more serious than the others, she could already tell, though she’d have sworn there was some amusement shining in his gaze.

Zach was either wiser, or maybe he simply had more control, but his lips weren’t curved as he watched her. Quiet. Aware. Speculative.

Sexy as hell, damn him. Fine. Seemed she had a lot to prove to everyone. Well, she was good at that, too, and she stepped toward the tree.

“Brooke-”

She put a finger in his face, signaling Don’t You Dare, and something flashed in his eyes.

Respect? Yeah, but something else, too, something much more base, which would have most definitely set off one of their trademark chain reactions of sparks along her central nervous system, if she hadn’t been about to climb a damn tree. “I can do this,” she said.

His eyes approved, and even though she didn’t want it to, that approval washed through her.

So did that sizzling heat they had going on.

Oh, he was good. With that charisma oozing from his every pore, he could no doubt charm the panties off just about any woman.

But though it had been a while since anyone had charmed Brooke’s panties off, she wasn’t just any woman.

Reminding herself of that, she stepped toward the tree.

Zach watched how Brooke handled herself and something inside him reacted. He didn’t know her, not yet, not really, other than that they had some serious almost chemical-like attraction going, but she was crew, and as such, she was family.

Except he felt decidedly un-family-like toward her. Nope, nothing in him looking at her felt brotherly.

Not one little bit.

The gang was being hard on her, there was no doubt of that, but he’d seen many new hires hazed over the years-six in the past few weeks-and it had never bothered him.

Until now. This bothered him. She bothered him, in a surprising way. A man-to-woman way, though that wasn’t the surprise. It was that he felt it here, at work.

People came in and out of his life on a daily basis. It was the nature of the beast, that beast being fire. Every day he dealt with the destruction it caused, and what it did to people’s existence. Hell, he’d even experienced it in the most personal way one could, when he’d lost his own parents to a tragic fire. He coped by knowing he made a difference, that he helped keep that beast back when he could.

What also helped were the constants in his life, and since the loss of his mom and dad at age ten, those constants were his crew. Aidan, his partner and brother of his heart. Eddie and Sam, fellow surfers. Dustin, resident clown, a guy who gave one hundred percent of himself, always, which usually landed him in Heartbreak City. Blake, whom he’d gone to high school with and who’d lost his firefighting partner Lynn in a tragic fire last year, a guy who’d give a perfect stranger the heavy yellow jacket off his back. Even Cristina, a woman in a man’s world, who was willing to kick anyone’s ass to show she belonged in it. All of them held a piece of Zach’s heart.