Sex and the Single Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novel (14 page)

Double D shot Sabina a look of utter outrage. Why was he angry at her when she’d been trying to save him the trouble of kicking her to the curb?

Double D stiffened his shoulders, sucked in his belly, faced Chief Roman, and launched into his speech.

“Chief Roman, it’s about Two.”

She knew it.
She squeezed her eyes halfway shut, unable to bear it in full screen. Here it came. The end of the best years of her life. The end of everything she wanted.

“That is”—Double D indicated Sabina—“Firefighter Jones is a top-notch fireman in every respect.”

What? What? Sabina didn’t understand. What was he saying?

“Even though she’s a woman and used to be a TV star, she’s no different from the rest of us. She does her job, she works hard, she’s saved my ass and everyone else’s here. She ain’t done nothing to deserve suspension or anything else. If you and the rest of the brass try to get rid of her, you’re going to have an empty firehouse because if she goes, we all go. We stand by our own, and Sabina Jones is one of our own.”

Once the crew had been called to the scene of an apartment fire that turned out to involve a meth lab. Something had exploded, and Sabina had felt the shock waves travel through the air, through her body, before the sound struck her eardrums. That’s exactly how this felt.

She stared, uncomprehending, at the firemen, until the words came crashing into logical sense around her.

Double D was standing up for her. They all were.

Her vision went blurry as she fought a doomed battle against tears. If she cried in front of them, she’d never hear the end of it. Blinking furiously, she gripped the closest support, the back of an armchair.

Say something, Sabina. Say something
.

But she couldn’t. Her throat muscles worked, but no words came. Emotion swamped her. This had never happened to her before. No one had ever taken her side, had ever stood behind her. With her.

Say something
.

Like a lifeline, Chief Roman’s deep voice resonated through the room, capturing the crew’s attention. “Duly noted.”

“Duly noted? That’s all?” Vader shouldered his way to the front of the group. Sabina took advantage of the distraction to swipe her forearm across her face and clear the tears away.

“I’ve heard your perspective, and I will take it under advisement. There are a lot of factors here.”

“What factors? You can’t blame any of this on Sabina. She tried to keep it secret so it wouldn’t affect us. She didn’t even tell me!”

Sabina blinked away more tears. Vader got it. He really got it. She didn’t have to explain anything to him.

“I’m not saying otherwise.”

“What are you saying?” Vader took a step forward until he stood nose to chin with Roman. “That you’d deep-six one of your own firefighters just to make the brass happy? We won’t let you do that.”

“You don’t have a say in it,” snapped Roman.

Oh God. This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. She didn’t want the station torn apart over her.

“This isn’t necessary.” She croaked the words, then cleared her throat to repeat them more loudly. Everyone looked in her direction. She summoned every bit of acting skill she’d formerly possessed. “As I was about to say before, this station means a lot to me. I don’t want to be the cause of anything that distracts from doing our job. We’re supposed to put out fires, remember? Not dodge camera crews and reporters. I’ll . . .” God, it was hard to say. She was about to hand over her life, her precious, hard-won job, like a lamb to the slaughter. But it had to be done. “I’ll step down. I’ll resign.”

“Your resignation is not accepted,” snapped Roman.

She gaped at him. So did everyone else. You could have heard a pin drop in the kitchen. The only sound was the low murmur of the police scanner in the training room.

“As I told Fire Chief Renteria a few minutes ago on the phone, I see no grounds for action against Firefighter Jones. Anything less than full support for Firefighter Jones would reflect badly on the department and on us as firefighters. Jones, you represent ten years of experience and training. You’re needed here. In fact, if you so much as request time off, I’ll consider it a dereliction of duty. You’re a firefighter, and you’ll damn well stay here and put out fires with the rest of your crew. Got it?”

By the end of his speech, his voice had risen to a thunderous level. He pinned them all with a glare of fire, like a warrior inciting his troops to battle.

Stunned silence vibrated through every corner of the fire station.

“The media can do whatever they want. We do what we always do.
Our job
. Are we all clear?”

A rumble of “yes, sirs” followed. All eyes were riveted to Roman, who had transformed from grim hard-ass to mighty leader right before their eyes. Sabina called on every ounce of willpower she possessed to stay upright and not make a fool of herself.

Roman relaxed his stance. “Now is that meatball stew I smell?”

Just like that, the atmosphere loosened. Roman strolled away from the office door and joined the firemen, who clapped him on the back and shook his hand. Stan trotted behind him, sniffing the air eagerly. Sabina forced her shaking legs to carry her forward.

Never had she loved anyone as much as she loved the San Gabriel firemen at that moment. They’d had her back, every single one of them. Even the new guy from New York.

Chapter Sixteen

R
oman had made one of his problems a lot worse—Renteria had hung up on him after a few choice curses—but he’d solved another. The firemen of Station 1 had swung one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction, from outright mutiny to something like adulation. He had to admit, it felt good. No one wanted to be a hard-ass all the time.

For the first time since his first night at Station 1, he joined the crew for dinner. Stud’s meatball stew could have used some oregano and a dash of burgundy, but otherwise, he couldn’t complain. He sat at the head of the table and listened to the guys talk about the Christmas ski trip to Big Bear.

“Captain, you like to ski?”

“Never tried it.”

Stud’s fork clattered to the ground. “You gotta come with, Romeo. You can start at the bunny slope, we swear we won’t laugh. They give us a discount cuz we’re firemen. It’s a blast and a half—”

Roman let him rattle on until he paused for a breath. “Back up, Stud. Romeo?”

Fred turned pink. “Well, you know, it’s close to Roman and kinda fits with the bachelor thing, and—”

“No.”

“Really? Because you don’t have a nickname yet and—”

“No.”

Fred gave in. “You’re right, you’re right.”

Roman let his grim expression relax. A line had to be drawn, but that didn’t mean he had to be a jerk. “You can keep working on the nickname, but back in New York they called me Rock.”

At the other end of the table, Sabina choked on a meatball. The fact that only she knew his former nickname made it seem like a secret bedroom name, or something he called his penis.

Fred tilted his head. “I don’t know. Rock’s sort of . . . one-dimensional.”

Psycho chimed in with a hoot. “Like most of our nicknames are layered and complex?”

“Rock,” said Vader enviously. “I like it. Rock-hard abs, rock-hard bod, rock-hard . . . whatever.”

Sabina seemed to be really struggling with her meatball.

“But he can’t have the same handle as he had back East,” said Fred plaintively.

“Why does it matter?” Roman kept an eye on Sabina. Should he vault down the table and administer the Heimlich maneuver?

“I can’t explain it. It just does. We’ll think of something. We need to get Hoagie back in here, he was always good with nicknames.”

They launched into a dissection of the etymology of the various nicknames, but he didn’t pay much mind. His attention was on Sabina, who finally got a grip on herself and managed to swallow her meatball. He smiled in relief, then nearly got knocked off his chair by what came next. A full-hearted, genuine, grateful smile encompassed her entire face, curved her lips into a perfect half moon, found a dimple in one cheek, made her eyes glow like crystals in a sunbeam, and generally transformed her elegant face into something that deserved an angelic choir singing along.

Good God Almighty.

His grip on his spoon loosened so it plopped into his stew. The tips of his ears tingled, then his scalp, the way it did when he was in the presence of something truly spectacular. It had happened only a few times, mostly in Italy when he’d heard a snatch of opera whistled by a man on a bicycle, or passed a glorious Florentine church.

Helpless, he gazed back like a fly trapped in a rapturous web. This was how Odysseus must have felt when his ship passed the island with the sirens. Weak and drugged, as though nothing mattered, nothing existed, except the sweet bliss beckoning him to his doom.

What had he done? By standing up for Sabina, what had he unleashed? If she kept smiling at him like this, instead of offering him that familiar wary, defiant expression, he was a dead man. If he had any chance of conducting himself like a proper training officer, he’d have to lash himself to the mast the way Odysseus had.

Maybe the aerial would do.

He wrenched his gaze away without returning her smile. Balling up his napkin, he piled it in his bowl and rose to his feet.

“I’ll get that,” said Ace, the rookie, scrambling to help him.

Roman stopped him with a gesture. “I’m not king here, I can clear my own plate.”

“That’s it!” Fred bounced in his chair. “Your nickname. King. Or King Roman.”

“No.”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

“I’m going to pass on the ski trip,” Roman said over his shoulder as he carried his plate to the kitchen. “No new tricks for this old dog.”

“Old Dog . . . that’s not bad . . .” Fred mused.

“No.”

“Right.”

Even though it caused him a near-physical pain, he managed to avoid the fading meteor of Sabina’s smile until he reached his office. No ski trips for him. No outings of any kind where Sabina might be present. No smiles, no friendliness, no more lectures in his office. No, no, no. Face it, he couldn’t handle it.

Then he remembered. Luke had a game tomorrow. Damn his luck.

For the first time, he gave serious consideration to the rumors of a “curse.”

Fine. She could
take a hint. As Sabina drove Carly to the game, she ticked off the facts. Roman didn’t want her gratitude. He didn’t want her friendship. She knew the feeling all too well. Bianca, the makeup artist’s daughter, for instance. All she’d wanted was an invitation to the Kids’ Choice Awards. Sabina had wanted to invite her, since she was fun and liked to snowboard and together they had giggle fests like normal girls. But instead her mother had invited the leader of a hot new boy band—long gone now—and Bianca had dumped her.

Of course, Roman could probably pick up cute, pink-haired Bianca with one finger. The point being, Sabina knew better than to trust just anyone with her friendship. And even though he’d stood up for her, he clearly wanted nothing to do with her.

She could live with that. In fact, it made life a lot easier. After she wished Carly a good game and climbed into the bleachers, she could just ignore the smoldering hulk of masculine hotness seated on the top bleacher to the left. She didn’t have to wave or pretend she was glad to see him. She could ignore the fact that he didn’t look her way, that his gorgeous head didn’t move one micro-inch in her direction, that his neck was starting to tan. She could ignore the thin sliver of pale skin under the edge of his T-shirt and the way it contrasted with his strong, brown neck. His forearms looked darker too, under their light covering of black hair.

A flash of memory—the black hair covering his burly chest, swirling below his belt—weakened her knees and made her sink onto the bleachers a moment before she was ready.

“Sorry, lost my balance,” she muttered to the woman in whose lap she’d nearly landed.

Yes, she could ignore all those things. It was such a relief.

Diane, farther down the bleachers, quickly switched places with the woman. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up today,” she whispered.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“All those crazy news stories. Everyone keeps asking me about you. I have to tell them I don’t know a thing.” She gave a sniff of pique.

“I’m sorry, Diane. I didn’t tell anyone. I was trying to start a new life.”

“Whatever,” Diane grumbled, then obviously decided not to hold a grudge. “Did you hear about the Dane twins? They’re going to do a clinic for the league in a couple of weeks.”

“Really? Carly will be so excited.”

The Dane twins felt like family—they were Katie Dane’s brothers, and now that Ryan Blake had married Katie, that made them virtually brothers-in-law to the entire San Gabriel firehouse.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like they’re celebrities like
some people
.”

Sabina decided to ignore that.

“On the bright side, I’m getting lots of new clients because the word is out that we’re friends.”

“Glad I could help.”

“But you could have told me, you know,” Diane hissed as the players ran out onto the field.

Sabina directed her attention to the game, but her mind kept wandering. Her job was safe, thanks to Roman and the crew—unless things got even crazier. But what else could Max and Annabelle do? They’d done the media blitz. Pretty soon some other hot story would take over and no one would care about Taffy McGee. All she had to do was ride out the storm. With the guys behind her, she could do it.

What an incredible thought—she wasn’t alone. It was almost too much to take in.

The game went
fast. The team was finally clicking. Carly started and pitched four great innings, then Luke was brought in to shut things down. Carly stood in the “dugout” cheering with everyone else. Sabina even spotted Carly and Luke with their heads together between innings, comparing batters, perhaps.

She couldn’t help it; she glanced over her shoulder to see if Roman noticed too. But his sunglasses made him as inscrutable as a Secret Service agent.

After the game, Carly dashed to Sabina’s side. “Can we go to Chili’s? Please, please, please?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sabina saw Luke mounting a similar assault on Roman. “I don’t know, Carly. I’ll just be a distraction.”

“Huh?” Her Little Sister gazed at her blankly. “Oh, that. Don’t worry, everyone’s over it. Most people never saw that show anyway.”

“Right.” Properly humbled, Sabina agreed to a short stop at Chili’s.

At the restaurant, Carly made a beeline for Luke. Bright-eyed and revved up from the win, he offered her some chips and guacamole and they immediately began dissecting the game. When had they become new best friends? Did she need to monitor this development? But she couldn’t, not when a small army of parents, led by Diane, was converging on her.

She looked around for Roman, who sat at a table in the corner, long legs stretched out, listening to the chatter of one of the single mothers. Catching his eye, she gestured to Luke and Sabina.

After quickly assessing the situation, he gave her a short nod—
I’m on it
. She relaxed. If Roman was on top of it, she didn’t need to worry. The crowd of parents surrounded her and began tossing curious questions at her, as if they were photographers at a red carpet premiere.

Like a good little former actress, she answered them all.

“My acting days are over . . . I didn’t want to be a distraction to the San Gabriel Fire Department . . . Reunion show? Really, my mother said that on FOX? No, there’s absolutely no truth to that rumor.” Through a fixed smile, she gritted her teeth. Oh, her mother was clever. She was probably hoping to stoke the public’s anticipation of a reunion show so high, Sabina would be hounded into participating.

Someone asked her about the firehouse. Before she could answer, someone else asked whether she was dating a fellow fireman. It was turning into a free-for-all, everyone tossing out questions without waiting his turn. Press junkets were a lot more organized. Maybe she should rent a hotel suite and hire a PR assistant.

She ignored the dating question and answered the first one. “Everyone’s being very supportive, but it’s definitely hard to do our jobs when people keep aiming cameras at us.” She smiled pointedly at the second baseman’s father, who’d been taking pictures of her with his iPhone the entire game.

He did not look apologetic. “Must be nice to be famous.”

“Well, I wouldn’t—”

“You must have made a fortune playing that girl.”

“Um . . .”

They closed in on her like buzzards over a fresh kill. “Why did you quit the show? Why don’t you get along with your mother? What was it like dating Greg Harrington? Have you heard from him?”

At press junkets, one glance at the coordinator would bring an uncomfortable interview to a close. But here she was on her own. “I’m trying to move on so I’d rather not talk about the show . . .”

“Is Annabelle staying here in town? Will you spend Christmas with her?”

“Uh . . .”

“Okay, that’s it.” A giant hand landed on her upper arm and plucked her away from the crowd. “Leave her alone,” growled Roman.

Everyone fell back, shocked. The man with the iPhone looked outraged. “We’re just talking to her.”

“Not anymore.”

Roman propelled her toward a small table sheltered behind a plastic cactus. He pressed his hand on her shoulder until she sat. From far, far above, his black eyes studied her. “You okay?”

“Yes. You didn’t have to do that. I was handling it.” He’d already rescued her from losing her job. This felt like overkill.

“Yeah well, I didn’t like it. It was damn rude.”

“You’re not my appointed guardian.”

“I am for now.” His tone left no room for more argument. Strangely, she didn’t mind. It felt too good to let him take charge like this. Too good to have someone on her side.

She gave up and sank back in the chair. “I’d forgotten how funny people can get around someone they’ve seen on TV. They ask such personal questions.”

“They were out of line.” He shot a scathing glance at the small knot of chattering parents. “You need anything from the bar? I’m getting some nachos.”

“Nachos sound good,” she said gratefully. “Extra sour cream. And Roman?”

Already halfway past the cactus, he paused and looked at her over his impossibly broad shoulder.

“Thanks. For this and the other.” Tentatively she started to smile, but he crammed his sunglasses onto his face.

“You can thank me by not doing that anymore,” he growled.

She gaped after him. That? What was
that
? A harmless smile? The man was deranged.

Her cell phone rang. Vader’s name popped up on her screen. “Yo,” she answered.

“Yo yourself. Are you busy later? It’s Saturday night.”

“No.” Not unless you counted eating Mexican comfort food and hiding from the public.

“I suppose you’re too big a celeb to hang out with me now.”

“We can hang, as long as I don’t have to buy my own drinks. We celebrities never do, you know.”

His laughter rumbled across the line. “Let’s do it. I want to see what it’s like going out with a famous chick.”

“Jesus, Vader, that might be the shallowest thing you’ve ever said. And that’s saying something. What about Cherie, how’s it going with her?”

“Hit a roadblock. Her brother came to visit and she uninvited me for dinner. Said she didn’t trust me not to say something stupid.”