Fire at Dawn: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 2 (3 page)

“So that the fork melts when you put it in the cup.”

He sat. “Why would you put a fork in a cup of coffee?”

“You ask too many questions,” said Lexie, filling the small carafe at the water cooler. “I get to ask to the questions. I’m the dispatcher. I’m the one who grills you.”

Coin raked his fingers through his dark hair. “I’m getting a little worried.”

“You should be.” She added five scoops of coffee instead of her normal two for the half-sized carafe and pushed start.

Engine Three radioed, “Three in quarters.”

Lexie pushed the headset transmit button that was hooked at her hip. “Darling copies.”

“It weirds me out when you do that,” said Coin.

“What?”

“I can’t hear anyone talking and then you respond.”

She tapped the headset she kept on when she was in the ComCen. “I love the wireless.”

“If it means you make me coffee while still working, I love it, too.”

Lexie leaned again on her console and rubbed her hands together. “Okay. Tell me about the last girl you dated.”

“You met her.”

“No, I didn’t.” Lexie would remember. She popped a Tootsie Roll into her mouth. “Want one?”

He shook his head. “You did meet her. At the Christmas party.”

“You didn’t take anyone last year.” Instead, Lexie remembered him dancing with all the dispatchers, one by one, while the other guys danced with their girlfriends and wives. He hadn’t asked Lexie. She’d wondered if she just wasn’t his type—maybe he liked the skinny ones.

Now was her time to find out.

“Monica,” Coin said. “The vet assistant.”

“Oh! The one you brought like three years ago?” That couldn’t have been his last girlfriend.

He cast a look out the window behind her. “That’s her.”

Lexie spoke around the candy. “She was so
boring
.”

“Really, Lex? Thanks.”

She put a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. But she talked about her cat, like, the entire night.”

“She and I had that in common. Cat-lovin’.”

“See?” said Lexie triumphantly. “You’re adorable.”

Coin fixed her with a stare that suddenly made Lexie want to take back the word. He didn’t look adorable. For one moment, Coin smoldered.

Lexie choked on her Tootsie Roll.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lexie managed to pull in a breath deep enough to cough. The Tootsie Roll dislodged from her esophagus.

“Do you need the Heimlich?” Coin was already next to her, his face serious.

She tried to laugh and ended up coughing harder. “No,” she managed.

“Put your hands to your neck in the universal choking symbol if you do.”

Lexie nodded. Sweat broke at her hairline. Was it the Tootsie Roll or him being so close that was making her so nervous? Her skin felt superheated, and she flipped on her desk fan.

Coin laid his hand on her back and rubbed firmly in a circle. “You all right?”

Had he ever touched her before, besides maybe a brief hug when they got together with the guys for poker? Lexie said, “Fine.” She turned her chair so he wasn’t touching her.

Time to take back the conversation. “What dating site are you on?” she squeaked.

“Losers-R-Us dot com.”

“You’re not on
any
dating sites?” That couldn’t be true, could it? A guy like him would be swamped online. He’d have a hundred girls to choose from in twenty-four hours, even in a town as small as Darling Bay.

“Are you on one?”

She cleared her throat again. “Of course.”

Coin stared at her. “You go on dates with total strangers.”

“It’s fun.” That was her party line. Lexie tried very hard to believe it. She even succeeded some of the time.

“It’s fun to go on blind dates and make small talk with people you have nothing in common with?”

Rescue Two gave an almost indecipherable squawk on the radio, but Lexie know Danny’s mumbles well. “Copy,” she said. “Rescue Two available on the air.” Dating
could
be fun. Sometimes. In the last year, though, she’d only had a couple of okay dates with guys who turned out to be too boring to see twice. “People are fascinating.”

“Tell me your most fascinating date.”

She took a moment to think. “Last year, there was the guy who was a commercial fisherman.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

Coin’s tone was pushy now. “Why was he fascinating?”

She’d been fascinated by his thick wrists. She’d stared at them all night, looking at the way the veins on the backs of his hands bulged, wondering if he was … well-endowed everywhere. She hadn’t found out, though. He’d called her, yeah. But she hadn’t gone out with him after that one night.

But it hadn’t only been his wrists that had fascinated her. “Because his job was so dangerous.”

“Pulling salmon out of the ocean?”

She shot him the look that quieted most battalion chiefs. “It has a higher fatality rate than firefighting. Fishing as a profession has
the
highest fatality rate in America. By far.” It was why she’d accepted his offer of a date.

“Oh.” Coin looked nonplussed for a moment, then he recovered. “So you can meet amazing people online. Why are we talking about this again?”

Lexie twisted so she could reach her personal computer. “We’re putting you online right now.”

“That, my friend, would be a cold day in a very deep place I hope never to visit.” He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.

Lexie lifted her phone. “Don’t move.”

“What?”

She snapped his picture. “And
that
is going to be your profile picture.”

“What do I get out of this?”

Raising an eyebrow, Lexie said, “This is a conversation you usually have with a parent. But if you need me to explain it to you …”

“Quit it,” said Coin. “I mean it. I’m happy the way I am.”

“Alone.”

“I have Serena.”

“Alone half the time.”

“I call it single. Not alone.”

“Coin, I’m single. Being single means going out with people. With friends. On dates. Doing things that are fun and frivolous and sometimes ridiculous and having a good time doing them.”

He stood and got himself a cup of the coffee that had stopped sputtering into the carafe behind him.

“You don’t do that,” continued Lexie. “The nights you don’t have Serena, what do you do?”

“Work overtime so I can keep paying Janice.”

“And
that’s
what I’m saying. Come on,” she said, bringing up HoldMe.com. “Let me do this for you.”

“So tell me,” said Coin, leaning against the counter and taking a big sip of the coffee Lexie knew was probably still too hot. “What are you getting out of this?”

“Nothing but the pure, unadulterated joy of helping another human being.”

“Screw that,” he scoffed. “Not good enough.”

“What would make it worth it for you? I’ll write the ad for you, if you want.”

“Nah,” he said, taking another sip. “You’ll have to do that anyway, since I know I’m not going to. Something else. Something better.”

Lexie didn’t know what he meant. “What else can I do to talk you into it?”

“A bet.”

Lexie squinted at him. “I don’t gamble.”

“What about our poker games?”

She grinned. “That’s not gambling. That’s taking candy from babies. And besides, I don’t trust you. What do you mean by bet?”

“A bet means we’re both into this. That we’re both invested. I have no interest in just being your entertainment, something for you to laugh at.”

What if his feelings were hurt because she was trying to get him online? “You know I’m not teasing you. I’m pushing you because I care about you.”

“Then prove it.”

“How?”

“Put something on the line. Something that matters to you.”

Something that mattered to Lexie? What
didn’t
matter to her? Everything did. Coworkers’ problems, and citizens’ complaints. 911 calls mattered almost as much as the little old lady who needed help opening her garage door. Friendship mattered to Lexie. Family did, too, even though she tried to pretend sometimes she didn’t have a mother.

Love mattered to Lexie. Since she and her last boyfriend—a tax accountant who had loved spending time with his online game more than he had with her—had broken up last year, though, she had tried not to think about that too hard.

“What?” Coin said, his voice demanding. “You thought of something.”

“No …”

“What?”

“It’s too hard to …”

“Just tell me.”

Lexie felt her skin heating again. “Love.”

“Love?” Coin’s eyebrows flew upward. “From a website?”

“You asked what mattered,” said Lexie, embarrassed. But she meant it. It was important. “Love matters.”

“Love it is, then.” Nodding emphatically, Coin said, “Love is our bet.”

“How do you make a bet on love?”

He held up a finger. “One, we tell the truth. Promise?”

Lexie nodded once. Truth was easy. She often got in trouble for telling too much of it, and she didn’t think she’d lied to Coin even once.

“And two, we
try
to fall in love.”

Lexie rolled her chair a few inches closer to him. “How do we do that?” she asked.

“If I have to tell you how to fall in love, sugar …” he drawled.

She caught his scent—not the normal Axe body wash that so many of the guys on the line preferred. He smelled clean, like he’d just taken a shower. Like soap and shampoo, and something darker, a little smoky. Old fire scents caught in his clothing, maybe? Lexie felt something jump in her stomach. “A challenge. Okay, then. You know I
do
like a challenge.”

“Yep,” he said. “The last person to fall in love has to …”

“Buy they other person dinner,” said Lexie triumphantly.

“Are you serious? We’re talking about changing our lives permanently, drawing other people into this game, and you think buying dinner will do it? No way. Go bigger.”

“True,” she said. “Okay. Bigger. Okay, the second person to fall in love has to buy the first one … an
expensive
dinner for two, for the winner and his or her new squeeze. At La Spezia.”

Coin groaned. “Bigger. What about a trip?”

“Ooh!” This was something she could get behind. “Where? Reno? Tahoe?”

“Hawaii.”

Lexie was impressed but didn’t want to show it. “Why stop there? Why not Tahiti? Or …” She brought up the website she’d been looking at earlier. “Check this out. Bora Bora.”

The picture she showed him was of idyllic thatched roof huts, staggered along joined piers. Each hut sat above crystal blue water. It looked like Lexie thought heaven should, if she got to talk to God about it.

“That.” Coin pointed at the screen. “If you fall in love first, I’ll buy you and your guy two round-trip tickets to Bora Bora.”

“But that’s so expensive!”

“What?” he said. “This is your idea. Besides, you’re single, no kids, and you work overtime, just like me. You have the money.”

What would have sounded rude anywhere else just came out as blunt. It was true. Most of them in the department worked too much, and money just kind of stacked up in the bank. Lexie wasn’t great at spending it on herself, so her savings got bigger every year. Definitely a perk of the job.

Lexie narrowed her eyes. “But do
you
want to go to Bora Bora? Really? Because I can see you throwing the whole bet just to prove your point. You’ll let me fall in love, and then send me and my ridiculously cute boyfriend away to the islands.”

“You think I’m that generous?”

“Yes.” One year, Lexie had run the Adopt-a-Family for Christmas, an annual tradition at the fire house. For one needy family the entire department had raised almost seven thousand dollars’ worth of gifts. Then Coin’s money had come in. He’d tried to make it anonymous, but the computer transaction had let his name slip through. He’d more than doubled the amount raised, and the family had been able to buy a used van with his funds. Lexie was the only one who knew. She hadn’t run the program in subsequent years, but every year, she knew that something similar happened, moneywise. She had her suspicions.

“And what am I supposed to do if
I
win? Take Serena with me on the days I’m supposed to have her? Janice never lets me get out of a single one of my days.”

“Have you ever, even once,
wanted
to get out of a day with your daughter?”

Coin had the grace to look chagrined. “No. But I know if I did, Janice would throw a fit and say she had an out-of-town business trip or something.