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  She was so caught up in the antsy twist in her gut that she noticed Everett’s pointed eye contact with Donovan a full ten seconds too late.

  The other firefighter sauntered over to the kitchen island, all swagger. “Speaking of downtime, I was just about to head to the back to grab a sweatshirt. Why don’t I get Nelson here settled into a bunk for a breather while I’m at it?”

  “That’s okay—” Savannah started, but Everett cut her off with a tip of his head.

  “You know what, Donovan? That is an excellent idea.”

  Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. “You’re sending me to my room to take a nap?”

  “We’re offering you a rare opportunity,” Donovan corrected, breaking into a ridiculously charming smile. “You’re going to need a bunk at some point anyway. There’s really no time like the present.”

  She chanced a last-ditch look at Jones, who didn’t even bother to hide the fact that he’d muted the TV to listen in. Although he said nothing, her fellow rookie’s expression suggested there were far worse things she could be asked to do than downshift for an hour.

  Savannah thought back to this morning’s kitchen assignment, and okay, point taken. The idea of sitting on her hands when she could be doing something of actual value might not be thrilling, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, either. Plus, it wasn’t as if she’d be expected to stay in the bunks if something major went down.

  Please, God, let something major go down.

  “I guess you’re right, Donovan,” she said in slow concession, although man, the words pinched on the way out. “I am going to need a place to sleep sooner or later. I might as well get comfortable now.”

  “That’s the spirit, rookie.” He clapped her on the shoulder, waiting for her to push off from the counter and put her plate in the sink. She frowned at Everett, who deflected with his garden-variety unreadable stare, and Donovan led the way out of the common room. Savannah followed reluctantly, sliding a hand over the ache in her lower back as they headed down the hallway toward the engine bay.

  “So the bunks are on the other side of the locker room, right? Off the back of the house?” They were the only part of the place she hadn’t seen yet, but it made sense that they’d be more removed from the common area yet still accessible to the engine bay for quick exits.

  Alex nodded, breaking into an affable grin. “See? And you thought you wouldn’t learn anything by taking a breather.”

  “Funny,” she said, although she couldn’t keep her tiny smile at bay.

  “I know, right? It’s a gift.” He lifted his blond brows in an exaggerated waggle, and God, she missed her brothers in Texas. “Anyway, yes. We try to keep the bunks separate so they stay as quiet as possible, but I’m not gonna lie. It’s hit or miss during the day. You might as well kiss your circadian rhythms good-bye now.”

  Even though Brad had given her an identical warning weeks ago, Savannah still nodded. “Good to know.”

  “Both Crews and Andersen on squad snore like goddamn lumberjacks, and the beds back here have probably been around since before the turn of the millennium. But otherwise, spending the night in-house really isn’t too bad.”

  The image of her brother’s couch popped into her head. “Are you kidding? At least here I have a mattress.”

  Donovan pulled up halfway over the tiles of the locker room floor, a bark of non-malicious laughter spilling past his smile. “That’s a story.”

  “Oh. Uh.” Heat tore across her face. Damn it, damn it, damn it, would she ever learn to think first, then speak? Spilling the embarrassing-as-hell details of her breakup with Rat-face Roger was so not on her wish list, especially not to a fellow firefighter who she wanted to take her seriously. “Nah. Not really.”

  Alex rolled his blue eyes sky-high, giving up a brotherly tsk that felt oddly comforting. “We can work on your absolute lack of a poker face later, because truly, you’re going to need one in order to survive. Right now . . .” He paused, flipping his palm up and wiggling his fingers to signal give it up. “Come on. Come on! You dangle a nugget like that in front of me and think I’m going to let you off the hook? Spill it, rookie.”

  “Okay, okay, fine.” Savannah laughed, rolling her eyes right back at him. “Let’s just say I’m recently and unexpectedly single, and my brother’s couch is my only available sleeping option until I can find a new apartment.”

  “Ouch. Sorry about the breakup,” Donovan said, and funny, he actually looked contrite.

  “Ah, I’m not.” She capped the words with a shrug. Just because she hadn’t wanted to cop to her breakup with Roger didn’t make her lack of regrets any less true. “He was pretty much a jackass, and to be honest, I’d rather focus on the job right now anyway.”

  Donovan examined her with a no-bullshit stare before kicking his boots back into motion toward the door on the far wall by the shower room. “You’re pretty ambitious.”

  “You mean for a woman?” She froze, but he didn’t even skip a beat.

  “I mean for a candidate. No wonder Westin put you with Everett. I mean, aside from the squad thing.”

  Surprise erased Savannah’s chagrin in one quick stroke. “What squad thing?”

  “He didn’t tell you?” Donovan dropped his voice, but whether it was to keep his words on the down low or out of habit at entering the bunk room, she couldn’t tell. “Everett’s moving to squad in six weeks.”

  Okay, so surprise was now a gargantuan understatement. “When my orientation is done?”

  “Yup. We’ll do a bit of musical chairs with assignments, but it’ll all work out.”

  His easygoing expression marked the personnel shuffle as no big deal, and other than the initial burst of shock the information had sent through her, Savannah knew that it probably wasn’t. Firehouses saw plenty of turnover, and Everett certainly seemed serious enough about the job to be a good fit for the rescue squad.

  Donovan shifted gears, gesturing to the room in front of them as he whispered, “Welcome to Station Eight’s bunk room. As you can hear, I wasn’t kidding about Crews. Or your sleep cycles.”

  The distinct sound of snoring drifted over the maze of six-foot cinder-block half walls dividing the open space of the sleeping quarters into smaller cubicles, and Savannah stifled a laugh.

  “Copy that.”

  She took in the large, semi-shadowed room, peeking past the threshold to the bunk on her left. It wasn’t much to write home about—an eight-by-ten rectangle just big enough to allow for a twin bed with a light fixture built into the headboard, a small storage locker, and an even smaller side table. A dark blue curtain hung from a tension rod spanning the top of the cubicle’s entryway, which at least offered a tiny bit of privacy. The row of narrow windows marching a horizontal line over the top of the south wall let in enough daylight to keep things visible, but not so much that catching up on sleep during off hours would be impossible.

  Or at least, it wouldn’t be if Savannah needed the break. But if resting for a little while would satisfy Everett into teaching her something more exciting than how to put on her turnout gear, then fine. She could play along.

  “Okay. Let’s see.” Donovan kept his tone at a low murmur, scanning the row of cubicles on either side of them. “We loosely assign bunks by squad and engine, just to keep things streamlined when calls come in. Bunks for engine are on the left, so let’s put you . . .” He tapped his thumb over his lightly stubbled chin, stepping over to the second curtain in the row. “Here.”

  “Sure. Great,” she said, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that Crews was at the other end of the room. She pulled back the curtain to her cubicle, eyeballing the neatly made bed and the starched, standard issue pillow waiting for her. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “You got it, rookie. Have a good break. Just make sure you come running—and I do mean running—if the all-call goes off.”

  It took every last ounce of Savannah’s willpower not to laugh at the irony. “Believe me, Don
ovan. That all-call goes off, and I’ll be the first person in the step.”

  * * *

  Cole gripped the basketball between his fingers, dribbling with a methodical thunk thunk thunk as he examined both his opponent and his options. Despite the otherworldly amount of trash talk that had been coming out of Donovan’s mouth for the last half hour, Cole had taken the smartass two games for two in the makeshift court adjacent to the outside wall of the engine bay, and with one more well-timed shot, he’d make it a bragging rights trifecta.

  God knew he had enough steam to blow off. Seven hours into her very first tour, and his candidate was trying to kill him, one sweet moment at a time.

  “Come on, dickhead. I don’t have all day for you to plot this shit down to the nanosecond.” Donovan laughed, his expression pure bravado. But after eight years of friendship, Cole could read the guy like the front page of the Fairview Sentinel and pick apart his game with just as much ease.

  Shift right toward the weaker side. Fake. Break away on the opening and take the layup for the win.

  By the time his neurons had carried the string of commands from his brain to his body, the clink of the metallic basket chains had already signaled Cole’s victory.

  “Damn, Teflon. Are you still falling for that move?” The familiar voice filtered in from the side exit of the engine bay, interrupting Donovan’s litany of swear words and Cole’s less-than-humble smile. “He’s been faking to your weak side since my rookie year.”

  Cole swiped a forearm over his sweat-laced forehead, his smile morphing to a grin as he turned toward their buddy and former Station Eight housemate, Nick Brennan.

  “It’s not my fault he always falls for it,” Cole argued, passing the ball to Brennan when his friend had crossed enough asphalt to reach the court.

  Brennan lifted a black brow toward the brim of his baseball hat, dribbling twice before taking a shot. “Uh-huh. Easy trash talk from Station Eight’s newest squad rookie. How’s it going now that you’re too good for engine, you fucking snob?”

  Cole let out a groan, although he couldn’t put his back into it. As one of his closest friends, Brennan could be counted on to deliver a ration of good-natured crap over Cole’s impending bump up to the rescue squad. As a former active-duty firefighter who had made squad himself just before a crushing injury forced him into early retirement? The shit-giving was nothing less than a total prerequisite.

  Not that Cole couldn’t—or wouldn’t—return the favor. “The pot and the kettle called. They both said to tell you you’re an asshole.”

  Brennan’s laughter combined with Donovan’s as the three of them met midcourt. “Yeah, yeah. Congratulations, dude. I know it’s what you wanted.”

  “I do,” Cole agreed, although hell if it wasn’t the biggest understatement he’d uttered all week. “I take it you talked to Crews.”

  “And O’Keefe. And Harrison,” Brennan said, and Jesus, nothing was sacred in a firehouse. His buddy smoothed a hand over his FFD T-shirt, right over the spot labeled instructor on the left upper chest. “And Captain Westin.”

  Cole’s heart knocked against his ribs, and not from the exertion of the one-on-one. “So you knew Nelson would be placed here at Eight and that I’d have to train her in order to move to squad.”

  As an instructor at the academy, Brennan was sometimes consulted on candidate placements. Since he’d been one of Westin’s firefighters for nearly five years before his injury, it made sense that the captain would’ve at least put Brennan in the loop over specifically which candidate to recruit as Cole’s replacement.

  Brennan exchanged a nanosecond’s worth of a glance with Donovan before nodding. “I knew Nelson would land here once the placement process became final. The rest . . .” He paused, but finally added, “I didn’t know for sure, but I had a strong suspicion, yeah. How’s she doing so far? I know she can be kind of—”

  “An epic pain in the ass?” Cole supplied, and Brennan coughed out a laugh.

  “I was going to say headstrong. She’s actually not a bad candidate, if you can get her to check her attitude. She definitely wants to be a firefighter, that’s for damn sure.”

  “She is pretty tough,” Donovan said, clearly a compliment. “When I took her in to the bunks, she told me her boyfriend broke up with her a couple of days ago. She might as well have been giving me the weather report, and it didn’t seem like a cover.”

  Cole’s shock led the way for the upward snap of his chin. “You talked to her about her personal life? What are you, Dr. Phil?”

  “Don’t hate, Everett. It’s not my fault I’m a likable guy. Anyway, yeah. Apparently the ex is a total douche canoe, so she’s crashing with her brother. But she blew it off like it was no big deal, said she’d rather focus on the job anyway. I’m telling you, girlfriend’s got chops.”

  Brennan latched on to the segue before Cole could counter that there was such a thing as too much attitude. “What’d you put her through this morning?” his buddy asked.

  “Gear drills,” Cole said. After Savannah’s initial trouble with the straps on her helmet when they’d been sitting in the equipment room, it had seemed like the most logical place to start.

  “How’d she do?”

  He hesitated, but he wasn’t about to downplay the truth, especially since once Savannah had gotten over being pissy, she’d done even better than he’d thought she would. “Pretty good, actually.”

  Donovan’s blue eyes narrowed to a squint in the overhead sunlight. “Yeah? How good?”

  Oh screw it. Cole looked from Brennan to Donovan, blowing out a breath. “She came within three seconds of breaking your rookie record.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Donovan said, all shock and no anger. “The only person who’s ever done that is . . .”

  Both of his best friends stared at him outright, finishing in unison. “You.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said, biting back an ironic laugh at the fact that Savannah’s personal best had clocked in at a near-identical number to his own when he’d been a rookie. “She did great—once I finally got her to shut up and listen.”

  Cole’s brain zeroed in on the hitch in Savannah’s breath as he’d stepped in close to her, his gut forming a knot at how he’d let his emotions guide him into her personal space not once, but twice today. The laundry-line scent of her skin . . . the hypnotic heat of her body, nearly pressed against his in all the right places . . .

  Focus, asshole! He shook the image of her wide, dark brown stare and the curve of her breasts beneath her T-shirt from his mind’s eye. “But after she stopped giving me shit, she pretty much killed all the drills I threw at her.”

  Brennan recovered from his surprise first. “That’s good, though. I mean, if Nelson catches on fast, not only will she be an asset to the house, but then you can move to squad, no sweat.”

  Cole raked a hand through his hair, letting his palm rest on the back of his neck. “In theory, yeah. The problem is, she’s too hotheaded to use her ambition to her advantage. All she wants to do when I push her is push back. Plus, she really stepped in it with Oz this morning, and believe me when I tell you, he is none too happy to have her in-house.”

  He gave them the bullet-point version of his conversation with the lieutenant, complete with Oz’s ominous words of parting. After a heartbeat’s worth of stunned silence, Donovan stepped back on the asphalt and whistled under his breath.

  “Jesus. Nelson really did piss him off, huh?”

  Tension rippled down his spine at the understatement, making Cole choose his words with care. “I think between the concept of having a female candidate and the reality of having this female candidate, he’s just looking for a reason to drag her in front of Westin.”

  Which would be detrimental not just to Savannah’s spot on engine, but to Cole’s spot on squad. While he certainly got Oz’s irritation with this morning’s kitchen byplay, the reasoning behind Savannah’s pushback had made a glimmer of sense once she’d aired it. Still, her screw-you
strategy was going to get both of them into boiling-hot water, and while Cole had never minded a little bit of heat, he sure as hell minded getting burned.

  “Nelson’s just going to have to put her emotions in check—and fast—if she wants to get right with Oz and prove herself around here.”

  The corners of Brennan’s mouth tightened beneath his dark goatee. “Did Westin tell you—”

  Cole’s brow had just creased at the unease on Brennan’s face when the all-too-familiar sound of the station-wide alarm cut his buddy’s words short.

  “Engine Eight, Squad Eight, Ambulance Eight. Structure fire, ninety-seven hundred Wabash Avenue. Requesting immediate response.”

  Alex broke into a grin at the same time he and Cole started moving toward the engine bay.

  “Guess your rookie’s about to get a little trial by fire.”

  Chapter Seven

  Crews, Donovan, Jones . . .

  Cole bit out a low curse as his head count came up suspiciously short. Swinging his gaze from the step to the engine bay, he leaned an elbow out the side window of Engine Eight, irritation beating out the adrenaline in his veins two to one.

  “Nice of you to join us, Nelson,” he called out over the growl of the engine, taking in Savannah’s sleep-rumpled ponytail and her half-bleary, mostly shell-shocked expression as she scrambled into the step and yanked the door shut with a heavy bang. Cole snapped the headset off the hook in front of him, guiding it into place and giving the traffic signal in front of the house a second’s worth of a make-sure glance before steering his way out of the engine bay.

  “All right. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Crews said into the mic on his headset. Although the lieutenant had been just as asleep as Savannah when the all-call had blared through the overhead two minutes ago, he worked in precise, efficient movements, sitting up straight against the officer’s seat beside Cole and clacking his way through the computer system they used to communicate with dispatch.