I want to interject and ask why the hell she’s being so nice, why she’s promising to call him when it’s so clear he doesn’t deserve her time. But I bite my lip instead and stand behind her, a bodyguard of sorts.

“This is fucking bullshit.” He throws his arms up in the air, before storming off like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

When he’s gone, she turns to me, dropping a soft hand to my forearm. “Thanks for helping out.” Her voice is still a bit shaky.

“Of course,” I choke out. The feel of her hand on my skin has me so screwed up I can’t even get an intelligent sentence out. My eyes are glued to hers, searching for some kind of answer hidden there. The freckles, which were so prominent on her face when she was a kid, are still there. They’ve faded a touch, but the peaches and cream skin is the same as I remember.

With my name dangling from my lips, I’m about to introduce myself just as Jade interrupts. “You really need to kick his sorry ass to the curb.”

Sighing, Grace sinks back down into her seat. “I know, I know. Sorry I ruined the night.”

“Are you kidding? He’s gone now. That makes everything even better.” Jade winks at me before asking if we want anything to drink. We both decline and watch her walk toward the bar.

Holding her head in her hands, she’s covering her face. “I’m such an ass,” she mutters.

“Hey, you did nothing wrong,” I say, pulling her hands away from her pretty face. “He’s the one who’s an ass.”

With an exaggerated huff, she flips her hair out of her eyes and looks at me across the table. “Thanks for that and thanks for helping me out.” She stands, her shoulders slumped, her voice taking on a defeated quality. “I’m just not feeling it anymore tonight. I think I’ll head home.”

As she walks past me to get Jade from the bar, I drop my hand to her shoulder, causing her to jump a little. “Sorry,” I apologize, though it’s Blake who’s the one who clearly set her on edge. Her eyes fall to my hand and then move back up to mine. Something passes between us in that moment, but before I can figure it out, Ian races up behind me. He runs into me so hard, he nearly knocks me over.

Clapping a hand to my back, he calls out, “Finally talking to that hottie, huh, Dave,” he slurs, clearly drunk already. Gracie scans my face, her eyes squinting as if she’s trying to see me through some bright glare. The need to shut Ian up overrides the hope I feel at Gracie possibly recognizing me.

Unfortunately, dropping a hard elbow to his ribs doesn’t seem to do the trick. “You are something fine. Damn, girl.” He gives Grace a head to toe once-over before she rolls her eyes at him.

“You’re an ass, Ian,” I mutter.

“Thanks, again, but I think I’ve had my fair share of rudeness for the night,” she snaps, pulling away from me before I can even tell her who I am, but if I’m not mistaken, her eyes drop to my chest before holding my gaze one last time.

“Love watching you leave,” Ian calls out when she’s a few steps away. Fuck, do I want to knock him out, but I can’t argue with him.

Watching her—and all her curves—strut away from me, it’s not a sight for the faint of heart.

In the two weeks since the bar encounter with Grace and Blake, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. Hell, I even went back to the same bar a few times just to see if she’d be there.

She wasn’t.

I have to laugh at myself, though. It’s not like me to pine over a girl. On the other hand, I’ve never been a ‘hit it and quit it’ kind of guy, so the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her isn’t all that strange.

One thing is for sure, I need to clear my head before I go to work. Jamming the last of my things into my bag, I finish putting together what I need for my forty-eight hour shift. Most of my stuff is in my locker at work, but extra work-out clothes are always a necessity.

Many people would probably say they hate driving through the city. The cab drivers alone make it less than enjoyable. But I’ve always loved the drive to work. Yeah, it’s deep in the heart of Manhattan, and it would probably be easier to take the train. But the sights, sounds, and smells—the ones that aren’t urine, anyway—you don’t get those on the train and in the subway. After parking the car, I grab my bag and make my way into the station.

I would call it my home away from home, but that’d be a lie. This is home and my apartment is just somewhere I sleep when I’m not here. Garry, the dispatcher, greets me at the door. With his heels kicked up on the desk, he’s quietly sipping a cup of coffee while everyone else is in the back of the house eating breakfast.

After unloading my stuff into my locker, I make my way downstairs and grab a cup of coffee, and a plate of eggs for myself. Everyone looks half asleep, barely saying a word as they devour their food.

“Rough night?” I ask to no one in particular.

Mickey, a three-year veteran, pipes up above everyone else’s indiscriminate muttering. “Had a run like every hour last night. Stupid shit, too.”

I laugh around the rim of my mug, but part of me feels bad for them. A night of no sleep, taking care of routine calls, without getting much time in between to catch a break is exhausting.

Before long, the rest of the day crew is here. Ian is here today, too. I’ve been kind of tight-lipped on how he screwed up my chances to talk to Grace. The last thing he needs is more fuel to feed the fire of him ribbing on me.

“We’re on hose detail this morning,” Ian calls to me after looking over the task sheet.

“Perfect,” I say, walking past him toward the rig.

Shooting me a confused look, he asks, “Why’s that?”

“No one has more experience playing with hoses than you, right?” I joke. Sadly, this is the perfect place for middle school humor.

“I’m sure you have just as much, asshole.” Ian hoists himself up into the truck. Fidgeting with the gauges and tank readers, he records the necessary details we need to complete our paperwork. As he scribbles down the last of the data, the sirens go off, signaling the truck we’re working on is needed in action.

Those are the moments the house comes to life. The men race around the truck, stepping into their bunker gear where it lays in wait for the sounds we’ve just heard. After the firefighter who operates the engine gets all the details from dispatch, and the captain, a twenty-something-year veteran named Peter Gallagher, buckles in, we’re off to our fire.

Winding through the streets of lower Manhattan will never stop being a thrill. Even after three years on the job, it still excites me. It’s pretty much every boyhood dream come true, and I get to do it almost every day of my life.

How freaking awesome is that?

“Let’s do this boys!” I call out as the truck pulls to a screeching halt in front of a twenty-five-story financial building. Captain Gallagher calls out orders, and people evacuating the building are lead to the side. From my vantage point, I see smoke billowing out of what looks to be around the tenth floor. “Stretch out those legs, fellas,” I joke, pointing up to the smoke-filled window. “We’ve got a trek up ahead of us.”

Shooting me a stern look, Gallagher pulls us in for a huddle. “Andrews and Mack.” He points a gnarled finger at me and Ian. A true old-schooler, he essentially refuses to call anyone by their first name. Hell, he won’t even call Ian by his full last name. Gallagher once told Ian that MacMillan takes too much time, and as a probie, he wasn’t worth the extra few seconds of his oxygen—all in good humor of course. “You two take the south stairwell,” yelling above the chaos swallowing the scene around us, he points at an old blue print. At first, he hated the addition of tablets, bitching that they’d slow us down. But the ease with which they allow him to look up the blueprints for each and every building on our call radius, well, needless to say, he didn’t hate them for too long. “Miller and Gonzalez, you’re with them,” he concludes his directive at us, before rattling off instructions to the rest of the crew.