It was the last one through the door who really caught her eye. He wasn’t a muscle head like a couple of them, but his chiseled face and prominent cheek bones gave him a rugged handsomeness. His dark hair was buzzed on the sides, but more than long enough to run a hand through on the top.
After taking a couple steps into the gym, the fireman looked directly at Poppy, as if sensing her eyes on him. Their eyes met, introduced themselves. They didn’t slide off of each other and go on their way. Her eyes and his eyes said hello, sat down for a speed-date, and ended up having a lengthy conversation, backing up all the other speed daters but still not parting ways until the event coordinator was summoned to force them apart. It was much more intimate than she was comfortable with a perfect stranger, but it still took effort to pull her eyes away.
Is it hot in here? wondered Poppy. She looked down at her phone and reached for it so she could rewind the book … and next thing she knew she was head over heels, executing a perfectly awkward and painful dismount from the treadmill. One second she was running for her life, the next she was laying on the ground, butt in the air, staring up at her knees. The treadmill was still running, grinding against her bare back and trying to rub all of the skin off.
Oh good, at least her shirt had nearly come completely off in the display of grace.
Poppy found herself chuckling through her grimace as she pushed away from the belt of the treadmill. In the face of pain that would break most POWs, she could either laugh or shout every swear word she knew at the top of her lungs. She couldn’t extricate herself from the awkward position, just push off enough to prevent third-degree abrasions. Hopefully.
A few second later someone ran up, hit the emergency stop, and braced her until the torture device stopped spinning its belt.
“You didn’t have to do that,” grunted Poppy. “I was kind of looking forward to having my back covered in skin grafts.”
“Here,” said a man’s voice. A hand reached through her tangle of legs and grabbed her hand. It was a man’s hand for sure, solid and much larger than hers. “Lean to your left and we’ll get you right-side up.” Another hand rested against her knee and moving in harmony, they guided her so that she was lying on her side, finally able to breathe normally.
Poppy’s ponytail had exploded and her hair now obscured everything. “Maybe I’ll just breathe for a minute?” It was impossible to tell if the labored breathing was due to the exercise or the feat of unimaginable poise.
“Let me just …” Someone started adjusting her shirt, pulling it down over what Poppy’s mother referred to as her “disproportionate roundness”.
“Okay, then,” said Poppy, shooting up to a sitting position, realizing abruptly how exposed she was. She did a quick check to make sure her sports bra hadn’t somehow been splattered across the wall behind her, and breathed a little easier when her hand brushed the strap. While she pulled her shirt to a state of public decency, she flipped her head back to clear her hair out of her eyes.
It smacked the hot fireman in the face. The hot one with the eyes.
For a second he sat there, eyes closed, mouth open. Stunned. Then he lifted an arm to wipe the residue of her sweaty hair off of his face.
Nice one, Poppy. You’ve reached an entirely new level of smooth.
“Well, Cap,” said the huge-fat fireman to the huge-muscular fireman. “Looks like Booter gets to fill out his first exposure report when we get back.”
“Funny, JFK,” said the man she had drenched with her mop. Looking back at her, he said, “I’m Slade. I’m an EMT. Did you hurt yourself?” He was crouching next to her as the rest of his crew gathered behind him.
Poppy somehow looked away from his dark blue eyes. “Hurt myself? What do you mean? Isn’t that how everyone dismounts from these instruments of torture?” The abrasion on her back stung, especially with her sweaty shirt laying across it, but there was nothing the fireman could do about the pain.
“It’s one way to do it,” said Slade. “I won’t judge. Here, lean back against the wall.” He had a small grin on his face and Poppy realized she was smiling through the blush on her own face.
With his help, Poppy was able to relax against the wall, keeping the raw skin on her lower back arched away. “I’ll just finish my workout down here. Since you didn’t let me complete the dermabrasion session.”
“She seems fine,” said the one Slade had called JFK.
When Slade looked over his shoulder at him, Poppy couldn’t prevent her eyes from quickly dipping to Slade’s arms. The t-shirt wasn’t skin tight, but it was tight enough to tell that the gym wasn’t the torture chamber to him that it was to her. Was he flexing? He had to be flexing.
As he turned back to Poppy she brought her eyes up to his face.
“Would you like me to check you out?” he asked.
Check you out? Had he noticed the way she had ogled him when she thought she could get away with it? As in, My eyes are up here, ma’am. The lady firefighter and the muscle head looked at each other, focusing.
Oh no. They saw me checking him out.
The muscle head bent his ear toward the radio, which was blaring something that Poppy couldn’t follow. “That’s us,” he said.
The female nodded. “Behind the Rite-Aid.”
They all started jogging toward the exit. Except for Slade, who was still looking at her. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can send another unit to that call if you need us.”
From the doors of the gym, JFK yelled back, “Get on the rig, Boot!”
Slade didn’t budge, still waiting on her expectantly.
“Go,” said Poppy, smiling and hoping it looked thankful and not like a creepy Joker smile. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” said Slade, rising. “Call us back if you change your mind. You know our number.”
She watched him jog with the grace of a dancer to the door. Oh man did she watch him. Why, in the name of all the exercise gods, did that have to happen at that moment? Riding the treadmill wave like an epileptic cow in front of the gym-goers was bad enough. But no, that wasn’t good enough for Poppy Mercier. She had to do it in front of a gaggle of good looking men. A herd of hotties. A flock of fire—
“Can I give you a hand up?” Alta was back, offering a hand.
Nice of her to wait until Poppy was done admiring Park City’s Finest. No wait, Finest was for police, wasn’t it? These guys were the Bravest. Though Poppy hadn’t met many finer than that Slade.
“I love it when they come in,” said Alta with a sly smile, helping Poppy to her feet.
“Oh, they’re regulars?” Poppy tried to sound casual.
“Yeah, they come in and play wallyball about once a week.”
“Oh good,” said Poppy. “I think that dismount was only about an eight-point-five. Next week I think I can pull off a ten if I land face down on the treadmill instead of head down on the ground.” She reached up and felt the goose egg forming on the back of her head. At least she hadn’t cracked her head all the way open. But hey, Slade would be back in a week or so. That might be enough extra motivation to keep Poppy coming back here.
“It looked pretty painful,” said Alta.
“Yeah, but in an agile, attractive sort of way, right?” The sting of sweat on raw skin hadn’t faded much.
Alta laughed. “Yeah, you were as nimble as an elephant in ice skates.”
“My mother’s right.” Poppy groaned. “I’ll die single for sure.”
Alta laughed again. “There’s no way. A funny girl like you with such a gorgeous smile? How have you not been scooped up yet?”
It was no surprise to Poppy that she was single, but it also wasn’t the time to recite the Litany of Lack. “That’s nice of you to say.” Especially since you look like you should be on a magazine cover.
“Are you feeling alright?” asked Alta. “Need to sit down, or need someone to check you out?”
“I think everyone in the gym already saw more of me than they wanted to.” When she
made it back to the shelter, Daria could bandage up the abrasion.
“Okay. I have some first aid training, and they give all of us a concussion class when we start working here, so I know a little bit about some danger signs.”
“That’s really nice of you, Alta. I’m actually a vet, so if I start walking in to glass walls or barking incessantly I’ll have a pretty good idea what’s wrong.”
With a chuckle Alta nodded and started toward the front desk. “I’ll be up here if you need anything.”
Quiet enough so no one else could hear, Poppy said, “I need to show you that you can’t throw me around.” She put on her pit bull face, the dog, not the singer. Her enemy couldn’t know that, like every one of the Pitties that had come through her rescue, Poppy was a softie inside.
Show no fear, feel no compassion.
Poppy hit the start button and took a deep breath as the machine taunted her with the three-beep countdown, and started sliding.
“Yeah, well your mom was probably a conveyor belt, and not like the cute little one at the all-you-can eat sushi. She’s … an industrial sized one in an Amazon warehouse or something.”
Before the treadmill was up to speed, Poppy was too out of breath for any more insults.
I got this. Only three miles to go. Don’t look down.
Miraculously her Bluetooth earbuds were still around her neck, so into her ears they went. Without crashing and burning, she found the play button and the narrator’s voice picked up again.
For a while Poppy lost herself in a fictional world—a world about a running protagonist interestingly enough—and continued to remind herself to not look down. A watched pot never boils and a watched treadmill logs no miles. The rivulets of sweat started running again. She had brought a towel to wipe up after her run, but maybe that fireman would be back and she could just use his face again.
Don’t look down.
If she wasn’t so scared of crashing and burning again, she’d grab the towel and lay it over the display to hide it, but two catastrophic failures in one day might make it hard to show her face here again. No, the gym would probably refund her money and tell her she was too much of a liability to work out there.
Don’t look …
Poppy looked down at her adversary, expecting to be in the mid twos. Its beady little display numbers sneered back a measly .9 miles.
“Oh … now you’re just lying.” Feeling like a failure, Poppy decreased the pace to 5.5. “But you know what? You can’t beat me. Winston Churchill … would give up … before I will. I might die here, but you can’t, make me stop, pounding you, until I get my, three point one.”
Focus on breathing, Poppy told herself. And don’t look down.
Read more or buy Two Hearts Rescue here.
Rescue Me by Taylor Hart
Damon Freestone stared down at the five-mile trail run he’d just done. It had been fun. As fun as Damon could deal with at the moment. Truthfully, he hadn’t even felt it. All he’d known when he’d gotten off his first full forty-eight-hour shift at Park City Fire Department was that he needed to do something to get his mind off everything.
Sucking in air, he pulled the water bottle off his hip and took a long drink. Honestly, it hadn’t been that bad of a shift, considering it was his first one since he had come back from Boston. And he had been demoted to a truckie.
His mind flashed to his first day as captain six months ago in Boston, to the burning building. At this point, he usually clamped down on the memory and refocused his thoughts. At least, that was what he’d been taught to do by the stupid shrink he’d been forced to see for weeks on end after it had all happened. The one who told him none of it was his fault. After all, he’d followed protocol. Squeezing the bottle between his fingers, he crushed it and then tucked it back into the water holster at his hip. Forget the shrink.
His mind opened to that day—his first call as the captain at Boston Fire. He’d done everything right. They had vented the building first and then sent in the truck crew to make entry and start search and rescue.
They’d pulled out twenty bodies.
The fire was moving fast. He could hear his men clearing the rooms. He could see it in his mind as easily as if he’d been in there himself. They were good men, trained properly. His mind was clear as he barked out orders. Everything was going down perfectly.
Until he heard Trev call out. “Chief, she’s hurt!”
At that point, it was like lightning struck his heart, and he instantly knew who Trev was talking about.
Jamie. The candidate. The new girl who had only shown up a week ago.
Without thinking, his feet went into motion.
“What the—!” He called, running to the truck and donning his air mask. He’d already had turnouts and SCBA on before they even arrived.
Corey was by his side as he moved toward the building. “Cap, you can’t go in there. You have command. We need your eyes out here. There are still ten guys in there.”
But come hell or high water, Damon was going in there. Time lost all meaning. He barged through the burning doors, sucking air from his tank and trying to see her, trying to feel her. He keyed his radio. “Trev, where is she?”
“I … part of the wall has fallen up here, I can’t get her out.”
Climbing the stairs quickly, he rushed straight to where he’d sent Trevor. The smoke was awful, and he could barely see through it. The hungry flames snapped at him as he made his way to Trev who was trying to figure out how to get her free. Springing into action, he rushed to the beam that had fallen, using all his force to push it off, but it wouldn’t budge.
On the radio, he heard the battalion chief. “Freestone, what are you doing? Get your butt out here.”
He ignored it, struggling to find a way to free Jamie.
The battalion chief ordered everyone to abandon the building then started calling out his crew one by one, telling them to get out. Air horns blared long blasts of four tones, the symbol to evacuate. The fire had burned long enough that either this thing would flashover soon or the whole building might come down.
Even though Damon could feel the blow was coming, he couldn’t leave yet. He scrambled to get another board and make a lever to push the beam.
Trev stayed by his side without asking and helped him push the lever.
“Freestone! Clark!” The battalion chief barked, calling the two of them.
Damon pointed at Trev. “Get out!”
Trev shook his head. “I’m staying with you, Cap.”
The battalion chief’s voice pierced the radio. “Then you are both fools that are going to lose your jobs.”
They pushed and levered the wood until Jamie’s leg came loose. Damon picked her up and carried her out of the apartment, down the stairs and into the pandemonium outside.
The building had the decency to not flash until both he and Trev were out. Flames tumbled over their heads and the pressure forced Damon down to his knees. He climbed to his feet and ran toward the medics.
As he laid her body on the stretcher, ambo crews and firefighters swarmed them, helping them take off their equipment. Damon sucked in the cool Boston night air.
The battalion chief walked over with anger in his eyes and stared at him. “Freestone, you made the wrong call.”
All Damon was concerned with at the moment was making sure Jamie was okay. He saw them intubating her.
“Is she breathing?” he asked Craig, the main paramedic.
When Craig didn’t answer, he began investigating the equipment they were using, and then the other medic pulled out an AED and shocked her chest.
“Breathe.” He commanded her, getting on his knees and feeling emotion bubble up in his throat. Emotion he never let out anywhere besides a punch to the face of his sparring partner at the gym in the morning.
His battalion chief was next to him, his hand on his shoulder, as Damon watched the crew frantically try to get a pulse, get all the smoke out of her so she could breathe.
Shedding his turnouts, he hopped into the ambo with them. The medics worked efficiently, doing everything they could, but in the short ride to the hospital, he watched her unresponsive lips go blue. He watched her die.
When they pulled the stretcher out and ran her into the hospital, he ran with them down the hall, listening to the paramedics give their report to the doctors.
Can’t find a pulse, too much smoke in her lungs, gave her albuterol, cortisone, a plethora of other drugs.
His mind couldn’t decipher all of it. In truth, it was the first time he didn’t feel absolutely involved in the scene, but more like a bystander watching it all unfold.
As he watched them cover her with a sheet, he knew it was his fault. She’d died because he’d sent her in too soon.
He wished it had been him instead.
Read more or buy Rescue Me here.
Rescue My Heart by Christine Kersey
“Well, isn’t this just perfect?” Lacey Porter murmured as her car sputtered before the engine shut down. Coasting onto the shoulder of the road, she glanced at the gas gauge where the needle had settled below the E, which was the kind of thing that happened when she got too focused on drawing.
Frowning, she shifted into Park, turned on the hazard lights, then pulled the key out of the ignition. Now she might be late for work. Not good.
The thought of turning up late when she was such a new employee stressed her out. Trying to calm herself, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, then drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled as she thought about what was going right in her life.
She had a job, even if being a waitress wasn’t her lifelong ambition. Her bestie Amber was letting her room with her. And she was loving it in Park City. Even though moving there had been hard, she knew it had been the right decision.
She thought about the life she had left behind and a tentative smile curved her mouth. Most importantly, no one was telling her what to do and how to live her life. Her life belonged to her.
Rescued By Love: Park City Firefighter Romance Page 14