Fearless

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Oh, there is. But you are on kitchen duty.” Oz’s implication hung in the air like smoke in a small space, and oh hell no. No way was she going to serve him like a fucking waitress.

  But she swung a surreptitious gaze over the common room, discovering that her options amounted to shit and shittier. The only people left in the room were Everett and two guys from squad, and they were far enough away to be well out of earshot of her conversation with Oz. Impulse dared her to tell him to take his coffee and cram it up his ass. But if she gave in—and oh God, how she wanted to give in—everyone would believe the lieutenant when he slanted the story in his direction and made her look insubordinate. Pushing back would only spray paint her with a giant troublemaker-colored bull’s-eye.

  And judging from the smug ass look covering his weathered face, Oz knew it.

  Savannah sucked a breath through her teeth. “Well then. Why don’t I get that for you, Lieutenant.” She reached for the coffee carafe, willing her fingers not to shake as she filled Oz’s mug to the brim.

  “That’s more like it, sugar.”

  The carafe in her hand hit the burner with a clatter. “What did you just call me?”

  “I didn’t call you anything, Nelson. All I said was, pass the sugar.”

  His hard gray stare sent an icy chill down the length of her spine, triple-dog-daring her to green light the heated response that had shot upward from her chest.

  Nerves of steel, girl. Be tough.

  Wordlessly, Savannah reached for the yellow sugar canister. She gritted her molars hard enough to make her jaw throb, sliding it over the countertop until it reached the no-man’s-land between them.

  Oz huffed out a joyless laugh. “Thought so.”

  But instead of sugaring the coffee she’d just poured, he reached over to dump every last drop down the drain, breaking their stare only to give her his back as he turned on his boot heels and walked out of the kitchen.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes’ worth of dishes did nothing to quell either the anger or the nerves running amok in Savannah’s belly. She gave the stainless-steel counter one last swipe with her dish towel, calling her kitchen duty done as she looked at Everett with anticipation thrumming through her veins.

  “So are we good to go?” Now that breakfast was finally out of the way, she was dying to actually do something of value.

  “Sure.” He pushed back from the now-empty table, finding his feet. Her pulse notched higher in excitement as they made their way toward the engine bay, although for someone whose job required speed and precision, Everett seemed to be moving slower than molasses headed uphill in January.

  Finally—finally—they came to a stop at the open door of Engine Eight, where he planted his feet over the concrete and gestured to the back step. “Go ahead and grab your turnout gear,” he said, and it took her all of seven seconds to comply.

  “Okay,” Savannah said. There had to be a billion different cool drills they could do now that she was officially on engine. Bonus points for active fire or immediate danger. “Now what?”

  Everett pulled a stopwatch from his pocket, the muscles in his forearms flexing over the dark blue cotton of his T-shirt as he crossed one arm over his chest and flipped the timer faceup in his opposite palm. “Now we see how long it takes you to gear up.”

  “I meant after that.” She started to laugh, but Everett’s head shake made the sound catch in her throat.

  “After that, you’ll dress down and we’ll do it again. That’s how gear drills work.”

  Her grasp on the gear overflowing from her arms tightened in shock. “You want me to practice getting dressed?”

  “I want you to do what you’re told. Following directives isn’t optional, candidate.” He paused, releasing an audible breath before adding, “But to clarify, yes. I also want you to practice gearing up. It’s not as intuitive as you think. Now go.”

  The soft click of the timer’s start button jolted Savannah into motion. She’d geared up plenty at the academy, although they’d never done timed drills. Still, maybe if she just got this over with, they could move on to something good.

  She crouched down low to drop her gear to the ground in front of her, snapping her hood from the top of the haphazard pile. A quick yank had it over her head, and she toed off the boots she’d been wearing next. Thank God she’d had the foresight to fit her heavier set of work boots inside the cuffs of her bunker pants when she’d left them in the back of the engine earlier so she could slide them all on at once. Of course, said bunker pants were twisted up with the rest of the gear in the pile, and she cursed as she took precious seconds to untangle everything, then even more precious seconds to tug the bunker pants over her hips and jam her feet into the boots at the bottom. She slapped the Velcro closure into place, her palms rasping beneath the stiff, unbroken-in suspenders gaping loosely over her shoulders.

  But Everett’s frown told her she had zero time to adjust them, so Savannah reached for her gloves, which were next in the pile. Her coat followed . . . or it would’ve followed if the bright red strap on her right shoulder hadn’t flopped to her elbow and immediately gotten caught in the coat sleeve where she’d just put her arm.

  “Damn it.” A sheen of sweat burst over her brow beneath the hood, her frustration threatening to bubble over. She reached inside her sleeve with her opposite hand to right the suspender over her shoulder, then her coat around her frame. Her breath came in short bursts that she felt as much as heard, wedging itself in her throat as she realized too late that working the zipper on her coat was going to take damn near an act of God with her thick-fingered gloves in place.

  With an aggravated huff, she shook the gloves back to the concrete. The zipper closed with a hiss, and Savannah moved on to the SCBA tank between her feet. The adrenaline zinging through her bloodstream turned the buckles into advanced rocket science, and after her fourth attempt to get them locked into place, she found success and reached for her helmet. She tightened the straps under her chin, and her lower back muscles—which were already madder than a wet hen from spending the weekend on her brother’s couch—screeched in protest as she bent down for her gloves . . . again. But they were the last item standing, and Savannah wasn’t about to quit so close to being done.

  Even if she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was dragging her ass across the finish line.

  “Time.” Everett’s voice echoed off the cinder blocks as he clicked the stopwatch with a flick of his thumb. His olive-green stare raked over her with enough intensity that she could practically feel it on her skin, and she braced herself for his scathing criticism of her performance.

  Only it never came.

  “All right,” he said, resetting the stopwatch. “Dress down and let’s do it again.”

  “That’s it? You’re not going to yell at me?” The words left a trail of heat on her face. But it wasn’t as if added brazenness was going to shock him at this stage in the game, and anyway, Savannah couldn’t deny wanting to know the answer to her question. Nearly all the training she’d done at the academy had been delivered drill-sergeant style. She’d certainly expected more of the same, or maybe even an added level of emotion, now that she’d taken the next step.

  Everett examined her, his expression more unreadable than ever. “Will yelling at you change the fact that your drill time is in the shitter?”

  Her stomach dropped even though the criticism was one hundred percent accurate. “No.”

  “And do you want me to yell at you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Good,” he said, and something about the soft yet serious tone of the interruption made her bite back her argument and listen. “Because it’s pretty clear that teaching you how to gear up properly is going to be a full-time job. I’d hate to add one more thing to my To-Do list.”

  Savannah paused for only a second, her heart still doing the triple lindy with her rib cage beneath the heavy layers of her gear.

  But if she wanted
to learn the best way to get her equipment in order without killing herself in the process, she was going to have to swallow her pride—and her burning curiosity—faster than a double shot of her daddy’s Johnnie Walker Blue.

  “Okay then.” Savannah shucked her turnout gear piece by piece until she stood in front of Everett in nothing more than her uniform and her balls-out determination. “What do I need to do first?”

  He met her eyes for just a split second before nodding. “Most of getting geared up quickly is a matter of practice. That and figuring out what works best for you on the fly. But just because you’re moving fast doesn’t mean everything is chaos. It also has to be right, so you need to find a strategy and stick with it.”

  He showed her a few tricks for getting her gear on in a more effective order, helping her to adjust her suspenders and suggesting that she go gloves last to avoid fumbling with the straps on both her helmet and her SCBA. He explained everything methodically, showing her the motions with equal precision, and after the fourth time through, her mouth got the best of her already questionable inhibitions.

  “Just out of curiosity, do you have any emotions?” Savannah asked, twirling a finger around her face before sliding her newly adjusted suspenders over her shoulders and hefting her coat from the floor of the engine bay. “Or is it one size fits all up there?”

  Everett’s mouth pressed into a hard line, his eyes not budging from the stopwatch in his grip. “Emotions are dangerous, especially on this job.”

  God, he was so serious. It had to be painful.

  But everyone had a tipping point, a hot button, a trigger, and for a split second, Savannah found herself wondering what could possibly rattle Cole Everett.

  What would it take to for him to really, thoroughly lose his composure?

  Warmth flashed high over her cheeks. “That doesn’t answer the question,” she said, dropping her gaze to the gear in front of her.

  “Are you trying to be insubordinate? Or does it just come naturally?”

  She zipped her coat into place and slid a covert glance over his face. His tone sounded even enough—not that he ever seemed to deviate from neutral territory. But his eyes didn’t crinkle, the corners of his lips didn’t lift upward in the slightest. Oookay. Guess it was a legitimate question rather than the general sort of teasing she’d gotten from everyone else at breakfast.

  “Also not an answer,” Savannah pointed out, her muscles squeezing beneath the now-familiar weight of the SCBA tank as she shouldered the thing and got to work on clasping the buckles. “But since you asked, I’m pretty inquisitive by nature. So I guess it comes naturally.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Everett tapped the button on the stopwatch, shaking his head slightly before rotating his index finger in the universal sign for let’s do it again. “And for the record, of course I have emotions.” His gaze darkened, although the rest of his expression remained unaltered. “I’m human just like you. But letting your emotions rule your actions will only get you into trouble. You need to check them at the door if you want to hack it around here.”

  “Yeah, I got that at breakfast,” Savannah said, her belly knotting at the memory of the car wreck conversation.

  “Well, make it a point to keep getting it. The work isn’t going to wait for you to get your shit together.”

  Everett’s pointed glance had her moving despite her frustration, and she pulled at her gloves, piling her gear back to the floor in moves that had become much more fluid over the last half hour. “Does getting dressed and undressed really count as work? Or is it more like a diabolical plot to bore me to death?”

  In an instant, Everett was in her personal space, so close that the woodsy scent of his soap filled her lungs on a sharp, surprised inhale. “I’m sorry, candidate. Did you say I’m boring you?”

  Oh God. Savannah was suddenly far, far from bored. “N-no. I just meant . . .”

  She trailed off, her shoulders bumping against the side panel of the engine at Everett’s closeness. His chest was barely an inch from hers, their bodies completely lined up from hips to shoulder to mouth. Heat arrowed a direct path to her core, and she hung on to his unyielding stare by the barest of threads.

  “No,” Savannah said. “You’re not boring me.”

  “Good.” His exhale moved past her ear in a warm puff as he dropped his eyes to the bare expanse of her neck, right to the spot where her pulse was currently slamming through her veins.

  “Now do yourself a favor and control your emotions instead of letting them control you. Because I don’t care if this is the only drill we do for a month, but you will learn how to gear up and pull your weight just like everyone else. Do you copy?”

  Chapter Six

  Four hours after Everett had led her out to the engine bay for gear drills, Savannah’s muscles felt as if they’d been massaged by a five-alarm fire. Her ponytail was plastered to the back of her head, having long since been turned into a rat’s nest from the repeated on-off-on-off of both her hood and her helmet. Her uniform fared no better, and between the heavy dotting of perspiration running from her temples to her shoulder blades and the inevitable layer of grime from her countless drop-downs over the garage floor, Savannah had no doubt she was a hot mess from head to toe.

  Make that an achy, exhausted, halfway to starving hot mess. But the second Everett had thrown down the gauntlet with this gear drill, the unbidden snap of heat in her body had become sheer determination. If he thought she couldn’t pull her weight, he was going to be in for the mother of all rude awakenings. No matter how hot his body had felt against hers.

  “You ready for lunch?” Everett flipped his wrist to check his watch, and Savannah bent at the waist, bracing her palms over her thighs to catch her breath. She’d been so focused on proving herself with the task at hand that she hadn’t realized until now that they must’ve bypassed lunch by at least an hour.

  “I don’t know,” she said, cautious. Just because she thought she’d aced the last handful of drills he’d put her through didn’t mean he thought so, too. “Am I?”

  Everett turned toward the storage compartment at the back of the engine, grabbing a bottle of water from the small cooler inside and handing it over. “I might be here to train you, but like I said at breakfast, I’m not too interested in testing the threshold of your blood sugar levels. You’re no good to me or anyone else on engine if you pass out.”

  Savannah took three long, greedy swallows before coming up for air, and sweet baby Jesus, water had never tasted so delicious. “Aw, thanks, Everett. You’re a peach.”

  “You’re welcome.” He gave her a minute to finish her water, then one more to store her gear in the back step of the engine. “Lunch is usually do it yourself around here, depending on who’s on calls.”

  “Yeah, squad and ambo have been busy today, huh?” She flicked a glance at the empty slots in the engine bay as they crossed the space and headed toward the door to the house. The all-call had sounded off twice each for rescue squad and the ambulance since Rachel and O’Keefe had come back from their gruesome accident this morning, but requests for engine assistance had clocked in at a whopping zero. Much to the chagrin of Savannah’s overeager nerves.

  “A little. But don’t worry. We’ll haul out soon enough.”

  She followed Everett into the station, pausing to wash up and right her disheveled uniform as best she could before heading into the center of the house. Although the TV was on in the common room and Donovan and Jones were parked comfortably on the faded brown couch in front of it, the station house seemed eerily quiet without the rest of the group around.

  “Wow.” Savannah lifted her brows, joining Everett at the kitchen island. “I guess I never really thought there would be much downtime.”

  “Sometimes there isn’t,” he said. “But it’s not a bad plan to take a breather when you can. You never know when a shit storm will come down the pike.”

  He pointed to the loaf of bread and handful of sandwich fixi
ngs on the counter in wordless invitation, and Savannah’s stomach rumbled despite the simple ingredients.

  “Still.” She picked up a plate, her shrug feeling tighter than it should. Damned gear drills. “Doesn’t being idle feel weird to you? I mean, wouldn’t you rather be out on a call than sitting here making sandwiches?”

  Although Everett’s face remained neutral as always, she could swear she saw the tiniest hitch in his movements as he reached for the container of roast beef in front of him.

  “I’m a firefighter, Nelson. I’d rather be out on a call than doing anything. But you learn to take the downtime where you can get it, otherwise you’ll fry your motherboard.”

  “But I thought working hard was part of the deal,” she said. After all, she hadn’t been expecting a nine-to-five. Been there, done that. Most yawn-worthy year of her life, much to her mama’s chagrin. “How else am I going to learn how to do the job other than to do it?”

  Everett shook his head, muttering something about doing things the hard way instead of giving her an answer, and they spent the next few minutes putting together a pair of sandwiches in silence. While Savannah was tempted to demolish the turkey and Swiss in front of her in about three bites, she forced herself to take the slow road. If she didn’t want the sort of nickname that would accompany an episode of light-headedness, she could only imagine how unshakably bad her moniker would be if she tossed her cookies—or in this case, her entire lunch—on day one.

  “Okay,” Savannah said, finally brushing off her hands after she’d put an apple and a giant scattering of chips on top of the sandwich in her belly. “So what’s next on the agenda?”

  “You really are unfamiliar with the concept of pacing yourself, aren’t you?”

  Everett’s tone made it impossible to tell if he was teasing her or actually asking. But since her answer wasn’t going to change either way, she simply shrugged.

  “I’ll have plenty of downtime when I leave here. There are two whole days in between shifts,” Savannah said, her muscles thrumming with jittery anticipation even as they ached with fatigue. It couldn’t really be normal to not have one single call all morning, could it?