Mason retrieved the bags holding the fixings for chicken Alfredo from the seat beside him. He had stopped and picked the ingredients up under the guise of providing her with a hot lunch while he waited for her to upload the pictures. It wasn’t the “lunch date in the safety of a crowded restaurant” he’d envisioned when he’d issued the invitation. And that made him nervous.
“Jesus, get a grip Ramsey. This isn’t the first time you’ve been to a woman’s house.” He growled into the silence of the truck.
Wrenching the truck door open wide, he slid out. With a bag in each hand, he crossed the lawn and climbed the porch steps. His gaze locked on wooden door before him. He shifted the bags, and raised a hand to knock. Before his fist contacted the front door, it swung open to reveal the person who had occupied his thoughts almost non-stop for the past four days.
“Mason,” Annie’s hand flew to her chest and she stumbled back a step. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Sorry to scare you.” He gestured toward the groceries he carried. “I brought lunch.”
“Oh really?” she murmured, the smile touching her lips. Waves of heat rocketed through him, giving him pause on the wisdom of his presence here. “I was just going to run out and grab a quick bite,” she quickly added, “but since you’re here now I don’t have to bother.”
“Are you sure? You might want to keep that as a back-up plan. You haven’t tasted my cooking yet.”
“I’ll take my chances. I don’t know many firefighters who are lousy cooks.” She grinned, stepping aside and allowing him access to her inner sanctum. “Comes with the territory.”
“Just remember I warned you.”
“Duly noted.”
Mason stepped into the small foyer. The tiny living area was immaculate. Every corner of the space was spick and span. The sofa, though well worn, was clean. A handmade afghan graced the back. A neat and tidy stack of magazines sat on the coffee table in front of the couch.
Mason glanced across the open layout of the space. The kitchen area was open to the rest of the house affording anyone in the kitchen the opportunity to talk to whoever else was in the house.
To the left of the kitchen area stood a dining room table. A crystal vase occupied the prominent position in the middle of the table. It was the most expensive looking item he could see in the house so far.
“Come on in.” Annie swept one arm wide while reaching for a one of the bags. “Here let me take one of these.”
Mason’s gaze fell to the gentle sway of her backside in the tight jeans she wore as he followed her across the space.
He followed suit as Annie set the bag on a small kitchen island. Unpacking it, her gaze shot to his as she pulled fresh broccoli, chicken, carrots, and numerous other ingredients from the depths. When he had finished unloading the second bag, a bottle of wine and a loaf of Italian bread had joined the other items, including the carrot cake he had purchased for dessert.
Eyeing the collection, Mason suddenly felt unsure of himself. When he had made the purchases, it had seemed like a good plan. Now, however, he wondered how it would look through Annie’s eyes.
Would she think he was coming on too strong?
“I swear it’s just a friendly lunch Annie.” He laughed, hoping to alleviate some of her unease.
Hell, how could he make her feel any less apprehensive when he felt the same way? Something about Annie made him feel like a school boy who had never even kissed a girl before.
“I believe you.” Amusement danced in her eyes. “I’m just curious to see what we are having.” Her gentle laugh rippled through the air. For the first time since he pulled into the driveway, Mason felt some of the doubt ease from him.
“Well you’ll have to wait and see.” He smiled in response. He’d been doing an unusual amount of that since meeting Annie. “Point me in the direction of your basic equipment and I’ll get this started while you work on the pictures.”
“Pots and pans are on the rack here.” She waved her hand above their heads like a magician revealing the hidden bunny. “Knives are over there in the block.” Annie pointed to the countertop beside the stove. “Make yourself at home. Feel free to look around if there’s anything else you need.” She finished. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” A deliciously wicked smile graced her lips. The heat in his middle went from smoldering to searing. “At least nothing in here.”
Mason’s gaze followed her sweet behind down the hallway. He presumed the sleeping area of the home and a bathroom branched off the hall.
Mason shuddered with desire when a picture of Annie lying naked and sated in bed flashed to mind. The image of him lying beside her nearly knocked the breath from him.
“Get a grip would ya.” Mason muttered.
He set to work, putting the precooked food in a pan to warm up while he prepared the pasta and vegetables.
~&~
Annie concentrated on her gait, resisting the urge to skip down the hallway.
Mason Ramsay had been the last person she’d expected to see when she opened the door. Yet, there he’d stood with grocery sacks in hand containing food he intended to make for her. A man cooking in her kitchen was foreign to Annie. Aside from her father. He had been the only man who had ever prepared any sort of meal for her. And, on the rare occasions that Camille hadn’t been there to cook for them, Joseph Andrews idea of dinner had been whatever he could find in the frozen food section of the local market. Her mom, on the other hand, was an excellent cook.
Annie gathered her laptop and photo printer from their spot on the small desk in the corner of her room. It wouldn’t bode well for her to invite Mason into her bedroom. Her heart thudded in her chest.
She scooped her camera from the dresser top, and made her way back down the hall. Annie stopped at one end of the table, and deposited her cargo before stooping to plug the gear in.
The unmistakable sensation of being watched skittered over her. One glance in the direction of the kitchen proved her senses were right. Her gaze caught and locked with Mason’s where he stood in the kitchen. The distance seemed to close between them even though neither had moved a step.
Annie worried her bottom lip for several seconds before he broke the contact. Her legs turned to jelly and she grasped the edge of the table to avoid slumping to the floor in a heap
What the hell was wrong with her? One minute she was a functioning adult. And the next second, with a single look from this man, she was reduced to a lust struck girl.
“Do you have a corkscrew?”
The soft spoken question startled Annie out of her reverie.
“Excuse me?”
“A corkscrew.” He held the bottle of wine up for her inspection. “You know, the curly metal thing used to open this?”
“Yeahh, yeahh smart ass.” She groused, embarrassment heating her face. “Top drawer, left side of the sink.”
Utensils rattled as he searched the contents of the drawer before he withdrew the requested item.
“Thanks.” He placed the wine in the freezer to chill. “I wasn’t sure if you liked wine, but I thought I’d give it a shot.”
“Um yeahh,” Annie stammered, willing her body to relax. After all he wasn’t asking her to go to bed with him, just have lunch and some wine while they did some work. After that, he would leave. He was only being nice. Like he said when he arrived, it was the least he could do since he’d been the one responsible for her working on her day off. “I’m not a huge wine drinker, but a little now and then is nice.” She moved toward the kitchen, hoping he couldn’t see how much his presence flustered her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Sure.” He grabbed the boiling pan of noodles from the stove, and moved to the sink where the colander waited. “You can set the table if you want to.”
“I think I can handle that.”
They worked in a comfortable silence. He seemed right at home moving his large body around in her kitchen. She could find no complaint with the way he moved it eit
her.
In fact, it was darned enticing. Several times she caught herself distracted by the lithe movement as he stirred the ingredients together.
Annie swallowed in an attempt to wet her suddenly dry throat. The rate she was going she probably wouldn’t be able to swallow even one bite of the delicious smelling food.
With trembling fingers she took the bread from its paper wrapper and placed it in the breadbasket she kept for just such an occasion. With the basket in hand, Annie grabbed the butter from the counter and set the items on the table.
“How’s it going in there, Chef Mason?”
“Dinner is served.”
Annie couldn’t stifle the laugh his exaggerated bow evoked. She gathered the wine and glasses followed him to the table.
An air of intimacy blanketed the room as they took their places at the table. Did Mason notice it too or was it entirely one sided on her part?
Annie forked the first bite into her mouth and found herself extremely impressed. Indeed, Mason did have a hidden talent for cooking. “Oh my,” her eyes locked on his. “I think I know who’s going to be doing a lot of the cooking around the station.”
“Hey now,” Mason chuckled, “Don’t go telling my secret. I’ve kept it hidden quite well till now.” He finished, popping a piece of bread into his mouth.
“Okay, but my silence will cost you.”
“I think I can afford your silence.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that Mr. Ramsay.”
The rest of the meal passed in comfortable silence intermingled with small talk. The topic that brought him to her door in the first place avoided for the time being.
Neither seemed eager to discuss the apparent serial arsonist in their midst.
Annie gathered the dinnerware from the table while Mason placed the remains of the meal in containers before putting them in the refrigerator.
Once the kitchen had been returned to its pre-dinner meal, the pair made their way back into the dining room.
“It’ll take me a few minutes to print these out.” Annie said. Should she show him the additional pictures? Pictures of the other scenes she had taken without anyone’s knowledge.
She flipped the flash drive holding the pictures in her fingers as she printed out the current pictures.
Maybe if she showed the older photos to Mason he would be able to dispel the serial arsonist theory. After all, he had more experience in the field than she did.
Annie glanced across the table.
“There’s something I didn’t tell Chief or you earlier.” Annie rushed on before he could interrupt, “I have some pictures I want you to look at. If you don’t think they’re of any importance I’ll take your word. If, on the other hand, you do, we need to show them to Chief along with yesterday’s batch.”
“Okay.”
Annie popped the flash drive into the port on the side of the computer. Her gaze wandered to his face while they waited for the pictures to upload. What was going through that good looking head?
“These were taken at a couple of the other fires we’ve had lately. They’re not the greatest quality. I used the camera on my cell phone and emailed them to myself, but I think you can get the gist of them.”
“If I see anything questionable, I might be able to touch it up with some equipment I have of my own.” Mason smiled at her, nearly knocking the breath from Annie’s lungs.
“Great,” she laughed, shakily “If we put our gear together, we could probably open a photography studio.”
“Now there’s an interesting thought.”
“Like you’d give up your career as a firefighter to become a photographer!” she scoffed. “You’d be bored out of your mind in no time at all without the adrenaline rush.
“Never know. At some point we all have to walk away from the job, and find something easier on our bodies. It might be nice to have a quiet job with normal hours.”
“The hours I kept were far from normal.” She hit a button on the keyboard and the pictures began flashing across the screen. “Here we go.”
They scoured the images for any signs of foul play. Mason had her print out several shots he deemed questionable, before they moved on to the more current ones.
Two hours later, Annie stood up and stretched her cramped back. It had been a long time since she’d spent so many hours hunched over a computer screen.
“We need to look at these a little closer.” He waved the printouts in question back and forth. “I say we hold off taking them into Chief until I can clean them up. We can take the more current ones in.”
“What are you going to do with those?” Annie dipped her head in the direction of the photos in Mason’s hand.
“How would you like to take a little road trip with me?”
“A road trip?” She fought hard to tamp down the thrill of spending more time with Mason, “When? Where?”
“Now and a little town east of here.”
“Does this little town have a name? And what would we be going there for?”
“Come on Annie! Let it be a surprise.” He pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, “Or don’t you trust me.”
It wasn’t Mason that she didn’t trust, Annie admitted to herself. At least not physically anyway. She met his brown gaze. Oh no, physically she had no worries where Mason Ramsay was concerned. Her emotional safety was another question entirely.
Even still, Annie wasn’t about to turn down an opportunity to spend more time with him. She’d been too careful for too long.
“I trust you entirely.” Annie said. And she had never meant anything more. That realization alone should have had her running for cover. She’d spent too many days letting some faceless person rule her actions. “And therein lies the problem.”
“Good now let’s get moving.” Mason moved to gather the materials. “Maybe I’ll even treat you to dinner.”
“Twice in one day?” Her pulse raced at the thought of spending more time with him. “How do I rate?”
“Pretty high actually.”
Those three little words sent the butterflies dancing through her with lightning speed.
CHAPTER FOUR
It never fails. Annie mused as she leapt from the chair she had just sat down in. Every time we’re about to get a good meal, a call comes in!
Annie raced behind the others as they sprinted from the day room, and ascended the stairs to the apparatus bay and their gear waiting there.
Information sounded from the overhead radio system, filling them in on the known details of the emergency.
“Hammond’s Bend fire station one, show you responding to one four seven nine, east Townsend road. Report of a structure fire, unknown whether the building is occupied. One four seven nine Townsend on a structure fire. Time out, seven forty five hours. Central dispatch clear.” The disembodied voice of the dispatcher ceased.
Racing through the bay, Annie skidded to a stop in front of her rack. She made quick work of donning her turnout pants, and boots in one fell swoop, before pulling her protective Nomex hood over her head and down onto her neck. Annie slipped into her turnout coat, and fastened all of the closures on the front of it as she went. She left the bag containing her mask where it hung on the front of her coat where she knew it would be when she needed it. With a final swipe, she gathered her gloves and helmet from the top shelf of her rack, and hurried to secure her place in the back of the fire engine. John sat in the driver’s seat of the idling apparatus.
Annie found her place in the back compartment, and shoved her arms through the straps of the air pack clipped in its holder on the back of the seat she occupied. Once that was done, she fastened the waist strap in place. She tightened both the shoulder straps first before cinching down the waist strap and ensuring the vital piece of equipment stayed securely in place on her back.
Once she’d finished the task, she removed her mask from the bag, and pulled it over her head. Though the mask made her sound a lot like Darth Vader, it made the difference b
etween whether she breathed in clean air or lungs full of deadly toxins generated by the fire. Satisfied with its placement, she pulled tight the four straps that held it in place. She slid the protective hood up her neck. The edges of the hole in the front overlapped her mask. All traces of her hair were covered by the protective material. Annie shoved her helmet over the top of the hood, and fastened the chin strap. The final step of preparation was slipping on the fire retardant gloves.
When all the gear was in place, it was often difficult to tell one firefighter from another. This was one of the driving forces behind the stern accountability of the firefighters on a fire scene. Every firefighter that entered into a fire scene was required to leave one of the two name tags fastened to their gear.
The radio attached to her air pack squawked to life. The Lieutenant fired off assignments to each firefighter on the engine.
Annie held her breath in anticipation. If Thompson and Hamilton were on the first attack line, that meant that Mark would be getting the second nozzle, leaving her to rehab air tanks again. And if that happened, she was definitely going to have that discussion with the Lieutenant when they returned to the station.
“Gentlemen and lady, listen up.” Steve began. “We have a confirmed structure fire. Single story dwelling. Nothing remarkable as far as contents go. Mark, I want you to grab the hydrant.”
“Andrews, Ramsay, grab the second line.”
Annie nodded her understanding, and cast a quick glance in her new partner’s direction. They locked eyes, and she gave him a quick nod, before she turned to stare out the large window overlooking the hose bed of the engine behind them. Butterflies tumbled around in her stomach. Though most wouldn’t admit it, it was a phenomenon that almost every firefighter experienced before going into a burning building. She focused on her breathing, and forced down the case of the jitters racing through her body.
Large plumes of black smoke became visible. All other thoughts flew from her mind as she mentally prepared. She had mere seconds to deploy the line from its resting place on the top of the engine and get to her appointed position. Luckily the nozzles were already in place on the ends of each line, saving them precious minutes.
Where There's Smoke: The Heroes of Hammonds Bend(Romantic Suspense) Page 4