“Yes! That was it.” She drew back the bat.
“Now, now, Katie” came a wheezing voice. “Put down the bat.”
Never had Ryan been so glad to see an old man with an oxygen tank, especially one who moved that quickly across the floor. He took advantage of Katie’s moment of inattention to pluck the bat from her hands.
She stomped her foot with a furious look. “I wasn’t going to bonk you, but if I did, you’d deserve it.”
He shook a finger at her. “Peace and harmony, my friend. Peace and harmony.”
Too late, he realized he should have taken away her left foot along with the bat.
“Ow.”
Chapter Two
Why Katie felt the need to kick the most drop-dead gorgeous man she’d ever set eyes on, a man who’d thrown himself into a dangerous brawl to help Doug out, she really couldn’t say.
Blame it on the bad mood that had plagued her all day—the past two months, in fact, ever since her family had dumped this place on her. “Dump” being an ironically appropriate choice of word.
“I’m sorry,” she grudgingly told the blue-eyed god who looked like he’d stepped off a movie set. Actually, maybe he was an actor traveling through San Gabriel on his way to Los Angeles and his next gig. “My foot slipped.”
“Right.” The man bent down to check on Doug. That movement had the effect of pulling his tan-colored T-shirt tight against his shoulder muscles. Which, in turn, had the effect of making her stare—which put her in an even worse mood. “You okay, man?”
“He’s fine,” said Katie. “Well, mostly fine. The paramedics are on their way.”
Doug muttered something. Katie knew he must be totally humiliated. Why had she let him talk her into that stupid bouncer job? The Hair of the Dog needed someone to bring people in, not keep them out.
The stranger stood up, unfurling himself to his full six feet plus of high-octane masculinity. “Look, I’m sorry I butted in if it wasn’t what you wanted.” The impact of his summer-blue eyes took away any chance of her answering.
Instead, she turned away to face the goggle-eyed “Drinking Crew,” as her father called them, who were practically falling off their bar stools. She put her arm under Dr. Burwell’s elbow. “Let’s get you back to your seat. Can’t have you gallivanting all over the bar, it’s not good for your health.”
Dr. Burwell resisted. “Want to offer the young hero my services. I used to be a doctor, lad. Want me to take a look at anything?”
Katie bit her lip at the deeply uneasy look that spread across Mr. Gorgeous’s face. She noticed Dr. Burwell didn’t offer to help Doug. The Crew had never taken to him.
“No thanks, sir. This is nothing. I’ll shake it off in no time.”
“And what’s your name, young Galahad?”
Those devastating blue eyes flicked to hers. She felt a flush creep up her cheeks. At least it was too dark in this hellhole for anyone to notice but her.
“Name’s Ryan. Thanks for the visit. Can’t remember a more enjoyable afternoon.” He spoke in a slow drawl that didn’t fool her. She’d seen how fast he was with his fists.
Sirens sounded outside.
Ryan cleared his throat. “I should get going now.” Interesting. Clearly he wanted to be gone before the paramedics came inside. He lifted a hand in a general wave.
“Come back any time and I’ll stand you a drink,” called Dr. Burwell.
Katie snorted. “You haven’t paid for a drink in five years.”
“You’re exaggerating, my dear. Why, just the other day . . .”
But she tuned him out so she could focus her attention on Ryan’s exit. The rear view was as pulse-tingling as the front. His blue jeans rode just right on his hips, his T-shirt had come untucked in the back. She watched, fascinated, as he dug one hand into his front pocket. That action tightened his jeans against his butt in the most hypnotic way.
She snapped out of it just in time to not be staring at his rear when he turned.
“Forgot to pay for those last two shots,” he said, sorting through a handful of bills.
“Oh, forget it.” Embarrassed, she waved him off. Did he really think she’d let him pay after she’d kicked him in the shin? “It’s on the Hair of the Dog.”
“Appreciate it.” One slow wink, and he was gone.
“My, my,” said Dr. Burwell. “Katie giving away drinks. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“What are you talking about? I might as well be running a charity here.”
A small gang of paramedics burst through the door. Katie gestured toward Doug. They immediately began tending to him.
“Will he be okay?” she asked after they’d tested his vitals and strapped him onto a gurney. She wasn’t too worried about Doug, who was both accident-prone and a hypochondriac. Over the years she’d learned that worrying over him was a waste of energy.
A young paramedic answered, “Looks like a broken arm. He’ll be at the Good Samaritan. Do you want to come with us?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Doug, with a white-lipped, martyred look. “Don’t leave on my account.”
“I’ll come see you later,” she promised. She couldn’t leave the bar, and even if she could, hovering over Doug would give him the wrong idea—the same wrong idea he’d had ever since she’d broken up with him.
The paramedics whisked Doug off. Katie guided old Dr. Burwell back to his bar stool. It took the full length of that walk for her to get her pulse back to normal. Ryan the Gorgeous was trouble. Bad for her blood pressure. Good thing she’d likely never see him again. She had enough to worry about.
Starting with certain bar tabs.
She walked behind the bar—which she hoped was her power position—and stood facing the four members of the Crew. “Okay, you guys, this is getting serious. None of you has paid up in weeks. You know I instituted that new policy. No more bar tabs.”
The old men hung their heads and exchanged sidelong looks with one another. Katie felt as if she were chastising a bunch of third-graders.
“Aw, Katie. You know we would if we could,” said Sid.
“You don’t get it. They’re about to cut off our beer deliveries. Like, next week, if I don’t figure something out. I can’t pay the bill. I can’t even pay part of the bill.”
“Beer is highly overrated,” rumbled Archie, a former newspaper columnist for the San Gabriel Herald. “A serious drinker will always choose one of the hard liquors. When he decided to drink himself to death, Ian Fleming chose Chartreuse, not Budweiser.”
Katie winced. The phrase “drink himself to death” seemed a bad choice given the average age of her customers. “Well, whatever Ian Fleming drank, hopefully he paid for it. And the fact is that the Hair of the Dog is a bar, and a bar without beer is like a . . . a . . .”
“Fish without a bicycle,” offered Archie.
“No, that’s my whole point—”
Sid chimed in. “A woman without a man?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Let’s not go there. Bars need beer. Beer distributors need money.”
“Ergo, you need our money. Quod erat demonstrandum.” The fourth member of the crew, Mr. Jamieson, a former Latin and French teacher at the local private school, gave a flourish. “Quite easily done.” He pulled a rattling pile of coins from his pocket. “The next round is on me.”
Katie peered at the coins, none of which looked familiar. “What are these?”
“Part of my collection. One of those coins is actually quite valuable, if you’d care to take it to an antiquarian.”
Katie laughed despite herself. She had to admit the Crew had their entertaining moments. “Look, keep your coin collection. But do me a favor. I’m trying something new tonight. A promotion.”
“You’re promoting someone?”
“But you barely have any employees.”
“No, a promotion. To bring more people in.”
Sid looked horrified. “Do we know them?”
“No. That’s the who
le point. These are going to be new people. People who might have money.”
Dr. Burwell shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s wise. Who knows what riffraff might show up?”
“We’ll have to take that chance. Tonight, I don’t want all the bar stools filled up by you guys. Do you think you could find another place to hang out for one night?”
“Absolutely,” said Archie. “Count on us, my dear. We’ll remove ourselves to one of the booths.”
The men cackled and agreed, looking delighted with one another.
Katie threw up her hands in utter frustration. Maybe she should lock them in a closet during the party tonight. Part of her wished she could cut them off entirely, but her father would throw a fit. He loved the Crew and knew how to handle them, but she was hopeless at it. They walked all over her. They really didn’t seem to grasp the dire state of things at the Hair of the Dog. Not even her father seemed to get it.
Unless he did, and her parents had skipped off to Baja with the intention of leaving her permanently in charge. In which case she’d be fully within her rights to lock the door of the Dog for good and get back to her regularly scheduled life. The one in which her peace of mind was rarely—make that never—disturbed by freakishly handsome strangers.
Ryan’s gut tightened as he approached the side door of Station 1. It had been a year and a half since he’d left in disgrace. From hotshot to hell in the time it took to answer a doorbell.
The door swung open easily. Captain Brody ran a tight ship and demanded that everything, even the door hinges, be kept in topnotch working condition. Ryan walked into the apparatus bay where the rigs lived. His eyes went immediately to his beloved Engine 1. Tingles shot through him, a physical reaction to the sight of the magnificent piece of equipment that had transported him, provided the wet stuff, and generally backed him up at so many fires he couldn’t even count them. Engine 1 had never let him down. The crew had never let him down.
But he’d let them down.
“Back to the scene of the crime, eh?”
Ryan looked up to find Captain Brody, feet spread, arms crossed. He would have looked awe-inspiring without that giveaway twinkle in his gray eyes.
“Captain.” Ryan stepped forward to shake Brody’s hand, only to find himself pulled into a bear hug.
“Good to see you, Hoagie.” Ryan winced. It had been a while since anyone had called him Hoagie—the nickname he’d acquired as a rookie thanks to his favorite sandwich.
“Good to see you too.” His chest tightened under Brody’s penetrating gaze. That man saw everything. He’d even seen through Ryan’s teenage recklessness and spotted a natural-born firefighter. He’d mentored Ryan, taught him, guided him, and been the closest thing to a caring father Ryan had ever had.
Even though Brody had ordered him to take a leave of absence or get fired, Ryan still loved the man. “How’s Melissa?”
Brody’s face lightened, as mention of his wife always guaranteed. “Great. You’ll have to come over some time, meet Danielle.”
“I heard you’d taken in a foster child. She’s still with you?”
“We filed papers to adopt her.”
Ryan smiled broadly. Brody and Melissa would be great parents to any child, foster, adopted, or otherwise. If anyone deserved a happy family, Brody did. Personally, Ryan had no experience of such a thing. “So . . . uh . . . I was hoping we could talk.”
“Sure. Come in the office.”
“Anyone around?” He didn’t want to see any of his former crew members until he knew where he stood.
Brody seemed to understand. “Business first, then you can catch up.” He clapped a hand onto Ryan’s shoulder and led him down the corridor that passed through the living quarters of the station. Ryan didn’t let his eyes stray to the tiny room where he’d spent two nights a week for so many years. It hurt too much. They passed through the kitchen, where the sound of a TV echoed. Someone was watching the Iron Chef. Maybe looking for ideas for that night’s dinner.
When they were safely in Brody’s office with the door closed, Ryan sank down into a chair. The office looked different, though it took a moment for him to pin it down. It had toys in it, that’s what it was. A smiley-face doll lay slumped in a corner, about to get run over by a plastic tricycle. Stan, the firehouse dog, a beagle mutt with a mangled ear and an obsession with Captain Brody, napped among the toys. “I didn’t know how tough it was going to be to come back here.”
“We’ve missed you,” said Brody as he took his seat behind his desk. “You’ve been gone longer than I expected.”
“Well, I had a lot of thinking to do.”
“Did you?” Brody gave him that see-to-the-bottom-of-his-soul look. “What have you been up to since you left?”
Ryan shifted in his chair. He trusted Brody above all men, but some things were hard to talk about in a testosterone-loaded place like a firehouse. “I went to the desert. Camped out. Looked at the stars. Read a lot.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve always liked to read, you know.” Ryan said this defensively. Fire stations were notorious for their relentless teasing, and he’d always been a favorite target thanks to his looks. He’d learned to keep a lot of stuff private.
“I know.”
Of course he did. Brody knew everything.
“Anyway, I ran into this hermit guy who lives out in the desert, and we got to be buddies. He had some damn good cactus . . .” Ryan cleared his throat. “He told me about this monastery. So I went there.”
Brody’s quick look of surprise told Ryan he’d finally caught his captain off guard.
“You can never tell the guys.”
Brody merely lifted one shoulder a fraction of an inch, but that single motion conveyed so much. Ryan relaxed, knowing Brody wouldn’t say a word, and that he was eager to hear all about the monastery.
“It was the first time in my life I wasn’t moving around all the time, you know? That’s what I liked most. They had some talks too, not that I understood everything they were saying. Mostly I liked having a chance to catch my breath. Especially after what happened.”
Brody leaned back in his chair. “So you did some contemplating.”
“I guess so. Then I ran out of money, so I hitched into Los Angeles and picked up some work there.”
“What kind of work?”
“Nothing to do with fires. Landscaping, mostly. Digging, building rock walls.” He’d worked harder than he ever had in his life, but every blister-ridden moment had felt good.
“So. You did some thinking at the monastery. Then you sweated it out with some manual labor. Now what?”
“I want to come back, Captain. I think I’m ready.”
Brody picked up a paperweight shaped like a volcano and hefted it in his hand.
“It wasn’t just the damage you did to the plug-buggy.”
“I know.”
“That woman nearly died.”
“I swear to God, I didn’t even know she was there.”
“You should have known. We had girls pulling all kinds of crazy stunts after Melissa’s report aired.”
“I know. Whoever came up with that Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel crap ought to be shot. Oops.” He paled. “It wasn’t Melissa, was it?”
“Of course not. Don’t try to blame this on her.” The fire in Brody’s eyes rivaled the lava that would have poured out of that volcano had it not been a paperweight.
“God, no. It was my fault. I should have checked inside the rig.”
The girl, Ginny Lee, had hidden herself in the station’s pickup truck, known as the plug-buggy, after she’d seen him return from EMT recertification. She’d hoped to surprise Ryan. Instead she’d gotten a gunshot wound when a fire scene had gone haywire. If Ryan had followed procedure and not rushed out alone, she would have faced nothing worse than a scolding from the captain. When Ryan had tried to visit her at the hospital, she’d refused to see him. Then she’d moved back to Illinois, no forwarding address.
“I know.” Ryan looked at the floor. Of course he’d been those things. But how could he convince Brody he’d changed?
“It practically killed me to lose you.” Brody slapped the paperweight onto the desk with a sharp crack. Stan opened an eye halfway, then dropped it shut again. “The best goddamn firefighter I’ve ever known. You were like a force of nature, Ryan. It was a thing of beauty to watch you fight a fire. Not to mention all the work I put into training you. All that, up in smoke thanks to one moment of stupidity.”
Ryan tried to speak, but Brody rolled right over him, growing ever more heated with each word.
“And yet it wasn’t one moment. If it had been only one moment, I could have overlooked it. A couple days without pay, end of story. But no. It was a pattern of reckless, daredevil behavior. Every time you risked your own neck, you put the rest of my guys in danger.”
Ryan felt sick. In the heat of the moment, he didn’t think about the others. He thought about the fire and how he could beat it.
“You were goddamn lucky you never killed anyone. And now you want me to put you back on the job?”
Ryan stared at a spot on the floor, a stain on the scarred linoleum, fighting to not explode into anger. The biting tone in the captain’s voice made him want to beat up ten more back-alley guys. He breathed deep. The captain had some good points, harsh as they might be. He’d fucked up. Nearly gotten a girl killed. How dare he ask to come back?
And yet . . . slowly, he got a grip on himself. He lifted his eyes and squarely met the captain’s blistering gaze.
“Yes. I want to come back.” He was a firefighter, through and through. He ought to be fighting fires.
“What’s that cut on your knuckle?”
“Nothing.” Ryan had forgotten about it.
“Were you fighting?”
Ryan got to his feet. In the old days, he would have either hidden the truth or lashed out. Now he gave Brody a level look. “I don’t fight anymore, not unless I have to. Two guys were beating down a bouncer. I had to step in. I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy it. But I didn’t start it.” He hoped Brody would believe him, but he wasn’t going to beg like a child.
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