She watched him stroke the dash with one large hand as if attempting to soothe the hurt feelings of the little Mazda, then forced herself to swallow.
“Your most meaningful relationship, I assume?”
He grinned. “All my relationships are meaningful—they mean I’ve still got what it takes.”
She tutted. After a pause, she said in a more serious tone, “When I was a child, about six or seven years old, there was a fire on our street. We were all out there, watching. My dad and some of the neighbors were using garden hoses, but they weren’t getting anywhere. It was terrifying, and then the fire trucks arrived. The firefighters had a reassuring presence. They created some semblance of order out of the chaos, and they saved all of the people who were sleeping in that house. And the dog.”
“Of course. There’s always a dog in the best stories. So, you wanted to save people like they did?”
“Yes, I wanted to help people, but in a way that wasn’t…girlie. I wanted to be the reassuring presence because I had the skills to fix the problem. Not that it’s always possible to fix it.”
“No.” He grimaced, then shook his head. “You’ve always been one of the boys, huh?”
“Yes. So, that’s my reason for joining.” She studied his shadowed profile. “What about you? What was yours?”
“Well, it wasn’t always my dream job. In fact, I’d never given it a thought until I met Joe. Remember Joe?”
“I’ve heard of him.” All she knew was that the senior firefighter had died on the job. That had been before she joined the service. “Because he was a firefighter, you wanted to be one too?”
“That was part of it. Thing is, I had a liking for adrenaline, but I decided to put it to good use by fighting fires. That way, I could get my fix, and I’d be helping the community as well.” He paused. “You live in Parkside, don’t you?”
With a start she saw that they’d arrived in the neighboring suburb without her being aware of it. She’d been so focused on listening to Aaron, he could have taken her anywhere and she wouldn’t have noticed. Well, that was embarrassing.
She directed him through the leafy streets to her home, and they came to a stop outside her small, turn-of-the-century, stone-fronted house.
As Aaron twisted in his seat to give it an assessing look, she suddenly saw the house with impartial eyes. “It’s not like this inside,” she said in a hurry. “I’m renovating it bit by bit, and the garden is the last thing on my list. I’ll get around to it eventually.”
“You’re renovating it by yourself?”
“Pretty much. It’s slow work, but I’m not in a rush, so it doesn’t matter. The good thing about living alone is that there’s no pressure.”
One eyebrow rose as he said, “There are other benefits.”
“Well, naturally. No arguments about the color of the paint. No complaints about my choice of appliances.”
“You can eat pizza as often as you like, watch sport all day long on TV rather than painting.”
“True. There’s that too.”
He laughed. “Definitely one of the boys.”
Was it her imagination or had he moved closer while she was looking at the house?
“And yet you don’t look anything like a boy tonight.” He tugged on one of the curls sitting on her shoulder. “I wonder if it’s all an act.”
She swallowed. Definitely closer. His scent surrounded her and it was more than just his aftershave, she realized. It was all him, and it was intoxicating. She tried to conjure up a facial expression that said she was immune to his masculinity.
“You look beautiful.” Shuffling nearer still, he reached out a hand.
She drew in a sharp breath. “What are you doing?”
His eyes narrowed, and one side of his mouth kicked up into a knowing smile. “I was going to lift your bag out of the back. What did you think I was doing?”
Cringing inside, she tried to hide her embarrassment by saying quickly, “Nothing.”
His hand, which was still in midair, lowered slowly till it rested on her shoulder. “This, maybe?”
She started to speak, to deny thinking any such thing, but he stroked her cheek with his thumb, and her words evaporated, leaving only a whimper behind.
“Or what about this?” He slid his hand around to the back of her head, cupped it, and leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. Lightly. The barest of contact, really, but it was enough to make her hormones fizz like the bubbles in the champagne she’d been drinking.
He pulled back, and she gaped at him. She couldn’t believe he’d kissed her. She couldn’t believe that she wanted him to do it again, but it seemed her body had taken control of her brain, and every molecule of it was crying out for a rerun.
But he wasn’t moving. Why? Why wasn’t he moving?
And then she understood. If she wanted more, she’d have to make the first move.
With a shudder of excitement, and without giving herself a moment to second-guess what she was about to do, she reached up to take his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. For a frozen moment he didn’t react, and she could feel her heart thudding in her throat, but then he groaned into her mouth and pulled her tightly against him. And God, he was a good kisser. She’d certainly never been kissed with such expertise. Somehow he was making her feel the kiss in places he wasn’t even touching.
And then she stopped thinking.
Her body reacted with the speed of flammable foam to fire, her nerves zapping and buzzing with a desperation she’d never known and couldn’t control. She slid her hands around his neck, then upward into the short, silky hair at the back of his head.
He pushed the tracksuit jacket off her shoulders and pulled away from her mouth, long enough to drop a tormenting trail of kisses along her shoulder and up the side of her throat until she was stretching her neck to give him better access and squirming with desire. She moaned and turned her face, searching for his lips, needing to taste him, and then he was kissing her again, and his hands were sliding over the satin fabric leaving burning trails across her skin.
When he slid his fingers around to her bodice, and then under the edge of the fabric, she let out a moan, one that vibrated in her throat, and she felt his lips curve into a smile against her mouth. She felt like she’d been swept up by a wave and had left solid ground a long way behind.
She wanted to touch him as well, and she fumbled at the shirt buttons beneath his tie and suit jacket—he was wearing far too many clothes. She’d just managed to slip one hand inside his shirt and run her palm across his muscular chest, when he drew back and said, “You have a couch? A bed? Somewhere more comfortable than this?”
With the gearstick and the hand brake in the way, she couldn’t touch him the way she wanted to, and the frustration was killing her. She nodded. “I knew this car was too small.”
Before she’d finished speaking, he was out of the car and around her side, holding open the door. She grabbed her purse, stepped out of the car, and straight into his arms. He kissed her again, long and hard.
The sound of a car door closing somewhere nearby infiltrated the haze enveloping her. The wave she’d been riding deposited her on the ground with a mind-clearing bump.
She jerked away from him with a gasp of dismay. A few meters from them, her elderly neighbor was locking his car. To add to her embarrassment, he gave her a nod before heading through his front gate.
The reality of what she’d been doing hit her with force. This was Aaron. What was she thinking?
“Oh my God.” She pushed away from him and straightened her bodice. “You have to go.”
“Wait…”
But Jasmine wasn’t waiting for anything. She dug into her purse for the key on her way to the front door, doing her best not to trip over the hem of her dress.
Inside, she groaned at the sight that confronted her in the hallstand mirror. Her hair had come loose from its pins and curls floated around her face, making her look wild and…wanton.
From the state of her swollen lips, there was no doubt that she’d been thoroughly kissed, and shivers of remembered desire shook her.
She slumped against the door. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. What she’d been about to do. And…with whom.
…
Aaron hadn’t been able to sleep. Finally, he’d given up trying, had an early breakfast, and gone down to the apartment building’s health club to lift weights. It was the only way he could think of to get Mac out of his head—not that it had been very effective so far. He couldn’t remember the last time a simple kiss had stayed in his mind this way. It was all about the person he’d been kissing, rather than the kiss itself, and the problems this…incident…could stir up.
Damn. This was going to make working together interesting, to say the least.
It still floored him that he’d worked with her for years without the slightest urge to kiss her—hell, he’d been as likely to kiss Dave, who, quite frankly, had a face like a twisted Ugg boot—and suddenly, because she’d looked stunning in a dress, and because she’d looked at him with copper-colored eyes that seemed even bigger than normal, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Not that it had been one-sided at all…which made it even more mind-boggling.
…
Jasmine awoke, surprised that she’d managed to sleep at all, with a raging thirst thanks to downing enough champagne to float a small sailing boat. Well, not so much in truth, but way more than she was used to, and enough to give her a pounding head and make her swear to stay away from Zoe at any future parties Leanne might throw.
As she drank her third glass of water, the full horror of the kiss returned to her with appalling clarity. Aaron might have kissed her first, but she had flung herself at him.
Groaning, she bent over till her forehead met the countertop with a satisfying clunk. But it wasn’t satisfying enough, so she lifted it and let it drop again. And again. How could she have been such an idiot? Of all the dimwits in the world, she was the award-winning, cake-taking number one of all time.
For pity’s sake, if she’d had to lose control, why couldn’t it have been with someone else? Someone she didn’t work with. Someone she didn’t hold in such contempt—outside of work, that was. She had nothing but respect for him as a fellow firefighter. His private life was another matter entirely.
Aaron knew how she felt about his lifestyle; he could hardly be unaware, since she’d made it as clear as she possibly could during the time they’d worked together. And she’d been equally critical of the women who fell for his charm—the charm she’d always claimed to find unfathomable. Now, she’d behaved no better than a woman he’d picked up in a pub.
Like her mother.
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. After years of trying to show everyone—especially herself—that she was nothing like the woman who’d betrayed her family, she’d behaved exactly the same way. And with Aaron of all people.
It wasn’t just his lifestyle that bothered her, it was his smugness. He was sexy and he knew it. For years, she’d worked hard to convince him that he didn’t have the same effect on her as he seemed to have on every other female he came in contact with. And now all that effort was wasted.
Okay, she had to put this into perspective. She hadn’t slept with Aaron. It had been a kiss, no more than that. Although, it could have been more…it so nearly had been more.
All it had taken for her to melt into a puddle was for him to touch her cheek, to give her a tiny peck of a kiss, and to look at her as if he saw straight through her tough facade to the attention-starved woman underneath.
Oh, God, she would relive the embarrassment every single time she saw him, knowing that he of all people had witnessed her loss of control. Now he would know that the attitude she gave him was fake, that she was no less vulnerable to him than any woman in the universe, and that bugged her big-time.
She was never going to drink again, that much was a given. Definitely nothing containing bubbles. As sensible as the resolution might be, it didn’t help her now, did it? She had one more day off before the start of her next shift rotation.
One day before she had to face him.
Chapter Three
Shift handover probably wasn’t the time to be thinking about anything other than the day ahead. Aaron made an effort to focus his mind on the station officer’s voice. It wasn’t easy. Jasmine had hijacked his thoughts since Saturday night, and no matter what he’d tried to do on Sunday to clear his head, she’d still been the first image he saw when he’d woken this morning. And Jasmine had been the name on his lips, not Mac.
They’d barely finished the regular equipment cleaning and functional checks before the station alarm sounded. Pump One, the truck to which both he and Jasmine had been assigned for this shift rotation, was the one responding to the emergency. He raced to put on his turnout gear but was the last to reach the truck. As Dave was rostered to drive, he climbed into the rear of the cab, beside Jasmine.
She glared at him.
Right. He got the message. They needed to talk, but this was not the time, especially with Dave looking in his rearview mirror at them. He gave her a nod and took his seat.
“All right, guys?”
He nodded. “All right, Dave. Let’s go.”
He didn’t miss the fact that Dave’s eyes had narrowed, nor that it took him a fraction longer than necessary to withdraw his gaze and start the truck. That was all he needed, for Dave and the others to get wind of the fact that something had happened between him and Jasmine. He went cold just thinking about it.
The thing was, he didn’t do serious relationships. He certainly didn’t do commitment, and his workmates were all well aware of that fact. They were a team; they were supposed to watch out for one another’s safety, and they wouldn’t want him anywhere near Jasmine in anything other than a work capacity. They’d be justified too—he’d feel the same way if there were someone else in his position—and he also knew that if he did anything to hurt her, he would lose their respect. That was the very last thing he wanted.
His friend Joe had taught him that if you didn’t have the respect of your fellow firefighters, you had nothing. Respect for one another was vital to the successful operation of a firefighting crew, crucial to the confidence they needed in everyone’s abilities.
The crew was like a family. And after years of being alone, he’d liked the sound of what Joe described and wanted to be part of it. He’d yearned to have the security of a family without the emotional investment that came with a biological connection. He’d believed that in the fire service he’d found the safe place that a family should be, without the risk of having his heart ripped out.
Then Joe’s death on the job had torn him apart. He’d put Joe on the pedestal his father had vacated, and losing his friendship had taught Aaron that biology wasn’t the key to heartbreak; it was love.
He’d loved his father. They’d been a normal, happy family. Then, one day, his father had decided he couldn’t tolerate domesticity any longer and had taken off. For good.
He’d loved his mother, but she, unable to cope with the loss of her husband, had withdrawn from him. Withdrawn physically, because she’d shut herself away with a bottle, and withdrawn emotionally, because she’d had no more love to give him. By the time she’d died, he’d effectively lost her anyway. There’d been nothing left of the mother he remembered from his childhood.
Losing Joe had been his third strike, and he’d finally learned that the only way to avoid the unimaginable pain of losing someone he loved was to avoid putting himself in a vulnerable position in the first place. It was obvious, really. So now, he didn’t give anyone the opportunity to leave him. He was always the one to do the leaving.
“Aaron? Are you with us?”
“Sorry, John. Yes, I’m listening.” Damn, he couldn’t allow his rambling thoughts to interfere with his job. He had to put everything other than work out of his mind or he would be a danger to himself and others. �
�What have we got?”
“Accident on a construction site,” John, the crew leader, responded. “Worker stuck between studs on the sixth floor of a building. No lift operating as of yet. Sounds like we’ll need to put the ladder up to a window to bring him down.”
At the construction site, the company’s safety officer, an attractive woman in her early twenties, briefed them. It was clear that she’d been overwhelmed by the events of the morning and was out of her depth when it came to handling their questions. When her phone rang, she took it from her pocket and, looking close to tears, left them to get on with the rescue.
Aaron nodded in the direction of the safety officer while she explained to the caller what had happened. “She’s pretty young, isn’t she?”
Jasmine rounded on him. “What? Don’t you ever stop? Is everything a womanizing opportunity to you?” Her expression blazed. “We’re at work now, and this is the fire service, not a dating service.”
After glowering at him for another long moment, she made an exasperated sound and stormed toward the truck.
John and Dave looked at him, waiting for an explanation.
He shrugged. “I was only going to say that she doesn’t look old enough to be responsible for the safety of a site like this.”
“You could be right,” John said. “It might be a contributing factor to the accident, but we’ll work that out later. Let’s get the ladder up.”
“So what’s wrong with Mac?” Dave asked as he walked beside Aaron. “Why is she such a cranky pants this morning?”
Aaron blanked his face. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“Hmm. Her anger seems to be aimed at you. Any idea what that’s about?”
“Not a clue.”
Dave shook his head. “It’s not like her. She’s normally so levelheaded.”
As he separated from Dave, Aaron caught sight of her, jaw set, lips pursed. His guess was that she was as distracted as he was by memories of that kiss on Saturday. “Hey,” he said as he went to grab a harness. “That was unnecessary, you know. I wasn’t going to ask her out.”
Flirting With Danger Page 3