Chapter One
“The old lady’s out in her front yard again. Better suck in your gut, bubba.”
Ransom Raines looked up from where he was replacing the oil dip stick in the hook-and-ladder truck in the driveway of Dallas Fire and Rescue Station 58. He frowned at his friend and fellow firefighter Deacon Hollister. Just like Deke, Ransom’s gut didn’t need to be sucked in. Firefighters were required to work out at least one hour a day, and if that didn’t keep them in shape, lugging around sixty to seventy pounds of turnout gear would do the trick.
Thankfully they’d made it out of the hot and humid summer months and were currently enjoying the cooler days of autumn. After he flipped a long finger at his friend, a gesture at which Deke merely laughed, he turned his gaze toward the front yard in question. Sure enough, several houses down the street from the station was eighty-year-old Millie Champion, clad in a bright, form-fitting tank top and shorts, her bottled red hair blazing in the sun. She sat in one of the plastic loungers near the wide porch, legs stretched out along the lounge chair’s length. As he watched, she twisted her torso to look toward the house, and her niece Jane walked down the stairs from the front porch. The natural auburn in her dark hair sparkled in the sunlight. She, too, wore shorts and tank top, though the colors were more understated than her elderly aunt’s, and the fabric was loose.
The drab colors did nothing to negate the beauty of her long legs or the curvy figure hidden by her clothing.
“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Deke proclaimed. He let out a low wolf whistle. “That is one fine woman. Just look at that sweet ass.”
Jane had bent to hand her aunt a glass, probably filled with sweet tea, and then straightened to adjust a black-and-pink polka-dot umbrella in order to block the sun from the old woman’s face. Finished, the younger woman turned and looked right at the men as they stood there staring at her.
Deke, never one to miss an opportunity, lifted a hand and waved, a big grin near to splitting his face.
Both women lifted hands in greeting.
“Knock it off.” Ransom shot him a glare and resisted the urge to feed his friend a knuckle sandwich. He’d known Jane for about a year, having met her just after transferring to Station 58. Deke had been at the station house longer and had met her right after she’d moved in with her aunt five years ago. Because of that, Ransom always felt like Deke had an advantage.
And he didn’t like that one fucking bit.
“You want that, you should move on it,” Deke advised, turning to shut the door to one of the equipment compartments on the truck.
“That is a woman and she has a name,” Ransom said through gritted teeth. “Watch yourself.”
With another grin and hands held up in surrender, Deke backed away a couple of steps.
“You two getting any work done, or are you ogling the neighbors again?” Lt. Nathan Boone sauntered around the front of the truck, hands in his pockets, hazel eyes squinting against the strong mid-day sun.
“Raines is the one doin’ the ogling,” Deke said as he ambled into the big garage bay. “I was merely bein’ neighborly.”
“Uh-huh.” Boone rocked back on his heels and looked over the ladder truck. “You done here?”
Ransom nodded. “We’re a hundred percent on the engine, brakes, all the lights, and Deke resupplied the compartments.” He jerked his chin toward a clipboard on one of the folding chairs near the open garage door. “All I have to do is finish the checklist and file it.”
“Good work.” The lieutenant glanced toward the Champion’s house and one corner of his mouth tipped up. “You ready for tomorrow?”
Ransom scowled. Just because he might have advocated, often, that the station house host a pet adoption event for the non-profit Jane volunteered for didn’t mean that he had to like the guys poking fun at him. “I have nothing to do with tomorrow,” he responded, glad his voice came out even keeled. After being at Station 58 for a year, he got along just fine with his fellow firefighters. Still, he didn’t need to get slapped with a charge of insubordination in his file when he snarked at his lieutenant. He had to take the good-natured ribbing in the way it was intended.
“You’re taking possession of the mutt we’ve adopted.”
Ransom shot him a look. “Why me?”
Boone laughed. “’Cause it was your idea, ya newb.” He shrugged. “I know you want to do this mostly to spend time with Jane. You could do worse. She’s a nice woman, sweet, not hard on the eyes. And she likes animals, so she can’t be all bad.”
Ransom’s scowl darkened. He liked animals just fine, too, but he didn’t want to be tied down because he had to take care of one. “I figured a station dog would be, you know, a station dog.”
“Yep. But since it was your idea, you’ve got primary responsibility for him. Or you can tell Jane the event is off.” Boone gave him a jaunty two-fingered salute and strolled back into the garage.
Ransom muttered a curse under his breath. He figured the lieutenant was only bluffing; there was no way he’d halt a pet adoption the day before it was supposed to happen. But Ransom didn’t want to push him on it. Boone might just be ornery enough to cancel the event. With another curse, he hauled himself up behind the wheel of the truck and started the engine.
So now he’d be tied to a mutt he really didn’t want, all to get closer to a pretty woman whose smile lit up his world.
His lips slowly tipped up. It might just be worth it, he thought.
* * *
“How many dogs you adoptin’ out tomorrow?” Aunt Millie asked.
“Thirty-five. Everyone’s been pre-screened, paperwork signed, and the dogs have all been vaccinated, chipped, and neutered. Holding the event at the station is really just a way to make it convenient for people to come get their animals, instead of having to drive across town to the shelter.” Jane flipped her ponytail off her neck and thought, not for the first time, about getting a shorter hairstyle. The July humidity in Dallas was about to kill her.
“When do you have to leave to go get ’em?”
Jane took a sip of tea then set her glass on a small, glass table crouched between the two lounge chairs. “I’m meeting Sarah at seven.”
“Your best friend is a hoot. When is she comin’ over for another all-nighter?” Millie asked.
“Soon,” Jane promised. “She’s overloaded at work. I was lucky she’s able to help with the adoption event.”
“So if you meet her at seven, ’bout what time will you be at the station?”
“I think we’ll have the dogs loaded by eight, with help from the shelter staff, and be here by a little before nine. Hopefully we can get the dogs out to their new families right away.”
“Hmm.” Aunt Millie brought her glass to her mouth but paused. “You think that cute Ransom Raines will be at the event tomorrow?” she asked with a not-so-surreptitious look toward Station 58.
Jane glanced that way, too, and saw the big hook-and-ladder truck being backed into the oversized garage bay. She couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel, other than whoever it was had dark hair, but she thought it was probably Ransom. He’d been the one to pull it out of the bay to begin with.
Not that she’d been watching from the shelter of the porch or anything.
“Any man who can handle a rig that size, and so deftly, too, knows the proper way to use his hands.” Millie gestured with her glass, sending an ice cube over the side to land with a bounce on the grassy lawn. She looked at Jane with eyes that were as clear as a twenty-year-old’s and as knowing as a seasoned hooker.
“Aunt Millie!”
“I bet he knows how to use that sexy mouth of his, too,” the octogenarian went on and then took a sip of tea, her expression as guileless as a newborn’s.
“Aunt Millie!” Jane didn’t know why she was so shocked that something like this would be coming out of her aunt’s mouth, but there she was. Shocked. And a little embarrassed. Even if, frankly, she’d wondered the same thing.
She’d fantasized about those big hands and that sexy mouth. Good God, she only hoped Aunt Millie hadn’t as well. That would just be too weird. Creepy weird.
“Aunt Millie,” she began, eyes narrowed, “you don’t want—”
“Law, chil’. That boy, hell, all those boys, are fine to look at. None-a them is goin’ to want an old woman like me, even if I am as fine as I am. Besides, I’ve got my eye on a new fella in my bridge group at the senior center.” She gestured toward the station house, where Ransom now sat in a rickety folding chair just inside the open bay door. “No, my darling, I want him for you.”
“Oh.” That was better. She dropped her gaze to the glass in her hands, rubbing her thumbs through the condensation on the outside. “I’m older than he is.”
“So? Means you got more life experience. You’ll be a better, wiser partner than someone younger.”
Jane looked at her aunt. “Almost a decade older.”
“Seven is not almost a decade,” Millie argued. “Nine is almost a decade. And you’re barely seven years older.”
“Barely still counts.” She sighed and leaned back against her chair. She kicked her flip flops off, stretching her legs along the length of the towel-covered lounge chair.
“Only counts in horse shoes. Well, that’s not the exact saying, but you know what I mean.” Millie gestured again, this time keeping all the ice inside the glass. “Anyway, he knows you’re older and he’s still interested.”
“He doesn’t know how much older,” Jane muttered. She’d grown up with a mother who’d drifted from one husband to another, each one successively younger until the last one had been even younger than her own daughter. While Jane loved her mother, she’d never figured out why her last stepfather had been with her mom. It wasn’t like her mom had a bunch of money or property. And he’d seemed to be genuinely in love, but with a woman who was thirty-five years older than him. It happened all the time in Hollywood, that age difference, though usually the genders were swapped with the men being older than their wives.
Her mom had been dead for over ten years, and Jane still hadn’t come to terms with it. And now here she was, eyeing a younger man.
“Okay, then, if you’re so bothered by the age difference,” Millie said, “go out with him just for the sex. You aren’t getting any younger, you know. You could do with a good poke or two by a real man, not just from something that runs on batteries.”
“Aunt Millie!” Jane figured if her eyes got any rounder they’d pop right out of her face.
“What? Janie-girl, you’ve only dated twice in the five years you’ve lived with me, and one of those was a one-date-only thing. You yourself told me nothing progressed past a kiss on the cheek for either one. And you also told me that you and Sam didn’t have sex for two years before the divorce. Talk about almost a decade.”
“Someone recently told me that seven is not almost a decade,” Jane rejoined in as prim a voice as she could muster. She really wanted to laugh. Millie was everything Jane wanted to be—outspoken, wise, and grabbing onto life with both hands.
Now she just had to be brave enough to grab hold of Ransom Raines.
With both hands.