Luke Slater hung forty feet over the city of Remington by a hand, a harness, and a Hail Mary. Ironically, the situation didn’t shove him into the brand of heart-slamming, utterly paralyzing panic it would incite in nearly anyone else; hell, it didn’t even make him consider blowing his breakfast the way he almost had the first time he’d been up this high with no ceilings or floors or plate glass windows to comfort his brain’s fear center. Then again, from all the practice drills he and his fellow firefighters ran during every shift to the “this-is-not-a-drill” risks they took every time a building started to burn, being Station Seventeen’s rookie for the last seven months had given his adrenal gland one hell of an attitude adjustment.

Which was fine by Luke, really. If recalibrating his holy-shit barometer was the pre-requisite for helping people when they needed it most, that seemed like a fair trade.

After all, if there was one thing he’d grown gold-star good at in his twenty-four years, it was putting a tourniquet on his emotions when life handed over a big, bloody mess.

“Okay, rookie. Now what?”

His engine lieutenant, Ian Gamble, leaned his well-inked forearms on the neatly bricked edge of Station Seventeen’s roof. The guy raised one dark brown eyebrow over a stare the exact same color as he leveled Luke with a look that read, you got yourself into this, now get yourself out. Luke had learned real fast not to take his lieutenant’s sledgehammer-serious stare personally. When Gamble was rationing up shit, he was in a decent mood. When Gamble clapped his trap completely? Yeah, that was when Luke knew he’d fucked something up on a royal level. And seeing as how he was on the business end of the bricks and this was the first time he’d ever done this particular drill without Gamble right there at his hip talking him through every micro-movement, he really, really didn’t want to fumble the job like a football on game day.

So he dug deep and said, “Now I assess the situation and execute the rescue protocol accordingly. Think, then act.”

The corners of Gamble’s mouth edged up by the slightest degree—barely a movement, let alone a smile—but from the six foot five former Marine, the gesture might as well have been a bear hug and a nice, hot cup of cocoa. “Good. But let’s do both today, huh? I’m not getting any younger, and it’s hot as balls up here.”

Luke squashed his return smile before it could make the journey from his synapses to his lips. Yeah, Gamble was a good teacher, and beneath the rough, gruff badass thing he had going on, he seemed to be an even better guy. But as much as Luke respected everyone at Station Seventeen and even liked them on a professional level, he wasn’t here to go the Kumbaya route with any of his fellow firefighters.

Arm’s length was safer. Smarter.

Necessary.

So he gave up a clipped nod and applied an equally clipped tone to his voice as he battened down his expression and said, “Copy that, Lieutenant.”

Inhaling a large breath of courage and end-of-April sunshine, Luke eyeballed his current circumstances in an effort to formulate a rescue plan that wouldn’t turn him into Elmer’s paste. He was four stories above the fat ribbon of asphalt leading from the side door of the engine bay to the alcove where they kept their trash and recycling bins (surroundings, check). He’d just maneuvered himself over what any sane person would call the wrong side of the waist-high bricks mortared around the perimeter of the roof (situation, check). The thick, bright blue straps of his harness put equal, squeezing pressure where they were looped over his shoulders, hips, and thighs (gear, check). His “victim”, a.k.a. his engine-mate, Shae McCullough, grinned up at him from her spot about fifteen feet below, where—for the purposes of this drill—her own safety gear had “failed” and Luke had to go rescue her (objective, check). He knew the protocol for a rope transfer like this backward, forward, and upside down, which meant he knew exactly what he needed to do next.

“Slater to Command, ready to lower,” he called out, the words low but steady.

And then he let go of the building.

For a split second, Luke’s heart declared mutiny on his brain, whacking out the Morse code equivalent of have you lost your mind, you great big crazy jackass? against his ribs. But the belay system he’d anchored around the steel-in-cement posts on the roof held him in place even though he’d let go of the ledge, and his engine-mate, Kellan Walker, was in charge of Luke’s lift/lower from the far side of the roof. Everything was on the level—as much as it could be when you were dangling forty feet above terra firma, anyway. Just another day at the office, learning how to save lives.

The recognition firmed Luke’s resolve. He ordered his shoulder muscles to loosen so he could balance out the physiological find-solid-ground-right-now-right-now message radiating out of his survival instinct. Filling his lungs with a slow slide of oxygen just as he’d been trained to, Luke tightened his belly beneath the now-sweaty RFD T-shirt sticking to his skin under his safety harness. This might just be a drill today, but at some point, he’d be in a situation where he had to step up, to be calm and quick and save somebody’s life. He’d need to turn this training into a solution. To fix the problem in front of him without emotions.

Whether that was tomorrow or in a thousand tomorrows, he was goddamn well going to be ready.

Luke looked up, shifting as much of his weight as possible into his pelvis as he sat back in the harness and pressed his boots against the sun-warmed bricks of the outer wall of the engine bay for steadier control. Lifting one gloved hand, he twirled his index finger in an exaggerated circle, making sure he had eye contact with Gamble before reinforcing the visual command with the matching verbal one.

“Slater to Command. Easy to lower.”

“Command to Slater. Easy to lower,” came the callback from Gamble. The first few seconds were a bumpy-ass ride, and hell if all the lurch and jerk didn’t dare Luke’s already questionable adrenaline levels into twitchy fucking territory. But then Kellan found a slow and steady groove. A handful of seconds later, Luke was face-to-Cheshire-cat-grin with McCullough.

“Aw. Of all the fire houses in all of Remington, you scaled mine.” Her gold-brown brows waggled toward the brim of her battle-tested helmet as she splayed both hands over her heart in an exaggerated gesture, and Slater couldn’t help but let a snort escape from the side of his mouth.

“We’re hanging nearly thirty feet above the ground, McCullough,” Luke said, making a special point to look down so his brain might start getting hard-wired to the idea that he’d be scaling buildings from time to time. “Knowing you, you’re probably disappointed to see me.”

Of all the firefighters in the house on both engine and rescue squad, Shae was the most fearless. As evidenced by the fact that she looked more like she was relaxing in a hammock right now than locked into a safety harness high above the ground.

“Come on, Slater.” She rocked side to side, as if all she was missing was a stiff drink in one hand and a good book in the other. “I’m always happy to see you.”

“Careful,” Luke warned, unable to keep a thread of teasing out of his voice. He might not be tight with anyone at Seventeen the way they were all tight with each other, but of everyone, he felt easiest around Shae. “Otherwise people are going to start thinking that moving in with Capelli has made you sappy.”

Shae’s grin shifted into something entirely deeper at the mention of her boyfriend, James Capelli, who ran all the tech and surveillance for the Remington Police Department’s elite intelligence unit, and who she’d also moved in with last month. “Yeah, that’s me,” she said with a deep belly laugh. “I’m just a big ol’ bag of sunshine and unicorns. Now do you want to help me out here? Apparently, I need to be fucking rescued.”

“Copy that,” Luke replied over a half-chuckle, looking up to lock eyes on Gamble again. “Slater to Command,” he called out. “Victim is alert and responsive. Hold for line transfer.”

“Command to Slater. Holding for transfer.”

Calmly sliding his forearm over the bloom of sweat that had begun to escape from beneath the brim of his helmet, Luke nailed his focus on the hardware on Shae’s harness. He’d pre-rigged the rescue equipment in the pack at his hip long before he’d thrown his leg over the side of the engine bay—funny how far the whole “be prepared” thing went when you had to rescue someone from a thorny situation on the fly—and he mentally catalogued his next steps before shifting to turn them into reality. But then Luke heard the shuffle and bang of someone moving through the station’s side door below him, caught the flash of blond hair on the very edges of his peripheral vision as the person belonging to it walked over to the trash bin to toss a Hefty bag over the side, and his hands hitched without permission from the rest of him.

“You okay?” Shae asked. Her brows tucked in concern, and damn it, of course she’d noticed. She was helping train him, for Chrissake. She’d probably notice if he sneezed crooked.

“Yep.” Luke knew better than to elaborate, especially since the answer was eighty percent untrue. It wasn’t that he was not okay, necessarily. But if anything was going to crash his concentration, it’d be the sight of Station Seventeen’s sweet-and-sexy paramedic, Quinn Copeland.

Great, now his pulse was hitching along with his stupid, traitorous hands.

Shae moved her gaze over their surroundings in a methodical sweep, the eyes she’d squinted against the glare of the late-morning sunlight going round and wide as they landed on Quinn. “So,” she said, dropping her voice but not the ear-to-ear smile that told Luke nothing good was going to come from their now-private conversation. “About Quinn.”

“What about her?” Luke stared holes in the pick-off strap he’d pre-rigged before the drill, willing his fingers to steadily fasten the stupid thing to the main attachment point on Shae’s harness. Rope rescue. Safe transfer. Focus.

“You two have been spending some time together lately, huh?”

His stomach knotted before dropping toward his hips. “Quinn has been helping with my paramedic training,” he said, selecting his words with care. After a really hairy call had led the house to a gruesome arson/murder scene three months ago, Luke had been surprised to discover he had a fear of blood. But since he also wanted to help people as a first responder, he couldn’t let that fear—debilitating as it had been—stand in the way of him doing the job that would keep people safe.

So he’d done what he always did. He’d taken a step back to quietly attack the problem, devoting himself not only to the rest of his fire and rescue training, but to earning his certification as a paramedic at the same time. Yeah, the workload was intense, and no, balancing both didn’t leave him much time for luxuries outside of sleep or hot meals. He wasn’t exactly a stranger to balls-out hard work, though. In fact, he and hard work were more like what his seventeen-year-old sister Hayley would call “besties”. Not that Luke had any freaking clue what that might actually entail, since he never got past the handshake and Heisman stage with anyone.

That whole arm’s length thing? So not an overstatement.

At any rate, Luke had his sister and their grandmother, Momma Billie. He didn’t need a bunch of Lifetime Original moments to distract him from his goal. He’d attained his full qualifications as an EMT six weeks ago. Official paramedic status would be in his reach before the year was out, provided he could continue to keep his seemingly sudden-onset fear of blood at bay. He was well on his way to becoming a full-fledged firefighter, like he’d always wanted. Just as long as he could keep both his focus and his distance, he’d be fucking stellar.

Quinn looked up with a grin and a wave before heading back into the fire house, and Christ, did she really have to have a set of cutely sexy dimples he could see all the way from here?

“Helping you with your paramedic training,” Shae echoed, her quiet murmur tumbling him right back to the here and now of the side wall of the engine bay.

Luke concentrated on the equipment in his hands, the clink of the carabiners and the soft hiss of the nylon ropes as he continued with the rope transfer while he spoke. “Sure. She’s been giving me tips and tricks to remember different procedures, telling me the fastest ways to safely do workups. Stuff like that.”

“Ah.” Shae waited a beat while he clipped the backup carabiner for the line transfer into place. “You know, it wouldn’t be terrible if you liked her.”

“I do like her.” The words shoveled out of his mouth by default. He double-checked the carabiner. Adjusted the slack in his line. Mentally kicked himself square in the nuts. “She’s nice.”

Shae made a noise Momma Billie would have described as unladylike. “You know what I mean, Slater. Don’t be a dumbass.”

And that was the problem, right there. He was a dumbass. He didn’t just like Quinn in a casual friends, good co-workers, she’s-helping-me-with-my-training kind of way. Nope. He was attracted to her. From the minute he’d clapped eyes on Quinn on his very first day as a rookie, Luke had had this reckless desire to kiss her. To hook his fingers in that waterfall of blond waves spilling down her back, to part her lips with his tongue and taste her until he ran out of air.

And he didn’t want to stop at her mouth.

Luke cleared his throat. Twice. “I’m not being a dumbass,” he said. “She is nice.”

His libido reached up and bitch-slapped him for the understatement. Big dark blue eyes framed by impossibly long lashes. Bow-shaped lips full enough to be both beautiful and distracting as hell. Long legs. Pretty, feminine curves that were evident even beneath her ho-hum paramedic’s uniform, and who was he kidding?

Quinn wasn’t just nice. She was totally fucking gorgeous.

As if Shae had zeroed in on Luke’s deepest, darkest brainwaves, she said, “You should ask her out.” And even though her delivery was purely matter-of-fact, his heart dumped into his gut. He needed to laugh, he knew. To make this into no big deal so he could change the subject. To not let Shae see that she was spot-on about his extra-curricular thoughts of Quinn.

“You don’t strike me as the matchmaker type,” he tried, putting a toe in the water with Diversion Tactic Number One: make it about the person you were talking to rather than yourself.

Not that Shae so much as nibbled on the line. “What can I say? Finding true love has made me squishy.”

“You threw actual elbows with Kellan over which one of you would get to rappel down here to be saved,” Luke pointed out, unable to help himself. “I’d hardly call that squishy.”

“It’s not my fault he didn’t look. I’m sure that black eye won’t last but a day or two.

Anyway”—Shae replaced the smile tugging at the edges of her mouth with a look of renewed determination—“if Quinn is so nice, why wouldn’t you ask her out?”

Luke gave Diversion Tactic Number One the old college try. “Would you date someone you worked with?”

Annnnnd oh-for-fucking-two. “A for effort, trying to shift the spotlight there. But my answer’s only ‘no’ because I’ve never been attracted to anyone I work with, and besides, we’re not talking about me.”

Shit. He shifted to Tactic Number Two: go vague to create distance. “Aren’t there rules against that sort of thing? You know, department-wide?”

Shae watched him seamlessly remove the pick-off strap from her harness, nodding her approval at his handiwork before conceding. “Inter-house relationships probably don’t make Captain Bridges want to do backflips of joy. But technically? They’re only against the rules if the parties involved are both on engine or squad together, and they want to get married. Paramedics are totally fair game.”

Luke bit back the pop of shocked laughter that wanted to emerge from his throat. This conversation had just gone from left field to bat-shit crazy in a few dozen syllables. It was time to tie it off, once and for all.

“Thanks for the primer on the RFD rule book, but getting on the captain’s bad side isn’t really on my wish list. Besides, Quinn and I are just friends.” He gestured to Shae’s safety harness, which was now tethered to his, prepped and ready for the next step in the drill. All that was left to do was release her original line and make the descent. “So should I keep going, here?” Luke asked, making sure he tied his manners into his tone. The last thing he needed was for Shae to think he was throwing shade. Dodging the topic was hard enough, thanks.

After a pause he might not have noticed if he hadn’t been funneling all of his attention into trying to boomerang the subject, Shae examined his work with a nod. “Affirmative. Nice job on that pick-off line. Now let’s see if you can get me safely to the ground, huh?”

“Copy that,” Luke said, his chest flooding with more than a little irony at the fact that focusing on being this high above the ground actually made him feel relieved. But since it was better than focusing on the topic he’d just managed to shake—not to mention necessary to successfully completing the drill—he dove in without hesitation.

Taking a minute to release the hardware attaching Shae to her own set of ropes, he did a lightning-fast double-check before barking out, “Slater to Command. Victim is secure on the primary line. Easy to lower.”

Gamble stared over the edge of the roof, thankfully oblivious to the conversation Luke had just skirted with Shae. “Command to Slater. Copy that. Easy to lower.”

He raised one hand overhead, looping his index finger in the signal to go. Slowly but steadily, Kellan lowered both Luke and Shae, who were now tethered to one another, all the way down until their boots made contact with the sunbaked asphalt below.

“Nice job not turning us into road pizza,” Shae said, slapping the top of his helmet with one hand and using the other to lift a big thumbs-up at Gamble, high above.

“Thanks.”

Luke’s cheeks prickled with pride. Just when he thought he was in the clear for good, though, Shae hit him with a stare that made him feel like a biology-project butterfly pinned to a board.

“And by the way, I’m not suggesting you marry her, rookie. But you keep to yourself an awful lot around here.”

Luke’s pulse stuttered, but despite the warning bells clanging in his head, he replied, “It’s nothing personal.” This, at least, was the top layer of the truth. Not that he was about to dole out the rest—not even to Shae, who was the closest thing he had to a friend at the fire house.

Arm’s length. Create distance. Right now.

“I like everyone at Seventeen, and I definitely like the job. I just don’t…hang out,” he finished quietly.

“Okay.”

Luke didn’t know what shocked him more—the no-bullshit reply or the no-judgment manner in which Shae had delivered it. “Okay?”

She lifted one shoulder in a non-committal shrug. “I’m sure you have your reasons for playing it close to the vest. All I’m saying is if you’re looking for someone to bridge that gap, Quinn’s a really solid pick. That’s all.”

But before he could answer, let alone process what Shae said, the shrill sound of the station-wide all-call sounded off from the speakers just inside the engine bay.

Engine Seventeen, Ambulance Twenty-Two, person down of unknown causes, nineteen-twelve Maplewood Avenue. Requesting immediate response.

“Ah, look at that, Slater,” Shae said, unclipping the carabiners from her harness and his with brisk, sure motions. “They’re playing our song.”

And then they were hustling toward the engine, all thoughts of anything either of them had said—or hadn’t said—summarily forgotten.