Georgia stood up from her desk with a big stretch and groan. After her adventure up in the hills, her body was still recuperating and she found that there were parts of her that ached that she didn’t even realize existed.

She looked down at her oversized desk with pride. She’d managed to get the report on car loan defaults done and into the main branch just minutes before the deadline, and had even started the process on a new vehicle loan for Abby and Wyatt Miller. They were filling out the paperwork to bring another foster child home and had come to the realization that a truck, even a quad-cab, wasn’t big enough. They were on the hunt for an SUV so they could cart their soon-to-be growing brood around with them.

It was still a little weird, honestly, to see Wyatt smiling and holding hands with Abby, completely in love with his new wife. They’d brought Juan – their foster son – in with them, and had proudly talked about being close to finishing the adoption process. Juan hadn’t said a word, but had beamed from ear to ear, clearly as thrilled about life as his soon-to-be parents.

Seeing Wyatt happy…it helped Georgia realize what Abby had seen in him in the first place. When she’d first heard that Abby was dating Wyatt, she was sure her friend had gone insane. Grumpy, testy, snappy, asshole-ly Wyatt Miller? Why on God’s green earth would Abby want to date him? He was handsome and all, but not that handsome – not handsome enough to put up with that kind of personality.

No one in town had seen his soft and caring underbelly, until Abby had brought it out in him, and shown it to the world. Georgia had even heard that Stetson and Wyatt were honest-to-God friends now, which Georgia would’ve bet her right arm would never happen. They’d been at each other’s throats their whole lives.

Transformations like this didn’t happen every day, that was for damn sure.

Tripp knocked on her office door while sticking his head through and looking at her. “Hey, you’ve got a reporter here…?” he said, a question more than a statement. What do you want me to tell them? was written clearly in his eyes.

Georgia looked at him quizzically, trying to think through why a reporter would want to talk to her. Her donation to the fundraiser for the fire department? That’d been a week ago. It seemed a little late to be writing that story, but she couldn’t think of anything else even remotely possible. “Tell ‘em to come in,” she finally said. Standing around and wondering why a reporter was there wouldn’t exactly get her the answers that she wanted.

In came a taller woman, high heels making her tower over Georgia even more as she stuck her hand out to shake. “Hi, I’m Penny,” she said with a knuckle-cracking handshake. “Mr. Toewes sent me down here to interview you for a story in both the Times and the Gazette. Apparently, you were out in that fire in the foothills a couple of days ago?”

Oh. Right. That angle at least made more sense than the fire department fundraiser. The two newspapers were sister papers, with the Gazette covering Franklin and the Times covering Sawyer. It was flattering, if awkward as hell, to think that someone would want to interview her. The last time the Sawyer Times newspaper had interviewed her, it was when she’d been promoted to be the branch manager, and the article that had ended up running had the world’s worst picture of her in it.

It’d made her driver’s license picture look downright flattering, which was really saying something.

“I…I was,” Georgia said hesitantly, trying to think of how to gracefully get out of this interview. And then, inspiration struck. “You know, what you should do is a piece on the Sawyer Fire Department as a whole. They did a big fundraiser a week ago that you could ask them about, and after all, it was one of their firefighters who saved me from that fire. All I did was live through it by hunkering down.”

She shrugged, feeling pinned to the carpet by the reporter’s intense gaze. “These men are the ones who put their lives on the line to save others. There’s a training meeting tonight at 6:30 at the fire department. Why don’t you swing by there? I’ll stop by, too. Then you can interview all of us at the same time.”

“That’s a brilliant suggestion!” Penny said, her eyes sparkling at the idea, her bright red lips curling into a bright smile. “Thank you! I’ll tell Mr. Toewes that I’ll follow up on this tonight. See you then.” She headed out with a swish of her skirts, closing the door quietly behind her.

Georgia stared at the door, feeling a bit like she’d just lived through a human-sized tornado.

At least tonight at the fire station, she’d have the other guys there to help her manage the sheer amount of energy that radiated off Penny the Reporter with every step.

Now that she’d voluntold the department for a group interview, she should probably warn them about it. She picked up the phone, biting her lower lip with worry. Hopefully none of the men were too camera shy…well, other than Troy, of course. He didn’t even speak to his fellow firefighters; he certainly wasn’t going to open up to a newspaper reporter, of all people.

Well, there was no getting out of it now. If they wanted to hate on her for voluntelling them for this, so be it.

She dialed the number for the fire station.