He’d been a gentleman. He’d bought her coffee and pulled out her chair—little niceties she wasn’t used to, because she sure didn’t expect that around the firehouse. But every time he talked to her, his voice had been rough and quiet, as if every word were a secret just for her. It had made her shiver in a good way.

Tonight, he’d looked broken. She’d been afraid to touch him, as if one brush of skin would send him shattering into a million pieces. But then she had, and he’d clung to her as if he’d been afraid to let go. Some people might see it as weakness, but she didn’t. She knew how it felt to have life yank the rug out from under you. She knew what it meant to need someone to hold you, to share the weight of the world for a minute. For a second. She would have held him all night.

And then her father had shown up to act like Detective Dickhead.

As usual.

A locker door slammed over on the guys’ side of the dorm. Hannah ignored it, insulated on the women’s side. She wasn’t the only woman in the department, but there were few enough that sometimes it felt like it.

She should probably get going. She pushed the damp hair back from her face and slapped the faucet to kill the water.

She could hear male voices more clearly now, but with the dorm area door closed, she couldn’t make out more than muffled tones, then laughter with an edge. Giving someone shit, from the sound of it.

Men. She sighed and reached for her towel.

Her phone was on the counter, and the screen lit with a message. Hannah pushed the button, hoping for a return text from Michael.

Her mother.

I have lunch packed for James. Need me to take him to school?

Hannah smiled. While her father treated her as if she’d never live up to his expectations, her mother made up for that lack of warmth tenfold. Hannah looked at the time and texted back.

I should be home in time.

A new message almost immediately.

I don’t want you to have to rush. You work so hard.

Maybe it was the timing of the message, or the emotion of the preceding twelve hours, but Hannah could swear she felt tears rushing to her eyes again.

Maybe her mom could sense it, because another message appeared almost immediately.

Don’t worry about rushing. If I don’t see you in the next 20, I’ll take him. I’ll put a note in his lunchbox from mommy.

Hannah smiled. Her mom always thought of details like that. She’d probably draw a picture and sign it from “mommy,” full of Xs and Os.

Hannah made a mental note to empty the dishwasher or vacuum the living room or something, just to let the woman know her efforts weren’t ignored. She put the phone on the counter and used the towel to scrub vigorously at her body. If she rushed, she could make it home in time to see James.

The phone lit again, and Hannah grabbed it from the counter. It wasn’t like her mother to keep a text conversation going. The woman needed emoticons explained, for god’s sake.

But it wasn’t her mother. It was Michael Merrick.

Sorry I couldn’t look for you. Are you OK?

Hannah stared at the message for a while. Too long—she realized she was still standing here na**d and freezing.

Yeah. You?

He didn’t respond for the longest time, and finally she had to get dressed or deal with hypothermia. She put the phone back on the counter and reached for her clothes.

Another locker slammed from the other side of the wall, then more male laughter. Hannah pulled on a long-sleeved tee and wished her hair were long enough for a ponytail. She didn’t have time to dry it—not if she wanted to get home in time to be a responsible mommy.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and flung the door open.

It left her staring straight into the men’s locker room. The door was propped open, steam in the air.

Irish was standing at a sink, wearing jeans and nothing else, shaving his face with slow, even strokes.

Hannah was standing there with her mouth hanging open. She quickly shut it and looked away before he could notice.

They’d been next to each other all night—at one point performing joint CPR on a woman they’d found in the basement of the fourth house—so it shouldn’t have felt so intimate.

But it did.

A faucet turned on, and she heard something tap against the sink. “You crashing here, Blondie?”

“Going home.” She had to clear her throat. Were her cheeks on fire? It felt like her cheeks were on fire. Had that been a tattoo on his shoulder?

Don’t look. Do not look.

God, she’d just been thinking of Michael falling apart in the ambulance, and now she was gawking at another firefighter. Someone she had to work with.

“You need something?”

Now she was standing here like a stalker. She forced herself to look at him. He was just shaving, for goodness sake. It wasn’t like she was watching him in the shower.

If her brain would stop supplying images, it would totally be okay.

“Aren’t you going home?” she said.

“A bed’s a bed,” he said. “I’m back on at noon.” He looked over. “How’s your boyfriend?”

Her boyfriend. Michael Merrick. Right.

“I don’t know. I texted him, but he hasn’t responded yet.”

“I didn’t know he had a history with arson in this town.”

“He doesn’t. Not really.”

“I walked through that house, Blondie. That fire wouldn’t have stopped unless someone put it out.”

A low whistle sounded from behind him. “Look at Blondie getting an eyeful. Your daddy know you’re into the dark boys?”

Hannah jerked back, sure her cheeks were flaming—though now she couldn’t decide if she was more furious or embarrassed.

Irish didn’t stop shaving. “Jealous, Stockton?”

Joe Stockton, one of the older guys who’d sit in the kitchen and shoot the bull all night, snorted from behind her. “Yeah, that’ll be the day. Me, jealous of a n—”

“Hey!” She whirled, ready to get in his face. Furious—definitely furious.

He just laughed and moved away into the men’s dorm area.

“Ignore them,” said Irish, his voice low and close.

She turned and he was right there, close enough to touch. She could smell the menthol of his shaving cream, and for an instant it reminded her of her father, from when she was a little girl.

She swallowed some of her fury. “He was about to call you—” She faltered. “He was about to say—”

“You think I don’t know?”

“You don’t care?”

“Of course I care. But they’re just looking to start trouble. I care about my job more.”

They. She thought of the slamming lockers and male laughter she’d heard earlier. “Who else? You should report them.”

He snorted and turned away, returning to the sink to let the water out. “You’re funny. You going to report Stockton for what he just said to you?”

She thought about that for a second and wasn’t sure what to say. Of course she wasn’t going to report him. The best she could hope for was an eye roll and a promise from the chief that he’d talk to the guys.

And then the next time would be worse.

“It’s not the first time, Blondie. Won’t be the last.”

All of a sudden, her firehouse nickname sounded belittling.

“Hannah,” she said.

Irish smiled. “Hannah.” Then he shook his head. “We can do better than that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Crap. It sounded like she was flirting.

Was she flirting?

She had no idea. Her brain was too tired, and the conversation had gone in too many directions in the last three minutes.

“I’ll work on it,” he said.

She turned away. “Close the door next time, okay? I don’t need to see what else you guys have to offer.”

Then she was through the door and into the parking lot before anyone could mistake the blush on her cheeks for anything more than a reaction to the early-morning chill.

CHAPTER 7

Michael sat on the edge of the concrete patio and put his bare feet in the grass. Sunlight beat along his neck and shoulders, fighting a losing battle against the lingering chill in the air. His breath made quick clouds that drifted away. He didn’t have a sweatshirt, but Marshal Faulkner had allowed him to check his laundry room to see if any clothes had survived the smoke damage. Luckily, there’d been three pairs of jeans and a ton of T-shirts in the dryer.

Unluckily, those were all the spare clothes he had for five people.

Adam had some old sweatpants that made up the difference for now. Michael added clothes to the mental list in his head. He’d drive to Target right now if he weren’t deathly afraid to separate from his brothers.

Every time he blinked, he saw the destruction of his neighborhood. Adam didn’t have a television, but he did have a laptop. He’d pulled up the local news coverage of the damage, but Michael had walked out here to get away from the conversation. He didn’t want to hear names and details. He didn’t want to know who was battling for life—or who hadn’t even gotten a chance to fight.

Now he’d been out here for an hour, and he could barely feel his fingers. At least his brothers had taken the opportunity to find a space to sleep for a while.

Michael unlocked his phone, tapped his text message icon, and then sat there, his thumb hovering over the keys.

He’d done this four times now. He had no idea what to say to Hannah. Was he okay?

No. He wasn’t. She’d seen him near breaking, and if he let go, just a little, he’d completely fall apart with no hope of gathering up the pieces.

She’d known, though. She’d grabbed his hand at the right moment. You’re shaking. She’d whispered it, leaving him a shred of dignity in front of her father.

He thought of those bookcases, charred almost beyond recognition. His whole house was unstable, but those damned bookcases were what his brain wanted to latch on to. His mother was long dead. Bookcases didn’t matter. Nothing in that house mattered.

He locked the phone and set it on the concrete.

Dirt shifted under his heels, feeding him strength, but not much else. His element wasn’t one for lightening a mood. He hunched over and rubbed his arms. Damn, it was cold.

He couldn’t stop fidgeting.

He picked his phone back up. Put it down, then picked it up again and woke the screen to check the time. He couldn’t call his insurance agent for another fifteen minutes. He could hold it together that long.

You can do anything for fifteen minutes.

His father’s words, often repeated. Michael first remembered hearing them when he was nine and didn’t want to do assigned reading for school. His father had set a timer on the stove and shoved the book in his hands.

His father had been right. He could read for fifteen minutes. He could do a lot of things for fifteen minutes.

Those words had haunted him after his parents’ deaths. He’d broken time into chunks to get through every day. Fifteen minutes for breakfast. Fifteen minutes to get his brothers to school. Fifteen minutes to travel between landscaping jobs. He could cook a frozen dinner in fifteen minutes.

Lights out in fifteen minutes.

His own words, when his brothers were younger, when he’d had no idea how to be a parent because he wasn’t done being a kid. The minutes after they were asleep were both the best and the worst. The best because the house was finally quiet, and he was alone with his thoughts.

The worst for the exact same reason.

You can do anything for fifteen minutes.

He hadn’t been able to save his parents. And the fire had killed them a lot quicker than that.

The door behind him slid open, and he inwardly sighed, wondering who else couldn’t sleep, and how quickly their stress would double the weight of his own.