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Following behind him, I want to make sure he leaves Gracie alone, and I want to make sure she’s okay, too.

“Get the hell away from her,” the other girl yells, standing as Blake approaches the table.

“Stay the fuck out of this, Jade,” he mutters. Pushing past her, he almost knocks her down.

With a quick side-step, I move around Blake and help steady Jade before she stumbles over completely. “You okay?” I ask, holding her at arm’s length.

Wordlessly, she nods and I let go of her. Luckily, I’m able to turn my attention back to Blake and Gracie just as he’s about to pull her from the bench.

Twisting his arm around his back, I make sure he doesn’t lay a finger on her. “Listen, asshole. Why don’t you leave these girls alone? They clearly don’t want you around, so get out of here and make everyone happy. Okay?” When he nods, I let him go.

A quiet and shaky voice cuts through the glacial stare in which Blake and I are locked. “Blake, go. Please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you’ve calmed down.”

“Hell no!” he yells. “I’m not leaving you here with this guy.” He pokes me in the chest and I rein in my desire to punch this asshole right in the face.

“You’re coming home with me. Now,” he demands.

Gracie stands from her seat and steps between us. “Blake,” she says calmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You should go before you say or do something you’ll regret. I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise.”

I want to interject and ask why the hell she’s being so nice, why she’s promising to call him when it’s so clear he doesn’t deserve her time. But I bite my lip instead and stand behind her, a bodyguard of sorts.

“This is fucking bullshit.” He throws his arms up in the air, before storming off like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

When he’s gone, she turns to me, dropping a soft hand to my forearm. “Thanks for helping out.” Her voice is still a bit shaky.

“Of course,” I choke out. The feel of her hand on my skin has me so screwed up I can’t even get an intelligent sentence out. My eyes are glued to hers, searching for some kind of answer hidden there. The freckles, which were so prominent on her face when she was a kid, are still there. They’ve faded a touch, but the peaches and cream skin is the same as I remember.

With my name dangling from my lips, I’m about to introduce myself just as Jade interrupts. “You really need to kick his sorry ass to the curb.”

Sighing, Grace sinks back down into her seat. “I know, I know. Sorry I ruined the night.”

“Are you kidding? He’s gone now. That makes everything even better.” Jade winks at me before asking if we want anything to drink. We both decline and watch her walk toward the bar.

Holding her head in her hands, she’s covering her face. “I’m such an ass,” she mutters.

“Hey, you did nothing wrong,” I say, pulling her hands away from her pretty face. “He’s the one who’s an ass.”

With an exaggerated huff, she flips her hair out of her eyes and looks at me across the table. “Thanks for that and thanks for helping me out.” She stands, her shoulders slumped, her voice taking on a defeated quality. “I’m just not feeling it anymore tonight. I think I’ll head home.”

As she walks past me to get Jade from the bar, I drop my hand to her shoulder, causing her to jump a little. “Sorry,” I apologize, though it’s Blake who’s the one who clearly set her on edge. Her eyes fall to my hand and then move back up to mine. Something passes between us in that moment, but before I can figure it out, Ian races up behind me. He runs into me so hard, he nearly knocks me over.

Clapping a hand to my back, he calls out, “Finally talking to that hottie, huh, Dave,” he slurs, clearly drunk already. Gracie scans my face, her eyes squinting as if she’s trying to see me through some bright glare. The need to shut Ian up overrides the hope I feel at Gracie possibly recognizing me.

Unfortunately, dropping a hard elbow to his ribs doesn’t seem to do the trick. “You are something fine. Damn, girl.” He gives Grace a head to toe once-over before she rolls her eyes at him.

“You’re an ass, Ian,” I mutter.

“Thanks, again, but I think I’ve had my fair share of rudeness for the night,” she snaps, pulling away from me before I can even tell her who I am, but if I’m not mistaken, her eyes drop to my chest before holding my gaze one last time.

“Love watching you leave,” Ian calls out when she’s a few steps away. Fuck, do I want to knock him out, but I can’t argue with him.

Watching her—and all her curves—strut away from me, it’s not a sight for the faint of heart.

In the two weeks since the bar encounter with Grace and Blake, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. Hell, I even went back to the same bar a few times just to see if she’d be there.

She wasn’t.

I have to laugh at myself, though. It’s not like me to pine over a girl. On the other hand, I’ve never been a ‘hit it and quit it’ kind of guy, so the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her isn’t all that strange.

One thing is for sure, I need to clear my head before I go to work. Jamming the last of my things into my bag, I finish putting together what I need for my forty-eight hour shift. Most of my stuff is in my locker at work, but extra work-out clothes are always a necessity.

Many people would probably say they hate driving through the city. The cab drivers alone make it less than enjoyable. But I’ve always loved the drive to work. Yeah, it’s deep in the heart of Manhattan, and it would probably be easier to take the train. But the sights, sounds, and smells—the ones that aren’t urine, anyway—you don’t get those on the train and in the subway. After parking the car, I grab my bag and make my way into the station.

I would call it my home away from home, but that’d be a lie. This is home and my apartment is just somewhere I sleep when I’m not here. Garry, the dispatcher, greets me at the door. With his heels kicked up on the desk, he’s quietly sipping a cup of coffee while everyone else is in the back of the house eating breakfast.

After unloading my stuff into my locker, I make my way downstairs and grab a cup of coffee, and a plate of eggs for myself. Everyone looks half asleep, barely saying a word as they devour their food.

“Rough night?” I ask to no one in particular.

Mickey, a three-year veteran, pipes up above everyone else’s indiscriminate muttering. “Had a run like every hour last night. Stupid shit, too.”

I laugh around the rim of my mug, but part of me feels bad for them. A night of no sleep, taking care of routine calls, without getting much time in between to catch a break is exhausting.

Before long, the rest of the day crew is here. Ian is here today, too. I’ve been kind of tight-lipped on how he screwed up my chances to talk to Grace. The last thing he needs is more fuel to feed the fire of him ribbing on me.

“We’re on hose detail this morning,” Ian calls to me after looking over the task sheet.

“Perfect,” I say, walking past him toward the rig.

Shooting me a confused look, he asks, “Why’s that?”

“No one has more experience playing with hoses than you, right?” I joke. Sadly, this is the perfect place for middle school humor.

“I’m sure you have just as much, asshole.” Ian hoists himself up into the truck. Fidgeting with the gauges and tank readers, he records the necessary details we need to complete our paperwork. As he scribbles down the last of the data, the sirens go off, signaling the truck we’re working on is needed in action.

Those are the moments the house comes to life. The men race around the truck, stepping into their bunker gear where it lays in wait for the sounds we’ve just heard. After the firefighter who operates the engine gets all the details from dispatch, and the captain, a twenty-something-year veteran named Peter Gallagher, buckles in, we’re off to our fire.

Winding through the streets of lower Manhattan will never stop being a thrill. Even after three years on the job, it still excites me. It’s pretty much every boyhood dream come true, and I get to do it almost every day of my life.

How freaking awesome is that?

“Let’s do this boys!” I call out as the truck pulls to a screeching halt in front of a twenty-five-story financial building. Captain Gallagher calls out orders, and people evacuating the building are lead to the side. From my vantage point, I see smoke billowing out of what looks to be around the tenth floor. “Stretch out those legs, fellas,” I joke, pointing up to the smoke-filled window. “We’ve got a trek up ahead of us.”

Shooting me a stern look, Gallagher pulls us in for a huddle. “Andrews and Mack.” He points a gnarled finger at me and Ian. A true old-schooler, he essentially refuses to call anyone by their first name. Hell, he won’t even call Ian by his full last name. Gallagher once told Ian that MacMillan takes too much time, and as a probie, he wasn’t worth the extra few seconds of his oxygen—all in good humor of course. “You two take the south stairwell,” yelling above the chaos swallowing the scene around us, he points at an old blue print. At first, he hated the addition of tablets, bitching that they’d slow us down. But the ease with which they allow him to look up the blueprints for each and every building on our call radius, well, needless to say, he didn’t hate them for too long. “Miller and Gonzalez, you’re with them,” he concludes his directive at us, before rattling off instructions to the rest of the crew.

By the time we make it to the seventh floor, we’re all a little winded. But, with almost seventy pounds of gear on our backs, it’s to be expected. The smoke filtering down the stairwell isn’t helping much either. Hunkering down behind the door, Ian tests it to see how hot it is. “Lucky for us,” he speaks into his dispatch receiver. “The fire hasn’t reached this side of the floor, yet.”

With that piece of information, we open the door and find an empty floor before us. Everyone was fortunate enough to evacuate before we arrived. Making our way toward the flames, we try to clear the area of any debris. It’s nearly impossible in an office space, but we still do our best. Through the window, we see the hook and ladder crew readying themselves to enter the building. The bucket is extended all the way to the north windows. All we need to do now is to wait for the command from them for their plan of action.

Through my two-way receiver, I hear Gallagher’s words. “What’s it look like, Andrews?”

“Small, no need to crash through.” After assessing the scene, I let Gallagher know the hook and ladder crew can stand by. “There’s a hose out in the stairwell. That’ll be enough.”

“Let’s put this out,” I command to the rest of my small crew.

Since there were no civilians on the floor when we entered, our job is somewhat simple. Douse the somewhat large, yet still contained fire, mull through the debris, make sure there are no hot spots, and then retreat back to the ground floor. Ian and Gonzalez retrieve the hose and pull it to where it’s needed and within minutes, the blaze is extinguished. We watch the bucket descend from the side of the building.

When all of that is done, and the fire is out, we turn over the burnt rubble and search the rest of the floor just to be certain that everything is put out. “Looks like it was the kitchenette,” I announce, holding up a melted hotplate. “As usual,” I add as an afterthought, shaking my head at the pointlessness of some fires.

Shaking their heads, the other guys agree with me at the stupidity of it all. Things could have been so much worse. Thank God it wasn’t a small home. The place would have been in flames before anyone would have even realized what was going on.

That thought brings me back to Gracie.

Every fire. Every scent of smoke. Every parent frantically calling out for their child.

All those things bring me back to Gracie.

And knowing she’d been within my reach just days ago—fuck, she’d even been in my arms—brings everything full circle.

Descending the stairs, my desire to find her is rejuvenated. Even if she’s still with that asshole, I need to find her. I’d like to say it would be only to thank her for inspiring me to become a firefighter, but then I’d be lying.

The need to see her again is like the flames I just fought.

Ravenous.

“Hey, man, you in there somewhere?” Ian nudges me, prodding me along our descent back to the rig.

Shaking my head and thoughts of Gracie away, I move along. Mindlessly, I help load the gear back onto the truck and stare aimlessly out the window as we drive back to the station.

After jumping out of the truck to help keep pedestrians out of the way, I watch as the engine operator backs it into the garage. When the door clicks closed, I find myself staring up at the station in awe.

“Excuse me,” a soft, sweet voice calls out from my side. With my helmet still on, I have to turn around fully in order to see who is speaking to me, my peripheral vision cut off by my helmet.

“Can I help you?” I ask. As I lift my helmet off my head and wipe the soot from my face, I still can’t see who’s standing before me.

Tucking my helmet under my arm, my eyes start at the ground and travel up the pair of legs before me. Covered in a flowing pale, yellow skirt, they’re smooth and lean—a definite sight for sore eyes after a fire. The sun is shining between the two buildings behind her, casting her face in the shadows.