12-Alarm Cowboys (25 page)

His mother had been after him for five years to ‘find a nice girl and settle down’. Well, he hadn’t found a nice girl, he’d found a hot mess of a woman who turned him inside out most of the time, but she was working on becoming that girl.

But they weren’t there quite yet—they still had a lot to work out.

Austin shifted his position on the sofa and lowered his voice. “There’s someone I really want you to meet, but we can’t get away right now.”

His mother’s gasp told Austin, his ploy worked. “Have you met someone?” she asked, her tone brimming with excitement.

“I have, and I think you’ll like her,” he replied, glancing at Sunny again to make sure she wasn’t listening. He had adopted a hardcore approach to dealing with her, teaching her, and it seemed to be working like a charm. The harder he was on her when she got cranky with the guys, the softer, more approachable she became. Sunny had become a much better teammate and leader, but she still had a ways to go. She was putting in the effort to change though, and become the Chief he was challenging her to be. Because she knew she had competition for the job now, and Austin never let her forget that.

“I can’t wait to meet her, but we miss you…your brothers and sister miss you. Your father is worried about you. It’s been six months,” Lena McBride said, her voice stinging with reprimand. His mother sniffled, and Austin flinched. He pictured her wiping her nose, and smiling which made the knot in his chest unravel.

He missed them too. Even when he was on the rodeo circuit, six months was the longest he’d spent away without a visit. Guilt swirled in his gut, but Austin knew he had things to accomplish before he could make the trip home.

“It might be a good while longer, Mom, but I promise, I’m fine.”

When Austin told his brother that he’d quit the ranch to become a firefighter again, he knew it wouldn’t be long before his mother found out. What he hadn’t expected was her to be upset. Three-quarters of his family was in the business, his father included. But he was three hours away from home, and he guessed that might be the difference in her mind. Her crying when he answered her call had about ripped his heart out.

“I promise I’ll be careful too, and from now on, I’ll call you every week.” He’d put a reminder into the calendar on his cell phone so he didn’t forget.

“You better, or I’ll send the McBride tribe down there to drag you home,” she threatened, but punctuated it with a watery laugh.

Glancing at Sunny, he saw her eyebrows pucker into a confused frown. “I’ve got to go now, Mom. I love you…tell everyone I said the same.”

“Love you too, badass,” she replied, and it was Austin’s turn to smile, as warmth flooded through him when he hung up.

Her childhood nickname for him was really appropriate. As a child, Austin had been a badass, and into more trouble than she could get him out of. As a middle child, he had plenty of time to find mischief and he kept her damned busy. It was a good damned thing for him that his father hadn’t found out about most of it, or Austin wouldn’t have had an ass left.

He’d have just been known as bad.

Pushing up from the sofa, he walked into the kitchen. That was probably why he understood exactly how to deal with Sunny Gleason. To make her see the err in her ways. Sunny was just late blooming with her badass, bratty ways. And she hadn’t had the benefit of having a mother and father to show her the light sooner.

“You still reading that chapter?” he asked gruffly, as he sat down at the table.

Her frown transferred to him, and her lips turned down to emphasize it. “If you wouldn’t have been on the phone, I could’ve asked you what the proper income ratio to employee expenses is, and I’d be done with it.”

“Talking to my mother takes precedent over babysitting you through what you should already know.”

She slammed her pen down on her pad, and lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, smartass, what’s the proper pediatric dosage for epinephrine on a forty-pound kid in anaphylactic shock?”

Hell, he didn’t freaking know that off of the top of his head. He sat up in the chair, and cleared his throat. “The ratio shouldn’t be higher than 70%.”

Sunny nodded and picked up her pen to make notes on the pad. Austin waited until she was done, thinking she might spout off the answer to her own question to him, but she went back to reading.

“Alright,
smartass
—how much epi do you give a forty-pound kid in anaphylaxis?”

Sunny looked back up at him and smiled as she pushed the black binder across the table to him. “I’m not babysitting you through what you should already know,
Chief.
It’s all right here in this paramedic protocol book you should have memorized.”

God, he loved sparring with her, because Sunny Gleason always gave as good as she got. He grinned, and leaned over to shut her study guide. “Yes, I should—but not now. I have a meeting at the park with a kid who should already know how to throw a baseball but his mother is too much of a
chicken
to teach him. He says she’s afraid he’ll hit her in the shin with it.”

Her eyebrows knotted again, and her blue eyes shot fire as they met his. “I did
not
say that—he never asked me to teach him!”

“It’s okay, Sunshine. Baseball isn’t a
girl’s
sport anyway,” Austin teased, and her face got redder, her frown more pronounced.

His grin spread as her chair scraped back and she shot up to her feet. “I’ll show you how much a girl knows about baseball. I was the best third-baseman on my high school softball team, MV—freaking—P my senior year, as a matter of fact,” Sunny growled, then pointed her finger at him. “I can teach my son and
you
how to throw a ball.”

“Is that so?” Austin asked, crossing his arms over his chest, loving the fire in her eyes, the passion in her voice. That’s the passion that she needed for this job, but he hadn’t seen it. Maybe with more time. “Well, I’d sure love to learn about
soft
ball, since the only thing I’ve ever played, even in
college
was hardball on the scholarship I earned playing in high school.” Sunny’s face fell and he wondered why, then she told him.

“You have a degree?” she asked, and that insecurity was back in her voice.

“Yeah, in agriculture,” he replied with a grin. “Doesn’t come in handy very often fighting fires, except field fires, which is how I knew we needed to flood those first few rows of that marijuana field and that ag sprinklers were an option to help control it. Only problem was we didn’t have the water to do it.”

“And we were too high to care,” Sunny added, with a laugh, her shoulders relaxing.

“Yeah, and that,” he agreed. “Let’s go teach Billy how to throw a ball. Between us, I think we can keep him from throwing like a girl.”

Sunny snorted. “What the hell is wrong with throwing like a girl?” she asked indignantly.

“Not a damned thing,” Austin answered, another idea forming in his mind too, now that he had this new bit of information about the aspiring Chief.

*

“You’re swinging like
a girl, Mom!” Billy heckled from the dugout. Sunny stepped out of the batter’s box to glare at him, and watched as Austin slapped him on the back and they laughed, Billy so hard he was doubled over with it.

Resting her bat on her side, Sunny took a moment to tighten her ponytail and to regain her focus on the pitcher. Braden, who Austin had chosen as his first pick because he knew he was a former baseball player too. Well, baseball wasn’t the game they were playing. It was softball, and she was about to show them how it was played.
Like a girl
, she thought, with determination as she stepped back in the box and tapped her bat on the plate.

“C’mon, Cap—reach for the fence!” Jordan yelled from her dugout as Sunny crouched, balanced her weight and cocked her bat into position.

Braden bent, studied the catcher for a second then nodded, before he reared back. Sunny tensed and watched his hand, caught the ball coming out of it and knew it was an outside pitch. She relaxed, huffed a breath and stood while the umpire called a ball. After throwing a smug grin at a frowning Coach Austin, who, in a surprise move, had chosen just to serve as his team’s designated hitter. Sunny was playing second, because it had been a long damned time since she’d played, and the guys hit harder than girls. She wasn’t about to admit that though.

After getting a sign from Gabe, who was his catcher, Braden wound up again, and Sunny watched his hand, saw the ball. Off-speed, a little high and outside, just the pitch she’d been waiting for. Sunny swung, extending her arms as she transferred her weight to her front foot. With a loud ping that felt solid against her hands, effortless, she connected with the ball making sure she followed all the way through. Her eyes followed it as she dropped the bat and took off for first base to the roar of both benches.

When her foot hit the bag the ball was still sailing, so she rounded and hauled ass for second. Austin’s voice boomed instructions to the leftfielder from the dugout, but her pounding heart muffled everything as she glanced outfield and saw Collins at the fence. Heart in her throat, knowing she was chancing losing the hard fought run they needed to catch up with Austin’s team, Sunny went for it. Collins was either going to catch it and throw her out—he had a strong arm—or he’d miss it and she’d take home.

They needed to push the envelope if they were going to win, she thought, focusing on the bag at third base. Halfway there, Sunny prepared to execute a headfirst slide, something else she used to be damned good at, but the roar of the third base dugout, hers, and the groans from Austin’s bench had her looking back to see Collins jumping the fence to get the ball. Her stride slowed, and a wide grin split her face as she danced over third base, making damned sure she touched it. Home plate looked like heaven as she strolled toward it. She looked over at Austin’s dugout, wanting to stick her tongue out, but he wasn’t there. She looked back at the plate, and right there in the mix of her guys waiting to congratulate her was Austin McBride, grinning almost as much as she was. Her heart floated in her chest, as her endorphins tripled, leaving her brain in a love-soaked fog as she looked at him.

Damn, the man, he wasn’t supposed to congratulate her, he was supposed to be mad, she thought, holding his excited, proud gray eyes as she slapped the guys hands when she passed along the baseline, and they slapped her back. But that didn’t seem to be his style. Austin was the most supportive man she’d ever met, even when he was challenging her. He enjoyed seeing her win, as much as he enjoyed winning.

I don’t want the job, I want you to have it.
Her smile slipped a notch with that thought. The question was did she still want it? With every day that passed, and she saw him at the station, watched him work and lead, Sunny realized he was much better suited, and infinitely more qualified to lead their station than she was. If she decided she didn’t want the job though, after all the effort he’d put into helping her get it, how in the hell could she tell him that? He’d be disappointed in her, and probably pissed too.

As soon as her foot hit the center of home plate, her feet left the ground as Austin lifted her to twirl her in circles, and Billy jumped beside him squealing. Sunny melted against him, soaked up Austin’s warmth and breathed in his delicious scent, relished the feeling of being in his arms again, somewhere she hadn’t been since the ranch.

Since he decided he was going to help her get the Chief’s job, he’d evidently adopted a hands-off policy to go along with that decision. It was irritating and frustrating. No matter how many hints she dropped, or passes she made, he just dodged her. Hell, for all she knew, maybe the man just didn’t want her anymore. She couldn’t blame him really. Sunny knew she wasn’t the easiest woman in the world to deal with, but his comments, and constant compliments, told her he found her attractive.

Austin slid her down his body, then met her gaze with intense eyes. His fingers dug into her arms, and Sunny’s gaze dropped to his mouth. His head gravitated toward her and her breath caught, but instead of kissing her, his hands fell away and he stepped back, leaving her lips buzzing like he’d kissed her anyway. Rubbing a hand over them, Sunny turned and picked up her bat, then walked on leaden feet to her dugout.

If and when she decided whether she still wanted the Chief’s job, she’d just have to cross that bridge then. Because right now? All she wanted was Austin McBride to carry her off the field and make love to her again.

‡