Up by Five (3 page)

“I sure did. And Sara was thrilled to see me.”

He sounded like he’d recovered.

“What happened to your face?” Sierra asked, coming closer

“A woman, a big, gaudy ring and a misunderstanding,” Gabby recited. “Is that right?” she asked Conner.

“Well, the misunderstanding came before the ring, but yeah.” He went to the freezer and grabbed an ice pack for his head.

“Let me guess, the misunderstanding had to do with how long you wanted her to stay the next day and when you’d be calling her again,” Sierra said.

“The confusion was somewhere between never and forever,” Gabby added.

They both grinned at Conner.

He didn’t say anything as he rested the ice against his brow.

“You know what you need, don’t you?” Gabby asked him.

“Two less talkative crewmates?” he asked.

Sierra laughed.

“You need to date a woman who knows you’re full of shit,” Gabby told him.

He moved the ice pack so he could look at her with both eyes. “What?”

She nodded. “Seriously. The problem with getting rid of these women after you’re…done with them…” Even she flinched at her wording. But it wasn’t her fault it was accurate.

Conner had raised that eyebrow again, but he didn’t interrupt.

“…is that they believe all your charming, romantic bullshit,” Gabby went on.

“Well, yeah. I sell it to them hard,” he said.

“I know. And you’re good. They fall for it. But then it’s tough for them to stop believing it the very next day.”

Conner sighed, as if the world really was unfair. “Hey, I’d love to date someone for a few weeks, even a few months. But I’m not doing forever. And I know women, I’ve even read
Cosmo
.” He glanced at Sierra. “It’s like having the opponent’s playbook.”

Sierra snorted.

Conner went on. “By date five or six, they’re assuming it’s getting serious and they want more and more. If I’m not interested in long term, then it’s really the fair thing to break things off sooner versus later, right?”

Gabby shrugged. He had a point. She read
Cosmo
too. “That’s what I mean. You need to date someone who knows that all your romantic seductive stuff is just to get into a girl’s pants. Someone who knows that what you really want is hot, sweaty sex and then to watch the game on TV with pizza.”

Conner tossed the ice pack back in the freezer. “Well, G, if you run across a girl like that, you let me know. I’m all about that. But be sure she knows about the cock-sucking thing, okay?”

Gabby heard the door open again.

“You took a giant pink bunny up to Sara Gordon?”

Ryan Kaye, the fourth member of their crew, showed up just then. He squinted at Conner.

“What the hell happened to your head?”

Chapter Two

Conner pulled up to the fire scene in his own pickup. He and the crew were supposed to be off today, but the call had come for all crews to report. That was always a bad sign.

He’d been only five miles from the scene in the opposite direction, so he’d told Ryan he’d meet them there.

Ryan pulled their rig in only a minute later.

“Damn,” Ryan said, climbing out and facing the apartment building that was ablaze.

Conner agreed. It was a newer building, not far from the hospital. It was also big. Which meant lots of potential victims. “No wonder they called us.”

“Bradford’s crew is on tonight,” Ryan said.

Conner nodded. He’d already made note of the fact that the first rig on the scene was Sam Bradford’s. Sam worked with Mac Gordon and his other two best friends, Dooley Miller and Kevin Campbell. Not that he’d ever admit it to Mac, but Conner was always glad to see them at a scene.

Conner had seen them in action. He’d done a lot of filling in for them before he’d been hired full time and given his own crew. They were damned good. They worked like they could read each other’s minds and they definitely had each other’s backs. It reminded Conner of how he felt working with Ryan, Gabby and Sierra. And how he felt when he pulled up and saw his buddies Cody Madsen, the Chief at Fire Station Three, and Shane Kelley, one of the best cops in the city on the scenes. Things always seemed to go better when they were all present.

“I’ll go find Bradford,” Ryan said.

There were no apparent victims. That could be good or bad—no one needed assistance, they’d all already been treated…or they were still inside or beyond help.

“Dixon!” someone shouted.

Conner pivoted and saw Cody striding toward him.

“We have victims coming out now,” Cody said, his face grim. “There’re a lot of people still inside.”

Apartment fires at night were the worst—a lot of people in bed, disoriented when they awoke to the alarms, many trying to grab possessions before they evacuated.

“We’ll take care of them,” Conner assured him. “Just get those flames put out.”

“You got it.” But Cody didn’t smile.

“Chief! We need you!” one of Cody’s men yelled.

Cody and Conner exchanged a look that said
good luck
,
I’m glad you’re here
and
take care of yourself
all at once.

Conner watched his friend jog off. He meant the “take care of yourself” more now than he ever had. He’d always wanted Cody to be safe, of course, but Cody was with Conner’s sister Olivia now, and, damn, he made her happy. If he got hurt, Conner would kick his ass.

“Need a paramedic!” someone hollered.

And Conner was on.

He grabbed his bag from the back of the rig and headed for the area where firefighters were directing or carrying victims for treatment.

He glanced around as he knelt beside the middle-aged woman the firefighter had lowered to the ground.

Ryan was helping Sam Bradford with someone, Sierra was talking to two little kids, and he assumed Gabby was around somewhere. She was always the first out of the rig and into the fray.

Conner turned his attention to his patient. And then to the next one. And the next one. And the next. They kept coming. For over an hour.

Finally having applied his last dressing to another minor burn, Conner got to his feet and stretched.

There had been a lot of those minor burns requiring only first aid and reassurance. Thank god. He’d only intubated three patients to help them breathe and there had only been two third-degree burns that he’d seen.

It was possible that the other paramedics had treated the more severely injured patients, but he hoped it meant the fire damage was more to the building than to the people who lived there.

He looked up at the smoking skeleton of the building. There wasn’t much left. The fire had burned quickly and it looked like the top half of the building was a total loss.

Conner shook his head and looked around for his crew. He’d helped Ryan with one of the intubations and he’d seen Sierra helping an older man into Bradford’s ambulance at one point. He hadn’t caught sight of Gabby yet, though.

He located Ryan, then Sierra. But still no Gabby. He turned a full three-sixty, searching the area. What the hell?

She had to be here. She wouldn’t not show up.

“Kaye!” he shouted at Ryan.

“Yeah?”

“Was G in the rig with you?”

“Nope. Figured she’d meet us here too.”

Conner was pretty sure she lived near here, so that would make sense. But then where was she?

“Anyone see Evans?” He approached Sam Bradford’s crew and the third ambulance crew that had been called in.

“Uh, no. Sorry,” Kevin Campbell answered.

“Me either,” Sam said. He frowned. “She didn’t go into the building, did she?”

They weren’t supposed to, obviously, but Conner couldn’t say for sure she hadn’t. He had, on a couple of occasions, gone in for a victim when he was the only one or there wasn’t time. It was stupid and risky, and he’d gotten his ass reamed and written up on disciplinary action both times. But if he had to do it again, he would.

And he could totally see Gabby doing the same thing.

“Hey, Dixon!”

He ignored the shout from Mac Gordon. Mac loved to give Conner a hard time when they were working. Or any other time. Conner deserved it, he knew, but he really wasn’t in the mood. He needed to figure out where the hell Gabby was.

“Ryan, you need to call—”

“Dixon!” Mac bellowed again.

“Not now, Mac!”

“Yes,
now
.”

He turned to flip Mac off but his hand dropped back to his side when he caught sight of the woman Mac had been working on.

“Gabby?”

She pulled the oxygen mask to one side. “Hey.” She gave him a sheepish smile.

“What the hell are you doing?” Conner strode toward her. Frustration warred with concern.

“Recovering from smoke inhalation and getting checked for burns,” Mac said.

“There aren’t any,” Gabby said.

“I should make you prove it. There are some places on you I didn’t check,” Mac said with a wink.

She kicked him. “You wish,” she said with a grin before putting her mask back in place.

Conner blinked. He’d never seen Gabby even remotely flirt with someone.

“What the hell…” Conner repeated. “You were already here?” She’d gotten there ahead of them? “You went in?” Dammit, he’d known she’d do something like that.

The idea of her charging into that fire made his entire body go cold. Jesus, she had no fear—and it scared the hell out of him.

“She was already in,” Mac said.

His smile said he was making fun of Conner, but Conner didn’t get it.

“You don’t just go in. You know that. You wait for us…”

“She lives here, Einstein,” Mac said. “She didn’t report for duty because it’s
her
apartment building on fire.”

Conner stared at him. Then he stared at Gabby.

Gabby was watching him right back.

Mac spoke again. “She got almost twenty people out before the firefighters got ahold of her.”

That didn’t surprise Conner a bit.

“When they wouldn’t let her go back in, she started treating people out of our rig. We didn’t notice at first because she wasn’t in uniform,” Mac added.

That also didn’t surprise Conner. Gabby was, hands down, the most dedicated paramedic on the team. That included Mac’s crew. She wasn’t the biggest or strongest, so there were things she needed the guys to do, things she needed help with at times, but she pushed herself and everyone else. There was no letting up, no resting when Gabby was around.

Conner admired the hell out of her.

“You gonna be okay?” he finally asked.

She nodded.

He nodded back. If Gabby said she was okay, she was. She was smart. If she wasn’t okay, if she needed something, she’d tell them. She was brave, but she asked for help, which helped Conner, and the rest of the crew, trust her.

Right now, though, he was having a hard time not hugging her.

She looked very different from the Gabby he was used to. Her hair hung free, for one thing. It was no wonder no one on Mac’s crew had recognized her at first. Gabby always,
always
, wore her hair up at work. Ponytail or bun. Always.

Now it was free, spilling down her back and over her shoulders. It was long, way longer than he would have guessed—had he ever spent more than two seconds thinking about it—and it was a deep-mahogany color, the lights inside the ambulance catching red highlights throughout.

Her face also looked different. She never wore makeup, at least not the kind of makeup he was used to seeing, but tonight her cheeks were pale, her eyes were wide and her expression…vulnerable. That was absolutely not something he’d seen on Gabby before. She was typically taking charge, commanding, focused. But she was also typically on the other side of the scene, the side that took people to the hospital and then went home to their own homes.

This was her home. The charred, smoking, black mess behind them.

Fuck.

He definitely wanted to hug her. He had a soft spot for the damsel in distress, there was no denying it. It had always been that way and had only gotten stronger raising his four younger sisters. There wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. A woman in need would always flare up his protective instincts.

But he fought it. Hard. All the time. He’d tried the knight thing and it had blown up in his face—and heart—big-time. He was now allergic to women who needed anything more from him than romance and hot sex.

Or so he told himself.

Truthfully, he was like an addict—always drawn to it and having to fight not to get involved and try to fix everything.

Plus, he couldn’t hug her. This was
Gabby
. There was something about her that held him back from the good-hearted teasing and flirting he did with Sierra, from the winks and smiles he gave the other women on staff at the hospital, from the hug he would have given any of them if they’d just watched their home burn down.

Gabby gave off this I’ve-got-it, I’m-good vibe.

But right now he couldn’t look away from her mouth.

There was something seriously wrong with him, he was sure. The poor woman had had possibly one of the worst nights of her life and yet he was staring at her mouth and thinking about the cock-sucking comment from the day before. He’d said it to shock her, he’d admit that. To see how she’d react. But he had no way expected her to respond with something even more graphic.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the suck-my-cock-until-I-come-so-hard-I-can’t-stand-up thing. And he couldn’t stop wondering just how much Gabby knew about cocks and all the related activities.

He’d never thought of her sexually before. Which was weird. She was a woman.

But she definitely gave no signs that she thought of him as anything more than a coworker and friend. He liked women who were interested. Who were very obviously interested. He’d had plenty of experience with reading female signals wrong—and the consequences of that. He liked the safe route now. The route where the women gave him big goo-goo eyes and flirted outrageously and whispered naughty things in his ear.

The route where he knew what they wanted and that he could deliver.