Hard to Resist - By Kara Lennox Page 0,16

yelled.

The visitor could have been anyone, from a chief making a surprise inspection to a wife dropping off a set of keys or a cell phone to a forgetful husband. Ethan was only slightly curious, and he figured if it concerned him Captain Campeon would call him.

The captain wasn’t shy about that sort of thing.

Then he heard the word “brownies” mentioned, and he dropped his scrub brush and washed his hands. If a family member or a nice neighbor had baked brownies for the fire station, he wanted in on it. If he waited even five minutes, they’d be gone.

Priscilla shook her head as she squeezed her mop head, getting more water down the leg of her navy blue pants than into the bucket. “You guys are so predictable. Mention brownies and your brain short-circuits.”

She flicked him with mop water as he passed. “Hey, bring me a brownie, will you?”

“If there’s an extra.” He headed for the dining hall, where a half dozen of his comrades were already gathered as someone wielded a knife over a pan of brownies.

Standing off to the side was Kat.

Ethan froze in the doorway and drank in the sight of the woman who’d invaded his dreams the night before. She had Samantha with her, clinging like a newborn monkey, hiding her face against Kat’s pink T-shirt.

Ethan couldn’t really blame her. The feeding frenzy unfolding before her eyes was enough to frighten a grizzly bear.

He stepped into the room and cleared his throat. Conversation stopped and Kat fixed her eyes on him, her full lips slightly open. The other guys, who apparently knew these were the two Ethan had helped to rescue, waited to see what she’d say.

“We brought brownies.”

“I see.”

“We wanted to thank you—all of you,” she added hastily, blushing.

Ethan was charmed by her shyness. She obviously didn’t want anyone to think she was singling Ethan out for special treatment. The guys parted like the Red Sea, as he approached. “Hi, Kat. Samantha, is that you? I can’t tell with you hiding your face.”

His cajoling had no effect, except to make the little girl clutch at her mother’s shirt even more. Her knuckles were white.

“We really appreciate sweets,” he continued awkwardly. “Especially chocolate.” He looked down at the pan.

Empty.

Kat looked, too. “I guess I should have brought two pans.”

With guilty mumbles everyone else ambled out of the dining hall, making excuses about work to do. Soon it was just Ethan, Kat and Samantha, who still hid her face.

“Did you get a brownie, Samantha?” Ethan asked.

“Samantha,” Kat urged, when her daughter didn’t respond, “Mr. Basque is talking to you. Think maybe you could answer him?”

“I don’t like brownies,” Samantha answered, her voice muffled. She refused to turn her face away from her mother. “Mommy, can we go now?”

Not a great start, but at least she wasn’t screaming.

“Don’t you want to take a tour of the fire station?” Kat asked. “Captain Campeon said he would show us around. I bet he would let you sit in the fire truck.”

That was a bit of a surprise to Ethan. Eric Campeon, still finding his footing as a newly minted captain with his first command, had made it clear he didn’t like civilians hanging out at the station. But then, Campeon didn’t like much of anything. The guy never smiled. Ethan had a hard time picturing Campeon catering to a mom and her little girl.

But apparently he would never get the chance to see it, because Samantha was having none of it. “I just want to go,” she said, sounding more agitated.

Ethan searched for something to say, anything to ease the little girl’s discomfort. Finally, inspiration struck. “Do you like puppies, Samantha?”

“No.”

“Oh, she does so like puppies,” Kat said impatiently. “She’s just being contrary.”

“We have some puppies out back. Daisy, our mascot, had a litter.” Apparently Daisy had once had free run of the place, despite a “no dogs” rule enacted by the department a few years ago. But Campeon had put an end to that when he’d taken over. That was just before Ethan had been assigned to work at Station 59.

Samantha had no response to the puppy suggestion, but at least she didn’t reject it outright.

“They’re Dalmatian puppies,” Ethan added. “You’ve seen 101 Dalmatians, right?”

“Only about fifty times,” Kat said. “Come on, Samantha. Let’s go look at the puppies.”

Samantha allowed herself to be led out of the kitchen, down a hallway and out a back door to a small fenced yard. Inside the yard was a spacious dog