May wondered why he still wasn’t married. Was having to watch her brother’s insidious, nearly decade-long suicide not explanation enough? Because spending his formative years with someone trying to numb a broken heart with booze certainly had the poor bastard’s son questioning the sanity of anyone who handed over that kind of power to another person.
And Gunnar liked to think he was at least intelligent enough to not turn into his old man.
He became aware of voices coming from the parking lot. At first, he ignored them, but their increasing volume eventually drew him to the window, where he saw a white late-model pickup backed up to the patch of tree-studded lawn near the front of the station. Katy stood in the bed of the truck, arguing with four firefighters—three of whom scowled up at her, while the fourth held the tailgate closed.
Obviously believing their new team member was deaf, Captain Ike Russo bellowed as he held the tailgate with one hand while gesturing toward the opposite end of the parking lot with the other.
More curious than concerned—although quick to start in barking, Russo wasn’t a biter—Gunnar decided to wait and see how Miss MacBain “handled” her first face-on encounter with her male coworkers. That is until he saw Paul Higgins reach out and forcibly stop Skip Mason from climbing up into the truck bed.
Gunnar gave a muttered curse and headed out the side entrance of his office, not the slightest doubt in his mind as to why Michael Gilmore had abandoned his precious creation. For a seemingly intelligent man, how could he not have known better than to throw a bunch of adrenaline-hyped alphas together, much less expect them to play nice? Christ, Skip Mason clearly believed there wasn’t a vertical cliff he couldn’t scale, a mangled car he couldn’t get inside of, or a woman he couldn’t charm out of her clothes.
Which was probably a good part of the reason Gilmore decided to leave before his final hire—a six-foot-one, real live suntanned goddess—showed up for work. Gilmore was adding a flame to a powder keg.
Though Gunnar would put money on the flame.
“Is there a problem?” he asked when he reached the tense assemblage.
A brightly given “absolutely not, Chief” came from the bed of the truck, at the same time, he got at least two yeses accompanied by several nods.
“I remember Mike mentioning something a couple of weeks back about having campfires,” Russo said with one last scowl at Katy before turning it on Gunnar. “But I don’t recall him saying anything about having them in front of the station, where anyone walking by can see us sitting on our keisters while on the clock.”
“And he sure as hell never said anything about inviting townspeople to join us,” Paul Higgins added. “So they can tell us to our faces what cushy jobs we have.”
“Did you really say she could put it out here?” Russo asked, gesturing toward the lawn.
Had he? Gunnar recalled Katy asking if he cared where she set up the pit, but all he could remember after that were those fog-gray eyes and that killer smile. He looked up at her. “Is there a particular reason you want to place it where the good citizens of Spellbound Falls, such as that gentleman this morning, can see their hard-earned tax dollars paying firemen to sit around a campfire?”
“Precisely so they can see us,” she said, her eyes taking on a familiar gleam. “We’d be better served to invite the complainers to join us than to send them scurrying down the street.”
What the hell? No, she couldn’t possibly be scolding him for coming to her rescue this morning. First off, he’d been protecting her feelings, and secondly, he was her chief.
“If we want the taxpayers to support us,” she continued, apparently unintimidated by his scowl, “then we need to help them understand our jobs. And the best way to do that is by showing them that, even if it appears we’re just sitting around doing nothing, we’re usually rehashing our last training session”—that gleam intensified—“and becoming a relaxed and cohesive team.” She glanced around at the others, and he wouldn’t blame every man for falling in line right that moment. “Every mom who brings her kids to visit, and every person who hangs out with us waiting for the alarm to go off, will be an ally at the town budget meetings instead of an adversary.”
Son of a bitch, now she was giving them civic lessons.
And Gunnar suddenly knew