Hot In Here. Susan Lyons

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      She glanced at Scott. “True?”

      Scott nodded. “Joe Probie. What can I say? They’ll make me do anything.” Mostly, stuff that was humiliating. He knew he was supposed to suck it up and smile, so he tried to find a grin.

      “Have to,” the lieutenant said. “It’s part of our job.”

      “To hassle the newbie?” Jenny looked skeptical.

      “Gotta know if he’s with us. Part of the team.”

      “It’s about trust,” John-Boy put in.

      “Uh…” Jenny’s fine black brows had drawn together. “Can you expand on that?”

      Yeah, could they? Scott would love to know the answer himself. Was this just about torture, or was there some actual logic behind it?

      The other guys glanced around at each other, then shrugged. “That’s pretty much it,” Little Man said. “We all go through it.”

      “So,” she said, “having been treated like crap yourselves when you first started out, you’re compelled to carry on that fine old tradition when the next probationer comes along?”

      Scott grinned for real this time. She sure had a way with words.

      The lieutenant gave a snort of laughter. “You got it.” Then he straightened his face. “Plus all that stuff we said about being a team. Gotta test the new guy before we can trust him.”

      Jenny was quiet for a few seconds and then she said, “When you go into a fire, it’s not each man for himself. The four of you are a team. Each of you has to know he can count on the other guys, no matter how tough it gets. No one’s going to break, because if someone does, it puts the other guys in danger.”

      She’d nailed it.

      Scott knew all this stuff; it had been drummed into his head during training, but she was tying it into the shit the guys had shoveled his way since he joined Fire Hall 11. The way she put it, the razzing almost made sense. The guys were testing to make sure he was strong enough to be part of their team.

      The other three were nodding.

      “Hmm,” Jenny mused. “And I guess it doesn’t get much tougher than having to carry the honor of your company up on stage in that calendar competition.”

      Scott’s lips twitched.

      The lieutenant made a fist and whacked him in the chest. Hard. “And then old Softy hadda go and do that girlie dance.”

      “Whatever it takes to win,” Scott said evenly. “Whether you’re beating a fire or a bunch of other competitors.”

      “I’m with Scott,” Jenny said. “He did you guys proud. You might think that dance was girlie, but I can tell you, every woman in the audience thought he was the sexiest guy on stage.” She shot him a sultry look. “He could’ve taken any one of them home on Friday night.”

      Okay, so maybe she was exaggerating, but he’d felt it. The power. The aura of pure sex steaming back and forth between him and the audience. And then with those girls who came backstage.

      He could’ve had any of them, and he’d chosen her.

      Now, in the bright light of day—with her so pretty and sexy and confident, standing there in her little pink shoes, her mass of shiny midnight hair catching the sun’s light and reflecting it back—she was still the one he wanted.

      “You come here to interview them or me?” he growled.

      Her eyes smoldered, a barely banked fire. “I think I’ve got all I need from these gentlemen.” She glanced around. “Thanks, Bulldog, Johnson, Tony. It’s been a pleasure.”

      Then those sultry brown eyes came back to him. “Is there someplace private we can talk, Scott?”

      Private. What exactly was she asking?

      “Yeah, we can take a hint,” Little Man said. “We’ll put the engine away and let you two talk in private.”

      Jenny snapped a few more photos as John-Boy backed the engine into its place inside the bay of the fire hall.

      Then she turned to Scott. “All this Softy and pisser stuff really, if you’ll pardon the expression, pisses you off, doesn’t it?”

      He shrugged. “Yeah.”

      “They’re testing you.”

      “I get it. But, fuck, I’ve wanted to be a firefighter since I was six. I did all the right stuff to get hired, though it took years and years. I aced training. I’d never let these guys down.”

      She’d been watching him carefully as he spoke. Now she said, “I believe you.”

      His heart warmed and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Thanks. But so should they.”

      “It takes a while to build a team,” she said neutrally.

      He gave a wry chuckle. “Damn, you keep nailing it. Thing is, I feel like I’ve been part of the firefighting team for a long time. When I was a kid, growing up out in Chilliwack, I hung around the fire hall. I was, like, their mascot. They even took me along to some little fires. They let me do stuff, like wash the hose.”

      She was smiling, as if she liked the picture he was painting.

      “One of the guys out there, he joined up with Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services. He’s battalion chief now for this battalion.”

      “That must be nice for both of you.”

      He grimaced. Chief Boychuk was great, but…“Sort of. But there’s a downside.”

      “What’s that?”

      “Give you an example. When we finish training, they give us our assignments. Most of us want the real busy fire halls, like Main and Powell. We want to fight fire, get out there as much as we can. But me, the guy who aces training, gets this fire hall. We don’t get so much action here.”

      “The chief wants to protect you?”

      “Yeah. He figures he’s watching out for me, but he’s not doing me any favors.”

      “Ah. The other guys here know about your connection?”

      He nodded grimly. “He even told them to look out for me. So they get back at me by being even tougher than they’d be on the average probie.”

      She was quiet a moment, then she said, “Yeah, but the more they test you, the stronger you get.”

      “Why don’t they test me in fires? They do stuff like mess up the bathroom and make me clean it, send me out to buy cartons of toilet paper when it’s on sale, steal the box spring from my bed and prop it up on soda-pop cans.”

      That last one made her raise her eyebrows. “You jumped into bed and…?”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ