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“I dunno,” the boy mumbled.
“He says his mom’s dead,” the firefighter said. “By the way, I’m Mike Gables.”
“Yes, I know.” She didn’t look at him this time.
“My reputation precedes me?”
“You could say that.”
His amused chuckle teased around the edges of the barrier she’d erected years ago to protect herself from men like Mike Gables.
“Randy, you’re going to have to tell me who you were living with.”
“I can’t ’member. I must have hit my head.”
“Hit your—”
“Amnesia,” Mike suggested mildly. “A bad case of voluntarius forgetingus. It’s in all the medical textbooks. Very serious.”
The boy looked up hopefully. His hair was as straight as Mike’s was wavy and might have been cut with pinking shears it was so uneven. “Yeah, that’s what I gots.”
Kristin suppressed a smile. “I see.” But that wouldn’t help her to locate whatever adults were responsible for Randy. “Maybe he’ll experience a spontaneous cure by the morning. I’ve heard of that happening in cases like this.” She risked a glance at Mike. He looked troubled.
“Can I go to sleep now? I think it’s past my bedtime.”
“It certainly is.” Despite her vow to keep her emotional distance, she reached down and covered the boy with a light blanket, letting her hand linger in a caress. He was about the age Bobby would have…
She thrust the thought aside. “Do you want me to stay until they take you upstairs?”
His eyelids drooping, he shook his head.
Mike gestured that they should leave. Instinctively, Kristin knew she shouldn’t go anywhere with the man, not even as far as the nurses’ station. But it seemed childish to object.
He followed her out of the cubicle, a little too closely, she thought. She could feel his eyes on her, the heat of his body warming the air around her. Or maybe she just imagined that he’d slipped inside her personal space. Whatever the case, her skin flushed and the hairs on her nape rose. To her dismay, she suddenly wished she’d worn an austere business suit tonight instead of casual slacks and a boat-neck T-shirt. Protective armor to bolster her good sense would have been a good idea, too.
Behind her, Mike was fascinated by the sassy sway of her ponytail—like a determined red flag warning him off—in contrast to the inviting swing of her hips. A woman of contradictions, he suspected. But then, what woman wasn’t?
He smiled to himself. This one had green eyes, not bright like spring grass, but a deeper shade that made him think of a forest glade that held dark, painful secrets. An intriguing thought and more fanciful than was his usual style.
She stopped, turned abruptly, and he almost ran into her. A part of him wished he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to touch her, to see if her skin was as soft as it appeared. Maybe later….
She looked up at him with those deep, secret-filled eyes. “Did Randy tell you anything about who’d he’d been living with?”
“Nope, and I don’t think he’s going to either.”
Her nicely arched auburn brows lowered into a frown. “Why not?”
“The house had been vacant a long time. I’d guess they were squatters and maybe left him on his own while they went off to the movies or something. From what I saw, they didn’t have much in the way of possessions. Itinerants would be my guess and probably leery of the law.” He shrugged. “Maybe the cops can find out something from the neighbors but I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.”
“If I can’t find his family or a responsible adult, I’ll have to place him in foster care.”
“A typical bureaucratic response.”
She looked surprised by his sharp tone. “That’s how the system works. You can’t leave a child alone.”
“Sometimes it’d be better for the kid,” he muttered, knowing full well that wasn’t the case for a boy as young as Randy. Unless someone turned up, he’d become just another cog in the system, and a pretty damn helpless one at that. But Ms. McCoy—social worker—being on the other end of the stick, couldn’t fully understand that. “Maybe he’s already in the system. Maybe that was a foster family he was living with and he’d just as soon not go back.”
“Our foster families aren’t usually squatting in an empty house,” she said defensively. “They’re checked out better than that.”
“Usually.”
“Could he be a runaway?”
“Pretty young for that. And I think there was too much stuff in there for him to have carried it on his own—an old cot he slept on, a mattress in the master bedroom and some basic equipment in the kitchen.”
“Then it’s a mystery, isn’t it?” She glanced around as the double doors opened to the ambulance entrance and an elderly man was brought in on a gurney.
Addy swept past them with a clipboard and a tray of supplies for the new arrival.
“Hey, don’t wear out your dancing shoes, Addy,” Mike warned with a grin.
“Sugar, if you’re askin’, I’m dancing.” She laughed as she vanished into the examining room with the patient.
Mike smiled after her. He’d dated Addy a couple of times, his limit with most women. She was fun, full of laughter and a helluva good dancer. But he’d found if he saw a woman more than once or twice they got the wrong idea. A few laughs, a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers were all any woman could expect from him. A man who’d been raised in a dozen different foster homes in the same number of years didn’t know anything about commitment.
When he turned back to Kristin, she’d set her jaw in a stubborn line. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call the police and ask them to check with the neighbors first thing in the morning. Maybe they can learn something of value.”
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, wondering why she’d gone all torque-jawed on him. He didn’t usually have that effect on a pretty woman.
“Meanwhile, I’m sure you have other things to do. I’ll look in on Randy later to see that he’s settled comfortably in his room.”
With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the emergency room. Mike watched the red semaphore wagging its danger signal. Definitely an intriguing woman. Too damn bad she was a social worker.
“Good lookin’, isn’t she?” Addy dropped a patient chart on the counter and unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck.
“You could say that. But I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”
“What? A woman capable of resisting your charms? Bet that doesn’t happen often.”
“Nope, it doesn’t.” And Mike couldn’t quite help but think he’d enjoy the challenge of changing Kristin’s mind, no matter what her job was.
Chapter Two
Mike spent his day off on the boat he kept in the marina at Morro Bay. Something always needed to be done—the motor overhauled, the decks wiped clean, the scuba gear checked. Not that he objected. On a sunny day, it was a helluva nice way to spend some time—with the added bonus of frequent female companionship as women dropped by to say hello.
Funny how this time he’d compared them all to a green-eyed redhead he’d met only briefly in the emergency room. And they’d all come up short.
Now, as he parked his pickup behind Station Six the next morning, he was ready to get back to work on his twenty-four-hour eight-to-eight shift. He wasn’t an adrenaline junky, but he needed some serious work to keep his mind off a libido that had a will of its own. He was kind of hoping they’d be training on the tower today. A few trips up and down that sucker hauling a mile of hose over his shoulder and he’d sleep just fine tonight. No fantastic dreams featuring a redhead to interrupt his Zs.
Dressed in his uniform, duffle bag over his shoulder, he went inside, taking the stairs to the third-floor living quarters two at a time.
“Hail, our hero!” Virtually all of the members of C-shift were waiting for him in the dining hall along with every guy on B-shift, about to go off duty.
Mike halted in his tracks. “What’s going on?”
Logan Strong, a C-shift member of the ladder truck company, produced a huge picture pasted on a three-by-four-foot poster board, a blowup of a newspaper photo. Mike squinted, trying to make out the grainy reproduction.
“The fair city of Paseo del Real—or at least the press thereof—has declared you a hero,” Logan announced, grinning broadly. “Congratulations.”
Oh, shoot! The picture was of Mike carrying Randy to the ambulance, the kid wearing his helmet. The headline read, Hero Rescues Child from Fiery Inferno.
“Ah, come on, guys. I didn’t do anything—”
“You got that damn straight,” Jay Tolliver said. “I could have been the hero if you hadn’t pushed your way inside before me. Think how many points I would have made with Kim if you’d let me go first.”
Mike lowered his duffle to the floor. “You don’t need any points with your new bride, Tolliver. She’s already nuts over you, though we’ve gotta question her judgment in that regard.”
Jay laughed, and so did the rest of the crew.
With a shake of her head that set her dangling earrings in motion, Emma Jean Witkowsky, the dispatcher, said, “I knew the minute I saw that picture in yesterday’s paper something good would happen. They’re setting up a trust fund for that sweet little boy so he can go to college.”
“We can always count on your psychic ability to tell us what’s going to happen—right after it happens,” Mike teased.
Lifting her chin, she set her jewelry in motion again. “It’s my Gypsy blood.”
Given her dark eyes and nearly black hair, it was entirely possible Emma Jean was a Gypsy, but Mike didn’t believe the psychic business for a minute. She was more often wrong than right, not that she’d admit it.
Crossing the room, Logan presented Mike with the photo. “I bet you made a deal with the photographer so you’d get the really big bucks at the bachelor auction this week.”
“Some of us hero-types don’t need any extra help. The ladies are crazy about me.”
“Yeah, and the feeling is mutual.”
Everyone in the room hooted and hollered, but Mike couldn’t deny that was true. He liked women, liked to see their eyes light up when he flirted with them—old ones, young ones, it didn’t matter. But he made it a point not to let any relationship go too far. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt a woman by leading her to expect more than he could give.
Ray Gainer, a fireplug of a man, arrived, duffle slung over his shoulder.
“Hey, you’re late,” Logan pointed out.
Gainer shrugged and gave everyone a sheepish grin. “Long ride back from Vegas.”
“Hot dog! That means Gainer’s buying the ice cream today,” someone shouted.
“No way! I lost my shirt this trip, and my wife’s gonna skin my hide if she finds out about it.”
The friendly bantering back and forth continued for a few more minutes, then the guys from B-shift headed home and Mike took the photo and his duffle into his room, stowing them both in his locker. Arnie Switzer, who slept in the room during B-shift, had left the place spotless as usual. Firefighters were good about that, neat and tidy, at least at the station house.
Firefighters also worked hours that were different from the rest of the world. Typically, they pulled three twenty-four-hour shifts a week with a day off in between, then they had four days off in a row. That meant a firefighter had plenty of time to moonlight on another job, or in Mike’s case, go scuba diving or hang out at the marina.
Closing the door on the locker, Mike gave some thought to the bachelor auction that was coming up. It was for a good cause, the burn unit at the hospital. Giving up a few hours of his free time wasn’t a hardship.
He smiled to himself. Maybe he ought to invite Kristin McCoy to the event and slip her a few extra bucks to bid on him.
Then again, she hadn’t exactly warmed to him. Given his luck, she’d use his money to run up the bid on Logan, a quiet, serious guy women couldn’t seem to resist. Mike didn’t want to waste his money promoting Logan’s love life.
KRISTIN KNELT in front of Randy, her heart nearly melting at the sad look on his face. His arms were wrapped tightly around a paper sack filled with clothing she’d dug up from the emergency supply—pants and shirts that were probably too big for his slender frame. He’d look like a lost waif, which is exactly what he was. The police hadn’t been able to trace the couple he’d been living with in the vacant house, the neighbors hadn’t had a clue who they were, and Randy still wasn’t talking.
The fire department had determined, however, that burning candles in the kitchen had started the fire. There hadn’t been any electricity in the house. Mike Gables had been right—whomever Randy had been living with were squatters. And they’d endangered a child. The worst kind of public enemies in Kristin’s view.
If she could take the boy home with her, she’d do it in a second. But that was against the rules. Besides, she couldn’t take in all the children she worked with no matter how much she might want to. There were simply too many.
“You’ll be staying here for a few days,” she tried to explain again. “Bud and Alice Gramercy are great foster parents. I know you’ll like living with them, and you’ll have lots of kids to play with.” The Gramercys operated a small group home for up to six kids at time, all of them loud and rambunctious as evidenced by the cacophony going on in the backyard.
“What about Suzie? Can she come too?”
“I’m afraid not, honey. The Gramercys already have two dogs. You can play with them.”
His lower lip jutted out about a mile. “Suzie’s my dog.”
“I know, but there isn’t enough room—”
“Where is she?”
“They’re keeping her at the pound. She’s fine, I’m sure.”
He was losing the battle to keep his chin from trembling. “Can I go see her? Please. I promised I’d come back for her.” A sob caught in his throat, and tears edged down his cheeks. “She’ll think I forgot!”
“Oh, Randy… “Unable to help herself, she pulled the child into her arms. “If you could just tell me if you have any relatives, who you were living with—”
“They didn’t want Suzie neither,” he said glumly, and Kristin could almost hear the unspoken words, They didn’t want me.
He rested his head on her shoulder, so sweet and needy it made Kristin want to bawl like a baby too. Who in the name of heaven would walk away from a child like this? Leave him alone in a vacant house with only a dog for company? If she could get her hands on—
Gritting her teeth, she forced her emotions aside and concentrated on her job, what needed to be done to protect Randy.
Surely somewhere she could find a foster family who would take both the boy and his pet. It was a crime to separate them. Boys and puppy-dog tails went together. And if someone didn’t claim Suzie within seven days, the pound would have to euthanize the dog. Kristin couldn’t bear the thought of telling Randy his dog had been put to sleep. It would break her heart as well as the boy’s.
Alice came out of the kitchen where she’d been fixing dinner for the mob of children. “Come on, Randy. Tell Ms. McCoy goodbye. It’s almost time for supper. I’ll show you where to put your things. You’re going to be sharing your bedroom with Shane and Toby. Won’t that be nice?”
Taking the boy by his shoulders, Alice gently pulled him away from Kristin.
His big, brown eyes locked on Kristin. “Can you go see Suzie? Tell her I didn’t forget her.”
Kristin nodded, though nowhere in her job description did it say she had to drop by a pound to visit a client’s dog, nor was there any time in her hectic schedule for that kind of an excursion. But maybe she’d go anyway. Maybe she could convince the animal shelter to hold off any final decision about the dog’s fate long enough for her to find a suitable family.
Then again, as firefighter Mike Gables had suggested, bureaucrats often made decisions based solely on rules they felt compelled to follow. Kristin could defend the system until she was blue in the face, but she acknowledged there were times when it simply didn’t work to the benefit of her young clients.
From the vehemence of Mike’s reaction, perhaps he had learned that lesson in a very personal way. She couldn’t help but wonder where and how.
WHEN THE PHONE rang, Kristin had been back in her office only long enough to note that the pile of case files on her desk had grown by a foot in her absence. The darn things multiplied faster than rabbits!
She picked up the phone. “McCoy.”
“Hey, girlfriend, what’re you doin’ Wednesday night?”
Kristin rolled her eyes. “Well, let me think, Addy. I’ve scheduled a quick flight to the Riviera. Thought I’d drop a few thousand dollars on the roulette tables then buzz back home in time to get to work the next morning. Of course, Las Vegas would be closer and cheaper, but you know me—a party girl at heart.”
“Which is why I called you. Your social life sucks big time.”
“I like my quiet life—”
“We’re all going out Wednesday night and there’s no way I’m going to accept a no from you unless, heaven forbid, there’s a death in your family.”
“Addy, I don’t do blind dates.” She rarely dated at all, and then only reluctantly, when one of her brothers absolutely forced a buddy on her and she couldn’t refuse.
“Who said anything about a date? It’s us girls—Connie, Janice, Holly Mae, you and me. We’re gonna have us a high ol’ time out on the town.”
They were her friends, too, all of them employed by the hospital in one capacity or another. Still, Kristin stalled. “Well…”
“Trust me, girlfriend. You need a break and so do we. It’s not like being a nurse is all that much more fun than going around wiping the noses of whiny little kids who’d just as soon kick you in the—”
“Addy!” Kristin laughed. If there was a softer touch in the world than Addy, Kristin had never met her. “So where are we going?”
“Uh, we’ll figure that out once we get started. For now, let’s plan to meet at the hospital about seven. We’ll go from there.”
Kristin didn’t like the hesitation she’d heard in her friend’s voice, but before she could ask for clarification, Addy said, “Gotta go, hon. There’s a big hunky UPS driver at my door. See you Wednesday.”
Left holding a silent phone, Kristin decided a night out on the town with her friends was exactly what she needed. She’d been spending far too much time in the past day or so thinking about a studly firefighter with a wicked smile and a dangerous reputation.
THEY’D tricked her!
Kristin had been thinking drinks and dinner with Addy and her friends, maybe a movie. What she got was a bachelor auction to benefit the hospital’s burn unit and an auditorium filled with giggling, out-of-control women. The aisles were crowded, the seats filling up quickly.
“There is no way I’m going to bid on anyone,” Kristin insisted.
“You don’t have to,” Addy assured her. “The looking is almost as much fun as the buying. It’s like window-shopping.”
Kristin wasn’t in the market for a bachelor of any size or shape. Forget that the money went for a good cause. She didn’t even want to look. Thinking about the absence of a special man in her life was a depressing exercise and one to be avoided.
“Look, Addy, you and the others can go ahead without me. We’ll do something together next—”
“Here we go.” Addy caught Kristin’s hand and forcefully dragged her into a row with several vacant seats. Connie was right behind her, pushing, and she was followed by the rest of Addy’s cohorts from the hospital.
Not only had they tricked Kristin, now they’d trapped her!
“You just let us know if you see anything interesting,” Connie said, settling beside Kristin.
The only thing in the room of interest to Kristin was the red Exit sign. And she couldn’t get to it without trampling an entire row of excited women.
As Kristin scrunched down in her chair in the faint hope none of her colleagues from work would see her, Connie passed Addy a big handful of money. With a smug smile, Addy tucked the wad of bills into her purse.
Kristin had the distinct impression her friends were up to some stunt she wasn’t going to like.
MIKE NOTICED her the moment he paraded out onto the stage with the other bachelors. Odd, in a sea of two hundred beautiful women, how he’d zeroed in on Kristin. Maybe it was because she was the only woman in the room who wasn’t screaming and waving. Or maybe it had to do with dynamite chemistry—on his side, at least. And he couldn’t help but wonder who she’d be bidding on.
Fire Chief Harlan Gray picked up the microphone to act as MC and auctioneer. “Good evening, ladies. I’d like to welcome you all to—”
“We don’t want any speeches, Chief,” someone shouted. “We’ve got money burning holes in our purses. Let’s have at it.”
The women in the audience whooped their approval. Instinctively, every bachelor on stage including the chief, who was a widower, stepped back a pace. These were some scary ladies. Nobody wanted to be in their way if they stampeded.
The chief sorted out the bachelors, asking Les Adams from Station Two to take center stage first. In all, about twenty bachelors were to be auctioned off, most of them firefighters, with a couple of doctors and a male nurse thrown into the mix. The bidding on Les started at a hundred dollars and made it to a hundred and fifty before running out of steam. Mike noticed Kristin wasn’t much interested in the proceedings.
An hour later, amid whistles and catcalls, Mike finally took his place out front. He grinned at the ladies and blew them a kiss, which brought another round of cheers. He’d like to do well at the auction, bring in the big bucks. In addition to an ego stroke, there was a friendly rivalry between the fire stations in town. The one that garnered the least money for the burn unit had to deliver ice cream to all the other stations.
Somebody started the bidding at two hundred. Before he could spot the first bidder, the price had gone up to two-fifty and he realized Addy Goodfellow had finally jumped into the fray with her first bid of the evening. Not Kristin, he thought with a twinge of regret. She looked like she’d rather be somewhere else.
Two-seventy-five quickly became three-fifty, and it looked like Mike was going to grab top honors for the night. Suddenly, he remembered that weeks ago Emma Jean had predicted he’d get the highest bid this year—and never be eligible for a bachelor auction again.
When Addy went to five hundred dollars, Mike began to sweat. He thought she understood he wasn’t a commitment kind of guy. She shouldn’t be spending—
“Five hundred once,” Chief Gray called. “Five hundred twice. Sold to the lady in the red blouse!”
The audience cheered at the top bid for the evening.
Mike mentally groaned. He’d show Addy a good time on their date, but he’d make it clear that as nice as she might be, and as much fun as she was, they had no future together.
The final bachelor went for two-fifty and the chief was about to call it a night when Councilwoman Evie Anderson stood up in the audience. An attractive woman in her sixties, she’d had her eye on the chief for some years, showing up at the fire station with home-baked goods for him and “his boys” and even baking him a birthday cake. Problem was, the councilwoman couldn’t cook worth a darn. From the taste of her strawberry syrup alone, which she’d brought to the pancake breakfast this past spring, Mike was convinced the woman was determined to poison every member of the fire department along with all their family members.
“We’re not done yet, Harlan,” Evie said.
“Yes, we are,” the chief insisted. “Steve was the last—”
“You’re single, Chief Gray. And I bid one thousand dollars.”
There was a moment of silence, as though everyone was intrigued by the blush that rushed up the chief’s throat and bloomed on his cheeks, virtually turning the roots of his gray hair pink. Then the audience cheered louder than they had all evening.
The chief banged his gavel. “Sold,” he muttered, and the whole crowd was on their feet practically bringing the auditorium down with their enthusiastic applause. Only two people didn’t look happy about the evening—Chief Gray and Kristin McCoy.