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Natalie opened her mouth to object, but the line was already disconnected.
She slowly hung up. Odds were that if Dan Egan knew she was coming, he’d run full tilt in the opposite direction.
FIRE CHIEF DAN EGAN loved his job, but like most professions, there were aspects he hated with a passion. And paperwork ranked right up near the top.
He pulled together the rotation schedules scattered across his desk and started putting them in order by week. Too bad Courage Bay’s budget didn’t allow for a full-time office manager. He could really use one. Especially now, so close to the holidays. It wasn’t hard to understand why everyone wanted Thanksgiving off. But it was up to him and his two captains to decide who would actually get their request. While seniority played a role, Dan also had to consider who had worked the last holiday, and other variables.
This was all stuff he’d prefer not to have to think about. He’d much rather be out on a run somewhere instead of stuck in his office trying to make heads or tails out of Captain Joe Ripani’s indecipherable chicken scratches. Dan turned a page one way, then another, trying to make out a notation. At last he gave up and tossed the paper aside. The white sheet drifted on the air and started sailing over the side of his desk toward the wastebasket. He made a move to catch it, pulling the three-month-old burn on his side and causing pain to shoot up his back and down his arm.
“Damn.”
Spike, a twelve-year-old Dalmatian and his constant companion nowadays, lay sprawled in front of the door. At the sound of Dan’s voice, he lifted his head and gave a quiet bark.
Dan grimaced at him. “I bet you know exactly how I feel, don’t you, boy?” He gingerly leaned back in his chair. “Too old to do any of the fun stuff, too young not to want to do it.”
While Spike hadn’t been the official fire dog for some years now due to age, his role at the station had been called into question by the new firehouse mascot, Salvage, a black Lab that truckie Shannon O’Shea had rescued from a warehouse fire. A second fire at the same warehouse was responsible for Dan’s burn.
Yes, Dan had found out exactly how it felt to be phased out—or rather, “promoted”—when he made fire chief a year ago, leaving his days of hands-on action well behind him.
The small, recessed speaker in the ceiling broadcast an incoming phone call to the station’s general line. Dan purposely ignored it, because for all intents and purposes he wasn’t there. He was supposed to be at the hospital getting a checkup from that frustratingly beautiful Dr. Natalie Giroux. An appointment he had no intention of keeping.
He caught himself lightly rubbing the wound in question, then put both hands firmly on his desk as Spike laid his head back down on top of his paws.
“Chief? Call’s for you.” Nate Kellison’s voice sounded over the speaker. Nate was a paramedic on Squad Two.
Cursing under his breath, Dan leaned back in his chair to yell out the open door. “I’m not here.”
“She’s not buying it,” came the answer.
Dan snatched the receiver from its cradle on his desk. “Egan.”
“I knew I’d get you if I threatened Nate with the rotation from hell.” His daughter’s voice filtered into his ear. “But my question is, why are you there instead of at the hospital like you’re supposed to be?”
“Something came up.”
“Right. Just like something’s come up the past four times you were scheduled to meet with Natalie.”
The mention of the lady doc’s name made Dan’s stomach tighten.
He told himself the thought of her poking and prodding at him was behind the physical response. If the memory of her mocha-colored eyes above her surgical mask when he’d finally come to in the hospital three months ago had anything to do with his reaction, well, he wasn’t about to own up to it.
Mocha? Where in the hell had that description come from? He rubbed his forehead with his finger and thumb. Must be Tim and all that fancy cappuccino stuff he made whenever he was on duty. Dr. Natalie Giroux’s eyes were brown. Nothing more, nothing less.
And Dan hated hospitals. Nothing more, nothing less.
There weren’t very many things capable of putting the fear of God into Dan Egan. He’d joined the Courage Bay Fire Department after completing six years of active military service as a helicopter pilot flying emergency missions in war-torn areas of the world. He’d done it all—firefighter, haz-mat specialist, smoke jumper, helicopter pilot, captain. When Patrick O’Shea became mayor last year, freeing up the top position in the fire department, Dan had moved up to chief. Yes, he’d pretty much faced every intimidating situation that there was to face.
But hospitals…
He cursed under his breath.
“I told you,” he said to his daughter, “and I’m going to keep telling you until you get it through that thick head of yours—I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the doctor for a checkup.”
“And I told you,” Debra countered without missing a beat, “and I’m going to keep telling you until you get it through that thick head of yours, it’s just a follow-up. If it’s true you’re fine, then what better way to shut me up than by letting Natalie take a look?”
There went that stomach-tightening thing again.
Next to hospitals, Burn Specialist Natalie Giroux was second on his most-hated list. Well, maybe not most-hated. But definitely a woman to avoid. While her eyes were soft and intriguing, her take-charge manner rubbed him the wrong way. Although he didn’t consider himself sexist—he was the first to admit the two female firefighters at the station more than pulled their own weight—Natalie…well, Natalie seemed to go that one inch too far.
Pushy. That’s what he’d like to think his late wife would have called her. A pushy woman.
“Are you done?” he asked his nineteen-going-on-forty-year-old daughter. “Because if you are, there are some important things I could be doing.”
“If you’re not on a run, then it’s not important,” she countered. “Anyway, I just called to make sure you’re there. I convinced Natalie to stop by and conduct her examination.”
“Here?” he repeated. “Here, as in the station?”
“Yes. And you’d better be nice to her.”
Nice to her, hell. He wasn’t going to be there.
“Deb, I’ve got to go.”
“Call me—”
Dan didn’t hear the rest because he was in the process of hanging up.
If Dr. Natalie Giroux was on her way to the station, that meant he had to be on his way out.
He pushed to his feet, wincing again as the scar tissue pulled tight. He grabbed his jacket, then headed for the door. Spike lumbered to his feet, the chain collar around his neck clinking as he wagged his tail and followed.
Dan hurried down the hall toward the bays at the front of the station, calling out as he went. “Nate? I’m out of here. If you need anything, I’ll be—”
The words stopped dead in his throat as he literally bumped into the woman he was trying to avoid, along with her unsettling mocha-brown eyes.
Dr. Natalie Giroux blocked his path, looking none too happy as rain ran in rivulets from the umbrella she held.
“You’ll be where?” she asked.
CHAPTER TWO
NATALIE HELD HER GROUND as she faced off with an obviously shocked and disappointed Dan Egan in the open bay of the fire station. She had little doubt he’d been trying to ditch her. The instant Debra had said she’d be calling her father, Natalie had hurried to the station, determined to get this over with once and for all. Close the file on the sexy and infuriating Dan Egan, who could easily serve as the poster boy for stubborn men worldwide.
She gazed into his light blue eyes and found herself swallowing hard to rid her mouth of the moisture that had instantly collected there. She’d forgotten how…big he was. And that was saying a lot, because at five-seven, she didn’t exactly rank on the short side. But Dan…Dan easily topped six-three. Six feet three inches of hard, solid, attractive male.
Of hard, mulish, injured male, she reminded herself.
“I, um,” Dan mumbled, squinting at her against a shaft of late afternoon sunlight that had suddenly speared through the thick, heavy storm clouds blanketing the Courage Bay area. “I have to run some errands.”
“Good thing you didn’t say you had an appointment.” Natalie couldn’t help a wry smile, although she felt cold and wet, and her day had taken an even steeper nosedive when she’d agreed to this particular call.
He absently scratched the back of his neck near the neat line of his dark brown hair. “Did we have an appointment today?”
A clacking sound caught Natalie’s attention, and she gasped as something brushed against her bare knee. She looked down at the white dog with huge black spots all over him. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “This must be Spot.”
Dan slid his fingers into the dog’s chain-link collar and pulled him back. “Actually, it’s Spike.”
Natalie blinked at him.
Dan grinned. “His grandfather was Spot.”
“Ah,” she said, not quite sure how to react to the information or the warm grin that came along with it. She tried to look over Dan’s shoulder, then glanced around him instead at the mammoth red ladder truck glistening in the shaft of light. A moment later the light disappeared and dark gloom settled in once again, a steady rain pelting the station roof.
“Looks like this storm’s not going anywhere for a while.”
Natalie glanced at the ominous purple clouds. Were they really talking about the weather? It had rained for the past seven days straight. “It is the rainy season in Southern Cal.”
He seemed to consider her. “That it is.”
“Where do you want to do this?” Natalie asked.
Dan’s eyes widened slightly. “Do what?”
“If you’re in that much of a rush, we could do it right here.”
“Here?”
“The examination.” She tightened her fingers around the black bag she held along with her umbrella, not comfortable with the other possibilities that came to mind. Why did she feel so drawn to this man, reading sexual innuendo into a simple comment?
But Dan was too much like Charles—so not what she wanted or needed right now. Nor anytime in the foreseeable future.
“Oh.” He looked around, as if realizing where they were for the first time. “We could go to my office.”
“That’ll work.”
He started walking away, then glanced over his shoulder. “Will this take long?”
“Depends.”
He slowed his steps, nearly causing her to plow into him. “On what?”
Natalie tried not to look at the way the denim of his jeans hugged his backside. “Have you had any problems since the injury? I mean, aside from the normal healing process?”
He shook his head. “No problems.”
“No soreness, tightness, sharp pains?”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Nope. None of that.”
“Well, then, this shouldn’t take any time at all,” Natalie said, hoping fervently that was the case. She didn’t like the way she felt when she was around Dan Egan. His presence…did things to her. Short-circuited her mental wiring. Kicked up her heartbeat. Reminded her that she was a woman who hadn’t been with a man in a long time.
Today would have been your wedding anniversary, a small voice whispered to her.
Charles is gone, another said.
“Are you okay?”
They had stopped outside an office Natalie guessed was his. “That’s funny,” she said with a small smile. “I thought I was supposed to be the one asking that question.”
His gaze skimmed over her face, but he didn’t say anything.
Once again Natalie felt that heightened awareness of Dan as a man. She put her bag down on the cluttered desktop and opened it up. “Take off your jacket and shirt,” she said in her most professional tone.
“Pardon me?”
His voice held a slight Southern drawl. Natalie had forgotten that Dan hailed from Turning Point, Texas. And though a long time had passed since he’d actually lived there, his voice, his mannerisms, and yes, even his charm, were decidedly Texan.
“I can’t examine you through your clothes, Dan,” she said quietly.
“Oh.”
He obviously wasn’t looking forward to this any more than she was. Just being near him again made Natalie remember how affected she’d been by him three months ago. When he was brought in to the emergency room, unconscious, after the warehouse explosion, she’d noticed how strikingly handsome he was. How powerful looking. When she’d peeled back the sheet to examine the blistered skin on his side, he’d blinked open those pale blue eyes, and she’d felt the shock of connection.
Immediately she’d repressed her response and focused on the job she had to do. But she hadn’t forgotten….
“Dan, I really need you to—”
“Okay—”
An earsplitting alarm went off and at the same time the cadence of the heavily falling rain intensified against the station roof.
Spike barked and wove circles around their legs even as Dan straightened his jacket and headed through the open doorway without so much as an explanation or apologetic glance.
Natalie gathered her bag and umbrella and followed after him, not about to be put off again. If she had to conduct this examination while he was putting out a fire, by God, she was going to do it.
DAN CLIMBED BEHIND the wheel of his service Jeep, allowed Spike to climb up over him and into the back seat, then switched on the siren. He was about to put the vehicle into gear when the passenger door opened and Natalie slid in next to him.
His gaze fell on the way her skirt hiked up from the climb, revealing her slender legs. She seemed to realize what he was looking at and immediately remedied the situation, tugging her hem down to cover her knees.
Ladder truck #1 blew its horn some twenty feet away as it pulled out of the bay and onto the street, siren blaring, redirecting Dan’s attention.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded of Natalie, a hairbreadth away from reaching over her to open the door and shove the lady doc out.
“With you, of course.” She crossed her arms in a maddening way that emphasized the gentle curves beneath her rain slicker and blouse. “I’m going to close the case on you today, no matter what it takes.”
Dan stared at her. There weren’t very many people who could stand up to his scowl, and he focused it on Natalie full force.
To her credit—or stupidity—she didn’t even blink. Instead, her delicate chin came up a little higher and those mocha eyes held a challenge he’d previously seen in fellow combatants’ eyes.
