Passion Ignited

“Omar!”

The firefighter turned. Another firefighter—Gabrielle recognized Mason Foley, because he had been in the papers some months earlier—was striding toward them through the alley. “Did you find something?”

“Thought I did,” Omar answered. “But I was wrong, apparently.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed on Gabrielle. “Her?”

“I saw her in the crowd,” Omar explained. “She was acting suspicious. I saw her take off, so I did too. When I caught up to her, she said she was in pursuit of the alleged arsonist.”

“Until he got in the way and stopped me,” Gabrielle quipped.

“You’re Gabrielle Leonard, aren’t you?” Mason asked.

“Yes.” At least this guy didn’t only read the sports pages, she thought sourly.

“The guy got away,” Omar said. “Did you see anyone running down Clark Street?”

Mason shook his head. “Naw.”

“Damn.”

Gabrielle looked up at Omar. There was something about him that looked familiar. And his name...

Yes! It came to her. Hadn’t he dated a friend of a friend? Two, from what she remembered. Both had been head over heels for Omar, but he’d broken their hearts. There was some story about a love triangle. It had been a few years back. But it was becoming clearer in her mind. Omar had played both the women. In the end, both had been devastated.

“Omar, we need you back at the truck,” Mason said.

Omar suddenly met her gaze. And there was that look again. Now Gabrielle could define it. It was the bedroom eye. She quickly averted her gaze to Mason, who nodded at her, and said, “Have a good day.”

Then she looked at Omar again, and though it was a quick glance, she felt something she didn’t want to feel. A spark of attraction. There was an undeniable sizzle between the two of them.

She jerked her gaze away and turned down the alley.

“Gabrielle,” Omar called.

But she pretended not to hear. Because the last thing she wanted to do was have any further involvement with him.

* * *

“Don’t quit your day job,” Tyler McKenzie joked when all of the firefighters had returned to Station Two. “You’d make a lousy detective, Omar.”

The guys had a good laugh at Omar’s expense. Mason, having gotten a kick out of the fact that Omar had “nabbed” Gabrielle Leonard, had enthusiastically shared the story. With everyone.

“Very funny, Tyler,” Omar said.

“Wasn’t Stacy Jackson out there with Channel 10 news?” Mason asked. “Maybe she’s the arsonist.”

More raucous laughter from the guys.

Omar rolled his eyes. Okay, so he had made a colossal mistake. Gabrielle Leonard was clearly not the arsonist.

“I couldn’t see her face,” Omar said. “She was wearing a hat.” Though he wouldn’t have recognized her even in the light of day. He never tuned in to to any Cable Four programming.

“Surprising,” Tyler said. “You mean there’s actually a woman in Ocean City you don’t recognize? I thought you’ve dated all of them.”

“You keep that up, you won’t make it to your wedding,” Omar warned him.

Tyler had recently gotten engaged—for the second time. His first engagement had been a mistake, something Omar and the other guys at the station had known almost from the beginning. But Tyler had hung on far longer than he should have, trying to make things work. It had been futile.

But a few months ago, Tyler had met someone else. Their connection had been wild and furious, and now he seemed happier than ever.

Omar had felt an instant connection to Gabrielle, as well. Sure, she was beautiful. That was obvious. But it wasn’t simply her beauty. There was something else. There had to be—because she had been undeniably angry with him, yet he still felt a spark.

“What was some woman from a TV station doing at the fire scene anyway?” Omar asked.

“She’s not just some woman,” Mason said. “She’s Gabrielle Leonard. A local celebrity.”

“Yeah well, I never watch community television.”

“We don’t even want to know what stations you watch!” Tyler said, then laughed.

“You’re a regular comedian today,” Omar said to Tyler. “I don’t have to watch it, when I can be out there living it.”

There was a round of ooohs and enthusiastic laughter. Someone patted him on the back, and said, “Our resident stud.”

Omar chuckled. His reputation at the station was one of a ladies’ man. And it was true, he had dated a lot. But he hadn’t dated seriously, at least not in recent years. For that reason, the guys all thought he wasn’t serious about finding a girlfriend.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t serious about it. He just hadn’t met anyone who had really intrigued him. Oh, he’d met plenty of beautiful women. And he dated many of them. But they all failed to interest him past the initial attraction. So what was he supposed to do? Settle?

“That’s our Omar,” one of the paramedics said. She was female, and she liked to tease Omar for his playboy ways.

It wasn’t that he was simply a playboy. At least, that’s not how he set out to live his life. And he knew he wasn’t getting any younger. He was thirty-six. Like practically the rest of society, the idea of settling down and having a family was one that appealed to him. But he first had to find the right woman.

Omar knew that if he told his colleagues at the station that, they would break into spontaneous laughter. He had to take responsibility for his own reputation, but part of his carefree attitude had been an act. He didn’t talk about it, but Omar had lost the love of his life. Losing Mika had devastated him. And since her death, he hadn’t met anyone else who could compare.

His mind went back to Gabrielle. He’d felt something with her in that alley. Something he wanted to explore.

The problem was, she had walked away from him when he had called out. She’d ignored him, making it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Well, Omar would see about that. One way or another.

* * *

“What are you doing?” Gabrielle asked.

Omar pulled her toward his body, and looked down into her eyes as if trying to claim her with his gaze. “Kissing you.”

He began to lower his lips slowly, and just when his lips touched hers, Gabrielle felt her body explode.

Her eyes popped open. For a moment, Gabrielle didn’t know what was going on. Her heart was beating fast. She was in her bed, she soon realized. Which meant...

Which meant she had been dreaming about Omar.

Dear God in heaven, what was wrong with her? She glanced at the clock. It was just after four in the morning, and she needed to be up in a few hours. Yet, she had been sleeping fitfully. For some reason, her mind wouldn’t stop replaying what had happened the previous night. How she had been running down that alley, then suddenly stopped by Omar. How the perp had gotten away.

The smoldering look Omar had given her...

Sitting up in the bed, she reached for her water bottle on the night table. She knew why she kept replaying what had happened. And it was because she had been so close to nailing the arsonist.

Did she look like a crazy person? The fact that Omar actually believed she had been the arsonist was baffling.

As she sipped from a glass of water at her bedside, she conceded that perhaps she had looked fidgety and suspicious. She had been keeping one eye on the fire, and one eye on the person she thought had started it. She didn’t want to get too close and scare him off. But she had tried—surreptitiously—to get photos of him.

She wasn’t sure if she had spooked him, but suddenly he had started to move out of the crowd. Toward the alley. There had been no time to try to get anyone else’s attention. Gabrielle had done the only thing she could do. Follow him.

How exactly were you planning to take him down? By batting your eyelashes?

The firefighter’s sarcastic question sounded in her mind. Would he have asked her that had she been a male civilian? Or would he have applauded a male for a valiant effort to take down a wanted criminal?

Gabrielle lay back down on the bed and snuggled with her pillow. Again, she thought about the look Omar had given her just before they parted. It irked her all the more to know that they had been talking about something serious, and then he had given her the bedroom eye. As though all she was good for was something sexual.

Of course, Gabrielle was jumping to conclusions. He hadn’t said anything inappropriate. Well, except for that one sexist comment. He certainly hadn’t crossed the line with her. But...

It was that spark she had felt. Amidst their arguing, she had felt a pull of attraction. Which made her wonder if she were losing her mind.

She looked at the pillow beside her. The empty pillow. The pillow where her ex-fiancé used to sleep.

Until he had cheated on her.

Maybe that was what was bothering her about the encounter with Omar. Besides the disturbing fact that he let the perp get away, maybe she had seen in him the very qualities she used to see in Tobias.

Yes... That was it. She had sensed in him the same kind of philandering ways she had sensed in Tobias. That’s why she had gotten angry with him.

Tobias Winthrop. What a joke. He’d had such a sophisticated name, and he’d had the pedigree to go along with it. Firstborn child of a wealthy businessman. Tobias began working at his father’s company even while in college. From that point, he was groomed to become the CEO of Winthrop Publishing. He had talked about how wonderful their future would be, how they could be a power couple in Ocean City. How they could sail the seas on a private yacht and take private planes to exotic destinations.

He had swept Gabrielle off her feet. But all the money in the world couldn’t buy happiness. She had learned that the hard way when Tobias had cheated on her with her own cousin.

Gabrielle rolled over in her bed and tightly shut her eyes. Why was she thinking about Tobias and his betrayal?

She knew why. It was her brain’s way of reminding her that men like Tobias—and Omar—were dangerous to her heart. She had felt a spark of attraction for Omar. And now, her brain was screaming at her with all kinds of signals. Trying to remind her that even being attracted to someone like Omar could lead to heartbreak.

“Good grief,” she said to herself. “Why are you even getting yourself worked up over this?”

It wasn’t as if she was going to see Omar again.

Chapter 3

The next day, Gabrielle felt exhausted at work. She hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. But in her line of work, napping on the job was impossible. She’d had people to call and interview before appearances on the various shows that Cable Four produced. And she’d had to film her own show, Your Hour, and be upbeat while she was on air.

So she had done what she’d had to do. This had been a three-espresso day.

She didn’t particularly like the strong drink. In fact, she consumed it more as if it were medicine. A liquid shot of adrenaline. It gave her an extra jolt when she was beginning to get fatigued. It allowed her to get through her day.

And when she was finished and finally leaving the studio, she wanted nothing more than to head home and get in her bed. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She needed to visit her parents. Ever since her father’s heart attack, she stopped by often to see how he was doing and to help cheer her mother up.

Gabrielle rounded the studio building to the parking lot...then stopped up dead in her tracks. Was that Omar?

It took only a second for her to realize that it was. And the nerve of him. He was leaning his butt against her Mercedes!

She hustled forward. As she did, he stood tall. He was six foot one at least. And now, in the daylight, without his firefighting gear, she could take a better look at him.

He had a medium brown complexion. He had a round face, which was both sexy and boyish at the same time. He was clean-shaven, and had closely cropped hair. And his body...his biceps were exposed beneath his shirt, and she could see the defined muscles, even though he wasn’t flexing.

He was one seriously sexy man.

As Gabrielle got closer to him, she saw that he had a gold stud in his left earlobe. Figures, she thought. Was that on page one of the player’s handbook?

“Gabby,” Omar said, and gestured to her personalized license plate. “Figured this had to be yours.”

Would it be completely rude to simply get into her car and drive away? Why Omar was even here, Gabrielle had no clue.

She pressed her electronic key to unlock her doors. “What are you going to do?” Omar asked. “Take off without talking to me?”

“How can I help you?”

“So formal.”

Gabrielle crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about last night.”

“I thought we discussed everything we needed to,” Gabrielle said.

“I’m not sure why we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Omar began. “But there’s a negative energy between us. I’d like to resolve that.” He extended his hand to her, and offered her a charming smile. “Omar Ewing. Lieutenant at Fire Station Two. Pleased to meet you.”

Gabrielle shook his hand. “Gabrielle Leonard.”

“I realize you were upset because I judged you wrongly,” Omar said. “And for that, I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” She started toward her driver’s side door.

“Whoa, wait a second.” When Gabrielle turned to look over her shoulder at Omar, he said, “That’s it? You’re taking off?”

“I... I have an appointment.” Not that it couldn’t wait. But being near Omar caused her heart to beat quickly, and she was feeling suddenly flustered.

“All right. I’ll be quick. You said you got a look at the guy you think is the arsonist. So I’m thinking it would be a good idea for the two of us to meet so that we can discuss whatever else it is that you’ve learned. Perhaps combined with what the arson investigators know, we might be able to finally take this guy down.”

“All right,” Gabrielle said slowly. “I’ll give you my card. You can call my assistant tomorrow. Make an appointment.”

Omar chuckled softly. “Call your assistant? I was thinking more like we could go to dinner.”

Now Gabrielle was the one to laugh. Finally, she understood. “So you’re here to ask me on a date?”

“A working date, if you will.”

Predictable... He wanted another notch on his bedpost, and he had set his eyes on her.

“You can pick the place,” Omar said. “We could do this tomorrow, if you want.”

“Mr. Ewing. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

He made a face. “Excuse me?”

“I know what you really want.”

Omar folded his arms over his brawny chest, and his biceps grew exponentially. He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Really? What do I want?”

“Dinner?” Gabrielle scowled. “Does that work with all the women you hit on?”

His eyes widened. “You think I’m hitting on you?”

The way he said the words caused her jaw to stiffen a little. Though the reason was beyond her. She shouldn’t be offended if he wasn’t actually hitting on her. Because she didn’t want him to hit on her.

And yet there was this itty-bitty feeling in the pit of her stomach that felt like rejection.

Or maybe it was just humiliation. Was she jumping to conclusions where Omar was concerned? Just like he had with her last night?

“If you really want to discuss the case, we can do it at my office.”

“But dinner would be so much nicer.”

Gabrielle knew his game. And just seeing him here had her unsettled. Her heart was still beating fast, and she had this odd sensation coursing through her body.

She didn’t like it.

All she knew was that if she never saw Omar again, that would be the best thing for her.

“If I recall, you mentioned something yesterday about how I should go to the police with whatever I knew,” she said. “I think that makes the most sense.”

“Or, you and I could discuss what you think you know, then I can advise you on whether or not we should go to the police with it. I am a firefighter. I’m not some schmuck off the street.”

No, he certainly wasn’t. He was six foot one or so of hot black man. And that was the exact problem with him. Gabrielle could totally see herself losing focus around him. Because for the first time since Tobias had left her, she was feeling a stirring in her gut.

And that was the last thing she wanted. Especially with a man like Omar Ewing.

“I didn’t say you were a schmuck.”

“Sorry,” Omar said, offering her a smile. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“I really do have to get going.” Gabrielle was hoping that she could slip away before he realized that she hadn’t actually agreed to a date with him.

“You know what I really don’t understand,” Omar began. “Why you were at the scene of the fire hoping to nab the arsonist without any help from anyone at your cable station. The more I thought about it, it made more sense for you to go to the scene with someone who had a camera. You might have been able to get the suspected arsonist on film without him knowing.”

“When I heard about the fire, it was late,” Gabrielle explained. “Far too late to wake up any of our cameramen. So I just went to the scene of the fire on my own.”

“What about someone else? A friend or boyfriend or husband who could have been there with you.” He paused. “Didn’t it occur to you that trying to go after the arsonist on your own could be dangerous?”

She almost laughed. He had thrown in boyfriend or husband, hoping to have her reveal her marital status. He thought he was smooth.

“Gabrielle?” Omar prompted when she didn’t speak.

“I...” Gabrielle began, but her voice trailed off. How could she answer that? She hadn’t even discussed her plans with anyone from the network. She hadn’t been at the fire scene in any official capacity. “I... It was just something I was compelled to do,” she finally answered. She certainly wasn’t going to get into the real reason. He didn’t need to know about her parents’ restaurant.

Omar nodded. “In the future, I think you should leave the detective work to the professionals. You could get yourself hurt doing what you did.”

“I assure you, I’ll be fine.” She paused. And when she met his gaze, she had to look away. He had this way of looking at her, as though he were seeing deep into her soul.

“Mr. Ewing—”

“Omar.”

“Omar,” she said. “I do have to get going.”

“You didn’t answer me about dinner,” he said.

She opened her car door. She got the sense that if she didn’t get behind the wheel, he would keep talking to her. “One minute you thought I was the arsonist. Now you’re asking me out on a date?”

“I wasn’t asking you on a date,” Omar said. “But, hey. We can always kill two birds with one stone,” he added, smiling with humor.

He was unbelievable. Gabrielle knew his type. Men who thought that because they were sexy, they could have any woman they wanted. Add to that the fact that many women lost their heads over men in uniform, and she could only imagine that his ego was even more inflated.

“If you’re really serious about discussing the arsonist,” she began as she got into the car, “call my assistant.”

She heard his soft chuckle. “Wow, you’re tough. I can see why you were out on the street going after the arsonist.”

“Good day, Mr. Ewing.”

As she closed her car door, she heard him say, “Omar. Call me Omar.”

She backed her car out of her parking space, and started to drive away. Just when she was about to turn onto the main street, she looked in the rearview mirror.

She saw Omar standing there, his arms on his hips and looking like a GQ model, watching her drive away.

She quickly turned right and slipped into traffic.

* * *

What the heck had just happened? Was it possible that Omar was losing his touch?

As he watched Gabrielle’s Mercedes turn onto the street, he couldn’t have been more surprised. He had gone to see Gabrielle to apologize, and to make amends. And she had reacted as if...

Well, she had reacted as if he had the plague.

He’d been nice, respectful. And she had treated him with disdain that he couldn’t comprehend. Was there something written on his forehead that said he was a jerk?

Despite her reaction to him, there was still something about her. Something about her that got his blood pumping.

It was proving to be a challenge even to get a moment of her time.

But Omar was nothing if not up for a challenge.

Chapter 4

Gabrielle drove as if the devil were chasing behind her. Why on earth had Omar Ewing come to see her?

Her stomach was tight. Her heart was pounding. And it was aggravating.

Good Lord, Omar was sexy. While looking at him, a part of her came alive. She didn’t understand this intense and idiotic attraction to a man like him.

“Forget him,” she told herself.

She turned up the music as she continued driving to her parents’ place. They still lived in the childhood home she had grown up in. It was a house overlooking the water, close to the beach. Her parents—Joe and Gina Leonard—had both worked two jobs when she’d been young, building the American dream for their children. Her mother used to work in a daycare during the day, while her father did construction. At night and on weekends, they cleaned office buildings. Their hard work had paid off.

Gabrielle had been ten when her parents had bought the house that ultimately became their home. It had been small, a split-level ranch house, with a huge backyard. The plan had always been to renovate the house and make it their own, something her father could do well because he worked in construction. The first order of business was to expand the house into the backyard. Her father had built his wife a dream kitchen. After that, the bedrooms had gotten bigger. An additional den had been added. Her parents had been able to renovate the house exactly to their liking. Because it had needed work and a lot of TLC, they had been able to purchase a house in a prime real estate location for an incredible price. But they had turned the house into something spectacular.

Gabrielle still remembered the celebration when the house had been finished. Her parents had been so proud. She and her sister, Grace, had been elated. And finally, her parents had stopped working quite as hard, allowing them to all spend more time together as a family.

Everything her parents had done had been for Gabrielle and Grace. She knew that. Joe and Gina had come from far more humble beginnings, and wanted their own children to have more.

Her parents had successfully conquered two goals. Raising two children, and having a house you could call a home. Now they wanted to spend their later years building another dream.

Just last year, her parents had decided to finally invest in something for themselves. For years, they had dreamed of opening a restaurant. Given that they had worked so hard to build a home for their children, her mother had not been able to follow her culinary passion when she’d been younger. Finally feeling financially secure, later in life, her parents took out some of the equity they had built up in their home to invest in opening a restaurant.

Gina’s Steakhouse.

Gabrielle smiled sadly as she remembered the day the doors had opened. Her mother had beamed with such pride. Her father had insisted that the restaurant be named after his wife. After all, she had given up going to culinary school to raise a family and work to make sure food stayed on the table. Her father had wanted to make sure that her mother finally fulfilled her lifelong dream. And seeing her name on the side of a building had brought her mother incredible joy.

As Gabrielle drove, tears misted her eyes. She had been moved to tears by her mother’s emotion on the day of the grand opening. Gabrielle knew that her whole life her mother had worked extra hard to make sure that she and Grace would have everything they needed in life. Finally, she had had something for herself.