It's a Wonderful Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novella (The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel) by Jennifer Bernard Read Free Book Online Page A

thigh muscles bulged when he did that. She caught his scent, sweat mixed with dust from the diamond, and her mouth went dry. You’re not supposed to smell the catcher , she lectured herself. Or drool over him. She wrenched her gaze away from him and forced herself to focus on the pitcher.
    Maybe having her right brain occupied with Mulligan helped her left brain do its job, because as soon as the first pitch flew into her strike zone, she whacked it right over the head of the second baseman, who happened to be Vader. It caught a breeze and sailed over a leaping Ryan Blake, who was playing center field. Everyone started shouting and running, and she took off for first base. This time she didn’t trip. She rounded first, soared past second, took time for a quick glance into the outfield, then raced toward third.
    Everyone on the bench was jumping up and down yelling things like “Go! Go! Go!” and “Stop! Stop! Stop!” so she blocked them out and headed for home. Mulligan straddled the plate, a solid wall of man, his glove extended. As she slid into home base, everything happened in slow motion. His glove swept down, she rolled to escape it, collided with his leg, then felt his entire weight come down on top of her. A grunt, then the umpire’s yell, “Out,” then the sound of her heartbeat hammering in her ears.
    “Get off me,” she yelled, shoving furiously at him.
    “Give me a second.” His voice sounded strained.
    “Are you okay?” His body was hard and muscled, every inch of him. She felt his heartbeat, heard his labored breathing. Saw his dark eyes taking her in. Noticed his broken nose, wondered if it had come from a baseball game or something more dangerous.
    “I’m fine, except some chick knocked me off my feet. Are you okay?”
    She remembered that she’d been called “out” and scrambled out from under him. The umpire, a firefighter from Porter Ranch, helped her up. “Ump, that’s a bullshit call. I was safe. I saw my foot touch the plate right before he tagged me.”
    “You never touched the plate,” said Mulligan, slowly unwinding himself from his position on the ground. “You rolled away from it.”
    “Because . . . because . . .”
    “Because I was about to tag you out.”
    Standoff. The air crackled between them. Maybe another guy would have given in to please the pretty girl, but the expression on Mulligan’s face told her he took the game seriously and would never patronize her like that. He acknowledged her as an equal competitor. Since she’d grown up fighting to make her brothers take her seriously, she could have kissed him for that.
    And suddenly she wanted to, more than anything.
    “Fine. Nice play, fireman.” She walked off the field, catching Mulligan’s surprised expression. Good. She wanted to keep him on his toes. He was entirely too sure of himself. Not that he wasn’t justified, with his ripped physique and bad-boy looks. But he didn’t need to know how he affected her; it would just go to his head.
    The EMTs lost the game, so by the time everyone adjourned to the Easy Out, a nearby sports bar, she was more than ready to toss down a beer and flirt with the nearest cute guy who wasn’t Mulligan.
    She picked Ace, the brand-new rookie. While plenty good-looking, he did nothing for her in terms of chemistry. But they had a good time laughing about the game over mugs of amber ale. Maybe he was getting a little too friendly, and playing with her hair a little too intimately. But that was a matter of opinion, and certainly not Mulligan’s business. So she was shocked when Mulligan, wearing a dire expression, interrupted her pleasant flirtation by dragging her onto the patio, currently deserted due to the Dodgers game playing on the screens inside.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” His dark eyes flung a wild challenge at her.
    “Excuse me?” Astonished, she hid behind a sip of her beer, but he plucked her mug out of her hand and set it on a nearby