Sex and the Single Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novel by Jennifer Bernard Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Stepping out of the bathroom, she gratefully inhaled the beloved smell of the firehouse—a hint of gas drifting from the apparatus bay, coffee from the kitchen, varnish from the ladders they’d been working on. And for the millionth time she gave thanks for the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that had landed her at San Gabriel Station 1.
    For his first overtime shift filling in as battalion chief, Roman made a brief appearance at dinner, which was prepared by Fred the Stud. The easy flow of conversation was clearly hampered by his presence, so he returned to his paperwork as quickly as possible.
    “Thanks for the meal,” he told Stud, scraping his chair back from the table.
    “Sure thing, Chief Roman. We never had a battalion chief at the station before. What about the dinner rotation?”
    “Stud,” said Captain Kelly sharply. “Chief Roman will not be cooking.” He shot a glance Roman’s way. “Unless he wants to, of course.”
    “No,” said Roman, more brusquely than necessary. “No cooking.”
    As he disappeared into his office, he heard a few mutters. “Of course not . . . hard-asses don’t cook . . . Chief Bighead . . . Brody always made pot roast . . .”
    He ignored the complaints. He wasn’t here to make friends.
    Victor Renteria, chief of the San Gabriel Fire Department, called soon after dinner. “Heard you’re already making an impression over there.”
    “Just doing my job.”
    “I knew I got the right man. If you can keep those guys out of the news for two weeks, I’ll buy you a bottle of Jameson’s.”
    “I don’t foresee any problems.”
    Chief Renteria gave a long, ironic chuckle. “Glad to hear it. Have they briefed you on the curse yet?”
    “No one’s mentioned it.” He’d heard about it, of course. Virgil Rush, the 1850s volunteer fireman jilted by Constancia B. Sidwell, his mail-order bride, had been so tormented by his crewmates’ teasing that he laid a curse on all San Gabriel firemen, dooming them to disaster in their love lives.
    Since he didn’t have a love life, he couldn’t care less about the “curse.”
    “Media eats it up. We used to like the publicity—bunch of good-looking, single firemen landing in People magazine—good for the image. But it’s gotten out of hand. The opinion pages are making mincemeat out of me. Did you see their nickname for me? Chief Rent-a-Mirror. They’ve taken this too far, Roman. It’s personal now. I can’t think about those bastards without a stiff drink in my hand. Get this damn thing under control, that’s all I ask.”
    “I’m on it, Chief. Total media blackout.”
    “You can make exceptions for fires, of course,” said Renteria dryly. “But only for fires.”
    As Roman hung up, Stan opened one eye and bared his teeth. For a beagle who slept most of the time, he sure was feisty. He gave Roman a long, meaningful look, then collapsed himself into a ball on the floor.
    So the dog didn’t like him. Why the hell should it bother him?
    Only two calls came in that night, both handled perfectly well by the men and woman of the B shift. Roman got almost no sleep, tossing and turning on the narrow bunk, which was six inches too short for him and about seventy-five feet too close to Sabina Jones. Although he’d tried not to acquire this information, he knew exactly where she was sleeping. And now he knew her first name. Sabina. Unusual. Kind of romantic-sounding. Of course, everyone at the station called her Two. Of all ridiculous names. She wasn’t the second of anything; she was one of a kind. Even after such a short acquaintance he knew that much.
    As he fell into a brief snooze, his last thought was about what the fire chief would say if he knew that he and Sabina had been one second thought away from hot, naked, sweaty, spectacular sex.
    Luke raced across the San Gabriel Airport terminal and launched himself at Roman, who caught him in a tight hug. Being mostly Italian, their family had never been shy