The Firefighter's Fiance

‘Penny for them?’ Matt asked.

Oh, no. She wasn’t going to tell him that. She smiled. ‘Nothing much. How was your day, by the way?’

‘Usual summer Friday. One case of heatstroke in the park; one bad back from someone who’d overdone it in the garden yesterday and couldn’t even get out of bed; then a maternataxi case.’

Paramedic jargon for a pregnant woman who’d left it way too late to ring the maternity unit to say she was having contractions, then had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance—and Kelsey knew that Matt had delivered a few babies in his time.

‘Then it was your RTA—’

‘RTC,’ Kelsey corrected.

‘RTA,’ Matt continued with a grin. ‘I’m using ambo terminology, not fire. After you, there was a possible heart attack, and then it was the end of my shift. Did you have a lousy day before the RTA?’

‘School safety visit this morning, one out-of-control barbecue at lunchtime—can you believe that people actually think it’s a good idea to throw lighter fuel on top of a lit barbecue?’ She flexed her shoulders. ‘I enjoyed doing the safety visit.’

‘You always do. It’s the teacher in you,’ Matt said.

‘Well, I’m not a teacher any more. Never was, really.’ She shrugged. ‘I walked out before I qualified.’

‘Ever regret it?’

She shook her head. ‘I love what I do now. Same as you. You never know what you’re going to face when you go on shift. Could be absolutely anything. Could be quiet, could be rushed off your feet—and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.’

Sometimes she thought that she got a buzz from the danger—the risks she took were calculated, but her job was still dangerous. Like Matt’s. It was one of the reasons Cassie hadn’t been able to handle Matt’s job—as well as the unsocial hours, there was the fact that he could always be hurt on duty. He had to deal with Friday or Saturday night callouts in the middle of the city, where people had been drinking or doing drugs—the wrong word at the wrong time, and they could react badly. Lash out or put a knife through his ribs.

Then again, Kelsey routinely had to face explosions, flashovers, clearing up dangerous chemicals…It would take someone special to understand why the danger was never uppermost in her mind when she was at work. Her focus was rescuing someone from a bad situation, putting their life back together again. Mending the hurt. Just like Matt did.

When they’d finished dinner, they cleared the table. Kelsey picked up the teatowel, ready to dry the dishes, but Matt took it from her with a smile. ‘Leave this. You’re studying. Two hours, you said.’

‘Ye-es.’

‘So why don’t I go to the video shop and hire us a good film? We can start watching the film at half-nine—you’ll still be in bed by midnight.’

Typical Matt: this was his way of making sure she didn’t work too hard, but without nagging her. Thoughtful. She adored him for it. ‘Sounds just about perfect,’ she said with a smile. ‘Thanks, Matt.’

‘No worries.’ He flapped the teatowel at her. ‘Go do your studying. I’ll sort this.’

Two hours later, there was a rap on her door.

‘Come in.’

‘Hey. I have popcorn, a tub of ice cream and that new thriller that went on release today.’

‘What flavour ice cream?’

‘Strawberry cheesecake.’

Her favourite. Kelsey saved her file and shut down her laptop. ‘I’m there.’ She followed him downstairs and flopped on the sofa next to him.

The perfect Friday night. A good film, her best friend and her favourite munchies.

‘If you guess who did it, just don’t tell me,’ Matt said.

‘As if I would,’ she teased. She rolled her shoulders, easing the kinks out of them.

‘You study in the wrong position, you know. Slumped over your desk. It’s hardly surprising you get backache. Come here and I’ll sort that out for you.’ He nudged her round so that her back was to him, and began massaging her shoulders.

‘Mmm.’ Kelsey almost purred with pleasure. He knew just the right spot to touch her. ‘If you ever decide you’ve had enough of being a paramedic, you could make a fortune as a masseur.’

‘But then I’d be stuck in one place, and I’d know exactly what I was doing every day. It’s like you said earlier—I get a buzz in never knowing what I’m going to face when I go on shift. Though I don’t need to explain that to you. You’re the same.’

‘Yeah.’ And it was good. Living on the edge. Making a real difference to people’s lives.

‘Better?’ he asked, just resting his hands lightly on her shoulders.

For a moment she was tempted to say no. So he’d continue touching her. And then maybe, if she leaned back against him, he’d let his hands slip lower to cup her breasts and—

No. Oh, hell. She shouldn’t have listened to Joe earlier that day. Having to face a traffic accident and cut someone out of a car had rattled her a bit, stirred up the feelings she normally kept compartmentalised and locked away. And, good as sex would undoubtedly be with Matt, she wasn’t going to mess things up between them for the sake of one night’s comfort.

She shook herself mentally. ‘Much better, thanks. And for that you get first dibs on the ice cream.’

And she wasn’t going to watch the spoon going up to his mouth and wonder what his mouth might feel like against hers.

At all.

CHAPTER THREE (#u6057cd9c-97a6-5d57-b3c0-63876c775043)

EVERYTHING was fine until the following Friday afternoon. A quarter to four. It had been quiet all day—too quiet—and then there was the familiar warble before the Tannoy message. ‘Turnout, vehicles 5 and 57. Fire at Bannington Primary School. Query trapped people.’

The primary school was about ten miles from the city centre. Kelsey’s crew had talked to the kids there about fire safety only last week. And it was the school Ray’s daughter attended—Finn had been delighted, last week, that her dad had brought his fire engine.

Please, God, let it be minor damage, Kelsey begged silently. Let it be a fire in a wastebin or something. Let it be something we can put out. Let nobody be hurt.

She’d never had to deal with a school fire before. Sure, she’d rescued kids from the back of a smashed-up car or from a small house fire, but she’d never faced anything like this. Even the factory fire she’d attended last year hadn’t worried her that much: although some workers had been trapped, they’d been able to follow instructions and she’d known it would work out just fine. There’d been minor burns and smoke inhalation, nothing too major. But with kids there was always the problem that they wouldn’t understand or they’d be too frightened to do what you told them. And they weren’t physically as able to deal with smoke inhalation and the heat of a raging fire as well as adults did.

Ray looked grim as the fire engine sped on its way out of the city. Kelsey could guess what was going through his mind and leaned forward, resting her hand on his shoulder. ‘Guv, school finishes at three. The kids will all have gone home. Finn will be fine.’

‘There’s after-school club for the kids whose parents are still at work,’ Ray said tersely. ‘I know Finn won’t be there, but some of her friends might be.’

‘Hey. Might even be a false alarm—like it usually is when we get a callout to the university,’ Paul said.

‘Let’s hope,’ Ray said, his voice clipped. ‘Police and the ambo team have been called as well.’

But when they turned into School Road, they could see smoke.

Ray swore. ‘They don’t have a sprinkler system, except in the new block.’

Kelsey remembered that the main part of the school was Victorian, a rambling building that had grown along with the urban sprawl of the town. It was full of corridors and small rooms and with varying levels to the floor. The kind of building that always worried firefighters because the layout wasn’t logical and the access points weren’t always clear. She also knew that Ray, as a school governor, had been agitating to get sprinklers fitted to the main building but the project had been tied up in arguments between the planning authority and the education authority over listed building regulations. There had been holdup after hold-up over the proposed changes to the building while they had tried to reach a compromise that would satisfy both areas. With sprinklers, the fire would be less serious. Without, who knew what they’d face?