Total Exposure

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.”