“Beau,” Mom said in the same disapproving tone she’d used when I was a teenager. “You work too much. If you don’t make time to find love, you’re never going to meet the right person.”
Nora stifled a laugh.
“Thanks, Mom, I’m aware of that,” I said. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting to get to.”
“Beau,” she said again, with more emphasis.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
I ended the call before she could start complaining again. I tipped forward and rested my forehead against my desk with a groan.
Nora barked a laugh in earnest. “She’s a real piece of work, your mother. She’s really at it again?”
“Unbelievable, I know.” I sat back up and scrubbed my hand over my forehead. “It’s like she thinks this wedding is her last chance to help me find the ‘right person.’”
Nora shrugged. “It’s annoying, but she just wants you to be happy.”
“She wants me to be happy in a way that suits her,” I groused.
“Well, you haven’t exactly been super forthcoming with them,” Nora pointed out.
“What? I’m out to them.” And I was, technically. It’d been a hard conversation when Nora and I first split, and they’d agreed to support me, and then promptly pretended that that conversation never happened. They never asked if I was dating anyone—especially not men—and I didn’t feel like I could take anyone home to meet my folks, even if I was actually in a relationship. I wouldn’t want to subject a partner to their disapproval, even if it was unspoken.
“Right,” Nora said. “When’s the last time they met someone you were dating?”
“They’re not interested in doing that,” I said. “And why would they be? Anna’s got that arena covered.”
Anna was ten years younger than me, and my parents adored her almost as much as I did. The fact that her fiancé was a lovely, smart, kind man who doted on her just as much as she deserved had initially been a nice distraction from Mom’s fixation with my dating life, but now that they were getting married, she was ready for me to get married, too.
“Not that there’s anyone for them to meet,” Nora amended. “When’s the last time you even dated someone for more than a few weeks?”
I grimaced. “None of your business.”
“So a long time,” Nora said. “Scratch that, when’s the last time you even had your eye on someone?”
“Also none of your business,” I muttered. But I was thinking about a certain member of the Liberty Crew. He was tall and lithe like a dancer, and his dark hair in a high bun made him almost as tall as I was. He was an explosion of energy—funny, with a musical laugh and a catlike smile, an elegant upturned nose and keen almond-shaped eyes that seemed to track me like a rifle sight whenever he was on scene.
I’d been trying really hard to keep things professional between us, but Tru seemed determined to fluster me with his flirting, and he was getting really good at it. And lately I’d spent a little too much time thinking about the way the sunlight caught the silver piercings that glittered in his ears when he tossed his head, laughing.
“You’re thinking about someone right now,” Nora said. “I can literally see it in your eyes. I have my own theory about who it might be, but…”
Nora had known me for so long, she could basically read my mind. At times like this, it was a little bit annoying. I may have mentioned Tru a few too many times when I was discussing the Stella’s Bakery case with her, and she now had her own suspicions. Ones she liked to remind me of, constantly.
“Well, you should ask him out,” Nora said. “You really need to start going on dates—I agree with your mother on that one, shockingly.”
“What I need to do,” I said, “is finish catching up on these emails and forget this conversation ever happened.”
I didn’t want to think about how Nora was right. Part of me did want to date and maybe, eventually, settle down, but it was too exhausting to even think about navigating that with my parents, and balancing it with my job. My life was simple, and focused, and good. It was easier to just focus on work—at least that way my family dynamics were stable, if not exactly ideal.
“Eighteen years to find a man, and still you haven’t,” Nora said with a sigh. “Such a waste of your most handsome years.”
“I’m still in my most handsome years.”
“That’s what you think,” Nora said teasingly.
Then our conversation was interrupted by the shriek of the station siren and the simultaneous buzz of my pager at my hip.
“Duty calls,” Nora said as the dispatcher’s crackling voice spoke from my pager. It was a fire—not a first responder call—which meant Nora wasn’t riding with me. She was off active callouts while she was pregnant, responding primarily to medical calls.
I nodded and hurried out of my office, grateful for the distraction. After nearly two decades of doing it, the job was a blend of muscle memory and intense focus. Four of the guys at the station and I jumped into our coveralls with practiced efficiency and rode to the site of the fire, sirens wailing as I drove the rig down the winding highway.
An old barn between Elkin Lake and Junee had caught fire, and the orange flames were spitting dark, rancid smoke into the clear blue sky.
“Dispatch said no victims on-site,” I said. “It was called in by the landowner. Keep your eyes peeled regardless.”
“Got it,” Jono said as he hauled the hose from the side of the rig. Jono was one of the newer full-time firefighters—young and a little brash, but he had the drive needed to make it in this field. Even though his shift had started just a few minutes before this call came in, he was eager and ready to work.
“All right, hit the foundation first then work your way up to the roof,” I said.
The team, fully suited up in coveralls and breathing apparatuses, began to tackle the roaring flames with well-practiced ease. Something about this fire itched at me, though—we were in the middle of nowhere. How did it start? Usually we saw fires like this a little closer to town, the result of a mislaid cigarette butt or a trash burn gone awry. But the landowner said no one had been around the lot for ages, as far as he knew.
I filed that thought away to address later, once we had the flames controlled. This was the part I excelled at. It was immensely satisfying to be a part of a well-oiled team like the firefighters of Elkin Lake South Station. We worked almost as one, tackling the flames from the foundation to the roof, until the fire was controlled and all that was left was the smoldering wreckage of the burned-out barn.
I loved my job, and my team. There were so many people in this world stuck working in jobs they hated just to make ends meet, and I got to do this—the thing I loved most in the world. And I got paid to do it. I didn’t need a relationship to be happy, regardless of what Nora and Mom thought.
“All good over here, sir!” Jono called from the backside of the building.
“Good work, everyone,” I said, surveying the ash.
This was enough. It was more than enough. Whatever fixation I had with Tru would pass, just like all my previous failed relationships and infatuations. But it’d be a lot easier if he wasn’t so… himself. Funny, and sexy, and so fucking flirty I could feel my resolve breaking every time he took it upon himself to touch my shoulder and bat his eyelashes at me.