Page 14 of Heat Advisory

Jade reminded me a lot of my sister, Hazel. She was small but mighty. Jade was just a few inches over five feet and had a bold personality. Where she differed from my sister was that she had platinum blonde hair full of curls—a riot of them that matched her character.

Jade and I not only worked together. We had also hung out a few times with other coworkers. However, while she knew a bit about my dating history, she probably didn’t realize this was the same Darren I’d dated last year.

We spent the following two hours working together to prepare an assessment for the area on debris flow and erosion potential after the wildfire that burned through this area several days ago.

I snapped pictures and took measurements, all while watching him stare at my ass the whole time.

What a creep.

Even before Darren, my dating history hadn’t exactly produced any winners. Needless to say, I hadn’t wanted to get back into the dating pool again so quickly, but my sister by blood, Hazel, as well as my sister-from-another-mister, Iris, had both told me to just put myself out there and see. Mr. Right could be just around the corner.

So, I did. Sort of.

When Jay sent me a message last night asking if I wanted to get breakfast with him on Monday, I decided to go for it. However, I would be driving myself. I wanted that choice in case I embarrassed myself beyond repair. It wasn’t every day that you got to have a breakfast date with the guy you had dreamed about for more than a decade.

The problem was, I’d done nothing but freak out ever since about said date, so I decided to go home and try to get some work done. Jade was great, but after we’d gone back to the office, all she kept talking about was Darren and Bernard with BAER, which made me think of my crappy dating life and whether or not Jay would just be another name on that list of guys I’d gone on a date with that didn’t work out.

I figured going home would let me see if working from a different environment would be better. My apartment was nothing to write home about. I lived in Sunny Valley, which was a small suburb outside Reno. It was far enough out of the city that I had quiet but still lived close to work.

My apartment was part of a two-story stucco complex, and I lived on the top floor in a spacious one-bedroom unit. It was an open floor plan, nine-hundred square foot space and had a cute little covered balcony that was great to sit outside on when it wasn’t a million degrees like today.

My office was really just my dining room, but it had a big window, so it made it feel nice and bright, even though the space itself wasn’t a true office.

I sat at my big oak table, scrolling through data on some soil samples from recent burn scars, assessing their flooding potential. Usually, I could get lost in information like that. I loved science, especially environmental science, and I loved studying the quiet ways that water shaped our world.

Most people wouldn’t think of fires and floods as connected, but they were often interdependent.

Jay fought the flames, and I studied what survived them.

And there I was, thinking about Jay again.

I sighed. This was useless.

After hours of failed attempts to distract myself with work, I decided it was time to call in reinforcements—I needed advice.

Iris answered immediately after it rang once. “Hey girl, what’s up?”

“You helped get me into this mess, so you’re going to help me get through it.” I skipped my usual greeting, choosing instead to just jump right into things.

She chuckled before asking for clarification. “Okay, well, I get you into a lot of messes, so you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“My date with Jay! He texted and asked me out to breakfast on Monday and then to go shopping for his groomsman’s tux for his sister’s wedding. What do I do?” I practically pleaded for advice.

“Wear sexy panties!” I heard an elderly voice yell into the phone, followed by Iris’s laugh.

“You’re on speakerphone, by the way, and Nancy says wear sexy panties.”

Great. Nancy was Iris’s next-door neighbor and one of my favorite people. She was pushing eighty years old but acted fifty years younger.

Nancy was a bestselling romance author and always gave us advice on men—though most of it was about sex. She had given us copies of several of her books—ones she felt fit us individually—and highlighted certain parts that she wanted us to know about.

“Hi, Nancy,” I greeted her.

“So, are you just picking up his clothes, or going together to watch him try them on?” Iris asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Oooo, changing room sex,” Nancy’s voice cooed. “I’ve never tried that, but that could be a fun one. If you do it, let me know how it goes. I may add that into my next book.”

I ignored her comment because I was not going to have sex with Jay on our first date, nor was I going to have sex in a changing room.