Page 79 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen

Zach: We need to talk.

Emily rolled her eyes and decided not to text him back. Her morning was too good to deal with any of his nonsense.

Not with the taste of Cole on her lips and the promise of hot firetruck sex in her future.

TWENTY-EIGHT

COLE

Sunday, December 20th

The engine didn’t need cleaning.

Cole knew this. He’d cleaned it two days ago, and it had been in the bay since, and nothing had happened to it in the intervening forty-eight hours that would justify the thorough going-over he was currently giving it. He was aware. He was doing it anyway, because it was something to do with his hands that wasn’t thinking about his hands on Emily Whitaker, and that was proving to be a more demanding task than usual this morning.

He worked methodically down the driver’s side, chamois in hand, his footsteps echoing off the concrete floor of the bay. The overhead fluorescents hummed. The engine sat alone in a space built for three with two stories of open air above it, the massive roll-up door sealed against the cold, the whole bay smelling faintly of diesel and lemon cleaning solution.

The station was quiet. His crew had the morning off. The town was largely back on its feet, power restored, roads clearing, the crisis giving way to the feeling of normalcy returning.

He got to the rear cab door.

He opened it, checked the interior, and stood there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

He could picture Emily there.

The specific sound she made when⁠—

He closed the door.

Captain, who’d been resting in a patch of sunshine on the cement bay, looked up at Cole before using his nose to nudge his tennis ball forward. Cole hadn’t been able to throw it outside since the snowstorm. The drifts would swallow the ball, leaving it buried until springtime. But Captain didn’t mind. The oversized garage bay gave him plenty of room.

“Don’t,” Cole said. He knew if he threw the ball once it would never end.

Captain’s tail thumped once. Twice. Then he was up, ball in mouth, squeaking it as he trotted over to Cole.

“I said don’t.”

Captain dropped the ball at his feet anyway.

Cole looked down at those big brown eyes and lasted about three seconds. He picked up the ball and chucked it across the bay. Captain tore across the garage after it, nails scrambling on the smooth surface, and brought it back in under four seconds. He dropped it and barked twice, high and demanding.

Cole threw it again. Captain skidded into a turn that nearly took out a mop bucket, caught the ball, and pranced back with it.

“Okay, that’s it, boy. Let me finish this first.”

Captain didn’t care what Cole was trying to finish. He dropped the ball and barked insistently, nudging the ball toward Cole with his nose then backing up.

“Later,” Cole said.

Captain sat down and waited expectantly.

Cole sighed and smiled despite his best efforts.

“Last time, buddy.” He threw the ball and turned back toward the truck, moving toward the front of the engine and starting on the hood, which also didn’t need cleaning and was going to get cleaned regardless.

He had plans. Detailed plans for a night this week when the station was quiet, and he had the bay to himself, and Emily was—if her expression on the porch that morning had been any indication—in a cooperative frame of mind. He allowed himself approximately thirty seconds to think about those plans in detail before he put them back in the box labeled later and focused on the chrome.

He was working on the passenger side mirror when he heard the side door clang open—not the big roll-up, just the walk-through door cut into the wall beside it. He knew before he turned around.