Heating up the Holidays

1

CRISTINA LEWIS walked into the florist’s shop with a tiny bit of an attitude, which, at least according to those who knew her best, was nothing new. Whatever. She rarely wasted time thinking about her demeanor, or what people thought of it.

Probably not the best way to make friends, but she wasn’t out to do so. Not in her world, where she was the lone female firefighter at station #34 in Santa Rey, California, a surfer-boy beach town. Her attitude was her shield, which she backed up by being good at what she did. The best, actually, and as a result, she was respected and trusted. And maybe a little feared, which worked, too.

Give her a burning building or a wrecked car threatening to explode any day of the week and she’d handle it. Unfortunately, today’s task was picking out a Christmas bouquet for the new chief and his wife.

Cristina wasn’t a Christmas person. Hell, she wasn’t a people person, so the fact that she was the one in here while her crew waited outside on the rig was fairly ridiculous. “I know nothing about flowers,” she warned the clerk who came around the front desk with a welcoming smile. “And even less about the whole ho-ho spirit, so we can skip the sales talk.”

“Good. I hate the sales talk.”

Okay, the woman was tough and had a sense of humor. Perfect. “Can you get me a Christmas bouquet and make it painless?”

“I’m an expert in painless.” The clerk’s professional smile never wavered. “For a boyfriend? Husband?”

Ha. Cristina didn’t have a husband. She didn’t have a boyfriend, either. The closest she’d come lately was her vibrator, but that had broken a few months back and she hadn’t yet replaced it. As for a real live penis, that honor had all too briefly belonged to an extremely laid-back, easygoing, sexy-as-hell EMT named Dustin Mauer, whom she’d had to dump through no particular fault of his own-other than that he possessed the most baffling ability to make her want things. Things she didn’t want to want. Things like a happily ever after, which she’d never believed in.

“It’s for the new boss’s wife.” She slapped the seventy-five bucks the crew had all pooled together onto the counter. “In the name of sucking up to the powers that be, apparently.”

“Well, you came to the right place.”

“Great.” Cristina just wanted to do this and get out, maybe fight a blaze or rescue someone. Anything but this. She knew damn well she was in here only because she had the lone vagina on the squad. Any one of those guys out there would have done a better job on this and they all knew it, but they were too busy cackling like little girls over making Cristina do it.

From some hidden speaker came a soft medley of Christmas tunes, and when she looked around, her senses were assaulted with a myriad of scents and colors. Flowers, plants, crafty stuff, it was everywhere, like a nightmare, all in green and red and silver and gold. Festive chaos.

It made her feel dizzy, and just a little like a bull in a china shop.

“Make sure it looks pretty,” came Blake’s voice over the radio at her hip. The radio issued by the fire department, the one supposedly to be used for emergencies only.

Cristina sighed. At the moment she didn’t care that Blake had had an incredibly rough year and that she loved him like the brother she’d never had, she snatched the radio off her hip and snarled, “You sent me in here, you’ll deal with what I pick.”

“Scrooge.”

So she wasn’t a fan of Christmas, so what. She had no family to speak of other than the one she’d made at the station, and therefore didn’t have a lot of happy yuletide memories. To her, Christmas was just another day at the firehouse, albeit with better goodies to steal out of the fridge.

“Make sure it has some red flowers on it,” came Blake’s voice again. “She loves red flowers, apparently.”

Like she cared what some higher-up’s wife liked. The last chief had been a serial arsonist. In her eyes, the new chief still had to prove himself. “You’ll like what I pick,” she informed him with plenty of her famed attitude. “Even if it smells like sh-”

“Wow, somebody really needs to get laid.” There was laughter in his voice now.

Yeah, okay, so she did need that, desperately, but she’d done the stupid thing and dumped Dustin after one fantastic night of amazing sex, and now he refused to have additional amazing sex without “more,” whatever the hell that meant.

Not that that was any of Blake’s business.

The clerk cleared her throat and held up some sort of floral arrangement with what even Cristina had to admit was a gorgeous mix of red flowers and greenery, and a silver bow that managed not to look obnoxious. “Okay, you are good.”

The clerk smiled. “Oh, I’m better than good. Do you want to take it with you or have it delivered?”

“Delivered, please.” And while she pulled out the address she’d written down and waited for the woman to handle the paperwork, she eyed the store again. With her chore now completed, she could take a breath of relief and admit that maybe the place had a charm to it. It did smell damn good. She eyed the small tree on the counter, filled with tiny red envelopes. “What are those?”

“A present-in-an-envelope. Donate twenty-five bucks that will go to one of several local charities, and you get a surprise donated from a local business-a spa treatment or a dinner for two, things like that.”

Cristina didn’t know what came over her but she dug into her uniform pants and pulled out a twenty and a five. Scrooge, her ass.

“Pick an envelope, any one,” the clerk told her cheerfully.

Cristina debated a moment, then grabbed one.

Feeling a little silly, she exited the shop. On the rig, Blake was on the radio with dispatch and waving to her to hurry up because they had a call.

As she hopped into the truck she read her card: Good for one night’s stay at Santa Rey’s most romantic getaway-the Sweet Pea B and B.

Terrific. There was only one man she’d want to spend the night there with, but Dustin wouldn’t do it, not unless she gave him his damn “more.” She stared at the card, rolled her eyes at the irony, then shoved it in her pocket and did as she did with everything that disturbed her. She brushed it aside and let it go.

DUSTIN MAUER drove his ambulance with easy purpose, as always. As an EMT, he knew the drill. Get to the scene as quickly as possible without risking anyone’s life, assess the victims, get them the necessary medical care. He’d been doing just that for nearly ten years, since graduating from Cal Poly. It hadn’t been his life goal to be an EMT, it’d been merely a means to an end, a decent paycheck with which to pay off his education debt while he and his brother Jason had gotten their renovation business up and running.

But then Jason had gone into the military and their business had become a sort of side deal, as in, they got to it when they got to it, and Dustin had gotten comfortable being an EMT. Plus he was excellent at it, and until a few months ago, had truly loved what he did every day.

Then he’d fallen for the stubborn, gorgeous Cristina Lewis and she’d dumped him, and he’d been restless ever since.

He pulled up to the multicar pileup on Hwy 1. James, his new partner, was talking to dispatch, but he could see what they faced-a big rig had hit the center divider, caught fire and then two other cars had impacted it, sliding beneath the trailer. It was a chaotic mess, and all units had been called to the scene.

The firefighters from his station were already there. Blake was working the flames, and Zach and Aidan were using the jaws of life to extract the people trapped in the first car, while Sam and Eddie rescued the woman in the second car.

And then there was the stubborn, gorgeous heartbreaker, Cristina. She stood right in the center of it all, surrounded by the blazing big rig and the smashed cars, feet firmly planted wide as she held a hose on the flames. She was in her fire gear from head to toe, including mask, so he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. Her expression would be calm, intense, determined as she concentrated on the job at hand.

Much as it had been when she’d dumped him after the best night of his life.

As he watched, a burning chunk of debris flew off the truck toward Cristina’s head. Heart in his throat, he shouted her name even as he realized the futility of that-she couldn’t hear him over the ruckus all around them. But she didn’t need his help. She easily leapt out of the way with a casual agility, as graceful as a cat, never letting up on the flames she was drowning.

Sam and Eddie brought over the four victims from the first car, and Dustin tore his eyes off Cristina to do his job.

She’d be okay.

Hell, she always was. Like a cat, he reminded himself, always landing on her feet.

A talent he’d have to learn…

Unbelievably, he wrapped only a few minor scrapes and bruises, nothing serious, and then the woman from the second car was brought to them.

She didn’t have any injuries at all. But as they sat there, her car exploded.

Dustin’s head whipped back to the scene, his gaze anxiously searching for-

There. Cristina was there, still standing in one piece and he took a deep breath.

“My God,” the woman said in shock ten minutes later when the flames were out. “I can’t believe we’re all still alive. It’s a miracle.”

“Actually, it’s good firefighting.”

They turned to the petite but toned firefighter who’d come up behind them. Except Dustin. He didn’t have to look. He knew the sound of her voice, knew the sensation that hit him every time she was within a few feet.

“You okay?” Cristina asked the woman, pulling off her helmet.

“Yes, thanks to you. You got there just in time, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It’s my job. I’m glad to help.”

Dustin knew she meant that utterly sincerely. Much as he’d like it to be otherwise, Cristina was the job. She lived and breathed for it, and little else.

As he’d learned the hard way.

She had a streak of dirt over one jaw, another across her forehead. She had her silky, long blond hair tied back as usual, hanging down inside the stiff collar of her protective jacket, though several strands were stuck to her damp, dirty forehead. She was a mess, and still drop-dead gorgeous.

Firefighter Barbie, her partner Blake had once dared joke.

Once.

Cristina had been so furious she’d tongue-lashed him for a week. Poor Blake-Eeyore to those who knew and loved him-had never made that mistake again.

To Dustin, Cristina was much more kick-ass warrior princess than Barbie, but he valued his life enough to keep that particular fantasy to himself.

“You really should take a ride to the hospital,” he said to the woman they’d rescued. “Just to make sure.”

“No, that’s not necessary. I’ve called my fiancé, he’s on his way.” She whipped around as a man came running up to the rig, shouting her name hoarsely, in stark relief. The two of them hugged tightly. Dustin watched, trying to remain impartial, but he was a sorry sap, and these sorts of reunions got to him every single time.

“Are you okay?” the man demanded, pulling back to look the woman over for himself.

“I’m okay.”

“Thank God.” He hugged her tight. “You are my entire life, you know that, right? If something happened to you-”

“I’m okay. I’m right here.” She hugged him as though she never intended to let go, her eyes closed as she breathed him in as if he were her very essence. “I love you so much.”

Dustin had seen such scenes dozens of times. Hundreds. It still got him. He looked at Cristina, who’d already turned away.

Typical. She was uncomfortable with public displays of affection or love. “Cristina.”

“Gotta go,” she said.

He followed her off to the side, away from the victim and her fiancé. “Right. Because messy emotions disturb you.”

She went still, then turned and looked at him. Things were winding down behind them now. Several cops were taking statements and the tow-truck operators were working on hooking up all the disabled vehicles to pull them off the highway.

“Look,” she said defensively. “It was just one night.”

“And you had such a bad time that you can’t bear to repeat it?”

She sighed. “Don’t make me hurt your manly feelings, Dustin.”

At that, he out-and-out laughed. There was nothing else he could do. “Are you going to tell me it wasn’t good for you?”

Now she opened her mouth, then slowly shut it again. He arched a brow, waiting, knowing damn well she’d had a great night, too.

She rolled her eyes and took a step closer to him, so that their steel-toed boots were touching as she stabbed a finger into his chest. “Okay, so I came once or twice. Big deal, it’d been awhile and I was primed. It doesn’t mean that I’d like to repeat the event. I can do that myself.”

“Three times,” he said much more tightly than he wanted to. He knew better than to take her bait and say anything, but when it came to her, The Most Irritating Woman on the Planet, he couldn’t seem to help himself. “You came two times before, and then again when I was inside you. Can you give yourself that?”

He wasn’t surprised when she spun on her heel and walked away.

A few minutes later, Blake clasped a hand on his shoulder, having come up behind him. “Not the smartest move, man, poking at the bear. You’re going to get bitten.”

Yeah. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

2

THINGS didn’t go any easier that night for Cristina, who, along with her crew, worked in twenty-four-hour shifts, three days on, two days off. They were going to need both days off to recover after the three fire calls in quick succession between midnight and dawn. It was still dark when Cristina finally made it back to the station, exhausted, filthy and starving.

None of those things were new. It seemed that she spent most of her shifts in some variance of exhausted, filthy and starving. It was a way of life. Her life.

Normally she yelled “Shotgun” for the shower before anyone even got off the rig, but today she let the guys go ahead of her because she felt…wiped.

The station was a comfortable, old, two-story brick building, decorated at the moment with Christmas ornaments made by various elementary schools in town, plus several small trees and what must have been an entire bush of mistletoe.

But she wasn’t going to be kissing any firefighters, not this Christmas.

The station was on the main drag and directly across the street from the beach. The view was always gorgeous, no matter the weather. During the day she could stare at the waves and the surfers in it, and in the hours before dawn, she could watch the moonbeams bounce off the whitecaps as she did now.

As she slid off the rig into the cool December air, she glanced at her watch-4:30 a.m.

Dustin stuck his head out the front door, making the decorated wreath hanging there tinkle noisily. “Cristina.”

Yes, that was her name. She really wished he wouldn’t talk to her until she was completely over him, because he had one of those low, whisky-thick voices that made her quiver.

“Come on. Come in and get a hot shower.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Get in here anyway.”

That was the thing about Dustin, the defining thing that grabbed her every single time-the way he could make an instant transformation from mild-mannered guy to tough, commanding alpha male. “In a few.”

“You’re filthy.”

Yeah, she hated that voice’s effect on her. Where were her knees? Suddenly she couldn’t feel them. “Well, you’re funny-looking. At least I can shower.”

He just looked at her, not scared off like most, and she sighed. “I’ll be inside in a few.”

He gave her a long assessing look, then shut the door. She sank to the front steps and stared out at the water, too tired to move. If she had even an ounce of energy left in her, she’d kick off her boots and walk to the sand.

Twenty-nine years old and too damn tired to walk to the beach. That was so pathetic, she forced herself to bend over and untie her boots, nudging them off. She shoved her grimy socks into them and left them on the front step, crossing the street in her bare feet.

Even in California December could get downright chilly, and she shivered when the cool sand hit her toes. This year she had Christmas day off, and the two days after that, as well. A rarity. Maybe she should hop on a plane and go south. As in the South Pacific south. Yeah, that would work.

But she wouldn’t, and she knew it. For all her bravado, she wouldn’t enjoy such a thing by herself, and she had no one to take, a depressing thought.

She had been invited to Sam’s house for a Christmas fiesta that he was making with his girlfriend, Sara. Or she could head with Eddie to his sister’s house and be overrun with kids. Or Zach and Brooke had asked her to join them. So had Aidan and Kenzie.

She could do any of that, but she’d told them all she had plans, that she was having a thing. An alone thing, not that they knew that. Much as she loved her friends and even thought of them as family, when it came right down to it, they had their own.

The predawn air wasn’t that bad, maybe fiftyish, but it was accompanied by a breeze that had the water just icy enough to make her gasp when the first wave washed over her feet.

“Are you crazy?”

She didn’t turn to see who had spoken in that quiet, raspy tone. Her body didn’t move at all, except on the inside, where something odd happened deep in her belly-a sort of quiver that she chose to identify as annoyance.

That her nipples tightened was sheer coincidence.

“I’m trying to enjoy a moment here.” She shoved her hands into her pockets rather than face the urge she had to grab on to him, just haul him close by the ears and lay one on him. It was so ridiculous, this insane attraction she had for him. Seriously ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he was going to give Brad Pitt a run for his money. In fact, he was the opposite of Brad Pitt, not GQ gorgeous at all.

Actually, he looked a lot like Harry Potter all grown up: dark, perpetually disheveled hair curling around his ears to just past his collar. Laser-blue eyes, magnified by the glasses he required to see a foot past his face. A crooked smile that was both self-deprecatory and contagious. He was tall, lean and lanky, and…hell. He was attractive, made all the more so by the fact that he had absolutely no idea how much.

Not that she was noticing.

Nope, that ship had sailed. She’d had him, curiosity over. Hunger sated.

Or so she told herself.

But did he take the hint and leave? No. Anyone else would have sensed something in her tone and backed away, but not Dustin. Somehow she didn’t scare him off. Somehow she didn’t piss him off.

It was really quite shocking.

And, she admitted to herself, just a teeny-tiny bit of a relief. People came and went in her life. That was just fact. Her father? Never knew him. Her mother? Traipsing through Europe with a backpack, or so she’d said the last time she’d touched base with her daughter, two years ago now. Any other people who had looked out for Cristina during her rough childhood, and acquaintances since that time, all had moved on and so had she. Apparently, she just wasn’t the type of woman to inspire long-term relationships. In fact, her personal motto read something like a government health warning: Stay away from attachments, as they pose a serious threat to your brains, wallet and if you’re stupid enough, your heart.

Somehow she’d become a firefighter instead of a statistic. Through time and sheer stubbornness on the guys’ parts, she’d developed friendships. She adored Blake like a brother, adored Aidan and Zach, adored all of them-but she still had a limited amount of how much of anyone that she could take.

That didn’t seem to be the case for Dustin, damn him. “I came out here alone. Which means I want to be alone. See how that works?”

“I hear what your mouth is saying, but everything else?” He shifted closer, standing next to her so that her shoulder brushed his arm. “Your body language, your body…”

Was it just her or did he sound all raspy and, dammit, sexy?

“Yeah, they’re all saying something else entirely,” he murmured near her ear, giving her a set of goose bumps.

So he’d seen the happy nipples. She crossed her arms over her chest. “For your information, I’m cold.”

“Hey, whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”

Now see, that. That was another thing that made him different. He called her on all her shit, every single time.

No one else did that.

She found herself staring into his glasses at those shockingly blue eyes. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Maybe because I’m so badass myself.”

She laughed.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Not so badass. But I see the soft, marshmallow Cristina.”

“I’m not soft. Anywhere.”

“Well, we both know that’s not true.”

There he went with the sexiness again.

He shifted even closer, right into her personal bubble. “I see you, Cristina. I see the woman who feeds the stray cat her leftover sandwich.”

“Only when the bread is stale.”

“The one who always shoves all her spare change in the homeless guys’ hands every time we go downtown.”

“I hate having change in my pocket.”

“The woman who looks at me and her eyes melt.”

“Hell no, they don’t.”

He just looked at her, smiling knowingly.

Ah, crap. “Shut up.”

He did, not because she asked, but because he liked to be quiet sometimes, as she did.

He got her the way no one else did.

All the others would get off their shift and go home to something, someone. She’d go to her apartment and bide her time until she could go back to work. Because, with no real family, work was her life.

Dustin had a great family: his mom, his sister, his brother…he’d lost his dad a few years back to cancer, and clearly missed him so much, but the rest of them were still very close. So close they constantly nosed around in his life and drove him crazy, and yet he loved them madly. Cheerfully.

He and Cristina were polar opposites. He knew this. She knew this. So why did he have to be the one to get her panties all twisted? Why him?

Ignoring her with an ease she’d never quite managed with him in return, he kicked off his own boots and socks and immediately hissed out a shocked breath as the waves splashed over his toes.

She laughed again.

At the sound, Dustin shoved his glasses further up on his nose and took a good, long look at her.

“What,” she asked somewhat defensively. “You’ve never seen me laugh before?”

“Not since…”

“Since what?”

“Since we played strip poker and I lost.”

Oh, boy, was that night imprinted on her brain. Her car had broken down. He’d taken her home, and then come in for a quick drink, and somehow he’d charmed her into playing a game of cards. Being a card master, she’d readily agreed, then scammed him, conning him right out of his clothes just out of curiosity.

Beneath his EMT uniform, he’d been hiding a sensual delight of long, lean muscle, and she’d gone from curious to aroused in zero point four.

They’d slept together that night. Even now her body tingled as it remembered, but she lifted her chin. “I laughed because you had SpongeBob SquarePants on your boxers.”

He didn’t look embarrassed but amused. That was the thing about Dustin, he was comfortable in his own skin. “It was laundry day, and my mom bought me those boxers.”

They’d made her hot. Another wave splashed over their toes and Dustin sucked in a harsh breath, backing up in surrender. “Okay, you win,” he said. “You’re the cool kid. Now can we go in?”

“I don’t want to go in.”

“What do you want?”

She let out a low laugh that inadvertently exposed her misery, and he shifted to face her, putting a hand on her arm. “Are you getting a migraine?”

Yeah, he knew her. Really knew her. And worse, he cared. Goddamm him. “No. Are you wearing SpongeBob SquarePants now?”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Not telling.” He stroked a rogue strand of hair from her forehead, letting his finger trail over her temple, the rim of her ear.

She shivered and surrendered, as well, stepping into him. “Dustin…”

For a brief moment, his other hand came up, brushing down her back, settling low on her spine. He turned his face into hers, letting the tip of his nose run along her jaw, his mouth brush the underside of her throat lightly before he sighed and went to step back.

She grabbed him, fisted her hands in his shirt and held on tightly, so he couldn’t go anywhere. “Please,” she whispered, horrified to hear the neediness in her voice.

Thankfully, she didn’t need to finish. He knew what she was asking. Please let’s get naked. Please make my body hum again. Please help me find oblivion tonight in your arms.

For a blessed moment he held her close to his hard, warm body, and she felt a surge of triumph. But then with a low groan, he shook his head, setting her away from him. “No.”

“Why? There’s not someone else.” Even the thought stopped her heart.

“You know damn well there isn’t anyone else.”

“Then-”

“Stop it.” He met her gaze. “You know why.”

“Suppose you tell me again.”

“You run and run and run, never slowing down, always working, always keeping busy.”

“So?”

“So then you’re so exhausted that you can barely move. But when your body finally forces you to take a moment, you look around and realize you’re alone. You hate alone. So you see who can fulfill you.”

“And you fit the bill. Perfectly.” She arched against him feeling the hard bulge beneath his zipper that assured her he felt the same way. “What’s the problem here, Dustin? Suddenly you don’t like sex?”

“I don’t like meaningless sex. Not with you.”

She managed another laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

He didn’t smile, and hers faded as she whirled away. But he pulled her back around. Their gazes met.

Locked.

Held.

She felt the jolt clear down to her toes, where it bounced and hit all her good spots. But now was not the time to melt. “So what now? You going to go find someone else?”

His fingers were tight on her arm. Not hurting her, never hurting her, but firm enough that she couldn’t have pulled away without hurting him. His eyes were fierce, his brow furrowed, his glasses slipping down his nose. Beneath the hands she’d set to his chest she could feel the heavy beat of his heart. And it did something to her, made her feel something…basic.

His eyes widened slightly, signaling that she wasn’t alone in this. Nope, the cool, laid-back, easygoing man was worked up, too.

Which was good, because she needed him. Him. No one else. No one else could make her sizzle like this-and she’d tried.

Fisting her fingers in his shirt, she tugged him close to kiss him, hard and deep. The rumble of his groan came up from his chest. The rasp of his five-o’clock shadow scraped her chin. The scent of him she couldn’t get enough of, filling her nostrils as all her bones liquefied as his fingers tightened on her.

Dustin. Dustin was finally in her arms again, kissing her like he’d been dying without her.

His mouth was warm and delicious, soft yet firm, pure unadulterated pleasure. God, he was such a good kisser. She hadn’t had time lately to dwell on that but she took the time now as his tongue stroked hers with the slow, sure precision of a master. He knew how to take his time, that was certain, and she fully appreciated his skill.

She couldn’t have stopped, but that was okay because he dove into the kiss with her, making her feel marginally better about the whole thing. She wasn’t alone in this. Not even close. He hauled her up against that chiseled, hard-earned body, his hands hot and rough, which matched the hot, rough, ragged groan torn from his throat.

Definitely not alone in this…

She strained against him as he rushed to touch as much of her as he could, making her body hum, and then…and then her nose bumped into his glasses and he pulled back so fast she staggered a step and nearly fell on her ass.

His glasses were fogged, and with a harsh, annoyed sound, he tugged them off and wiped them on his shirt before jamming them back on. “I told you. I’m not going to scratch your itch.” His chest was still rising and falling from the kiss, but his voice sounded disturbingly weary. Bending, he grabbed his shoes. She expected him to walk away from her.

Most did. After all, she saw to that, didn’t she?

But she should have known better. Dustin wasn’t like most people. He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met. Straightening, mouth still wet from hers but grim, he offered her a hand.

She stared at it.

“Shower and bed,” he said very quietly…in direct opposition to his breathing.

“Alone,” he specified.

Damn. And yet a small part of her knew she’d be lucky to manage a shower before crashing.

She’d summoned the last of her energy to get here, to spar with him, to kiss him, but now she felt as if she’d hit the wall. Nothing left in the tank.

Empty.

God, she wanted her bunk almost more than she wanted her next breath, and yet it seemed like such a chore. But Dustin would get her where she needed to go.

Somehow, someway, he always did.

3

WHEN THEIR SHIFT ended at eight o’clock that morning, Dustin stepped outside and watched in disbelief as Cristina dragged her sexy but tired ass to the side of the building and unlocked her bike.

They’d just had a rough night, as rough as it gets, where they’d had maybe an hour of sleep broken into fifteen-minute increments, and she was going to ride her bike home.

Hard-core Cristina.

She was tough, so tough that people often forgot that she had a good reason to be so. She didn’t talk about herself much, if ever. What information he had on her he’d pretty much pieced together from five years of knowing her. Her mother had had her when she was only sixteen, and while she’d done her best, her best had often meant hanging with men who weren’t the greatest influence and ruled with a heavy fist. Cristina no longer kept in contact with her mother, and she’d never learned who her father was. She had no siblings, and as far as Dustin could tell, she didn’t keep a lot of friends outside the station.

Inside the station, however, she loved them all fiercely, grumpily, and that love was returned, though not as grumpily. Any one of the guys would lay down his life for her, himself included, and she felt the same. Earlier in the year when her partner Blake had been wrongly accused of arson, she’d steadfastly and vocally objected, and had never wanted to believe the worst of him, even when all the evidence had been firmly stacked against him.

The people of station #34 were her family. He was her family. And she was afraid to mess with that. He got that, he really did, he just knew deep down inside that what they had could be so much deeper, if only she’d let it.

But, badass as she was, inside she was terrified. Terrified of letting go, terrified of allowing him too close, terrified of getting hurt.

What she didn’t understand was that he felt those fears, too. But he’d always felt that life was worth living, fears and all, that if he didn’t go for it, then why bother?

She fumbled with the bike lock and swore again.

Walk away, he told himself. He’d made the decision that she was bad for him. Bad for his self-esteem, bad for his ego, bad for everything.

Except…ah, hell, here came the excuses…except there was something about her. Something about the way her brain worked that was such a turn-on. And then there was the way she made him laugh. He came from a lively family. They were all opinionated and they all were thinkers, and they all made him laugh.

But Cristina slayed him.

God, that was sexy. She was sexy. That thought made him want to smile because at the moment she wore baggy sweat bottoms and a snug long-sleeved thermal top, with her long blond hair down and still wet from her shower. Not an ounce of makeup. He could see the exhaustion in every line of her trim body. She’d laugh her ass off if he told her he found her sexy, just as she was.

But she had a way of drawing him in no matter what she looked like. He came up behind her in time to hear, “Goddamn mother f-”

“Trouble?” he asked.

She spun the lock and rubbed her undoubtedly bleary eyes. “No.” She attempted the lock again.

It was three miles to her apartment from here. Three miles in which she could run herself into a car or under a bus.

“Cristina.”

She yawned, wide. “Yeah.”

“Let me give you a ride.”

Another yawn. “Nah, I’m good.” But she rested her forehead on the lock and closed her eyes.

Setting his fingers over hers, he grabbed her hand and pulled her upright. She was so limp she actually let herself lean on him for a moment, which dammit, made his arms go around her and hold on tight.

Her wet hair stuck to the stubble on his jaw. It smelled good, like her, like warm, tired woman. God, he was such a sucker. “I’m driving you home.” And a glutton for punishment, let’s not forget that.

Surprising him, she allowed herself to be led to his truck, let him put her bike in the back for her. Once in the passenger seat, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “It’s a good thing I’m so tired, or I’d have to kick your ass for bossing me around.”

“Is that right?”

A hint of a smile crossed her lips. “No.” She was so drowsy her words were slurred. “Actually, when you get all gruff and demanding like this, it turns me on.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true. When you go all rough and manly, it gives me the shivers.”

She had a wicked grin on her face now, with her eyes still closed, and he had to smile and shake his head. She was teasing him. “And here I thought women wanted sensitivity and sweetness. I’ve been going about it all wrong.”

“Seems like.”

He pulled into her apartment complex, got out of his truck and came around for her just as she was getting her feet beneath her. “I’ve got it from here, sailor.” She patted his cheek. “But thanks.”

“Uh-huh.” Instead of walking away, he took her arm and led her to her front door.

“This isn’t necessary.” She unlocked her door and blocked him from coming in. “See you in a few days.”

Putting his hands on her arms, he gently but firmly pushed her inside, then followed her in, kicking the door shut behind him.

“Look, I just want another shower with hot water this time, and my bed,” she said, sounding cranky now. “And I’d add sex to that list, but you’ve already shot me down on that score, so get the hell out.”

He’d been inside her place a few times. A nice couch, a small TV, shelves with a few books here and there, and a plant that was either coming back to life or halfway dead. “Where’s your Christmas tree?”

She didn’t answer him.

“You said you were having a thing. You turned down all the invites you got because you were having a thing.”

“I am having a thing.”

An alone thing. He got that now. She’d lied, which he hated.

As if too burned out even to move, she sank to her couch and covered her eyes.

The soft, exhausted sigh did him in.

“Get up.” He held out a hand. “Come on.”

She opened her eyes and stared at his fingers. “For what?”

“Shower. Bed.”

“Is that an invitation?”

Rolling his eyes, he pulled her up himself and took her down the hallway to her bathroom. In his experience, a woman’s bathroom was her holy sanctuary, filled with all the mysteries of feminine beauty: bottles, creams, tubes, brushes, lingerie hung to dry.

Not Cristina’s bathroom. As always, it was clean and unlike the woman herself, devoid of life. “I’ve always wondered. Where’s all your stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Your girl stuff.”

She pulled open a drawer, revealing a brush, a tube of mascara and a bottle of body lotion. “Here.”

“That’s it?”

“No.” She pulled open her other drawer, which held an unopened box of tampons and an opened box of condoms.

He stared at the condoms and thought down boy. Telling himself it didn’t matter how many condoms were missing, he cranked on the hot water and turned to her.

She was looking at him curiously. “You’re doing it again.”

“What, breathing?”

“Being assertive.”

“Yeah? How’s this for assertive. Strip.”

She stopped in midyawn and raised a brow.

“Strip,” he repeated. “Shower. And then if you’re a good little girl, I’ll tuck you in before I leave.”

Now those eyes narrowed. “So you’re being all sexy for what, just to tease me? Get out.”

“Sure. As soon as I take care of you, since you’re too stubborn to do it yourself.”

“Seriously, what the hell is your problem this morning?”

The box of condoms was open, that was his problem. “Take your damn shower.”

“Fine.” She pulled off her shirt.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. “Jesus, Cristina.”

“Hey, I’m just following directions.” She shoved down her sweats, revealing a miniscule black thong. Then that was gone, too, and with a smug look on her face, she stepped into the shower and shut the curtain in his face.

He let out a slow, long breath. “Good. I’ll just…” stand here as hard as a rock “…leave you to it.”

“Oh, no. You promised to tuck me in.” She stuck her head around the curtain and eyed him, her hair stuck to her head, framing her face, which was pale with dark circles beneath her eyes. Still, she batted them for all she was worth.

Spinning on his heels, he forced himself to leave the bathroom rather than strip down and join her. In the kitchen, he put water on to boil and searched the cupboards, which were pretty bare, but he found some tea bags.

He heard the shower go off while he was waiting for the tea to get good and dark, the way she liked. Then he drew a deep breath and headed back down the hall, reminding himself that he was only going to give her the tea, tuck her in and walk away.

No matter how freaking fantastic she looked naked, and no matter how much he wanted her.

No matter what.

CRISTINA STOOD beneath her shower and let the hot water pound at her sore muscles. She’d held up pretty well in front of Dustin, but she felt a telltale tightness in her chest, and the burning in her throat told her she was an inch from losing it.

If Dustin had stuck around for another minute he might have caught on, but this was a pity party for one only. Work had been tough over the past few days, but that wasn’t what had gotten to her.

It was Christmas.

She hated the third-wheel feeling, hated how it made her feel like a stupid, unwanted kid all over again. She put her face right into the water and told herself that the prickle behind her eyes was simply from the spray, nothing else, but only when she ran out of hot water did she step out of the shower, grab a towel and go into her bedroom. She planned to pull on a big T-shirt and a pair of boxers and get into bed for at least eight straight hours.

But then Dustin walked into her bedroom, holding a mug of tea that smelled so good she nearly jumped him for it.

He handed over the mug but stayed in the doorway, carefully not looking at her bed, which meant he got a good look at her face, far too close a look for her own comfort.

“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

Was there anything worse than someone asking that question when you were so close to losing it you could taste the tears? “Other than you won’t do me? Nothing.”

Stepping closer, he snagged her arm, reeling her in, staring into her eyes for a long moment.

“Let go of me.”

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She felt her belly hitch for no stupid reason at all, except he wasn’t being his usual laid-back, easygoing self today, but a new aggressive and assertive Dustin, and combined with the frustration simmering in his voice, it all equaled too much sexy for her. “I’m just tired.”

His thumb glided over her jaw, his fingers slipping into the wet hair at the nape of her neck. “Cristina.”

God, the way he said her name, as if she mattered a whole great big bunch. “Look,” she managed in a bored voice. “If you’re not going to get naked, then get the hell out. I said I’m tired.”

He sighed, then lifted his hands with a quick shake of his head. “Fine.” And then, just as she’d wanted, he turned away.

Good.

Perfect.

She could feel those unwanted tears stick in her throat so she ruthlessly held her breath. But he walked so damn slowly! By the time he got to the doorway, she had to suck in air or suffocate.

He whirled around. “What was that?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.” I’m fine. Look at me being fine…

But then he took a good look at her face and said her name softly, and she shocked the hell out of both of them by covering her face.

“Ah, Cristina.”

“Go,” she managed in a perfectly even, perfectly pissed-off voice.

But his footsteps came closer instead of heading out the door. And the next thing she knew, he’d tugged her hands from her face and looked her right in the eyes. “You’re not okay.”

“Why the hell won’t you just go?” she asked, baffled. “You want to, you know you do.”

Grimly, he began to pull her in, though she resisted. The mild-mannered Dustin would have backed off, but he wasn’t his usual mild-mannered self at all.

She could have fought him and won, but her fight had left her, gone south for the winter. Instead she sagged into him and pressed her face to his throat.

4

DUSTIN HAD no idea what was going through Cristina’s mind as she stood there in his arms. He couldn’t possibly guess, but he did know he wasn’t going anywhere until he found out. He had a reputation for being quiet and easygoing, but being with this woman made him the opposite. Only she could do this to him, make him feel so revved up. “Talk to me.”

She made a sound, a low, breathy sound that, if it had been any other woman, he’d have said was crying.

But this was Cristina. Kick-ass, rebel-queen Cristina, who never cried. She’d once proudly told him she hadn’t cried since second grade, when one of her mother’s boyfriend’s dogs had eaten her one doll, and she’d only lost it because the dog had choked and died. “Cristina.”

“Bite me.”

He would, gladly. That was the problem. “Spill.”

She muttered a long string of various four-letter words at that, and if she hadn’t been so serious about it, he’d have smiled.

But then a soft sound escaped her, and he knew she wasn’t anywhere close to smiling, and it tore a hole in his heart. “Baby, you’re so tired.”

“Just shut up a minute,” she whispered. “Just shut up and stand here and hold me.”

He could do that, for now. He had his arms around her, one hand in her hair, the other on the small of her back, fisted in the towel around her. He was hugging her. Comforting her.

That was it.

But suddenly in the huge, overhanging silence surrounding them, he became aware of the silky disarray of her wet hair, and how good it smelled. Of the imprint of her small body against his, covered only in that damp towel, which didn’t matter because he could still see the picture of her in his mind dropping her clothes before getting into the shower.

Then her hand wriggled up between them, flat against his chest as she lifted her gaze to his.

In that very second, the embrace went from simple comfort to something else.

And he wasn’t alone.

Slowly, she came up in tiptoe and touched her mouth to the corner of his. He went instantly hard.

Her mouth still touching his, she went still, preternaturally still, and then shivered.

And not from the cold.

He slid a hand down her side, reaching for her hand, entwining his fingers in hers, moving their now-joined hands to the small of her back because he couldn’t bear her touching him and not having her.

But the motion arched her spine just enough to have her breasts pressing into his chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, and he groaned, unable to hold it in, the sound more a plea than anything else.

Her lips parted, answering that plea, and that was it for him. Ripping off his glasses, he opened his mouth on hers, kissing her, hard and long.

Not having her.

God, what a big, fat lie that was. He was going to have her, here and now, and he knew it.

They both knew it.

The kiss was everything, hot and giving, sweet and unbearably sexy, sending waves of desire and hunger through his body, pooling between his thighs in his groin.

He was lost, a goner, drowning in the sensations, the feel of her body against his, her sweet tongue in his mouth, the way they fitted against each other as if it’d been meant to be. Even when the kiss finally ended, he kept his mouth against hers, going still, just breathing her in.

Then she lifted her head, her eyes meeting his, filled with a question mark.

He moved his hand against the sleek strength of her back. She was small-boned, petite against him, almost fragile, but he knew that was deceptive. In reality, she was the strongest woman he knew.

Walk away now, he told himself. Run, or this time you’re going to fall all the way, and she’ll stomp all over your heart.

Again.

And yet he knew that with only the slightest encouragement from her, he’d pull her down to the couch and do something completely crazy and stupid and totally amazing, like yank off the towel and kiss every single square inch of that glorious body until she made those sexy little sounds in the back of her throat that she made, the ones that grew progressively more desperate right before she came, the ones that teased him into a sexual frenzy such as he’d never known.

“Dustin.” She put her hands on his face. “How is it that you’re always there when I need you?”

Yeah. He wasn’t going to run or even walk. No way in hell. Not when she needed him.

“Dustin.” She was still staring deeply into his eyes, which was the thing about Cristina. Everything about getting too close to him terrified her, and yet she didn’t look away.

Nothing less than utterly direct at all times, she took his hand and turned, leading him back to her bedroom.

And he went willingly.

CRISTINA STOPPED at the foot of her bed and glanced at Dustin. God, the slightly befuddled, extremely turned-on expression he wore made her knees weak. Everything about him made her knees weak. Made all of her weak.

And wasn’t that just the problem?

She didn’t do weak, at least not knowingly. And yet…and yet this man. God, this man. When she was with him, she could give in, could be weak, because he was there for her.

Always.

She needed him, and she didn’t understand why, when she’d never needed anyone in her entire life. Her vague anxiety about that wasn’t going to stop her, not when she finally had him here again. Slowly she dropped her towel at their feet.

He squinted, focusing hard to see her, looking both adorable and sexy as hell. “Cristina-”

She put her fingers to his lips, not wanting to hear yet again why he wasn’t going to do this with her. She knew all the reasons why they shouldn’t do this again.

But she needed him, needed him like air, needed his mouth hot, his tongue wet. She needed-God. She needed so much that each touch stroked her from the inside out, and she stepped close and kissed him to get more.

Dustin lifted his mouth from hers.

“No,” she gasped. “Don’t stop.”

With a low, ragged groan, he cupped her face and shook his head. “I’m not stopping. I’m not strong enough for that.”

Actually, he was one of the strongest men she’d ever known, but she wasn’t going to quibble, not when he was going to give her what she wanted.

Him.

Just him.

He pulled her in for another hot, wet, drugging kiss, her incredibly sexy EMT, a kiss that had her-no softie herself-quivering. He had a way of touching her, of looking at her, good Lord. She wanted this kiss to last until Christmas.

Of next year.

But then he stepped back.

“Dammit!”

“Shh…”

Oh, no he didn’t.

But he only wanted to drag his shirt over his head, giving her a quick glance at sleek skin and hard sinew which made her melt, though not as much as his naked piercing gaze did as he yanked her back against him. “Where were we?”

“Right here.” She slid her fingers into his hair, straining to reach his mouth, but he held her off, just looking at her, his eyes so dark and sexy her knees wobbled. “What?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You’re blind without your glasses.”

“I have you memorized.”

She sighed. God, she was a complete sap if that was working on her. “You’re beautiful, too,” she admitted. “And your eyes…”

“As blind as you said.” He squinted with exaggeration and used his hands as if he couldn’t see, copping a quick feel.

That made her laugh, but it backed up in her throat when he rubbed her up against him. Oh, yeah. Her soft, sweet, sensitive Dustin wasn’t showing his usual side, and she loved it, both that and the slight rough edge to his hands as he kissed her again, his mouth binding her to him while he undid his jeans, letting go of her long enough to grab a condom from his wallet and shove the jeans off.

She sat on the bed, scooting back to make room for him as he crawled up her body and reached for her hands, holding them in his on either side of her face as he leaned over her. “Be sure,” he murmured. “Be damn sure.”

She looked up at him. He was so gorgeous, so much more than she’d let herself see, and so much more than she herself could ever be, and suddenly she faltered. For her this was a release, a great one, but nothing more. It wasn’t the same for him, she knew that. What she didn’t know was if she could do it to him-

“You’ve changed your mind, it’s okay-”

“No.” God, no. Her insides were trembling, making her fingers far too unsteady for her taste, and she uncharacteristically closed her eyes as she touched his jaw. “You don’t understand. I-” You’re too good for me, for this…

As if he understood, he touched his forehead to hers, his breathing rasping in and out roughly as he took in some air. “Cristina.”

In a rare moment of cowardice, she squeezed her eyes tighter.

“Look at me.”

Obeying that ragged command, she managed to open her eyes and meet his.

“It’s just you and me. Just us. And we already know how good that can be. Let me show you how good this can be, as well.” And he kissed her shoulder. Her collarbone. A breast, which he softly sucked into his mouth. When she gasped, he continued his little tour of her body, heading farther south, kissing a rib, her belly button, a hip…

Shifting, he ran his hand down her leg, gently nudging it open so that he could kiss first one inner thigh and then the next.

And then in between.

She stopped thinking then and stopped breathing, too, while he took her straight to implosion in five point four seconds.

When she came back to planet Earth, he was working his way up her body, looking quite hot and bothered. Once again, he laced his fingers with hers as he slowly eased her legs apart. “You do have the most beautiful eyes. Keep looking at me.”

She could feel him hard and heavy between her legs, gliding against her throbbing and already very wet flesh. “I’m looking.”

“You see me.” He held her gaze as he slowly pushed into her, hard and thick, filling her so completely that she couldn’t stop the small cry of pleasure from escaping her throat.

“I see you,” she promised on a rough breath, arching up for more, for all of him, wrapping her legs around his waist.

“Keep seeing me.” And he began to move inside her, making love to her with such beautiful fierce care that she found herself rocking into him, begging for her release long before he allowed it, showing her exactly how good he was for her, exactly how much she needed him and how much he could love her.

If only she’d let him.

And for that moment in time, she did let him, let herself. She completely gave in to it, letting herself soar, content to be in his arms for as long as he’d hold her.

Or at least as long as she could stand it before the doubts and fears overtook her again.

HOURS LATER, Dustin stirred and reached for Cristina, knowing when he felt the cold sheets that he was alone in her bed.

Rolling to his back, he sighed, not bothering to call himself a fool for believing that this time it would be different. He should know better by now.

It was never going to be different, nothing was ever going to change.

Except him.

He could change.

He could grow up and get over her and not give her the power to do this to him.

Not ever again.

5

WHEN CRISTINA came back from her punishingly long hard run, Dustin was gone. Which was perfect, she told herself. Excellent. She didn’t need round two or an after-sex cuddle.

Nope, she was good.

Walking through the apartment she’d lived in for several years now, lived in and been content in, she found herself taking a good look around as Dustin had. When she’d first moved in, she hadn’t been able to afford a west-facing apartment so she couldn’t see the beach, but it was there, only two blocks away, and when she opened the windows, she could smell the salty ocean air.

She had minimal furniture but she didn’t spend a lot of time here, so she hadn’t found it necessary to fill the place up with stuff she would never use.

In fact, she hadn’t filled much of it at all, and as she took the place in, saw the half-empty, clean rooms, she came to the uncomfortable realization that Dustin might be right.

She had nothing Christmasy out, no decorations, nothing personal at all.

She’d never cared before. It hadn’t mattered, the holiday hadn’t mattered. In fact, little did beside her work.

So when had that stopped being enough? When Blake had gone through such hell this year? When she’d thought he was dead and that she’d lost one of the few people she’d let herself care about?

Or when two others on her team, Aidan and Zach, had each found their respective soul mates in Brooke and Kenzie? Yeah, that had shocked her to the core, two staunch bachelors, both falling so hard.

With a sigh, she gathered her laundry, telling herself she didn’t care that she didn’t have a damn Christmas tree or some stupid decorations, and she sure as hell didn’t care that she didn’t have a soul mate, because if she had, then she might be doing laundry for two right now and that would suck.

Besides, she didn’t even know if she believed in soul mates. The idea of it, that there was one person in all the persons of the world, one, that was meant for her, seemed crazy. With those odds, it was no wonder that she’d decided not to look.

And yet…and yet a small part of her thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be doing two loads of laundry instead of one, if she had company while she was doing them. She dumped the first load into her washing machine, and, hearing the crinkle of paper, stuck her hands into her pockets. It was the red envelope, the one that had cost her twenty-five bucks on a whim.

For charity. There. See? She’d made a contribution to Christmas, and somehow, ridiculously, the thought cheered her slightly. Until she opened the envelope and remembered what her twenty-five bucks had gotten her.

That one-night romantic getaway. She and Dustin could have rocked that one night.

She should just throw the card away and chalk it up as a tax write-off. There was no reason even to keep it around…

But as she passed the trash can, she slipped the card back into her pocket instead.

DUSTIN WALKED IN the front door of his house and found his brother slouched on his couch, feet up, remote in hand, game on the television, as if he lived there.

Jason nodded a greeting, taking a few seconds to tear his gaze off the game, but once he did, he blinked at Dustin’s disheveled appearance. “Either you got your ass kicked by the job, or you just got laid.”

Dustin kicked off his shoes and dropped his keys and wallet, then sank to the couch next to his brother, whom he was damn happy to see. “You got off on leave a few days early.”

“Yeah.” Jason wasn’t in his National Guard uniform, but wearing jeans and a vintage Van Halen T-shirt. “Thought I’d hang here, and we’d go up to Mom’s for Christmas Eve together. Nice change of subject, by the way.”

“I haven’t seen you in six months, you don’t want to talk about my job.”

“Okay, let’s talk about you getting laid.”

Dustin rolled his eyes and leaned in to hug his brother, who met him halfway and pulled him in tight. “Missed your ugly mug a little.”

“Same goes, bro. Same goes.” Jason offered him a soda and the chips, both of which had come from Dustin’s stash. “The house is coming along.”

Dustin looked around him. They’d bought it together several years back, right before Jason had reenlisted in the National Guard. It was an investment over and above their usual renovation projects, and as a major fixer-upper, the investment part had been mostly faith.

But with Jason’s down payment and Dustin’s physical labor, the place really was coming along. They could sell, put the profits into another house and start over again. Their sister wanted them to do that and hire her part-time as a cash laborer, which would be both a blessing since she was a hard worker, and a damned headache because she was also a pain in the ass.

But it would be a nice transition out of his job, which Dustin had been restless at for far too long now.

“Shelly called me,” Jason said, reading his mind about their baby sister. “She’s seeing some guy named Chewy. I told her I was going to have to kick his ass for no reason other than he lets people call him Chewy.”

Dustin laughed. “He’s all right. And they’re not serious.”

“You checked him out?”

“Yeah. He’s in college like she is, and a good kid, despite the unfortunate name.”

“All right then.” Jason stared at the game. Drank. Ate a few chips.

Dustin looked him over. Still the same dark hair, cut militarily short, and light gray eyes which could warm with a quick laugh or turn to steel. Jason had always been a big guy, nearly six foot four, and beefy, like the football player he’d once been, but over the past years in the military, he’d honed his body into a much rangier form, looking more like a lean boxer now than a high-school football star. Their mom had been worried about him ever since he’d gotten back from being in the South, working in and near New Orleans on clean-up and rebuilding, going out on search-and-rescue calls as his orders dictated. And indeed, as their mom had said, there was something different about Jason, something less easily accessible and definitely introspective.

“You could take a picture, it lasts longer.”

Dustin didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m just wondering if you’re okay.”

“Ah, and here I thought I looked so pretty today.”

“Seriously, Jase.”

“Seriously?” Jason set down his soda and hit Mute on the game, turning to face him. “Seriously, I was going to ask you the same thing. You look like shit. What’s up?”

“I asked you first.”

“Okay, what’s wrong with me is that the big bad world out there sucks right now.” Jason lifted a shoulder. “I work my ass off to do my part to fix it, but I can’t, and if I think about it too much it seems stupid even to be trying, so I am not going to think about it. Not for at least the next two weeks before I have to head out again. Now you.”

“Me what?”

“You might as well tell me before I knock it out of you.”

Given Jason’s new physical prowess, he could do it, too.

“Is it the job putting that look of misery on your face. Or a girl?”

Dustin let out a breath. “Both.”

“So there is a girl.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

Jason blinked. “A guy?”

“Jesus!”

“Well, use your words, dude.”

Dustin rolled his eyes and ate some more chips.

“Come on, Dus. You’re the middle child. You’re the talker.”

“Fine.” Dustin pushed the chips aside. “I’m in a job that was supposed to be just a phase, a little fun before we got our renovation business going.”

“Don’t look now, but our renovation business is going. We’ve got good equity in this place.”

“Sort of my point. We could be doing more and yet here I am, still driving an ambulance…”

“So quit and get a move on. I’m game. Let’s sell the house. We can use my portion of the profit for a new down payment on another fixer-upper, and your labor. And I say we go big this time and do it right. Bigger house, bigger profit margin. If you’re serious about being done as an EMT, you’d have the time to put in.”

True.

“So…the girl,” Jason said, leaning back to close his eyes. “Get to the girl.”

Right. The girl. How to say that he was more than halfway in love with a woman who wasn’t ever going to love him back? “She’s a coworker, which is colossally stupid.”

“Only if you intend to repeat.”

“Last night was a repeat.”

At this, Jason opened his eyes and turned his head to eyeball Dustin. “Is it that firefighter chick you’ve been hung up on since day one? The hot one who looks like…what do they call her? Kick-Ass Barbie. Cathleen?”

“Cristina.”

“Ah, Christ,” Jason said with a groan. “It is. Man, you’re going straight down the path to Heartbreak City with that one. She’s out of your league.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Look, life’s too short to get kicked in the balls or the heart, and with Cristina, you’ll get both.”

DUSTIN DIDN’T REALIZE exactly how true that statement was until his next shift. He got to the station, and found Cristina in the kitchen with everyone else. She was doing her usual dig through the refrigerator-she was the most notorious food thief in the entire station. “You stealing someone’s lunch again?” he asked lightly, as if she hadn’t dumped him.

Well, actually, you had to have a relationship with someone to be dumped. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a thing. A sex thing. That was all.

At his question, Eddie and Sam, both at the table eating cereal, went still, swiveling wary gazes to Cristina. Blake, drinking coffee at the sink next to Aidan and Zach, raised a brow. It was unlike Dustin to start the bickering but what the hell. It was time for a new thing.

Cristina slowly turned to face him, her eyes unreadable. She hadn’t changed into her uniform yet and wore army-green cargoes and a snug long-sleeved T-shirt that fitted her curves like a glove, curves he knew intimately. Curves he’d kissed every single inch of. “No, smart-ass,” she responded. “I made cookies.”

“Made them? Or bought them?”

It was a long-standing joke that the only girl in the station couldn’t cook, but still, the entire room held their breath and swiveled their gazes to Cristina as if watching a tennis match.

“I baked them myself,” Cristina said. Stiffly. “I’m actually leaving them in people’s lunches to make up for all the stuff I’ve…borrowed.”

“Wow.” Dustin leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms so that he couldn’t reach for her, which is what he suddenly wanted to do, even surrounded by everyone else. She looked good, he thought, rested, with color in her cheeks. She had gloss on her lips, her only makeup. Her hair was loose, which made him remember how it’d felt brushing his chest.

He wanted both to touch her and to strangle her. “I’m impressed.”

“That’s because whatever we women do, we have to do it twice as good as a guy to be thought of as half as good. Luckily, that’s not difficult.” She shut the refrigerator, and avoiding looking at him, headed across the kitchen.

“She’s escaping, man,” Blake said to Dustin out of the side of his mouth.

“They must have slept together again,” Sam whispered to Eddie as if Dustin was deaf. “She’s looking relaxed and he’s not.”

“You doing it wrong?” Eddie asked Dustin.

Dustin sighed. “Cristina.” He watched her stop and go a little stiff in the shoulders. “Are we going to talk about it at all?”

“What, the orgasms?” She didn’t turn to face him. “That’s a little too risqué a topic for the workplace, don’t you think?”

Eddie snickered, only to be silenced by Sam’s elbow in his gut.

Dustin took a step toward Cristina. “Maybe we could discuss this in-”

The alarm bell interrupted him, then dispatch, calling for Dustin and James’s unit. No firefighters required.

“-private,” Dustin finished on a sigh, grinding his back teeth together in frustration as he was forced to head out. He brushed past her, making sure to touch her as he did, getting some satisfaction when her breath caught at the contact.

Which didn’t change the fact that they were back at square one-her holding him at bay with her sarcasm and sharp wit, and him nursing an aching heart.

6

THE MOMENT Dustin was out of sight, Cristina sagged to a kitchen chair. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, patting her knee. “You are.”

Sam nodded.

Blake lifted a shoulder in silent agreement.

Cristina looked at Aidan and Zach, two of the most logical men she knew, hoping…but they also nodded.

It was unanimous. She was an idiot.

“I know you don’t like to clutter your plate with relationships,” Blake said tactfully. “Because you have to be free for…What is it exactly that you have to be free for?”

“Well…” Everyone waited for her sage, intelligent response. “I have to be free for…” Jeez. She suddenly had no idea. It’d started out because she’d spent so many years watching her mother never be free, always trapped in a bad relationship with one man or another, over and over again.

Trapping Cristina, as well, so she’d learned to gather her mistrust close to her like a cape. Once she’d gotten out on her own, she’d gone the opposite route, always staying on her own. She was, after all, nothing if not a creature of her own habits. But that all seemed short-sighted and a bit pathetic now. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and thunked her head to the table. “I guess I don’t know how to do things differently.”

“You can fix this,” Blake said so calmly, she raised her head.

He nodded.

The others nodded, too.

“All you have to do is stop running scared,” he said gently, rubbing her back.

“Whoa. I’m not scared.”

Five patient but amused faces just looked at her.

Okay, so she was scared. Oh, damn. “But what if I mess it up?”

“Well, you probably will,” Zach said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, everyone does once or twice, at least.”

“You can still turn this around,” Blake promised. “If you want it bad enough.”

She looked at the door through which Dustin, her mild-mannered best friend by day-big, bad, confident, sexy lover by night-had vanished. There’d been something different in his eyes just now.

Distance.

Her fault. He thought he’d been ditched. She knew that now. She’d pretended to want distance, but that wasn’t really what she wanted at all. She knew that now. “I want it bad enough,” she whispered. “What do I do?”

“You could tell him you love him,” Blake said.

“What?” She nearly choked. “I’m not-I can’t-I can’t say that-I mean, it’s not…that.” She grabbed Blake by the lapels. “There has to be something else.”

“Well, for one thing, you relax,” Aidan said as Blake pried her hands off him. “Ask him out. Show him you’re in this. Plan something fun. Take him jet-skiing, or something he wouldn’t do for himself. You know, show him you know what he likes.”

“Feed him,” Zach suggested, patting his belly. “Food always works.”

“You don’t have to cook it,” Aidan said quickly. “In fact, you shouldn’t cook it. Go out to a restaurant, or make a picnic.”

“But if you do the picnic,” Eddie interjected. “Make sure it’s not silly little finger food. Bring real food.”

“And try smiling,” Zach said. “You have a great smile, on the rare occasions you use it. He’ll be so stunned, you’ll have time to spit out the fact that yes, you’re an idiot, but you’re working on it.”

“It would help if you took off all your clothes first,” Eddie said.

“Guys like that,” Sam agreed.

“You could practice here,” Eddie suggested, nearly falling over when Sam shoved him.

Blake was shaking his head. “Just tell him you love him.”

No. No, she liked the other ideas much better. She’d just ask him out, that’s what she’d do. Plan that picnic. Smile. Bring food. Maybe wear some sexy outfit and let things take their course. She’d show him how much he meant to her.

Yeah. She was going to turn this around. Time was on her side.

DUSTIN’S UNIT was run ragged for the rest of the day, one call after another. So it was inevitable that one of his calls would bump up against one of Cristina’s. He’d been brooding all damn day, and braced for the awkwardness of seeing her, given that she kept sleeping with him and then breaking his heart. But if she felt weird, she didn’t let on. In fact, she smiled at him.

Dazzled the brood right out of him.

She was working a small fire caused by a toaster while Dustin treated the young woman who’d attempted to put it out by herself only to fall on her butt, knocking the air out of her.

“I can’t be in a cast for Christmas,” she wailed, holding her bottom in both hands. “Not this year.”

“I don’t think they cast your ass,” Cristina said helpfully from where she stood near the toaster. She winked at Dustin.

Winked.

“I can’t have any bandages, either, my boyfriend’s coming to town.” The woman tried to get up and gasped in pain. “Ouch, ouch, ouch…Do you think it’s broken?” As she asked this question, she turned and yanked down her pants, revealing a quite perfect tightly toned ass. “Anything?”

Dustin stared at it, then lifted his gaze to find Cristina looking at him, eyes amused, brows raised. Oddly enough, given that he’d been pouting all morning, the air crackled between them. “I don’t think it’s broken.” He cleared his throat. “You look…fine.”

“Fine,” Cristina mouthed, and rolled her eyes.

Afterward, outside, she sidled up to him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said, and to keep that crackle at bay, he went light. “Need me to look and see if your ass is broken?”

She flashed a smile and almost blinded him. “You just want to see my ass.”

True enough. After all, it was world-class.

“Little tip, ace.” She patted his chest, voluntarily touching him outside of sex. “Next time a woman pulls her pants down for you, find a better description than fine.”

“I’ll work on my adjectives,” he said, hoping despite himself that it was her ass he saw next.

“Um, Dustin? You want to have a picnic sometime?”

He stared at her. “Huh?”

“You have a hearing problem? I asked if you wanted to have a picnic.”

“Like a date picnic?”

“Yeah. A date picnic.”

“A date,” he repeated. He wouldn’t have been more shocked if she’d asked him to marry her.

“Well, if it’s that stupid-” She started to turn away but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back around.

“I’m sorry. You surprised me, that’s all. I’ve asked you out before and been shut down.”

“You know what? Forget it. Forget I said anything about anything.”

“Cristina…” He shook his head. “You drive me crazy.”

“I realize I tend to have that effect on people.” Again she tried to pull away and again he held her.

She looked at his hand and then up into his eyes. Something was happening between them, the same odd phenomenon that always happened between them, and it was heat, pure heat.

“Mostly it’s in a good way,” he said a little thickly. “The driving-me-crazy part.”

“Mostly?” Her voice was husky, too.

“Yeah. Well, you do have your moments.”

She stared at him for a long beat. “You say the nicest things.” A small smile flashed. “And you’re funny.”

“I’m a keeper.”

She paused, suddenly looking as though she’d been struck, then touched his chest. “I know.”

The air felt changed, his heart too full. “Cristina-”

“But I’m not,” she whispered. “A keeper.”

And with that, she turned away.

“Cristina.”

She kept walking.

“So…no picnic I’m guessing?”

Still walking…

Okay. Shit. Once again he’d gotten his hopes up but no more. He couldn’t do it again. This had to be it, he had to be done bashing his head into a wall. He wanted her, more than he’d ever wanted anything, but it wasn’t healthy. Shaking his head, he pulled out his cell and called Jason. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

He let out a shaky breath. “Let’s sell. Go big.”

“You’re outta there then? You’ll give the new project the time it’ll need?”

He leaned back against the wall and nodded, until he realized that his brother couldn’t see him. “Yes and yes.”

“Hot damn. I have a real estate agent on hold right this minute who says she can sell the house, and already has a list of properties for us to look at.”

“Good. I’ll meet you after work.” Dustin shut the phone and turned, nearly running into Cristina.

She slapped his clipboard against his chest. “You left this inside. What are you selling?”

“My house.”

“Why?”

“Because the time’s right.”

“You mean, the market?”

“That, too.” And then, for the first time ever, he walked away from her.

THEIR PATHS crossed again later, at a duplex fire in an older part of town. The building had been undergoing renovation; now flames were taking care of the reno, and at least fifteen construction workers were unaccounted for.

Cristina and Blake were on scene, as well as Aidan and Zach and the others, putting their own lives on the line.

That was their job.

Dustin knew it as he stared at the inferno, his gut pinched, but he never got used to it, never, so he concentrated on the victims as they were pulled out, rather than wonder exactly where Cristina was and if she was safe.

He had to believe she was safe.

Eddie and Sam came barreling out of the fire, a big guy between them, hunched over. Dustin ran toward them, meeting them just beyond the porch and barely out of the smoke from the fire. The guy slumped to the ground just as above them they heard screaming.

“I’ve got him,” Dustin told them. “Go!” He dropped to his knees next to the victim, who was over six foot four and close to three hundred pounds.

And out cold.

The heat was overwhelming. Only a moment ago Dustin hadn’t been able to see the flames from here, but now the entire front wall of the duplex had started to burn, and just to his right, one of the windows exploded.

He dropped over the victim, protecting him. Above him, flames leapt out of the huge gaping hole where the glass had just been, enraged by the new burst of oxygen. As he watched, horrified, the flames coalesced in a ball, heading right for him, and he thought, ah hell, I’m done. Toast, burnt toast-

But he didn’t die, so he opened his eyes and realized the flames had been abruptly held back by a long line of water, coming from a hose-

In Cristina’s hands. “Get back!” she yelled.

In the movies, their gazes would have met and in hers Dustin would have seen love and fear for him, but she didn’t take her gaze off the fire. Dustin got behind his unconscious victim, sliding his hands beneath the guy’s arms, and tugged, hard, not looking back.

He didn’t have to. He didn’t need the movie stare to know Cristina had his back, she always would. He could trust that.

But in spite of their chemistry, he couldn’t trust her with his heart. That had finally settled in his head. It was why he was getting out, cutting his losses. For self-preservation, he had no choice.

He and James left the scene with two of the victims in their rig, heading to the hospital. By the time they got back to the station, the shift had ended and Cristina was gone.

He showered and changed before heading out to look at houses with Jason. Afterward, he drove to Cristina’s place…to say goodbye.

She opened the door and looked at him in surprised relief, and also anticipation.

That hummed through him, so instead of saying goodbye, he decided to show her how he felt. He stepped over the threshold, pushing his way in past her.

“What-”

That was all she got out before he got his hands on her, spun her around, and pinned her to the door.

“Dustin-”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do what?”

“This.” And he kissed them both stupid.

7

CRISTINA PULLED BACK to stare into Dustin’s unbearably familiar face because she had to see him. She’d been standing in her living room, worked up at how he’d put his life on the line today.

If she hadn’t been right there with her hose-

But she had been and he was okay, she told herself. But her? Not so okay. She’d been wondering what the hell was wrong with her that she couldn’t just go for what she wanted, when the one thing she wanted had knocked at her door.

And then he’d said he couldn’t do this anymore. They should discuss that, but this was not her mild-mannered EMT geek. This was a pissed-off, frustrated, on-the-edge Dustin, tough and implacable in his resolve.

He’d stepped all over her personal space and was kissing every single brain cell out of her head. “If you’d gotten hurt today,” she murmured, “I’d have killed you.”

“You really are the most annoying woman on the planet.”

“I think it’s time that we start annoying other people.”

“Later.”

“I mean it, Dustin.”

“I believe you.” His eyes darkened. “It’s why I’m here. Saying goodbye.”

Her heart caught. “Oh. I…see.”

“I’ve got to, Cristina. You’re killing me.”

Right. She knew that. He was killing her, too. As was her own inability to figure out what to do about that. “I don’t want to kill you. I like you alive.”

“You just don’t like me close.” He was still holding her against the door, her hands held in his on either side of her face. Eyes narrowed, mouth grim and tight, he stared down into her face with an expression that said I’m pissed, frustrated and worked up. And I want to take you right now, right this very minute.

God, the man made her forget she had knees. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Me, too.” He let out another breath. “But I want you to know how much it meant to me that you were there for me today.”

She stared at him, the words I always will be stuck in her throat, because she could feel that goodbye to the very corners of her soul, and knew he meant it. “Forget the thanks. Get back to the goodbye, which I was so enjoying.”

She needed to keep this light.

Very light.

Or she’d fall apart, and she didn’t allow herself to do that, ever. So she lifted her mouth to his and he met her halfway, going back to ravishing her mouth as if he were a man starving after a two-week fast and she was a twelve-course meal.

She felt the same. She needed to fill herself up with him. Straining against his leanly muscled form, she ran her mouth along his jaw, impatient at not being able to reach any of the good stuff. “My hands, I need my hands to touch you.”

“You touch me with your eyes. You touch me with your voice. You touch me with your damn heart, you just can’t admit it.”

Stung by what was undeniably the truth, she went still, but he tilted her face up to his, stared into her eyes, swore roughly and kissed her again. “You touch me every time I look at you,” he managed gruffly when they both came up for breath. “Or when I think of you. Hell, I dream about you. It pisses me off, Cristina.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come. You shouldn’t have come.”

“Damn right, but I did. I came to say goodbye.”

“What does that mean exactly? Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving the station and going back to what I wanted to do in the first place. It might take me a little time to get it all in gear, I still have to sell the house, but I wanted you to know.”

Her heart had stopped at the words I’m leaving the station. She tried to turn her head away to blast him with some more words, words that would scare him off, make him get the hell out, but he wouldn’t allow it. He took her mouth with his, nipping at her resistance with hot, hungry bites until, with a moan of surrender she arched closer, clutching at him, giving in to everything, anything, he wanted of her.

It was insane, this surging swell of need and hunger she felt. It flooded her, nearly blinding her, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d torn her hands from his and yanked at his pants, desperate to get them open, even more desperate to get him inside her. While she fought his zipper, he had her jeans down completely and a condom out of his pocket. “Wrap your legs around my waist,” he commanded in his low, rough whisper, the one that had her shivering and rushing to do what he asked.

“Yeah, like that,” he ground out. “God, just like that.” Lifting her up against the door, he pushed inside her.

As she cried out in sheer, unadulterated pleasure, her head thunked back against the wall and she gripped his shoulders for all she was worth. She had no idea how she could want him like this, but she did. “Dustin-”

“I know.” Sliding a hand up her back to cradle her head, protect it from the door, he began to move. “I know.” Leaning into the door, he pressed her between the hard wood and his equally hard body, thrusting into her over and over again, until her toes curled, until she was panting out his name like a mantra in mindless plea as he kissed her, using his tongue in a matching rhythm to his body.

Within moments, she burst, and he was only seconds behind her, and for long ragged breaths they were both gone. Then his knees wobbled, and with an oath, he slapped a hand back on the door to hold them upright, his muscles still trembling. But instead of letting her go, he turned his face into the curve of her neck and nuzzled there, softly kissing her damp flesh.

“I can’t feel my legs,” she gasped.

“I’ve got you.”

And wasn’t that just the thing. The terribly confusing thing. “I…need to feel my legs.”

Lifting his head, he looked into her eyes as he let her legs slide down his body. When her toes touched the floor, her legs nearly buckled, but he caught her, his jaw against hers, his breathing-still uneven-disturbing the hair at her temple.

“I’m good.” Proving it, she stepped back, coming up against the door, but holding her hands up to show him that she was fine.

Dustin just stared at her. “What the hell was that?”

“Some damn amazing goodbye sex.”

“Yeah.” He turned in a slow circle, shoving his hands through his hair as he came back around. “I really don’t want to do this, to say goodbye.”

“Well then, don’t. Don’t say it.”

Stepping back, he shook his head. “I want more.”

She closed her eyes.

“And you still don’t,” he said quietly.

“Dustin-”

“Goodbye, Cristina.”

She was standing there, mouth open when he walked right out the door.

ON DUSTIN’S next shift, his unit was called out just as he set foot in the door of the station.

Just as well. He needed to keep busy, because after this shift he was giving his typed resignation to the chief, and he didn’t want to think about it.

At midday they met up with Cristina and Blake’s rig outside a small grocery store on the corner of Main and Third. Inside there’d been a brawl in the liquor aisle over the last of the peppermint schnapps, leaving the manager with a black eye and a customer headed for a night behind bars.

“I guess that guy really needed that peppermint schnapps,” Cristina said.

“Maybe he should have gone for a beer instead.”

She gave him a tough-girl stare. “Sometimes, you just have to have what you have to have.”

“Yeah?” Knowing he was stepping into the frying pan, he shifted close. “And what is it that you have to have?”

She paused, then sagged a little, losing the attitude. “That’s the problem. I always figured it was one thing and now I’m thinking it’s another entirely.”

Just then Blake called her away. Dustin had to restrain himself from yelling, “What the hell does that mean?” after her.

They met up again several hours later, outside a small house. “People are so stupid around the holidays,” she said.

He happened to agree. People were stupid around the holidays, as evidenced by the fact he was loading a guy into the ambulance minus his fingers, which he’d cut off with his new turkey carver, right into his kitchen sink. Earlier he’d had a guy who’d fallen off his roof putting up the Christmas lights, and a woman who’d accidentally electrocuted herself when she had stuck too many strings of lights into one socket and then touched it with wet fingers.

Yeah. People were stupid around the holidays. Including himself.

And then came the defining moment of stupidity. He and James were called back to the grocery store from earlier that day for another unknown injury.

“The call came from the deli,” one of the clerks in the front told them as they came through. “Someone’s down.”

“I’ll go get the stretcher,” James said.

Blake and Cristina entered, as well. “They said they might need a fire unit,” Blake told them. “What’s up?”

“Don’t know yet.” Blake radioed dispatch for more information while Dustin headed in, extremely aware of Cristina at his side. At the back of the store, a wide-eyed clerk peeking out from a swinging door behind the deli counter waved them over. “You’re just EMTs, right?” she whispered frantically. “No police?”

“What’s happening?” Cristina asked her.

“No questions!” The clerk grabbed Dustin’s arm. “He said no questions! Oh, God, you have to hurry, or it’ll be too late!”

Dustin went with her, with Cristina right on his tail. They both looked at each other, nonplussed, when the clerk locked the door behind them. “He said just two EMTs.”

Dustin opened his mouth to correct her that Cristina was a firefighter, but Cristina stepped on his foot. “It’s just us two,” she said quietly.

“Okay, good.” The clerk gulped in air. “Because if I let anyone else in, he’ll kill all of us. Hurry!”

Kill?

The back area was empty, except for two people-the manager they’d met earlier, down on the ground, still sporting his black eye, but now holding on to his shoulder, as well, which was bleeding all over the floor.

And the customer from earlier, who stood over him.

With a gun.

“Well, it’s about time,” he said, tightening his grip on the gun. “This idiot made me shoot him.”

“You’re crazy!” the “idiot” yelled, writhing in pain, bleeding out on the floor as Dustin watched. “And so is the courthouse for letting you out on bail! They should have put you in a seventy-two-hour hold! And for the record, all I said was that you’re more stupid than you look if you think I’m going to apologize to you!”

“And you’re not only as stupid as you look, you’re also going to be dead.” He aimed the gun between the manager’s eyes. “Now say it. Say you’re sorry.”

The wounded man was bleeding fast and furious, and going very pale. “No.”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“No!”

“You have another shoulder, you know. And I’ll shoot you in it-Hey!” The shooter turned his head toward Dustin, who’d shifted closer to the victim. “Stay right where you are until I tell you to move!”

Ignoring him, Dustin went down on his knees to look at the wound. The bullet couldn’t have hit any major arteries or the manager would probably already have bled out completely-one thing in the guy’s favor.

Dustin lifted the torn and bloody material away from the entry wound.

The manager hissed out a pained breath. “I’m going to die, aren’t I? How long before I die?”

Cristina went to move closer to help but crazy-gun-guy protested. “Stay where you are!”

Her hands fisted but she stayed. “He needs helps.”

“Let me repeat. Move and I’ll shoot.”

“Okay, let’s all just try to relax,” Dustin said quickly, still crouched by the injured man. “You let us in here, right? So I know you don’t want anyone to die.” He went to open his bag, until the gun ended up in his face.

“No funny business!”

“No funny business.” Slowly, Dustin pulled out gauze and pressed it to the wound. “He needs a hospital.”

“Not until I get my apology.”

“For what?”

“He said I was a worthless loser.”

“You hit him,” Dustin pointed out. “And then you shot him. I think you’re even.”

“Mom said he has to apologize, that I shouldn’t give in until he apologizes.”

“Mom?” Dustin divided a look between the two guys as sirens sounded in the distance. “You’re brothers?”

“Only temporarily,” the brother holding the gun said. “Because I’m going to shoot him dead if he doesn’t apologize, and then I’ll be an only child.”

The manager groaned and lay back. “Jesus. You’re crazy.”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“Just say it,” Dustin grated out, trying to stop the bleeding and having little luck.

“No way in hell!”

The armed brother waved his weapon, looking quite pissed off at the world. When it ended up in the vicinity of the terrified clerk, she let out a low cry and started to back away.

“Don’t move!” The manager, gray from blood loss and pain, yelled from his position on the concrete floor. “God, Tess, don’t get shot for me!”

The gun was in her face now. “Yes, Tess,” the manager’s brother said. “Don’t get shot for him.”

“Okay, let’s just all stay very calm,” Dustin slowly rose, holding up his hands. “You don’t need the clerk anymore, right? You can let her go. Let both women go.”

“They can identify me.”

That didn’t sound promising. For any of them. The police were probably outside by now, maybe even making their way in somehow, or so he hoped, so he figured stalling was key. “Look, why don’t you tell me what it is you want, and I’ll try to negotiate it for you.”

“I want an apology, or he dies.” Emphasizing this, he pointed the gun at his brother.

Tess screamed and scrambled backward, turning to race recklessly toward the door.

“Stop!”

Knowing it was all going to go bad, Dustin grabbed Cristina and shoved her behind him, dropping them both down as the guy waved his gun around like a mad man over their heads.

Well, shit, he thought. He should have quit yesterday.

8

FROM BEHIND Dustin, where he’d shoved her, Cristina couldn’t see, but what she heard stopped her heart.

“Stop!” crazy-gun-dude yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot you!”

“Don’t shoot her!” his brother cried.

Cristina lifted her head.

Tess wasn’t stopping. Heart in her throat, Cristina tried to get free from Dustin’s grip but then he was surging forward, throwing himself at the gunman.

In Cristina’s life, she’d been afraid many times, but never like this, never such a gut-wrenching horror. “Dustin!” She reached for him, grabbing, but catching only his belt, and the holster for his scissors.

Dustin landed on the gunman and they rolled around on the floor, each grappling to be on top.

Cristina held the scissors like a weapon, planning on stabbing gun guy, but the two men kept moving, rolling, bizarrely in tune to the clerk screaming her head off. Then the man with the gun shoved free of Dustin, whose face was bleeding. He’d lost his glasses and squinted, as crazy-gun-guy leapt to his feet and aimed at the clerk’s back.

“No!” all of them yelled. Dustin lunged to his feet, the sudden motion causing the gunman to whirl on him just as the manager, still on the floor, yanked on his brother’s leg hard, causing him to lose his balance.

The gun went off.

Time stopped and so did Cristina’s heart as she watched Dustin jerk. She dove for him as the deranged brother fell, and they all hit the floor in unison.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she gasped, grabbing Dustin as he doubled over and grabbed his leg, his face a mask of agony.

The room was suddenly filled with police and everything was a blur.

Except Dustin, still in her arms, eyes closed, his precious blood pumping out of a hole in his thigh. “Dustin.”

James was suddenly there, as were two paramedics from station #33, all getting in her way, pulling Dustin out of her arms.

“He’s going to be fine,” she told them, stepping back out of the way so they could get him on a gurney.

Blake was there. He hugged her hard, and into his chest she said it again. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he said, far too solemnly.

Which was odd because Dustin was going to be fine. Fine.

BLAKE GOT Cristina to the hospital right behind the ambulance. As they rushed into the E.R. alongside Dustin, Cristina never took her eyes off his pale, pale face. A nurse cut away his pants while a doctor barked orders over his head.

Cristina tried to get a good look but another nurse eased her back out of the way. But she stayed in the room. “Look at that, Dustin. I’m getting you out of your pants without even trying.”

Dustin’s mouth quirked, but his eyes stayed closed. “Be gentle.”

There was a lump in her throat the size of a football. “Hey, I’m always gentle with the lightweights, ace.”

“I’ll have you know I’m no lightweight. I know what I’m doing…”

Cristina choked out a laugh. He did. He did know what he was doing, always. “Dustin-”

“Yeah…” His voice was fading away, which terrorized her. But it was just the drugs, she told herself.

He was fine.

Out of the speakers came some soft, elevator Christmas music, reminding her that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Someone had the small TV at the nurses’ station on CNN, muted, and ticker after ticker spelled doom and gloom for their economy. “You know, it’s really not a good time to be selling a house,” she whispered.

Blake reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Cristina-”

“Seriously. He should just forget about selling his damn house.”

“I think I can get this bullet out without sending him to surgery,” one of the doctors said.

“Do it.” Dustin sounded as if he was breathing through gritted teeth.

“Give him more pain meds,” Christina demanded. Why weren’t they giving him more? “Blake-”

Blake held her back, whispering in her ear. “They know what they’re doing. You know they know what they’re doing.”

“Do you feel this?” the doctor asked, poking at Dustin’s bare foot.

“Feel what?”

Oh, God. “He’s going to be fine…” She stared at Dustin’s too-pale face. “You hear me, Dustin Mauer?”

The doctor gave Blake a look that had the firefighter holding on to Christina very tightly, but she was very aware that no one was making any promises. “He’s going to be fine,” she repeated for herself.

“Yes,” Blake said, sounding a little tense. “He is.”

The alternative was far too painful to contemplate. A world without Dustin? Without those eyes, that smile, that gentle, giving, sweet nature that he could turn just a little rough and edgy when he had to? No way. She couldn’t imagine not having him in her life. “Goddammit, we have a picnic to go to.”

Dustin didn’t respond to that and she tried to move closer to the gurney, but Blake caught her. “We have to stay back or they’ll make us leave.”

“He practically jumped in front of that gunman!” she cried. “To protect that girl. To protect me!” She did the saving, dammit. No one needed to save her.

Blake kept a good hold of her, probably afraid she was going to jump the line of nurses and start yelling at Dustin again. She gripped the front of Blake’s shirt, giving him a shake when it was herself that needed one. “I’m not done with that man!”

Very gently, Blake pulled her in for a hug. “I know.”

“I have things to tell him.” She wasn’t exactly sure what they were yet, but she’d figure that part out. She tried to look at Dustin through the throng of people now working on him. “Do you hear me, Dustin Mauer? I have things to tell you!”

“Cristina, come on now,” Blake begged her. “The drugs have just knocked him out. Stay back. You’ll get your second chance. Everyone gets a second chance.”

If anyone should know, it was Blake, who’d come back from the dead, literally.

But suddenly everyone in scrubs was on the move, with Dustin between them, far too still and quiet on the gurney.

“Going into X-ray,” the doctor called back. “Checking bullet and bone placement. Is his family here?”

“Not yet,” she managed, her gut tight.

“We’ll be back.”

It didn’t escape her that he moved off without having ever given anything away.

In the movies that never boded well. As Dustin’s gurney moved past her, she reached out and touched his foot. It was all she could reach. “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered after he was long gone behind the double swinging white doors. “You are.”

9

DUSTIN LAY in the hospital bed, wriggling his toes. He was never going to get tired of wriggling his toes, not ever again. That was the good news.

The bad news? He hadn’t quit his job soon enough.

“You feeling sorry for yourself?”

Dustin craned his neck and eyed Jason, sitting by his bed. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for your pansy ass to wake up. So…does getting shot hurt as bad as everyone says?”

“Nah.” He sat up and grimaced at the pain. “Piece of cake.”

Jason’s smile faded. “You scared the shit out of us. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Believe me, I don’t intend to. They got the bullet out.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m okay.”

“Yes.”

“And the other guy who got shot?”

“Also okay.”

“So do you have the getaway car?”

“You’re not clear to go yet. And Cristina and Blake had to go to the police station to give statements, but they were going to come back to see you.”

“I need out of here.”

“But-”

Dustin struggled to toss off the covers. He was wearing a hospital gown. Great. “Either drive me or call me a damn cab. And where are some damn pants?”

“Jeez, those drugs you’re on are supposed to make you happy.”

“I’ll be happy. Out of here.”

BY THE TIME Cristina got back to the hospital, she was seriously losing it.

Dustin was recovering.

She knew this because she’d called every ten minutes. “I need to see him,” she said to Blake, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

“He’s probably sleeping.”

“Okay, but I still need to see him. I think I might…have feelings for him. Real feelings, you know?”

Blake laughed softly. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, I didn’t!”

“That’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake. But we love you anyway.”

She stared at him for a beat. “You do?”

“All of us, Cristina. Every last one.”

She struggled with this concept, wanting to believe that could actually even be possible, but not sure, even now, if she could. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Maybe it’s your sweet, sensitive nature.”

“No, really. Why?”

He took in her tense features, and softened. “We love you because you’re the best of the best, Cristina, and because you’re fierce and intense and amazing. You’d lay your life down for any single one of us. Hell, you’d do it for a stranger. Now you have a guy, also one of the best of the best, who feels the same way about you, and you’re sitting at a green light looking at me.”

“Oh!” She hit the gas and didn’t let up until she’d pulled back into the hospital. She rushed past the E.R. cubicle where only a few hours before Dustin had lain bleeding, not able to feel his toes, to the information desk, where she was directed to Dustin’s room.

And found an empty bed.

An aide was cleaning up the sheets. “Where is he?” she demanded hoarsely.

“Who?”

“Dustin Mauer. The patient who was here. Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

FOR THE FIRST TIME in her entire life, Cristina left the job in the middle of a shift. Abandoning Blake at the hospital, she drove to Dustin’s house and banged on his door, opening it herself when she couldn’t wait. “Dustin-Oh.”

A Dustin look-alike was on the other side of the door. He was tall, leanly muscled, and so much like Dustin she had to blink.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I-” She looked behind her, back outside, to make sure she’d driven up to the right house.

“Oh, you’re at the right place,” he told her. “You’re the heartbreaker, right? Cristina.”

“Jason.” Dustin said this from his perch on the couch, his voice low and raspy and so familiar it nearly brought her to her knees. “Let her in.”

“She’s already in.” But Jason stood back and gave her room.

“My brother, Jason, the watchdog,” Dustin said. “Jason, this is Cristina.”

Cristina managed a small smile and then moved past Jason to stand in front of Dustin, so relieved to see him she could scarcely breathe. He looked like shit, like death warmed over really, but he was breathing, so that was good. Still, she wanted to wrap him up in her arms and never let go. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“So we’re even.”

“I scared you? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Why are you here?” he asked instead of answering her.

She shoved her hands into her pockets. Probably she should have figured out exactly what to say to him. “Isn’t it customary to visit someone who’s been shot? Even idiots who check themselves out of hospital against doctors’ advice?”

His eyes gave nothing away behind his glasses. “So this is a friendly visit then? A how-are-you-doing visit? Well, I’m pissed off and in pain. There. Now you know. Thanks for coming.”

As if on cue, Jason opened the door in a not-so-subtle invitation for her to walk back out again.

“Wait.” She let out a breath and shoved her fingers in her hair. “Just wait a damn minute.”

Dustin waited with a patience that stretched hers thin for no reason that she could put her finger on. “I just wanted to see you. Is that so weird? We-we’re-”

Completely unhelpful, he lifted a brow.

“I mean, I thought we-”

He still just looked at her.

Goddammit.

“Okay, let me help you,” he said.

Well, finally!

“We’ve been friends,” he murmured. “Close friends.”

She’d never been good with the word close, but it was hard to dispute the truth. “Yes.”

“We’ve been sleeping together.”

She shot a quick glance at his brother. “Well, not regularly or anything. At least until this week,” she muttered.

Jason pursed his lips. “Sounds like you kids have some talking to do. I’ll be eavesdropping from the kitchen.”

He left, and a heavy silence filled the room.

“Here’s the thing,” Dustin said.

Good. The thing. She was so glad he was about to define the thing.

“I’m tired.”

“Well, of course you’re tired. You were shot!”

“No, I mean, I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the yo-yo. I’m tired of making all the moves.”

A burning panic began to rumble low in her belly. “What are you talking about?”

“If I don’t push you, then we stand still. But I’m tired of pressuring you into each and every single tiny step forward we take. It’s why I came to your place the other night to say goodbye. Which didn’t stick, obviously. So if you want to make the first move today, then make it already. If not, I’d like to be alone.”

Hurt, stunned and more hurt, she just stood there.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Sounding extremely tired, he lay back and closed his eyes. “Lock the door behind you.”

Well, wasn’t that subtle? She’d just lock the door then. Asshole. She let herself out and not only locked the damn door, but slammed it first.

And drove herself home to think.

And think some more.

And in the thinking, found her mad. How dare he go along with whatever the hell it was they’d been doing all this time, and then suddenly decide that wasn’t working for him?

It wasn’t like it was working for her, either. Not even close. She spent a very long night stewing, and when she woke up, she stormed back to his house.

Only to find it empty.

It was her day off, but she drove to the station and sought out Zach, who was doing pull-ups on a bar in the hallway, shirtless. Once upon a time she’d harbored a secret crush on Zach. They were friends, and twice they’d been friends with benefits, but it had been a long time ago, and, while he was one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever met, he was a better friend than most.

Plus he’d found true love with Brooke, and been taken off the market.

But even before that, she’d fallen for Dustin. She hadn’t known back then the why or how of it, but Dustin had taken her off the market, too.

It was time he damn well knew it. “Where’s Dustin?”

“Gone.”

The same queasy panic she’d experienced yesterday flooded her again. “What do you mean, gone? Where does a guy who’s been shot go?”

Zach released the pole and hopped down. Letting out a long breath, he looked her in the eyes. “He’s at his mom’s house in San Luis Obispo.”

Which was an hour north of Santa Rey. “Why?”

“For Christmas.”

There was something funny to his tone. “He’s coming back though,” she said. “Right?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Oh, God. She wasn’t going to like this. “Tell me what, Zach?”

“He gave his notice. He’s going full-time into the renovating business with his brother.”

Cristina chewed on that for a moment while a very bad feeling sank in her gut. “Okay, I’m going to need his mom’s address.”

Five minutes later she was on the highway heading toward San Luis Obispo. She didn’t want to think about why she was in such a hurry, or why the panic had grown and spread from her gut to every part of her body.

Dustin had quit.

He’d walked away.

And she’d let him.

10

CRISTINA GOT STUCK in holiday traffic, which only upped her blood pressure, but finally, she got there. Dustin’s mother lived in the middle of suburbia, complete with a white picket fence and a well-kept yard decorated for Christmas with lights strung in the trees and boughs of holly along the patio decking.

It was Christmas Eve.

It was Christmas Eve and she stood on the porch, hand raised to knock, about to completely impose on a family she’d never even met.

Because she had to see Dustin. She had to tell him-

Oh, God. She still didn’t have the exact words but she had the gist now. She was going to get it right this time.

Jason opened the door to her knock. Perfect.

In an exact imitation of his brother, he arched a brow and waited patiently.

“Um,” she said brilliantly.

“Still working on your greeting, huh? Need a moment?”

“No.” Yes. She stepped into the living room, filled with comfy, worn furniture and a huge Christmas tree, around which were so many presents they came halfway out into the room. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, amused. “We don’t get to see each other too much during the year so we tend to go a little overboard at Christmas.”

She had no understanding of this. Christmases in her world were a whole different ball game. “Oh. Uh, I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not. Everyone’s out doing their last-minute shopping. Probably be gone for hours. I was just leaving, too. Dustin’s upstairs.”

And with that, he walked out the front door. She stared at the tree, gulped and headed toward the stairs. “Dustin?”

He didn’t answer, and she began to make her way up, her heart in her throat. Upstairs in the hallway, all the doors were shut. “Dustin?”

She heard a soft oath, some rustling, and then one of the doors opened and Dustin stood there in a thick, dark blue robe, braced on a crutch, looking pale and tense.

And at just the sight of him, her heart warmed. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

He was hurting like hell, she could tell, and without a word, she went to him, slipped her arms around him, and took him back to his bed.

Lying back on the mattress, he gritted his teeth and pulled himself into a better position. “If you’re here to have your way with me, I’m going to disappoint you.”

“You could never disappoint me.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

As usual, he told it like it was, holding nothing back. What was it like to wear your emotions on your sleeve, she wondered, not to have a deep, dark secret festering inside?

Her deep, dark secret was killing her. “You win,” she told him. “Your evil plan worked.”

“Huh?”

It was so clear to her now, and, needing it to be clear to him, she stripped out of her clothes while he sputtered, and then she climbed into bed with him.

Two warm, hard arms came around her. “Cristina.”

She kissed his jaw, and then his chest, and he groaned, the sound bringing her such raw relief she felt the sting of tears at the base of her throat. “You’re not mad at me,” she let out before she could stop herself.

“Frustrated. Irritated. Hurt.” He shook his head and sighed. “But not mad.”

“I’m so sorry, Dustin,” she whispered, slipping her hands into his robe, warming at the discovery that he was naked beneath. She tugged the robe off his shoulders so they could both be naked together. “This day really sucked golf balls.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Don’t ever get shot again.”

“Amen to that.”

“Dustin, I-”

But his hands were busy skimming over every inch of her, wrenching a heartfelt and appreciative deep groan from his chest. It tugged at her, from loins to the tips of her hair, and she kissed him. She meant it to be a sweet kiss, a prelude to the I-love-you speech she’d prepared, but his hands swept down her back and cupped her bottom, nudging her closer until he let out a hiss and went still.

“Careful,” she gasped. “I don’t want to hurt you-”

“You’re killing me.” But he wouldn’t let her pull away. Rolling to his back, he urged her over on top of him until she straddled his waist.

She understood. It was her move. If she wanted him, wanted them, then this one was on her. No problem there. Her fingers curled around him. He was ready. She reached for the condom she’d brought.

“You came prepared.”

“In many ways-” She broke off to put it on him, leaving them both gasping by the time she was done. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. When you-Oh, yeah,” he managed on a rough breath when she sank down on him. Their twin moans mingled in the night, and she dropped her forehead to his, swamped with emotion. “Dustin.”

“Much as I want to be the macho guy here and show you a good time, I can’t move. My leg-”

“I’ve got you.” And for once, she did. She cupped his face and breathed his air and repeated it softly. “I’ve got you, Dustin.” Heart and soul…

When she began to move, it seemed as though her entire world moved along in sync. For the first time she felt completely transformed, transfixed, beyond herself. He gripped her hips in his hands and let her ride him, and just when she began to go over, he stroked her where they were joined, making her his…except she already was.

His.

She let herself fall, and one stroke later, he fell with her.

It took her a long time to recover. Still breathless, she rolled off him, shocked at the depths of what they’d just shared. “How was that for a first move?”

He reached for her hand, bringing it to his mouth. “Nice.”

“I have more. First moves, that is.”

“You’re going to have to give me a minute.”

“No,” she said, and laughed. Rolling over, she lay on his chest, looking through the dark to find his eyes glittering with interest. “I meant a different first move.” Her smile faded, replaced by nerves. “I’ve been an idiot, Dustin. A stubborn, closed-minded idiot.”

His lips quirked in silent agreement, but he didn’t respond. His hands though, they moved, up and down her naked body, producing a set of anticipatory shivers. He had the most amazing touch.

“And also-” She paused. “Okay, this is the hard part because I’ve never said this before-I was wrong.” God, those hands. And now his mouth got into the fray, too, nibbling at her shoulder, over her collarbone…“About me being able to be in a relationship. About us. About so many things-” His fingers were driving her crazy. “Are you listening?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He sounded laid-back and sleepy-eyed and sexy as hell, and she breathed him in. “I don’t know why I’m so anxious. It’s just words. Three words.” She drew a breath. “I love you.”

His hands went still and he stared at her. “What?”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you, but as you know, I have a few issues.”

His eyes were bright, warm and filled with love for her even as his lips quirked. “I love you and your issues.”

“I know. And that’s my own miracle, believe me.” She shot him a shaky smile. “I want you, Dustin. EMT or whatever it is you want to do-I don’t care. I just can’t imagine you not being in my life.” She held her breath for his reaction, but he merely smiled, too, a slow beautiful smile that stopped her heart.

“About time,” he murmured, and pulled her close.