Page 9 of Taken

I shook the thought away as I leaned across his kitchen island. Sure, Nicholas was the hottest guy I’d ever seen in my life, but there was zero chance of our paths ever crossing again, just like there was zero chance of anything happening between us. If Nicholas was as nice and neat as his home, he would’ve never been interested in crossing the professional line with some guy he saved from a cabin fire.

If he was even into guys to begin with.

“I hope you like bacon.” Nicholas grinned over at me, interrupting my thoughts. “If not, I could go with something more vegetable forward? Maybe a veggie omelet?”

“I feel like the term ‘veggie omelet’ is actually illegal to say around these parts,” I joked, grinning right back at him. “But the good news for you is that I’m fine with bacon. More than fine.”

“More than fine?”

“Obsessed. Bacon is all I eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Nicholas tilted his head to the side. “Are you fucking with me?”

“Always.” I chuckled as I tapped the kitchen island. “You’ll get used to it after a while.”

“Uh-huh.” Nicholas smirked. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” I lied, unsure of how to answer the question without lying. “I slept all right. How about you?"

"I slept good.” Nicholas shrugged. “I usually do.”

“Lucky man.” I let out a wistful sigh. “Hey, do you think we could go check out the cabin after breakfast?”

“That’s the plan. You should be able to see what’s left that you can grab, you know, whatever survived the fire. And I can do a check on the damage, too.”

“Sounds perfect. I can probably grab my truck while we’re down there, too, so you don’t have to keep playing chauffeur.”

“Sounds perfect,” Nicholas repeated, before he brought his focus back down to the stove in front of him.

The cabin looked like it’d been a little on fire.

Not completely on fire. Not completely burnt out.

There were just little bits and pieces of evidence of flames if I looked at it long enough, like something had torn through it but it’d been quickly taken care of. It reminded me of someone setting fire to a stack of books, with only the spines being burned, the pages still readable if not a little smoky.

I watched as Nicholas surveyed the perimeter, going once around the cabin, his eyes locking on places that didn’t mean anything to me. I briefly wondered if my initial assessment had been incorrect, if my idea of a little on fire was a much bigger deal than I realized with my untrained eyes. A few moments later, though, and he was standing beside me again, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Ready to go in?” he asked, all business, like I was another fireman.

“Something wrong with the outside of the cabin?” I replied, nodding toward the building. “You were looking around it like?—”

“I was just doing a check to be safe,” he interrupted my response. “It’s something we’re trained to do. Just making sure there aren’t any live wires, nothing burning in the back. You don’t want to get out of a cabin that’s on fire just to end up in another fire.”

“Yeah, I imagine that’d be pretty embarrassing for a firefighter,” I joked.

But Nicholas didn’t react. “Come on. Follow me.”

“Tough crowd,” I murmured to myself as I followed him into the cabin. On first impression, the inside of the cabin looked just like the outside, a little burned but nothing too devastating. I turned my attention back to Nicholas, which was when I noticed that he was holding something in his hands, his fingers flipping through the pages?—

“No!” I unintentionally shouted at the top of my lungs, my hands already flying toward my journal. I hastily pulled it out of his grip, soon holding it down by my side.

“Uh…” Nicholas let out a confused laugh. “What was that about?”

“You should know better than to just go through people’s things.” I scoffed. “Some things are personal.”

“You working on a novel or something? Because one of the guys at the station acts the same way whenever one of us makes the mistake of getting too close to his laptop when he’s working on a new chapter,” Nicholas replied. “Artists are pretty sensitive types, so I guess it makes sense.”

“I’m not working on a novel—I’m not sensitive—It’s just—” I was flustered by the question, unsure of which part to reply to first. “It’s just my journal, okay? I like keeping a record of what’s going on around me. What’s going on in my head.”

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