Page 17 of The Spark Between Us

“Hey, good to see you. You know you never have to do that, but thanks.” We’d known each other for years, and I’d gotten called to more than a few kitchen fires there.

He pretended to rescind his offer, picking up the plates. “You telling me how to run my restaurant? Or just trying to impress your date?”

Sarah put her hand on the arm holding the food and piped up immediately. “Wait, not so fast with that. And I’m not his date. I’m the sister of a friend, and I’m crashing in his spare bedroom for a bit.”

“Oh yeah? Well, welcome to town. Thanks for coming out to see us.” He introduced himself and gave Sarah his card, which had a twenty percent discount for any wine in the store. She seemed delighted. Then he put the plate on the table and went to chat with another customer.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Sarah pinned me with a sharp stare. “He called you ‘Captain.’ And since I haven’t seen you in any Marvel movies, I’m thinking…Captain and Tennille cover band? Or do you sail the seven seas?” Her wide eyes sparkled with mischief.

Why did she have to be smart and gorgeous and cute? I swallowed hard. “It’s my job. I’m captain at Engine 97,” I told her.

She rearranged her wine and water glasses to make better room for the hummus to sit in the middle between us. “Is that something different than being a fireman?”

It made me laugh. “We don’t refer to ourselves as firemen. Firefighter is the term we use. I’m a paramedic as well, but we have other guys with that training, so I don’t do much of it anymore.”

“Oh, firefighting and medical knowledge? I have tons of questions. Is that okay, or do you not like talking about work?”

“I don’t mind talking about it. What do you want to know?” I rarely talked about it, mainly because most of the people I spent time with were people from work.

Every shade of blue in Sarah’s eyes shimmered like a heatwave. “I want to know everything.” Warmth spread in my chest at the way she said it, guileless and honest. “Then I’ll return the favor if you want.” She scooped a bite of hummus into her mouth, and I stared fixated when her tongue slipped out to lick the corner of her lips. “Ask me anything. I love talking about my work, but I hate talking about myself. So if someone asks about me, I pivot so we end up talking about work instead. Little peek inside my brain.” She bit into a chip.

“Why don’t you like talking about yourself?”

She tilted her head to the side and blinked a couple times. “I’m still a work in progress. No conclusions to draw yet.”

I’d never heard a person describe herself that way. I wanted to know more, but quizzing her didn’t seem wise when she’d outright said she didn’t want to talk about herself. Maybe once I knew her better.

Her pale eyes flickered with intensity, and I felt a little like an interrogation subject, but strangely, I didn’t mind. “So to start, what do you have to do to become a captain? And how’d you pick this career? And why can’t I call you a fireman? Sorry, I guess that’s three questions,” she laughed.

Before I could answer, Sarah’s gaze shot past my shoulder and I turned to see what caught her eye.

“Seems like they’re trying to get your attention.” Sure enough, on the other end of the patio, two women—both drunk, judging from the way they held each other up—were whispering to each other and burning a hole through Sarah with their stares.”

I adjusted my chair to block them from her view and ignored them. “I know one of them. Not well. Don’t worry about it.”

“Someone you dated?” She shot me a knowing glance.

I shrugged. “Something like that. Okay, in answer to your first question, like every job, there are levels. Everyone starts out probationary—we call them probies. It’s scut work, extra cleaning, the worst hours, et cetera.”

“Do you haze them?”

“What?”

“Like fraternity pledges. They have to do all kinds of things to prove they’re worthy. Sorry, I work at a university. I see a lot of pledge hazing.”

“Well, no. Not in the way you mean. We are master practical jokers, and most have us have been locked out at night in our underwear at one point or another, but we don’t make them eat onions soaked in Tabasco sauce or chug beer...”

“Sounds like you’re familiar...” She waggled her eyebrows and smiled.

I gave a small salute. “Zeta Psi, UCLA, at your service.”

“Nice. Okay, so once you’re done being a probie, then what?”

I took another sip of wine. “Then you move through the ranks. First firefighter, then if you specialize, you can be an AO—apparatus operator—which means you’re a driver engineer or operate some of the equipment and pump water.”

She sat up straighter. This wasn’t idle small talk to her—she was a knowledge sponge. The sparkle in her eyes told me she wanted me to keep going.

“Captain or lieutenant is the next rung up, but an engineer can pull rank and be acting captain if need be. Our AO was doing that earlier today until I showed up and confused everything. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but it was hard to leave when I saw it was my unit. Anyway, captain is when you start moving more into supervision and management, but I still get to work every fire and emergency. The main thing that interested me was being able to control a scene and still do the work.”

---