Page 8 of Tameron

“He’s my roommate’s boyfriend. He’s amazing, and I can see why he’d be a great teacher for you, Misha.”

As we kept chatting, everyone else trickled in, and right on the dot, Dayton started his class. He was annoyingly good at teaching, much to my chagrin. Couldn’t the universe have at least given me the pleasure of seeing him fail miserably at something? The man was good-looking, he was a damn firefighter, he was unfailingly kind and nice, and now he turned out to be a decent teacher too?

I needed him to have a flaw. Just one thing he wasn’t good at, something negative. Anything to justify my dislike of him. Except I wasn’t gonna find it during this class. Hell, he was so good that halfway through, I forgot my annoyance and was able to fully get into it. It always felt so amazing to reach that yoga-flow state.

My thought that maybe it wasn’t all so bad evaporated when I walked over to my car after the lesson and discovered I had a flat. “Ugh, seriously?”

I kicked the flat tire. Was the universe now mocking me for enjoying myself for thirty damn minutes?

I did have a spare, but no way would I be able to get that on myself. That involved a lot of bending over while doing heavy lifting, which would not end well if I attempted it. So now what?

“Need help?”

I spun around at Dayton’s voice. Of course it had to be him. My pride battled with my common sense for a moment, but then I surrendered. I’d be a fool not to accept it. “Yeah, that’d be awesome.”

“No problem at all. Do you have a spare?”

I clicked the keyfob to open the trunk and then lifted the floor compartment. “I do, but I don’t have a jack.”

“No worries. I have one in my truck. Let me grab it.”

He was a regular fucking Boy Scout, wasn’t he? But it was hard to be annoyed about that when it came in so handy. He jogged to a big red pickup truck—an appropriate color for a firefighter—then made his way back with the jack.

He knelt next to the flat. “Let’s see if we can get this done.”

Okay, I liked that he said “we” and not “I.” At least he assumed I’d be helping or whatever.

I watched as he went to work, my eyes taking in his form. Wait, did he have…? Oh man, he totally did. His nipples were pierced. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I did now that I could peek inside his singlet as I towered over him. Both nipples had tiny little barbells. Not what I would’ve expected from him at all. I also saw a tattoo on his back, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

Within minutes, he’d managed to jack up the car—I was dutifully watching, feeling very useless—and was in the middle of taking off the flat tire when he suddenly stopped. He cocked his ear in the direction of a group of trees that lined the parking lot. “Are you able to hear that?”

I turned my good ear in that direction and focused. I heard…a high squeaking sound? Like a…like a mewl? “Is that a cat?”

He nodded, putting down the lug wrench. “I think so. A kitten, even. It’s a little high-pitched for an adult cat.”

We walked over to the trees, looking up and following the sound. “There,” I said, pointing. “Oh my god, you were right. Itisa kitten.”

A tiny gray kitten sat on a tree branch, its slender body shivering as it mewled with all its tiny heart.

Dayton stood close to me, and our heads were inches apart as we looked at the little kitten. “It’s scared to come down,” Dayton said.

“Can we coax it out?”

“We can try, but usually, it doesn’t work.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “And you know this, how? Don’t tell me the old cliché about people calling the fire department to rescue cats from trees is true.”

He shot me a cocky grin. “Oh, it is, trust me. I’ve saved many a cat from a tree, and even a few dogs. Plus some kids, a furious wounded raccoon—that one was not fun—and an owl who’d injured his wing.”

I was still gonna try. I made chirpy sounds with my lips, holding out my hands to the kitten. “Come here, buddy… Jump into my arms. You can do it. I’ll catch you, I promise.”

Dayton joined me, clicking his tongue and making different sounds, but the little kitten didn’t move a muscle. It was well and truly stuck, the poor thing.

Finally, I gave up with a deep sigh. “Looks like you’re right, so how do we get it down?”

Dayton shrugged. “The old-fashioned way…with a ladder.”

“You have a ladder in your truck?”

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