“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.