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He shrugged as if it was no big deal, then asked, “You don’t want me to turn off your alarm?”
“Could you, please?” she heard herself say, moving aside to let him into her apartment as if his words had been some secret magic phrase to grant entrance. “I can’t get the thing to shut up.”
His lips twitched. “If you ask nicely.”
What? Her mouth fell open. Was he kidding her? But before she could come back with some retort, he came into her apartment and was following the smoke signals and noise to her kitchen.
When her gaze dropped to his jeans-clad butt that could sell millions of pairs of pants if someone would stick an ad up on a Times Square billboard, Sarah blamed the noise for interfering with her brain waves. No way would she have otherwise visually ogled the man’s bottom, lit-up-billboard-worthy or not.
Within seconds, he’d pulled over a chair and climbed onto it. Looking like some sexy god up on his perch, he reset her smoke alarm.
Despite how much he annoyed her, the silence had her wanting to wrap her arms around him in gratitude.
“Bless you!” she praised. “That thing was driving me crazy.”
Turning, he stepped down from the chair and carried it back to where he’d grabbed it from. “No problem.”
“How did you know?”
Facing her, hands on his narrow hips, he grinned. “Told you. I succumbed to the sound of your mating call.”
She shook her head. Maybe in denial of his claim. Maybe in denial of memories of those hips wrapped in a towel and nothing more. Maybe in denial of the fact that for the first time in her life she was an ogler. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Mating call. As if.
“I didn’t lure you here,” she choked out of her dry mouth. Seriously, her vocal cords felt like they’d been put through a dehydration machine.
His amusement apparent, he cocked a brow. “Really? You expect me to believe your smoke alarm accidentally set itself off on the same day you learned I’m a firefighter?”
It did sound fairly incredible.
“Admit it,” he continued, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You wanted to see me and issued an invitation you knew I wouldn’t refuse.”
“I...” She grimaced. He made a good point. One that made any argument she issued lack credibility, even though she hadn’t intentionally set off her smoke alarm. Neither had she wanted to see him.
Quite the opposite.
She’d seen him too much that day already.
Seen and liked. Even the dirty, worn-out endearing hospital version. Unfortunately.
Wincing, he took in the smoke still escaping from her toaster oven. “You didn’t have to really set fire to anything, Sarah. A simple knock on my door and a verbal invitation would have done.” He shrugged. “Or, if you wanted something more dramatic, a match next to that sensitive baby there would have had it screaming for me.”
“I didn’t...” She paused, flustered by his teasing, by how her heart pounded that he was there, inside her apartment, talking directly to her, that he was using the teasing flirty tone as he had at the hospital.
“Need rescuing?” He finished her sentence for her. He walked over to the toaster oven, opened the door, grimaced at the burned mess inside. “Sure you did. In more ways than one. What was that?”
“Toast.”
His eyes widened. “That was toast?”
At his question, something inside Sarah snapped.
“Yes, it was. Toast. Toast that was going to be my dinner, because I was hungry and tired and... Don’t you judge me...you...you...” She searched for a derogatory name, sure there were thousands just on the tip of her tongue. Unfortunately, none sprang forth.
That’s when the day’s events took their toll and she did something totally out of character.
She watered up and fought tears.
