Fire
Me Up
Pine Mountain # 4
Pine Mountain # 4
By: Kimberly Kincaid
Releasing February 3rd, 2015
Zebra/ Kensington
IF
YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT…
Teagan
O’Malley can handle a crisis. She’s a paramedic, it’s her job. But she never
expected to land in the kitchen of her father’s pub, with no notice, no cash,
and no room for error. The kitchen is not her favorite place. Lucky for her,
she just scraped a bad-boy chef off the pavement after a motorcycle
accident—and something about him says he can turn up the heat in more ways than
one.
Adrian
Holt has had a rough few years, and he’s not eager to get tangled up in
anything more complicated than a good risotto. But with a broken arm and a head
full of bad memories, he needs a challenge to keep him sane. Teagan’s dare-me
attitude and smoldering mess of a bar are just what the doctor ordered. And the
two of them together might cook up some even better medicine…
Teagan shouldered her first-in bag and
jumped out of the rig, her boots barely making contact with the pavement before
one of the cops securing the scene had fallen into step beside her. “Morning,
Officer. What’ve we got?”
Although her eyes were locked in on the
scene about thirty yards away—which was thankfully blocked from incoming
traffic by a pair of police cruisers—Teagan’s attention was just as sharply
focused on the cop’s response.
“Motorcycle versus minivan. Motorcycle
driver is over there, single rider, wearing a helmet. Denies losing
consciousness, no visible head injury, but he’s combative and complaining of
left arm pain. I’ve got an officer on him now, just to make sure he didn’t fly
before you got here. He’s going to be a handful.”
“Oh goodie. I eat those for breakfast,”
Teagan said, moving swiftly past the barricade. “How about vehicle two?”
The officer tipped his chin at a dark
green Honda Odyssey sitting halfway on the shoulder of the road, hazard lights
flashing in perfect orange rhythm. “Minivan driver has her two kids in the
backseat, all parties belted in. Everyone appears stable with no visible
injuries, no complaints of pain. Scene is secure. Just let us know what you
need.”
“Got it, thanks.” She swung her gaze at
Evan before letting it land on the Honda. “You want the minivan before the cops
take her report? I’m grabbing Chris and Jeff from Seven to help nail down this
single rider and make sure he’s stable for transport.”
Evan shook his head and shot her a wry
grin. “I know you owe me, but I can take the cranky biker.”
As if on cue, strains of a heated
altercation filtered past the scene noise, pulling a sardonic laugh from
Teagan’s throat. “Call it even for the fridge. I’ve got this.”
He turned with a shrug toward the nearby
minivan. “You’re a glutton for punishment, O’Malley.”
Understatement of the frickin’ year.
Teagan called for the two firefighters
before turning her attention toward her patient, who stood arguing with one of
Pine Mountain’s finest in the middle of the road in spite of the fact that she
was certain he’d seen better days.
Holy big-man-on-a-stick, this might be
more than she’d bargained for.
Even though his back was half-turned and
she was a good ten paces away, the guy was obviously huge, and from the sound
of it, he was no stranger to being righteously pissed off. Still, the
unmistakable edge of pain bled through his tone as clear as sunrise over Big
Gap Lake, and the way he clutched his left arm at such an awkward angle against
his body told her all she needed to know. Pissed off or not, she was getting
her hands on him, pronto.
“Hey, Chris, run and grab the backboard
from the rig and roll the cot over here, yeah? Jeff, you’re with me for trauma
assessment. I get the feeling it’s going to be an adventure.” She lasered her
focus from her crew to the injured man without breaking stride or waiting for
answers.
Time to get to work.
“Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but I
heard this is where the party is.” Without a second thought, Teagan slipped
into the hairbreadth of space between the cop and her irritated patient,
assessing the latter with a critical eye. Her subconscious gave a whisper of
recognition as she looked at his rugged, stubbled face, but the tickle of
familiarity took a backseat to the visual assessment she needed to do in order
to gauge his injuries.
The guy had nearly a foot on her, which
was pretty freaking impressive considering she measured in at five foot- seven.
The physique that went with his height left impressive in the dust, though,
especially since his chest was as thick as a double-wide trailer and every
ounce of it appeared to be muscle.
Make that leather-clad muscle, which had
probably saved his ass, quite literally. As best she could tell, thanks to his
now-banged-up jacket, the guy’s road rash appeared shockingly minimal, although
she’d have to get the garment off to be sure.
Too bad the rest of his injuries didn’t
match, namely that arm he was cradling like a helpless newborn. She didn’t even
want to get started on the laundry list of other injuries that could be lurking
beneath the dirt-streaked denim and leather.
She passed the first-in bag to Jeff, who
caught it without looking while the police officer stepped to the background to
give them a wide berth.
“My name is Teagan O’Malley, and I’m a
paramedic with Pine Mountain Fire and Rescue,” she said, her hands a flurry of
movement as she geared up to do a rapid trauma assessment. “Can you tell me
your name?”
The guy lifted a pierced eyebrow toward
his spiky platinum hairline and speared her with a stare caught somewhere
between hazel and cold gray. God, how did she know him?
“I’m fine,” he ground out, his voice pure
gravel and aggravation. “Which I already told that fucking jarhead, but he
wouldn’t let me leave.”
Yeah. It was going to take a little more
than a bad attitude and some uncut testosterone to get her to back down. “That
fucking jarhead, as you so eloquently put it, might’ve saved your life by
keeping you here until you can be medically cleared. While I doubt there’s a
gift registry for that kind of thing, a simple thank you might be nice. Just to
be on the safe side.”
Her would-be patient took a step back,
his stare going from cutting to calculating in the span of a breath. “I don’t
need to be medically cleared,” he said, although it didn’t escape her notice
that he caught the cop’s attention to toss him a tight nod.
Teagan bit back the temptation to point
out that, from the looks of things, he was a walking, talking version of the
game Operation with that arm bent up like it was. “Okay. Why don’t you let me
give you a quick once-over to be sure?”
“No.” The word fell between them without
subtlety, and she drew back with a frown. The tough guy routine was cute
really, but nobody was indestructible.
“Look, I know this isn’t fun, but it’s
necessary, so—”
“If you think I’m getting in that
ambulance, then you don’t know shit.”
Jeff locked eyes on her in a nonverbal
communication of say the word, but
Teagan gave a quick shake of her head. She’d handled enough tough guys to fill
a stadium, and this one was no different.
She craned her neck and stepped close
enough to see the numerous abrasions peppered in with the guy’s dark stubble,
meeting his stare head-on even though it sent an involuntary shiver down the
plumb line of her spine.
“Let me tell you what I do
know.” She dropped her voice to just a notch above a whisper
and threw on a smile as thick and sweet as store-bought frosting. “I know your
arm is broken, and I think you know it, too. I know you don’t want me to look
at it even though it hurts like a bitch. And I also know that’s not an option,
because it’s possible that broken arm is the least of your worries. So here it
is. You can either cooperate with me and we’ll do this the easy way, or I can
sedate you and work you over so thoroughly, I’ll be on a first-name basis with
every last part of you. Are we clear?”
A muscle tightened in the hard line of
his jaw, drawing out the silence for a beat, then two before he turned toward
her ever so slightly, as if waiting for her to get on with it.
Good enough, she thought as she lifted
her hands to start checking him out.
But before Teagan could even start on his
pulse, the guy’s free hand had turned to form an ironclad circle around her
wrist.
Heat shot all the way up Teagan’s arm and
her heart whacked against her ribs like a hockey puck dropping at center ice .
. . right up until she realized the guy had simply reached out to get her
attention.
“Adrian.” The word, little more than a
harsh affirmation, pushed past his lips quietly, and it snapped her focus back
into place.
“Excuse me?”
As fast as he’d touched her, he loosened
his fingers, as if the movement of getting her attention in the first place had
drained his strength to fumes. “My name is Adrian. And yeah. My arm hurts like
hell.”
And just like that, she was moving again,
even though her skin still prickled with strange and residual warmth.
“Can you rate the pain on a scale of one
to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”
Something Teagan couldn’t get a gauge on
flickered across his expression, darkening his eyes to a steely green gray, but
he snuffed it out with an audible exhale. “If I don’t move it, it’s fine.”
“And if you do?”
Adrian paused. “Six.”
Damn. She’d hate to know what had given
him his ten. “Okay, Adrian, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to have
you sit on this cot.” Teagan stopped to acknowledge Chris’s impeccable timing
as he rolled the thing over, and she reached for the trauma shears Jeff had
wordlessly taken from the bag before she continued. “And I’m going to ask you a
couple of questions while I check you out. You okay with that?”
He dropped his chin a fraction, and the
wince it produced wasn’t lost on her. “What’re those for?” Adrian asked, gaze
firm on the shears in her grip.
“I’m sorry, but in order to get a good
look at you, that jacket’s got to go.”
The feral expression she’d just lulled
off Adrian’s face made a vengeful comeback. “You’re not cutting my jacket.”
Oh, come on. She was a paramedic, not a
magician, and that arm probably resembled a jigsaw puzzle right out of the box.
“You got any better ideas on how to get it off over a broken limb, Einstein?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
In the time it took her to blink, he had
the jacket halfway off his shoulders even though the move had to hurt like
nothing else, and Teagan’s gut gave an uncharacteristic yank.
“Wait—stop!”
But before her words could make it all
the way out, the deed was done. “There . . . you go,” Adrian grated, his face
roughly the color of the sheet on the cot as he gripped the jacket in his free
hand. “Problem solved.”
“Are you out of your mind? I can’t help
you if you’re only going to make things worse!” Christ.
If there were broken ribs in that granite wall of a chest of his, he could’ve
single-handedly punctured a lung with that little stunt.
His voice only held the slightest hitch
as he fixed her with a stoic glance. “You said you needed it off to get a good
look, right? Now you’re free and clear, Red.”
Jeff reclaimed the trauma shears and put
them in the bag with a sheepish grin. “Hate to admit it, O’Malley, but he’s
kind of right. What do you need first?”
Teagan sucked down a deep breath and shot
Jeff the mother of all death glares. “I’ve got the RTA. You work on getting the
stuff together to splint that arm.” She turned her glare on Adrian as Jeff
began to rummage for what he needed. “Park it,” she said, jutting her chin at
the cot.
Miraculously, he settled against the
reclined back of the rolling bed and let her take his vitals without argument.
The numbers were startlingly good for someone who’d just turned his motorcycle
into spare parts in the middle of the road, but she’d seen vitals nosedive
without warning too often for that to mean he was in the clear.
No better way to assess an injury than to
let your fingers do the walking. Starting at the top of Adrian’s platinum blond
head, she skimmed her hands over him, missing nothing as she worked her way
down the corded muscles in his neck and chest. The injury to his forearm
indicated an obvious break, but since the skin was intact, she placed the limb
carefully at his side to await a splint before sliding her hands to his
abdomen.
“Careful. Any more personal and you’re
going to have to take me to dinner first.”
The comment, and the hint of dark humor
that came with it, caught Teagan totally off guard under the circumstances, and
her fingers stuttered over the left side of his rib cage. She’d done thousands
of assessments, and never once had they been anything other than a hundred
percent perfunctory.
But right now, with her hands about an
inch above the low-slung waistband of Adrian’s jeans, her brain heaved forward
into forbidden territory, and her girly parts were all too happy to shake off
the dust and go along for the unexpected joyride.
Teagan cleared her throat. Twice. “I’m,
ah, just making sure nothing else feels broken. Did you lose consciousness at
any time? Any dizziness, nausea, trouble breathing? Anything like that?” She
reset her hands and forced herself to concentrate as she moved them over the
rest of his upper body.
Wow. He really was . . . wow.
And she really needed to knock it off.
“No, and no. Like I told the cops, I’m
not an idiot. I don’t ride without a helmet.”
She worked her way down the lower half of
his body, satisfied that everything was in working order before returning her
attention to his face. “Good intentions aren’t always enough to save people,
you know.”
His pupils looked round, reactive, and a
lot less pissed than before, and his gravelly voice held a hint of amusement as
he said, “Spare me the lecture, Red. I’m a big boy.”
Teagan fought both the urge to agree with him and the burning desire to
roll her eyes. “Gee, I’ve never heard that nickname for a redhead before.”
Kimberly is a 2011 RWA Golden Heart® finalist who lives (and
writes!) by the mantra that food is love. Her digital Line series is all about
the hot cops and sexy chefs of Brentsville, New York. She is also the author of
the Pine Mountain series, which follows small town singles as they find
big-time love. Kimberly resides in Virginia with her wildly patient husband and
their three daughters.
Thank you for hosting today!
ReplyDelete