months he had secretly been paying half of Stanley’s room and board. A lot of people talked about Cody—about his skirt-chasing, about his bar-brawling, about his risk-taking—but nobody talked about his generosity. Because they didn’t know.
Only she knew that there was more to Cody than the rumors swirling around Northern Lakes, and that made him even more attractive to her. She glanced down at the cash; there was enough to get the air fixed now, even if the condenser was beyond repair like the serviceman had already warned her.
“Thank you,” she murmured. She should have been relieved, but there was an emptiness inside her. While it was enough money to fix the air-conditioning, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the lawsuit. She needed more if she was going to have any hope of keeping her family heritage.
He leaned over her desk, so close that his face nearly touched hers as he murmured in her ear, “And remember—”
Remember? What was she supposed to remember? With him so close she could barely think.
“—this is between you and me.” His breath caressed the side of her face, making her skin tingle. “Stanley can’t ever know.”
Cody had brought Stanley to her boardinghouse when the kid had turned eighteen and lost his eligibility to stay in foster care. She wasn’t sure how he even knew the kid or why he cared. But he did—obviously a lot.
She shook her head, but he hadn’t moved his. Their mouths nearly touched. She drew in a shaky breath and assured him, “I haven’t told anyone.”
“It’s our little secret then,” he said. The amusement was back, glinting in his green eyes. He didn’t straighten up and move away. Instead he leaned closer.
She could feel the heat of his breath on her lips now. Her lashes fluttered in anticipation of his mouth moving over hers. He was going to kiss her.
But then an alarm rang out. He jerked away from her as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He cursed.
“There’s a fire?”
He spared her only a quick nod before turning to rush out the door. She hoped the arsonist hadn’t struck again; the last fire he’d started had been too close.
Hopefully something else had caused a fire. Lightning. Bad wiring. An overheated car.
Or Cody Mallehan.
Because she was pretty sure he’d started a fire inside her. Her fingers trembling, she fished out another ice cube. She could dump the whole glass down her tank top, but she doubted it would cool the desire she felt for her new boarder.
CODY HAD PUT OUT one fire with the extinguisher he carried in his truck. But there was another fire he couldn’t put out. The one burning between him and his hot landlady...
If the fire alarm on his phone hadn’t rung, he might have done something really stupid. He might have kissed her. Their mouths had been so close that he’d almost tasted the sugar on her lips from her glass of sweet tea. Remembering the trail the ice cube had taken from her throat, over the swell of her breast to disappear in her cleavage, he groaned.
“What’s the matter with you?” Dawson Hess asked. The dark-haired guy sat next to Cody in the big conference room on the third floor of the firehouse.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“That groan is the first sound I’ve heard you make since you rolled in here late,” Dawson said.
During the meeting Cody had managed to hold in his disappointment that they still had no leads on the arsonist. But that was just about all he remembered of the meeting.
“You’re never quiet,” Wyatt chimed in from the other side of Dawson. His blue gaze held some concern. “What’s wrong?”
Owen James leaned forward from the chairs behind them and asked, “Something’s wrong?”
In addition to being a Hotshot, the former army medic was an emergency medical tech for Northern Lakes during the off-season. Like the rest of them, he’d no doubt been stationed at home again because of the arsonist. So far nobody had been seriously hurt in any of the fires.
But the arsonist was getting more and more dangerous. It would only be a matter of time—unless they stopped him.
Cody shook his head and reassured them all. He forced his usual cocky grin. “Just getting sick of doing all the work around here.”
Concern gone, Wyatt snorted—which Owen echoed.
“Hey, I had to put out a car fire on my way in,” Cody said. “That’s why I was late.”
“That fire was on M87,” Owen said. “What were you doing out there?”
“I’m staying out that way,” Cody replied.
“At the Beaumont boardinghouse?” Wyatt asked.
He nodded.
Wyatt snorted again. “That’s not going to last.”
“Why not?”
“Serena Beaumont isn’t going to put up with you hitting on her,” Wyatt said. “She’s like Fiona used to be.”
“She thinks getting involved with a firefighter is too great a risk because of our dangerous jobs?” As an insurance agent, Fiona O’Brien had statistics to back up her belief. Unfortunately, the wildfires burning out west had added to those statistics when a few more firefighters had lost their lives battling those blazes. The Huron Hotshots had spent a few weeks helping out there, but their greatest threat was at home.
Wyatt shrugged. “Serena is Fiona’s friend. But I don’t know her really well. Since her mom died last year, she’s been busy trying to run that boardinghouse all by herself.”
With the size of the place, Cody could understand how just cleaning it would keep her busy. But cooking and caring for people, too?
That was why he preferred to live alone now that he had a choice. He’d loved his cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Then, he hadn’t had to put up with, or take care of, anyone else. Sure, it had been too quiet sometimes. But that was just because he was used to noise, used to people being around.
It didn’t mean that he hated being alone. Or that he got lonely...
A person could be lonely even living in a house full of people. Was Serena lonely?
Something seemed to have been bothering her earlier. She’d looked upset or sad. But maybe she still missed her mom. Cody wouldn’t know what that might be like. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had.
“So you’re saying she doesn’t have any time to put up with Cody’s flirty bullshit,” Dawson summed up for Wyatt.
But she’d given Cody her time. She hadn’t thrown him out of her office when he’d flirted with her earlier. She hadn’t pulled away when he’d leaned in close.
Her thick lashes had fluttered, and she had closed her big, dark eyes as if anticipating his kiss. His stomach muscles tightened; he’d wanted to kiss her, to taste her...
But it was better that he hadn’t. “I didn’t know that she lost her mom last year.” All he’d known was that she owned a huge house and was damn hot.
Dawson nodded. “Owen and I went out on the call.” If he wasn’t too busy with his assistant superintendent duties, Dawson occasionally helped out at as paramedic.
“She died right in that house,” Owen added with a soft sigh. “We got there as quickly as we could, but we were too late to save her. Serena had tried—unsuccessfully—to resuscitate her until we got there.”
Cody cursed. He remembered that frustration of being unable to save someone.