Free Burn for Me by Lauren Blakely

out. A total gentleman, and they’re even still friends, but she broke up with him because she thought he always had eyes for someone else.”
    “Who?”
    “She didn’t say. But maybe the woman he really wanted is you, Jamie.”
    Her heart dared to skip a beat, and this time it wasn’t just from lust. It was from hope.

Chapter Eight
    Her cat was stuck in the tree.
    The message glared at her when she turned her cell phone on as she got in her car. She jammed the key into the ignition, wanting desperately to believe him but knowing the risks and feeling duped nonetheless.
    As she turned on the car her phone flashed again.
    She glanced at it and did a double take. Meow — I really was in a tree. -Tiger.
    She fought back a silly grin with no success. She wanted to be angry, to curse him, but the text cracked her up. She grabbed the phone and called him back as she drove. Maybe Diane was right.
    “Is anything on fire?”
    “Nothing but my muscles and they’re burning from working out hard,” he said.
    She laughed. “Are you at the gym?”
    “Just finished,” he said, and he sounded weary. “But now I’m home and about to crash. Long day. Long shift. Twenty-four hour shifts do that to you.”
    “I can imagine. So the cat was in a tree? For real?” she asked, her voice still laced with skepticism. But it was a skepticism she wanted to shed.
    “Swear on my life.”
    “You know that’s the classic fireman cliché.”
    “But it’s true.”
    She rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t see her as she drove. “Look, I know this is no-strings-attached, but I need to know for sure that you aren’t messing around with anyone else this week.”
    “I’m not, I promise,” he said, and she could hear the earnestness in his tone, but she could also feel it, as if she were holding it in her grasp. “I wouldn’t do that. I swear on my men, on all my guys at the firehouse. I swear on the way I’d protect them and run into burning houses to save a kid, a family, a dog, even a cat, that I was only there on a work call.”
    “You swear?” she asked, her voice trembling. At some point she was going to have to decide whether to let go of her fears. But she knew the word of the fireman was a true one.
    “I swear. She had a bottle of wine, and she tried to get me to stay, but I left. I’m not interested in her. I am only interested in the gorgeous, smart, fiery woman I bought a book of poems for. Besides, you have to know me well enough by now to know that I’m not that kind of a guy. When I’m with a woman I’m with that woman, and you might have declared this ‘no-strings attached’ and that’s fine for now, but my string is only attached to you.”
    Her heart thumped wildly, and she gripped the steering wheel so she could focus on the road. The sentiment was so sweet that it made her long for him. Besides, the truth was she did know him. And while he’d had a long line of ladies, maybe she’d been judging him simply for being lucky in love. She’d assumed that meant he strayed. But you could be lucky in love and be faithful. She decided right then and there to let go of all her lingering jealousy. She might not ever want more from him, but she wanted this thing they had—this fling—to be just between them. And part of that meant she needed to say good-bye to her worries about other women. Because they were just that— her worries. Nothing more.
    “I do know you. I’m going to believe you.”
    “Good. You should,” he said and yawned.
    “Hard shift?”
    “Yeah, there were a few car accidents we had to tend to.”
    “Anyone hurt badly?”
    “Rushed a family over to the hospital but it was all minor bumps and bruises.”
    “That’s scary but I’m glad it was okay.”
    “Me too,” he said, taking another yawn. “Hey, was that our first fight as friends with benefits?”
    She stopped at a light. “I think so.”
    “I like how it resolved.”
    “Me too.” She paused and her mind rolled through