Free The Night Belongs to Fireman by Jennifer Bernard Page A

disaster,” she moaned to Cindy.
    â€œForget it. Men don’t care about clothes, except when it comes to taking them off. Just don’t forget to smile. Don’t pull that hands-off-or-my-bodyguard-will-stomp-you thing you usually do.”
    â€œI don’t do that!” Did she?
    â€œI’m just saying. Be friendly. He’s earned it.”
    â€œFriendly. Right. How are you feeling?”
    â€œA thousand percent better. This is so much more fun than Teen Mom reruns. Call me after, okay?”
    Rachel hung up and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked too pale, and not so much friendly as . . . alarmed. If only she’d gone to a normal high school and had slumber parties and done makeovers and gone to proms. If only she’d casually dated, fallen in love, gotten her heart broken, all the usual teenage rites of passage. But she’d done none of those things. She’d alternated between pricey, private Everwood School for Girls and home tutoring. In college, for the first time, she’d made real friends, not fake whose-family-has-more-money friends. But she still hadn’t gotten the hang of casually dating. Face it, doing anything casually was pretty impossible for her.
    But none of that meant she couldn’t give a nice, cute fireman a tour without looking like Wednesday Addams. She pinched her cheeks, trying to give them some color.
    â€œOw.” That hurt. But it did make two distinct dots of pink appear on each side of her face. She rubbed at them, trying to make the color spread. Would a slap in the face work better, give more of an all-over flush? Then again, it might be hard to look friendly if her cheeks were in pain.
    She poked at her hair one more time, then made a face at the mirror. Who do you think you are, Scarlett O’Hara? With a roll of her eyes, she abandoned her reflection and went back to the foyer.
    As it turned out, her ridiculous efforts paid off. She experienced the thrill of seeing Fred’s eyes widen and an appreciative grin spread across his face. “Your hair looks pretty like that,” he said. Such a simple compliment, and yet it kindled a trickle of warmth in her heart. Maybe because he said it so sincerely. He obviously meant it. Compliments usually made her suspicious, especially when they came from men back home trying to suck up to her father.
    But Fred had no idea she had anything to do with America’s third wealthiest man.
    â€œThanks,” she said, then stuffed her purse behind her desk. It was safe here. Everyone who worked at the Refuge had been extensively vetted by her father’s security team.
    She led the way onto the gracious grounds of her favorite spot on earth. She’d worked so hard to create the Refuge for Injured Wildlife. No one knew how hard, and she couldn’t tell Fred without revealing her true identity. She wasn’t ready for that. “Is Stan pretty well behaved around other animals?”
    â€œIf you have any rescued squirrels, I’d tell them to hide,” he said lightly. “And your sheep will be herded so fast they won’t know what hit them. On the other hand, if anyone’s trapped, he’ll let you know. He used to be a rescue dog.”
    She led the way down the main path that wound through the grounds. “I’ve thought about training my border collie to be a rescue dog. She has an amazing prey drive.”
    â€œStan has an amazing sleep drive, but I’m sure he used to be great. Right, Stan?”
    The beagle gave Fred a world-weary sort of look. Rachel smiled to herself. Whether he intended to or not, Stan was telling her a lot about her visitor. All good, so far.
    â€œWhat would you like to see first? Do you like birds? Camelids? Foxes? Goats? Someone just brought in a wounded short-eared owl.”
    â€œDo you take in every sort of animal?”
    â€œYes,” she said proudly. “At least temporarily, until we can figure out the best