Free Her Firefighter SEAL by Anne Marsh Page B

have flashbacks,” he admitted. “You’re not going to want to sleep with me at night. The nightmares make me restless and pissy.”
    She tossed her empty paper plate into the fire. “Do they make you violent?”
    “I would never hurt you or the baby.”
    She nodded. “I’m a bed hog. I’ll steal your pillow. And Baby will kick you. We’ll figure it out.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” he said easily, wondering what she would do next.
    “So.” She looked at him. “We’re going to use each other. We’re going to be company for each other.”
    “Yeah,” he said, right as his pager went off. They both stared at the device vibrating on his hip. He’d left it in his truck while they went out to fish, so it had survived their unplanned swim. Maybe that had been a mistake.
    “You get reception out here?”
    “Guess so.” He checked the pager and discovered a message to report to the Strong firehouse. Ben Cortez was short an EMT and wanted to know if he was available. He got up and got busy putting their fire out. She got up and started collecting their clothing from the bush. Too bad the reason their clothing was strewn around the beach had nothing to do with sex.
    “Are you joining the firehouse permanently?”
    He grabbed a bucket of water from the lake and drowned the fire while he considered the answer to her question. “Nope,” he said finally.
    “Why not?” Finished with her clothes, she moved on to his, and his brain took a temporary vacation. There were better ways for her to get her hands on his clothes, and he wanted to investigate those ways now.
    “Because the firehouse is a temporary gig.”  Being grounded permanently wasn’t happening. He jumped. End of story. Since anything else was impossible, he started mixing the fire ash with dirt. Getting careless and setting the lake on fire wouldn’t set the right example.
    “Your knee’s okay?” She eyed his leg doubtfully, like his medical history was pinned to his kneecap. And because he was the king of wishful thinking, he lied through his teeth.
    “It’s fine. I’ll be approved to jump in a week or two, and then I’ll be back to jumping with Donovan Brothers.”
    He jabbed the remnants of their fire with a stick, looking for hidden hotspots. The new fire season would be a bad one. California seemed to live in one perpetual drought, and each summer seemed drier than the last. He’d fallen in love with smoke jumping when he’d volunteered during his annual leave days from the military. No way he sat out the fight. No way he was too broken to help.

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    Chapter Seven
    W orking as a volunteer firefighter and EMT helped fill up the hours. Or so Kade told himself. Never mind that it chafed, riding along at the back of the posse, hitting cleanup. And he absolutely understood the value of a cleanup crew—the military’s had done one hell of a job patching him up after the damage the Afghani insurgents had done to him—but he wanted to be in the thick of things. He didn’t watch.
    He damned certain didn’t wait.
    Today’s fire was ten miles outside of Strong.  Some Farmer Fred wannabe had decided to burn a pile of trash, and the wind had kicked up, tossed a few sparks around, and voilà. Insta-fire. At least their civilian firebug had possessed the good sense to phone it in. When the fire truck had pulled up, the guy had been sprinkling the four-foot flames eating up his fence and garden shed with a puny stream of water from a bright green watering can. Dick jokes had ensued immediately, because that had been one tiny hose and none of the team could resist.
    Or so he’d heard , because here he was, his ass stuck inside the ambulance, watching shit through the windshield. He drummed his fingers on the wheel. In addition to being inside instead of outside, he was also parked at a safe distance. Go him. Undoubtedly the Bubble Wrap came next.
    When Ben Cortez strode over and tapped on the window, he rolled it down