All Fired Up (Green Valley Heroes #7)

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

MADELINE

A s I pull up to the fire station’s parking lot Sunday morning, I have to admit I feel a bit like a badass. The shock on Hunter’s face yesterday as he realized what I’d done was priceless.

His car isn’t in the same place today, though. It’s not anywhere. Did I actually scare him off? Well, good for me. He had no business being here.

So why is there this weird sense of...disappointment in the pit of my stomach?

I push that aside and head in, finding a man around my age in the bay laying out an array of tools and equipment.

“You must be Madeline,” he says, pausing to hold a hand out for me to shake. His eyes are incredibly blue.

“H-hi,” I stammer, unsure how my reputation precedes me as I return his handshake. “How do you know who I am?” I don’t recognize him, so he didn’t go to school here.

“Lucky guess. And you’re the only woman in the training program.”

“Oh, right.” Duh. Context clues, Madeline.

A phone rings off in the distance and he excuses himself, muttering something about how no one else answers the phone in this damn place on the weekends.

There’s a prickling along the nape of my neck, and I turn around, finding Hunter about ten feet away. His dark hair is casually messy in that artful style male models seem to sport, though I doubt he spends hours in front of the mirror to achieve the same look.

“Still being teacher’s pet, I see,” he says, half smirking, half frowning.

That’s the second time he’s called me that. “What makes you think I’m a teacher’s pet?”

He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his broad chest. “Have you already forgotten high school?”

My brows knit. “I wasn’t a teacher’s pet. I barely even talked back then.” Not that I do a whole lot of that now, either. Except with...him, it seems.

“Well, you didn’t have to talk to have the teachers thinking the sun shined out of your ass.”

I can’t help the flush that burns across my face. What is he talking about?

“Sounds to me like you’re jealous.” It’s the only semi-witty response I can come up with at the moment.

His jaw tightens briefly before he smirks again. “Whatever you tell yourself.”

He saunters away, leaving me standing awkwardly by myself by the table of power tools. I’m not sure who that point went to. Not that there’s a score, per se.

But there kind of is.

Twenty minutes later, the group gathers in front of our instructor, Buck, as he explains what the tools in front of him are used for, and I thank past Madeline for reviewing the chapter in our textbook already. Otherwise, I’d have no idea about some of this stuff. A pike pole? Halligan bar? They’d sound made up if I wasn’t looking at them in front of me.

After going over the forcible entry and structural firefighting tools, he moves on to the gas-powered ones.

“Anyone know what this is?” Buck asks us, holding up a rescue saw with a gleaming silver circular blade.

“It’s a saw,” Harry says, going for the obvious.

Buck chuckles. “I meant what kind.”

There’s a lot of shuffling of feet and no answers, until I raise my hand and say, “It’s a rescue saw. They can also be called concrete or quick cut or rotary saws.”

“Right. Someone did her homework.”

Hunter pointedly looks at me, but I avoid his eye, not wanting him to call me a teacher’s pet again. It’s not my fault no one else answered.

Buck shows everyone how to turn it off and on, then gives one of the guys a chance to try it himself as he continues to tell us what they use the saw for in rescue operations.

“And this,” he says, moving on, “everyone should know is a chainsaw. We use the Stihl brand for consistency with all our saws. Anyone want to try her out?”

“I think Madeline should,” Hunter pipes up. “Since she knows so much about saws.”

All eyes turn to me and a quiet snicker sounds from someone.

Buck makes a be my guest gesture toward the chainsaw. Wait, he’s not going to show me how to turn it on and off first? He did it for the other guy.

I hesitate then admit, “I’ve never used one.”

Buck nods agreeably and motions to Hunter. “You want to give it a try?”

One of the Clewis brothers slaps Hunter on the back. “You should be a pro, mill boy.”

He works at Payton Mills? The image of him as a lumberjack pops into my head, with a red flannel and rolled-up sleeves to show off his forearms. His muscles flex as he swings an axe, and he wipes away a bead of sweat that trails down the side of his face, his gaze smoldering.

I blink, getting rid of the image. Why am I thinking of him like that?

Another image pops into my head of him making out with Lydia under the bleachers back in high school and I rapidly blink that away, too.

Stop that. I’m supposed to be paying attention.

Hunter places the chainsaw on the ground, flips a switch, and moves the lever on top, then with one hand bracing the machine, he pulls a cord. The engine turns over and he moves the lever again.

“You want the chain brake off?” he asks Buck, who shakes his head.

Hunter turns the chainsaw off but doesn’t look at me to gloat as he returns to his spot in the group.

“You want to try it now?” Buck asks me.

Oh, crap.

I nod, knowing I can’t refuse in front of the group, and wipe my damp palms on my pants.

I bend and flip the switch, then move the lever to the same spot Hunter did. Okay, here goes nothing.

Pulling the cord, I brace myself for the kick of the engine, but nothing happens. There’s another snicker from behind me.

“It can take a few tries to catch,” Buck says kindly.

I try again and nothing. Then a third time. Bupkis.

I swallow back the hot frustration in my throat and thank whatever higher power there may be that it finally roars to life on the fourth try. Otherwise, I was going to have to curl into a ball and die.

After shutting it off, I slink back to my spot and avoid answering any more questions for the rest of Buck’s lesson. When he releases us for lunch, I get my purse from my locker and hightail it to my car, wanting to decompress with some fast food during our break.

Why did Hunter have to call me out like that for answering a question? He should have been the one to answer since he works at a freaking sawmill.

I reverse out of the space and slam on the brakes, screaming, when there’s a loud burst of sound behind me. Was that my car? It was too close to be anything else.

I get out and puzzle at the fragments of what looks to be a balloon right by my rear tire. What the hell?

Glancing up, I find Hunter in the same spot from yesterday, leaning against the driver’s side door of his Mustang with a shit-eating grin on his face. That fucking?—

I march over there, relishing the way his eyes widen, and stick my finger in his face. “Did you do that?” I ask, pointing at my car. I’m still not sure exactly what he did, but it had to be him. Who else could it be?

He shrugs, way too casually to be real. “You wanted to mess with cars.”

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Damn. He’s right. I did mess with his car. Well, not really, but he thought I did at first. If I was smart, I would have fled the scene of the crime. Also, I shouldn’t have left that phone number. It could have remained a mystery forever. He’d never have suspected me otherwise.

But I was vain enough to stay behind and watch him. To make sure he knew I was the one who pranked him. Stupid ego.

The difference is, he messed with my car for real. Not that it’s damaged, but that’s not the point. I didn’t actually do anything to him, and it was only in retaliation for his roach trick.

This means war.

I grind my teeth and walk away, mindful of the Clewis brothers also in the parking lot watching us. My appetite is gone now, so I head back inside the firehouse and straight to the clipboard where everyone wrote down their contact information yesterday, in case we need to get hold of each other. Copying down Hunter’s email address, an evil grin spreads over my face. I’m going to sign that fucker up for every spam site I can find.

And this time, he’ll have no clue it was me.

Our afternoon lesson involves Buck showing us how everything is organized on the fire engine, and we have to crowd close so everyone can see. Somehow, I end up next to Hunter, but it’d look too weird if I asked to switch spots with someone else, so I suck it up. A part of me wants to rail at him, to tell him what a jerk he is, to demand he leave me alone. But another part can sense his body heat standing this close, warming me. Can smell the subtle scent of his cologne, something intoxicating I want to get a deeper whiff of. I’ve always had a thing for men’s cologne.

He shifts and touches my arm, then jerks away, giving me a look I can’t interpret, like I shocked him. What’s his problem? He was the one who moved, not me.

I angle my body away from him and ignore the spot on my arm that’s tingling. I need to be focused on what Buck’s saying, not hyper-aware of Hunter next to me. This is potentially life-or-death information. I need to learn.

And forget about stupid boys.