Page 53 of A Baby for the Firefighter

He scratched the back of his head. “That sounds lovely, but what about your mother?”

“I’ll think of something to get her out of the house.”

“You’re not gonna have her help you cook?”

I whacked the cheeky bastard over the head. “Of course not! I can do this!”

“Okay then.” Dean chuckled. “Friday night. It’s a date.”

“Good.” Now I only had to figure out what I was going to make and how to make it. Not that the meal was going to be the main part of the night. No, I was finally going to lose my V-card that night. I was determined. With Dean, it would be okay. It had to be.

23

Dean

“Real glad youdecided to work with us.” Daniel clapped me on the back after showing me around the station.

“Yeah, I think I’m going to settle down in Oceanport,” I told him, if only because I wanted to talk about something other than the station and the job. Daniel had been going on about it nonstop for almost an hour and my head was ringing. It was a small station, but he certainly had a lot to say about it.

“Yeah? That’s good,” he said as he handed me my uniform. “The town could use a few more alphas like you. Thought you were gonna go back to the big city, though. Everyone’s saying.”

“I was going to, yeah, but…” I shook my head, the uniform weighing heavy in my arms. “I guess I found something worth staying for.”

He laughed and clapped my back again. “A sweet little omega, huh? They do that to you.”

I wasn’t sure that I would describe Griff as ‘sweet little omega’, but his guess was close enough to the truth, so I simply nodded. “Something like that.”

“Good, good.” Daniel grinned. “Good to have an omega waiting for you at home. We firefighters, we need something to protect in our lives.”

Instinctively, I grimaced, but regained control of my face again before Daniel could notice. “I guess,” I said. I did feel an innate need to protect people, and especially Griff, but after everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure anymore that I could do it—and that was a thought I couldn’t let myself linger on.

What if something happened and I couldn’t protect Griff?

What if instead of his parents’ house, it was his house that caught on fire next?

The thought was too horrible to consider. Just the idea of Griff trapped in a sea of flames made me so sick I felt like throwing up before I could catch myself.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Something wrong?” Daniel asked. “You look a bit pale.”

“No, nothing wrong, sir.”

Get a grip, Dean. Nothing’s happening to Griff.

“I heard about that last job you had in the big city,” Daniel said. “That’s not troubling you, is it?”

I quickly shook my head—almost too quickly. “No. How did you hear about that?” I certainly hadn’t told anyone in Oceanport. Shane had heard a bit about it from my parents, but we’d never discussed it.

“What do you think? I googled you. There was a newspaper article about the whole tragedy.”

I swallowed. Everyone had called it a tragedy. Me? I called it a failure.

“You don’t feel responsible for that, do you?” Daniel asked.

“No,” I lied, because I knew what everyone wanted to hear. They wouldn’t understand.

“Good,” Daniel said. “Sometimes things just go to shit.”