Page 5 of Ink and Ashes

She rolls her lips together. “I couldn’t find anyone in the lobby.”

“So you decided to let yourself wander the station?” I cock a brow.

“You know there’s a county-wide evacuation alert, right?

” I ask, because it’s clear this woman is not from around here.

Aside from the fact that I’d never forget a face like hers, she’s dressed like she just came from a corporate office in the city—a dead giveaway that she’s not where she belongs.

With a light chuckle, she says, “I do.” The woman shifts her weight from one high-heeled foot to the other. “My name is Holland Rhodes. I’m an investigative journalist, and I’m here to?—”

“Nope,” I say, cutting her off. Those words worked wonders on killing any feelings of attraction I had a moment ago. She’s not the first reporter to show up digging for information, and she won’t be the last. I don’t know what it is they’re looking for; all I know is that it can’t be good.

It never is.

I storm past her toward my quarters, sensing her hot on my heels as I walk away.

“You didn’t even?—”

“Don’t need to. I said no.”

I swing open the door to my office, but before I have a chance to close it, she’s there.

“Okay, Lieutenant ,” she snarls. “You wanna shut me down? Fine. But at least let me finish a fucking thought before you do it.” She takes a step further into my quarters.

“My name is Holland Rhodes and I’m an investigative journalist. I saw on the news that this town has had over half its average number of fires per year in less than two months since the season began. I want to help.”

I shake my head. “Respectfully, a big city reporter showing up in our town isn’t help. It’s a distraction, and it’s not what we need. You should go. You never should’ve come here to begin with.”

“Not a reporter.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And I think there might be more to the fires than meets the eye?—”

“There isn’t.”

“You know that for certain?”

My jaw flexes.

“I can help get to the bottom of the fires, if you’ll let me.”

“There’s no bottom to get to.” I step forward, preventing her from entering any further.

“Yes, we’ve had a lot of wildfires this year, but you’re looking for a story where there isn’t one.

We do this for a living, and we have a good idea of what’s causing them.

It’s the same thing that causes more than half of British Columbia’s wildfires: lightning.

You should follow the lead of the town’s locals and evacuate so my team and I can get back to doing what we do best, which is fighting the actual fires you’re so keen on reporting about. ”

“But—”

“Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day, Miss Rhodes,” is all I add as I shut the door to my quarters, locking it behind me.

I hear a muttered, “Have the day you deserve, Lieutenant Killjoy,” through the door before the clicking of her heels fades into the distance.

“So, who was that last night?” Beau asks the next morning, a smirk filling his face. We’re getting ready to head back out to the fire, and I guess he figured now was as good a time as any to bother me about Holland Rhodes.

Beau Madison has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. He and his brother Dom, another one of the firefighters for EGFD, are the sons of my mom’s childhood best friend, Hannah.

My mom and Hannah both grew up in a small town partway between here and Kelowna. There was a massive wildfire there one year, and my dad had been part of the team that went to help. He had been put in charge of evacuation, and that’s how he and my mom met.

Shortly after my mom moved here to be with my dad, Hannah got pregnant with Dom.

His dad is a piece of shit and wanted nothing to do with them, so she moved here to have the support of my mom and our family.

A few years later, my mom got pregnant with me and Hannah got pregnant with Beau, and the rest is history.

Beau and Dom have different dads, neither of whom are in the picture.

Hannah doesn’t talk much about her past, but we all know it was for the best. Those boys were raised by their kickass single mom and my parents.

That makes them family. Hannah lives down in Kelowna now, but she comes to visit lots.

And her closeness to my family is never going to change.

Beau started volunteering at the station the same time I did when we were sixteen.

We grew up doing the same things, and he was promoted to lieutenant about a year after I was.

It’s just the way it’s always been. Our personalities are completely opposite, but I think that’s what keeps us close.

I help mellow him when he gets too wild, and he’s one of the few people who can pull me out of the shell I usually hide in.

I grunt. “ That was Holland Rhodes, investigative journalist.”

Beau hums. “A journalist, huh?”

“Yup,” I say simply. He knows my issues with the press.

“What’d she want?”

“She said she’s been looking into the fires .”

“What the hell does that mean?”

I shrug. “Fuck if I know.”

“You think she’ll be back?” Beau asks.

“Probably.” I glance past him through the lobby to where a bunch of the volunteers are finishing loading up the trucks in the bay.

“We’ll keep it quiet for now, but if she’s not gone in a few days, I’ll warn the team about her.

I don’t want anyone talking to her, and you know Langley’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to pretty women. He’ll do anything she asks him to.”

“So you admit she was pretty?” Beau smirks, crossing his arms over his chest. Of course that’s the part he’d focus on.

I roll my eyes. I’d be blind not to notice how stunning she was, with her long, auburn hair, intoxicating eyes, and killer body. But much like the fires we fight, she screams danger. I see enough of that on a daily basis—I don’t need to face more in my personal life.

And something tells me that a woman like Holland would burn worse.

“Fuck off,” I tell Beau.

Just then, Dom pokes his head in the door. I’m sure everyone overheard that conversation with Holland last night, and like his brother, Dom is nosy as hell.

Dom is the perfect mix of Beau and me. He joined the team when he was twenty-one, after he finished university. He has a degree in engineering, so he’s our driver engineer, AKA the person who knows the ins and outs of all our apparatus.

He’s always been the smartest guy in any room. He knew he would end up as a firefighter, but he wanted to take some time after high school to learn as much as he could about other topics before he started, which is why he went away to school.

That’s never changed either. A few years ago, he also became a certified smokejumper—though he doesn’t act as one unless called in by BCWS—and he recently started a course in fire investigation. He continues to find new things to school our asses on every day.

“What are we gossipin’ about?” Dom asks, leaning against the doorframe.

“The woman last night was a journalist,” Beau tells him, smirking.

They both know the why behind my hatred for reporters, and they get a kick out of it every time an attractive one rolls through.

It doesn’t happen often, and I’ll admit that none have ever impacted me as much as Holland Rhodes did.

At least until I found out the real reason she’s here.

Dom huffs a laugh. “You ever gonna get over that? Not every reporter is like the ones who came after y?—”

I grit my teeth together, interrupting him. “Don’t care. Even if they aren’t all out for blood, they are all a distraction. One that none of us need right now.”

“I saw the way you were looking at her last night.” Beau smirks. “I think Holland Rhodes is exactly the kind of distraction you need.”

“Get out of here,” I tell them with an eye roll as I stand from my chair. “We have work to do.”

Beau stands and taps me on the shoulder before the two men leave my office, both of them laughing.

I shake my head as I follow behind them to the bay, letting a light chuckle fall from me too.

I know they were just busting my balls, and truth is, if not for her profession, I might actually go for it.

But as it stands, Holland Rhodes is the thing I hate most in this world, and I’ll be hard-pressed to find something to make me change my mind about her.