Darius stepped to her side and frowned at the pile of boxes in the bed of her truck. “Could have secured that load a little better.”
As she gritted her teeth, the box slipped from her grasp and landed on his foot.
Obviously, their tenant/landlady relationship was off to a fantastic start.
Chapter Eight
Darius ignored the pain in his toe. First of all, the box was pretty light. Second, it was nothing compared to the confirmation that the woman he kept running into—the woman he was definitely hot for—really was the same woman who wanted to evict him. He could barely believe the warm, laughing woman from last night was the all-business shark behind those emails.
He had to get this situation sorted out.
“Listen, why don’t I help you unload these boxes and then you guys can come in for some coffee. I’m due at the firehouse soon but I have a little time.”
“I promised I’d take S.G. out for cheeseburgers.” After a moment of tension, her face relaxed. “But maybe we can talk later. I’ll…email you.”
“Right. Looking forward to that.”
She laughed reluctantly, and just like that, the woman from last night was back. No red halter top this time. She was wearing a cambric work shirt and her dark hair was caught back in a ponytail. The sparkly high heels had been replaced with mud boots. And yet she was still sexy to him. Tall and curvy and outrageously attractive.
The palms of his hands twitched, and he curled them into fists, then stretched out his fingers.
“Your email address…[email protected]. All this time I assumed your name was Daniel Boone.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “Family legend says we’re related, but who knows? You always signed your emails Catriona. I didn’t make the connection to Kate.”
“I go by Catriona at work. Or I used to, anyway. Now I’m a peony farmer named Kate.” A wry smile quivered in the corner of her mouth.
His pager buzzed. He checked it and swore out loud. Message from Nate.
Dispatcher called. Nuisance fire number gazillion out on the mudflats on the boardwalk. No address, just meet me at the firehouse in two minutes.
“Gotta go. We’ll be in touch.” He turned to S.G., who was still cooing to the neighbor’s dog. “Hey, S.G., can you take Thor across the street before you leave?”
Since it was the quickest option for the short trip to the firehouse, he hopped onto his Harley.
Kate planted her hands on her hips as he maneuvered the bike down the driveway. “A Harley. Let me guess. That’s why Emma rented this place to you.”
He grinned at her and hit the kickstarter. “You got it. Guess Harleys are thicker than blood.”
He zoomed off, leaving her shaking her head in rueful defeat.
Darius changed into his gear in record time and hopped into the already moving Engine 1 as it left the apparatus bay.
Nate drove the rig, setting the flashers to clear the way through town.
Not that there was much to clear, ever, except in tourist season. But visitors didn’t generally start heading to Alaska until later in May. Only a few of the boardwalk businesses were even open yet. They encountered no obstacles during their race to the long finger of land that extended into the bay like a claw.
Darius watched the snowcapped mountains across the bay draw closer while the crew—Nate, Rick Puente and Betty Riley—speculated about the fire.
“Punk kids,” announced Rick. “They’re ready for school to be out. I know my kid is.”
“Could be the hippie dude who lives in an old bus on that property. Maybe he wants all the mud to himself,” said Betty.
“If it’s the hippie guy, then it could be a one-off.” Nate frowned at the road ahead. “But it sure seems like it’s connected to the others. It’s a pile of soaking-wet lumber on a mudflat. How does something like that even burn?”
Rick adjusted his gloves. “It’s got to be connected. This time of year we’re usually fighting mud, not fires.”
Even though Darius was relatively new to Lost Harbor, he knew the pattern. The most intense time for firefighting was the summer, when massive brushfires could develop in the wilderness. Sometimes they encroached on the settled areas, in which case it was all hands onboard to set fire lines and backfires.
Here in town, structure fires just didn’t happen all that often—because there weren’t many structures. Emergency medical calls took up the bulk of their time.
But this was the eighth time in the last couple weeks that a random fire had broken out. A shed behind the feed store had caught fire. A burn barrel at an empty homestead had been knocked over and sparked a small brushfire. And now an abandoned houseboat was burning.
Darius glanced over at Nate, who’d grown up here and knew the territory inside and out. “What do you think, Nate?”
“You know what they say. Strange things happen around Lost Souls Wilderness.”
All the others said the last words along with Nate, while Darius rolled his eyes. He’d only heard that saying about a hundred times since moving here. It seemed to be a point of pride with the locals, but he preferred a more reality-based approach.
“How about we see what’s going on with this fire before we speculate,” he ordered the crew.
And that put an end to that.
The fire had broken out at one of those quirky Lost Harbor locations that didn’t fit a conventional location marker. On the long, narrow arm of land that led to the harbor, there was a stretch of marshy mud flats where a series of old boats had been abandoned over the years. Ancient fishing boats and dinghies rotted away into the mud. Some of them still belonged to people, some didn’t. One old fishing vessel occasionally flew a pirate flag.
They found the houseboat fully engulfed in flames, spewing thick black smoke into the air. A haphazard pile of old rowboats and skiffs and ropes and other gear extended from the houseboat all the way to an RV park. Someone should have cleaned up that mess years ago.
At the other end of the trail of junk was the office building that serviced the RV park. Restrooms, a gas pump, a small convenience store. The houseboat was a goner, but they had to protect those structures.
Darius issued swift orders to hose down the debris closest to the houseboat and clear the area adjacent to the RV park. He helped Nate haul the three-inch hose to the jumbled junk pile of marine detritus. He held the hose in place while Nate went to turn on the flow.
Unlike every previous place he’d worked, the tiny town of Lost Harbor didn’t have many fire hydrants. Engine 1 was equipped with a seven-hundred-and-fifty pound water tank. If that wasn’t enough, sometimes they had to find other sources of suppressant—ocean water would work in this instance. Just one of the ways in which firefighting in a remote location was new and different.
As he saturated the weathered old dinghies and buoys and broken crab traps, he kept an eye on the blazing bonfire that had been a houseboat. The wind was blowing the smoke toward the bay, creating a trail of dark swirls that wafted into the sky.
Why would anyone want to torch that old thing? Had someone set this fire? At first glance, he saw no other reason why it would have caught fire. Nothing electrical, nothing chemical, nothing weather-related.