Page 3 of The Fireman and the Flirt

“That’s me. Up for the challenge.” The real challenge would be speaking in complete sentences around him without my throat going dry. “But maybe there’s someone else he could work with.”

“Are you serious, Cary?”

“I don’t want it to be uncomfortable, since he’s your brother and all.”

“Why would it be uncomfortable? We’re friends, and I trusted you to sell my house when Josh and I moved in with Russ and Quentin.”

Heat prickled at the base of my neck.

“You’re the best in the game,” Cal said. Not even the compliment could help me shake the discomfort seeping through my pores.

Cal leaned back in the booth, an amused smirk on his face. “You know, this is going to sound crazy, but I always thought you had a little crush on my brother back in high school.”

I sputtered out a laugh. “Really? What made you think that?”

“I don’t know. You loved hanging out at our house even though we never did anything.”

“My house was never fun to hang out in. You guys had PlayStation.”

“Are you sure?” Cal seemed to derive a weird pleasure thinking about me crushing on his brother.

“Yes. I said maybe five words in my entire life to your brother. It was high school. None of our brains were fully developed anyway.” I waved off his line of thought. “I will help your brother and your niece find the house of their dreams if he wants to work with me.”

The summer had not gone like I planned. Deals fell through. Buyers got cold feet. I wouldn’t let my resurfacing crush mess up the chance to clinch a commission.

It was early November, but it might as well have been the Christmas season. I glanced out the window at the decorations going up around downtown. I was due for a Christmas miracle.

“Do you want to work with him?” Cal’s tone changed. It was a real question. I couldn’t blame him for being confused at my reaction, but I couldn’t tell him the real reason why I was terrified of seeing Derek. I couldn’t tell him that all those years ago, I’d shot my shot with his older brother, and it was a huge disaster.

I handed Cal my card. Maybe this one would actually get used by Derek. “Have him give me a call.”

I was a professional. I was an adult. Derek was merely a potential client. No crush or huge disaster would get in the way of that.

2

DEREK

Isat on the pullout couch of my makeshift bedroom and stared out the window at the quiet cul-de-sac. I remembered when this development was being built back in my high school days. My friends and I would come to the empty houses and drink. It was perfect. The fuzz never found us. We called these places douche castles because only boring-ass adults would choose to live in Sourwood, or so we thought. Now I was one of them.

Twenty-some-odd years later, I was temporarily living inside one of these douche castles, which I had to say was very nice. Those boring-ass adults made very savvy investments.

I turned around when Cal’s husband Russ knocked at the door. They’d met because their boys were in school and a scouting troop together, and their blended family was quite adorable. Russ always had a concerned look on his face, unless he was with my brother, then it changed to lovingly annoyed.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m almost recovered from the jet lag. It only took a week. How many time zones did I cross to get here?”

“Four.”

“Fuck me.” I hadn’t been back in Sourwood in years, not since my parents passed away. I sometimes forgot how far I’d traveled. Four time zones wasn’t fucking around, though.

Russ opened his mouth to say something, but I knew what was going to come out. I saved him the trouble. “I meant fork me. Sorry.”

Bless his heart for trying to keep his household profanity-free. My nephews were ten. He could keep all the cursing out of the house he wanted to, but fuck and shit would eventually become a major part of their vocabularies.

“You just rest. Moving is exhausting, and a cross-country move by yourself would wipe anyone out. Jolene is hanging with the boys in the living room.”

“How does her jet lag seem?”

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