Playing with Fire
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November 2005
Whiskey Creek Press
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Whiskey Creek Press

Excerpt:

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"You made it," Melodie Peterson said, grabbing Lindsay's arm and plucking her from the flowing stream of humankind. Without giving her a chance to catch her breath, she propelled Lindsay behind the exhibit to a makeshift dressing room. "Dennis Bigelow bet Emilio Chavez ten bucks you wouldn't show. He said you were too chicken."

"I'm surprised Emilio sided with me."

"Oh, he's not still mad over that hose thing." Melodie dismissed Lindsay with an exasperated huff. "Will you just forget it?" She pulled the floral shower curtain aside. "You can change in here. You're early, so take your time. Matt still has ten minutes left on his shift."

Lindsay froze partway inside the dressing room. "Matt Callahan?"

"Yes, silly." An eye roll accompanied the mild chiding. "Do you know another Matt?"

"No." But at that moment, Lindsay wished she did. It would make staring at his underwear much easier.

Boxers. Grey and white pinstriped.

They were slung over the curved rod supporting the shower curtain, along with the rest of his clothes. Not quite what she'd pictured him wearing and to be honest, she frequently pictured Matt in various stages of undress. In her imagination, however, he wore something flashy, sexy, and sinfully snug. Maybe knowing the specifics of his intimate apparel would quash the fantasies she'd been having about him since they met at the academy two years earlier.

After all, she was dating Joey. And it didn't seem right to be seeing one man while secretly lusting after his roommate.

Lindsay glanced over her shoulder at Melodie and offered a weak smile. Her coworker enjoyed gossiping far too much for Lindsay to risk being the subject of yet another juicy story.

"I thought he was scheduled for Sunday." The fair lasted all weekend, and Lindsay had made sure to sign up for a different day than Matt.

"You know Matt. Always trading shifts with somebody."

"Yeah." Of all the rotten luck.

"I've got towels for you up front. You'll need several, trust me."

"Thanks. I'll be right out."

Lindsay ducked behind the shower curtain and waited for Melodie to retreat before groaning with frustration. Her morning was nose-diving at an alarming rate. First there was her impending bathing suit exhibition and now Matt Callahan. What next?

The answer came to her in flash when she realized the only place to hang her own clothes was right next to Matt's. Her throat constricted, and the groan became a gurgle.

Her despair didn't last. "What's the big deal anyway? I'll just leave them on the ground. A few grass stains are nothing compared to the alternative."

Bending over, she attacked her sneaker laces. Once undone, she stood up. Leveraging the toe of her left foot on the heel of her right foot, she pried off a sneaker. With no room to move about, she lost her balance and automatically grabbed for the nearest handhold.

Matt's boxers.

There was a small tearing sound as they came off the rod, bunched inside her closed fist. Lindsay's heart sank, and she dropped to her knees.

"Oh, dear."

"Are you okay?" Melodie's bare toes appeared under the hem of the shower curtain. The nails were painted jade green.

"I'm fine. I slipped."

"Sorry. There's not much room in there."

"That's an understatement."

"Let me know if you need help."

"You don't by chance have a sewing kit handy?"

"A what?"

Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut. Not to staunch the flow of tears but to contain the hysterical laughter threatening to erupt. "Nothing. I was joking."

"Okay." The toes disappeared.

Lindsay released the breath she'd been holding and listened to Melodie's retreating footsteps. Only when the secretary was a safe distance away did Lindsay unfurl her fingers. Matt's boxers fell open, soft, buttery, and slightly faded from multiple washings. She spread them out on her lap, ostensibly to examine the tear. Matt had been inside these boxers a short time ago, nothing separating his skin from the material except a few molecules of air. She tentatively touched the tear, which wasn't much, then traced her fingertips down the length of one leg seam.

The results were immediate and electrifying. A surge of desire ribboned through her and headed straight to a place low in her belly. Lindsay's heart beat hard and fast, knocking into her ribs like impatient knuckles on a steel door. She inhaled sharply, bit her bottom lip, and dared to imagine the impossible. She and Matt alone in a dark, secluded place and her removing the boxers inch by slow, torturous inch.

"Lindsay, you're a pervert," she whispered. "Handling a man's underwear and getting a thrill from it."

Realizing how far over the edge she'd slipped, she stood and replaced the boxers, neatly hanging them back in the same place. She wouldn't tell Matt about the tear. If he even noticed it, he'd likely make some sort of assumption as to the cause.

What was wrong with her anyway? She had a perfectly good boyfriend in Joey, yet here she was, fondling another man's underwear, drool spilling down her chin. All right, maybe not so perfect. Joey's white cotton briefs were sadly uninspiring.

In all fairness, she'd been helping him fold his clean laundry, not stripping him bare before having sex. That in itself was a joke since she and Joey did no more than kiss. Ever. And the most ardent of those kisses hadn't elicited a fraction of the carnal response as one small and slightly weird encounter with Matt's boxers.

Lindsay finished undressing, taking her annoyance out on her clothes. She ripped off her ball cap, Arizona Diamondbacks tee-shirt, and gym shorts, then tossed them haphazardly in a corner on top of her sneakers. She had no concerns that Matt would pick them up when he returned to change. If he ever learned how Lindsay really felt about him, he'd choke on his own laughter. No, Matt didn't go for the stick figure type. She'd seen enough women flocking around him to know he favored the three P's: pretty, perky, and petite.

Glancing down at herself garbed only in the yellow bathing suit, Lindsay gritted her teeth and thrust the shower curtain aside. One hour. Sixty little minutes and she'd have performed her civic duty. Hopefully, Matt would be done by now and she'd miss him in passing.

"Look out dunking tank, here I come. Innocent bystanders, beware."

She crept to the front of the booth and poked her head around the side of the tent. Matt didn't see her, but she had an unobstructed view of him sitting on the platform suspended above the tank, his feet dangling inches from the crystalline blue water. Attached to a short post beside him was a red and white target. When struck in the center, a lever released and the platform collapsed like a trapdoor, dumping the occupant into the water.

"Just you wait!" A buxom blonde in a halter top and Capri pants stood at the front of the line. She held up a bucket of baseballs. "I've got a dozen chances to make this guy fall for me. And if that's not enough, I'm buying a dozen more."

Her remark was met with hoots, hollers, and one or two jeers.

"Come on, darling," Matt called out in a teasing drawl, tilting his head at the target. "Show me what you've got."

"I'll show you what I've got." The woman smiled wickedly at Matt, then at the crowd. "Ladies, this hot shot is all mine."

Lindsay didn't blame the woman. Matt was gorgeous. She half considered buying her own bucket of baseballs. The surge of desire returned tenfold, and she had to concentrate to keep from mooning like a school girl deep in the throes of her first crush.

Sunlight glinted off Matt's short brown hair, the damp ends sticking up in spikes across the top of his head. The aviator sunglasses he wore hid a pair of chocolate brown eyes, dark and delicious as a thousand-calorie dessert. His well-muscled shoulders and arms defined male masculinity. Lindsay itched to run her hands up the length of those arms, collecting the droplets of water clinging to his skin. Then she'd slide her hands over his...

Thunk!

A baseball missed the target entirely and hit the wall behind Matt. The woman in the halter top scowled at the target as if it were surrounded by a force field which deflected oncoming objects.

"Rats."

"Try again, Suzy," a friend encouraged.

Suzy did, screwing up her face with determination. Her next pitch came closer, but not close enough. "Damn!"

"I'm still waiting, darling." Matt pretended boredom, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement.

He swung his legs back and forth, drawing Lindsay's attention to the fine hair which covered their entire length. She hadn't considered body hair a turn-on until the first time she'd seen Matt in a pair of denim shorts and nothing else. He'd been running laps around the track at the academy and when finished, came to sit beside her on the bleachers. She very nearly dropped the manual she'd been studying. They'd conversed. Well, Matt conversed. Lindsay babbled and stuttered, unable to take her eyes off him.

He'd said something flirtatious. Flustered, Lindsay tried to respond, succeeding only in biting her tongue. While she swallowed a sob and blinked her watery eyes, Cassandra Hughes, another cadet, sashayed by, shaking her plump, heart-shaped fanny practically in Matt's face. He mumbled an excuse and left, following Cassandra. Not that Matt had been interested in Lindsay anyway. Flirting was as instinctual to him as swimming upriver to spawn was to salmon. And like the fish's annual journey, served as a preliminary to reproduction.

Another thunk from a misfired baseball brought Lindsay back to the present. Six more baseballs followed in rapid fire succession, all glancing off the target.

The blonde woman shook her arm, working out the kinks. "Hmph. I must be getting rusty."

"Come on, lady," an anxious customer near the end of the line hollered. "We ain't got all day."

"Cool your jets," the blonde retorted, then took aim and fired. The baseball struck the target dead center. A bell clanged, and a fountain of water rose in a pillar behind Matt. The blonde and her friend exchanged high fives, their squeals loud enough to rupture eardrums. With a loud whump, the platform dropped. Matt plummeted into the tank, making a giant splash. The spectators cheered.

He popped up from beneath the water a few seconds later, sunglasses in hand, to a round of applause. With a wave to the blonde, who blew him a kiss in return, he waded to a stepladder leading out of the tank. Grasping the handles firmly, he hauled himself up the ladder. Water sheeted off his back, and his skin glistened in the sunlight. Each step he took revealed more and more of his torso, then his backside. A hush fell over the crowd. Matt's wet trunks clung to his body, outlining his butt in perfect, mouth-watering detail.

"Turn around," the blonde yelled.

Matt did when he reached the top rung, and a collective sigh rose from the audience, Lindsay included. Then he hopped off the ladder and disappeared behind the wall.

"We're glad you enjoyed Douse the Flame," Melodie's voice blared from the overhead speaker. "The Glendale Fire Department wishes to thank you for your generous contributions to Habitat for Humanity. Firefighter Matthew Callahan would also like to thank you. He's finished his shift for the day, but don't despair. Next up is firefighter Lindsay Pfeiffer."

The crowd groaned in unison and immediately dispersed, with the exception of two customers; a teenaged boy whose overactive hormones manifested themselves in a severe case of acne and an elderly gentleman with a walker.

"Lindsay," Melodie called from the front of the tank. "You're up."

"You can run, but you can't hide," Lindsay mumbled to herself.

Determined to make the best of a bad situation, she plunked her ball cap on her head and thrust out her chest, not that it made much difference. Pausing long enough to draw a breath, she stepped out from behind the tank...and ran smack dab into Matt.

He caught her and for one wild, lust-filled moment, held her against the downy soft mat of curls covering his chest.

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