Heating up the Holidays

stash. “The house is coming along.”

Dustin looked around him. They’d bought it together several years back, right before Jason had reenlisted in the National Guard. It was an investment over and above their usual renovation projects, and as a major fixer- upper, the investment part had been mostly faith.

But with Jason’s down payment and Dustin’s physical labor, the place really was coming along. They could sell, put the profits into another house and start over again. Their sister wanted them to do that and hire her part-time as a cash laborer, which would be both a blessing since she was a hard worker, and a damned headache because she was also a pain in the ass.

But it would be a nice transition out of his job, which Dustin had been restless at for far too long now.

“Shelly called me,” Jason said, reading his mind about their baby sister. “She’s seeing some guy named Chewy. I told her I was going to have to kick his ass for no reason other than he lets people call him Chewy.”

Dustin laughed. “He’s all right. And they’re not serious.”

“You checked him out?”

“Yeah. He’s in college like she is, and a good kid, despite the unfortunate name.”

“All right then.” Jason stared at the game. Drank. Ate a few chips.

Dustin looked him over. Still the same dark hair, cut militarily short, and light gray eyes which could warm with a quick laugh or turn to steel. Jason had always been a big guy, nearly six foot four, and beefy, like the football player he’d once been, but over the past years in the military, he’d honed his body into a much rangier form, looking more like a lean boxer now than a high-school football star. Their mom had been worried about him ever since he’d gotten back from being in the South, working in and near New Orleans on clean-up and rebuilding, going out on search-and-rescue calls as his orders dictated. And indeed, as their mom had said, there was something different about Jason, something less easily accessible and definitely introspective.

“You could take a picture, it lasts longer.”

Dustin didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m just wondering if you’re okay.”

“Ah, and here I thought I looked so pretty today.”

“Seriously, Jase.”

“Seriously?” Jason set down his soda and hit Mute on the game, turning to face him. “Seriously, I was going to ask you the same thing. You look like shit. What’s up?”

“I asked you first.”

“Okay, what’s wrong with me is that the big bad world out there sucks right now.” Jason lifted a shoulder. “I work my ass off to do my part to fix it, but I can’t, and if I think about it too much it seems stupid even to be trying, so I am not going to think about it. Not for at least the next two weeks before I have to head out again. Now you.”

“Me what?”

“You might as well tell me before I knock it out of you.”

Given Jason’s new physical prowess, he could do it, too.

“Is it the job putting that look of misery on your face. Or a girl?”

Dustin let out a breath. “Both.”

“So there is a girl.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

Jason blinked. “A guy?”

“Jesus!”

“Well, use your words, dude.”

Dustin rolled his eyes and ate some more chips.

“Come on, Dus. You’re the middle child. You’re the talker.”

“Fine.” Dustin pushed the chips aside. “I’m in a job that was supposed to be just a phase, a little fun before we got our renovation business going.”

“Don’t look now, but our renovation business is going. We’ve got good equity in this place.”

“Sort of my point. We could be doing more and yet here I am, still driving an ambulance…”

“So quit and get a move on. I’m game. Let’s sell the house. We can use my portion of the profit for a new down payment on another fixer-upper, and your labor. And I say we go big this time and do it right. Bigger house, bigger profit margin. If you’re serious about being done as an EMT, you’d have the time to put in.”

True.

“So…the girl,” Jason said, leaning back to close his eyes. “Get to the girl.”

Right. The girl. How to say that he was more than halfway in love with a woman who wasn’t ever going to love him back? “She’s a coworker, which is colossally stupid.”

“Only if you intend to repeat.”

“Last night was a repeat.”

At this, Jason opened his eyes and turned his head to eyeball Dustin. “Is it that firefighter chick you’ve been hung up on since day one? The hot one who looks like…what do they call her? Kick-Ass Barbie. Cathleen?”

“Cristina.”

“Ah, Christ,” Jason said with a groan. “It is. Man, you’re going straight down the path to Heartbreak City with that one. She’s out of your league.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Look, life’s too short to get kicked in the balls or the heart, and with Cristina, you’ll get both.”

DUSTIN DIDN’T REALIZE exactly how true that statement was until his next shift. He got to the station, and found Cristina in the kitchen with everyone else. She was doing her usual dig through the refrigerator-she was the most notorious food thief in the entire station. “You stealing someone’s lunch again?” he asked lightly, as if she hadn’t dumped him.

Well, actually, you had to have a relationship with someone to be dumped. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a thing. A sex thing. That was all.

At his question, Eddie and Sam, both at the table eating cereal, went still, swiveling wary gazes to Cristina. Blake, drinking coffee at the sink next to Aidan and Zach, raised a brow. It was unlike Dustin to start the bickering but what the hell. It was time for a new thing.

Cristina slowly turned to face him, her eyes unreadable. She hadn’t changed into her uniform yet and wore army-green cargoes and a snug long-sleeved T-shirt that fitted her curves like a glove, curves he knew intimately. Curves he’d kissed every single inch of. “No, smart-ass,” she responded. “I made cookies.”

“Made them? Or bought them?”

It was a long-standing joke that the only girl in the station couldn’t cook, but still, the entire room held their breath and swiveled their gazes to Cristina as if watching a tennis match.

“I baked them myself,” Cristina said. Stiffly. “I’m actually leaving them in people’s lunches to make up for all the stuff I’ve…borrowed.”

“Wow.” Dustin leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms so that he couldn’t reach for her, which is what he suddenly wanted to do, even surrounded by everyone else. She looked good, he thought, rested, with color in her cheeks. She had gloss on her lips, her only makeup. Her hair was loose, which made him remember how it’d felt brushing his chest.

He wanted both to touch her and to strangle her. “I’m impressed.”

“That’s because whatever we women do, we have to do it twice as good as a guy to be thought of as half as good. Luckily, that’s not difficult.” She shut the refrigerator, and avoiding looking at him, headed across the kitchen.

“She’s escaping, man,” Blake said to Dustin out of the side of his mouth.

“They must have slept together again,” Sam whispered to Eddie as if Dustin was deaf. “She’s looking relaxed and he’s not.”

“You doing it wrong?” Eddie asked Dustin.

Dustin sighed. “Cristina.” He watched her stop and go a little stiff in the shoulders. “Are we going to talk about it at all?”

“What, the orgasms?” She didn’t turn to face him. “That’s a little too risque a topic for the workplace, don’t you think?”

Eddie snickered, only to be silenced by Sam’s elbow in his gut.