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  Pay it. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself in time. "You've never gotten a speeding ticket?"

  She shook her head and met his gaze again. "No. Never."

  Well, shit. Ford had run her license, checked for priors and warrants, but hadn't dug to see how many tickets she had on record. He pushed a breath through pursed lips, refusing for the third time to feel even a trickle of guilt. It was getting harder by the second.

  "Traffic court is held the second Tuesday of each month at the city courthouse downtown. Your court date is on the bottom." He leaned in to point at the date near the bottom of the citation and caught her scent of lavender with a dash of vanilla and a hint of sweat. Oh, baby, the desire to make that hint of sweat stronger by engaging in an hour, or ten, of hot, screaming monkey sex made his balls tighten to the point of pain.

  "If you show up at court, explain to the judge how this is your first offense, you'll probably get off on a good behavior clause." She definitely would if Ford talked to Judge Stubens and put in a word about Rayne's case. And that was certainly the guilt talking. Wasn't he supposed to be ignoring that?

  "If you go six months without another violation of any kind, this one will be wiped off your record. Or you can call the number on the back in about a week, find out the cost, and pay the fine."

  "In which case my insurance goes up and my pocket book gets hit doubly hard along with a smear on my once clean driving record." She gave a dry chuckle, but when she looked at him again she was smiling. A genuine curve to totally sensual lips he couldn't stop himself from wanting to touch, to taste, to see closed around his throbbing cock. Christ! "Guess that'll teach me not to speed."

  "That's what the system is intended to do." Ford laughed, but then he stopped laughing because, oh man, that storm in her eyes turned into a promise so freaking hot, he felt his blood start to boil.

  She quickly looked away, shoved the citation in the empty cup holder, and wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel. "Thank you, Offi—Detective. I'll be sure to pay closer attention to my speed."

  "You do that." Ford straightened and took a step back. "Have a good day, ma'am." He could have sworn he saw her wince as she put her car in drive and eased back into the flow of morning traffic.

  * * * *

  "You want me to what?"

  Rayne heard the sudden thud of the box as it slapped first the wall and then the floor, and cringed. Hope there was nothing breakable in there. She hung the armful of clothes on the closet rack. She turned, caught the black streak of Sunshine as the dog scurried out of the room, and hid a smile at her brother's incredulous expression. She gave him her best death glare instead. "Watch it, will you, Max? Believe it or not, I do own some valuable breakables that actually survived Emilio's fury."

  "You can't be serious."

  "Yeah, actually I am. Remember the set of black glass frames I picked up in Florence when my graduating class went to Italy? Both of them are miraculously still in one piece. Not even a scratch and they're in one of these boxes. And that crystal…" She trailed off when Max's eyes narrowed. Her brother had a good glare, too. Not as good as her evil one, but equally sufficient in shutting her up. It was made even more effective by his ‘mad scientist meets hunky built firefighter’ facial lines and intelligently hard eyes.

  "You want me to model for some sort of calendar?"

  "Pose," Rayne corrected, her lips twitching despite her attempts to keep her expression straight and serious. "And it won't be just any calendar. It'll be firefighters and EMTs. Kind of a Men of the Silver Springs Fire Department B Shift project." Whisky brown eyes swam into her memory and the room did a decided little spin. Maybe she should call Chad at Southern Paradise Magazine, suggest they broaden their intentions and make it a Men of Silver Springs calendar instead, incorporating law enforcement, too.

  "Did that speeding ticket knock something wonky in your head, Rayne?"

  No, but Detective Ford ‘Drink Me’ Harris sure did. "Come on, Max. It's a great idea! There are plenty enough guys on B shift to fill all twelve calendar months." And every one of them was hard bodied, muscular perfection.

  Brother or not, Rayne couldn't deny Max fit the description. Almost six-foot of work-developed rippling muscle, tanned flesh, dark eyes with impossibly gorgeous lashes, and spiky brown hair, the newly promoted lieutenant of the SSFD B shift was definitely calendar material.

  She hadn't met all the guys her brother worked with, but she'd seen them in various snapshots, TV segments, and newspaper clippings and, oh yeah. Only a couple of the men on B shift were movie star handsome, but each qualified for Hunk-o-rama status in their own way, and each would draw more attention to the calendar than a California forest fire.

  "Actually, you'll be three months short. There are only eleven people on B shift and two of them are female."

  "Okay, we'll figure out something to do with those three months. No big deal."

  "It is a big deal. A calendar like that," Max shook his head. "It's sexist, demeaning, ludicrous—"

  "For a good cause," Rayne bulldozed over his relentless protests. She planted her fisted hands on her hips, preparing to list all the pros to the idea. She'd devised several to sway his decision in her favor. All of which skittered straight out of her thoughts when the room around her caught her attention. Max took her abrupt silence as a reprieve and scooted out the door, muttering about going for another load.

  "You should’ve let me go to a hotel." She pushed her palm over her hair, smoothing out the disarrayed strands, and turned on Max when he returned.

  "No, I shouldn't have and we're not going through this again." He walked to the foot of the bed, to the stack of boxes he'd already started along the wall, and set the latest one on top far more gingerly than he had the last. "What I should’ve done was insist you come here in the first place."

  She'd gone to a friend's instead. After the tornado did its pick-it-apart routine with her house, she'd been left with nowhere to live. Hundreds of people in the Billings and Silver Springs areas had been dealt the same line dance in the wrath of the hurricane. Though it turned out to be only a category three on the National Hurricane Center's scale, the winds in excess of one hundred miles per hour, buckets of rain, developing tornados, and storm surges left so much destruction in the coastal cities, it would take years to recover.

  It had been six months since the storm, six months since she'd lost her home, and only two weeks since the insurance company finally sent an agent to see about her claim. Two weeks since she'd discovered getting a check to pass on to a contractor to rebuild her home wasn't going to be as easy as she'd hoped. In fact, it could be another two weeks or even six months before she saw any money at all. With that realization came the knowledge that she couldn't continue spooning off her friend's hospitality, especially not when space had been even more limited than Max's matchbox spare room, and her need for it held no end in sight.

  "You like your own space, your privacy. I do, too."

  "And we'll both get it. I'm gone twenty-four out of every seventy-two hours, remember?"

  "Yeah, and home the other forty-eight. What are you going to do, pretend I'm not here?"

  Max shrugged and then shot her a sideways grin that reminded her of the little boy in Dexter's Laboratory when he accomplished a particularly difficult scientific formula. "Why not? I did it pretty well when we were kids."

  "Oh, ha ha."

  "There's not much left to bring in. Another couple of boxes and a few more hanging clothes." He jammed his fingertips into the pockets of his tight-fitting Wranglers and clicked his tongue. "It'll be a bit cramped in here, but it won't be that bad."

  "Neither will posing for the calendar." Rayne swallowed a laugh at the withering look that wiped the smile from his lips. "Think of all that can be done with the money we raise. All the help that money can give the people of the city. That's why you're a firefighter, isn't it, to help people?"

  "That's a low blow." Max scowled at
her, but then he shook his head and let out a despondent sigh. "Come by the station tomorrow. B shift takes over at seven in the morning. You can catch up with the other guys then, after you run this whole thing by the captain." He pulled at the neckline of his now sweat-sodden, solid white t-shirt and grimaced. "You can get the last box out of your car. I'm going for a shower, and then we'll have pizza and beer. My treat."

  Rayne grinned. She waited until he'd left before she pumped a fist in the air and did a victory boogie around what little open floor space remained in the room, humming along to the tune of Neil Sedaka's Calendar Girl, or in this case, Calendar Boy.

  * * * *

  Cory Nox drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the latest Three Days Grace single blaring through the speakers as he whipped his red Honda Element into the parking lot outside his apartment. With his roommate pulling a double shift, his plans for the evening consisted of pizza delivery, a six pack, and a few quiet hours of watching ESPN in his underwear. Not quite as exciting as an evening spent hot and sweaty between the sheets with a long-legged blonde, but relaxing nevertheless. It had been a long time since he'd met a woman, blond or otherwise, who interested him enough to head for the sheets. The only female he'd spent any time with in recent months was his firefighter/EMT partner, Terri Vega. Though gorgeous with a capital G, no way would he ever lure her into bed.

  He put the SUV in park and simply sat there, already feeling the relaxation setting in as he lost himself in the music until the song ended. The beat still pumping in his head, he hummed along as he twisted off the ignition, hopped out, and dropped his keys on the pavement.

  Hello, Penthouse, as his roommate would say. Impossibly long legs stretched to a heart-shaped derriere clad in well-worn jeans. Miss Penthouse was bowed way over into the trunk of a Saturn ION, one incredible leg bent at the knee, her toes pointed to the ground. Cory knelt to pick up his keys, letting his gaze climb from those toes in ratty tennis shoes, up the mile of leg to linger on the drool-worthy ass. By the time he stood, his back wasn't the only thing erect.

  Oblivious to his appraisal, the beauty inched back, straightened, and hefted a fairly large box into her arms. Cory leaned an elbow on the back edge of the Element, continuing to study her, his cock growing harder by the second. She had dark hair, not blond, but hey, who was he to be picky? Tawny, he thought it was called. He couldn't tell how long it was, but he guessed given the length of her ponytail, it would likely cover her shoulders when taken down. Man, he loved a woman with long hair. Too many women wore their hair freakishly short these days.

  She shuffled the box, somehow managing to close the trunk, and moved around the car. Her shirt, far too large for her slender frame, fell to cover her delectable ass. He heard himself groan in protest. Still, he watched her, flinching when she propped the box on the panel outside the rear passenger’s door to retrieve something from inside. If that box slipped even a fraction, she'd have a nice scratch on her otherwise pristine paint job.

  It didn't slip and another second had her hefting the box again, this time with what looked to be several articles of clothing on hangers tossed on top. She started for the door to the apartment building. His apartment building.

  Two steps led to the door and she stumbled up the first, nearly dropping the box in the process. Cory felt like ultimate road kill. He sprang into action, pushing himself off the Element and double timing it to the door. He pulled it open, propped it with his foot to free his hands and grabbed the box just as she jostled it, nearly dropping it a second time.

  "Eek!" Her squeal rang of both alarm and surprise. The clothing on top of the box started to slide off the side. She slapped a hand on it hard enough to have the box dipping in Cory's arms, but he had a good grip. The box wasn't going anywhere. "Wow! That was a close one." She laughed breathlessly then drew her bottom lip between her teeth and looked at him.

  Her eyes were large and stormy gray. Her cheekbones high and sculpted in a face slim and long and sporting a nose a bit too large. Her lips were perfectly shaped in contrast to her other features and unpainted. As a matter of fact, her entire face was unpainted, he realized. Like the long hair, her lack of makeup surprised him and he found it immensely arousing.

  No, she wasn't a Penthouse centerfold, but something about her made her more beautiful in his mind than any super model he'd ever seen. Even more so when she stopped gnawing her lip to slowly run the tip of her tongue over the spot. His dick flexed, his heart thumped, and he damned near dropped the box after all.

  "Thanks." She scooped the clothes into her arms and took a small step back. "It doesn't seem to be evenly packed. I think something in it shifted. It's heavier on one end."

  Cory glanced at the box. It was on the heavy side, maybe twenty or thirty pounds. Nothing he shouldn't have been able to hold for hours. He would much rather be holding her. The thought came at him from far out of left field, the blow slapping him back to the here and now and jarring him to his senses.

  "Are you moving in?" Even as he asked the question, he thought of the four apartments in the building. Two upstairs and two down and all of them occupied to the best of his knowledge. "I didn't know there was a vacancy in the building."

  "There isn't." She moved around him to catch the door and held it open. "I'm staying with my brother for awhile. Thanks again for catching that box. The brute told me there was only one left, but he failed to mention it was one of the heavy ones."

  Cory stepped through the doorway, stopping in the foyer to turn and look at her. There was a door to his left, another to his right, and a set of stairs behind him leading to the same on the second floor. "I'll take this to the apartment for you. Who's your brother?"

  He knew the other tenants in the building but couldn't think whose sister she could be. His roommate didn't have a sister, at least not anymore. The couple who lived in the apartment to his left had siblings. He'd met them during a New Year's Eve party last year. Miss Not Penthouse hadn't been one of them. Mrs. Svergie, who lived in the apartment on the right, was older than dirt with a sister who kicked the bucket several years before. Then there was…

  He stopped the thought before it completely formed, a sense of growing dread and disappointment moving through his blood and his cock.

  "Max Jasper in B201. Upstairs."

  Fuck a duck! Didn't it figure the one woman Cory met in what felt like forever would be his lieutenant's freaking sister? Now he wanted to drop the box, smack on Max's head.

  "I'm Rayne." She shuffled the clothes in her arms and started to hold out a hand but pulled it back. "Oh, uh, we should probably get this stuff upstairs. Then we'll try that again." She smiled, a gentle curve of her lips that seemed as friendly and enticing as it did nervous, and started up the stairs.

  Her name was Rayne. Cory shook his head as he followed her up, grateful now for that too large t-shirt covering her wonderfully alluring figure. The name fit and not just because of the stormy gray of her eyes. Eyes he'd already begun to picture looking down on him as she rode his cock, her long tawny hair falling like a curtain around her intriguing face, her breasts but a breath from his mouth.

  Yeah, she'd rained on his parade big time. The one that had started making its way through his town of Get-it-on-ville when his gaze landed on her freaking toes! The one that had altered his plans for the evening in a major way. Oh, he'd still get his pizza and beer, but instead of having it on the sofa in front of the television set to ESPN, it would be on the sofa with her and a Lifetime movie, or maybe even the Soap Opera network. Hell, he could make sacrifices for this woman. He wouldn't be in his underwear either, at least not at first. By the time the night progressed that far, his underwear wouldn't stay on long.

  But no, instead a storm kicked up and rain, or in this case Rayne, turned out to be his lieutenant's sister. That tiny fact tossed dick shrinking buckets of water all over his mental parade.

  "Would you bring that in here, please?" She led him to the second bedroom of Max's apar
tment. The one Cory knew the firefighter used for his Dr. Frankenstein-meets-the-twenty-first-century experiments of God only knew what.

  The room looked like a hell wind had picked it up, flipped it over a time or two, and then tilted it on its side for good measure before setting it down again. Kind of like what happened to the box in his hands, Cory mused. In a word, it was chaotic.

  Aside from the twin bed on the far wall, he saw no clear spot but the center of the floor, and there wasn't much of that. He noticed a stack of boxes only three high at the foot of that bed and figured one more couldn't hurt. He moved to the stack and set the box on top. It was a good sign when it stayed put, not causing the others to collapse under its weight or toppling in a heap to the floor. It was not a good sign, however, when he turned to find Rayne looking at him.

  Looking? No, she stared at him with a swirl of interest and, oh, please, no, heat in her eyes that had his cock forgetting the bucket of icy water and swimming to full torpedo hard speed once more. He watched her gaze climb his body much in the same way he'd allowed his own gaze to do to her outside. A trickle of sweat slid down his spine. The heat in her eyes was that hot!

  Finally, she reached his eyes and blinked, almost as if surprised to find him looking back at her. Or maybe it was her way of erasing purely erotic images of him and her that had started playing in her mind. Yeah, right. Dream on, Nox.

  Her gaze locked with his and she held it there as she stepped to him and extended her hand. "Rayne Jacobs."

  "Cory Nox." She had a small hand, but her grip felt strong and damned if it wasn't as warm as her eyes. He actually felt the electricity move through him at the contact. Who needed a defibrillator? If his heart ever stopped, one touch from this woman would get it pumping again.

  A hint of recognition swirled in her eyes along with a mix of uncertainly. He thought he knew why. "I work with Max. I'm a firefighter/EMT assigned to Rescue 4."