She wore a short, sleeveless dress that hugged her lethal curves, its color caught somewhere between red and hot pink. Her dark hair spilled around her shoulders in long layers, except for where it was pushed away from her face by her sunglasses, which sat perched on her head. Her legs were bare and silky-smooth.
Eyes on the road, dumbshit.
He had no business letting himself get hot and bothered. For starters, she was Lexi’s best friend. If things got messy, it could hurt his friendship with Lexi. And then there was the little warning Taylor had given him.
“Be careful with Vic, okay? She’s had a hard time lately. She’s a little fragile.”
Taylor hadn’t bothered to explain what he’d meant by that, but Eric had gotten the message loud and clear. Victoria was off-limits.
Okay, fine.
She wasn’t the least bit interested in him anyway. Her face was buried in her phone, her fingers tapping out a message. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left DIA, but was preoccupied with checking emails or text messages or some damned thing.
What was it with people and their phones? Life was happening around them, but they missed it, their attention focused on itty-bitty screens. What was the point?
She let out a breath, irritation flashing across her features.
“Everything okay?”
She looked over at him, phone still in hand. “It’s just work stuff.”
“Public relations, right?” He remembered Lexi saying something about that last year when Victoria had come to visit.
She nodded. “I work for Jensen West Communications, the biggest public-relations firm in the city.”
“You must love your job to bring it with you on vacation.”
She gave a little laugh, looked down at her phone again. “It’s not by choice, believe me. My boss works eighty hours a week and thinks everyone else should too. I don’t think the word ‘vacation’ is in her vocabulary.”
“That doesn’t sound healthy.”
“Says the man who runs into burning buildings for a living.”
Okay, so she had a point.
He found himself grinning. “But you love the job, right?”
“Does anyone love their job? You go to college, get a degree in something you hope you’ll enjoy, then bust your butt to find work in your field. Ten years later, you wonder how you’ll be able to stand showing up at the office every day for the rest of your life. You know how it is.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Really?”
“I love what I do, and I didn’t go to college.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope.” Her surprised tone of voice made him grin. “I didn’t want a desk job, so I didn’t see the point of college. I put myself through firefighter academy and got certified as an advanced life support paramedic. I worked on a state hot-shot crew for a few years, traveled a lot, got to see a lot of cool places.”
“Weren’t they burning at the time?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I guess they were.”
So, she had a sense of humor. It was dark and a little twisted, but he liked that.
“How did you become fire chief? Aren’t you young for that? You’re my age, right?”
“Ah, let’s see …” He took her flurry of questions in reverse order, pleased that he’d momentarily become more interesting to her than her phone. “I’m thirty-three. I’m the youngest chief in the department’s history. I volunteered for Scarlet FD until a position opened up. I made shift captain in four years and was promoted to chief two years ago when the old chief retired.”