Her Perfect Hero

“Epperson’s gotta be taking this hard,” Campeon said as he pulled their truck out of the alley. They drove slowly past the front of the building. Roark was standing in the street, talking to one of the remaining firefighters. “Hey, is that Priscilla he’s talking to?”

“Yeah,” Tony and Ethan said together. Priscilla had been riding on the engine.

“How does he know her?”

“He was our arson instructor at the academy,” Tony answered. “And we’ve run into him a few times at Brady’s.”

Campeon snorted. “Brady’s. Damn shame. That niece has no idea the disservice she’s doing to the community by destroying that bar.” He turned to Tony. “Didn’t I hear you were doing something about that, Romeo?”

“He’s flakin’ out on us,” Ethan said. “He struck out once, so he’s not even gonna try again.”

“I didn’t say that,” Tony argued. In truth, he was still making up his mind.

“You gotta try,” Campeon said, showing a rare degree of humanity. Normally he remained stoic and stone-faced no matter was going on around him. “You gotta get through to her. A tearoom? Holy cripes.”

All right, Tony would do it—for Brady’s. After all, his captain had just given him an order, right? He would seduce Julie Polk. He would pretend he wanted to help her get her tearoom open, but while he was doing it he would share stories about Brady’s that would appeal to her sentimentality. He would use every strategy he could think of to get her to change her mind.

Most importantly, he would not fall in love with her. He would not set himself up for more heartbreak.

Chapter Three

Julie was afraid this time she’d bitten off more than she could chew. In her zeal to maximize profits from the liquidation of her uncle’s estate, she’d decided an auction was the way to go. She’d done her research and estimated the value of most of the collectibles, putting a reserve price on anything really worthwhile so it wouldn’t walk out the door for nothing. Then she’d hired an auctioneer, picked a date and paid for an expensive display ad in the newspaper as well as in a local antiques-and-collectibles weekly.

The auction was two days away—and the bar was still a wreck. She’d had every intention of getting in here and cleaning things so that the items would fetch the highest prices. She’d also planned to get a ladder and take down the tin ceiling—each panel was worth at least ten bucks. But she’d ended up staying home to care for her dad for a couple of days instead when the woman who regularly looked in on him developed a cold. Since Julie had been living back at home for several weeks, she’d felt it was the least she could do. Otherwise her mom would have had to miss work.

Now her dad’s caregiver was back, but Julie was so far behind she knew she’d never catch up. She had a dozen different cleaning products, a bucket full of old rags and not nearly enough time or elbow grease to do the job. Belinda, working double shifts at her summer waitress job this week, wasn’t available.

Well, nothing for Julie to do but jump into the project and get as much done as she could. She’d found an old ladder in a back closet. She could take down at least one of the ceiling panels and shine it up so bidders could get a good look at the intricate pressed pattern.

She climbed the rungs and balanced herself precariously at the top. With a screwdriver and a hammer she tried to pry one of the tiles loose, but they’d been up there for almost a hundred years and they weren’t coming down easily.

Finally she managed to get the hammer’s claw wedged under one corner. She pried with all her strength but got nowhere.

The front door opened and a shaft of morning sun cut through the bar’s dusty interior. Belatedly, Julie realized she should have locked the door behind her. This part of Oak Cliff wasn’t a hotbed of violent crime, but a girl couldn’t be too careful.

A man stepped inside, silhouetted in the doorway, and for a few moments Julie couldn’t see his features. Then she recognized the broad shoulders, that muscular chest, the dominating presence. She took in a deep breath. It was Tony.

Even as she’d teemed with ideas for Belinda’s tearoom, making lists and budgets and plans, Tony Veracruz had never been far from her thoughts. And at night when she couldn’t sleep—and these days, she never could sleep—he invaded her fantasies.

She’d told herself it was harmless to imagine what he looked like naked, that she would have few if any dealings with him in the future, so long as she kept her blinds drawn. Given her flat refusal to even talk about reopening Brady’s or consider accepting his offer of dinner, she hadn’t expected him to return, invading her solitude and setting her heart vibrating like a tuning fork.

She started to say something—and then everything happened at once. With an ear-splitting noise, the tin panel above her pulled partly free, revealing a wooden beam seething with termites.

Dozens of them fell into her hair.

She screamed and dropped her hammer, then lost her balance. Clawing at the air as she fell backward, she braced herself to hit the hard wooden floor. She wondered in the split second she was airborne how many bones she would break.

But she didn’t hit the floor. Instead, she fell into a strong pair of arms as perfectly and neatly as if she’d fallen into a hammock.

How had he gotten there so quickly? It took her a few moments to realize she was okay; she wasn’t going to die after all. “What are you doing here?” she asked inanely.

“Is that any way to greet a man who just saved your life?”

“Put me down, please.” She still had a head full of termites. She had to get them off her.

“You could have broken your neck. Why didn’t you ask someone to help you with this?”

“Oh, you mean a big, strong man—because I couldn’t possibly wield a couple of tools?”

“Well, obviously you…”

“I’m perfectly capable! Or I was, until an entire nest of termites flew into my hair.”

“Termites?”

“There are a couple on your arm now.”

He quickly put her down and brushed at his arm, while she shook the rest of the insects out of her hair. Ugh. Her skin was still crawling from the sight of those awful bugs.

“Got any Raid?” Tony asked.

“It’s going to take more than bug spray, I’m afraid.” She mentally added a termite inspection, fumigation and possibly expensive repairs to her working list of things to take care of. For now, though…where had she seen bug spray? The storeroom? She walked back to look.

Tony was right at her heels. “You’re taking down the ceiling?”

“I’d planned to auction off the ceiling, along with all this other stuff. But I didn’t know there was nothing but bare rafters behind the tin. I guess I’ll have to leave it. Ah, here it is. For crawling and flying insects. I think termites are both.”

Tony took the can from her. “I’ll take care of this.” He climbed up the ladder and sent a toxic fog into the space above the ceiling panels. “You know, the tin ceiling is part of the ambience,” he argued as dead bugs fell to the floor. “Anyway, this is a historical landmark. You can’t go tearing it up.”

Julie stood well away from the bug shower. “I checked with the landmark commission. So long as I don’t make material changes to the exterior, I’m okay. And a tin ceiling isn’t exactly the ambience I’m looking for.”

Painted tin ceilings were funky and kind of charming, but Julie was going for classy all the way. She’d wanted to do textured plaster.

She mentally adjusted her picture of Belinda’s to reflect a tin ceiling—painted a pale yellow so as not to call attention to itself. It would be okay.

Then she realized something was on her foot—something alive. Immediately thinking termite, she started to kick until she realized it was a half-grown Dalmatian puppy gnawing on her shoelace.

“Excuse me,” she said, yanking her foot away, “have we met?”

Tony came down from the ladder. “This is Bluto. His mom is Daisy, the fire station mascot. I usually give him a walk on my days off.”

“They let you keep puppies at the fire station?”

“Only in a dog run in the back. And only temporarily. The pups had to go. Bluto is the last one.”

“So you brought him here?”

“I saw the lights on and thought I’d stop in and see how it’s going.” He looked around. “You still have a lot of work to do, I see.”