Hot in Here
SUSAN LYONS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Acknowledgments
To Doug, for his love, his belief in me and his patience. Living with a writer isn’t the easiest thing in the world!
Thanks to my amazing critique group, Michelle Hancock, Nazima Ali, and Betty Allan, for your wisdom, support and all the shared laughter.
For research and brainstorming assistance, thanks to Kate Austin, Helen Cho, Marjorie Daniels, Dorit Hoffman, Tracy Leong, Judy Jackson, Jeanine McDonnell, Nancy Warren, and Denise Wong.
Thanks too to the firefighters at Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services Firehall #6. I hope they’ll forgive me for the liberties I took, and realize that this book is, after all, fiction. I mean no disrespect to their noble profession, and I’m sure no girlfriend has ever pole danced around the fire pole in their hall!
Thanks to my editor, Hilary Sares, for giving me the artistic freedom to follow my muse.
I invite my readers to visit my website at www.susanlyons.ca, email me at [email protected] or write c/o PO Box 73523, Downtown RPO, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L9.
1
Backstage, pacing, Scott Jackman heard the raunchy music swell, the crowd whoop and roar. He groaned. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
Who’d have guessed his lifelong ambition to be a firefighter would land him here? Yeah, he’d known that, as a probie, he’d be the butt of a bunch of stupid jokes. But if he’d ever figured he’d have to boogie his own butt across a stage in front of hundreds of screaming women—not to mention a bunch of gay guys, the gang from good old Fire hall 11, and his little sister—he might have…
Hell, no. Whatever his parents might wish, he’d never been cut out for the farming life in Chilliwack.
He was a firefighter, through and through. And firefighters were tough. If he could risk his life in smoke and flames, he could bloody well get through three minutes on stage.
Scott had made the first cut in the competition, based on photos submitted by a couple hundred guys. He was one of twenty-four finalists for twelve firefighter calendar spots. If he didn’t win a month, the guys at the fire hall would never let him forget it.
Beyond the curtains, the last notes of music were swallowed up in a thunder of applause. Crap. The audience was voting with their hands, feet and voices, and it sounded like the guy on stage was sure to make the calendar.
The curtains parted and a panting, laughing man burst through. He’d gone out wearing full firefighter turnout gear and was back minus the helmet and jacket. His muscled upper body gleamed with oil and sweat, and he was hauling up his turnout pants over leopard-print briefs. A fire hose was slung over his shoulder.
God knows what he’d done with the hose on stage.
Whatever it was, the audience sure the hell had got off on it.
Shit, shit, shit. What had he been thinking, trusting his sister Lizzie to put together his act? Tap? Fucking tap dance? In front of an audience that clearly wanted raunch?
Was it too late to change his plan? There were still a few people ahead of him; he had time to work up a new routine.
Nah. Lizzie’d kill him. She’d put a lot of time into coaching him. Helping him remember what they’d learned in those long-ago childhood dance lessons, and turning it into something very adult.
But the guys at the station would rib him to death if he made a fool of himself.
’Course, it wasn’t like they didn’t already.
The next competitor strutted toward the curtain, wearing turnout gear and—oh, great—carrying an axe. Music started up. This piece, too, had a hip-grinding rhythm.
Scott groaned again, then clapped the headphones of his iPod to his ears and cranked up the music Lizzie had chosen. He closed his eyes, settled into the beat. Imagined the steps, riffs, the way his hips and arms would move to the music. The sultry notes of the sax began to heat his blood. Man, this kind of music always made him feel like sex.
Speaking of which…if he sold his number and made the cut for the calendar, there was a damned good chance he’d be going home tonight with one of those screaming firefighter groupies. Preferably one with a killer bod and long blond hair.
The other women were clapping but Jenny Yuen lifted her digital camera and snapped a final shot of the latest…contender was the only word, the way the guy’d clasped his hands together over his head like a victorious boxer. His build, though, was more like one of those hulky weight lifters who heaved barbells over their heads. Gross!
“Any guy with such overblown muscles has to have a tiny dick,” she told her girlfriends. “That’s why he brought an axe. It’s his penis substitute.”
The Caprice nightclub, packed with a few hundred very warm bodies, was a noise machine. Everyone was yelling, and Jenny, at five-foot-nothing in her kitten-heeled pink sandals, had to scream even louder.
The club was set up with tiny tables shoved close together. Jenny’d come early to make her case: a midget reporter doing a cover story needed a down-front vantage point to shoot photos. As a result, she’d scored a primo table for her and her best gal pals, the Awesome Foursome.
“Isn’t it balls that shrink from steroids?” Suzanne Brennan shouted back.
The cheers finally died down and the girls settled into their seats.
“Yeah, it’s testicles,” Ann Montgomery said. A lawyer, she was a stickler for accuracy. “And a reduced sperm count, and erectile dysfunction.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jenny said. “Could’ve sworn it was dicks.”
“Doesn’t exactly matter, does it?” Rina Goldberg was the fourth member of the Foursome. Her naturally soft voice had grown hoarse from all the screaming. She took a sip of her lemon-drop martini. “The guy’s not going to be much use to a woman, either way.”
“True enough,” Jenny said as her mind flagged a story idea. Obviously there were a lot of misconceptions about the side effects of steroids, and this was stuff young women and men needed to know. Like, if the people in this audience knew the truth, would any of them be cheering for Mr. Muscle-Bound? How could a guy be sexy if unwrapping his package was going to lead to a major letdown?
She reached for her own chocolate martini. Man, was that great! Almost as good as sex—with a guy with a functioning package.
Better than sex with Pete, her most recent dumpee. He’d functioned, but the sex had, after the first few times, turned out to be ho hum.
Pete, from Korea, had been the latest in a string of taboo lovers