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Hell, even when Alyce used to come visit before she started college, you were ready for her to go back to Chicago at the end of the summer when I was still in the States, Georgie would say. “You’re not a people person. Did you forget that?”

My dear Georgina was in my head whether I liked it or not. She was Alyce’s mother, and I loved both of them, but Georgie nagged worse than a rock in my shoe.

“Where were we?” I asked as I blinked a couple of times to get out of my head and took in the sight of JD as he stared at me.

“Oh, the mail? I’ll let Lerner continue to deal with my mail at the office. They send me things I need to act upon and toss the rest of the crap I don’t need. They also deal with the fan mail, which we seem to get pretty regularly. I’ll just have to let them know your house address for delivering important stuff, if that’s okay.”

He was flicking at his hand brace as if he were nervous, and I didn’t like it. I was simply a firefighter, not a serial killer, and it wasn’t my intent to scare him.

My crew at the firehouse had told me, more than once, that I had an intimidating glare most of the time. I certainly wasn’t trying to intimidate JD, or anyone else, for that matter.

JD was a good-looking kid, probably twenty-five or so, with gorgeous brown hair and eyes that sometimes sparkled like they were filled with gold flakes or mischief.

At forty-two, with prematurely gray hair and a cranky disposition, I was no match for the young women and men who surely swarmed JD when he was onstage during a concert. He was a rock star, wasn’t he?

Most of the folks at Station 2, be they probies or auxiliary volunteers, steered clear of me because of my shitty disposition, which always preceded me.

“Yeah, uh, sure. Go ahead and give your, uh, Lerner my address. I’ll go with you to Hansen’s place and help you collect your things. You can’t lift anything with that brace, so it’d be hard to carry everything at once. Let me shower and change, and then we can drive my Jeep down there and get everything in one trip.”

JD nodded and took a seat on a barstool at the counter while I went down the hallway to take a quick shower. I’d been in the waves for a few hours and needed to clean up.

When I’d gone out to clear my head earlier that afternoon, I’d drifted south of my usual surf spot in hopes of the waves being better. I’d been surprised to see Kit Hansen talking to a handful of guys and girls I’d met over the summer. They were waiting for the waves to hit because of the projected storm off the coast that was supposed to make landfall by sunset.

Many of the folks in the water were beach renters who came to surf in the summer, though the best time for incredible waves around Dockweiler Beach, south of Los Angeles, was from November to April, when the swells were at their peak. Anyone surfing there during the summer was showing off to impress the guys or the girls on the beach. The real show came when the curls hit in the winter.

I’d gone out on the water that late afternoon to clear my head. The station had worked a boating accident the previous night, and I couldn’t get it out of my thoughts.

Young family—parents and twin toddlers in a thirty-two-foot, stern-driven boat—and two drunk college bros who’d just returned for the fall semester at USC and decided it would be fun to go out on a jet ski after too many brews.

One of the college boys drove into the side of the boat that was on a sunset cruise, believing he could jump over it on the jet ski with the other idiot on the back. There was no ramp to support the ridiculously idiotic stunt they’d seen in a ridiculous reality television show.

The results of senseless accidents such as that one pissed me off. I wondered what the hell was wrong with people. The universe gave me no answers, which only served to piss me off more.

The mother had been critically injured with a punctured lung from a broken rib, undergoing surgery overnight. The father’s right shoulder was injured, but his injury wasn’t nearly as severe as the mother’s. The toddlers… I couldn’t allow my mind to fathom the loss the mother would face when she awoke after surgery.

I finished my shower with a quick blast of cold water to erase my dark thoughts before stepping out of the stall to dry off and dress. It was those thoughts that kept me from being friends with anyone except Georgie. She was as gruff and hard-hearted as I was. It was why we loved each other like two peas in a best-friend pod.

After I was dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, I left my room to find JD still sitting at the counter, appearing not to have moved an inch. His empty beer bottle was sitting in front of him, and he was staring out the back windows facing the beach.

“You know, if you’re going to live here, you’ll have the house to yourself most of the time.” I teased him a little because he seemed nervous.

JD turned his gaze to me, having pulled his long dark hair into a messy bun.

“Oh, uh, yeah, I guess. I just didn’t want to touch anything I shouldn’t. I usually stay in my room at Riv and Kit’s house. I don’t want to overstep their boundaries, and since they didn’t give me any rules, I wasn’t sure what was okay to do.”

I sighed. Something in his past had clearly made the kid so damn guarded. That didn’t sit well in my gut.

“Well, you can’t overstep with me, I promise. You ready? Maybe we get something to eat after we pick up your stuff?” I was hungry. It was nearly six, so it was reasonable to want a meal.

“Yeah. I mean, yes. That sounds great.” He picked up his empty bottle and carried it to the sink, rinsing it. “Where do these go when they’re empty?”

I walked to the pantry and opened the doors to show him the trash and recycling bin. “Trash pickup’s on Thursday, along with recycling.”

“Good, okay. I’ll take care of the trash and recycling going forward. When do you work? Do you work tonight?”

I stared into those soulful, golden-brown eyes. JD had a hint of a mustache, though his peaches-and-cream complexion made it seem impossible for him to grow one. I wondered about the secrets he hid behind that cautious expression. If I wasn’t careful, I’d drown in those depths.

“I worked yesterday. I don’t work again until Monday. We’re holding the Boot Brigade charity drive tomorrow to collect for children’s charities, so I’ll be gone most of the day.” Out of my peripheral, I saw JD nod.