Her Perfect Hero

Tony knew Epperson from the training academy; he’d been an instructor there. He also knew Epperson from hanging out at Brady’s Tavern. They’d crossed swords over the shuffleboard table a few times.

The ambulance took Peterson to the hospital for stitches and a shot of antibiotics, so Tony took the rare opportunity to sit beside the captain.

“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.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” Her attention was torn between gorgeous Tony and his cute puppy, which wagged its tail so hard its entire body wiggled.

She couldn’t help it. She bent down to pet the pup, and it jumped all over, licking her face in a frenzy of love. Her parents hadn’t allowed any pets, seeing them simply as more mouths to feed. And once she was on her own, she’d never considered getting a dog or cat.

“Hi, Bluto.” It was much easier to be warm and friendly to the puppy than to Tony. Safer, too. She wasn’t normally unfriendly, but she knew she had to be on her guard with Tony for two reasons: he wanted something from her she couldn’t give, and she wanted something from him she didn’t dare ask for. If he had any idea how attracted she was to him, he could use it against her.

“So you live around here?” she asked.

“Just down Willomet. Less than a block.”

They were neighbors.

A noise above her yanked her attention away from the pup. She looked up just in time to see the ceiling panel she’d been working on detach itself completely and head straight for her.

Tony grabbed Julie and the dog and yanked them both out of the way. The heavy piece of tin, with its knife-sharp edges, crashed to the floor right where she’d been standing, leaving a gouge in the wooden planking.

Now she reacted. She’d almost died—twice in two minutes. Her knees went wobbly, and if Tony hadn’t put his arms around her, she’d have sunk to the floor.

“That’s twice I’ve saved your life,” he said, his voice husky.

For an insane moment, Julie thought he might kiss her. She’d fantasized about it often enough over the past couple of days. But then the moment passed, sanity reasserted itself and Tony released her, leaving her tingling.

Could a brush with death cause these peculiar feelings? She sure hoped she had an excuse for wanting to lose herself in a man’s touch when she was supposed to be concentrating on her tearoom.

With no small effort, Tony pulled himself out of the sensual fog that Julie had put him in. He’d felt so drawn to her, as if he wanted to kiss her. Thankfully he’d realized how inappropriate that would be and had let the woman go, taking a step back to put her out of temptation’s reach. This seduction had to be executed with care.

Ethan had said to make friends with Julie, get to know her. That wasn’t Tony’s normal approach. He usually liked to sweep a woman off her feet, flirt mercilessly, prove to her how strongly he was attracted to her. He’d always figured the friendship could come later, when the sexual pull wasn’t so overwhelming that it occupied all of his brain cells.

But so far that friendship part had eluded him. Yeah, he was friends with Priscilla and Ethan’s wife, Kat—and Natalie, the mother of his little girl. As far as his love life went, though, something always went wrong before he could become friends with a lover.

So maybe he would try being friends first. There was more than one way to seduce a woman, and he wouldn’t quit until he’d tried them all.

“Th-thank you,” Julie said, recovering some of the color in her face. “I do appreciate the life-saving maneuvers.”

“That’s what firefighters are for.” She looked amazing, standing there with her heaving breasts and her rosy cheeks, her golden hair mussed from shaking. She was trying to pretend that being so close to him hadn’t had much effect, but Tony knew better.

Then she pulled herself together, all business again. “As you pointed out, I have a ton of work to do. So if you’ll excuse me…”

“That’s why I’m here. I thought I could help.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why would you offer to help when you hate the idea of my tearoom?”

He shrugged. “Never could resist a damsel in distress.” He looked around. “And you are in distress.”

He could tell she wanted to argue. But her need for an extra pair of hands and some elbow grease won out. “If you really want to help, the wooden Indian would make a good start. He’s covered with so much nicotine I can’t even tell what color he’s supposed to be.” Then she added, “But you won’t soften me up. I won’t change my mind about the tea-room. So if that’s your agenda…”

“Agenda? You’ve got to be kidding,” Tony said, his conscience pinching him a bit as he picked up a cleaning rag. At least if he helped her clean, he had an excuse to stick around and get to know her better. And she could get to know him. Once she thought it through, she’d realize what a great guy he was—saving her life, helping her scrub this place down—and she might be more willing to listen to his reasons for wanting to revive Brady’s Tavern.

Or he might just make love to her. Right now, that seemed a far more intriguing goal than changing her mind about keeping Brady’s intact.

“I’m not sure how Sir Edward will feel about taking a bath,” Tony said as he tackled decades of filth.

“Sir Edward?”

“The cigar man. He used to belong to an Englishman who owned a cigar shop down on Jefferson. When that gentleman fell on hard times he closed the shop—and he didn’t have enough money to pay off his bar tab. So Brady—that would have been the second Brady, your grandfather—took the Indian as payment.”

Tony watched Julie from the corner of his eye. She paused in her efforts to clean years of scum off one of the high round tables that dotted Brady’s. “Really? How interesting.”

She didn’t sound sarcastic, at least. So she enjoyed local history. That had to be a good thing for the campaign to save Brady’s.

“Are there more stories like that?”

“Dozens.” Tony gave up on the Indian and walked back to the bar. “Where’s the ashtray that was sitting here?”

“The big ugly one that possibly used to be brass?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t figure anyone would want it, so I threw it away.”

Tony clutched at his chest and pretended to gasp for air. “Threw it away?”

“Was it special?” She actually sounded concerned.

“It was the Daryl Jones memorial ashtray. Jones was a legendary fire chief, back in the days of prohibition. When he died, they took the old fire bell down and made an ashtray out of it. He and Brady—that would be your great-grandfather—were good friends.”

Julie winced. “And they made his bell into an ashtray? Isn’t that kind of disrespectful?”

“Since Jones was a chain-smoker, no. I can’t believe you threw it away. I’d have bought it from you. Any of the firefighters would have.”

Without a word, Julie disappeared into the back room. He heard her digging around and a minute or so later she emerged triumphantly with the ashtray in hand. “If you’ll help me clean, you can have the ashtray for free.”

“Deal.”

As they worked, Tony told her more stories. The billiard table had come from Dallas’s first bowling alley just before it was torn down. The dartboard had been a gift from a baseball player in the 1950s.

Tony showed Julie a bullet hole in the wall that was reputed to have been put there by the famous bank robber Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, when Brady’s had been a speakeasy.

Julie paused often to take notes.

“That popcorn machine behind the bar came from the Texas Theater down the street.”

“No kidding? Hey, they’ve renovated that theater, haven’t they?”

“Yeah, and it looks great.” Now he was getting somewhere. “Oak Cliff is renovating everything. People are really starting to appreciate the history of this area. Preserving rather than tearing down.” Hint, hint, Julie.

“That’s marvelous! I bet the theater owners would love to buy back this machine and display it there.”

Tony sighed. “What are you writing all these stories down for?”

“The auctioneer says that anything with historical significance will get a better price. So tell me more.”

Tony realized his efforts to convince Julie not to tear up Brady’s might actually be counterproductive. His stories made her even more inclined to parcel out all these wonderful old things.

Watching her as she scrubbed the filth off an old hurricane lamp—probably something left over from the days before the bar had electricity—he had a hard time remembering what his mission was. He just wanted to kiss her.

Still, he made one more try. “I understand your wanting to get money for all this stuff,” he said carefully. “But doesn’t sentimental value count for anything? Separately, you have some semivaluable collectibles. Together, you have a legend—your family’s legend at that. This is the place your great-grandfather opened a century ago. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

She looked stung by his harsh question, at first, and then she looked mad—and he knew he’d gone too far. She threw down her rag and marched over to him, getting right in his face.

“I’m sorry that you guys have lost your hangout. Truly I am. But I have to do what’s right for me and my family. My living family, not a bunch of dead guys. And even if you try to deny it, it’ll be good for the neighborhood, too.”

He started to say something, but she cut him off.

“I am not going to change my mind. What do I have to do to convince you?”

Bluto chose that moment to jump against Tony’s leg and yip.

“Maybe you should take him for that walk,” Julie suggested, her voice softening.

“Yeah, I’ll take him back to his mom. He’s looking for a good home, by the way.”

“That’s all I need—a dog to make my life complete. Why don’t you keep him?”

Tony laughed. “I already adopted one.” He hooked Bluto’s leash to his collar and the dog proceeded to drag him toward the door. “Goodbye, Julie. But I’ll be back.”

As he stepped out into the August heat, he acknowledged that this battle was going to be a lot harder than he’d first thought. But Julie wasn’t immune to him. She’d enjoyed the stories he told. Maybe, after she had time to think about it, she would change her mind. And if not…

He could at least get the word out about the auction. Every off-duty cop and firefighter in Oak Cliff would want to attend and grab a piece of Brady’s.

As Tony crossed the street, intending to return Bluto to his dog run behind Station 59, he realized he’d forgotten to take the Daryl Jones memorial ashtray.

JULIE HAD BEEN HOPING for a good crowd at the auction, but the mass of people crowding up to the bar to register and receive their bidding numbers exceeded all her expectations.

She’d done everything she could think of to publicize the auction, including the well-placed ads. She’d asked her auctioneer if she should have the sale at an auction house, but he’d discouraged her from that. The bar itself was plenty big enough. The location was easy to find and she would save the costs of renting a hall and transporting the goods. Plus, she would get some locals who would bid on items for sentimental reasons.

The crowd was made up mostly of men in jeans and T-shirts. They didn’t look like collectors or antiques dealers. But, then again, how would she know what such people looked like?

The one man she’d been most anxious to see wasn’t in the crowd, however. Tony had left abruptly two days earlier, without his darned old ashtray. She felt bad about the way they’d parted, with her all mad. She shouldn’t have let him get to her. If she were one hundred percent confident in her plans, his arguments should have just harmlessly rolled off her back. But the truth was, she was scared to death of what she was attempting.

Maybe she’d managed a tearoom, but she’d never started her own business from the ground up. She was a mass of insecurities.

The quality of her sleep had deteriorated still more, because she couldn’t get the feel of Tony’s embrace out of her mind—nor the way he’d looked into her eyes just before releasing her.

But she had to. Getting involved with a sexy firefighter—or any man, for that matter—wasn’t in her plans.

An older man in a suit approached her and she pointed to the clipboard sitting on the bar. “Fill out your name, address and phone there and I’ll assign you a number.”

“I’m not here to buy, Ms. Polk.”

She looked up sharply, alarmed by his stern tone. “Then what can I help you with?”

He held up a badge for her to see. “I’m the fire marshal. There’s a strict limit of one hundred people for these premises, in terms of fire safety, and you’ve already exceeded that limit.”

“A hundred?” Surely that was wrong. The number seemed very low to her. Her building wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t a broom closet, either. “Are you sure?”

“It’s posted by the door. This old building is a historic landmark, which means we take extra care. Have you had the sprinkler system inspected?”

“I’ll be doing a complete renovation, and fire safety will be my number one priority,” she assured him. “But for the auction, I can’t just go kicking people out who’ve already registered.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to, ma’am. Unless you want me to do it. But then I’d have to charge you a hefty fine.”

Julie was steaming. The firefighters were behind this, she was sure of it. They’d probably been searching for some way to foil her auction—and they’d found it. Maybe the maximum occupancy was a hundred, but she doubted it had ever been enforced until now.

She supposed she had no choice but to comply with the fire marshal’s order. The auction was starting in fifteen minutes.

So she went to the auctioneer’s microphone, turned it on and announced that all those who hadn’t registered, plus those with numbers higher than ninety-seven, would have to leave because of the fire code. Including herself, Belinda and the auctioneer, that made one hundred. Her announcement produced lots of grumbling, but everyone complied. Once the extras had left, there was plenty of room in the bar. She smelled a rat, especially when the fire marshal shot her a victorious smile.

He parked himself at the door, keeping careful count of all those who came in and those who left.

As the auction progressed, Julie was increasingly disappointed in the results. She’d been to a few similar events before, and usually there was heated bidding, at least over some of the items. But with her auction, once someone bid, the rest of the crowd stayed maddeningly silent. She’d put modest reserve prices on the more valuable things, and most of these did not achieve the minimum bid and so remained unsold.

The auctioneer was sweating, talking up individual items, sharing the stories Julie had written down for him. Finally, though, he shrugged his shoulders and shot her a bewildered glance, validating her own feelings that this was an aberration.

Was it fixed? She took a closer look at the predominantly male, casually dressed crowd, and an awful realization occurred.

They were firefighters. Cops and firefighters. Every single blasted one of them. And they were cooperating, to ensure she did not succeed.

Her face grew hot. How could they be so hateful? Such bad sports? Couldn’t they accept that Brady’s was gone now and leave her alone? How could anyone get so riled up over a stupid old bar, even if it was a historic landmark?

She caught the eye of one man who’d bid on the wooden Indian and gotten it for a hundred dollars when she knew it was worth a lot more. But she’d purposely set her minimum bids low because she wanted this stuff gone. He gave her a potent, malevolent look, confirming her suspicions.