King of the Friend Zone (Power of the Matchmaker) Read online

  Chief Anders shook his head, clearly on the verge of losing all patience. “Two minutes out.”

  Hunter clapped his gloved hands together and called out as loud as he could. “We’re going to need all of you to take fifty steps back. Literally. Fifty steps. Start walking!”

  No one moved.

  “We need to be close to the fire,” one of the hippies replied. “We’re sending it calming energy so it won’t get out of control.”

  Was the kid serious? Could he possibly be serious?

  “Welcome to the past five minutes of my life,” the chief muttered.

  Hunter physically forced the closest hippies back. “Maybe you should have done all the good juju stuff before starting the fire. Now back up!”

  The three people in Hunter’s path tripped back more than stepped, but it was still movement.

  “That’s it!” he praised. “Keep going. We can’t work until you’re out of our way.”

  Daryl stepped up behind him. “What’s going on?”

  “These hippies are trying to meditate the flames away and won’t leave.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Hunter said, still pushing them back.

  “By all accounts the building is clear,” Chief Anders said. “That’s the only positive in this. I’m not sending any men in there for a sweep. The building’s too far gone and all residents present and accounted for.”

  “Only problem is that they’re all moths trying to fly back into the flames,” Hunter grumbled as he continued to force them back.

  “You don’t understand,” a young guy objected. “I can feel the fire, man. It’s so angry. If you let me talk to it, I can calm it down.”

  Hunter and Daryl shared a look as it became clear that they weren’t just dealing with hippies. They were dealing with high hippies.

  “If we form a circle and send out messages of peace and calm, the fire will join us.”

  If by “join you” you mean burn you into a pile of ashes we could stir together, then yes. That’s exactly what it will do. Join you.

  Hunter’s less-than-kind mental response was interrupted by the arrival of four officers who ran up behind Daryl. Two of the officers were new to him, but Hunter knew Officers Flynn and Thompson from previous calls in the area.

  “Finally!” the chief moaned, spotting the officers. “We need a perimeter, stat.”

  “On it,” Flynn said as the officers moved in to take over for the chief.

  Hunter stepped in next to Flynn and dropped his voice. “At least some of them are as high as a kite, so you might have to be extra diligent to make sure that their prayer circle nama-stays outside of the yellow tape.”

  “Great,” Flynn said. “Thanks for the tip, Chase.”

  “No problem,” Hunter said before catching up to the chief. Smoke replaced fog in his nose as the left side of his body grew exponentially hotter than his right. “Open up the top?”

  “Yes,” his chief called back. “Let’s pop the top and put this thing out before it spreads down the street.”

  “Copy that,” Hunter said, running back to his engine and grabbing a chainsaw. “Nothing glamorous today, men. No bodies inside and no pets that need rescuing, so let’s get on the roof and make some chimneys, shall we?”

  His men moved into action like the well-oil machine they were, grabbing equipment before following him up the wooden ladder that extended up to the roof.

  Another engine arrived minutes later, unleashing another hose onto the fire as Hunter and his team created the holes that allowed the black smoke of the dying inferno to billow out and release heat from the building.

  “How are things looking, Daryl?” Hunter asked into his radio when his friend looked over the ledge of the building.

  “It’s not spreading,” Daryl replied over the speaker. “I have no idea why not, but it hasn’t jumped next door yet.”

  “Let me know if that changes.”

  “Copy that.”

  His team worked quickly, opening up the roof and getting back to the ground while the other engines drowned the fire out and kept it from the neighboring buildings. Thirty minutes later, the fire was soggy ash.

  Looking over the disaster, Daryl shook his head. “What do you want to bet it was incense or something?”

  “Definitely something stupid,” Hunter grunted.

  “Let’s go look,” Daryl said, and they both joined the other firefighters for a sweep of the property.

  The chief had been right; the building had been cleared so there were no grim discoveries until Hunter spotted several of the firemen around the breaker box.

  Hunter walked up to the group. “Is this the point of origin?”

  In response, the fireman in front of him stepped to the side and let Hunter see for himself. “One of the apartments—I can’t imagine which one—split the fuses to get free energy on their neighbor’s dime. Insurance isn’t going to touch this with a ten-foot pole.”

  Even from five feet away, Hunter could see the mess in the fuse box that had all the tell-tale indicators of an origin point. An investigator would come in tomorrow and do an official investigation, but Hunter wasn’t the only fireman with a construction background. They all knew what they were looking at.

  He shook his head and walked back to the truck. It was time to get his men back to the station to shower off the soggy soot and get a little shut eye…or at least that’s what they’d do if the idiots of the world would be so kind as to not start yet another needless fire.

  Chapter 8

  Before coffee, before computers, before anything but a quick bathroom break each weekday morning, Esme hit the treadmill until she had 5,000 steps tallied up on her FitBit.

  She’d always been one of those girls with the type of body that liked to keep ten extra pounds around, even back in her high school cheerleading and college ballroom days. But ever since she and Hunter had started competing on their FitBits, Esme had settled nicely into her goal weight. It was hard not to when the guy she was up against apparently walked a marathon every day. No matter how long she stayed on her treadmill or how far she parked away from the grocery store, Hunter out-walked Esme every day.

  Especially this past weekend.

  Esme didn’t know what Hunter had been doing since she had been with Jon and not tracking emergencies Hunter was called to, like she usually did, but his FitBit numbers were off the charts. Yesterday should have been a typical work day for him, but he’d beat her by more than 12,000 steps. No wonder the man was built like a tank. When it came to working out, he was a machine.

  But for a brief window of time each morning, a little after 6:00, Esme always made sure she was ahead on steps. It didn’t matter that Hunter was asleep after pulling a 24-hour shift at the fire station. Her brief lead still counted as she jogged on her treadmill and watched the world brighten up through her bay windows.

  It might be a regular Monday for the rest of the world, but it didn’t feel like any other Monday to Esme. Everything felt different. Because it was.

  She was engaged. She was freakin’ engaged!

  It still didn’t feel real, even though everything she’d done over the weekend had cemented the fact.

  Jon had met her parents and she’d Skyped with his. Yesterday it had only been the two of them and Jon had kept referring to her as Mrs. Bauer while they lounged around his place and took it easy.

  It felt surreal and all too real at the same time. Part of her wanted to forget the fact that she had a job and move right into wedding planning. They needed to pick a date and a location and how big they wanted the wedding to be and decide a thousand other things.

  Oh, and she totally needed to get on finding a dress. Grace would be a huge help there since she’d just gone through the process herself with her husband, Ashton.

  Esme was so distracted with dress thoughts that she made it to 5,200 steps before stopping her treadmill and finishing the rest of her morning routine. By 7:15 a.m., she was in fr
ont of her computer and checking her google alerts for the past two days. She moved through the news stories first, noting what new organizations had picked up before heading over to social media sites like Reddit and Tumblr to find out how people were reacting and what stories were still under the radar.

  It only took about five minutes of catching up on all the professional stupidity that had taken place over the weekend to push wedding thoughts out of her mind entirely.

  Esme was a PR Crisis Consultant, and when she did her job right, her clients didn’t call her with a crisis; she stopped them before they happened. Whenever possible, Esme preferred to spot issues before they became problems. When that wasn’t possible, she created plans to survive or thrive through disasters and then walked her clients through them.

  She couldn’t stop every crisis before it happened, of course. She would have to be full-time and in-house with all of her clients to even attempt that level of pre-emptive success; but she could often spot warning flags or send a digest of mistakes competitors were making to advise her clients to steer clear of similar mistakes.

  Simple mistakes, like a deejay who had stirred controversy over the weekend by declaring his station was giving away “a handful of fat, stacked Tubmans” for their cash giveaway.

  Not her client. Happily.

  Missteps like a deejay thinking he was being cheeky and fun by referring to the new $20 bills like that was as unacceptable as it was avoidable. And since one of her clients managed over 150 radio stations across the US, Esme added the story link with a summary of the deejay’s missteps along with a list acceptable alternate phrases.

  Technically, as a consultant, sending emails to clients with tips on how to avoid negative publicity was above and beyond her job description, but doing so made her job easier in the end. Informed clients made smarter business decisions. Smarter decisions meant fewer crises while also leaving the door of communication open for her clients to run messaging past her first before putting it out in the universe for her to deal with retroactively.

  Plus, it made her clients feel better about keeping her on retainer year after year. In her business, repeat customers and word of mouth were what had allowed Esme to buy her dream house in Sausalito two years ago.

  A house you might have to sell now, she thought with a frown.

  She and Jon would have to talk about that. Hunter was right. Jon would want to live close to the hospital, and Esme could live anywhere with a solid internet connection, so the case wasn’t looking good for her to keep the house.

  Maybe she would have to play hardball with Luke and tell him that if he wanted her to sell him her house, then he needed to find her something comparable near the hospital. Or maybe Luke and Hunter could find something and flip it to her taste before the wedding. When those two guys worked together, miracles happened. Esme’s current home was a testament to that. They’d delivered her a dream home in Sausalito. Maybe they could do the same in the city.

  The ring of her phone brought Esme back to reality and she recognized the Chicago number.

  “Andrew,” she greeted, picking up. “Good to hear from you.” At least she hoped it was a good thing.

  “Hey, Esme. I wasn’t sure if this was too early to call.”

  “Never too early for you,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, we’ve finally hired our new marketing manager and I was thinking that it would be good for you two to meet face-to-face and establish a relationship for the fee outlined in our contract.”

  “I would love to make that happen,” Esme replied. “What were you thinking? Do you want to send your new manager out here to experience the chill of a San Francisco September?”

  “That was my thought,” Andrew replied. “I could send her out there for a few days and you could give her some time each of those days to get her up to speed on where we are as a company, the pitfalls we’ve avoided in the past, and the style guide we’ve come up with across the years to keep ourselves on track.”

  This. This was why Esme liked keeping in touch with her clients whether there was a crisis or not. Meet-ups like the one Andrew was suggesting were a win-win. If Esme could train the new marketing manager across a few days, she could save herself any number of headaches down the road.

  “I love how you think, Andrew,” she said. “And since you’re calling me, I’m assuming you have dates you want to throw my way?”

  “If at all possible, next week would be ideal.”

  “Next Thursday and Friday?” Esme offered.

  “That would be perfect,” Andrew said.

  “Then I will carve out time for her on each of those days and we’ll get her up to speed.”

  Andrew let out an audible sigh of relief. “You’re a dream, Esme. I’ll have Deborah reach out to you to hammer out the details.”

  “Is that the new manager?”

  “Yes,” he laughed. “Sorry. You always seem to know everything before I do, so I assumed you knew.”

  “I do now,” Esme said. “Have her call or email me, and we’ll get things set up. I look forward to meeting her.”

  “Me, too. And thanks for this, Esme.”

  “My pleasure, Andrew. Better to help you get a new face up to speed like this than have her spend the next year dealing with hard knocks as she gets up to speed the hard way.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Andrew said.

  A few pleasantries later, Esme’s home office was silent again as she opened her calendar for the next week. Barring an unforeseen crisis, she had both afternoons open on Thursday and Friday. She blacked them out and called to make lunch reservations for each day before going back to her usual routine.

  Three hours later, she had her first drafts of weekly digests prepared and did one quick pass through of each client’s website before making adjustments and pressing send. She glanced at the clock, wondering when she would hear from Deborah before compulsively checking her FitBit.

  Hunter was up and had finished his morning run while she’d been working. Esme’s step count was at a respectable 5,466 while Hunter had already doubled her with 11,894.

  She needed to find a way to walk on her treadmill and work at the same time. She was pretty sure that was the only way she could compete with Hunter’s activity. He would be working with Luke on their latest townhouse all day, which meant his steps shouldn’t be too off the charts until later that night. She clicked on the app she used to track his location and smiled when she saw he was already at the townhouse with Luke.

  Oh, yeah. She was totally going to beat him today. For once.

  Grabbing her phone off her desk, Esme headed out the door for a late-morning walk along the coast. The tourists would be out in full force now, but Esme wasn’t the type of local who avoided the people who came to her little tourist town for the day. Quite the opposite. It was Esme’s hobby to eavesdrop on all the conversations. She told herself that it was one of her many ways of staying up to date on where people’s heads were at, but the truth was she really liked listening.

  Always had.

  She might have had a bit of a gossiping problem when she was a teen…okay, she’d totally had a gossiping problem. But Esme liked to think that she’d made a pretty good living out of understanding what got people’s tongues wagging and what left them bored.

  It was time to go out and find out what had tongues wagging today.

  Chapter 9

  MOM

  Mom:

  Whatever your plans

  are tonight, they’re

  canceled.

  Hunter:

  And if I have a date?

  Mom:

  Bring her!

  Hunter:

  Where?

  Mom:

  The Taylors.

  Hunter:

  Why?

  Mom:

  We’re meeting Jon

  tonight.

  Hunter:

  Have fun.

  Mom:

  You, to
o. You’re going

  to be there.

  Hunter:

  I’ll pass.

  Mom:

  I’m not asking. None

  of us have met him.

  Hunter:

  We’ll double sometime.

  I’ll skip tonight.

  Mom:

  See you there. Should I

  RSVP you with a +1?

  Hunter:

  RSVP me as a no show.

  Mom:

  It’s starts at 7:00. Be there.

  And shower first.

  Don’t come covered in

  construction dust like

  last time.

  Love you!

  Hunter:

  I need to work.

  Mom:

  You need to eat. Audra

  is cooking.

  Hunter:

  That’s nice. Tell her

  I won’t be there.

  Mom:

  You’ll be there. This is

  not a request. See you

  at 7 sharp.

  Chapter 10

  There were a lot of places Hunter didn’t want to be at the moment, but sitting at Greg and Audra Taylor’s dining room table with four happy couples was pretty much at the top of his list. Never mind that seven out of the other eight guests were some of his favorite people. Bette and Davis were his honorary aunt and uncle, as were Kate and Ed. Hunter loved them like family, just like he loved the Taylors. It was the guy sitting on the opposite corner of the table that had Hunter glancing at his watch every few minutes and debating whether or not he’d reached the point in the evening where he could politely excuse himself.

  Probably not yet. They were still on hors d’oeuvres.

  Hunter did his best not to stare as he assessed the guy who seemed to affix a perma-smile to Esme’s lips by doing nothing more than sharing the same air. She was clearly smitten, and he could kind of see why.