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grandparents’ watchful eyes. It was always tough to turn her back on the attraction that drew her to the man following slowly behind her.
    If her dating life didn’t start to improve soon, it was going to get much harder to do, especially if Walter kept talking about babies every time he saw her. Not that she wanted babies with Walter. Babies just made her think about how they were made, a process she would definitely like to explore with him.
    “I’m hungry too, Jane. Starved in fact,” Walter called loudly, not missing Jane’s stumble as she heard his words. It made him grin to see she hadn’t become immune to him yet, no matter how much his pursuit of her warred with her logic. Why was the woman fighting the attraction between them so hard? If he ever got her in bed, he was going to make sure that Jane stopped thinking of him as a kid.
    Shaking his head over his carnal thoughts of how he could prove himself, Walter let his gaze follow Jane’s shapely rear to the picnic area. Her shorts showed off her muscular, attractive legs to perfection. Her streamlined thighs and toned calves offered convincing evidence that she worked out to achieve them. Admiration filled him, along with visions of Jane in a gym. She’d be sweaty, but her eyes would be twinkling. Her mouth would be firmed as she worked. Her seriousness was a constant challenge to him. It was also one of the things that turned him on most. Would he ever discover anything about the older woman that he didn’t like? Somehow he doubted it.
    But obviously, he needed a better plan for finding out.

Chapter 2
    “Thank you all for volunteering. You need to lose your shirts and see Megan in the kitchen to get oiled. Mr. January you’re up first, so head to the front of the line please.”
    Walter grinned at the shock on some of the firefighters’ faces. Then he watched the photographer adjust his camera on the tripod, grinning harder when the man looked up with a frown.
    “Can somebody not in the calendar please go stand by the fire engine? We’ll get through this faster if I can preset the height for the shots. I’d like to get these done before you all have to take a call.”
    Glad he had opted out of the list of guys posing for the calendar, Walter dipped his head and grinned at the black soot smear on his white t-shirt. He had been tasked with collecting the heavy but apparently un-photogenic water hoses from the side of the newly washed engine to move them out of the camera’s sight.
    Besides, his parents would kill him if he ended up bare-chested and shiny for all of Falls Church to see. Leland and April Graham still hated to see their only son wearing his regulation uniform even for parades and festivals.
    And Harrison? Harrison would have a massive stroke laughing his ass off at a bare-chested photo of him in a cheesy beefcake calendar.
    “Hey—tall guy in the dirty t-shirt.”
    Grinning about his grandfather’s keen sense of irony, Walter stopped and pointed to his chest, grinning more when the photographer nodded.
    “Do you mind helping me?” the man asked.
    Accompanied by a chorus of jokes thrown his way about how cute and photogenic he was in his dirty clothes, Walter walked to the fire engine and stood where the man requested. He watched as the photographer bent, looked through the lens, then stood and glanced around.
    “We need something to fill out the space. Got a jacket? Or maybe a hat and an axe? A big axe? Biggest thing you got,” the photographer said.
    Snickering like a kid in middle school over the man’s unintentional innuendo, Walter lifted the door of one of the boxes on the side of the engine behind him. He took out a hat, and then pulled the giant fire axe they used to break through walls from its hanger. Hefting it without grunting was the reason he’d been lifting weights for years. He closed the box with a bang that brought all eyes to him as he turned back.
    “Will these do?” Walter asked, mouth twisted in a smirk