Burning Up by Sami Lee

directions. In combination with the sooty blackness of his face, the way his blue eyes flashed with fury made him look sort of…insane. As crazy as he claimed to have been at the thought of her in danger. Pam’s heart skipped a beat and she began to second-guess her impulse to call him a knucklehead.
    She was just about to apologize—after all, it was actually quite nice that he’d been worried about her—when her words disappeared on a gasp of shock. Steve picked her up, hefted her over his shoulder and began carting her off the soccer field.
    “Wh-what are you doing?” Pam managed to demand, although not as stridently as she’d like. The position put pressure on her midsection and made it hard for her to catch her breath. “Is this the fireman’s carry?”
    “Yep.”
    “How cliché of you.”
    “It may be a cliché, but you didn’t expect it.”
    No, she hadn’t. She was stunned to the back of her teeth and mortified to boot. Pam cast her head about, trying to see if the whole school was watching. Her hair was in her face so she couldn’t tell. She was glad there weren’t that many students left on the grounds, but she knew the few that remained would gleefully pass on news of Miss. Spencer’s misadventure. She’d never hear the end of it.
    “Put me down, Waller!” Pam battered at what flesh she could with her hands. She ended up slapping Steve’s rock-hard butt. She remembered how firm it was, how good it had felt in her hands last week when she’d grabbed it as he pumped into her.
    Great. He’s carting you off like a sack of horse manure and you get turned on.
    She realized she was back in her classroom when the familiar chairs and tables came into view. Steve kicked the door shut behind him and hauled her over to her desk, where he unceremoniously dumped her on her backside.
    Pam shoved a hand through her hair to push it off her face and let out an indignant huff. “Your fireside manner leaves a lot to be desired, Waller.”
    “And you make me mental, Spencer.” Hands on hips, he glared at her. “You can’t tell me not to be concerned about you, or that I’m not allowed to care about you. It’s too late for that.”
    Pam’s heart rate, already fast due to her unexpected trip across the school grounds, picked up speed at the implication of his words. Did Steve really care that much about her? The possibility dissipated some of her annoyance, but she crossed her arms over her chest and matched Steve’s glare. “I told you I was perfectly safe.”
    “I didn’t know that for sure. You never know how a fire’s going to spread. And you substitute sometimes. You watch other teachers’ classes for them. You change rooms when you need to use someone’s sound equipment. Based on that, you could have been anywhere in the school—including the science block.”
    Pam stared at him, stunned into silence by his knowledge of the finer details of her job. When she was done gaping, she managed to choke out a question. “How do you know all that?”
    Steve took a step forward, moving closer. He’d shucked his yellow jacket before coming after her too, and now wore his rubber pants and a fitted navy T-shirt with the fire service’s emblem on it. Pam felt the heat of his flesh winding around her and wondered if the cotton of his shirt would be warm to the touch. She was warm, that was for sure. The seriousness of Steve’s gaze heated her blood.
    He reached up and touched her face, the lightest of touches. “I know because I’ve been listening, Pam. Somewhere between mutual ribbings and deciding we didn’t like each other, we talked. You’re the third of four children—two older brothers and one younger sister. When you were a kid you had a cat named Pepper. When she got hit by a car you cried for a week. You were a bit of a tomboy growing up but believe me sweetheart, there’s nothing boyish about you now.”
    The curve of his lips brought back every memory of last weekend, of how he’d