Emma Callaway walked quickly down the dark street, wishing she'd arrived at her father's party on time so that she could have gotten a better parking spot, instead of having to hike three blocks up hill. As she passed a lone guy smoking a cigarette in front of a twenty-four hour market, she felt an odd sense of unease. The man's gaze seemed to follow her down the street, and she picked up her pace.
She wasn't normally afraid to walk at night, especially not in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco, but the street was filled mostly with retail and commercial buildings, and at nine-o'clock on a Sunday night, they were all closed, making her feel isolated and alone.
She took a quick glance over her shoulder. There was no one following her, but the shadowy street did not ease her nerves. She told herself to stop imagining things. She was just on edge. The last few weeks of work had been challenging, and all she wanted to do was relax and spend a few hours with her family as they celebrated her father's recent promotion to Deputy Chief of Operations for the San Francisco Fire Department.
Emma was enormously proud of her father, but Jack Callaway's latest feat had only set the bar of achievement that much higher for herself and the rest of the Callaway clan. Not that the bar hadn't always been high. Firefighting had been a family tradition for at least four generations, including the current one. Three of her brothers were firefighters, and she'd started out as a firefighter as well, eventually becoming a fire investigator a year earlier.
She loved being an investigator, but it was also frustrating work. Determining whether a fire was arson was one thing, finding the perpetrator and getting justice was another. But she wasn't going to think about her open cases tonight. She just wanted to spend time with her family and friends.
Opening the door to Brady's Bar and Grill, she stepped inside and paused, surprised at the huge crowd. Her father was a popular guy, but it seemed as if half the city had come to toast his latest achievement. A long mahogany bar covered the far wall, and there was a line three deep to get cocktails. The dance floor was packed with people drinking, talking, and laughing, and every table in the main dining room appeared to be full. Gazing to the right side of the restaurant, she saw a cluster of people in the hall by the back room where darts and pool were the games of choice.
Brady's would make a killing tonight, she thought with a smile, not that they didn't do a good business most nights. Brady's was a firefighters' bar. The owner, Harry Brady, had a son, Christian, who was also a firefighter, and it wasn't uncommon for shifts to end with a trip to the bar. Wherever she looked, she saw familiar faces. She was a local girl, and Brady's was a local bar—the kind of place where everyone knew each other's name.
The door opened behind her and a blast of chill November air sent a tingle down her spine. Glancing over her shoulder, that cold quickly turned to heat when she met the deeply intense and penetrating green eyes of Max Harrison, an inspector with the San Francisco Police Department.
Max had transferred from Los Angeles three months earlier, and since then their paths had crossed a few too many times. She'd found Max to be a cocky, territorial detective, whose idea of sharing information was her telling him everything she knew, and him giving nothing in return.
While she didn't like Max's attitude, she couldn't help but appreciate the way he filled out a pair of faded jeans and carried off a brown leather jacket over a cream-colored knit shirt. He was tall and athletically built with a mouth-watering physique, light brown hair that shimmered with gold, and a far too sexy mouth. But she knew trouble when she saw it, and the last thing she needed in her life was man trouble. She'd gotten out of a serious relationship a few months earlier, and she didn't need to dive into another one, especially not with someone who could heat up her body with just one look.
"What are you doing here?" she asked shortly.
Their meetings were always tense, the mix of anger and attraction between them making most of their encounters awkward and uncomfortable. It was bad enough they had to occasionally work