Men of Courage: Trapped! / Buried! / Stranded!

That was all it took.

“Excuse me a minute, will ya?” Hoping to preserve what little dignity he still possessed, Ethan forced himself to walk to the bathroom, slam the door and lock it. He needed privacy for the next fifteen minutes while he worshiped the porcelain god, praying it was a dream, hoping against hope that when he emerged everyone would be gone—especially Rosie—and his brain could stop pulsing long enough to let him catch his breath.

He was hanging on to the toilet, his head spinning, when he heard footsteps outside the door.

“Ethan?”

He sat back on the cold ceramic-tiled floor and propped himself against the side of the tub, eyes closed. Breathing was a chore, thinking more so. He did not want to talk. “Go away, Rosie.”

He expected a sharp comeback, a refusal. Hell, he half expected her to knock the door down. Through the years he’d known her, Rosie had shown a knack for doing just as she damn well pleased without unnecessary consideration for what anyone else thought. She was headstrong, opinionated, independent—and she’d been in his bed.

After a few expectant moments when nothing happened, Ethan tensed with new foreboding. His eyes opened and he stared at the locked door. Rosie hadn’t done anything. Had she actually left when he’d asked her to? Or rather, when he’d rudely ordered her to? Had he hurt her feelings?

Had he had sex with her?

His stomach more unsettled than ever, Ethan pushed himself upright and stuck his head out the bathroom door. He didn’t hear a single sound. “Riley?”

Ten seconds passed, then, “What?” Riley leaned around the hallway, looked Ethan over, and made a disgusted face.

“Did Rosie leave?”

“She’s making breakfast.”

“Oh.” That figured. If he wasn’t so hungover, he’d have remembered that Rosie wasn’t a sensitive girly-girl. In fact, she was pretty damn tough…for a female. So of course he hadn’t hurt her feelings.

He hadn’t slept with her, either.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Ethan mumbled to Riley, who continued to look at him as if he was lower than a worm. “Get your mind out of the gutter, will ya?”

Riley crossed his arms over his chest and flattened his mouth. “She said for you to shower and join us.”

And Rosie being Rosie, she fully expected to be obeyed. “Yeah, all right.”

“She said you have ten minutes.”

Annoyed, Ethan slammed the door. He’d take as long as he damn well pleased, and that was that. Hell, the woman didn’t own him. Just because she’d awakened in his bed didn’t mean she could start thinking about bossing him around.

Course, she always bossed him around. And most of the time he let her. Though she was four years younger, they’d been friends forever, through high school and college. They’d remained close friends through the death of her parents, through his long engagement.

They’d even stayed friends after her brother had run off with his fiancée, leaving him literally stranded at the altar nineteen months ago.

Naked, Ethan stepped beneath a stinging spray of hot water and clenched his teeth against the surge of discomfort that radiated to his limbs. He braced his hands on the tiled wall, dropped his head forward and closed his eyes.

God, if he’d had sex with her, he didn’t know if they could remain friends. Rosie was a marrying kind of woman, not a one-night stand. And he would never consider marriage again.

What the hell had he done?

* * *

“HOW MANY EGGS do you guys want?”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Rosie,” Riley said with a long, exaggerated sigh, “what’s going on?”

Rosie Carrington glanced over her shoulder at Riley. He was a big man, so she cracked three eggs for him, same as Harris. “I’m just making breakfast, Riley. No big deal.”

“Yeah, right. Just making breakfast—at Ethan’s, dressed in his shirt, probably on the proverbial morning after.”

“You’re too smart to make assumptions, Riley.”

Harris and Buck looked at each other, then snorted. Oh, they’d made plenty of assumptions, all right. Not that she blamed them. It was a rather damning situation.

Riley paid them no mind. “Okay, so what are you doing here? Last I saw Ethan at the party, he was flirting with that sexy redhead and you were fuming mad at him for, as you put it, acting like an ass again.”

Rosie concentrated on not overcooking the eggs. Last night…well, she had been fuming mad. Come to that, she was still a little peeved. Most of the time Ethan was the best man around, easy to respect, easier to love. He was hardworking, levelheaded, conscientious. A firefighter with a moral code bone-deep. True, he’d become something of a hound dog, but a good-natured one nonetheless.

Yet whenever people brought up his ex-fiancée, he went from being a great guy to a shallow, chauvinistic jerk who grabbed the first available woman. Rosie assumed he did that to prove to everyone that he was over his fiancée, that he’d recovered. The opposite was true. It showed that he was still hurting—and that hurt her.

It had been over a year and a half, for crying out loud. She’d had enough. It was time to take matters into her own hands.

Rosie knew the men were uncomfortable to have found her here. If all went as she planned, they’d just have to get used to it. Besides, she was now decently covered—sort of—in a ratty old housecoat that she’d located in Ethan’s closet.

“You’re being evasive, Rosie.”

“Gee, Riley, I’m twenty-six years old. I thought that meant I didn’t have to answer to anyone for my personal life.”

Harris scratched his head, making his black hair more disheveled than ever. “You and Ethan have a personal life?”

She ignored him as she poked a fork at the pound of sizzling bacon in the cast-iron skillet. Four men, all of them big bruisers, needed a lot of food to maintain their energy levels. “You know, I’m amazed you guys planned to go fishing all day without breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day. You shouldn’t skip it.”

The men smirked at that ludicrous comment. As firefighters, Ethan and Harris kept in the peak of health. Their jobs allowed nothing less. Buck owned a lumberyard and physical labor was part of his daily work week. He had muscles on his muscles.

And Riley—Rosie peered at him again. Riley was an evidence technician for the police department. A former member of the SWAT team, he now owned a self-defense studio where he taught sparring, grappling, Jeet Kune Do and Silat knife fighting.

Next to Ethan, Riley was the most intriguing, appealing man she knew. He could break a person in two without effort. But more often than not, he was as gentle as a lamb—especially where women were concerned.

There wasn’t much call for a SWAT team in the small city of Chester, Ohio, thank God, but Riley had only lived here about five years. Before that, he’d evidently suffered some bad times, not that he ever spoke of it much. He tended to be a very quiet man.

Except for now, when he chose to badger Rosie.

“I think we’ll all survive fishing on an empty stomach.” Riley’s voice was dry, teasing.

“Now you won’t have to.”

Harris leaned forward, sniffing the eggs. “This’ll be better than the pork rinds Buck packed.”