Czytaj książkę: «Firefighter With A Frozen Heart»

CHAPTER ONE

“IT’S not your call, Corbett. You took in a lungful of smoke, so you go to the hospital to get checked out. Not my idea, not my rule either, but you do it, or you take a suspension.” Captain Steve Halstrom folded his arms across his chest, looking properly stern in his edict. “You don’t have a choice in the matter.”

Jess didn’t need to go, though. He didn’t have a damn thing wrong with him. Wasn’t coughing. Okay, so he’d broken enough rules for the day. He got it, this was the punishment. Meaning he’d have to leave his buddies behind at the scene, feel guilty as hell walking away from them while they were still fighting the worst of the blaze, just so he could pay the so-called piper. If his years as an army surgeon had taught him one thing, it was the value of working as a team. Today, against his better judgment, that team ethic would prevail, and he’d be sidelined. Do the deed, do the time. He’d done the deed, couldn’t argue the point … much. “Even though I’m a doctor, and I know—”

“What you know is that it’s policy. You take in smoke, you take a ride to the hospital.”

Jess looked up at the building—a three-story apartment, fully engaged. Everybody had got out, and that was the good news. The bad news was the wind, and the old building sitting so close to the one on fire that its demise was likely.

“Damn, this is lousy timing,” Jess muttered, shrugging out of his turnouts—personal protective gear that was turned inside out when not in use so that the firefighter could quickly step into them and pull them on. A hundred pounds of heavy was what they called it, and it was a far sight different from the surgical scrubs and occasional lab coat he had worn when he’d been a surgeon. But that was just part of the career trade-off. He was okay with it most days.

Today, when he’d pulled that child out of the burning apartment and carried him down the stairs, letting him breathe his air, he’d been very okay with it. The child had been hiding in the back of an old closet. Couldn’t be seen from a normal vantage point. Parents nowhere to be found. But one elderly lady had mentioned there might be a child up there, and that’s all it had taken to raise the hair on the back of his neck. Granted, he hadn’t known if the kid was still in there, but that hadn’t stopped him. Not when there had been a possibility. “If I check out okay, I’m coming back,” he told Steve.

“If you check out okay, you get three days off. This was a close one, Jess, and you brought it on yourself. So, you’re on leave, not suspension, and if you argue with me, it’ll be a week. Got it?”

“After what the lady told me, I should have just left the kid in there?” Jess snapped at his supervisor, instantly regretting it.

“You know what? Doesn’t matter how you check out medically, take the whole week so you’ll have plenty of time to think. Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten protocol, let me remind you that you are required to let someone know where you go. It’s not an option. We don’t do this job alone.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to have to hang you up like this, Corbett, but it’s all I can do. This time you’re off the hook easy. Next time I’ll do something official.”

Steve was right about this. Jess knew it. Didn’t have to like it, but he did know it. So now he had a whole empty week ahead of him. That, if nothing else, was his demon to deal with. “Then I’ll see you in a week.”

“Next week,” Steve said, waving Jess off to the ambulance where he waved off the paramedic who tried to help him in.

“I’m fine,” he grunted at her. Sitting out on the job, the way he was being forced to do, didn’t square with him. But, different from the days when he had been head of trauma in the army, he wasn’t head of anything now. Just another one of the many. Actually, one of the nearly fifteen thousand New York City firefighters and paramedics. One who was close to the bottom of the ladder. It was a good way to get lost, which was all he wanted. Get lost, stay lost. Do his job. Forget the rest of it.

“Which is why you’re in my ambulance?” she asked, following him in the door. “Because you’re fine?”

“Look, just do what you have to do, skip the comments and leave me the hell alone. Okay?” Plopping down on the stretcher inside the ambulance, Jess closed his eyes, even though the light was dimmed to almost total darkness. All he wanted to do was shut out the extraneous noises, but he couldn’t. In Afghanistan, there’d always been noise … screaming, crying, artillery going off. Here, the sounds weren’t the same, but they all amounted to suffering. Here, though, he got there first, made a different difference. Then he moved on, no commitments left behind.

“Too bad. The comments are the best part,” she quipped.

Nice voice. A little throaty, which wasn’t bad in the feminine variety … if he’d been looking for the feminine variety in anything. Which he wasn’t. So he laid his right forearm over his forehead, not so much because it was a comfortable position but more to shut out what he’d see when his eyes adjusted to the dark. The equipment, the storage bins, the paramedic … not his life anymore. “Then comment away, after you check me out and release me,” he said, not wanting to be a grouch about it. She was, after all, just doing her job, and being tough on her because of it wasn’t his style.

“Well, it says here you took in some significant smoke, which means you get a free ride to the hospital like it or not. So, for starters, I need to put the oxygen mask on you …”

Now he was annoyed. He didn’t need oxygen. Didn’t want the damn mask clamped down on his face.

“No, thanks,” he said, finally opening his eyes and shifting his arm up just enough to have a look when his eyes adjusted enough to make out a blur. First sight, red hair. Spunky red, even in the dimness. Short, boyish, in a pixie sort of a way. “Skip the oxygen. My lungs are fine, no matter what my captain thinks.”

She moved toward him, carrying both an oxygen mask and a blood-pressure cuff.

“Blood pressure’s okay, too. Unless you put that oxygen mask on me.”

She laughed. “Scared of a mask, fireman? A little bit claustrophobic?”

“Not scared or claustrophobic. Just don’t need it,” he said, now wishing he could get a better look at her. He was pretty sure she was shapely. Nice curves in silhouette. Oddly familiar to him, even in the dim light.

“Says you?”

“Says me. I’m a … used to be a trauma surgeon.”

“I’m impressed, fireman. But not swayed. You get the mask, I get your blood pressure. And I don’t negotiate.”

“But do you compromise?”

“Whoa, the fireman has an offer to make?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at that. His paramedic was downright stubborn, and he liked it. “Not an offer. A compromise. I’ll cooperate unconditionally when you take my blood pressure if you let me wear a cannula instead of a mask.” Prongs up the nose were better than a mask any day. The thing was, when he geared up to go on a run, he was all about masks and other equipment. But a simple, lightweight, green oxygen mask … that was his last memory of Donna. Garbled words she’d tried saying to him through her oxygen mask. Words he’d wanted to understand but couldn’t. Words he should have heard if not for that mask.

“So, fireman, are you always this uncooperative?”

“Only when I have to be.”

“Let me guess. In your opinion, that’s most of the time.” He chuckled. “You’ve got some bedside manner, paramedic.”

“I try.” She pulled the cannula from the drawer and handed it to him. “Since you seem to know my job, you do the honors while I crank this baby up to full squeeze.” She was referring to the blood-pressure cuff she was dangling over him.

Damn, he really wanted a better look at her. She was tweaking his memory and all he could see right now were big protective eye goggles and a surgical mask. Smart move, considering all the soot and debris flying around out there, but very frustrating. “Is that a threat?”

“A promise.” She took his blood pressure then tossed the cuff back in the drawer.

“One twenty over eighty. Pretty good, for a man in your disgruntled and extremely dirty condition. Here, let me clean some of that soot off your face.” Grabbing a bottle of sterile water, she twisted off the lid then soaked a gauze pad and started to dab at his face. But he caught her wrist and stopped her.

“One twenty over eighty? Did you mean to tell me it was a perfect blood-pressure reading rather than just a pretty good one? Oh, and the dirty face is fine, it comes with the job.”

She wrestled out of his grip. “And the fireman gets a demerit for the worst manners I’ve met all day.”

“What the fireman wants is to get the hell out of here and get back to work.”

“Like I said before, you get a trip to the E.R. After that, you’re out of my hands.” She gave a pound on the glass between her and the driver, indicating they were good to go, then handed him the wet rag. “Wash your face. I don’t want you getting soot in your eyes. And no arguments, okay? I just want to get this over with. You’re my last patient on my last run as a paramedic, and I don’t want any hassles. Think you can manage that for me, fireman?”

“And I suppose you expect me to smile, too?” he asked, half cracking that smile.

“What I expect is that I’m going to do the paperwork now, and you’re going to answer my questions. Smiling is optional.” Sitting down on a fixed bench across from him, she picked up the clipboard, clicked her pen and wrote the date on her transport form. “Do you have a name?” she asked.

“It’s Jess. Jess Corbett.” He thought he heard a little gasp from her.

“Okay, Jess.” She twisted until her back was almost to him, as the ambulance lurched forward, then lowered her mask and pulled off her goggles. “So, tell me, how did you end up here?”

“Kid trapped in a closet. I gave him my oxygen. My captain wasn’t happy that I didn’t go in with backup. You know, same old story.” Now, this was frustrating. He thought she looked like … no, couldn’t be. Voice was different. Hair much shorter. Curves more filled out. Julie had been a couple pounds shy of skinny, with long straight hair. Thin voice. Pretty, not gorgeous. But his paramedic, what he could see of her, was gorgeous.

“I mean here, in New York City, fighting fires. How did that happen?”

“That’s on the paperwork?”

“No, but getting to know my patients gives me a better sense of what’s going on with them. As in, are you always so grumpy or is this a reaction to your smoke inhalation?”

“Trust me, it’s a reaction to my smoke inhalation, but not the kind of reaction you think it is.” But she could be Julie. Except, Aunt Grace had told him Julie was working in the south. “In answer to your question, though, let’s just say that I got tired of my old job, quit it and decided to try something new.”

“Well, I suppose quitting is good … for some people, isn’t it? You know. As in running away.”

Julie! He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the stretcher and yanked off his oxygen cannula. “I thought you were working down south someplace.”

She turned to face him, full on. “This is south, compared to Lilly Lake.” She reached up, switched on the bright overhead so he could see everything. “Julie Clark, R.N., paramedic.” Said in all bitterness.

Well, this was certainly awkward. His first love. His first … everything. It was so awkward he didn’t know what to do. Bail out of a moving ambulance, lie back down, shut his eyes then pretend she wasn’t there? Let her have it out with him before they got to the hospital? Which was long overdue, actually.

With the way her eyes were sparking now—the same beautiful blue eyes that kept nothing hidden—jumping from the ambulance seemed like the best way out of this mess … for him. But he’d been the one who’d laid out that mess back then, and running away a second time sure didn’t feel like the honorable thing to do. Hadn’t then, didn’t now. So, Jess gritted his teeth for the confrontation, and since this was Julie, he knew there would be one. Being feisty had always been part of her charm, and he didn’t expect any of that had changed.

“It’s locked,” she said, as if sensing his thoughts. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Was that a barbed smile crossing her lips? “So, what’s the protocol here, Julie? Do I ask how you’ve been? Should we sit here in silence and stare at each other? Or would it be easier if you beat the hell out of me and just got it over with?”

“If I weren’t on the job, I might just take you up on that one. But since I am, here’s an idea. How about you be a nice, cooperative patient and lie back down, and I’ll be the paramedic who watches your vital signs and makes sure you don’t go into respiratory arrest as some aftereffect of the smoke inhalation? Does that work for you, Jess?”

“Are you going to put a pillow over my face and smother me?”

“Is that what you want me to do? Because I can.” “Look, Julie …”

She shook her head, and thrust out her hand to stop him. “Lie down. Now! And don’t argue with me.”

“Sure,” he said, doing just that. “And I suppose if you really want me to wear a mask …”

Julie laughed, but it had a cutting twinge to it. “Jess Corbett, trying to comply. It doesn’t become you, Jess. Not at all. Besides, I’d rather watch you lie there and be uncomfortable around me. Good show, watching you squirm.”

He did stay down for about a minute, hating every blasted inch of silent space around him. Then he popped back up. “You said I’m your last patient. Does that mean you’re quitting?”

“Moving on. Went to nursing school part time for years, all the way through to my doctorate, and now I’m going to work as a full-time nurse.”

“Congratulations,” he said, still pretty much at a loss for words. It wasn’t every day that you ran into a childhood sweetheart, one he’d actually had feelings for. Of course, he’d made fast work of that. But, still, Julie … She was a memory-maker. Gone from his life, but never forgotten. “Well, I hope you have a good career. Aunt Grace would have been proud of you.” What a lame thing to say, but he really couldn’t think of anything else except, maybe, to apologize. After all this time, though, that seemed so trite, and under these circumstances so contrived.

“Oh, I intend to. So now, unless you have a medical concern or question, be quiet. Okay? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Don’t want to listen to you either.”

Too bad, because he liked the sassiness in her. He’d liked it seventeen years ago, and it hadn’t changed much. But once they dropped him off at the hospital, that was going to be the end of the line for Julie and him … again. It was for the best, he thought as he sank back down on the stretcher, shut his eyes and tried to blank her out. Definitely for the best.

“Signing out for the last time,” Julie said, handing in her badge. This was it. After so many grueling years in the back of an ambulance, she was finally moving on to the place she’d always wanted to be. And it was a good move, being a nurse. Grace Corbett had helped her, had made everything possible. Had dreamed the dream with her. She sighed, thinking about Grace, missing Grace. “And glad to be moving on.”

“Well, you take care of yourself. It’s not going to be the same without you around here, Julie,” her supervisor, a tall, big-boned woman named Gert, said, giving her a hug.

Good times, good memories, being a paramedic. Better ones ahead of her, though. She hoped. And two hours later, when she was tossing the last of her few incidentals into a cardboard box, she was still looking forward, not backward, because looking backward would be filled with thoughts and memories of Jess Corbett … the last person she’d ever expected to find in the back of her ambulance tonight.

Jess … darn! Now she’d opened the floodgates, and he’d poured through in a huge way. The funny thing was, she didn’t try holding him back. In fact, she shut her eyes for a moment and indulged herself. Jess … He was bigger than he was last time she’d seen him. More muscled. Lean. Fit. Broader shoulders. Face more chiseled, edgier lines to it. His eyes, though … still the same sapphire blue, but harder. Much harder than she remembered. No laugh lines around them either, which made her wonder if he ever smiled. His hair was the same, though. Sandy, maybe a little darker than it had been seventeen years ago. Clipped a whole lot shorter than she’d ever seen it on him. She liked the stubble on him, too. Made him look … masculine. Not that Jess, as a teenager, hadn’t been masculine. But Jess then compared to Jess now … actually, there was no comparison. Jess the man and Jess the boy, the man won hands down.

“But I’m not going to think about him,” she said, heading down three flights of stairs, grappling with the last of the things she was taking to her new life. She had an emergency room to expand. New responsibilities to think about. And thinking about Jess distracted her. So she wouldn’t. That’s all there was to it. She would not think about Jess Corbett.

An hour later, as she turned onto the interstate taking her north, she was still trying not to think about him. Of course, this new life she’d chosen for herself wasn’t going to make that easy, was it? Not when her destination was Lilly Lake, and Lilly Lake was the place they’d almost started a life together.

For early spring, the evening was pleasantly warm. Tonight, the sun was setting in gold hues over the lake, and in the distance the wail of a loon saddened the expanse. Heard for miles, across land, and from lake to lake, it was the haunting call of mates looking for each other, mates lost to each other and calling out to find them. Jess knew what that was about, what it felt like to search. “So that’s the long, sad story of my exile from New York City.”

“Smoke inhalation?” Rafe Corbett snorted a laugh. “They grounded you a week for smoke inhalation?”

“Two weeks,” Jess grumbled, then chuckled. “Let’s just say that I overstepped my bounds. After my clean bill of health I shot off my mouth when I should have kept it closed, and my captain decided to put me on ice for a little longer to think about it.”

“In other words, you don’t play by the rules.”

“And you do?”

“Okay, so the Corbett men do things their own way. But for me, that’s fine. I’m an orthopedist, I don’t really have to get into much of the team spirit the way you do.”

An orthopedist who, not so long ago, hadn’t been all that different from Jess. Except now Rafe was a married man with a daughter, and another one on the way. The picture of perfect contentment, and happy to be in that place. “Well, team is where it’s at. And between us, big brother, I do have some problems with that. I’m more used to …”

“Doing it on your own?”

Jess winced. It was true. He was a loner in most aspects of his life. In fact, he could probably count on one hand the number of times he and Rafe had actually sat down and talked as brothers these past dozen or so years. “Yep, doing it on my own. But I get the team concept, realize how important it is, even if I get ahead of myself sometimes.”

“Get ahead of yourself? You ran into a burning building without telling anybody you were going in. That’s a hell of a lot more than getting ahead of yourself, Jess.”

“You’re going to give me a lecture, too?” he asked, clearly annoyed, not with Rafe so much as with himself. He’d been wrong. He’d admitted it. But there was something inside him … something he just couldn’t control at times. Sometimes he had to act, consequences be damned. “Because I’ve already heard it, and now I have two weeks to reflect on the error of my ways.”

Rafe held up his hands in mock surrender. “Then it’s over, okay? Not another word. So, do you want to come stay up at Gracie House? We’ve got better accommodations. Molly would love having her favorite uncle there to play with.” Six-year-old Molly was Rafe’s new daughter and part of his newfound contentment.

“No. The cabin’s fine. But tell Molly she’ll be seeing enough of me over the next couple of weeks that she’ll probably get sick of me.” In truth, he liked the cabin. Liked its rustic charm. A mile from nowhere, with just enough amenities to call it modern, it kept him isolated. What more could he want? “Tell Edie, though, I appreciate the offer, and that I wouldn’t mind stopping in a couple of times for a good home-cooked meal if she’s up to it. I don’t want to put her out, though, considering …”

“She’s pregnant, working until her due date if she can and she loves to cook. How about tomorrow night? That’ll give her the chance to plan it, and give you the chance to settle in.”

“You can do that, just make plans for your wife like that?”

Rafe chuckled. “Hell, no. But Edie didn’t figure you’d stay at the house with us, so she told me to invite you over tomorrow night for dinner.”

“And you’re just trying to score points with me, making me think it was your idea.”

“I need some points, because I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“Not ominous. More like a matter of practicality. And to be honest, I’m glad you’re home because I was going to come to the city next week to talk to you about it.”

Jess twisted in his seat. Was on the verge of getting up and going inside. Shutting the door on what Rafe was here to discuss. “Another time?” he asked, trying to put off the talk for no good reason other than he didn’t want to deal with it at present. In fact, his preference would be signing his share of Lilly Hospital over to Rafe, then be done with the whole thing. But that’s not what Rafe wanted. So Jess was hanging on, but in title only.

“Look, Jess. I understand it’s hard for you, and if there was any other way to do this, I would. But we are co-owners …”

“One of which who wants nothing to do with the hospital. So, here’s what you can do, Rafe. Anything. Anything you want. I trust your judgment, and I’ll give you my blessing but, please, leave me the hell out of the decisions.

Okay?”

“What I want, Jess, is to take Rick Navarro on as a partner. He’s earned it. He deserves it. And he has good ideas for expansion …”

Jess waved him off. “What, in the definition of anything don’t you understand?”

“For once, just listen to me, okay? Before you start spouting off your opinion or telling me all the reasons you don’t give a damn, just shut up and listen!”

Jess huffed out an impatient sigh. “Do I have a choice?”

“You’ve always got a choice, but I was hoping you’d give me some support in this.”

“You’ve got my support, Rafe. Just not my attention.” He pushed himself up out of his seat and headed toward the front door, but stopped before going inside. Change of heart? Not at all. But a sure change of mind. Rafe was the only person he had in this world, and it wouldn’t hurt him to listen to his big brother. After all, Rafe had taken the beatings for him, quite literally. All those years, all the tirades, Rafe was the one who’d stood up to their old man and taken the punishment. So at the least he owed him another minute to listen. “Okay, tell me, but don’t expect anything from me other than listening. Because I’m not going to get involved in this.”

Rafe stood, and went to lean on the banister across from the front door. “Fine. I’ll make it fast. We’re expanding pediatric services, which you already know. We’re looking into some growth in obstetrics, too. But the first thing we’re taking on is an expansion to our emergency services, because what we have isn’t good enough.”

At the mention of emergency services, Jess winced. Being a former trauma surgeon, this was probably where Rafe wanted to wheedle some kind of commitment out of him. Come back and work temporarily until we can find someone else to take over. Or be a consultant. That’s what he expected, but he was going to hold his ground. No involvement, no way!

“Rather than sending major trauma cases to the hospital all the way over in Jasper, or someplace even farther away, we’re going to expand enough to handle what we need and help with overflow from other areas. So we’ve hired a nurse-coordinator to oversee the first phase of growth. She has an amazing trauma background, a doctorate in nursing …”

“A doctorate?” he asked, feeling his gut churn.

“A doctorate. And for where we are right now, she’s the perfect person to put in charge of coordinating the plans. Um, Jess … we hired …”

“Let me guess. You hired Julie Clark?” He hadn’t seen her in seventeen years, now here she was, front and center, twice in two days. How could that be happening?

Rafe frowned. “Either that was an amazing wild guess, or you’ve been in touch with Julie.”

“In touch. Not by choice.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” Rafe asked.

Jess shook his head. Didn’t reply, so Rafe continued, “Well, she was the right one. Has the credentials we need, as well as the experience …” He paused, studied Jess’s frown, sucked in a deep breath. “Look, Jess, since you’re not here most of the time, and when you are you never leave the cabin, I didn’t think it would matter.”

“Why would it matter?” Jess snapped, then stormed inside his cabin and slammed the screen door behind him. “Jess?” Rafe called after him.

“Nothing matters,” Jess yelled back. “Not one damned thing.” Except for those couple of weeks of Julie’s pregnancy scare hell. Those had mattered a lot.