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She shook her head.
Where in the hell did that thought come from?
Samantha gazed at the sleeping man, but looking at his striking brown face, which seemed somewhere between restful and tense, she could tell the first operation must have been excruciating. She had overheard the doctors saying they needed to do at least one more operation on his spine.
“He’ll be fine, and he’ll make you laugh again, Mrs. Hightower.” Samantha offered the only words of encouragement she could. She knew the man had a long road to travel toward recovery, but looking at him, she also knew he’d make it.
She prayed he would.
She and Mrs. Hightower sat in silence. The only sound heard was Joel’s mother’s soft sobs. The only thing Samantha could think was she never wanted to be the woman crying because she’d been foolish enough to fall for a man who had a dangerous job.
She would never make that mistake.
“So what exactly are you saying to me, Doc? Make it plain.”
Joel listened to everything the man was saying, and he didn’t like any of it. After two painful surgeries and spending more time than he could have ever wanted laid up in a hospital bed in traction, he had very little patience for medical jargon and even less patience for hypothetical ponderings.
He wanted to know one thing and one thing only: Would he be able to fight fires again?
The distinguished surgeon, Dr. Lardner, gave an uncharacteristically sheepish grin that seemed to acknowledge he’d been guilty of not being as clear or as forthcoming as he could have been. His thin lips pursed in consideration, and his thick blond eyebrows closed in at the middle of his forehead. He ran his hand through perfectly coiffed blond hair, then stared at Joel with steel-blue eyes.
“Your surgeries were very successful, and the extent of the damage to your spine was not as extensive as we had originally thought. We honestly didn’t think you would walk again. We thought you would have been at the very least partially paralyzed—at the worst, fully paralyzed—but you’re not.” Dr. Lardner stopped and gave Joel a pointed look before continuing.
“You will be able to walk once your legs and spine heal, but you will need intense physical therapy to strengthen the spine and to help get you to the point where you are walking with the same proficiency you were before the accident. Is that plain enough for you?”
Joel bit back the sarcastic quip he was thinking as the doctor threw his own words back at him. He wasn’t used to feeling so on edge and vulnerable. However, not being able to get around and move the way he wanted to was taking its toll, and the thought that he might not be able to do the one thing he had wanted to do ever since he was a little boy—fight fires—had him feeling more like a tiger in a cage than a guy in traction.
“Yeah, I get it, Doc. I’m lucky I’ll be able to walk again, but will I be able to fight fires again?” Joel gritted his teeth to hold back the rest of what he wanted to say. No need pissing off the skillful surgeon whose hands made walking again a reality.
“That I can’t tell you, Joel.” Dr. Lardner gave a slight shrug. “Once you’re out of here and have started and completed your physical therapy, we’ll have a better sense of that. But for now, let’s dwell on getting you healed up so that you can go out there and handle the rest. Okay?”
Joel nodded. He would go back to his profession because any alternative to that was not an option. Fighting fires were not only his legacy, but also his entire reason for being.
Going one-on-one, head-to-head against one of nature’s most destructive elements was the biggest rush he’d ever felt. He fought fires because he loved helping people. He fought fires because he was a part of an elite group of men who lived to do what no one else would: run into the blaze not away from it. He didn’t have the kind of personality that would allow him to just sit behind a desk day after day. He needed to be out and in the thick of things.
Taming a fire before it spread and took lives or wrestling a life out of the fire’s hands by carrying a child or adult to safety from a burning building made him feel as if he could really do anything he wanted. To say his profession was intimately connected to his sense of manhood would have been an enormous understatement, and that was why he had to be able to fight fires again. That was why he would be able to fight them again. He couldn’t let anyone or anything stand in his way.
Chapter 1
Six months later
Joel Hightower entered the physical-therapy stage of his rehabilitation feeling less like his normal upbeat self.
Okay, make that nothing like his normal self.
After the two operations on his back, he had spent the bulk of the past five months in traction, and once the casts had come off, he’d had to get used to walking around with a cane for a little while, walking around feeling like half the man he used to be.
As far as he was concerned, he was allowed to be in a bad mood. His entire life had been snatched from under him, and he had to literally learn how to walk on his own two feet again.
The inside of the clinic looked as drab as the adjacent hospital had. Sure, the walls of the waiting room were a bright shade of Pepto pink, but everything else screamed stale and antiseptic. He really hoped the rest of the clinic wasn’t the same color scheme. He couldn’t take three months of constant puke pink.
He had to get his body back functioning properly so he could get a clean bill of health to return to his job. That was the most important thing. Getting back to work. Putting out fires. Until then, he felt as if he was on hold.
Too bad his physical therapist was keeping him waiting, too. He stood, freed himself from his brother Lawrence’s helpful grasp and steadied himself on his cane as he walked over to the receptionist’s desk for the second time in twenty minutes.
The short, perky woman had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore very little makeup on her almond-colored face. He glanced at the nameplate on her desk. Jenny Saunders.
“Ms. Saunders, I—” he started, only to be cut off with a honey-sweet smile.
“She’s running a little behind. This isn’t normally the case. She’ll be right with you. Again, I apologize for the delay. We had a therapist call in sick today, and Samantha had to take on some of his patients.”
The woman gave him another pleasant grin and a stare that seemed to suggest he go and sit down somewhere. He could tell Jenny Saunders was getting a little tired of him.
So what? He was tired of waiting.
His therapist’s first-impression points were going down—way down.
“Why don’t you just chill, man? Have a seat. Relax.” His brother Lawrence was only a couple of years older than him. The way the narcotics detective was always telling Joel what to do, one would think Lawrence had him by decades.
Although all the Hightower men shared the same mahogany complexions, dashing good looks and athletic builds, he and Lawrence had often been mistaken for twins when they were growing up. He used to hate that.
He decided to ignore Lawrence for the moment.
“It’s not like you walking up there every five minutes is going to make your therapist come any faster,” Lawrence offered.
When he realized Joel was not going to respond, Lawrence shrugged and went back to flipping through the Vibe magazine he’d gotten from the humongous pile of reading materials on the coffee table.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I’m Samantha Dash, and you must be Mr. Hightower.”
He turned to set eyes on a curvy chocolate goddess with flashing brown eyes, flawlessly smooth skin and jet-black hair. She wore her hair in one of those natural styles with twists, and it reached her shoulders. Then there was her smile…With a smile like hers she could probably get away with anything.
Anything but keep him waiting.
Forget how captivating she looked. “Do you always disregard your patients’ time like this, or is it just me? Because if this is the way you conduct yourself, then maybe I should look into getting another therapist.”
She tilted her head, and she took a step back, placing her hand on her hip. She glared at him for a full minute before saying a word.
Joel glanced at Lawrence for some moral support and saw his brother had buried his face in the magazine.
No problem. He didn’t need backup for this. Right was right and wrong was wrong.
“Like I said, I apologize. We’re down one therapist today, but that’s not your problem. The gift of understanding isn’t something everyone is born with. So, I’m sorry for giving you the opportunity to exhibit your extreme lack in that area. Now, if you’ll just follow me, we can get you started.” Her smile took on a decidedly false appearance, and gone was the warmth and kindness that seemed to exude from her just a few moments ago.
Oh, well.
That wasn’t his problem. He was there for one reason and one reason only, to get his life back, and if this hand-on-hip, smart-mouth spitfire of a woman had to be checked from the door in order to ensure he got what he needed, then so be it.
Well, pictures certainly are deceiving. Samantha led Joel Hightower back into her office in the clinic. She had been a little nervous when she found out she was the therapist assigned to the hero firefighter. The fact that she had thought of him often over the past six months made her think she might be risking her usual professional distance with him as a patient.
Meeting the incorrigible, surly man in person let her know right away she had nothing to worry about. She didn’t have to worry about being attracted to him. Hell, she didn’t have to worry about even liking this man. He was nothing like the playful, mischievously sexy stud she had conjured up in her imagination.
That guy would probably always have a funny joke and a smile. That guy had sex appeal for days and would make a woman run hot, not with anger the way she was at the moment, but with passion.
That guy didn’t exist and in his place was this jerk.
“First off, I’d like to tell you a little bit about what you’ll be doing here for the next three months.” She kept her tone even and flat as they sat in her office.
It was a small office with an even tinier window, but it was hers. At twenty-seven years old, she liked the fact she had worked hard and secured a position with excellent growth opportunities at such a high-profile clinic attached to a renowned hospital and medical center.
One day she would have a bigger office and even more patients, but for now, she made this one cozy with lots of earth tones and faux plants. She would have loved real plants, but her first efforts of using real greenery to beautify her space ended in carnage. It would have rivaled the destruction of the rain forests if she hadn’t performed a self-intervention and embraced her lack of a green thumb.
During her first time meeting with a patient, she liked to give them a sense of what to expect. So she talked with them in her office for about twenty to thirty minutes depending on her first impression of the patient’s personality and the injuries each had sustained. At the end of each session, she spoke with them to wrap things up.
“My job is to help improve the function and mobility in your back. To help you begin to walk more fluidly. I’m also here to help relieve the pain and teach you exercise and pain-management techniques. We’ll run some general exercises today, testing your strength, balance, coordination, posture and muscle performance.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes.
Oh. No. He. Didn’t.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hightower, but am I boring you? Does the discussion of how I plan to help you with your back bother you?” She knew her tone was snappy, but she couldn’t help it.
He sighed again. “I heard all of this from my doctor. I know what a physical therapist is supposed to do, so can we get to it and just do it?”
Oh. Yes. He. Did.
How could she have been so wrong about a person? This impatient, irritable man was nothing like she had imagined, nothing like the man she had dreamed of him being. She almost wished she had never met him. At least then she would still have her sweet version of him to think about.
She plastered on her most professional smile. “Fine. I can explain as we go along.”
You surly sourpuss of a man!
Once she started working with him, things went somewhat smoothly. As long as they didn’t try to have a conversation, they were fine.
After working with him on balance, coordination and trying to get him used to moving around without the cane, she decided to try another shot at small talk. They had three months of therapy to get through, after all. It would be nice if they could build at least a cordial working relationship.
Basketball!
What man didn’t like to talk about sports? And the Nets and the Knicks were both having great seasons. As a Jersey guy, he was bound to be a fan of one of those teams.
Being a Chi-town girl, she personally liked the Bulls over all teams. She had been a fan since the days of Michael Jordan and she believed he was the greatest player to have ever played the game.
No one compared. No one.
And she included the Bulls in her prayers at least once a week—two or three times during the play-offs—in hopes the team would return to its former glory.
But she could squelch her fandom to reach out to a patient. She didn’t hate the Nets or the Knicks. She could tolerate those teams and their fans. As long as he wasn’t a Lakers fan or God forbid a Phoenix Suns fan, they could have a nice conversation.
“So, what do you think about the Nets?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think about them. I’m not really a fan of the team.”
“Oh, so you’re a Knicks fan?”
“Knicks? No way. That’s my brother Lawrence’s favorite team. I can’t stand them. They invent new ways to lose a game. Sorriest team in the league, well minus the Chicago Bulls, who haven’t seen a good year since that highly overrated ball hog Jordan left.” He laughed.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck and her lip twisted to the side.
Did he just call Jordan overrated and the Bulls sorry?
Her mind did a rewind as she replayed his blasphemous words in her mind. Sure, she’d wanted him to lighten up so they could connect, but…
“Actually, I’m a former Lakers fan. Now it’s all about the Suns. Shaq Diesel will go down in history as the best to ever play the game.” He flexed an arm muscle and nodded.
She could only assume he was trying to convince himself that the nonsense he was spouting was somehow true.
“On what planet? You must be delusional. Even if Michael Jordan had never played the game, Shaq would hardly qualify as the best to ever play it. And really…the Lakers? The Suns? That just lets me know you don’t have a thing to say about the sport worth listening to.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she winced.
She turned and looked at him and saw he was staring at her with a perplexed expression.
“So, because I like a different team and don’t think Jordan hung the moon, then I just need to shut up?”
Well, when you say it like that, it does sound kind of harsh.
She took a deep breath.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Mr. Hightower, “yes, shut up!” He made her mouth go on extra-overload saying things she would have never said to a patient, ever.
Her father used to take her to see the Bulls when she was a kid. After he was gone, she still watched all the games on television when she could. It had been the one thing she could do to remain close to him.
However, she could maybe, possibly, put her feelings on hold for a minute.
“No, of course you don’t need to shut up. You can certainly voice your opinions, no matter how woefully misguided they are.”
Now, see, you could have left off the woefully misguided part, Samantha, she told herself.
“How about we just leave basketball alone?”
“That’s probably a good idea.” She used her fake but very professional smile again. “So, I want to try a little electric stimulation today. It’s one of the methods we use to relieve pain.”
It was better to just stick to the basics with this guy. The only thing they seemed to have in common was getting him well.
Chapter 2
Driving back to his town house in Passaic Park with his brother, Joel couldn’t stop talking about his physical therapist. She was certainly great at what she did. In one session, she had put him through more activity than he’d seen in months, and it seemed like the more irritated she became with him, the more she did.
He had a feeling Lawrence was a little bit tired of him talking about Samantha Dash, but every time he thought he was done, he would remember something else.
By the time they were sitting in his living room watching a basketball game on his large flat-screen television, he remembered the horrified look on her face when he had made his comment about Michael Jordan. You would have thought he’d said the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus should be executed at the firing range.
