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Firefighter With A Frozen Heart
Dianne Drake
Firefighter With a Frozen Heart
Dianne Drake
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ufcf808b3-cf78-5046-9744-e395772ef0d0)
Title Page (#uadc99fb7-2182-54ba-8160-ba235406b428)
Praise (#u5986d82d-b993-520a-9949-c70ca740349c)
Excerpt (#u1e6e11db-d54c-5ec5-9bda-9cd49b7ccdd9)
About the Author (#u245cd0d9-be6c-576c-ac80-511fb9de4a2f)
Chapter One (#u6636973c-b8e8-57bc-a0b2-313a04003745)
Chapter Two (#ub47c43e4-8b58-5837-a317-47748b390afd)
Chapter Three (#u81a7d0db-596c-5974-ba8b-fc01973e8a3d)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise for Jessica Matthews:
‘With a rich backstory and an emotional reunion, readers are treated to a beautiful love story. It is heartwarming to see two people deeply in love get a second chance.’
—RT Book Reviews on SIX-WEEK MARRIAGE MIRACLE
A new trilogy from Dianne Drake
NEW YORK HOSPITAL HEARTTHROBS
Three gorgeous guys return home to upstate New York. It’s a place they love to hate, until they each find a bride—amidst the bustle of a very special hospital.
With THE DOCTOR’S REASON TO STAY, Dianne Drake welcomed you to the first story in her trilogy.
Now, with FIREFIGHTER WITH A FROZEN HEART, we see doctor turned daredevil firefighter Jess Corbett face his biggest challenge yet …
Damn, he shouldn’t have kissed her.
Should have left well enough alone—especially since they’d come to an understanding. But the urge … Well, he’d hoped it would be quelled. It wasn’t, though. Didn’t even come close to it. In fact, one kiss had whetted his appetite. He wanted more. But he knew the result of that, didn’t he?
About the Author
Now that her children have left home, DIANNE DRAKE is finally finding the time to do some of the things she adores—gardening, cooking, reading, shopping for antiques. Her absolute passion in life, however, is adopting abandoned and abused animals. Right now Dianne and her husband Joel have a little menagerie of three dogs and two cats, but that’s always subject to change. A former symphony orchestra member, Dianne now attends the symphony as a spectator several times a month and, when time permits, takes in an occasional football, basketball or hockey game.
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.
