The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion

The old house creaked and a shed door slammed shut outside, highlighting the uncomfortable quiet that had suddenly settled between the three of them. Finally, Carmen said, “I was hoping you’d be one of my bridesmaids.”

Hannah practically sighed, grateful to have the subject changed back to something more pleasant. “Wait. Would I have to walk down the aisle with Drew? Because nothing says ‘lonely spinster’ like having your brother as an escort.”

“You would only walk with him at the end,” Luke said, then smirked. “Unless you want me to ask Isaac Jones to be my best man?”

Hannah’s response was to pick up a plump strawberry from the fruit salad and throw it at his head.

“Is someone going to fill me in on whatever is going on between you and Isaac?” Carmen asked.

Luke shook his head at his fiancée. “Don’t ask or she might tell you.”

“Do you know what he had the gall to do earlier today?” Hannah continued as though she hadn’t heard them. “He tried to squeeze into a picture I was taking of Sammy.”

Her brother used his finger to wipe off the red juice dribbling down his cheek. “Where was this picture being taken?”

“Inside the fire truck.” Hannah looked down at one of her jagged thumbnails. Not that she was the type of woman who had time for manicures, but she also wasn’t normally a nail biter. Or, at least, she hadn’t been one in years. Just two sightings of Isaac and less than forty-eight hours later, her nails were bitten to the quick.

“Technically...” Carmen handed Luke a damp paper towel to wipe his face “...I believe it’s called a fire engine.”

“What did he do when you asked him to turn the taxpayers’ fire engine—” Luke winked at his fiancée “—into your personal portrait studio?”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t like I asked for special treatment or anything. In fact, if it’d been up to me, I would’ve kept as far away from him as possible. But you should’ve seen how Sammy’s eyes lit up when he put on that helmet. My son is obviously way more important to me than a meaningless grudge some arrogant firefighter still hasn’t gotten over ten years later.”

“Hello?” Carmen’s hand shot up into the air and she waved her fingers. “I’m still lost over here. What grudge? What’s going on between you and Isaac?”

“Nothing!” Hannah wailed, then she lowered her voice when she spotted the kids playing outside the window. “Nothing is going on between us and it never will again.”

“Again?”

“We dated briefly when we were teenagers.” Actually, they’d done a lot more than date, but Hannah wasn’t going to further humiliate herself by admitting to her brother and his fiancée how much more. Ten years ago, Hannah had been much more innocent—in more ways than one—and had thought Isaac was “the one.” Currently, though, both pride and hindsight forced her to downplay how foolish she’d once been. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“As you can see,” Luke grabbed for another slice of pepperoni, not even bothering to conceal his sneakiness this time. “Hannah’s totally over him. She’s only mentioned him about thirty-eight times since she got here tonight.”

“No I haven’t.” Hannah crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I didn’t even say a word about the video.”

“What video?” Carmen asked and Hannah’s jaw snapped shut.

“Somebody posted a breakup video on YouTube ten years ago,” Luke explained, as though it was perfectly normal to end a relationship in an online rant to the entire world. Then he looked at Hannah. “Did you ever find out who did it?”

But she kept her lips locked in place. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to her that Isaac wasn’t necessarily responsible for posting it? And did it even matter? All that mattered was that he’d said the words.

“What do you mean, a breakup video?” Carmen asked.

When it became apparent that Hannah wasn’t going to speak, Luke continued. “I forget the exact words he used, but it went something like, ‘Hannah Gregson was done with me so she moved on to the next guy.’”

Actually, it was Hannah Gregson is the ultimate user. She plays all innocent until she gets what she wants and moves on to the next guy. Well, guess what, Gregson? It’s over and you’ll never see me in Sugar Falls again. Too bad you just lost out on the best guy you’ll get. Not that Hannah had replayed it in her mind a thousand times.

“Ouch.” Carmen frowned, not even knowing the worst part. Isaac’s unpleasant speech had come right after they’d spent the night together. “How old was he when he did this?”

“Eighteen,” Luke replied. “And, in his defense, his eyes were pretty watery at the time, as though he’d been drowning his sorrow in a case of cheap beer.”

“In his defense?” Hannah finally spoke up. A bit too loudly. “You’re supposed to be my brother, you know? Whatever happened to having each other’s back?”

“You want me drive over to the fire station and beat him up for you?” he asked, and Hannah tilted her head as she pondered his offer. “Geez, I was kidding, Hannah. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

“Because of your job?” She nibbled at the cuticle on her thumb. Her brother was a former SEAL who was now the officer in charge of Navy recruitment for the entire region.

“No, because of his.” Luke let out a deep breath when Hannah shot him a look of confusion. “Here’s the deal. I know this might surprise you, but your precious nephews got into a little trouble at the Fourth of July picnic.”

“Those angels?” Hannah looked out the window to where Aiden was tying each side of a kite to Caden’s shoulders as they directed Sammy to run a tape measure from the top of a ladder to an oak tree in the middle of the yard. Carmen groaned before dashing outside to get them.

“I know. It’s hard to believe.” Luke chuckled. “I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved a bag of hot dog buns, some firecrackers and Mayor Johnston’s hand-carved cornhole set. Anyway, Isaac was on duty nearby and had the blaze put out before it did any real damage. But he also gave the boys a solid lecture about fire safety and made them honorary junior deputies. Since then, they haven’t so much as blown out a candle, let alone gotten anywhere near an open flame. So I kinda owe the guy.”

“Well, I don’t owe him a damn thing,” Hannah replied.

She’d already given Isaac Jones way too much of herself.

By seven o’clock on Monday morning, most of the weekend tourists had left town and Sugar Falls was already bustling with locals returning to work. Isaac had just gotten off duty and decided to stop at Duncan’s to pick up some groceries before heading back to his uncle’s house.

Walking across the street from the fire station to the only market in town, he used his cell phone to call Jonesy, who answered on the first ring.

“Do we have any eggs?” Isaac asked.

“Not sure,” the old man replied.

Isaac really needed to move into his own place and stock his own fridge. “What about milk?”

“Might have a little left.”

A horn honked from somewhere down the street and Isaac heard the echo of the same honk on the speaker. “Where are you?”

“On my way to the Cowgirl Up Café to meet Scooter for breakfast,” Jonesy said in a slow drawl.

Looking over his shoulder, he spotted his uncle a few hundred feet away, riding his horse in the middle of the road, a line of cars gridlocked behind them. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Isaac disconnected the phone and counted patiently until Jonesy cantered up to him. “I thought Mayor Johnston told you not to ride Klondike on the street anymore.”

“He did. But then the folks over at city hall threw a walleyed fit when I started riding her on the sidewalk. So unless they’re gonna put a horse trail through downtown, me and Klondike are gonna take advantage of any road my tax dollars pay for.”

“You could drive your truck, you know.”

“Then Klondike would miss out on those big, juicy apples Freckles gives her over at the café.” His uncle patted the horse’s spotted gray neck. “You like your treats, don’tcha, girl?”

“Well, maybe you should at least ride her in the bicycle lane,” Isaac suggested.

“That’s for bikes. You wanna grab some breakfast with me and Scooter?”

Isaac studied the older man, looked at the parking lot of the market then glanced at his watch. As a kid, the highlights of his summer used to be when he’d get to spend time with Jonesy and Scooter, his uncle’s best friend, and listen to their countless stories. The two irreverent coots were staples in downtown Sugar Falls and loved to sit around talking about their days on the professional bull riding circuit, the action they saw in Vietnam and the latest prospects for the Boise State offensive line. They were both part of the volunteer fire department and mountain rescue team, but mostly they hung out gossiping about the locals and imparting unsolicited advice to anyone in their vicinity, peppering their conversations with the occasional conspiracy theory.

Isaac patted his empty stomach. He’d been out of town for a couple of weeks and hadn’t had Freckles’ country gravy in a while. Plus, it would be a good chance to catch up on the latest news. And by news, he meant information about Hannah Gregson and her sudden reentry into his life. “I guess I could go for some chicken-fried steak. But I’ll walk. And I’m a government employee, so if Mayor Johnston or Cessy Walker see you on that horse, I’m gonna keep on walking.”

The Cowgirl Up Café was only two blocks down Snowflake Boulevard, the main street that ran through the center of the Victorian-era downtown. Although he lived in Jonesy’s old cabin on Sugar Creek, Isaac spent most of his time at the new fire station, working out the kinks of turning a rural volunteer unit into a professional and efficiently run department. Proving to everyone that he would be the best fire chief this town had ever seen.

His mom had always pushed him to be the best at whatever he did. If it were up to his old man—Jonesy’s brother—Isaac would’ve been handed everything on a silver platter. Hank—now Henry—Jones left Sugar Falls the day he turned eighteen and never looked back. He’d made his fortune in the stock market and vowed that no relative of his would ever have to worry about money again.

It was probably the biggest thing that his parents fought about, when they bothered to spend any time together. His mother was a young intern when she’d met and married his father and Henry never quite got over the fact that his supposed trophy wife ended up out-earning him by their third year of marriage. Neither one had wanted children, but Henry had talked her into just one child in the hopes that it would slow his wife’s career path and turn her into a carpooling soccer mom.

Yet having Isaac only drove Rachel Jones to do better, to put in extra hours at the office, to make even more money. He was the wedge that had finally driven his parents apart. At least, that’s how he’d always felt.

If Henry would buy their son the latest gaming console, Rachel would send him outside to work with the gardener in order to “earn” time to play video games. When Henry had taken Isaac aboard his private yacht for two months on the Mediterranean, Rachel decided to send her biracial son to spend his summers with a cranky, older uncle in a simple cabin on a mountain in Idaho—about as far from their Upper East Side lifestyle as she could get him. She’d thought it’d be the perfect way to not only get back at Henry, but also make Isaac appreciate the finer things that money could buy, which would make him want to become an even greater success than his parents.

His mom’s goal of pushing Isaac to always rise above had worked and made him competitive at life. Just not at the career that she’d envisioned and thoroughly mapped out for him.

Because they were short-staffed until the latest batch of recruits graduated from the fire academy in Boise, Isaac had spent the past two days working double overnight shifts to cover for one of his deputy firefighters. He hadn’t seen his uncle since the pancake breakfast on Saturday. While Isaac had been relieved to avoid Jonesy’s nosy questions about the return of his ex-girlfriend, he also hadn’t been able to gather any useful information.

When they walked through the saloon-style front doors of the restaurant, Isaac had to blink a few times to accustom himself to the bright purple and turquoise-blue decor. He’d been coming to the café since the summer after sixth grade, and the eclectic decorating style was no clearer to him now than it had been back then—he could never figure out if it looked more like a rustic bunkhouse on a ranch or a sequin-covered sorority house.

“Darlin’!” yelled Freckles, the owner and interior decorator. At least, he assumed she was the one responsible for the look of the place—judging from her brightly dyed orange hair, red cowboy boots, skintight leopard-print leggings and low-cut lime-green T-shirt that boasted We’ll Butter Your Biscuit. “When’d you get back from your trainin’?”

“Late Friday night.”

“Well then, I don’t blame you for not stopping in and seeing me yet.” Freckles carried a pot of coffee to the booth where Scooter was already sitting. “Not even the start of ski season, and this place was already a madhouse last weekend. Your old uncle here almost got himself eighty-sixed for coming in on Saturday and announcing to all my paying customers that my pancakes came from a box mix.”

“Who are you callin’ old?” Jonesy mumbled, flipping over a hot-pink coffee mug. Isaac kicked his uncle under the table. Nobody knew Freckles’ exact age, and although it would probably be safe to estimate that the woman was nearing her eighth decade, it definitely wouldn’t be prudent to mention it out loud.

“I’m putting you and Scooter on decaf.” Freckles squinted, her long false eyelashes sticking together as she frowned at Jonesy. “I’m not dealing with any extra sass outta you two this mornin’.”

Isaac chuckled, but his humorous mood was quickly cut short when the front door opened and Sammy appeared, wearing stiff jeans with creases and a brand new pair of sneakers. Hannah was right behind him, dressed in a long, bohemian-style skirt and a high-necked tank top, the arms of her denim jacket cinched around her waist.

For the second time today, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Isaac believed in a life lived with plenty of forgiveness and no regrets. But that had been before Hannah Gregson came crashing back into his universe with her cute kid. It was much easier to forgive a past grievance when he wasn’t running into the person who’d done him wrong everywhere he went in this small town.

The top of her long, blond hair was loosely clipped, allowing the bottom locks to stream down her back in soft waves. The last two times he’d seen her, she’d had it pulled up. In fact, when they’d been teenagers, the only time he’d ever seen it completely down had been the night they’d sneaked off to the boatshed behind her family’s cabin and she’d been peeling off her swimsuit with the lantern light glowing off her tanned skin...

He took a gulp of water, tilting the glass back so quickly that an ice cube slipped down his throat, causing him to sputter. Unfortunately, his cough caused everyone in the restaurant to look his way, including Sammy, whose face lit up with a crooked smile as he darted over.

“Hi, Chief Jones! Do you still have the photo of me on your phone?” The boy’s accent seemed to deepen slightly with his excitement. “My mama said she forgot to ask you for a copy.”

Forgot? After telling Isaac to get out of the picture, the woman had been so quick to rush off with her kid, she’d tossed his cell on the passenger seat of the fire engine and hadn’t even said so much as a thank-you.

He took a pen out of his front T-shirt pocket and scribbled on his paper napkin. “This is my number. Tell your mom to text me and I’ll send it to her.”

Isaac told himself that it wasn’t as if he wanted Hannah to have any more contact with him than necessary. He merely wanted her to acknowledge that he’d done something nice for her.

“I’ll tell her.” Sammy nodded. “Are you going to bring the fire engine to school today?”

“I hope not.” Disappointment flashed across the kid’s face and Isaac amended, “But only because that would mean we were responding to a fire and nobody wants one of those disrupting how much fun you’ll be having in your new class.”

Sammy didn’t seem quite convinced and Isaac sympathized with being the new kid in a different world. So he offered Sammy the same distraction Uncle Jonesy had once offered him when he’d been a child. “If you want to see the fire engine again, just come by the station anytime, big guy.”

Hannah was at the counter, balancing two white bakery boxes in her arms but keeping a guarded eye on Sammy. While he doubted she could hear him, Isaac’s stomach clenched at the realization that the woman probably wasn’t a fan of him talking to her son, let alone giving out an open invitation to hang out at the fire station. Was she seriously that worried that he might be a bad influence? Or maybe she feared that Isaac would tell the kid about their shared past.

“Sweetie,” Hannah called out to the child. “Can you come help me carry these to the car?”

The boy did an about-face and his new sneakers squeaked as he walked over to his mom. She stroked his head before giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Isaac recalled his own first day at his elite boarding school in Connecticut. There hadn’t been any affectionate affirmations or even parting words of wisdom. His father had a “business meeting” on the golf course and his mother was closing a deal in Taiwan. But her assistant had left an itemized packing list with the maid and a map with specific drop off instructions for their driver.

Sammy gave her a toothless grin and a thumbs up before carefully taking one of the containers.

“You’re gonna need another set of hands to get these all out to your car, darlin’,” Freckles admonished.

“We can make two trips.” Hannah smiled at the waitress, but even from halfway across the restaurant, Isaac could see the pink flush stealing up her sucked-in cheeks and the steady way she avoided making eye contact with anyone.

He flashed back to the summer when they were seventeen. The baseball game she’d organized to raise money for a new bingo cage at the senior center got rained out before game time, and she’d been sitting, drenched, in the uncovered dugout. Isaac had pulled up in Jonesy’s old truck and offered to drive her home. She’d confided in him how weak it made her feel when people thought she needed help—especially when she was the one who was supposed to be helping others. She’d admitted that she’d always been the baby of her family and with her twin brothers’ recent enlistment in the Navy, she was finally getting the freedom to spread her wings and prove that she could be just as strong and as capable as them. Unfortunately, in her determination to make the world a better place, she also hadn’t had the foresight to get her driver’s license before deciding to tackle all of her charitable goals.

If he had to pinpoint the start of their relationship, it would be that day, when the sweet and beautiful girl who claimed she didn’t need anybody finally accepted his help. It had all been downhill after that.

Jonesy kicked him under the table and used his whiskered chin to nod toward Hannah.

What? he mouthed at Jonesy.

“He wants you to go help her, son!” Scooter’s booming voice drew everyone’s attention. The last thing Isaac wanted was to have the townspeople speculating about the new fire chief, the returning teacher and their disastrous past together. Not that they weren’t already doing exactly that.

“No need,” Hannah said, turning toward the exit so quickly that her hair swirled in waves down her back. “I’ll come back for the rest.”

The only way to stop the stares—and the speculation—was to get Hannah out of the restaurant as soon as possible.

Chapter Four

Isaac stood quickly and was at the counter in five strides. He picked up the remaining three bakery boxes and followed Sammy, who was trailing his mother out of the café.

The smell of sugar and cinnamon made his head dizzy as he watched her retreating rear end cross the sidewalk to where several cars—and two horses—were parked at the curb, her flowing skirt swishing with each of her hurried steps.

Isaac recalled the summer he was fifteen, when Hannah had worn a Save Our Planet T-shirt and organized a recycling drive at the park square in the center of town. He would’ve expected her to be driving some low-emission hybrid automobile and not the behemoth of a gas-guzzling jalopy she was currently unlocking.

“Is this really your car?” he asked, then cringed as she dropped one of the containers she’d been balancing in her free arm.

She groaned, then turned to face him. “No, it’s not. And what are you doing here?”

“I’m helping you carry...” he looked down at his boxes “...whatever this is.”

“They’re cinnamon rolls. It’s Nurse Dunn’s birthday today and normally the principal would bring in breakfast treats to celebrate with the other teachers. But Dr. Cromartie was taken to the hospital with appendicitis over the weekend, so I volunteered to pick them up.”

Of course she did, Isaac thought. But before he could comment on her constant need for martyrdom, she lowered her voice and added, “I meant, what are you doing in Sugar Falls?”

He took a step back at her accusatory tone. “I live here.”

“But why?”

“I’m guessing for the same reason you want to live here. Because I like it.”

“I thought you liked the East Coast better. You were certainly eager enough to go back there. Couldn’t you have gotten a job with the Yale Fire Department or something?”

“First of all, no. Yale is a college, not a city, so they don’t technically have their own fire department.”

She huffed before bending down to pick up the cinnamon rolls she’d dropped. “I was being facetious.”

Hannah took the box from Sammy, whose wide eyes were bouncing back and forth between the two adults arguing on the sidewalk. She pulled one of the fresh baked treats out and passed it to him. “Everything is fine, sweetie. Grab a napkin out of the glove box in case you get icing on your shirt and then buckle up.”

As the boy climbed inside, she turned back to Isaac. Her full pink lips parted, but before she could resume her attack, Isaac said, “Second of all, Sugar Falls needed a chief for the new fire department and I was the most qualified candidate for the position.”

“They must not have had a very big pool of applicants.” Hannah used her key to open the trunk, then snatched the top two boxes from the stack in his arms—a bit forcefully, in his opinion. However, he wasn’t going to take the bait. He stepped around her to set the rest of the cinnamon rolls in the car, but she didn’t get out of his way in time, causing his biceps to brush against the soft cotton covering her breast.

It felt as if someone had lit a match inside his chest and his skin tightened as she gasped.

“Third of all...” He schooled his features so she wouldn’t be able to see that the accidental contact had affected him as much as it had her. “I have just as much right to live here as you do.”

“But I lived here first.” She slammed the car door and put her hands on her hips, which only served to draw his gaze to her full breasts.

“You didn’t live here six months ago when I took the position. Trust me. I checked.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You checked on where I was living?”

“Apparently not well enough.” The truth was that he hadn’t asked his uncle directly because Isaac didn’t want Jonesy to think he’d never gotten over her. But he’d tried to bring it up in casual conversation with Scooter Deets, who obviously wasn’t a reliable source. All he’d told Isaac was that the last he’d heard, Hannah was living somewhere overseas doing charity work. “So it looks like you’re stuck with me now.”