Sweet Justice

The toughest call he ever had to make

Following protocol during a fire that badly injured a young woman leaves Georgia firefighter Andrew Monroe racked with guilt. He hopes to make amends by helping Mallory Blair’s kid sister heal through equestrian therapy on his family ranch. The big obstacle is Mallory, who blames Andrew for what happened in spite of the daring rescue that placed his own life at risk. He knows that falling for Mallory is asking for trouble...especially when their mutual attraction ignites more conflict. But Mallory’s a fighter. Like her sister. Like him. Together, can they find a way to turn the past into hope for the future?

“That’s better. You don’t look so polished now. You look all rumpled and kissable.”

“I do?” Mallory tilted her head up, staring into clear, calm blue eyes.

Andrew cupped her jaw. His mouth on hers was soft, tentative at first, then more confident. It was a good kiss, a near perfect kiss, all the better because he didn’t push things, but let it happen naturally. She rested her cheek against his shoulder.

“Mauve is the pink trying to be purple,” she murmured for lack of anything else to say.

“Never can keep those straight.” His hand slid along her hair, tucking it back behind her ear. She felt his gaze upon her, smelled a hint of smoke on his skin.

He was wearing his uniform under the denim jacket, she realized with a start—navy blue with the insignia stitched onto the pocket.

The same uniform he wore when he’d abandoned Katelyn to that demon fire.

Dear Reader,

I still remember the night a kitchen fire devastated the heart of my parents’ home. Luckily, no one was injured. Others, including many firefighters on duty and off, haven’t been as fortunate.

In Sweet Justice, Andrew and Mallory find themselves dealing with the fallout of just such a fire, one that injures both a civilian and a firefighter. It all starts with a single bad decision with the potential to send hopes, dreams and futures up in smoke.

The worst thing about most structure fires? They’re imminently preventable. Writing this book has reminded me to be safe—and to check those smoke detector batteries!

Cynthia

Check out me and my fellow Mills & Boon Heartwarming sisters at heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com.

Sweet Justice

Cynthia Reese

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CYNTHIA REESE lives with her husband and their daughter in south Georgia, along with their two dogs, three cats and however many strays show up for morning muster. She has been scribbling since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and reading even before that. A former journalist, teacher and college English instructor, she also enjoys cooking, traveling and photography when she gets the chance.

To my lovely gal pals—Leslie, Bobbi and Fran. Thanks for talking me down from the ledges.

Acknowledgments

Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran are the best editors on the planet—this book wouldn’t have been possible without them. I also owe a huge debt to my Harlequin Heartwarming sister Karen Rock, who patiently brainstormed with me to work out the lives of the Georgia Monroes.

For technical help, thanks goes to Sergeant Tommy Windham and all the firefighters at the City of Dublin, Georgia’s Fire Department. Dr. Jean Sumner first gave me the idea of what injury Katelyn might suffer in a fire. Eric Carney and Stacy Watson graciously taught me what burn victims endure during rehab. All mistakes are mine!

Inspiration also came from the Love family—they’ve shown me what a wonderful thing a big family can be.

My critique partner, Tawna Fenske, as well as my readers, Jessica Brown, Wright and Dusty Gres, Kandice Williams, and Lee and Kathy Cheek, helped me tremendously.

And to my husband and my daughter—I owe you loan-shark big for putting up with my MIA self.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

BLACKNESS.

A solid wall of blackness.

Andrew Monroe crawled farther into the darkness, the grit of the floor biting into his knees, the heft of the fire hose under his right arm. His left hand secure on Eric Russell’s turnout gear, the only way he even knew his fellow crewmember was ahead of him.

And the girl they were trying to find? Who knew where she was? Or was she even here?

Eric had called out to her, but the only noise that penetrated the darkness was the rasp of their own breathing.

Captain had said that her roommates weren’t sure the girl, Katelyn, was still in the house—if you could call the tumbledown two-story much of a house. It seemed to go on forever, just room after room. It was like so many of the big old homes in this college town—taken over by students in search of cheap rent, and who cared if the place was nothing more than a firetrap?

The roommates, Cap said, weren’t even sure this girl, Katelyn, had even come home the night before. No one had seen her since yesterday afternoon.

She was probably out for an early-morning run or getting coffee or had slept over at a friend’s—at least, she was if she was lucky.

Whether she was in here or not, it was Eric and Andrew’s job to clear the structure and make sure no one was still in the house. So they started at the bottom, intent on working toward the stairs.

Eric moved forward, and Andrew crawled behind. He heard Eric’s muffled call for Katelyn again, then his waiting silence.

Only the sound of their air packs answered. Andrew’s heart sank. This was a mess, and he could sense time was running out for her if she was in here. She was just a college kid.

Nobody needs to die that young.

Eric pulled up short, and Andrew almost crashed into him. He stayed still, listening. Yeah—there it was again, ahead and above them...on the stairs?

A girl screaming. Even through his mask and the rest of his gear, Andrew could hear the panic in her voice.

Why do they always go up?

Was she coming down the stairs? In this smoke? She’d be dead—better for her to stay where she was until they could get a ladder setup outside, pull her from one of the upstairs windows.

He felt more than heard her as she dashed back and forth across the landing above their heads.

Hasn’t anyone taught you to get on your knees in a fire? Sheesh. You’re like a jackrabbit up there. Slow down, otherwise you run out of air. Get to a window.

Had Eric heard? Andrew signaled to Eric, who was in charge of their two-man sweep team. They needed to radio the captain. As the guy in charge, that was Eric’s call to make.

Once the girl was safe, Captain could assess whether it was worth the risk to save this heap of junk.

Eric and Andrew’s history of teamwork paid off. Andrew sensed that his buddy had either heard the girl himself or realized that Andrew had.

Eric moved—for his radio? To tell Andrew to make the call?

Andrew didn’t have the time to figure it out, because in the next breath, the floor next to Eric gave way. Hot air belched upward, along with a cloud of blackness tinged with an unearthly glow from the flames beneath them.

His buddy would have dropped into that glow if Andrew hadn’t had a hold of him. Even so, Eric slipped, his hands scrabbling for purchase, his feet digging into part of the floor that still held. Andrew tightened his grip on him, praying that the floor wouldn’t give way beneath them.

C’mon, c’mon, hold still!

For a heart-stopping moment, Andrew was sure they were going to tumble into the yawning pit of darkness below, the heat billowing up...

At least I’m not married. I won’t leave a wife like Dad left Ma.

Something in Andrew fought back at that and doggedly held on. They were too young to die in a death trap like this, Andrew was twenty-five to Eric’s twenty-eight. Fire couldn’t have them today.

Not today. Maybe someday, but not on my watch.

The big firefighter swung sideways and Eric’s head rammed into something thick and heavy. The sickening thud reverberated through Andrew’s fingers and arm.

Andrew seized the safety strap on Eric’s gear and began to drag him away slowly, every muscle protesting at Eric’s weight plus the added burden of air packs and boots and turnout gear. The intense heat from the fire and the strain left Andrew gasping.

One more tug. One more pull. And another. And another. Andrew’s arms felt as though they would be yanked out of their sockets if he didn’t get Eric to a safer spot.

But at least he’s breathing.

The blackness got even blacker and Andrew knew what that meant.

The fire’s spread.

As Andrew reached for his radio, he felt a shudder in the floor beneath him. He had to get them out before the whole place went. He scooped Eric under the arms again and began dragging him backward, along the line, to the door.

Above him, a girl was screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t let me die!”

Or was it his imagination? Was the fire playing tricks on him?

The front door and help felt an ocean away...and the girl, Katelyn? She might as well be on the moon.

He stopped for a breath. How much air had he used from his tanks to pull Eric this far? How much air did he have left? Unclipping his radio, he managed to wheeze, “Mayday! Mayday!”

Instantly his captain responded, wanting a size-up. Andrew got it out, all of it, Eric, the girl, everything, then returned to the task of dragging Eric closer to the door, inch by inch. Drag. Stop and breathe. Drag. Stop and breathe. Drag—

Hands closed over him—the RIT team Captain had sent in. They scooped up Eric as though he weighed no more than a feather, hauled him away from Andrew.

Above him, another scream.

Or was it only in his head?

Another hand gripped him, pulling him. Andrew’s muscles quivered with exhaustion, but even so a part of him wanted to go back for the girl.

He knew leaving her was the right thing to do. Other firefighters would put the ladder against the upstairs window, go in, find her.

He was done. For now he was done.

Outside, blinking under the glare through the gray October clouds, Andrew drew in deep gulps of cold air. Across the yard, EMTs swarmed over Eric. Head injury, laceration to his leg, maybe a punctured lung from a broken rib.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye before they had Eric on the bus and down the street.

His captain strode up beside him, radio halfway to his mouth. “Monroe! Where was that girl? They can’t find her. They’ve done a sweep, but no dice. I pulled them out—the smoke’s so bad, and they used up their air in nothing flat. That whole place is about to go.”

“You’ve got to go after her!” Andrew insisted. “Sounded as if she was on the landing above us—as though maybe she was trying to come down.”

The captain swore. “The way that floor caved, you can bet the stairs aren’t far behind.”

“I heard her,” Andrew repeated. “I’ll go. Send me. I just need a new air pack. I know where she is—at least where she was when I was pulling Eric out.”

The captain’s radio squawked, seizing his attention. He turned back, a look of indecision on his face for a moment, then he gave Andrew a quick nod.

Andrew didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a new air pack and shot up the ladder, nozzle in hand, with another firefighter, Jackson, behind him.

This time, he didn’t hear Katelyn. He climbed inside the window and pushed along the bedroom wall, pawing through what felt like a drycleaner’s worth of clothes on the floor. Around a heavy dresser. Over a squeaky toy.

Out the door. Down another hall, this one bare floor, no carpet. Heat seemed to radiate upward through the cracks in the floorboards, and he pushed back thoughts of Eric almost tumbling down into the blackness.

The floor would hold.

They would find Katelyn.

“Fire!” Jackson hollered out. “Stairs!”

Andrew pointed the nozzle and blanketed the area with water.

The smoke, amazingly, seemed to clear, and that was when he saw her—just the shape of her, just a suggestion of a form on the floor. It was a miracle he’d seen her—a second earlier, and he, like the earlier crew, would have missed her entirely.

Andrew crawled forward. Laid his hand on her.

Small. Scarcely bigger than Taylor or Marissa—and his nieces were only twelve.

Still, her deadweight slowed him down as he tried to drag her one-handed back the way they’d come. He was too tired—too exhausted from pulling Eric. He needed to use both hands.

It was almost as if Jackson could read his mind. He clapped Andrew on the back and grabbed the nozzle. Now Andrew set to work, dragging her along the line, back toward the bedroom, over the squeaky toy, through the clothes that would go like fat-lighter kindling once the fire reached this far.

And it would. The glow was getting bigger, marching up the stairs, toward the bedroom door. Jackson was hurrying him now, but he didn’t need to, because Andrew knew the score.

They had to get out, out before that fire ate through the staircase and took away the second floor’s main load-bearing wall.

Now for the window—daylight, even if it was only a rectangle of gray the color of galvanized steel. The hand-off to Tommy, who was waiting on the ladder—

And that was when Andrew saw how bad Katelyn really was. The disintegrated yoga pants from mid-shin down, the misshapen and blackened bedroom slippers, with their hot pink fur matted and melted. The soot-covered face slack and unresponsive.

I should have called it in when I heard her on the stairs. She was okay then. She was fine. And now... Is she even alive?

Andrew watched as Tommy made his way down the ladder. He watched for any hint that Katelyn was more than a corpse.

Too late. I was too late.

He clambered out onto the ladder and headed down, his heart somewhere in his boots.

Too late. The words echoed in his head with every step on every rung.

On the ground, more EMTs were waiting to take her from Tommy. Quick as a flash they had her on a backboard, a C-collar on—and Tommy was giving him a thumbs-up. His wide grin told Andrew there were some signs of life.

Elation flooded him, and he nearly collapsed on the ground by the ladder as relief pulsed through him.

She’s alive!

A win. This was a win. The house could go—and it probably would in a matter of minutes, whether he gave it permission or not.

He looked back over his shoulder to see Jackson on the ground and flames punching through the upstairs windows.

Yeah. Fire could have the house. But it couldn’t have Eric, and it couldn’t have Katelyn—at least not today.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHILL ATE into Mallory Blair’s bones. The waiting room was empty except for an old man asleep on a couch. He was wrapped in about three dozen blankets and a plump pillow. She found herself fixated on those blankets, wishing for something warm to wrap around her.

Not a blanket to envelop her.

A pair of arms.

Not a pillow under her head.

A strong, rocklike shoulder.

She’d been here before—not here, not in this hospital. All she could think when she took in the institutional furnishings, the flickering fluorescent lights overhead, the overwhelming scent of citrus cleaner, was another hospital. The hospital where a doctor had come out and hemmed and hawed and finally told her that Mom and Dad were gone.

In one instant, the world she’d known—comfortable, secure, a future ahead of her— went poof. She’d gone from being—

Admit it, Mallory. You were a spoiled brat who had no clue how much you depended on your parents.

She hadn’t been all alone then.

Katelyn had been with her.

Mallory swallowed the sob pent up in her chest. If it came out, if she started crying, she’d lose it. She’d cry for hours or days or a lifetime, and she couldn’t do that. She had to be strong. She had to think and concentrate on what the doctor said.

If the doctor ever came back out.

What if she comes back out and tells you Katelyn’s gone?

Mallory was still trying to wrap her head around the little she knew. One minute she’d been hanging the new shipment of holiday dresses on the rack, running her steamer over them to remove the creases and folds, and the next, some stranger on a phone was telling her...

Accident, fire, medical evacuation by helicopter to a burn unit halfway across the state.

And here...after a two-hour drive through twisty Georgia roads she didn’t know, to find the right hospital in a city full of hospitals...

Down the hall came loud laughter. The corridor was full to bursting with a huge family, tumbling over one another like a box full of rambunctious puppies, more like a family reunion than a crisis. They’d had good news, she guessed. That or they were trying to put the horror of the moment out of their minds.

I should have never let Katelyn talk me into letting her skip her senior year and go on to college in Waverly. I should have insisted she choose a college closer to home. I should have found the money to pay for the dorm, not that firetrap of a house. It’s my fault—I pushed for that resident’s exemption for her, just to save money, and I shouldn’t have.

Mallory’s stomach rumbled. It confounded her how she could still be hungry when her sister might be dying behind those double doors up the hall.

Another sob fought its way past her hammering heart.

You might have all the time in the world to eat yet. If she tells you that Katelyn’s gone.

The couch groaned as the old man turned on his side, burrowing deeper into his nest of blankets. For a moment, Mallory found herself wondering about his story. What calamity had brought him to this place?

Down the hall, the crowd grew still louder, as one family member ratcheted up the volume level to best another’s. More people had come in to join them, and Mallory could see them greeting one another with hugs and back slaps.

This time, she didn’t even have a scared twelve-year-old sitting beside her in the waiting room. When her parents had died, there’d been no one left of their family except a hard-of-hearing great aunt on her mother’s side they’d never met, and two states away at that. Mallory remembered begging the social worker from the department of family and children services to please, please not put Katelyn in foster care. She could do it—she could take care of her sister.

And see how you’ve screwed that up.

She pulled her winter coat around her, wincing as the lining ripped in the shoulder seam. The coat was three years old and much mended, but the whole lining needed replacing. She’d been planning on doing it this weekend, in fact...but she wouldn’t now.

She had more important things to worry about than a tear in a coat lining. She needed to be grateful she even had a coat.

Is Katelyn cold?

Katelyn hated the cold—it had always been a battle between them over the thermostat, Mallory turning it down to sixty-five to save money, Katelyn slipping behind her and jacking it up to seventy-two.

I’ll turn it up to eighty if you’ll just come back to me.

Another wail pressed up, out, like a caged animal testing its bars for weakness. She’d just managed to stifle it when she spotted a tall dark-haired guy, shoulders broad in a denim jacket, push through the crowd.

He smiled at the family as he passed, spoke for a few minutes, gestured with the hand holding a big brown paper shopping bag to the cooler he was pulling with his other hand.

He was about her age, and he had a kind smile, the guy did. It seemed so much warmer than the room’s chilly, sterile air. She wondered how he was connected to the family, wondered what he had in the cooler. With that many people, they’d need a lot of snacks and drinks. They looked as though they were camped out for the night.

Like me. They’re not going anywhere, like me.

He continued on from the crowd, closing the gap between himself and the door to the waiting room with a few easy strides of long denim-encased legs. Mallory realized with a start that he was coming to join her. He must be planning on leaving the cooler here for the family.

The door creaked open. “Hi...are you with the Blair family?” the man asked.

“Uh—yes.” She stared at him as he entered, trying to figure out if she knew him from somewhere. Had the stress of the day made her fail to recognize him?

No. She’d never forget his easy smile, the cleft in his chin, the bright blue eyes that seemed to bring a summer sky’s joy into the chilly waiting room. His dark hair was closely cropped, but it had grown out enough since his last haircut to have a cowlick right at the crest of his head. Mallory’s fingers itched to smooth it down.

“You’re Katelyn Blair’s...sister?”

“Yes.” She struggled to a standing position and extended a hand. She’d been sitting so long and so stiffly that her knees threatened to collapse on her. “I’m Mallory Blair. You must be one of Katelyn’s friends.”

He dropped the handle of the cooler and gripped her offered hand with a big strong hand of his own, one with long square-tipped fingers that swallowed hers. “Andrew Monroe...and, no, I don’t know your sister, exactly. I was one of the firefighters who was at the fire this morning. I wanted to see how she was doing.”

Tears stung her eyes at his thoughtfulness. She gripped his hand with both of hers and pumped it with a fierce energy. “Thank you, thank you—thank you so much for getting her out, for giving her a chance—”

She had to drop his hand to swipe at her eyes. “I’m sorry—I’m just a—a mess.”

Andrew guided her back to her chair and eased her down in it. He sat in the chair beside her. “I can imagine. She’s going to be okay, then?”

“Oh—I don’t know. They haven’t told me much. They said...” Mallory drew in a shaky breath and knotted her fingers in her lap. She noticed a chip in her nail polish—polish she’d carefully put on just the night before, when all was right in the world.

“Yes?” Andrew prompted. The way he said it was full of patience and encouragement, as though he knew she didn’t want to say the words lest they finally seem real.