The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion Read online

  So much for making a stealthy getaway before Isaac returned.

  Chapter Nine

  Isaac spied a late model Prius in the parking lot as Scooter pulled the fire engine into the bay. That same car had been at the station when they’d left, which meant that Hannah was still here. Had she waited for him?

  As much as that should’ve lifted his spirits, he was tired and dirty and had an investigation report to write. He didn’t really have time to answer five hundred questions about an oven fire that had gotten out of control. Or to think about how he’d downplayed the seriousness of it when he’d known for a while now that the elderly Mrs. Alvarez shouldn’t be staying alone anymore.

  While everyone else headed to the showers or their cell phones to call their loved ones, Isaac pulled off his jacket and helmet in the apparatus bay and walked toward the kitchen in his pants and acrid, sweat-stained T-shirt.

  Sammy Gregson’s catapult hug caught him by total surprise. And, judging from the look on Hannah’s face, it also caught the boy’s mother by surprise. But Isaac lifted him up, clinging to the boy who’d wrapped his skinny legs and arms around him, the scent of sugary frosting smeared on the kid’s sleeve a welcome relief from the smoke he’d been sniffing on his clothes a few moments ago.

  “Did you put the fire out?” Sammy asked, his face smooth and serious and at eye level with Isaac’s.

  “We did. And, more importantly, nobody got hurt.”

  “So you saved the day?”

  “My whole crew saved the day. We worked really well together as a team.” Isaac looked around the kitchen, not seeing anyone other than Hannah. “Speaking of teams, where are your cousins and their friend?”

  “My Aunt Carmen picked them up and took them home. But I asked Mama if we could stay here and make sure you got back safely.”

  That explained the emotional welcome—the boy had been worried about him. Sammy’s hold loosened and Isaac took that as a sign that he could set the kid down. He chose the spot on the counter next to a rectangular pan filled with something brown and slightly jiggly. “And what’s this?”

  “That’s the cake we were making with Mr. Jonesy and Mr. Scooter. Except, when you guys left, the oven got shut off and it didn’t finish cooking.”

  Hannah gasped. “Oh, my gosh. I had no idea it didn’t finish cooking. Sweetie, if you knew it wasn’t done, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because your face was doing this.” He pushed the skin together over the bridge of his little nose so it made a dramatic crease. “I thought maybe you were scared about the big fire. But when you gave us all jobs to do, your forehead stopped being all wrinkly. So I put the frosting on the cake, just like you told me.”

  Isaac leaned against the counter, his arm only a few inches away from hers. He lowered his voice, “Were you really scared?”

  She looked a little embarrassed. “I wasn’t scared. I was just a bit nervous. That’s all.”

  He grinned. “Nervous that I was going to get hurt?”

  “No. Nervous that I was being left alone in the fire station and that one of the kids was going to get into the ax room, or whatever you call that place with all the tools, while you were all gone.”

  “Sorry to leave you on your own like that, Hannah. Normally, we would leave someone back here, but I told you we were understaffed right now.” She nodded, so he added, “But it looks like you kept everyone in line. At least, the kitchen looks better than it did when the alarm went off.”

  “Well, we cleaned it up. I didn’t really know what else to do.”

  “We also made a salad,” Sammy said, opening the huge fridge to reveal a bowl filled with lettuce and vegetables.

  Isaac looked toward the stove at the pot filled with plain pasta. “And spaghetti, apparently?”

  Hannah shrugged, offering a small smile. “I figured you would need some when you got back.”

  “Why?” Isaac asked.

  “To go with the sauce?”

  “What sauce?” Jonesy asked as he walked into the kitchen with Scooter on his heels.

  “The spaghetti sauce in the pot,” Hannah gestured a thumb toward the stove.

  “Girl...” Jonesy shook his head as he tsked “...that’s my award-winning firehouse chili.”

  “That explains why there were beans in it,” Hannah mumbled.

  “Mama isn’t so great of a cook,” Sammy said in a whisper that was so loud, even Scooter, who was hard of hearing, heard. “But she’s real good at board games and doing voices when she reads me books. And she gives the best hugs.”

  At least, she does when she thinks nobody’s watching, Isaac thought, remembering her quick squeeze at the jog-a-thon.

  “Well, we can’t very well send you home with a bad cook on an empty belly,” Scooter said to her son. “C’mon. Let’s go set the table.”

  “Oh, no. Thank you but we can’t...” Hannah’s objection died on her lips as she watched Sammy hop down and happily follow the older man out of the kitchen. She turned to Isaac. “Really, we can’t stay.”

  “Tell that to those guys.” Isaac jerked his chin toward the dining room.

  Jonesy was leaning over the stove sniffing at his chili, probably to make sure Hannah hadn’t messed anything up besides the cake. “You didn’t add anything to this, did you?”

  “Didn’t touch it.” Hannah rolled her eyes, then lowered her voice as she whispered to Isaac. “I’m not that bad of a cook, you know.”

  Isaac crossed his arms across his chest as he smiled at her. “Really? What was the last thing you made for dinner that you didn’t pull out of the freezer?”

  “Does cereal count?”

  “Only if you’re eight years old.”

  “Hmph.” She crossed her own arms, mimicking his stance. “You’d be lucky to have a bowl of my cereal, Isaac Jones.”

  “Is that an invitation for breakfast?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

  If she’d blasted him with one of her cool blue stares, it would’ve been easier to laugh it off as a joke. But her pretty blush meant that she understood exactly what he had meant. “Not if you still smell like that in morning.”

  Despite the stench of smoke coming off him, Isaac leaned in so that their faces were so close, the soot smeared across his cheekbone could almost float over to hers. “You have a shower at your cabin, don’t you?”

  He heard the breath catch in her throat and felt the heat of her skin as her blush deepened. She stumbled as she took a step backward and brushed his hand away as he reached out to steady her.

  Jerking her head around to peek at the doorway to the dining room, her voice was shaky when she replied, “I also have a son at my cabin.”

  Yes, she had a son now. Hannah would do well to remember that fact herself the next time she got a little flirtatious with a man. And not just any man, but Isaac. The person she’d thought she’d known better than anyone else in the world at one time. The person who’d once made her laugh and made her dream and made her think that there was something other than good causes that she could dedicate her life to.

  But they weren’t the same people anymore. Too bad her desire for him hadn’t gotten the memo.

  Dinner with the entire B Crew at the station that night consisted of four firefighters (including the chief), one senior volunteer (Scooter’d had to go home to find a replacement battery for his hearing aid), two paramedics, one excited little boy and one schoolteacher who was a complete nervous wreck every time the chief looked down the table at her.

  His earlier touch had reminded her of their slow dance at the VFW hall, and that brought back memories of every verbal and physical exchange they’d shared in the past few weeks, which had begun blending in with her recollections of their high school summers. Her attraction to him back then had snowballed the same way, although now that Hannah was older—and had a lot more than just h
er reputation to lose—it was feeling less like a growing snowball and more like an avalanche.

  * * *

  “I still don’t understand why they don’t have a dog at the fire station,” Sammy said later that week when they were driving down the mountain to donate some old blankets to the animal shelter outside of Boise. “Aren’t they supposed to have one of those dogs with the spots on them?”

  “That’s just a myth,” Hannah said, then saw her son’s confusion in the rearview mirror. “A myth is like a legend or a story that gets told so often, people believe it.”

  “So we don’t have to pick out a dalmatian? We could get Chief Isaac any dog we want?”

  “What? No. People shouldn’t pick out pets for others. If Chief Jones wants a dog, he can go get one himself.”

  “Oh, look,” Sammy said, the lining of his coat making a rustling sound against the seat belt. “Maybe he’s getting one right now.”

  “Huh?” But when Hannah turned into the parking lot at the animal shelter she saw the red pickup truck pulling in behind her, the gold letters with the official Sugar Falls crest stamped on its doors.

  It was the chief’s vehicle, the one Isaac used around town on official business when he wasn’t responding to actual calls. The gravel crunched under the four-by-four’s tires as he parked beside them, not making Hannah’s nerves feel any steadier than they had after that unrelaxing dinner with his crew a few nights ago. Hannah leaned into the back seat to grab a stack of folded fleece, not wanting to face Isaac until her pulse slowed.

  “Are you here to pick out a new dog for the fire station?” Sammy asked Isaac as soon as his driver’s side door opened.

  “A dog? No way. That’s way too much responsibility and we’re already understaffed right now with our regular workload. We don’t need to add training a dog to anyone’s list of duties.”

  “I could come take care of him,” her son offered as he climbed out of the car, and Hannah’s head whipped around. “Or her, if you get a girl dog.”

  Oh, geez. Hannah needed to put the brakes on this conversation. And she needed to do it ten minutes ago.

  “If you’re not here for a dog—” she asked Isaac, sending a pointed look at Sammy “—which is a very, very big responsibility, by the way, then what are you doing here?”

  “I’m dropping off some blankets and thought I’d check their collection bin to see if there were any more canned goods.”

  “That’s what we’re doing.” Sammy smiled.

  “Yeah,” Hannah seconded. “That’s exactly what we were doing because this location was on my route.”

  “Well...” Isaac lifted his shoulders. “We’ll give them double the blankets and you can be responsible for taking all the food back to Mrs. Johnston.”

  Hannah opened her mouth and was about to agree until she thought better of it. “Actually, it’s probably best if you take all the food to her. She’s been asking me to head up a bake sale to pay for the new teen room in the library and I’ve been trying to avoid her.”

  “Apparently, she isn’t familiar with your lack of skills in the kitchen,” Isaac said, the hint of a joke lifting the corners of his mouth.

  “Hmph,” Hannah huffed, although he had her there. “It’s not like I need to know how to bake in order to sell everybody else’s baked goods.”

  “Can we play with some of the dogs while we’re here?” Sammy interrupted, something he’d never done before. Hannah would’ve corrected him if it hadn’t been such a normal six-year-old thing for the otherwise shy boy to do and she hadn’t been working on getting him to come out of his shell more often. But she wanted to discourage Isaac from the familiar direction their banter was now taking.

  “Sure,” Isaac said, before seeing Hannah’s disapproving expression. “I mean, we can if it’s okay with your mom.”

  Hannah sucked in her cheeks at the man’s presumptuousness, but ended up allowing Isaac—who wasn’t loaded down with as many old, used blankets as they were—hold the door for her and Sammy.

  The strong smell of pine cleaner, litter boxes and wet dog assaulted her nose when they walked inside.

  “Here, let me help you with some of those,” Isaac said, trying to grab the stack under her right arm. The backs of his fingers brushed the tender spot below her ribcage and a shot of electricity blasted through her. Instinct had her yanking her elbow inward to protect herself from the startling but sensual touch.

  Unfortunately, her clampdown also pinned his hand between the blankets and her waist. He was close enough that she could see each individual lash as he lowered his eyes in a sleepy, seductive way and then smirked. “If you don’t want me to help, you could just say no thanks. You don’t have to trap my arm.”

  Hannah’s wrist shot upward releasing Isaac’s hand and the stack of blankets, which he effortlessly caught, damn him. She took a couple of steps to the side and tried to look down her nose at him. “Fine, but don’t try to take credit for my donation.”

  “Are you guys coming?” Sammy called from the oblong reception desk where a man with a thick shock of gray hair and a matching beard down to his chest sat manning a clipboard. If he hadn’t been wearing khaki pants and a green polo shirt with a volunteer nametag that identified him as Frank, the gentleman might’ve been mistaken for Santa Claus.

  “Just what we needed before the winter,” Frank told them when they relinquished the blankets. Hannah felt like she should recognize the gentleman, but the animal shelter was closer to Boise than it was to Sugar Falls and it was more likely that its volunteers lived in the city.

  Hannah smiled. The feeling of doing some good for someone else, even a four-legged animal, never failed to lighten her heart with a joyful satisfaction. “Chief Jones is also here to pick up any canned goods people might’ve left for the Sugar Falls food drive.”

  She felt the heat of Isaac’s stare on the right side of her face and knew that if she so much as glanced in his direction, she’d see Isaac giving her an Oh, really? look. But Hannah didn’t care. She needed to get him to take the canned food items and go before anyone—especially her son—noticed the way her body kept reacting every time Isaac got too near.

  “And we’re also here to play with some dogs,” Sammy added, again pleasing Hannah with the realization that he was starting to find his own voice and growing comfortable talking in front of strangers.

  Hannah nodded toward where someone had painted a sign that said Kitty Korral. She whispered to her son, “Go ahead and take a peek at the new kittens. I’ll meet you over there in a second.”

  Sammy didn’t have to be told twice before he was darting to the large window on the back wall. Hannah squared her shoulders, then thought better of it and attempted a more casual pose before speaking to Isaac. “So, uh, thanks for taking the food back to Sugar Falls. I better catch up with Sammy before he falls in love with all the animals.”

  “Fine,” Isaac said. “But when I drop them off with Mae Johnston, I’ll let her know that you’re planning to take the lead on making all the cupcakes for the library bake sale, too.”

  Hannah’s ears burned at the reference to when she was sixteen, going through her vegan phase and had tried to make her now-infamous silken tofu mini bundt cakes for the Christmas in July craft bazaar. She hadn’t taken into account how crumbly they would be, and the bold squirrels in Town Square Park had darted across the grass, over pedestrians and picnic blankets, scaring city folks and some children as they filled their tiny cheeks with all the fallen pieces.

  “If you tell her that, then I’ll tell Freckles and Cessy Walker that you came up with a brilliant idea to do a sexy firefighter calendar to raise funds to build a new gazebo in Town Square Park.”

  Instead of shocking him into silence, Hannah’s words made Isaac chuckle. “They tried to do that last year and I already told them in no uncertain terms that it would never happen. But it’s ni
ce to know that you’ve also been giving some thought to seeing racy photos of me.”

  Hannah gasped. “You wish,” she told him, but that was exactly what she’d been thinking, blast his self-satisfied smile.

  If she’d dared a glance below Isaac’s neck, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see his hands rubbing together in villainous glee—as though he had her right where he wanted her.

  “Well, if the rest of the fire department looks like this one—” Frank gave Isaac a bold, appraising look “—I could unload a coupla dozen of those calendars for you.”

  Sucking in her cheeks, Hannah swallowed her chagrin at forgetting that there was another person there, witnessing her attraction to Isaac.

  “Thanks,” Isaac told Frank, then he looked around the lobby. “Did someone move the collection box?”

  “Oh, yes. Forgot to mention that earlier.” Frank used his thumb to gesture toward a dry-cleaning bag hanging from a handle on one of the filing cabinets. “Mae Johnston stopped by this morning to drop off my red suit. She’s my Mrs. Claus when we do the Santa visit to the children’s hospital. But that’s not who the calendars would be for, mind you. We also do the North Pole Poker Run for my motorcycle club.”

  “Hmm.” Isaac tilted his head. “I guess I could see Mae as Mrs. Claus. She has the right hair for it, even if she’s not exactly the sweet, grandmotherly type. I could definitely see her at a biker rally, though.”

  Hannah’s fingernails dug into her palms. What did Mae Johnston and Santa suits and biker rallies have to do with anything? And why wasn’t Isaac in any hurry to correct the assumption that he wasn’t actually going to pose for a sexy firefighter calendar? At least, she hoped that was a misconception. Either way, she couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice as she pointedly asked, “So, about that food collection box?”

  “Mae picked up the box when she dropped off the suit,” Frank said slowly, as though he’d mentioned that when they first walked in, which he obviously hadn’t. Otherwise Hannah would’ve already been on her way.