The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion Read online

  “Okay, well, now that we’ve got all of that clear,” she said, rolling back on her boot heels, “I’ll leave you two to talk about...whatever...and I’ll just go catch up with Sammy and take him to play with the dogs.”

  “Make sure you check out the new litter of puppies that came in yesterday,” Frank called out. “They’re adorable and you could use them when you do your hunky fireman calendar.”

  Hannah blew out a sigh, fighting the urge to turn around and tell Frank that there wasn’t going to be a stupid calendar.

  “Thanks, man. We’ll let you know.” Isaac’s voice was way too close and that did cause Hannah to turn around right before she got to where her son had his face pressed up against the kitten nursery viewing window.

  “Why are you still here?” she whispered to Isaac out of the side of her mouth.

  “Because I told Sammy we could look at dogs.” He opened the door that led toward the animal kennels and the boy dashed through. Looking back at Hannah, he extended his arm as though he was ushering her inside. “You coming with us or did you want to hang out here with Frank and talk about which poses you think I should do for my upcoming photo shoot?”

  Hannah’s back molars unclenched long enough for her to grumble, “The only pose I’m interested in seeing is the one where you’re walking out the exit door.”

  Isaac winked at her as she marched past him to follow her son. His voice was low and smooth and directly behind her ear when he caught up to her angry stride. “You always did like the view of my butt.”

  Chapter Ten

  “She kinda looks like a dalmatian,” Sammy said to Isaac, and Hannah had to bite her lip to keep from correcting the boy. After all, it wasn’t her child’s fault that Isaac had barged in uninvited on their visit to the animal shelter, getting her all flustered and then putting her on the defensive.

  “Well, she’s white with some black markings,” Isaac replied as he gently removed a set of tiny canine incisors from the laces of his boot and urged the spotted puppy back toward her solid-colored siblings. He and Sammy sat on the concrete floor and rolled a tennis ball back and forth to each other as the four littermates gave chase, a flurry of oversize paws and wagging tails scrambling to be the first to catch the green felt orb. “But dalmatians have short hair and this girl is gonna be a total fur ball. Plus, the vet tech said they think she’s part husky and part Great Dane. She’s going to end up being almost twice the size of a dalmatian, aren’t you, Big Dot?”

  “Big Dot!” Sammy repeated and giggled so hard he fell onto his side. Hannah wanted to warn him to watch the little yellow puddle one of the pups had made when it got too excited from a vigorous belly rub a few minutes ago. But Isaac had already teased her about being a germophobe when she’d insisted on a squirt of antibacterial gel every time any of them so much as looked at a different kennel. So, instead, she stood up and went in search of some paper towels or disinfecting wipes to clean up the mess.

  “I think she likes me, Mama.” The sound of Sammy’s belly laugh as Big Dot tried to balance on top of the six-year-old’s chest made Hannah’s heart stretch so much, she doubted her ribcage could contain it. Just when she thought she might burst with happiness, her son said those four little words that would force her to into the role of meanest mother in the world. “Can we keep her?”

  Sighing, she sat down cross-legged beside Sammy and stroked his head, her forefinger tracing the line where his hair met his face. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, sweetie.”

  Sammy’s shoulders slumped against the ground as he looked up at the ceiling, sadness filling his solemn brown eyes. The puppy wiggled its bottom and the boy absently petted her, then rolled his head so he was looking at Hannah. “Remember when we had to draw our family in class?”

  Hannah’s throat clogged at the memory. She’d seen the pictures hanging up in the kindergarten room when she was at the school for parent–teacher conferences the previous week, and Sammy’s had been the only one with just two people in it. And those two people didn’t look anything alike. She made another mental note to talk to Choogie Nguyen’s mothers as she slowly nodded at her son, waiting for the inevitable.

  “Well, almost everyone had a pet in their drawing, except for me.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding. Okay, so his observation could’ve been a lot worse. If Sammy thought an animal—and not a father, for example—was the only thing missing from his life, then maybe he was adjusting all right, after all.

  She looked at Isaac, needing reassurance that she was making the right decision; however, all he did was shrug.

  “But if I had Big Dot, I could ask Mrs. Kamil to take down my drawing and then I could color a puppy on it.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” was all Hannah could say. She’d been around children all of her life, but it was different when you were raising your own child. And it wasn’t like she’d had Sammy since he was a baby, giving herself time to grow as a parent along with him. He’d been four years old when she met him and under the charge of several adults who worked at the children’s home. A year later, she’d started the adoption process and six months after that, he’d moved into her small cottage near the dormitory and she became his sole caretaker. Even though they’d had an instant emotional bond from the first day she’d started teaching at the orphanage in Ghana, they’d really only lived together the past several months and were still learning how to adjust to their new roles in each other’s lives. She’d read countless books and articles, prepping herself for tricky parenting moments like these, but now all she could do was sit here and murmur platitudes while stroking his hair.

  Hannah wanted to do better than that.

  “If you take her home, Big Dot might miss all of her brothers and sisters,” Isaac offered, probably out of pity for both her and Sammy.

  “When Mama brought me here, I only missed some of the kids from the home, but I don’t really remember them anymore.”

  Hannah stifled her cry by putting her fist to her mouth. It had only been several weeks, yet already Sammy was forgetting things about the first few years of his life. She’d read that it was normal for this to happen, but reading it and feeling it were two different things.

  Before she could think of what to say, Sammy scooted his entire body ninety degrees so that he could still lie down, but look at Isaac. The small dog stayed on his chest. “Do you ever miss your brothers and sisters, Chief Isaac?”

  “I don’t have any siblings,” Isaac replied. “I was an only child.”

  “I don’t have any, either. But Big Dot and me could be like brother and sister. Then I wouldn’t be an only child.”

  “Sometimes being an only child can be fun,” Isaac said, but Hannah knew that he didn’t mean it. When they were eighteen, Isaac had told her that he’d always been lonely growing up. Of course, his parents were so absorbed in their own lives that they’d dumped their son at his Uncle Jonesy’s house every summer, which wasn’t quite the same situation as Sammy’s.

  “You might not have any siblings, but you have cousins.” That was the best Hannah could do.

  “Yeah,” Sammy conceded cautiously, as though he wasn’t fully convinced that an extended family was a suitable substitution for a dog. But at least he now had his head propped up on his elbow. “My boy cousins are fun because they’re older, but my girl cousins are boring. And they still wear diapers.”

  “Well, you’re already better off than me,” Isaac said in a conspiratorial tone, as though he was confiding in the child. “I didn’t have any cousins at all. Just Uncle Jonesy.”

  Hannah needed to stop wallowing in her sea of emotions and put a positive spin on things before this conversation got any more depressing. “You have uncles and aunts, too, Sammy. And what about Grammie and Pop Pop?”

  The boy’s frown didn’t disappear and she hated that she sounded as though she was trying to
sell the idea of family to the boy.

  “I like Pop Pop, okay. But...” His voice trailed off and Hannah’s stomach sank. She’d noticed the way Sammy stayed behind her whenever they went to visit her parents, and how he almost never spoke with her mom, no matter how many times Donna Gregson tried to relate to him. Hannah had rationalized it by telling herself that he’d only known them a little over a month and she’d assumed that Sammy was being his shy self. However, he didn’t act the same way when it was just her father.

  “Do you not like Grammie?” she asked.

  Sammy sat up and looked at Isaac, then at Big Dot, who’d tumbled to his lap, then back to Isaac.

  “Sweetie.” Hannah put a hand on his shoulder. “Remember what I told you before we got on the airplane to come here? You can always tell me how you’re feeling. Even if you think it will make me sad or mad.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like Grammie. It’s just that she’s sick.” The boy’s eyes looked toward Isaac. “Like my mother.”

  “You’re sick?” Isaac’s attention shot over to Hannah, but she didn’t have the mental fortitude to address his concerns, as well. She was still reeling from the emotional minefield she’d just inadvertently exposed.

  But Sammy shook his head. “Not her. She’s my mama. I mean my bia...bio...” He looked at her. “What’s it called, again?”

  “Your biological mom?” Hannah asked and Sammy nodded. “Oh, sweetie, Grammie has a different kind of sickness.”

  “So she’s not gonna die like my mother did?”

  Hannah swallowed several times and had to look up to keep her tears from spilling over onto her cheeks. The truth was, she didn’t know what her mom’s long-term prognosis was. And she certainly didn’t know how to explain it to a boy who’d already lost so much.

  So when Big Dot let out a loud bark, Hannah said what any worn-down mother would do in that situation. “How about we find out how to take Big Dot home with us?”

  She was rewarded with a shining smile from her son—but inside, she couldn’t shake the fear that had haunted her ever since she’d learned of her mother’s diagnosis. And when she lifted her gaze, she caught Isaac staring right at her—and knew he’d figured her out.

  * * *

  After having already intruded on one intensely intimate family moment at the animal rescue, Isaac spent Thanksgiving week debating whether he should further complicate things with Hannah by attending her brother’s wedding this weekend. Yet every time he convinced himself to stay far away from her, Luke’s words would replay in his head.

  They both needed to put this thing behind them once and for all. Officially.

  Unfortunately, Isaac was still second-guessing his decision to come when Kylie Gregson, Hannah’s other sister-in-law, cornered him at the reception after the long-anticipated dulce de leche wedding cake had been served. “Just like that, she caved and got the dog?”

  “Pretty much,” Isaac replied, the condensation from his glass of whiskey and Coke making his palms wet. Or maybe it was the DJ inviting couples out to the dance floor that had him so anxious. For the hundredth time tonight, he told himself that he never should have come all the way to Twin Falls.

  But he’d worked a double shift on Thanksgiving and the day after so that his employees with kids could be with their families. Isaac had needed the break away from town. He’d thought it’d be simple enough to disappear in the crowd, since the wedding’s resort location was packed with almost everyone from Sugar Falls, along with at least a third of the population of Carmen’s hometown of Las Vegas. But everyone related to Hannah—either by blood or marriage—had tracked him down, going out of their way to talk to him.

  But it was Kylie who put him on edge with her blatant curiosity and her less-than-subtle line of questioning. “So, a few days ago, when you just happened to run into Hannah at the animal shelter, you didn’t team up with Sammy to talk her into getting a puppy?”

  “Me? I was right there with her, trying to reason with Sammy about the responsibility of caring for a dog,” he argued, not adding that his own heart had turned to mush when the kid brought up his lack of siblings and his family portrait at school. Isaac knew all too well the feeling of missing out on something that everyone else around you seemed to have. But for good measure, he added, “Besides, how could I talk Hannah into anything? She hates me.”

  “First of all, Hannah Gregson is incapable of hating anyone. She’s too noble for that.” Kylie lifted a second finger. “Second of all, I didn’t live in Sugar Falls during those youthful summers, but from what I hear, I probably wouldn’t blame her for hating you if she did. Which she doesn’t.”

  Fair enough. There had been a time long ago when Isaac hadn’t cared very much for his actions, either.

  “Third,” Kylie continued, “I meant, did you talk her into it in one of those reverse psychology ways? Like telling them they shouldn’t get a dog because you knew she would do the exact opposite just to spite you?”

  While Isaac had definitely picked up on Hannah’s tendency to want to do the complete opposite of whatever he suggested, he’d also picked up on the fact that Sammy might need something that made the child feel as though he belonged, as though he was needed. Looking back on the conversation now, Isaac might’ve taken a different approach and suggested that being the dog’s caretaker would actually give Sammy a role in his new household, a sense of purpose.

  However, the Gregson household, along with the people in it, really shouldn’t concern him at all. His tone still sounded defensive, though, when he replied, “How would it spite me? It’s none of my business whether she gets a pet or not.”

  “And fourth,” Kylie continued, apparently not done yet, “have you two ever thought about just sitting down and having an actual conversation about the fact that you’re both still crazy for each other? I can tell you from firsthand experience that it really would do wonders for your relationship.”

  Isaac barely caught the cocktail glass before it slipped out of his hand and shattered on the ground. “What did you say?”

  “I said I know from firsthand experience—”

  “Not that part.” He circled his finger in a loop as though he could rewind her words. “I mean the part about both of us still being crazy for each other.”

  Kylie’s eyes shot upward before she huffed and muttered something about idiotic men. But he couldn’t ask her for any more clarification because Hannah chose that moment to walk up to them, her pale pink bridesmaid’s dress tailored perfectly to her figure.

  Isaac lifted his drink to his lips and tried to look busy.

  “Mom is tiring out already.” Hannah spoke quietly to her sister-in-law. “But she’s insisting that all of the grandkids hang out in the motor home with her and Dad now that it’s past their bedtime. I know that was the original plan, but I don’t want her wearing herself out.”

  “Is that their motor home out front?” Isaac asked. He’d noticed that it was parked awfully close to the red-painted curb, and the first responder in him had gone out of his way to make sure there was alternate access for a fire engine to park, in the event one was needed. He had a habit of doing that no matter where he went, even if he was at some huge resort hotel two hours south of his jurisdiction.

  “Yes. We tried to get them to stay in one of the rooms, but my mom said the hotel would be too busy with it being a holiday weekend and she’d be more comfortable having her own bed and stuff nearby.”

  “Hannah.” Kylie draped an arm loosely around her sister-in-law’s shoulder. “I think that if your mom is insisting and your dad is going to be with her, then let them spend some time with their grandchildren. It’s important to her, and the kids love hanging out in their RV. We’re only a few hundred yards away and can take turns going out there and checking on them.”

  Hannah bit her lower lip. “Okay, but maybe only for an hour or so?”
/>   “My girls are gonna fall asleep on the walk out there.” Kylie nodded toward a double stroller holding identical twins with matching floral wreaths falling out of their hair. “Drew and I planned to take them upstairs to our room afterward, anyway. Don’t worry, okay?”

  “It’s hard not to.” Hannah’s admission caught Isaac by surprise. She usually acted as though she was more than capable of handling anything under the sun. It had him wondering if her hesitation now had something to do with Sammy’s recent revelation and concerns about his adoptive grandmother.

  “Then let me distract you.” Kylie handed Hannah her flute of champagne. “Speaking of kids—and now a dog—hanging out in RVs, I was just talking to Isaac here about how you always swore you weren’t a dog person, but then you caved and got Sammy a new puppy.”

  “Isaac told you that, did he?” Hannah squinted one eye at him before she took a large swig of champagne.

  He held up his palm. “I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.”

  “Oh, you two with your constant defensiveness.” Kylie snagged a second glass from a passing server and traded it out with the empty one in Hannah’s hand. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. What you both need is a couple of drinks, a slow dance and a long make-out session.”

  “Ugh, Kylie!” Hannah wrinkled up her nose. “Please don’t tell me about your firsthand experience again. I don’t want to think of my brother Drew doing any of that.”

  Isaac fought back a grin, experiencing some relief that she’d gotten the same lecture he had. And a little more relief that Hannah’s first response hadn’t been abject horror over doing those things with him.

  Kylie wiggled her eyebrows. “Maybe you should do less thinking and more kissing and making up?”

  Hannah gasped as her sister-in-law gave her a little hip check before sauntering away, causing Hannah to sidestep in her high heels. Isaac reached out to steady her, grabbing one side of Hannah’s waist. Feeling the heat of her skin under the gauzy fabric, he suddenly wondered if maybe he was the one who needed to be steadied.