by Bella Andre
Only, as she stood under the warm spray that was slowly washing away the black smudges of smoke on her skin, along with what she realized were the charred ends of her hair, she didn’t have any idea how long it was going to take her to feel okay, too. Not with the visions of what might have happened to them running through her head one after the other, mental pictures of their ordeal that were blurred with the dark edges of a thick, black fog.
And yet, despite how exhausted and drained she felt, she could never forget the heroic firefighter who had pulled them out of their flaming apartment. He’d risked his life for theirs. Once she and Summer were back on their feet, she would go find him. Not just to say thank you, but to find a way to repay him for the incredible gift he’d given them.
The precious gift of life...when death had been so horribly close.
Closing her eyes tight, as if that would keep the dark visions at bay, she lifted her face to the water and let it wash away her tears of shock—and joy that she got to live another day with the little girl who meant absolutely everything to her.
* * *
As they walked through a nearby Target store a couple of hours later, Megan was amazed to find that, despite the horrors of the fire they’d lived through, Summer had returned almost immediately to her normal energetic personality.
Megan wished she could rebound so fast. Of course, the two zillion forms she’d just filled out for the insurance company hadn’t exactly helped her state of mind. She was used to plenty of paperwork, but this had been over the top even for her.
She’d purchased their small but charming apartment last winter and had been fixing it up in her spare time. Now all she had to show for her hard work was a promise of money from the insurance company. After they did their assessments, of course. Until then, they’d given her enough cash to get by for a while until she could contact her bank for a new ATM and credit card. They’d also informed her that she had been checked into a Best Western hotel near the hospital until she could make other arrangements.
As soon as she bought a new cell phone, she’d call her parents and try to break the news of the fire to them without giving them a heart attack. No doubt they’d be on the next plane out from Minneapolis to come take care of her and Summer. Of course she wanted to see them, wanted to feel their warm arms around her, but at the same time...well, she wasn’t looking forward to a repeat of five years ago when David died.
No doubt about it, they were going to put the pressure on her to come “back home.” They’d use this fire as the perfect example of how much safer she and Summer would be in the small town she’d grown up in.
Megan unconsciously lifted her chin. She was proud of how well she’d done raising her daughter by herself. And regardless of what her parents thought, she’d learned her lessons about safety perfectly well. The men she’d dated the past couple of years were accountants like her, or teachers, or engineers. She’d never again make the mistake of giving in to the thrill of being with a man who thrived on risk, who ran toward danger instead of away from it like any sensible, reasonable person would.
Summer tugged her toward the food court and Megan broke another one of her rules, this time about junk food as they bought hot dogs and nachos and big cherry Slushies. But although Summer polished everything off, Megan couldn’t do more than take a couple of bites of the greasy fast food.
Knowing how much her daughter liked new clothes—oh, who was she kidding, they both did—Megan told her, “We’re just going to buy a few essentials like jeans and T-shirts today.”
“But we’ll need to get a whole bunch of new stuff soon, right?”
Silently thanking God that her daughter was more pleased about getting new clothes than she was distressed about losing her old ones in the fire, they went to try on a handful of things and were on their way to the front of the store to buy them, when Megan realized she’d forgotten something very important.
Yes, they needed clothes. Of course, they needed to buy some food. But despite how cheerful Summer was being about their situation, her daughter had just had all of her things taken away from her...including the Rapunzel doll she slept with every night.
Knowing they needed to be extremely careful with their cash for the time being, she put down one of the T-shirts she’d been planning to buy on the dressing room re-shelving cart and steered her daughter toward the toy section.
“Look, I think they have Rapunzel dolls here.”
Summer’s eyes lit up and she threw her arms around her mother. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!” As she ran down the aisle to get the doll, Megan had found herself standing in the middle of the big store with tears threatening to come again.
When they were trapped in the bathtub, she’d hoped, she’d prayed that she and her daughter would live to do something as mundane as go shopping together, but the fact was that as the fire had raged hotter and bigger, as the sirens had rung out louder without anyone coming to help them, she’d almost stopped believing.
Quickly wiping away the evidence of the emotion threatening to spill out again, when Summer returned with the brand new doll, perfect in its shiny package, Megan knew she had a lot to learn from her daughter’s smiling face, from her happiness over something as small as a pretty doll.
They’d lost things, but they still had each other.
All she wanted to do now was check into their hotel room and curl up with Summer for a much needed nap. But as soon as she arrived at the hotel, her neighbor and friend, Susan Thompson, pulled her aside.
“Megan, Summer, thank God you’re all right.”
The older woman brought both of them in for a hug. Again, tears threatened and Megan had to hold her breath and focus on a patch of dried gum on the carpet to keep them from falling. She wasn’t normally a crier, hadn’t let herself give in to tears even after David’s death. She’d been too busy then trying to keep up with her two-year-old; trying to hold on to her accounting job and keep them fed with a roof over their heads; trying to deal with the pressure from her parents to come back home immediately and never, ever leave again.
Mrs. Thompson, however, had no such qualms about crying. Her cheeks were shiny with tears as she finally let them go. “As soon as I told the firefighter you were both inside, he ran straight in for you.”
Again and again throughout the past hours, Megan’s brain had flashed back to the firefighter who had found them in the bathtub, his firm, confident voice directing her. Her skin, her muscles and bones, still felt the phantom imprint of his hands, the strength of the way he’d lifted, moved, pulled her and Summer forward toward safety.
Susan sat with her on the nearby faded couch in the lobby. “He had just helped me and Larry out onto the sidewalk when I looked around and realized you and Summer weren’t standing there with the rest of us.” Her mouth trembled. “I’d seen you come in just a little while before. I knew something was wrong.”
Megan swallowed hard, reaching out to cover the other woman’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “If you hadn’t told him—”
No, she thought as she shot a glance at Summer, who was happily unwrapping her doll, Megan couldn’t finish the sentence. Her daughter seemed to be totally engrossed in her toy, but Megan knew darn well that she was actually taking in every little thing around her. Every expression, every word. Megan didn’t want Summer to turn what had almost happened into a fear that she’d take forward with her.
But Mrs. Thompson was shaking her head. “That firefighter was the real hero. They didn’t want to let anyone else into the building, but he didn’t hesitate to run in to save you. I just hope he’s all right after what happened to him.”
Megan looked up at her friend in horror. “He was hurt?”
Susan frowned. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” She couldn’t remember anything after they’d made it down the stairs.
“Mommy?”
Megan knew she should be pulling it together for her daughter, that it was t
he most important thing for her to do, but instead, all she could do was ask, “How badly?”
Her friend sighed, looking even more upset. “They had to carry him out on a stretcher.”
Megan felt just as she had when they were stuck in the bathtub—like she could hardly breathe, like the darkness was coming down over her again.
She jumped up from the couch. “I have to call the hospital. I have to find out how he’s doing.” Susan stood with her and followed her to the front desk. “I need to use your phone. Please.”
The young man behind the counter nodded quickly and she realized he must have overheard their conversation. “Of course. No problem.”
Her hand was shaking on the receiver as she called Information for the phone number of fire dispatch. She asked them to transfer her to the firehouse in her neighborhood.
By the time the call went through, she was near frantic. A man’s low voice barely said hello before she was saying, “I’m the woman the firefighter saved yesterday. Me and my daughter. I just heard he was hurt. I need to know how he’s doing. If he was hurt badly? How long will it be until he’s okay again?”
The man on the line with her was silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t give you that information.”
“He put himself in terrible danger to save me and my daughter. I need to thank him. I need him to know how much what he did means to us.”
“I understand how upset you are, but—” He stopped speaking and she heard another voice in the background. “Hold on a moment.”
Another man came on the line. “Is this Ms. Harris?”
She was momentarily surprised the man knew her name. “Yes, this is Megan Harris.”
“My name is Todd Phillips. I’m the captain at Station 5. How are you and your daughter doing?”
“We left the hospital a few hours ago,” she quickly told him.
“I’m very glad to hear that. And I’m sorry about the fire in your apartment.”
Megan knew the time would come when she’d grieve the loss of all her precious mementos of her daughter’s baby years and of David. But the loss of their things paled in comparison to the horrifying knowledge that a firefighter had gotten hurt while saving them.
“I need to thank the firefighter in person for what he did to help me and my daughter.”
She could almost hear the fire captain shake his head across the line. “I’m sorry, Ms. Harris, but—”
“Please,” she begged. “I owe him everything.”
Everything.
After a short silence, he said, “I’ll need to check with Gabe first.”
“Thank you so much.”
She gave the fire captain the number for the phone at the front desk before hanging up, but even as she and Summer finally went upstairs to their new temporary home and her daughter zombied out again in front of the Disney channel, Megan couldn’t stop worrying about the man—Gabe—who had given up his own safety for theirs.
She was on the phone in her room, wading through more red tape with a representative from her bank, when there was a knock on her door. The young man from the front desk was there with a message.
“A fire captain called. He’ll meet you at the hospital in thirty minutes.”
Chapter Three
Out. Gabe Sullivan wanted out of the damn hospital bed. He wanted to yank the IV out of his arm, too, and was just about to do that when his mother walked in.
“Don’t you dare take that out.”
Mary Sullivan had already been in to see him earlier in the day, but this time she’d returned with two of his brothers and their significant others.
Nicola ran forward. “Oh my God, I was so worried about you!”
When Marcus’s pop-star girlfriend had heard that the city’s stations were facing heavy budget cuts, it had been her idea to play a show to raise money for them. But at the tail end of her acoustic benefit concert, Station 5 had been called out to the three-story building on Conrad Street.
She threw her arms around him and he purposefully pulled her closer as Marcus looked on. The way his brother shook his head said he knew exactly what Gabe was doing. Any other time, Marcus would have had him up against the wall for getting this close to his woman, but evidently being stuck in the hospital had some bonuses. Like the fact that Marcus was too happy Gabe was alive to lose it over the placement of his hands just above the curve of Nicola’s hips.
Still, Gabe knew he could only push things so far when Marcus wrapped his hands around Nicola’s waist, growled, “Get your own damn girlfriend,” and yanked her back against him.
Gabe got exactly why his oldest brother had fallen for the pop star. She wasn’t just easy on the eyes and talented, she also had a huge heart. It had been years since Gabe had been with anyone like that—a woman who had all those qualities, someone with whom he could actually imagine having a long-term relationship rather than just a few hours between the sheets.
Fortunately, a moment after Nicola was pulled away, Chloe was taking her place in Gabe’s arms.
“Damn it,” Chase muttered, “now he’s got mine. Nothing like being a hero to make women throw themselves at him.”
Clearly, they were all so glad he was okay that they’d let just about anything slip right about now. Everyone except his mother, who was staring at him with eagle eyes.
“I just spoke to the doctor and he’s informed me that you’ll be staying here for another night so that they can make sure no internal bleeding has started in your brain.”
“Aw, Mom,” he said, sounding more like a fourteen-year-old boy than a twenty-eight-year-old grown man as Chloe moved back toward Chase. “I feel fine.” His head ached like a son of a bitch, but he’d suffered hangovers nearly as bad.
“Since I’m sure the beam to the head has knocked out what little common sense you have, I’m going to trust the doctor.” He barely stifled his groan at being stuck in one place for so many hours on end as his mother added, “And so are you.”
Chase was doing a pretty good job of acting like the bandage on Gabe’s head wasn’t that big a deal. But Marcus, who had stepped into their father’s place when he’d passed away more than twenty years ago, was clearly concerned.
“How did this happen, Gabe? You’ve always been smart out there, but from what the news reports have said about the fire, the building wasn’t safe to go into.” His expression tightened even further. “Not even close to safe.”
At eight years his senior, Gabe had figured Marcus would be the one to call him on what he’d done. But although the rescue had almost ended in disaster, Gabe wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently. Not when he could still see the helpless little girl in her mother’s arms, her big eyes pleading with him to save the person she loved most in the world.
“The building wasn’t empty.” It was the only explanation that mattered.
“You could have died, Gabe.”
He held his oldest brother’s gaze. “You’re right. I could have.” He waited a beat before saying, “But I’m still here.”
Marcus blew out a hard breath. “How many goddamned lives are you going to burn through playing hero?”
“Marcus!” their mother exclaimed.
Wanting to break through the tension in the hospital room, knowing this was just all part of being a firefighter’s family, Gabe said, “It’s okay, Mom. This is Marcus’s way of showing he cares.”
Fortunately, Nicola helped thaw things out in the room by laughing. When Marcus glared at his girlfriend, she merely grinned at him and said, “We all know you’re like one of those hard candies with a gooey center, Marcus.” He turned the full force of his scowl at her, but when she went up on her toes and kissed him, he stopped scowling.
Before Marcus—or anyone else—could start in on Gabe again, he yawned big and loud. One sibling after another had been in and out of his hospital room all day. The nurse had even said at one point, “How many of you are there? My patient needs his rest.” Of course, when R
yan had flirted shamelessly with the woman, the no-fail effect of his too-pretty face meant she’d pretty much agreed to bend visiting hours as much as she could for the Sullivan clan.
Picking up on his signal, his mother began to shoo them out, kissing him on the cheek before leaving. “I’ll be by your house with food tomorrow.”
He could take care of feeding himself, but he knew helping him like that made his mother feel better about what had happened...or, more to the point, about what had almost happened. She’d never been crazy about the dangers that came with his being a firefighter, but she’d supported him anyway.
“Thanks, Mom.”
They left and he had just closed his eyes for a few minutes when another knock came at his door. His captain, Todd, stepped into the room.
“How’re you feeling, Gabe?”
“Good, Captain.”
He moved to sit up straighter on the bed and Todd shook his head. “You’re fine just like that. I know your skull must hurt like hell.” He nodded back to the doorway. “Are you ready to see Ms. Harris and her daughter, Summer?”
No, he thought, he’d be better off never seeing those eyes again.
He’d thought about Megan and her daughter one too many times for comfort. Not just because he was reviewing the rescue, trying to look for what he could have done differently, to have gotten them out faster and more safely—but because he hadn’t been able to forget her strength, how hard she’d fought to stay conscious, and what a fighter she’d been every single second of the harrowing journey from her burning apartment.
Still, he understood that fire victims often felt compelled to say thank you to the men who had saved them. Especially in a case like this, where they’d just barely held death at bay.
“Sure.” He began to nod, but a sharp shooting pain stopped him halfway into the movement.
Catching his grimace, Todd said, “I’ll ask Megan and her daughter to come back later.”
Her name fit her, Gabe had found himself thinking one too many times. Megan was pretty and strong all at the same time. It would be better to think of her as Ms. Harris. Although, he had to wonder, was there a husband? And if so, where had he been during the fire and why wasn’t he here with them now?