Blue Flame (Firefighter Romance #3)

Prologue

Dangling from a third-story window ledge wasn’t a good thing. Dangling from a third-story window ledge by the tips of his fingers, with fire blazing all around him was even worse, and though Jake Rawlins had been in tougher situations, at the moment he couldn’t remember one.

“Go away!” cried the young teen, trembling on the very corner of the flaming roof above him. “Go away!”

Jake adjusted his precarious perch and eyed the kid. “Hey there, I know this is scary, but I’m here to help. My name’s Jake. What’s yours—”

The boy scrambled out of Jake’s reach.

Okay, so nothing about this call was going to be easy tonight.

So far, he had a mansion of a house on fire in the dead of the night; occupants caught unawares on a rural street, with the fire hydrant just far enough away to create a sea of hoses at his crew’s feet, all on hilly, uneven land in the outskirts of San Diego County.

Oh, and a terrified teen sitting above the inferno, on a roof, holding one arm against his chest as if he’d injured it.

The winds whipped right at Jake, stirred by the fire itself, trying to tear him from the house.

It’d only been two minutes since the ladder engine had malfunctioned, trapping him up there, but it felt like a lifetime.

He had at least eight minutes before another ladder engine would arrive.

Only problem, the roof wasn’t going to last another eight minutes.

“Billy! Somebody get my Billy!” screamed the kid’s mother from three stories below. Her terror stabbed at Jake, and fueled him on. Adjusting his grip on the ledge, he reached for the rain gutter, which was thankfully anchored to the house, and began to climb.

The house itself was nothing but a bright ball of flame around him.

No one could get through the inferno to get inside, not until they tamed the fire, which his crew was working on from below.

Long streams of forced water flew through the air toward the flames, which only seemed to enrage them all the more.

“Mom!” Above Jake, Billy’s voice sounded weak and smoke-ravaged.

Jake got high enough to see him again, and his heart nearly stopped. Shaking in terror, Billy sat about three feet back from the ledge, completely surrounded by flames, cradling his arm and screaming. “Mom!”

“Billy,” Jake called out calmly. “My name is Jack. I’m going to get you back to your mom.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, I didn’t!”

Had he started the fire? At the moment it didn’t matter.

Neither did the fact that as captain of the malfunctioned engine, Jake was usually on the ground, strategizing and organizing the crew, not straddling a rickety rain gutter thirty feet above ground.

Christ, he hated heights. “Hang on, now.” Jake kept his face averted from the heat and flames blasting toward him, but then the kid shifted to bolt away.

The roof was a goner. A wrong move now, and he could fall through. With no ladder and nothing to brace his foot on, Jake had to use sheer strength to pull himself up, and he felt every one of his hundred and eighty pounds, not to mention the additional sixty-five pounds of gear.

The kid stared at the flames engulfing the roof, flinching as areas began to cave in. “Mom!”

“Your mom’s safe. Let’s do the same for us.” With the flames leaping far too close for comfort, Jake reached out for him.

“No!” Whimpering, Billy crawled backward, out of Jake’s reach and straight into the danger zone. “I don’t wanna go over the edge!”

Jake could hear more sirens coming closer now. He could feel the mist of the spray his crew were frantically sending around them, trying to keep them safe. “Billy, we need to go.”

“I want to go through the attic door, the way I came!” Dropping to his knees, Billy scooted away from Jake and the feared edge, and directly toward the flames.

Jake understood the height issue, and sympathized more than the kid could know, but there was no help for that. They had to get off the roof, and fast, and they had to go the way Jake had come—via the ledge.

From far below, new swirling lights joined the others, and he knew the other ladder engine had arrived. Relief was cut short by a thundering crash directly on his left. Whipping around, he watched a good part of the roof cave in, including the attic door and stairs.

Billy stared at the gaping hole in horror. Flames immediately filled it, but unbelievably, the kid crawled toward it.

“No.” Jake reached out and got a hold of Billy’s shoe, which promptly came off. Shit. With his other hand, he caught the kid’s ankle, but lost in his fear, Billy thrashed around.

“It’s okay,” Jake tried to soothe. “I’ve got you—” He took a well-placed kick to his chest, which nearly sent them both over the edge of the three-story house.

“I want to get down!”

“Yeah, but not the way the stairs and attic door just went, okay?”

Another crash, and only three feet away this time, and more of the roof vanished.

Jake’s stomach dropped to his toes. It was now or never.

With the hot, unforgiving wind whipping his face and the smoke clogging his lungs, he got a better grip on Billy, trying to be careful with the injured arm.

“Hold it tight to you.” Jake spread a protective hand over the limb as best he could. “The ladder’s here.”

“We’re going down on a fire engine ladder?”

“Yep.” Holding on to Billy, Jake leaned slightly over the edge to take a look. Indeed, the malfunctioned engine had been moved, and the new one was in position, the ladder inching its way up.

It felt like slow motion. Another roaring boom came directly behind them, and Billy cried out, clinging to Jake.

Jake’s gaze met Steve’s, the firefighter on the end of the ladder. The silent urgency passed between them as more of the roof dissolved around them. They were running out of time.

Steve reached out but was still too far away. It was going to be too damn late. Jake could feel the immense heat beneath him, all around him. He figured he had less than a minute to get them down before there wasn’t a square foot to stand on.

The ladder bumped the building, and Steve reached for Billy, whose one good thin arm was wrapped so tightly around Jake’s neck that he could hardly breathe. “Billy, Steve’s going to take you down.”

“I want you to do it!”

Again Jake’s gaze met Steve’s. They didn’t have time to switch positions, not with fire raining down over them, the ladder slick from the hose. Jake pulled free of Billy’s grip and shoved him at Steve.

An ominous rumble came from beneath Jake’s feet. Steve was still right there with Billy, trying to get out of the way for Jake, but the flames whipped up from below, taking over the ledge, forcing Jake back another step, separating him from Steve and Billy by a wall of fire.

Who would miss him? came the inane thought. His mother? Nope. His brother? Double nope. Cici, the beautiful brunette he’d seen twice and who’d been so hot just last night? Yeah, maybe she’d miss him—

The roof gave beneath his feet, and he fell.

And fell.

Jake opened his eyes to find himself still in the hospital, where he’d been for two days. He lay there and listened to Cathy, his protective nurse, kick some serious reporter ass right outside his door.

“No, you can’t talk to him,” she told someone furiously. “He’s recovering from serious injuries and doesn’t want to talk to any press, not you, not the Times, not People, no one.”

She bustled into his room with an incensed huff. “There. That should buy you five minutes of peace.”

“They’ll give up eventually.”

Moving to his IV, she patted his hand in sympathy shooting him via his IV with pain meds to give him some relief after yesterday’s reconstructive shoulder surgery.

Amazingly enough, other than his crushed shoulder, he had only a concussion and a few second-degree burns on his back.

Not bad, considering. And as the euphoria from the drugs kicked in, he began floating happily. In and out…

He came to sometime later, apparently in the middle of a conversation with his surgeon Dr. Barrett, and also his good friend, fire inspector Joe Walker.

Dr. Barrett nodded at Jake and left.

Joe had a look in his eyes that Jake hadn’t seen since they’d lost Danny in that horrific building fire six months ago. “I’m not dead,” Jake said quickly, craning his neck to the monitors to indicate he was indeed breathing.

A shadow of a smile crossed Joe’s face. “No. Apparently you have nine lives.”

“Well then, stop looking at me like that.”

Joe’s expression didn’t change, and Jake’s heart started a heavy drumming. Ah, shit. What was the matter? What had he missed while in la-la land? He could see his toes, could even wriggle them—

“Look, Jake. I know firefighting is everything to you.” Joe’s eyes looked suspiciously shiny. “I’ve watched you risk life and limb on this job for years. I saw how you hated being injured last year, having to work on the hiring board instead of fighting fires.”

Jake closed his eyes to the torment in Joe’s voice. The steady bleep bleep of his monitors were suddenly no longer assuring. “Just tell me what I missed.”

“You have a hell of a recovery ahead of you.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake said, all mock confidence. “I’ll be back on duty in no time.”

“You heard the doctor. You’re going to recover enough to use the arm, but—”

He shook his head in automatic denial. “No buts.”

Joe’s mouth went grim, but he held eye contact, and in that gaze, Jake saw things he didn’t want to see.

No.

He couldn’t be done. But what if he was? Maybe he couldn’t feel anything because they’d cut off his arm. Flailing out with his left hand he slapped at his right shoulder. White-hot pain stabbed at him, and he sagged back, gasping.

Nope. Arm still there, just numb from the neck block he’d required on top of the anesthesia. “I’ll heal.” He grimaced and breathed through the pain. “I’ll heal and get back to work.”