Jill Shalvis
Flashback
The second book in the American Heroes: The Firefighters series, 2008
Dear Reader,
When I start to write a romance novel, it’s usually all about the fantasy. Girl meets Hot Guy. Hot Guy falls hard. You know the drill. But this book is a little different. You see, this time, reality intruded-in my life, and in my writing.
Several members of my immediate family were evacuated in the tragic San Diego fires this past fall, about the same time I was finishing up this book. And suddenly this miniseries, AMERICAN HEROES: THE FIREFIGHTERS, became more than a romantic fantasy for me. Sure, I wanted to give readers a sexy tale that would keep them enthralled right through to the end. That’s always my goal. But I also wanted to honor these amazing, strong firefighters who put their lives on the line for real, every day.
I hope I did them justice.
Best wishes and happy reading!
Jill Shalvis
P.S. If you still need a firefighter fix, you don’t have long to wait-the 2008 Harlequin Blaze Christmas anthology, Heating up the Holidays, will hit the shelves in December. And if you missed it, be sure to check out my connecting book, Flashpoint, available last month.
1
THE FIRE BELL RANG for the fourth time since midnight, interrupting Aidan Donnelly in the middle of a great dream in which he was having some fairly creative, acrobatic sex with a gorgeous blonde. The last thing he wanted was to be shaken awake, but apparently sex, imaginary or otherwise, wasn’t on his card for the evening.
He was on the last few hours of a double shift from hell. The loudspeaker mounted in one corner of the bunk room was going off, telling him and his crew that they would not be going home in one short hour after all, but back into the field on yet another emergency call.
Putting the blonde back where she belonged, in the file in his brain labeled Hot Erotic Fantasy, Aidan got up to the tune of a bunch of moans and groans from his crew.
So close. He’d been so close to three desperately needed days off…
Across the room Eddie kicked aside the latest issue of Time, which had an entire company of firefighters on the cover. “A lot of good being the sexiest occupation does us,” the firefighter grumbled, “when we’re too exhausted to take advantage of it.”
“Some of us don’t need beauty sleep.” This from Sam, Eddie’s partner. “Like, say, Mr. 2008 here.” He slid a look Aidan’s way, but Aidan found himself too tired to rise to the bait.
Through no fault of his own, he’d been named Santa Rey’s hottest firefighter for 2008. This dubious honor came along with another-being put on the cover of Santa Rey’s annual firefighter’s calendar. “I told you, I didn’t submit my name.”
Eddie grinned in the middle of dressing. “No, we did, Mr. 2008.”
Aidan gave him a shove, and Eddie fell back to the mattress, snorting out a laugh as he staggered upright again and grabbed his boots. “Yeah, like being that pretty is a hindrance.”
“I am not pretty.”
No one answered him in words as they pulled on their gear, but several made kissy noises as they headed toward their rigs. Still groggy, and definitely out of sorts, Aidan took the shotgun position next to Ty, his temporary partner, on loan from a neighboring firehouse, since his usual partner Zach was still off on medical leave.
Eddie and Sam grabbed their seats, as well as Cristina and Aaron, another on-loan firefighter, and they were all off into the dark night-or more accurately, the dark predawn morning-following the ambulance, which had pulled out first. The air was thick with dew, and salty from the ocean only one block over. For now the temperature was cool enough, but by midday the California August heat would be in full bloom, and they’d all be dying. Aidan got on the radio to talk to dispatch. “It’s an explosion,” he told the others grimly.
“Where?” Ty asked.
“The docks.” Which could be anywhere from the shipping area, to the houseboats filled with year-round residents. “Only one boat’s on fire, but several others are threatened by the flames, with no word on what caused the explosion.”
Behind him, Eddie swore softly, and Aidan’s thoughts echoed the sentiment. Explosions were trickier than a regular fire, and far more unpredictable.
“Are they calling for backup?” Sam asked.
They needed it. Firehouse Thirty-Four was sorely overworked and dangerously exhausted going into the high fire season. They’d had a rough month. Aidan’s partner and best friend Zach had been injured after digging into the mysterious arsons that had plagued Santa Rey. Mysterious arsons that were now linked to one of their own.
Blake Stafford.
Just the thought brought a stab of fresh pain to Aidan’s chest. Now Zach was off duty and Blake was dead, leaving them all devastated.
Cristina was especially devastated, and with good reason. She’d been Blake’s partner, and the closest to him. She’d suffered like hell over his loss, and also over the arsons he’d been accused of committing.
She blamed herself, Aidan knew, which was ridiculous. She couldn’t have stopped Blake.
As it turned out, none of them could have stopped him.
Aidan considered himself pretty damn tough and just about one-hundred-percent impenetrable, but losing Blake had been heart-wrenching. He missed him, and hated what he’d been accused of. He didn’t want to believe Blake was dead, and he sure as hell didn’t want to believe Blake guilty of arson, and the resulting death of a small boy-none of them did, but the evidence was there. He could hardly even stand thinking about it-classic denial, Aidan knew, but it was working for him. “Dispatch’s sending rigs from Stations Thirty-Three and Thirty-Five.”
No one said anything to this, but they were all thinking the same thing-it’d take those stations at least ten extra minutes to get on scene from their locations-and the sense of dread only increased as they pulled up to the docks.
Turned out that the fire wasn’t at the shipping docks, but where the smaller, privately owned boats were moored at four long docks, each with ten bays. Possibly forty boats in total, many of them occupied.
Chaos reined in the predawn. Their senior officer was usually first on scene, setting up a command center, but he was coming from another fire and was five minutes behind them. The sky was still dark, with no moon, and the visibility wasn’t helped by the thick plumes of black smoke choking the air out of their lungs. Flames leaped fifty feet into the air, coming from a boat halfway down the second of the four docks. Aidan took a quick count, and his stomach tightened with fear. There were boats on either side of the flaming vessel, and more on the opposite side of the dock.
Not good.
As they accessed their equipment and laid out lines, three police squad cars tore into the lot, followed by the command squad, all of whom leaped to work evacuating the surrounding docks. Aidan and company needed to contain the flames, but the explosion burned outrageously hot. He could feel that mind-numbing heat from a hundred feet back. With the chief now on scene, barking orders through their radios, Aidan and the others moved with their hoses, their objective to keep the flames from spreading to any of the other boats. They were halfway there when it came.
A sharp, terrified scream.
The sound raised the hair on the back of Aidan’s neck, and he dropped everything to run toward the burning boat, Ty right behind him.
The scream came again, clearly female, and Aidan sped up. No one knew better than a firefighter what it was like to be surrounded by flames, to have them lick at you, toy with you. It was sheer, horrifying terror.
They had to get to her first.
Behind them came Sam, Eddie, Cristina and Aaron, directing water on the flames to clear Aidan and Ty’s path down the dock toward the boat. Twenty feet, then ten, and that’s when he saw her. A woman standing on the deck of the burning boat, wobbling, the flames at her back.