The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion
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Christy Jeffries
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HarlequinChapter One
Chief Isaac Jones commanded the stainless steel griddle in the kitchen of the Grange Hall the same way he did the Sugar Falls Fire Station—with a steady hand and a slight wonder that he’d ended up in this position in the first place.
Flipping a row of pancakes, he caught the flash of a blue shirt and gold neckerchief out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, partner,” Isaac said to one of the young Cub Scouts balancing three loaded paper plates between two small hands. “Can you find Mister Jonesy out there and tell him we’re gonna need more batter?”
“We’re almost out of syrup, too,” the chief of police, who also happened to be the pack leader for Troop 1307, said from the pass-through window separating the kitchen from the rows of tables and chairs set up in the main room. “I’ll run to Duncan’s Market and grab everything they have on their shelves.”
“I knew I should’ve ordered all the supplies before I left,” Isaac mumbled to no one in particular. It might be the last Saturday of October, but Sugar Falls was experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, and the unusually high temperatures meant nobody wanted to linger in the overheated kitchen this morning. When he’d originally volunteered the fire department to cosponsor the Scouts’ pancake breakfast fund-raiser, he hadn’t anticipated that the National Guard would move his unit’s annual two-week training up an entire month. Which meant that he hadn’t been in Sugar Falls ordering supplies for today.
“What can I do to help?” someone asked over the whirling of the industrial fan behind him.
The back of Isaac’s neck tingled at the familiar sound of the woman’s voice. His breathing stuttered. He hadn’t seen her in over ten years, and last he’d heard, she was joining the Peace Corps or a similar outfit volunteering in Africa somewhere. So surely it couldn’t be...
His dread was confirmed the second he turned around. Hannah Gregson.
His lungs refused to draw air for at least ten seconds as she stood there, her blond hair twisted into a messy knot and her proud shoulders pushed back as though she was ready to take on the world’s problems. She didn’t wear an ounce of makeup, but her complexion was as pure and fresh as it had been the summer after their senior year of high school.
“Your pancakes are burning,” she said, grabbing the spatula out of his clenched hand and easily swinging her tall, lithe body in front of his to scoop the blackened circles off the griddle.
Had she not recognized him?
Sure, Isaac had filled out a bit since he was eighteen, and he no longer sported the longer, fuller curls he’d worn in his youth. In fact, his hair was more of a fade now, a shorter style he’d grown accustomed to when he’d joined the Army after college. But he hadn’t changed that much.
Of course, the last time she’d seen Isaac was the night of that Labor Day bonfire and neither one of them had been at their finest.
He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”
“Making pancakes?” She tossed a cheeky smile over her shoulder. It was then that recognition finally dawned in her pale blue eyes and he experienced a tiny rush of satisfaction that she appeared to be as thrown off by his presence as he was by hers. “Isaac?”
“What’s this about you needing more batter?” Uncle Jonesy asked as he strode into the kitchen at that exact second. The old cowboy took one look at Hannah and said, “Aw, hell.”
“Hi, Jonesy,” Hannah said, lifting the spatula in a feeble wave. Good. At least she was now aware of the uneasiness circling the confines of this kitchen.
Jonesy was quick to recover, though, because he stepped around the stainless steel worktable in the center of the room and lifted Hannah up into a big bear hug. She let out a surprised squeak and Isaac’s uncle chuckled. “I heard you were back in town, hon.”
Isaac’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. He had? It would’ve been nice if the old man had given him a heads-up.
“I just got back a couple of weeks ago,” she said, and Isaac realized that Hannah must’ve arrived right after he’d left for his Guard training. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets, aiming for a casualness he didn’t feel as he studied her. They never had been able to stay around each other long enough to make things work.
“I bet your mama and daddy are excited you’re finally back in Idaho.” Jonesy smiled.
The Gregsons were originally from Boise. Summer kids, like Isaac, who only visited Sugar Falls during the warm months when they were out on school break. After he moved into the dorms at Yale, he’d heard through the grapevine that Hannah had decided to save money by going to Boise State, which must’ve been a real coincidence since Carter Mahoney was also attending that school on a full ride track-and-field scholarship. After hearing that she’d also gone home with Carter for Thanksgiving that same year, Isaac had made it a point to avoid any conversations that had to do with Hannah Gregson and where she was living. Or who she was seeing.
After ten years, he certainly didn’t want to hear about it now. Rocking back onto the heels of his work boots, Isaac heard the annoyance in his own voice when he asked, “Are you two gonna sit around and catch up or are we going to make some pancakes?”
“Guess I’ll run out and try to wrangle us some more mix.” His uncle’s gaze shifted between them as he scrubbed the gray whiskers on his ruddy face, probably eager to beat a hasty retreat. Deserter.
“Then I’ll get started on another bowl of batter.” Hannah passed the spatula to Isaac, her long, slender fingers coming into contact with his palm. A heat that had nothing to do with the nearby empty griddle spread through his gut.
“You don’t need to help.” Isaac’s tone came out more harsh and dismissive than he’d intended. “What I mean is that the fire department and the Scouts are putting the breakfast on. So we don’t really need any outside volunteers.”
“Hmm.” She looked around the empty kitchen. “It appears that you’re rather short-staffed at the moment.”
Okay, so that was slightly true. But he’d rather have no staff than have a bossy do-gooder like Hannah Gregson near him. Her mere presence echoed everything that his venture capitalist mother had drilled into him as a kid. Being an African American woman married to an older white investment banker, Isaac’s mom constantly had to prove herself at her husband’s bank before launching her own private equity firm and taking the biotech world by storm. Whether it was a grade at the science fair or a game at the county fair, his mother always insisted that her only child be better than the best.
Maybe that ingrained competitiveness was why Hannah’s intrinsic need to lead by example had always come across as a challenge to Isaac.
And today was no different.
“I’m only on my own temporarily,” he defended. “My crew is responding to a call at the elementary school.”
She gasped and he quickly held up his free palm, the one that wasn’t still tingling from her earlier touch. “Don’t worry. It’s the thirteenth time they’ve been out there this weekend. The district went with a low-bid contractor to install the new fire detection system. Most likely it’s another false alarm and they’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Hannah’s mouth relaxed, but her eyes sparkled with determination. “Then I can fill in for them in the meantime.”
With the growing number of young Scouts lining up at the pass-through window waiting for more plates of pancakes to serve, Isaac had to admit that he could use another hand. He studied her slender, strong fingers knotting the apron strings in front of her flat stomach. He just wasn’t quite sure he was ready for her hands.
Isaac cleared his throat. “Thanks for offering, but I’m sure one of the kids’ parents can come back here and help us.”
“I am one of the parents,” she replied, and Isaac’s heart slammed into his rib cage.
“Huh?” He must’ve looked as confused as he felt because Hannah rolled her eyes and jerked a thumb toward the dining area.
“My son’s a Cub Scout and his entire den is out there right now, wondering if these pancakes are going to cook themselves.”
“You have a son?”
Hannah could see Isaac Jones’s hazel eyes shifting back and forth as his brain made calculations. She hadn’t seen the man in ten years—since before he became a man, really—but some habits were hard to break and she could clearly see that his penchant for jumping to wrong conclusions was one of them. “Yes. His name is Samuel.”
“Is he...? I mean, uh...how old is your...um, son?” Isaac stammered. No doubt that he was expecting the age to coincide with the date they’d last been together and Hannah wondered if the guy’s ego knew no bounds.
Of course, with those wide shoulders and that perfectly warm brownskin with bronze undertones, he was definitely handsome enough to have an ego.
Instead of answering, though, she focused her trembling hands on the task of opening up the only box of pancake mix she could find and dumping it into a stainless steel bowl. After the way Isaac had once broken her trust and her heart, he didn’t even deserve to ask her about the weather, let alone such a personal question.
But her enjoyment at letting him squirm was short-lived because Sammy came into the kitchen at that exact moment. Hannah’s heart melted at her six-year-old’s hesitant steps and his round, wide eyes under the stiff blue cap. Straightening his gold neckerchief, she quietly asked, “How’s it going out there?”
Sammy tugged at her apron and Hannah bent down so she could hear his whispery, soft voice. “Those people sure eat a lot.”
“I know.” Hannah stroked a hand along the boy’s smooth ebony cheek. She’d read all the books and talked to countless other families about the transitioning effects of cross-cultural adoptions and children relocating overseas, especially for a child who had spent most of his life in a village orphanage in Ghana until he’d moved into a small cottage on the same premises with Hannah. “But don’t worry. We will have plenty of food for everyone. Do you want to help me mix up more pancakes?”
“No, thank you,” her son replied a bit more loudly, his accent making him sound almost British. “Uncle Luke said I could help him count out the change in the box. My cousins told me I need to learn how much the coins are worth so that the other kids at school won’t steal my lunch money and buy pudding cups with it.”
Hannah scrunched her nose. Her twin nephews were already proving to be a horrible influence on Sammy. But at least the nine-year-olds were coaxing the shy boy out of his shell and attempting to protect their newest family member. She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and tried to ignore Isaac’s blatant stare from the other side of the kitchen as Sammy walked out, only slightly more confident than he’d been when he entered.
“Was that your son?” Isaac asked, his voice even deeper and smoother than it had been when they were teenagers.
Stiffening her spine as straight as it would go, she turned to confront the man she’d stupidly fallen for all those years ago.
“I adopted him while I was in Africa on a Teachers Without Borders program.”
He slowly nodded and she watched the relief drain over his face. Then one side of his full lips quirked up, immediately reminding her body of the way his mischievous smile had always had the ability to draw her in. “So you became a teacher after all.”
Hannah grunted, choking down her outrage. How dare he take pride in the memory of their late-night talks sitting on the tailgate of his Uncle Jonesy’s old, rusted-out pickup truck? The conversations where she’d told him about her ambitions and her dreams and he’d told her that she was going to make the world a better place. She cracked an egg so hard, half the shell fell into her mixing bowl.
Luckily, she was saved from having to make any further casual small talk when his uncle swung through the door, balancing a sack of pancake mix in each gnarled hand. “Look what I found! No thanks to Freckles over at the Cowgirl Up Café, mind you. That ol’ gal cursed me up and down a blue streak for not knowin’ that her flapjacks were made from scratch.”
“So then where’d you get these?” Isaac stepped away from the stove to relieve Jonesy of half his load.
“One of the ladies from that quilting group over at the community church brought them over, saying we could borrow theirs as long as we replace it before their homeless outreach breakfast next week.”
Hannah wanted to ask if they’d had a sudden outpouring of homeless people relocating to the touristy mountain town of Sugar Falls. When she’d left two years ago, there’d been a handful of regulars stopping by the shelter for an occasional hot meal, but that was usually only in the snowy, winter months.
However, she kept her lips firmly clamped, not sure if she was ready to find out what else had changed around here since she’d been gone.
As she whisked, Isaac turned to the stove and she tried not to peek at his back. He’d always had those slim hips and long legs, but when had his shoulders gotten so broad? Probably around the same time that his jawline had gotten more chiseled.
Stop it, she commanded herself. This tingling sensation under her skin wasn’t because she was still attracted to Isaac, it was simply her body’s way of responding to the shock of seeing him after all these years. In fact, she hadn’t even recognized him at first. Maybe because she’d been so successful at blocking out all thoughts of the one guy who’d ever broken her heart.
Of course, his curls were gone and his hair was now cropped close. Plus, Hannah never would have expected to see him wearing pants, since she’d only spent time with him during the summer months. Actually, it was a bit jarring not to see him in a pair of board shorts and dressed in a shirt with sleeves that hadn’t been cut off. What wasn’t unusual, though, was to see him in a Sugar Falls Fire Department tee since his uncle had always run the volunteer department.
Why hadn’t anyone in her family warned her that Isaac was visiting this fall? Not that her brothers didn’t have their own busy lives, but they should’ve known that she would want some advance notice that she might run into her ex-boyfriend. While they’d both joined the Navy two years before that fateful summer, they had to have seen the grainy footage of that video someone had taken of Isaac and then posted on the internet.
Her body shuddered at the suppressed memory. Despite the fact that it had been taken down twenty-four hours later, everybody had seen it. The entire town had heard his recorded accusations and she’d never been in such a hurry to return home to Boise.
In fact, after college, Hannah had initially hesitated to take the teaching position in Sugar Falls. She only accepted when she’d been convinced that all the gossip about her had died down. It’d helped knowing that during Isaac’s irate monologue online, he’d told the person holding the video camera that he was leaving for good and would never come back to Idaho for as long as he lived.
Looked like that was another promise Isaac Jones had broken.
Channeling all the old hurt into her whisk, Hannah made bowl after bowl of pancake batter, refusing to think about the man standing only a few feet away from her. She kept her attention focused on the pass-through window and on the boys approaching in their Scout uniforms. She hoped Sammy was fitting in with them and wasn’t overwhelmed by all the new faces. Maybe she shouldn’t have signed him up for extracurricular activities so soon. But he’d be starting a brand new school on Monday and she knew how rough the first day could be for a transfer student who was already accustomed to American schools. It would be twice as awkward for her son.
After a tense hour of Hannah and Isaac each pretending that the other wasn’t there, Sammy rushed into the kitchen wearing a big grin, revealing two missing teeth. “We made four hundred and twenty-eight dollars. How much is that in cedis?”
Hannah had an app on her smartphone that would convert US dollars into Ghanaian currency, but she couldn’t remember where she’d left her purse. She was about to say as much to Sammy when she heard an older boy in a tan Scout uniform snicker. “That’s worth two goats and a water buffalo where you come from.”
Anger flooded her and she was about to admonish the mean-spirited kid when Isaac called out, “Hey, JP, since you seem to know so much about livestock, why don’t you go help Scooter Deets fill up those slop buckets he brought over from his ranch. He needs someone to sort through the trash for any leftover pancake bits that might’ve gotten thrown out. I’m sure his hogs will appreciate it.”
“But that’s disgusting,” the bigger boy said. “Those trash bags are covered in syrup and junk.”
Isaac’s only response was a steely scowl that didn’t invite any more back talk. Hannah should learn how to imitate that expression, since it might prove useful in her classroom full of fifth-graders this school year. JP pivoted with a huff, muttering under his breath as he shoved past a smirking eight-year-old who hid a box of plastic gloves behind his back. Apparently her son wasn’t the only boy who’d been picked on by this bully.
“Kids like that are jealous of worldly guys like us.” Isaac finally turned toward Sammy and gave him a wink. Worldly? Maybe. But guys like us? Please. As if her ex-boyfriend was anything like her sweet son. However, before Hannah could say as much, the man continued. “When I was younger and first came to Sugar Falls to visit my Uncle Jonesy, some of the other boys in town didn’t know what to think because I was new and different. But my uncle kept a close watch to make sure nobody messed with me. So if JP gives you any more problems, let me know and I’ll set him straight.”
“I will.” Sammy nodded as he approached Isaac, curiosity apparent in his expression.
Hannah felt her heels press back onto the ground, her calf muscles relaxing as the fight drained out of her. It wasn’t like she could get mad at the person who’d just defended her son. Then again, it was her role as Sammy’s mother to be his number one protector. After all, it wasn’t like Isaac would be around in the future to take on all the bullies of the world.
“Why are you making them so fat?” her son asked as Isaac poured the last of the batter onto the griddle.
“What do you mean, big guy?” Isaac asked, and Hannah tried to steel her heart against the sweet tone of his voice. Sammy was a few inches shorter and much thinner than the other six-year-olds in his den. So his smile lit up even more at being referred to as big guy.
“In Ghana, our pancakes are real skinny. Like pieces of paper.”
Isaac knelt down to speak to the boy and Hannah strained to hear his reply. “I’ll tell you what. If you get the recipe for me, next time we have a pancake breakfast, we’ll make them your way. I had some like that once when I lived in Morocco and I bet everyone in town will love ’em.”
Something tugged low in Hannah’s belly. Isaac hadn’t said that he’d make Sammy his own batch, which would only have made her son feel more different and out of place. Instead, he’d had the perfect response, offering to bring a piece of Sammy’s old life to share with everyone in his new life.
It was too bad Isaac Jones never kept his word.
