Firefighter With A Frozen Heart

“Oh, I intend to. So now, unless you have a medical concern or question, be quiet. Okay? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Don’t want to listen to you either.”

Too bad, because he liked the sassiness in her. He’d liked it seventeen years ago, and it hadn’t changed much. But once they dropped him off at the hospital, that was going to be the end of the line for Julie and him … again. It was for the best, he thought as he sank back down on the stretcher, shut his eyes and tried to blank her out. Definitely for the best.

“Signing out for the last time,” Julie said, handing in her badge. This was it. After so many grueling years in the back of an ambulance, she was finally moving on to the place she’d always wanted to be. And it was a good move, being a nurse. Grace Corbett had helped her, had made everything possible. Had dreamed the dream with her. She sighed, thinking about Grace, missing Grace. “And glad to be moving on.”

“Well, you take care of yourself. It’s not going to be the same without you around here, Julie,” her supervisor, a tall, big-boned woman named Gert, said, giving her a hug.

Good times, good memories, being a paramedic. Better ones ahead of her, though. She hoped. And two hours later, when she was tossing the last of her few incidentals into a cardboard box, she was still looking forward, not backward, because looking backward would be filled with thoughts and memories of Jess Corbett … the last person she’d ever expected to find in the back of her ambulance tonight.

Jess … darn! Now she’d opened the floodgates, and he’d poured through in a huge way. The funny thing was, she didn’t try holding him back. In fact, she shut her eyes for a moment and indulged herself. Jess … He was bigger than he was last time she’d seen him. More muscled. Lean. Fit. Broader shoulders. Face more chiseled, edgier lines to it. His eyes, though … still the same sapphire blue, but harder. Much harder than she remembered. No laugh lines around them either, which made her wonder if he ever smiled. His hair was the same, though. Sandy, maybe a little darker than it had been seventeen years ago. Clipped a whole lot shorter than she’d ever seen it on him. She liked the stubble on him, too. Made him look … masculine. Not that Jess, as a teenager, hadn’t been masculine. But Jess then compared to Jess now … actually, there was no comparison. Jess the man and Jess the boy, the man won hands down.

“But I’m not going to think about him,” she said, heading down three flights of stairs, grappling with the last of the things she was taking to her new life. She had an emergency room to expand. New responsibilities to think about. And thinking about Jess distracted her. So she wouldn’t. That’s all there was to it. She would not think about Jess Corbett.

An hour later, as she turned onto the interstate taking her north, she was still trying not to think about him. Of course, this new life she’d chosen for herself wasn’t going to make that easy, was it? Not when her destination was Lilly Lake, and Lilly Lake was the place they’d almost started a life together.

For early spring, the evening was pleasantly warm. Tonight, the sun was setting in gold hues over the lake, and in the distance the wail of a loon saddened the expanse. Heard for miles, across land, and from lake to lake, it was the haunting call of mates looking for each other, mates lost to each other and calling out to find them. Jess knew what that was about, what it felt like to search. “So that’s the long, sad story of my exile from New York City.”

“Smoke inhalation?” Rafe Corbett snorted a laugh. “They grounded you a week for smoke inhalation?”

“Two weeks,” Jess grumbled, then chuckled. “Let’s just say that I overstepped my bounds. After my clean bill of health I shot off my mouth when I should have kept it closed, and my captain decided to put me on ice for a little longer to think about it.”

“In other words, you don’t play by the rules.”

“And you do?”

“Okay, so the Corbett men do things their own way. But for me, that’s fine. I’m an orthopedist, I don’t really have to get into much of the team spirit the way you do.”

An orthopedist who, not so long ago, hadn’t been all that different from Jess. Except now Rafe was a married man with a daughter, and another one on the way. The picture of perfect contentment, and happy to be in that place. “Well, team is where it’s at. And between us, big brother, I do have some problems with that. I’m more used to …”

“Doing it on your own?”

Jess winced. It was true. He was a loner in most aspects of his life. In fact, he could probably count on one hand the number of times he and Rafe had actually sat down and talked as brothers these past dozen or so years. “Yep, doing it on my own. But I get the team concept, realize how important it is, even if I get ahead of myself sometimes.”

“Get ahead of yourself? You ran into a burning building without telling anybody you were going in. That’s a hell of a lot more than getting ahead of yourself, Jess.”

“You’re going to give me a lecture, too?” he asked, clearly annoyed, not with Rafe so much as with himself. He’d been wrong. He’d admitted it. But there was something inside him … something he just couldn’t control at times. Sometimes he had to act, consequences be damned. “Because I’ve already heard it, and now I have two weeks to reflect on the error of my ways.”

Rafe held up his hands in mock surrender. “Then it’s over, okay? Not another word. So, do you want to come stay up at Gracie House? We’ve got better accommodations. Molly would love having her favorite uncle there to play with.” Six-year-old Molly was Rafe’s new daughter and part of his newfound contentment.

“No. The cabin’s fine. But tell Molly she’ll be seeing enough of me over the next couple of weeks that she’ll probably get sick of me.” In truth, he liked the cabin. Liked its rustic charm. A mile from nowhere, with just enough amenities to call it modern, it kept him isolated. What more could he want? “Tell Edie, though, I appreciate the offer, and that I wouldn’t mind stopping in a couple of times for a good home-cooked meal if she’s up to it. I don’t want to put her out, though, considering …”

“She’s pregnant, working until her due date if she can and she loves to cook. How about tomorrow night? That’ll give her the chance to plan it, and give you the chance to settle in.”

“You can do that, just make plans for your wife like that?”

Rafe chuckled. “Hell, no. But Edie didn’t figure you’d stay at the house with us, so she told me to invite you over tomorrow night for dinner.”

“And you’re just trying to score points with me, making me think it was your idea.”

“I need some points, because I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“Not ominous. More like a matter of practicality. And to be honest, I’m glad you’re home because I was going to come to the city next week to talk to you about it.”

Jess twisted in his seat. Was on the verge of getting up and going inside. Shutting the door on what Rafe was here to discuss. “Another time?” he asked, trying to put off the talk for no good reason other than he didn’t want to deal with it at present. In fact, his preference would be signing his share of Lilly Hospital over to Rafe, then be done with the whole thing. But that’s not what Rafe wanted. So Jess was hanging on, but in title only.

“Look, Jess. I understand it’s hard for you, and if there was any other way to do this, I would. But we are co-owners …”

“One of which who wants nothing to do with the hospital. So, here’s what you can do, Rafe. Anything. Anything you want. I trust your judgment, and I’ll give you my blessing but, please, leave me the hell out of the decisions.

Okay?”

“What I want, Jess, is to take Rick Navarro on as a partner. He’s earned it. He deserves it. And he has good ideas for expansion …”

Jess waved him off. “What, in the definition of anything don’t you understand?”

“For once, just listen to me, okay? Before you start spouting off your opinion or telling me all the reasons you don’t give a damn, just shut up and listen!”

Jess huffed out an impatient sigh. “Do I have a choice?”

“You’ve always got a choice, but I was hoping you’d give me some support in this.”

“You’ve got my support, Rafe. Just not my attention.” He pushed himself up out of his seat and headed toward the front door, but stopped before going inside. Change of heart? Not at all. But a sure change of mind. Rafe was the only person he had in this world, and it wouldn’t hurt him to listen to his big brother. After all, Rafe had taken the beatings for him, quite literally. All those years, all the tirades, Rafe was the one who’d stood up to their old man and taken the punishment. So at the least he owed him another minute to listen. “Okay, tell me, but don’t expect anything from me other than listening. Because I’m not going to get involved in this.”

Rafe stood, and went to lean on the banister across from the front door. “Fine. I’ll make it fast. We’re expanding pediatric services, which you already know. We’re looking into some growth in obstetrics, too. But the first thing we’re taking on is an expansion to our emergency services, because what we have isn’t good enough.”

At the mention of emergency services, Jess winced. Being a former trauma surgeon, this was probably where Rafe wanted to wheedle some kind of commitment out of him. Come back and work temporarily until we can find someone else to take over. Or be a consultant. That’s what he expected, but he was going to hold his ground. No involvement, no way!

“Rather than sending major trauma cases to the hospital all the way over in Jasper, or someplace even farther away, we’re going to expand enough to handle what we need and help with overflow from other areas. So we’ve hired a nurse-coordinator to oversee the first phase of growth. She has an amazing trauma background, a doctorate in nursing …”

“A doctorate?” he asked, feeling his gut churn.

“A doctorate. And for where we are right now, she’s the perfect person to put in charge of coordinating the plans. Um, Jess … we hired …”

“Let me guess. You hired Julie Clark?” He hadn’t seen her in seventeen years, now here she was, front and center, twice in two days. How could that be happening?

Rafe frowned. “Either that was an amazing wild guess, or you’ve been in touch with Julie.”

“In touch. Not by choice.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” Rafe asked.

Jess shook his head. Didn’t reply, so Rafe continued, “Well, she was the right one. Has the credentials we need, as well as the experience …” He paused, studied Jess’s frown, sucked in a deep breath. “Look, Jess, since you’re not here most of the time, and when you are you never leave the cabin, I didn’t think it would matter.”

“Why would it matter?” Jess snapped, then stormed inside his cabin and slammed the screen door behind him. “Jess?” Rafe called after him.

“Nothing matters,” Jess yelled back. “Not one damned thing.” Except for those couple of weeks of Julie’s pregnancy scare hell. Those had mattered a lot.