After the Fire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  About the Author

  Books Available from Bold Strokes Books

  Synopsis

  Paramedic Connor Haus is good at two things—saving lives

  on the streets of Boston and holding her past against every

  firefighter she meets. The tragic loss of her partner, Kam, has

  left her bitter and angry, her work and fellow-EMT Jake

  O’Harrigan the only pieces of her life she still cares about.

  Until rookie firefighter Logan Curtis moves to town, and onto

  Connor’s scene, and threatens to rattle the walls Connor has

  long since put up.

  Hotshot Logan has never had a problem getting women to

  notice her. But when Connor trips her radar, she realizes

  Connor may be more than just another notch on her bedpost.

  But how could anyone compete with Kam’s memory?

  Sometimes, you have to wait until after the fire to see just

  what’s worth saving.

  After the Fire

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or

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  work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  After the Fire

  © 2016 By Emily Smith. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-653-1

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: March 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are

  used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or

  dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely

  coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form

  without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Melody Pond

  By the Author

  Searching For Forever

  Same Time Next Week

  After the Fire

  CHAPTER ONE

  Connor Haus didn’t like firefighters. She respected them,

  sure. She was, after all, among the majority who found

  themselves wanting to run from the burning building, not

  toward it. They were brave, and strong, and heroic. But

  Connor also found them arrogant and foolish—not exactly

  ideal qualities when it came to saving lives. And saving lives

  was all Connor really cared about anymore.

  Her partner of the last ten years, a young, energetic EMT

  with a boyish smile named Jake O’Harrigan, slammed the

  ambulance into park, but she was already hanging out the open

  passenger side door, ready to leap to her feet as soon as the rig

  came to a stop.

  “Meet you there.” She grabbed the massive gear bag from

  the back and rushed to the woman sitting on the curb, leaving

  Jake behind to haul the stretcher. Boston Fire Department was

  on scene first. Of course they were. Although, for the life of

  her, Connor could never understand why the system operated

  that way. Firefighters, to her, were good for one thing, and that

  was brutish work like spraying hundreds of gallons of water

  onto high-rises or cutting people out of cars. The city required

  that most of them be trained in some level of emergency

  medical services, but to Connor, medicine, especially street

  medicine, should be left to the paramedics.

  “Nice of you guys to join us.” A rosy-cheeked man-child

  the size of a small house was holding an oxygen mask to the

  young woman’s face while he smirked mercilessly at Connor.

  She knew him. She knew most of them. His name was Marty

  Taylor, and he was one of the many members of BFD who

  fueled her hatred and often irrational irritation toward the

  profession.

  “I’ll take it from here, Taylor.” But Marty didn’t move. “I

  said we’ve got this.”

  “If you’re interested, this is Meg. She called us for

  difficulty breathing. Respirations are 32, pulse is 120, alert and

  oriented times four. History of asthma.”

  Connor dropped her bag and zeroed in on her patient.

  Before she’d even seen Taylor, she’d noted the girl’s pallor

  and the icy tint to her lips and under her sunken eyes. She

  looked sick. It was an insight, or more a sense, that Connor

  had finely tuned over her ten years as a medic. She couldn’t

  explain it, really, and she certainly couldn’t teach anyone how

  to do it. But whatever it was, Connor knew it. And this woman

  was sick.

  “O2 sat?” She was greeted with silence while she felt for a

  pulse on the patient’s clammy wrist. “Taylor? What was her

  sat when you got here?” She gave him a cool glance.

  “I…I guess I didn’t get one—”

  “What do you mean you didn’t get a sat?”

  “I forgot…She’s on four liters on the mask though.” This

  was why Connor couldn’t stand firefighters who tried to play

  medic. Most of the guys she’d encountered had been just like

  Taylor, too, quick to be the hero but missing key pieces of the

  puzzle so crucial when it came to life or death. She said

  nothing but unzipped the front pocket of the bag and pulled

  out the pulse oximeter.

  “86 percent. Damn it.” She looked back up at the pale face

  in front of her. “Meg? My name is Connor. I’m a paramedic.

  Can you tell me what happened?”

  The young woman on the curb forced a small smile

  through the plastic oxygen mask, but her color was getting

  worse by the minute. If Connor didn’t do something, fast,

  she’d have to intubate.

  “Have…asthma…” She gasped. “Can’t…breathe…”

  Jake showed up next to them with the stretcher in tow.

  “Just relax. We’re going to help you. Jake, can you put

  together an albuterol treatment for me? And quickly?”

  Connor cranked the oxygen tank up to eight and watched

  the numbers on the oximeter. They weren’t budging. Taylor

  stood up, pacing uncomfortably back and forth, the thudding

  of his heavy black
boots on the frozen Jamaica Plain pavement

  echoing in Connor’s ears. While she waited, she helped the

  woman slowly to her feet, neither Jake nor Taylor offering

  much in the way of assistance, and sat her down on the

  ambulance stretcher. Finally, Taylor ran off, returning with a

  wool blanket, which he proudly wrapped around her

  shoulders.

  “Here you go, Boss.” Jake handed her a breathing

  treatment, which she quickly placed in the woman’s mouth.

  “This is albuterol, just like what’s in your inhaler, only

  stronger. Just breathe normally, okay? We’ll get you feeling

  better in no time.” Her voice was strong and confident, but

  inside, like always, she was writhing. Connor thought back to

  an instructor she’d had in paramedic school who was always

  telling her to “be the duck”—flailing under the water to stay

  afloat but calm on the surface. She’d found she was quite good

  at being the duck. And no matter how hot things got, Connor

  knew how to pretend they weren’t. Jake, on the other hand,

  wasn’t quite as gifted in this area. He joined Taylor in his

  pacing until Connor was sure the two of them were going to

  wear holes in their shoes. This must be why those idiots wear

  rubber boots.

  Within a few minutes, the young woman’s cheeks

  transformed from a frigid white to a delicate pink, her lips no

  longer reminding Connor of a 7-11 Slurpee drink. The

  numbers on the oximeter climbed, slowly, until they reached

  92—a reading she could live with, and so could her patient.

  “How are you feeling now?” she asked, placing her

  stethoscope to the woman’s back.

  “So much better. I can breathe…Thank you. You’re a

  lifesaver.”

  Connor smiled at her. “That’s sort of the idea.”

  Taylor motioned to his buddy, who’d been sitting on the

  back of the engine playing on his cell phone through the entire

  series of events. Connor thought she’d actually prefer it if

  everyone in BFD just stayed with their truck. That way they

  couldn’t bother her or her patients.

  “Let’s get her loaded up for Haus here, shall we?”

  The two spry men in their bunker gear effortlessly lifted

  the woman and the stretcher into the back of the Boston EMS

  rig. At least they’re good for one thing, Connor thought. I’ll

  probably be able to work into my sixties without a back injury.

  She grinned to herself and hopped into the ambulance.

  ❖

  By the time Jake pulled into the ambulance bay at Boston

  City Hospital, the young woman was telling Connor about her

  three dachshunds at such length that you’d have had to wonder

  if she’d ever been sick at all.

  This was her favorite part of the job—finding them in

  crisis and bringing them in fixed. Jake yanked open the heavy

  back doors, and the two of them lowered the stretcher to the

  ground and walked through the emergency room. A blast of

  heat reminded Connor that it was still January in

  Massachusetts. She rarely noticed things like the weather

  while she worked, though. Even in her thin Boston EMS

  fleece and cargo pants, she’d been sweating under the heat of

  death right in front of her.

  “Connor. You brought us a present.” Galen Burgess, the

  young ER resident with California-blond hair and a year-long

  tan met them at the door.

  “Anything for you, Galen.” Connor gave her an overt wink

  and a smile.

  “Welcome. I’m Dr. Burgess, the resident on today. I’ll be

  taking care of you.”

  “Hi. I’m Meg.”

  Galen followed Connor and Jake down the hall and into

  one of the exam rooms, where she took the woman’s arm and

  guided her to the bed.

  Galen Burgess embodied sex, and she knew it. Every

  woman who came through the Boston City ER when she was

  on staff was immediately swept up in her West Coast charm

  and toothy smile. When they met two years earlier, Connor

  had vowed not to be one of the many women on Galen’s list of

  conquests. But in a few months Galen had cornered her in an

  on-call room with a bottle of chardonnay and a few smooth

  lines. Connor was helpless. They’d slept together several more

  times before Galen disappeared, Connor eventually finding her

  in the arms of one of the maternity nurses behind a curtain in

  Room 4.

  It had taken a solid year before she could look at Galen

  without wanting to find the nearest emesis basin. But she was

  finally over it. Galen Burgess was fun, and sexy, and

  dangerous, and they enjoyed the mutual flirtation whenever

  Connor brought Galen a patient. But that was it. And that

  worked out just fine for Connor. She wasn’t interested in

  anything even resembling a relationship. Not with Galen and

  not with anyone.

  ❖

  The radio on Connor’s hip remained unusually quiet, so

  she took just a moment to say good-bye to Galen and her

  patient, and swing by the cafeteria for a much-needed coffee.

  With her thirty-second birthday a few weeks away, she was

  getting a little old to be working 24-hour shifts. And as she

  filled a paper cup with the hot coffee, she thought briefly about

  getting off the streets. She could go back to school to be a

  nurse, or even a physician assistant. But she liked the streets.

  She even loved them. She loved the rush of being the first

  to find a patient who was sick or hurt. She loved making

  people better with only what was in her gear bag or on her

  truck. She loved bunking with Jake in the station on their long

  stretches together. Connor would never leave. She’d be a

  paramedic until she died or retired—whichever came first.

  A clumsy hand smudged with black soot reached over her

  for the creamer, knocking Connor’s hot coffee all over her

  front.

  “Really?” Connor grumbled, grabbing a stack of napkins

  and patting herself down.

  “I’m so sorry…”

  She finally looked up, irate about having to go back out

  into the cold in a coffee-stained uniform because some dumb-

  ass lug of a firefighter couldn’t wait his turn for the Half and

  Half. But the owner of the clumsy hand wasn’t a “he” at all,

  although she might not have noticed if she hadn’t looked

  closely. This person wore yellow bunker pants and a gray T-

  shirt damp with sweat around her back and chest. Her chin-

  length hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her chiseled

  face was brushed with more black along her strong cheeks.

  “BFD. Figures.” Connor glared into the woman’s bold,

  blue eyes.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “At least let me go find you a pair of scrubs,” the woman

  offered.

  “No. You’ve done enough for today, thanks.”

  Connor went back to fruitlessly dabbing the growing stains

  on her jacket that seeped through to her polo shirt. They

  stopped at her Kevlar, but it was going to be a miserable

/>   sixteen hours until she could shower and change. With any

  luck, she and Jake would make it back to the station long

  enough to find a new shirt in the boss’s office. But luck wasn’t

  something she often depended on.

  “Suit yourself.” The woman brushed off Connor’s

  dismissal and skipped out of the cafeteria to meet her fellow

  clumsy, dumb-ass firefighter buddies.

  “What are you still doing here? And what’s that fragrance

  you’re wearing today? Eau de espresso?”

  Connor had waited for Galen outside an exam room, where

  Galen was tenderly pressing on a small child’s belly and

  laughing with her parents.

  “I don’t want to talk about it…” Connor’s handheld

  crackled to life with a jarring tone she’d know anywhere.

  “Shit.”

  “Medic 884, respond to 29 Tower Street for a 3-alpha-10.

  Ninety-two-year-old female with chest pain. Over.” She

  grabbed the radio from its holster.

  “884 to ops. Anyone else to take this one? I’ve had a bit of

  a fight with a cup of coffee and was hoping to make it back to

  base to change. Over.”

  “No can do, 884. All other units are out. Sorry. Over.”

  Connor groaned and rolled her eyes. “884 responding.

  Over.”

  “You can’t go outside in that.”

  “Think you can get me some scrubs?”

  Galen nodded and rushed to a supply closet around the

  corner, retrieving matching blue pants and a top even thinner

  than the coffee-stained clothes she already wore. At least she’d

  be dry. Connor silently cursed the woman from the cafeteria

  again under her breath.

  “I owe you.” She kissed Galen quickly on the cheek.

  “I’ll remember that!”

  “Pig.”

  ❖

  Jake was waiting in the driver’s seat for her when she

  arrived back in the ambulance bay.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Fucking BFD happened to me.”

  “You’re going to wear those?” he asked, obviously

  incredulous.

  “Better than looking like I should be collecting change in

  Downtown Crossing.”

  “You know,” Jake flipped on the lights and sirens and

  peeled out of the Boston City parking lot, “you really have to

  drop this grudge against BFD. They aren’t all bad.”

  “Just drive, Jake.”

  Connor stripped down to her bra and panties while Jake