Lizzie Breen is used to fighting-from her alpha male brothers, who try to smother her in the name of safety, to the life-threatening childhood illness she overcame. She knows what she and Mulligan feel for each other is a lot more than a fling, but she can't get him to see that. The only gift Lizzie wants to give him this season is her love, but he's not willing to accept it.
When Mulligan is trapped in the burning wreckage of a holiday store, a Christmas angel arrives to open his eyes. But is it too late? This Christmas, it'll take an angel, a determined woman in love, and the entire Bachelor Firemen crew to make him believe … it is indeed a wonderful life.
PURCHASE LINKS
AMAZON / B&N
On his way into
the training room at San Gabriel’s Station 1, Dean Mulligan ran smack into a
fallen cluster of tinsel and barely avoided a spruce branch to the eye. He
staggered backward.
About the author
Visit her on the Web at
Email: JenniferBernard.author@gmail.com
Twitter: jen_bernard
PURCHASE LINKS
AMAZON / B&N
EXCERPT - Chapter 1
On his way into
the training room at San Gabriel’s Station 1, Dean Mulligan ran smack into a
fallen cluster of tinsel and barely avoided a spruce branch to the eye. He
staggered backward.
“I’ve been hit!” he
announced dramatically to the rest of the A shift, none of whom looked
impressed. “Where’s Santa? I’m going to kick his bearded ass.”
“Merry Christmas
to you too.” Fred Breen tossed him a candy cane. Mulligan caught it, gave it a
glare, then hung it on his middle finger for safekeeping. “We’re trying to
decide where to hang the mistletoe someone sent. Any ideas?”
“Yes.” Mulligan
gave his middle finger a meaningful glance and wiggled it. “I’ve got room for
it right here.” Not that he hated Christmas, but . . . well, he kind of hated
Christmas. If everyone else had experienced the kind of Christmases he had,
they’d probably cancel the holiday altogether.
Fred shook his
head sadly and muttered something about Grinches.
Mulligan surveyed
the shabby, workaday training room, now lit with twinkle lights and scented
with spruce boughs. “It’s not even Christmas yet. Why are we doing this?”
“Christmas is in
two days. When are we supposed to do it?” Vader Brown, the new captain of the
engine company, gripped a steaming mug of coffee in his enormous fist.
“Don’t ask
Mulligan that,” Sabina answered, strolling in from the kitchen with a
red-and-green-iced doughnut. She looked cool and gorgeous as always. Mulligan
used to have a crush on her, but he hadn’t thought about her that way lately.
Not since he and Lizzie had started their . . . whatever it was. “Mulligan’s
the original Scrooge. He actually said we should ban Christmas for safety
reasons.”
“Christmas lights
. . . electrical hazards . . . family stress . . . it’s a nightmare. Ask any
suicide hotline..” Mulligan headed into the kitchen to pour himself a mug of
coffee. “Oooh, cookies.”
“Don’t touch
those,” Fred warned. “A lady wearing an elf costume brought them in. You might
get Christmas fever.”
Mulligan popped a
fudge cookie—the least Christmassy of the choices—in his mouth. “An elf
costume. Like, a hot elf?”
Sabina rolled her
eyes, while Vader made a “little bit” gesture with his fingers. Stan, the
firehouse dog, trotted into the room. His head drooped under the weight of felt
reindeer antlers.
“Who did that to
poor Stan?” Mulligan demanded, nearly choking on the rest of his cookie.
“What’s your
problem, Mulligan?” Double D called from one of the couches in the training
room, where he was resting his leg, still healing from when he dropped a
microwave on it. If anything, his belly had gotten bigger since the accident a
few months ago. “You’re harshing my Christmas mellow.”
“Your what?” Mulligan nearly spewed cookie
crumbs all over the counter.
“I’m learning surf
from Acie.”
“You’re going to
surf? I pity the ocean.”
“Of course I’m not
going to surf. I’m speaking surf.
It’s totally tubular.”
Ace, the blond
surfer-boy rookie who was about to move to his permanent assignment, grinned.
“Sick, brah.”
Mulligan shook his
head, disgusted. He should have put in for vacation time over Christmas. But
since he didn’t have a family, he usually volunteered to work extra shifts to
fill in for the guys who did. He’d rather be at the firehouse than at the local
bar trying to drown thoughts of his messed-up childhood Christmases.
“Am I the only one
who can see how much Stan hates his antlers?” He plucked the silly things off
Stan’s head. The dog violently shook his whole body, as if trying to get rid of
the sensation of the hard plastic headband, then licked Mulligan’s shoe.
Mulligan bent down
to scratch his head. Stan was more of an eater than a lover, and more of a
sleeper than an eater. But Mulligan knew a certain spot behind his left ear . .
.
After he’d helped
Stan recover from the trauma and indignity of the antlers, he headed for the
workout room.
“I’ll be throwing
some iron around,” he told everyone. “Give me a shout when it’s time for
lineup.” Even though things got a little more relaxed this time of year, every
shift started with lineup, during which the captain would relay any new and
important information, such as training bulletins, shift changes, and dinner
rotation assignments.
Mulligan had been
part of Station 1 for the past two years, and part of the A shift ever since
Patrick “Psycho” Callahan had left to become a hotshot in Nevada. He’d never
met Psycho, but judging from the stories, they had a lot in common. It was a
good thing they’d never worked together because they would have gotten into all
kinds of trouble.
In the workout
room, he sat on a bench and hefted a hundred-pound free weight into his right
hand. As he flexed his biceps, he focused on the burn building in his muscles.
The sensation grounded him, distracting him from the disturbing effect of all
the Christmas hoopla. He watched the thick scar across his forearm flex and
stretch. His stepfather had left that one with a machete. A badge of survival,
Mulligan told himself, just like the rest of his scars, some left by his
stepfather, some gained from fights during his fiery teenage years.
He switched to the
other biceps and did ten quick reps. Being in peak physical condition was
extremely important to him. If he hadn’t been fast and strong, he’d probably be
dead by now. Either his rocky past would have killed him, or his job as the
“topman” for Truck 1 would have. When you hacked holes in burning roofs for a
living, it paid to be fit.
On the other hand,
maybe it would have been best if he hadn’t bucked the odds. Maybe surviving
wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Life should be about more than surviving,
shouldn’t it?
He ground his
teeth. Effing Christmas. He went through this every single year. Christmas
gutted him like a fish. He’d take a hundred Valentine’s Days over Christmas.
With fascinating
timing, his cell phone beeped with an incoming text message. The name “Lizzie”
flashed on the screen, sending the familiar bolt of . . . something . . . through
his system. Excitement, anxiety, alertness, whatever--it mainlined adrenaline jnto
his bloodstream.
He flipped the
phone into his other hand and read the message. Breen family Christmas. Great-aunts. Baked ham. Rum cake. What do you
say?
Aw, hell. He
couldn’t. He didn’t celebrate Christmas. He just ignored the whole damn thing
until it was over. But if he told Lizzie he couldn’t go, she might take it as a
personal rejection. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings any more than he
already had.
I’ll be on shift, he typed. Thank God for that.
You volunteered for Christmas?
That’s the kind of guy I am. Always giving and thinking of others.
He grinned,
picturing Lizzie’s dramatic eye roll at that absurd claim. Lizzie didn’t put up
with bullshit. She’d been raised in a family of macho military brothers; Fred
was the only one who hadn’t joined a branch of the armed forces, and quite
frankly, the fire service was the next best thing. From the first time he’d
laid eyes on Lizzie, she’d sassed him and teased him as if he belonged with the
Breens.
But he didn’t. He
was nothing like the Breens, and he didn’t feel brotherly toward Lizzie. Not
one bit.
Sorry. Had to excuse myself for a second to
gag, she texted.
Figured.
If you’re working on Xmas, how about Xmas
Eve?
Damn. Trapped. In
his opinion, Christmas Eve held all the same unpleasant associations as
Christmas. Perhaps even more, because Christmas Eve was all about hope and
anticipation of the next day.
Freddie wouldn’t be too crazy about me
showing up.
His phone rang.
Oops. He’d pushed the wrong button with that statement.
“What are you
talking about?” Lizzie’s lively voice launched into the workout room as if it
were a dancing girl in bangles. “What does Fred have to do with this?”
He gave a
long-suffering sigh. “Fred is your brother. Why do I always have to remind you
of this? Do you have so many they all run together?”
“I know he’s my
brother, Mulligan. Don’t be an ass.”
“Oh, Lizzie.
Always asking for the impossible.” He propped his phone between his ear and
shoulder and picked up another hand weight, a lighter one, so he could do more
rapid reps.
“I know what
you’re doing, idiot. You’re trying to piss me off so I’ll forget about
Christmas. And Christmas Eve. And the present I got you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course I did.
And you’re going to like it.” Her voice got that kittenish purr that made him
harder than a free weight. “It’ll rock your world. Change your life forever.
You’ll be on your knees in front of me.”
“Will you be
naked?”
“Except for my
Christmas stockings.”
“Lizzie . . .”
Mulligan growled, in extreme discomfort due to the sudden bulge in his pants.
“So you’ll come?” she
asked innocently.
“No.” Not in the
way she meant. “I told you, I’m working. And there’s Fred. And I don’t really
bother with Christmas.”
“Well, that might
be a problem,” she said sassily. He could just imagine her toying with the end
of her ponytail. Her hair looked dark brown at first, but once, while they lay
in bed, he’d sifted through the strands and found shades of deep bronze,
mahogany, and even sherry. There was a lot more to Lizzie’s hair—and Lizzie—than
it seemed at first. “Since I love Christmas.”
“It’s not a
problem, because we’re putting this on hold, remember?” He spoke carefully,
because not only did he care about Lizzie—as much as he could care about any
girl—but she was his fellow fireman’s little sister. Lord knew he should never
have gotten tangled up with her. He just hadn’t been able to resist.
“Don’t talk to me
as if I’m a silly child.” The edge in her voice made him wince. “I know exactly
where things stand between us. You’re being a stubborn idiot, and I’m being
more understanding than you deserve.”
“That’s true.
You’re being too understanding. You
ought to hit me upside the head and kick me to the curb.”
She muttered
something he couldn’t quite hear. Catching his reflection in the mirror, he
grinned at that scarred, tough, broken-nosed brute. If Lizzie tried to kick him
to the curb, she’d probably break her toe.
“I’m doing you a
favor, Lizzie. Someday you’ll think back to the time you went temporarily nuts
and went out with a broken-down old hulk of a fireman and thank your guardian
angel it didn’t work out.”
A short silence,
followed by a huff of breath. “I don’t like it when you say things like that,
Mulligan. You’re not broken-down.”
Little did she
know. Okay, certain parts of him
worked fine. Especially around her. It was the invisible parts that no longer
functioned.
“And you’re not
old,” she continued. “You’re only a few years older than me.”
In years, maybe.
In terrible experiences, he had several lifetimes on her.
“And you’re not a hulk. Well, I suppose
maybe you’re a hulk, if that’s a good thing, like the Incredible Hulk. But not
if you mean it as a bad thing.”
The wistfulness in
her voice made him soften. Lizzie was . . . Lizzie was a darling. A
sweet-hearted spitfire of a girl who deserved someone less . . . scarred.
“This isn’t my
favorite time of year,” he told her. “If I was smart, I’d check into a motel
room about a week before Christmas and come out in time for all the New Year’s
parties. Sorry, Lizzie. I’m not a Christmas guy. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Okay. I can
understand that. It’s a tough time of year for a lot of people. The ER is
always crazy around the end of the year. Fine. I won’t bug you about it again.”
And that, right
there, was one of the many reasons he couldn’t seem to walk away from Lizzie
for good. She got it. Always
practical, she knew when to step back, when to give him some room. She just . .
. got it.
“I wanted to tell
you something else, Mulligan.” Her serious tone made him frown. “I was going to
tell everyone at once, at Christmas, but if you’re not going to be there, you
get to hear it first. I got offered a job.”
“That’s great.
Congratulations.” Lizzie had recently finished her EMT training and had been
working on her pilot’s license and helicopter certification. Her dream was to
be a flight paramedic. She’d be a damn good one too. Lizzie was quick and
sure-handed and daring and smart. He’d seen her in action during ride-alongs
and been blown away every time.
“The job is in
British Columbia.”
“What?” In the
tilt-a-whirl of his reaction, her words didn’t even make sense to him. What was
British Columbia? Was it a state he’d never heard of? Or two countries put
together? “What are you talking about?”
“British Columbia.
It’s in Canada. Western Canada.”
“You can’t move to
Canada.”
“Of course I can
move to Canada. I just have to get a work visa and update my passport and—”
A welling sense of
panic threatened. “But you’re not Canadian. It’s a foreign country.”
“Oh, I see. You’re
worried about the language difference.”
The teasing note
in her voice made his jaw tighten. “I know they speak English in Canada.”
“They also speak
French in certain regions, and there are a few native languages such as
Inupiat, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be safe with English.”
“Okay, smart-ass.
That doesn’t change my basic point. You belong here. Your . . . your family’s
here.”
“My family is all
over the world. At least I’ll be on the same continent. My mother will be over
the moon. She loves Canadians. She’s always going on about how nice they are.”
Nice. No one had ever accused Dean
Mulligan of being nice.
“And they have
cute accents. I’m a sucker for cute accents. Scottish is best, like Matt
McBride’s. Makes me weak in the knees. But Canadian is right up there too. The
way they say ‘aboot,’ it’s adorable.”
Adorable. There was another word never
used to describe Mulligan. Lizzie, heading off to Canada, land of adorable
accents. Dean wanted to rip something apart. Unfortunately, the workout room
didn’t offer much besides iron bars and mirrors. He contented himself with
thumping his free weight onto the padded workout mat. It rolled, nearly
catching his toe.
“What was that?”
Lizzie asked. “Sounded like an earthquake.”
Everyone in San
Gabriel was still a little antsy about quakes and aftershocks, even though it
had been over six months since the Los Feliz Earthquake had struck.
“No. Nothing like
that.” Well, maybe a little like that. Her news was more like a bombshell than
an earthquake though. His ears were still ringing. And his head was pounding.
And a tone was blaring . . .
He yanked the
phone away from his head and listened.
“Structure fire at
1608 Sierra Vista Way. Battalion 6, Task Force 1, Task Force 3. Strip mall with
possible victims inside. Incident number two-twenty-one.Time of incident, nine
fifteen.”
“I have to go,
Lizzie.” He was already pelting toward the door.
“I heard. Go.”
Lizzie got it. She
just got it.
He ran to the
apparatus bay, reaching it ahead of the rest of the crew, who were coming from
the kitchen. He tossed his phone in his locker and quickly donned his gear,
doing a quickie double-check of his regulator, which had acted up last shift.
It seemed fine now. He hopped into Truck 1 and fastened himself in. His right
leg jumped with adrenaline. While he always experienced some degree of nerves
before a fire, this didn’t sound like an ordinary fire. A strip mall two days
before Christmas was going to be a madhouse.
His stomach
tightened, thinking of flammable tinsel, scented candles, wrapping paper
catching a spark.
Fred, the
apparatus operator, slid into the driver’s seat. “Got a little more info. It’s
an electrical fire that started inside a shoe store. It spread fast through the
rest of the mall. Six shops or so. I think there’s a Yogurtland in there.”
Ace hopped in,
followed by Skeet, the new captain of the truck company. One,the tiller man--or
tiller woman, in this case--steered from the rear of the rig, Over in Engine 1,
Vader, Double D, Sabina, and Sanchez were already rolling toward the big garage
door as it rattled up.
Once they left the
garage, Fred hit the sirens and lights, and they rumbled through the streets,
morning traffic parting before the mighty rigs of Task Force 1. Mulligan
distracted himself from his nerves by waving to a kid in an SUV that had pulled
over. The boy was halfway out the car window, waving madly. His golden retriever
was trying to climb over his back until finally the boy’s mother pulled them
both back in the vehicle, and then the SUV was ancient history, three blocks
back.
A boy, a dog, a
mother . . . the dog reminded him of Bruiser, the stray golden he’d taken in
and who’d followed him around the minor leagues until he got too old.
The far backseat
of the SUV had been loaded with boxes, and a spruce tree had been lashed to the
roof. A boy, a dog, a mother, Christmas . . . damn.
He hated this time of year.
“Mulligan, are you
listening?”
“Huh?” Mulligan
swiveled to see Fred glaring at him. He was fiddling with his breathing
apparatus.
“I said, don’t
mess with my sister. If you do, things are going to get ugly.”
Fred might look
young, but he was actually a badass with multiple black belts in various
martial arts Mulligan had never heard of. Mulligan was a fist-to-the-jaw sort
of guy himself. “I’m not messing with her.”
“She likes you.”
“I’m sure you can
talk her out of it.”
“If you believe that,
you don’t know Lizzie. Trent once tried to talk her out of trying to parachute
off the porch roof with her Halloween butterfly wings. He had to pin her down,
but even that didn’t work. We had to set up a trampoline. No one can talk her
out of anything.”
Mulligan’s heart
sank. That meant he couldn’t talk her out of moving to Canada. Which would be
tough to do anyway, since he couldn’t give her a good reason to stay. “Lizzie
and I are friends.”
“So are we. For now.” With one last menacing hairy
eyeball, Fred retreated behind his face mask.
Great. Just what
he needed—to piss off a martial arts master whose future father-in-law was a
tech billionaire. If he got on Fred and Rachel’s bad side, he might get his ass
kicked and his Internet erased.
Like a roiling
tornado, black smoke churned over the tiled rooftops up ahead. “Whoa,” said
someone before they all went quiet and listened to the initial size-up on the dispatch
channel. As the first on scene, the Battalion 6 chief took charge as incident commander.
“Engine 6 is on the scene of a one-story,
L-shaped strip mall, give me two additional task forces. Companies responding
to the Sierra Vista incident be advised there are no known current occupants on
the premises. Heavy black smoke showing through the roof. No exposure problem.
All companies be advised, Sierra Vista is blocked, enter from First Street.
Engine 6, you are fire attack in division Alpha.”
No occupants and
no exposure problem--or risk of spreading to nearby buildings. That was a relief.
“Truck 1, vent the
roof, you will be known as Roof Division,” continued the IC as they reached the
scene. “Heavy smoke is building up inside the Christmas store, Under the
Mistletoe.”
Truck 1 had their
mission: they’d be going up on that hot, smoking roof.
Fred pulled up close
to the middle of the strip mall, where a storefront decorated like Santa’s
workshop was declared, by an ornate, gold-and-scarlet sign, to be Under the
Mistletoe. Smoke puffed through the
doorjambs and various cracks in the façade. As soon as the truck came to a
stop, everyone got busy. Mulligan jumped out of the rig, then stashed his
breathing apparatus on the ground while he set chock blocks behind the tires
and lowered the ground jacks that would stabilize the aerial ladder. While Fred
got the aerial into position, Mulligan grabbed a chainsaw from inside the rig.
He donned his breathing apparatus, set his face mask into place, then swung
himself onto the roof of the truck.
He squinted
through smoke-laden air at the aerial, which made a bridge from Truck 1 to the roof of the strip mall. Inside the
building, the fire howled like an injured creature, like a wild mocking witch
ready to wreak fury on the world. Mulligan was not a religious man, but he
muttered “Lord help us” under his breath. Throngs of civilians clustered around
the edges of the parking lot, gawking and taking photos or videos. Fire was
photogenic, no doubt about it.
Mulligan tightened
his grip on his chainsaw and swung one-handed up the aerial. It took a lot of muscle
power to hump ninety pounds of gear up a ladder using only one hand. Thank you,
free weights. Fred, Skeet and One followed him up the aerial, while Ace grabbed
a rotary saw and crowbar and headed to the front door to provide forcible entry
for the engine company.
The ferocious heat
of the flames cooked the air, sending it in weird little currents and swirls.
Mulligan had obsessively studied the science of fire because he’d grown up with
no education, and a burning curiosity about anything and everything consumed
him. He’d spent hours and days and weeks learning how to read smoke. He’d
practiced with old video footage from Channel Six News. Pop in a tape, watch
the smoke. How much, how thick, how fast, what color. He’d picked the brains of
veteran firefighters who’d been on thousands of firegrounds. No one, no one at Station 1 could read smoke as
well as he could.
As he climbed the
ladder, he automatically analyzed the information gleaned from the storefront
window and smoking cracks in the building. The black, turbulent smoke moving at
such high velocity meant the fire was very hot and very close—a heavy fire load.
It would be impossible to tell more about the materials being burned by the
fire because a strip mall like this would contain a huge variety of substances.
The large quantity of heavy black smoke, its velocity, and its thinness told
him that if they didn’t ventilate this thing soon, it would flash. It hadn’t
quite reached the “black fire” stage he’d seen only a few times, in which black
snakes of smoke curled back toward the fire. But if he didn’t release some of
the superheated air inside Under the Mistletoe, the heat would radiate back on
the fire and the entire “box” would become so hot that every surface would
combust.
No firefighter could
survive a flashover, not even in full bunker gear. The truck company’s job was
to make a heat hole to keep that from happening.
Mulligan reached
the edge of the roof and stepped onto the blistering asphalt tile surface. His
blood pounded in his ears, telling him to hurry, but not make any mistakes.
They needed to get this done, then get the hell off the roof. Sounding with his
roof kit and stepping gingerly along the main beam line, he found his spot
between the rafters. With his chainsaw, he made a head cut – the first cut -- then
turned the corner and made another, longer line, so he had two sides of a
rectangle. Fred worked from the other side until they’d chainsawed out a
rectangle of plywood. One and Skeet used their rubbish hooks to pop the boards,
stepping nimbly back when black smoke attacked the open air in tumultuous
billows.
They all watched
for a brief second, then headed back to the ladder. Mulligan gestured for the
others to go first. That was how he liked it; he’d claimed that role when he
first joined the truck company. Skeet went down first, then One, then Fred, the
crew stepping quickly from rung to rung down the steel lifeline that led from
the hot roof to Truck 1. Then, quick as a spark, everything changed.
The IC crackled
over dispatch. “Engine company, pull out. Pull out now.” Fred, still on the
aerial, looked back at Mulligan and waved him urgently toward the ladder. A
rumble from underneath shook the building. Get
to the ladder, get to the ladder. Someone shouted on the tactical channel,
something about the façade. Mulligan looked down as a crack appeared beneath
him. Ladder, ladder. But no, he
couldn’t make it to the ladder, not without jumping over that gap ripping
across the roof. The façade. Oh my
God, the façade was falling away, the entire front of the building sinking
backward like an exhausted person collapsing onto a bed.
He stepped
backward, away from the gulf opening beneath his feet, and then he was falling,
down, down, down a rabbit hole of smoke and blackness. Something came out of
his mouth—a shout? A laugh?—but the constant roar of flames drowned it out and
there was no one to hear anyway.
“May Day, May Day,
May Day,” he heard on his radio. “Firefighter Mulligan through the roof on the
Delta side.” Then silence, as all talk on the tactical channel stopped, and all
sound disappeared.
A last thought
flashed through his mind—he was going to die inside a Christmas store. How
absurd was that?
Worse, he was
going to die without ever seeing Lizzie again.
About the author
Jennifer Bernard is a graduate of Harvard and a former news promo producer. The child of academics, she confounded her family by preferring romance novels to … well, any other books. She left big city life for true love in Alaska, where she now lives with her husband and stepdaughters. She’s no stranger to book success, as she also writes erotic novellas under a naughty secret name not to be mentioned at family gatherings.
Website: www.JenniferBernard.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JenniferBernardBooksEmail: JenniferBernard.author@gmail.com
Twitter: jen_bernard
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