A Firefighter in Her Stocking
Page 1
A gift impossible to resist!
When a firefighter rushes a child into her ER, Dr. Sarah Grayson is stunned that the ash-covered, exhausted hero is her incorrigible playboy neighbor, Jude Davenport!
Sarah is wary of such men, but when gorgeous Jude suggests a Christmas fling, she can’t resist. Yet their relationship deepens, and Sarah sees behind the playboy is a man who has loved and lost. He might try to keep his emotions on ice, but Sarah begins to wonder—could she be the one to heal his damaged heart?
Christmas in Manhattan
All the drama of the ER, all the magic of Christmas!
A festive welcome to Manhattan Mercy ER, a stone’s throw from Central Park in the heart of New York City. Its reputation for top-notch health care is eclipsed only by the reputation of the illustrious, wealthy Davenport family and the other dedicated staff who work there!
With snow about to blanket New York over Christmas, ER chief Charles Davenport makes sure his team is ready for the drama and the challenge...but when it comes to love, a storm is coming as they’ve never seen before!
Available now:
Sleigh Ride with the Single Dad by Alison Roberts
Dr. Grace Forbes is reunited with old flame Charles Davenport—but will the brooding father and his adorable twins make her Christmas dreams come true?
A Firefighter in Her Stocking by Janice Lynn
Dr. Sarah Grayson can’t resist a festive fling with her playboy neighbor, hunky firefighter Jude Davenport, even if she knows she’s playing with fire...
And coming soon:
The Spanish Duke’s Holiday Proposal by Robin Gianna
The Rescue Doc’s Christmas Miracle by Amalie Berlin
Christmas with the Best Man by Susan Carlisle
Navy Doc on Her Christmas List by Amy Ruttan
Dear Reader,
Firefighter heroes are new territory for me. But creating Jude was so much fun! I will be revisiting his heroic profession again in future stories.
Having grown up poor and, having been burned by love more than once, Dr Sarah Grayson is focused on her career and not much more. Especially not her gorgeous neighbour. That is until he comes rushing into the ER with a little girl he’s saved from a fire and she realises there’s more to him than a pretty face.
Having loved and lost, firefighter Jude Davenport takes risks with everything except his heart. How can he risk something he gave away long ago? But there’s something about his Plain Jane neighbour he just can’t resist, and maybe—just maybe—with her help he can finally let go of the past...
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Jude and Sarah. My email is Janice@janicelynn.net or you can message me on Facebook.
Happy reading!
Janice
A Firefighter In Her Stocking
Janice Lynn
www.millsandboon.co.uk
JANICE LYNN has a Masters in Nursing from Vanderbilt University, and works as a nurse practitioner in a family practice. She lives in the southern United States with her husband, their four children, their Jack Russell—appropriately named Trouble—and a lot of unnamed dust bunnies that have moved in since she started her writing career. To find out more about Janice and her writing visit janicelynn.com.
Books by Janice Lynn
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
Flirting with the Doc of Her Dreams
New York Doc to Blushing Bride
Winter Wedding in Vegas
Sizzling Nights with Dr Off-Limits
It Started at Christmas...
The Nurse’s Baby Secret
The Doctor’s Secret Son
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.
Janice won the National Readers’ Choice Award for her first book The Doctor’s Pregnancy Bombshell
To James Mills, FDNY EMS Battalion 8, and to Andrew Floied, Manchester Fire Rescue. Thank you for your invaluable insight and for being real-life heroes!!
Any mistakes are my own.
Praise for Janice Lynn
“Fun, witty and sexy... A heartfelt, sensual and compelling read.”
—Goodreads on NYC Angels: Heiress’s Baby Scandal
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Dear Reader
Title Page
Booklist
Dedication
Praise
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
Extract
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
IT WASN’T EVERY morning that Dr. Sarah Grayson stepped out of her apartment and saw a couple making out.
It had happened, though.
Same man, different woman.
Nausea churned in Sarah’s belly. She ordered her eyes away, but since a nice, but somewhat bland apartment building corridor offered nothing to snag her attention, her gaze stayed put.
Making out in her hallway might be a bit of a stretch. Still, the couple stood in her rather hunky neighbor’s apartment doorway, sharing a far from innocent kiss.
Even if the kiss had been a mere lip peck, her neighbor’s lean hips wrapped in only a towel knocked innocent right out of the ball park. Home run.
Grand slam.
Sarah ran her gaze over his chiseled torso. He rated pin-up-worthy—centerfold, for sure. Part of her couldn’t blame the busty brunette for clinging to his broad shoulders. Or for totally ignoring the fact Sarah had stepped into the hallway. Common decency said they should pull apart and look a little embarrassed, right?
When Sarah’s gaze collided with piercing blue ones, her breath caught. No embarrassment in those magnificent eyes. Just pure unadulterated sexual temptation.
Good grief. He probably was a grand slam.
What eyes. A color so intense they pulled you in and made you feel as if you were drowning, made you want to drown in everything promised in the enticing blue depths.
Not Sarah, of course.
She was immune to playboys like this guy. She’d built up her defenses years ago while listening to her mother harp about the blight of good-looking, fast-talking men.
Adulthood had fortified her defenses.
Still, she wasn’t blind. Her neighbor was hot. She knew it and so did he.
Even as his lips lingered on the brunette’s, those eyes crinkled with bad-boy amusement. Probably laughing at the fact Sarah had taken up full-fledged voyeurism.
Gaze locked with hers, he pulled back from the kiss.
“Baby,” the brunette protested, still not noticing Sarah as she tugged downward on her cocktail dress skirt.
Good, the skimpy material barely covered her perfectly shaped bottom. A sticking plaster would cover more than the clingy sparkling spandex. Then again, if Sarah had curves like the brunette maybe she’d wear shrink-wrapped clothes, too.
She doubted it, but who knew? Sarah dressed to avoid drawing attention so she could focus on more important things than meaningless ogling.
Either way, she’d never know because her stick-straight slender body lacked the brunette’s hourglass shape.
“Brandy, we have company,” her neighbor said, much in the way a parent would to a petulant child.
The brunette turned, flashing big almond eyes, raked her gaze over Sarah’s shapeless body beneath her heavy jacket, scarf, and hat. She dismissed Sarah’s importance and quickly turned back to towel boy.
He was better to look at than a ready-to-face-the-chill-of-a-Manhattan-November-early-morning Sarah.
Or Sarah on any morning, really.
“Jude,” the woman practically cooed.
So that was his name. Jude.
He’d tried talking to her a few times when they’d bumped into each other in the hallway, but she’d ignored him. What would be the point? She wasn’t interested in going through his revolving front door and he didn’t seem the type to want to just be friends with a woman. Plus, he made her feel uncomfortable. Not a creepy uncomfortable, just a very aware of how male he was uncomfortable.
Realizing she was standing in the apartment hallway, gawking still, Sarah turned from the couple, locked her deadbolt, and pretended she couldn’t hear Brandy begging to do anything he’d like her to do. Had the woman no pride?
Go home, girl. He used you.
Too bad Brandy’s mother hadn’t warned about men like him as Sarah’s mother had repeatedly done.
At the woman’s next words, Sarah’s cheeks caught fire. Nope, no pride whatsoever.
Sarah turned and her gaze collided with Jude’s amazing blue one again. She’d swear those eyes could see straight into her very being, knew her thoughts. Maybe they even had some type of superpower because her stomach fluttered as if it had grown thousands of tiny wings.
Nausea, she told herself. Men like him made her sick. Out all hours of the night, never seeming to work, always with a different woman. Sick. Sick. Sick.
Maybe he was a gigolo or some kind of male escort.
Her nose curled in disgust to go along with her flaming cheeks.
“I think you’ve embarrassed my neighbor.”
His voice was full of humor, which truly did embarrass Sarah. What was wrong with her? Standing in her hallway, as if frozen in place, ogling the man as if she’d never seen a bare chest.
She’d never seen one like his outside magazines and television, but that was beside the point.
She needed to get her voyeuristic self to work.
She couldn’t make out most of what Brandy replied but caught the words “prude” and “dumpy”. Ouch.
Refusing to look that way again, Sarah dropped her keys into the oversized bag she carried to work, and got out of Dodge before she had to listen to Jude’s reply.
She hurried down the stairs, through the apartment complex foyer, and out onto the sidewalk to walk the few blocks to the hospital. The cold November wind bit at her face, but her jacket shielded her from the worst.
Too bad she’d not had a shield against what she’d just witnessed. That image was going to be hard to erase.
No doubt her neighbor had dismissed her as unimportant just as the brunette had. Sarah didn’t care what he thought. Or what any man thought. She knew her strengths, her weaknesses. She preferred to be known for her brain and her heart rather than for outward appearances.
She was quite proud of who Sarah Grayson’s brain and heart was. A dedicated emergency room doctor whom she believed made a difference in her patients’ lives.
She wouldn’t let her revolving bedroom door neighbor make her feel badly about herself. After all, what did he do?
He never seemed to do anything.
Except beautiful women.
On that, the man was an over-achiever.
A neighbor from the floor below said she thought he came from old money. Either Sarah was onto something with her paid male escort theory, or he was nothing more than a carefree, lecherous playboy using his family to fund his depraved lifestyle.
Maybe she would get lucky and he’d move.
* * *
Adrenaline drove firefighter Jude Davenport as he pushed his way through the flame-filled building. Or maybe it was the heat that kept him moving. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck and his ears burned beneath his Nomex hood.
First checking temperature with his thermal imaging camera, Jude opened a door and thick black smoke billowed out, banking low.
“Engine Seven to command. We are entering structure and making a left-hand search.”
“Command copies Engine Seven is entering structure, making a left-hand search.”
As lead man, Jude crawled to the left-hand wall and, staying in contact with him, his partner made his way around the room, using his axe to search. Visibility was next to nil thanks to the rolling black smoke.
They had to find her.
A four-year-old little girl was trapped in this hellish inferno.
Somewhere.
Along with more than a dozen tenants, they’d already rescued her mother and sister. Jude did not want to have to look that woman in the eyes and say he’d not been able to find her daughter.
He knew first-hand the pain of losing someone you loved and that drove him as he crawled toward a closed door he could barely make out.
A child was in there, was alive. Every instinct said she was.
He just had to get there, get to her, and pray that when he did find her, that she was still alive and he’d be able to get himself and her out of the fire.
Finally, he reached the door.
Then what he’d been dreading happened, what he’d known was coming because of how long they’d been searching in the burning building.
The air horn on the truck blew.
Once. Twice. Three long times.
“Command to all units. Evacuate the building. Repeat, evacuate the building.”
He hadn’t needed the sound of the horn or command coming over the radio speakers in his air pack to know things were bad and the building was lost.
Things were bad.
Somewhere in this hellhole was a terrified four-year-old.
“Command says part of the stairs has collapsed,” his partner, Roger Woods, yelled. “We gotta go.”
Jude had to check the room. They were too close to turn back without doing so.
“Seriously, Davenport,” his partner called from behind Jude. “Don’t make me drag your butt out.”
“As if you could.”
Roger was one of his best friends and Jude trusted the man implicitly. There was a reason Roger was his partner. Because they had similar life philosophies. They valued others’ lives much more than their own. Roger wouldn’t turn back any more than Jude would. Not when they were so close to where the girl was supposed to be.
Finally Jude got to the door. Using the back of his wrist and his thermal imaging camera, he checked the door for heat.
Hot, but not unbearable.
He reached up, grabbed the handle with his gloved hand, and opened the door.
The room wasn’t quite as smoke-filled as the one he was leaving, but visibility was still barely above zero.
Reaching again for the camera hooked to the strap of his breathing apparatus, Jude scanned the room. The left and right walls glowed white, indicating that there was fire on both sides of the room. Jude was pretty sure the wall not lighting up, the opposite wall from him, was an exterior wall, which was good, because he was also pretty sure they weren’t going out the way they’d come in.
Then, with the aid of the TIC cutting through the smoke and steam, the image of a little body not moving made his heart pound.
“Davenport? Do you hear me? Get out now,” Command screamed in his ear.
It wasn’t the first time Command had screamed at him.
He didn’t answer his boss. What was the point? He wasn’t going anywhere. Not without the girl. He wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t walk out of a burning building when the child’s thermal image was in his sight. Reality was that Command wouldn’t want him to. None of their crew would exit when a fire victim was within sight.
“There she is.”
“Thank God,” Roger called from behind him.
“Engine Seven to Command—we need a ladder to fourth division A-side window for rescue.” God, he hoped there was a window on the exterior wall because he couldn’t see a thing. “We have one victim.”
Command acknowledged, repeating the call.
“Keeley?” Jude yelled, hoping the girl could hear him above the fire’s loud roar. Hoping that she’d answer, that she’d move.
She didn’t.
Please, don’t let us be too late.
He couldn’t see her with his bare eyes, but used the camera to guide himself toward her. The room was a sweltering hot box.
Then the thermal image on his TIC moved and Jude wanted to cry out in relief. She was alive. Who knew how much smoke she’d inhaled, what kind of burns she might have endured, but she’d moved so there was hope.
“Keeley,” he called again, crawling toward her. “We’re here to get you out of this place.”
He had no idea if she could hear him over the deafening sound of the fire destroying the building. If she could, he wanted her to know he was on his way.
Finally, he reached the far corner of the room where she was huddled beneath her mother’s bed.
Coughing, the little girl stared at him with watery eyes, but didn’t make any move toward him or respond to his motioning for her to come to him. Was she asphyxiated?
In his gear, he couldn’t fit under the huge low-rise bed she was hidden beneath and wasn’t quite sure how he’d move the massive bed with her beneath it without risking hurting her, but he had to get to her fast. They had to get out of the building pronto.
“Keeley, we have to go.” He tried again, tugging on the corner post of the solid wood monstrosity without any success. Was the thing nailed down? “Come to me, honey. Let me carry you out of this place.”