After the Storm

by Amy Knupp

  How do you rescue a hero?

  With a hurricane heading for the Texas coast, Nadia Hamlin needs to evacuate. Now. Before she can leave, however, there’s one more thing she has to do—despite the risk. But that delay lands her trapped in her car in the middle of the storm. Fortunately, firefighter Penn Griffin arrives. Unfortunately, her good-looking rescuer suffers a career-ending injury in the process.

  The only way Nadia can think to make amends is to help Penn get back on his feet. Even if he doesn’t want anything to do with her, she won’t give up. Her determination has an unexpected impact. Because soon he can’t seem to get enough of her.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  Penn’s voice was rough, even though he cleared his throat.

  Nadia lifted her head and blinked her eyes slowly open. Mesmerizing sky-blue eyes with long, sleepy lashes. “I wanted to see you, make sure you’d recovered from Monday night,” she said.

  The shy grin she gave him didn’t help his fight to ignore the heat that was building inside.

  “Your back is better than the other night?”

  “It’s fine. I pushed too hard then.”

  Nadia shifted, moved her body, bringing her lips an inch from him and, damn, she had a way of setting him on fire. Her lashes lowered as she glanced down at his lips. Every muscle in his body tensed as he anticipated contact.

  “I’m not going to kiss you,” she whispered. “This time you have to kiss me.”

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve spent the past three years plus researching firefighting and firefighters for my Texas Firefighters series. One of the things that has made a big impression on me is the pride and love these men and women have for their noble career.

  This made me wonder, as writers often do, what if? What if a firefighter who loves his career more than just about anything loses his ability to do the job? How does he handle that loss of identity as well as vocation?

  Penn Griffin’s story began to take shape in my mind. After a crushing on-the-job injury, he wrangles with these very questions himself. To complicate his quest, Nadia Hamlin, the woman whose insane dedication to her job was the indirect cause of his accident, is determined to assuage her guilt by being there for him. Penn doesn’t want anyone to “be there,” least of all Nadia.

  I hope you enjoy the dynamics of Penn and Nadia as they try to overcome guilt, blame and their underlying attraction to each other.

  If you’d like to learn more about my books and my writing life, please visit my website at www.amyknupp.com. I love to hear from readers directly, as well, so feel free to email me at amyknupp@amyknupp.com. Thank you for picking up After the Storm.

  Happy reading,

  Amy Knupp

  After the Storm

  Amy Knupp

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amy Knupp lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, five cats and a turtle named Scuttle. She graduated from the University of Kansas with degrees in French and journalism and feels lucky to use very little of either one in her writing career. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America, Mad City Romance Writers and Wisconsin Romance Writers. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, college basketball and addictive computer games. To learn more about Amy and her stories, visit www.amyknupp.com.

  Books by Amy Knupp

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1342—UNEXPECTED COMPLICATION

  1402—THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  1463—DOCTOR IN HER HOUSE

  1537—THE SECRET SHE KEPT

  1646—PLAYING WITH FIRE*

  1652—A LITTLE CONSEQUENCE*

  1658—FULLY INVOLVED*

  1702—BURNING AMBITION*

  1748—BECAUSE OF THE LIST

  1789—ISLAND HAVEN*

  *The Texas Firefighters

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  As always, I couldn’t have written this book without help from others.

  Huge thanks to Adam Best for his generosity, patience and thoroughness in answering my many (at times, odd) questions about back injuries. I’m sure I twisted some of what he told me in order to fit my story, but without him, I couldn’t have done Penn’s injury any justice.

  Thank you once again to Jim Davies, who provided insight and answers to still more firefighting questions, sometimes the same questions I asked three years ago.

  Eternal gratitude to the geniuses at Lakefront Brewery for creating New Grist gluten-free beer, without which I might not have survived writing this book.

  Most of all, thank you to my husband and two boys for not banning me from the family, even when I was impossible to live with due to the overambitious deadline I set for myself.

  Love you guys.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER ONE

  NADIA HAMLIN’S FRIENDS often said her job would be the death of her. Today, it seemed they might just be right.

  Nadia stared outside, sweating and shivering at once, through the glass side door of the Silver Sands Hotel. She checked her watch, pointlessly, because she already knew she was running late for the mandatory evacuation of San Amaro Island.

  Securing the files she’d grabbed from her office beneath her rain jacket, she squeezed her eyes shut and used all her weight and strength to force the door open against the wind.

  She’d lived on the island for most of her twenty-seven years and never experienced a hurricane until now. Evacuations, yes, and she promised God and anyone who was listening she would never push it so close to the deadline again if she could just escape safely this time.

  She’d left her BMW in the closest parking spot—it was the only vehicle in the entire lot—just twenty feet away, but it felt like twenty miles as she fought against the wind. Her hair was soaked before she was halfway there. Heart pounding, she swore out loud repeatedly. Not that anyone could have heard her over the roar of the storm. This might be only the early stages, but it was awe-inspiring, anyway—or fear-inspiring if, like Nadia, you flirted with being stranded.

  When she reached the car, she let the wind press her into the side of it, the stack of folders between her body and the door, relieved to quit fighting for a few seconds. She fumbled in the pocket of her rain jacket for her keys, unable to see a thing because her long, wet hair was blowing everywhere, mostly in her face. Damn, she should have done this inside. At last, she pressed the unlock button and steeled herself for the effort of opening the door.

  When she finally got the door open, she screamed as the wind whipped it outward. She fought to hold on, to prevent it fr
om being ripped off her beloved car. It took all her strength to pull the door closed.

  She sank into the driver’s seat, exhaling shakily.

  As she was about to start the engine, something crashed into the front of her car. Something huge. She swallowed, trying to get her heart out of her throat, and blinked back tears.

  Her favorite swearword became her new mantra, the word steeped in disbelief and icy, paralyzing fear.

  Now that she was out of the weather and her hair was out of her face, she could sort of see. And it wasn’t good.

  The something huge was…a sign? For real? A mangled commercial sign was lodged on the front section of her car. Seconds passed as Nadia stared, dumbfounded. She spotted the familiar coral and green of the sombrero from Ruiz’s Restaurante, which was a good quarter of a mile up the beach from here.

  That realization spurred her into action.

  She twisted and fished her cell phone out of her pocket. Her fingers hovered over the numbers as she tried to figure out who to call for help. Not many options when you waited until the rest of the island population had already taken off, were there?

  Nine-one-one, then.

  She dialed it with her eyes closed tightly, hating that she had to call anyone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But she really didn’t care to die in the parking lot of her family’s hotel—or anywhere, for that matter.

  She half expected to get a lecture from the dispatcher about waiting too long to leave. Thankfully, the woman was business as usual and said a crew would be out to help her momentarily.

  Momentarily seemed like eternity when you were stuck in a car during a hurricane.

  Debris flew by, slamming into the side of the building and anything else in its path. Not knowing what else to do—and incapable of sitting here doing nothing—she turned the key, which she’d left in the ignition, to start the car. It hesitated, turned over a couple of times, and Nadia thought for sure it wasn’t going to start. It’d always been reliable, but it was six years old and had a sign lodged in it. The engine caught on the second try, though, as if the hood wasn’t partially crushed.

  So now what? Of course she couldn’t drive it—the chunk of sign was enormous, maybe eight feet across at its widest point, and from here it looked like it had melded with her car. Futilely, she turned the windshield wipers on to high.

  Something hit her side window, making her jump. Pressing her hand to her chest, she yelled, as if that would do a bit of good. Whatever it was kept blowing past. She inspected the window, surprised it was still in one piece, without chips or cracks.

  At a loss for what else to do, she turned around and went through the things in the backseat. Maybe she could use something there for…whatever. Maybe there was something she needed to take with her, besides the suitcase of clothes and toiletries she’d thrown in the trunk at the last minute. Dirty beach towel, box of business cards, convention-planning folder, Frisbee, old flatiron for her hair…

  Maybe not.

  As she turned back around, a man six feet from her door startled the breath out of her. A firefighter, she realized, registering the red truck behind him and the helmet that made him look top-heavy. The storm was raging so loudly she hadn’t heard them approach. And this was the very beginning stages? Yeah, way past time to get out of Dodge.

  Instinctively, she went for the handle and attempted to push the door open. The storm had other plans. Even leaning into it didn’t make it budge.

  The firefighter grabbed the handle and pulled, bracing himself against the back door. He managed to open it a few inches, and the noise and chaos of the weather intensified until he let it slam shut again.

  Panicked, Nadia pushed the door from her side but the man, who she could barely see even though he was only two feet away, shook his head and held up his hand. Before she could question him, he made his way, obviously struggling to stay upright, around the back of the car to the passenger side. He opened that door more easily, climbed into the seat next to her and closed the door.

  He’d been about to speak when he turned toward her, but as they made eye contact, they both froze in recognition.

  “Penn?” Her relief at finding someone she knew was disproportionate and she attributed it to the storm. Any other time, in any other situation, she would likely barely say hi to Penn Griffin—because he wouldn’t want her to.

  He closed his green eyes and shook his head, exasperated. A moment later, he returned to strict professionalism. “Are you hurt, Nadia?”

  “I’m fine. Well, scared to death, actually. I guess I kind of screwed up. I had to come in to get some files because who knows how long we’ll be stuck off-site and unfortunately business won’t stop in the rest of the world—”

  “Nadia.”

  She took a breath, briefly closed her eyes, realizing she was babbling like a fool. In front of a man. A man she’d gone out with exactly once—or really it’d been more like half a date when you got down to it. Losing her cool in front of a good-looking guy wasn’t normal for her. Again, she blamed the fact she was in the middle of a stinking hurricane.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re sitting in a potentially deadly storm because of some files. For your all-important job. Why am I not surprised?”

  “I know. Not my best decision,” she said more levelly. “I meant to be off the island an hour ago.” She knew exactly what he was thinking. After their failed night out three months ago, there was little room for doubt.

  “If you’re not hurt, let’s get you out of here ASAP. It’s going to get bad.”

  “Going to?”

  “This is only the beginning. The engine’s running?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think I should drive with…” She gestured to the front of the car.

  “You did the right thing,” Penn said. “By calling.” He didn’t have to clarify that stopping by the hotel before evacuating was not the right thing.

  It hadn’t seemed so risky at the time. If she had to spend a few days on the mainland, she needed to bring work with her, particularly the materials she needed to prepare for her upcoming conference. She hadn’t counted on traffic being heavy this far north on the island, since most people had left hours ago. The streets had been bumper-to-bumper, though. And then, because all the other hotel employees were already gone, including her mom, Nadia had had to find the right key for the hotel, something she hadn’t done in ages. What should have been a fifteen-minute errand had taken more than an hour, and here she was.

  Damn. She really hated messing up.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, reveling a little bit in Penn’s reassurance.

  “You are going to stay put while we get that thing off your car. I’ll tell you when it’s okay to go. Then I want you to drive straight to that bridge and get your rear as far inland as you can, understood?”

  Nadia nodded but he didn’t see her. He was already out the door. She noticed a second firefighter jogging toward Penn then. The two came together to the left of her car and she could see Penn gesturing and shouting to his colleague in order to be heard, pointing to the sign as he spoke. The other guy nodded and rushed back to the truck. Penn went to work on the sign. He peeled a couple of insignificant pieces away with more difficulty than Nadia would have expected.

  As he bent over to get a better look at where part of the sign was embedded in the hood, things happened so fast, Nadia had a hard time making sense of them. A large chunk of debris blew into him and he went down, out of her line of sight. All she could see was his helmet, skittering across the pavement.

  Nadia screamed and struggled to get the door open, black fear pulsing through her. As she fought against the wind, she watched for him to pop up, prayed that he would regain his footing and make another go at dislodging the sign. He didn’t appear, though.

  The door finally opened and the wind swung it out of Nadia’s reach. No longer concerned about the car, she stepped out into the chaos just as the other firefighter ran to Penn. One more followed c
losely, the two of them yelling back and forth.

  The wind overpowered her and she crouched close to the ground, bracing herself in a wide stance and waiting for Penn to move. Sheltering her face from the pelting rain, she watched the men scramble. She fought to see Penn’s face, to ascertain whether he was conscious, but the firefighters blocked her view. One of them spoke into his radio. She couldn’t make out a word he said.

  Time seemed to slow down like a DVD player on half time, and she felt like she was watching from somewhere far removed.

  An ambulance pulled up. The paramedic on the passenger side rushed out and yelled something at her she couldn’t understand. The driver made a quick stop at the back of the ambulance and then ran toward Penn carrying a bag of equipment and a backboard.

  A freaking backboard.

  As the first paramedic reached her and ushered her toward the ambulance, the firefighters let the other paramedic get closer to Penn. The parts of him she could see remained motionless and she called out to him, desperate to see a reaction of any kind.

  “They’ll take care of him,” the paramedic yelled, urging her forward. “Come on!”

  Right before she was ushered inside the ambulance, she got a better view. Penn was lying on the concrete, looking…dead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CONSCIOUSNESS WAS overrated.

  Penn fought to stay asleep but the pain wouldn’t allow it. It felt as if someone had jabbed the claw end of a hammer in the back of his left thigh and was raking it downward. And that was with narcotics, if he remembered right. Time had become meaningless. Immeasurable. Son of a bitch, he didn’t know how much more he could take.

  He glanced around the hospital room to make sure he was alone. In the two days since he’d been brought in, his colleagues had filtered in and out to check on him whenever they could. They’d attempted to keep the mood light, trading jokes about the state of Penn’s concussed head and bringing him nonhospital food.

  Rafe Sandoval and Paige Hegel, two of the paramedics on duty last night, had ducked in whenever they dropped off a patient. This was the nearest hospital to San Amaro Island and just far enough inland that it hadn’t been evacuated or damaged by the storm. Penn’s roommate and fellow firefighter, Cooper Flannagan, had hovered like a nervous mother hen so much yesterday that Penn was relieved as hell Coop had started a twenty-four this morning.