Make It Hot. Gwyneth Bolton

out of the room when the older woman looked up. The medium-built woman was dressed in a stylish eggplant colored pantsuit with a string of pearls and matching earrings. Her salt-and-pepper hair was up in a bun and her smooth brown complexion was flawless. Minus the gray hair, she hardly seemed old enough to have an adult child.

      “Are you another one of the doctors?” The woman wiped the tears from her eyes but more replaced them.

      “No, ma’am. I’m a physical therapist. I saw his story on the news and just wanted to stop by and share some positive energy and thoughts.” Samantha smiled and started to leave the room again. She felt awkward being there, since she didn’t even know the man.

      “He has to pull through. I can’t lose my child.” His mother buried her head in her arms and started sobbing.

      Samantha walked over to the woman and placed her arms around her.

      “He’ll make it.” As she said the words of comfort, she realized how true she wanted them to be. It would be a shame for this woman to lose her son, for the world to lose such a brave man.

      “Out of all my boys, he was always the prankster, guaranteed to go out of his way to bring a smile to my face.” She lifted her head, and it seemed as if she was trying to smile as she remembered her son’s antics; but the smile was shaky at best.

      “If he weren’t the one laid up there like that, he’d be in here with me now saying or doing something to try and stop me from crying.”

      So, I was right about him.

      Samantha prided herself on being a good judge of people, and it pleased her to know that she had read Joel Hightower’s kind, handsome face correctly. He was a joker. He would probably make her laugh all the time.

      She shook her head.

      Where in the hell did that thought come from?

      Samantha gazed at the sleeping man, but looking at his striking brown face, which seemed somewhere between restful and tense, she could tell the first operation must have been excruciating. She had overheard the doctors saying they needed to do at least one more operation on his spine.

      “He’ll be fine, and he’ll make you laugh again, Mrs. Hightower.” Samantha offered the only words of encouragement she could. She knew the man had a long road to travel toward recovery, but looking at him, she also knew he’d make it.

      She prayed he would.

      She and Mrs. Hightower sat in silence. The only sound heard was Joel’s mother’s soft sobs. The only thing Samantha could think was she never wanted to be the woman crying because she’d been foolish enough to fall for a man who had a dangerous job.

      She would never make that mistake.

      “So what exactly are you saying to me, Doc? Make it plain.”

      Joel listened to everything the man was saying, and he didn’t like any of it. After two painful surgeries and spending more time than he could have ever wanted laid up in a hospital bed in traction, he had very little patience for medical jargon and even less patience for hypothetical ponderings.

      He wanted to know one thing and one thing only: Would he be able to fight fires again?

      The distinguished surgeon, Dr. Lardner, gave an uncharacteristically sheepish grin that seemed to acknowledge he’d been guilty of not being as clear or as forthcoming as he could have been. His thin lips pursed in consideration, and his thick blond eyebrows closed in at the middle of his forehead. He ran his hand through perfectly coiffed blond hair, then stared at Joel with steel-blue eyes.

      “Your surgeries were very successful, and the extent of the damage to your spine was not as extensive as we had originally thought. We honestly didn’t think you would walk again. We thought you would have been at the very least partially paralyzed—at the worst, fully paralyzed—but you’re not.” Dr. Lardner stopped and gave Joel a pointed look before continuing.

      “You will be able to walk once your legs and spine heal, but you will need intense physical therapy to strengthen the spine and to help get you to the point where you are walking with the same proficiency you were before the accident. Is that plain enough for you?”

      Joel bit back the sarcastic quip he was thinking as the doctor threw his own words back at him. He wasn’t used to feeling so on edge and vulnerable. However, not being able to get around and move the way he wanted to was taking its toll, and the thought that he might not be able to do the one thing he had wanted to do ever since he was a little boy—fight fires—had him feeling more like a tiger in a cage than a guy in traction.

      “Yeah, I get it, Doc. I’m lucky I’ll be able to walk again, but will I be able to fight fires again?” Joel gritted his teeth to hold back the rest of what he wanted to say. No need pissing off the skillful surgeon whose hands made walking again a reality.

      “That I can’t tell you, Joel.” Dr. Lardner gave a slight shrug. “Once you’re out of here and have started and completed your physical therapy, we’ll have a better sense of that. But for now, let’s dwell on getting you healed up so that you can go out there and handle the rest. Okay?”

      Joel nodded. He would go back to his profession because any alternative to that was not an option. Fighting fires were not only his legacy, but also his entire reason for being.

      Going one-on-one, head-to-head against one of nature’s most destructive elements was the biggest rush he’d ever felt. He fought fires because he loved helping people. He fought fires because he was a part of an elite group of men who lived to do what no one else would: run into the blaze not away from it. He didn’t have the kind of personality that would allow him to just sit behind a desk day after day. He needed to be out and in the thick of things.

      Taming a fire before it spread and took lives or wrestling a life out of the fire’s hands by carrying a child or adult to safety from a burning building made him feel as if he could really do anything he wanted. To say his profession was intimately connected to his sense of manhood would have been an enormous understatement, and that was why he had to be able to fight fires again. That was why he would be able to fight them again. He couldn’t let anyone or anything stand in his way.

      Chapter 1

      Six months later

      Joel Hightower entered the physical-therapy stage of his rehabilitation feeling less like his normal upbeat self.

      Okay, make that nothing like his normal self.

      After the two operations on his back, he had spent the bulk of the past five months in traction, and once the casts had come off, he’d had to get used to walking around with a cane for a little while, walking around feeling like half the man he used to be.

      As far as he was concerned, he was allowed to be in a bad mood. His entire life had been snatched from under him, and he had to literally learn how to walk on his own two feet again.

      The inside of the clinic looked as drab as the adjacent hospital had. Sure, the walls of the waiting room were a bright shade of Pepto pink, but everything else screamed stale and antiseptic. He really hoped the rest of the clinic wasn’t the same color scheme. He couldn’t take three months of constant puke pink.

      He had to get his body back functioning properly so he could get a clean bill of health to return to his job. That was the most important thing. Getting back to work. Putting out fires. Until then, he felt as if he was on hold.

      Too bad his physical therapist was keeping him waiting, too. He stood, freed himself from his brother Lawrence’s helpful grasp and steadied himself on his cane as he walked over to the receptionist’s desk for the second time in twenty minutes.

      The short, perky woman had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore very little makeup on her almond-colored face. He glanced at the nameplate on her desk. Jenny Saunders.

      “Ms. Saunders, I—” he started, only to be cut off with a honey-sweet smile.

      “She’s