The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion. Christy Jeffries

      “Eighteen,” Luke replied. “And, in his defense, his eyes were pretty watery at the time, as though he’d been drowning his sorrow in a case of cheap beer.”

      “In his defense?” Hannah finally spoke up. A bit too loudly. “You’re supposed to be my brother, you know? Whatever happened to having each other’s back?”

      “You want me drive over to the fire station and beat him up for you?” he asked, and Hannah tilted her head as she pondered his offer. “Geez, I was kidding, Hannah. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

      “Because of your job?” She nibbled at the cuticle on her thumb. Her brother was a former SEAL who was now the officer in charge of Navy recruitment for the entire region.

      “No, because of his.” Luke let out a deep breath when Hannah shot him a look of confusion. “Here’s the deal. I know this might surprise you, but your precious nephews got into a little trouble at the Fourth of July picnic.”

      “Those angels?” Hannah looked out the window to where Aiden was tying each side of a kite to Caden’s shoulders as they directed Sammy to run a tape measure from the top of a ladder to an oak tree in the middle of the yard. Carmen groaned before dashing outside to get them.

      “I know. It’s hard to believe.” Luke chuckled. “I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved a bag of hot dog buns, some firecrackers and Mayor Johnston’s hand-carved cornhole set. Anyway, Isaac was on duty nearby and had the blaze put out before it did any real damage. But he also gave the boys a solid lecture about fire safety and made them honorary junior deputies. Since then, they haven’t so much as blown out a candle, let alone gotten anywhere near an open flame. So I kinda owe the guy.”

      “Well, I don’t owe him a damn thing,” Hannah replied.

      She’d already given Isaac Jones way too much of herself.

      By seven o’clock on Monday morning, most of the weekend tourists had left town and Sugar Falls was already bustling with locals returning to work. Isaac had just gotten off duty and decided to stop at Duncan’s to pick up some groceries before heading back to his uncle’s house.

      Walking across the street from the fire station to the only market in town, he used his cell phone to call Jonesy, who answered on the first ring.

      “Do we have any eggs?” Isaac asked.

      “Not sure,” the old man replied.

      Isaac really needed to move into his own place and stock his own fridge. “What about milk?”

      “Might have a little left.”

      A horn honked from somewhere down the street and Isaac heard the echo of the same honk on the speaker. “Where are you?”

      “On my way to the Cowgirl Up Café to meet Scooter for breakfast,” Jonesy said in a slow drawl.

      Looking over his shoulder, he spotted his uncle a few hundred feet away, riding his horse in the middle of the road, a line of cars gridlocked behind them. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Isaac disconnected the phone and counted patiently until Jonesy cantered up to him. “I thought Mayor Johnston told you not to ride Klondike on the street anymore.”

      “He did. But then the folks over at city hall threw a walleyed fit when I started riding her on the sidewalk. So unless they’re gonna put a horse trail through downtown, me and Klondike are gonna take advantage of any road my tax dollars pay for.”

      “You could drive your truck, you know.”

      “Then Klondike would miss out on those big, juicy apples Freckles gives her over at the café.” His uncle patted the horse’s spotted gray neck. “You like your treats, don’tcha, girl?”

      “Well, maybe you should at least ride her in the bicycle lane,” Isaac suggested.

      “That’s for bikes. You wanna grab some breakfast with me and Scooter?”

      Isaac studied the older man, looked at the parking lot of the market then glanced at his watch. As a kid, the highlights of his summer used to be when he’d get to spend time with Jonesy and Scooter, his uncle’s best friend, and listen to their countless stories. The two irreverent coots were staples in downtown Sugar Falls and loved to sit around talking about their days on the professional bull riding circuit, the action they saw in Vietnam and the latest prospects for the Boise State offensive line. They were both part of the volunteer fire department and mountain rescue team, but mostly they hung out gossiping about the locals and imparting unsolicited advice to anyone in their vicinity, peppering their conversations with the occasional conspiracy theory.

      Isaac patted his empty stomach. He’d been out of town for a couple of weeks and hadn’t had Freckles’ country gravy in a while. Plus, it would be a good chance to catch up on the latest news. And by news, he meant information about Hannah Gregson and her sudden reentry into his life. “I guess I could go for some chicken-fried steak. But I’ll walk. And I’m a government employee, so if Mayor Johnston or Cessy Walker see you on that horse, I’m gonna keep on walking.”

      The Cowgirl Up Café was only two blocks down Snowflake Boulevard, the main street that ran through the center of the Victorian-era downtown. Although he lived in Jonesy’s old cabin on Sugar Creek, Isaac spent most of his time at the new fire station, working out the kinks of turning a rural volunteer unit into a professional and efficiently run department. Proving to everyone that he would be the best fire chief this town had ever seen.

      His mom had always pushed him to be the best at whatever he did. If it were up to his old man—Jonesy’s brother—Isaac would’ve been handed everything on a silver platter. Hank—now Henry—Jones left Sugar Falls the day he turned eighteen and never looked back. He’d made his fortune in the stock market and vowed that no relative of his would ever have to worry about money again.

      It was probably the biggest thing that his parents fought about, when they bothered to spend any time together. His mother was a young intern when she’d met and married his father and Henry never quite got over the fact that his supposed trophy wife ended up out-earning him by their third year of marriage. Neither one had wanted children, but Henry had talked her into just one child in the hopes that it would slow his wife’s career path and turn her into a carpooling soccer mom.

      Yet having Isaac only drove Rachel Jones to do better, to put in extra hours at the office, to make even more money. He was the wedge that had finally driven his parents apart. At least, that’s how he’d always felt.

      If Henry would buy their son the latest gaming console, Rachel would send him outside to work with the gardener in order to “earn” time to play video games. When Henry had taken Isaac aboard his private yacht for two months on the Mediterranean, Rachel decided to send her biracial son to spend his summers with a cranky, older uncle in a simple cabin on a mountain in Idaho—about as far from their Upper East Side lifestyle as she could get him. She’d thought it’d be the perfect way to not only get back at Henry, but also make Isaac appreciate the finer things that money could buy, which would make him want to become an even greater success than his parents.

      His mom’s goal of pushing Isaac to always rise above had worked and made him competitive at life. Just not at the career that she’d envisioned and thoroughly mapped out for him.

      Because they were short-staffed until the latest batch of recruits graduated from the fire academy in Boise, Isaac had spent the past two days working double overnight shifts to cover for one of his deputy firefighters. He hadn’t seen his uncle since the pancake breakfast on Saturday. While Isaac had been relieved to avoid Jonesy’s nosy questions about the return of his ex-girlfriend, he also hadn’t been able to gather any useful information.

      When they walked through the saloon-style front doors of the restaurant, Isaac had to blink a few times to accustom himself to the bright purple and turquoise-blue decor. He’d been coming to the café since the summer after sixth grade, and the eclectic decorating style was no clearer to him now than it had been back then—he could never figure out if it looked more