Colorado Fireman

Adam looked up into the pale blue eyes of the mother of all those children.

“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice clear despite all the confusion around them.

“No problem,” he ground out between more coughing.

“Do you always do that?” Carly asked.

“Do what?”

She crouched beside his stretcher. “Deflect a compliment. I was thanking you for saving my son from the fire. And Molly. What you did was extraordinarily brave. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

He gave her a tiny salute and muttered, “All in the line of work,” then lay back down. Molly the dog was lying on the stretcher beside his, apparently playing dead except that her tail was wagging.

Adam closed his eyes.

Dear Reader,

I’m delighted to bring you the fourth book of The O’Malley Men series, which is also a Creature Comforts title.

Many of my readers have been intrigued by youngest brother, Adam, the firefighter. He’s been an enigmatic figure in my previous books, Colorado Christmas, The Sheriff and the Baby and Colorado Cowboy, drifting in and out of family gatherings, never really connecting with anyone.

So, to make Adam reveal his true self, I’ve had him move back to his hometown of Spruce Lake. Only problem is, moving back to the town he escaped when barely out of his teens has forced Adam to confront the demons from his past.

Adam is good at pretending that nothing touches him, but he’s a dedicated firefighter. Hailed a hometown hero when he saves both a toddler and a dog from a burning building, Adam tries to shy away from the accolades, knowing he’s no hero. Instead, he’s been harboring a dreadful secret and he’s convinced that when the town discovers the truth, he’ll be condemned instead of praised.

But of course the large and gregarious O’Malley clan isn’t letting Adam hide from either them or his past. Add to the mix the mother of the toddler, Carly Spencer, who refuses to let Adam get under her skin.

Adam is in for the ride of his life with Carly, her four children, his matchmaking mother and Molly the basset hound.

I love hearing from readers. You can email me at cc@cccoburn.com. Please watch for the fifth and final installment of The O’Malley Men, when we finally learn why Jack left the seminary to become a master carpenter—and when an old flame comes to Spruce Lake and turns his life upside down.

Happy reading and healthy lives!

C.C. Coburn

C.C. COBURN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Many thanks to

Battalion Chief Neil “Rosie” Rosenberger and Captain Derek “Goose” Goossen of the Red, White and Blue for their invaluable assistance and patience with my research. It’s encouraging to know our safety is in the hands of such capable men.

Remedial massage therapist Lynn Creighton for her help and insights into what is involved in massage therapy and for her amazing massages.

And my dear friends, equine veterinarian Dr. Holly Wendell and horse-rescuer Helen Lacey for again patiently educating me about horses.

Any errors or discrepancies in this story are the fault of the author and in no way reflect the expertise of the aforementioned.

Chapter One

Desperate for more air, Firefighter Adam O’Malley cracked open the bypass on the regulator leading to his airpack.

The smoke inside the apartment building in Spruce Lake, Colorado, was thick and filled with lethal fumes. His helmet light shone through the gloom, barely illuminating his path as combustible materials manufactured in the seventies ensured the building burned fast and hot. Thankfully, the positive pressure inside his face mask prevented the noxious wastes from entering through its seals.

Adam heard the unmistakable whimper of a child and turned toward it.

He’d promised the mother he’d bring her toddler out alive. His vow had been the only thing that kept her from racing into the burning building to save her son.

Adam hadn’t lost a victim yet and today wasn’t going to be his first, not if he could help it.

Dropping to all fours, he crawled along the floor, where the smoke was less thick, toward the child. He spotted the little guy because of his diaper, a white beacon in an otherwise blackened world. He was on the floor beside his crib, hands stretched out, tears running down his chubby cheeks.

How could anyone have left a kid behind? he wondered as he ripped open his bunker coat, lifted the child into his arms and placed him inside its protection, talking to him in soothing tones. “It’s okay, little guy. I’ve got you now. We’ll see your mom in no time,” he assured the child, praying their exit hadn’t been blocked by falling beams or other debris.

He picked his way back out of the apartment, his body and jacket shielding the boy who clung to him, whimpering. The deafening sounds of fire consuming everything in its path—timber splintering, walls exploding, windows shattering—followed Adam as he moved down the stairs, testing each step to ensure it was still intact. Moments later, they were outside in the bright winter sunshine.

The child’s mother broke from Captain Martin Bourne’s hold and rushed toward them. Tears streaming down her face, she muttered incoherently as she tried to take the child from his arms. But Adam wasn’t giving up his charge just yet. The paramedics needed to check him over, so he grabbed her with his free hand and directed her to the ambulances waiting nearby.

He’d just extracted the child’s deathlike grasp around his neck when the mother screamed and raced back toward the building.

“Don’t tell me she’s got another kid!” Adam yelled at his captain as he ran to intercept the woman.

Then he noticed she was chasing after one of the kids they’d rescued earlier. He was running back into the building. What was it with this family?

Adam had always been quick on his feet, and in spite of the cumbersome firefighting gear he wore, he managed to overtake the mother, warning her to “Get back!” as he passed her.

He caught up with the kid, threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and returned to where Martin was trying to calm the mother. The kid kicked and screamed and beat at Adam’s back but the blows slid off his bunker jacket, slick with water from the fire hoses.

He put the kid down but the boy spun away, intent on running into the building. Adam reached out one arm, snagged the child and hunkered down in front of him.

“What do you think you’re doing, son? We got all your family out,” he said.

“M … M … Molly’s in there.”

Adam glanced up at the mother. “You’ve got another kid?” Sheesh, how many did this woman have? Four frightened children had been extracted from the building and she looked as if she was hardly out of her teens.

“Tiffany was babysitting my children,” the mother explained. “She got my oldest three children out.”

Served him right for making that comment about her having another kid.

“Molly is the Polinskis’ dog,” she said.

“How do you know she isn’t already out?”

The woman indicated two elderly people being loaded into ambulances. “They’d never go anywhere without Molly.”

Except from a burning building, Adam wanted to say.

“Mrs. Polinski told me she’s still inside!” the child yelled over the sound of more parts of the building collapsing. “She wants me to get her!”

Adam closed his eyes. Some days he hated his job. There was no way he’d find the poor animal. Not until long after the fire was out …

“Son, it’s too late to get her,” Adam said in as soothing a voice as he could muster. What the hell were the old people thinking? Expecting a kid to go rescue their dog?

As if reading his mind, a hound of some kind howled mournfully. Another of the woman’s children screamed, this one a girl of about six. “Please! Get Molly!” she cried.

Adam wished everyone would calm down and stop yelling.

“Which apartment is she in?” he asked as the dog continued to howl.

The woman pointed up to the third floor. “The one on the end, next to ours.”

Adam looked into the eyes of his battalion chief and knew he was going to refuse.

“Wait till the ladder truck gets here. We’ll reassess the situation then,” Chief Malone said.

Adam released the boy and stood. “You know I can’t leave her there, Chief,” he said and, without waiting for his go-ahead, turned back toward the building.

His battalion chief’s warning shout ringing in his ears, Adam sprinted up the stairs to the third level. As he did, they collapsed beneath him. He leaped the last couple of steps and landed heavily on his face, smashing his face mask and breaking the connection to his air supply. The mask filled with acrid smoke.

Ripping it off, Adam crouched down and crawled toward the sound of a dog scratching frantically on the other side of a door at the end of the hall. Adam had no idea how people could leave their precious pets behind in a fire. Or any other disaster, for that matter.

Coughing because of the smoke, he opened the door.

Inside, he found the saddest-looking dog in the world. Without wasting a second, he scooped up the basset hound, headed across the room to the window and kicked through it.

As the glass shattered onto the snow-covered ground below, he gulped fresh air into his lungs. “Ladder!” he yelled, but his voice was a harsh squawk.

Since the stairs had collapsed, the ladder truck was their only way out of the building. If it hadn’t arrived, he and Molly were toast. Literally.

Irritated by the smoke, he blinked, forcing his eyes to water. A shout came from below as someone spotted him. Adam waited and prayed, sucking in huge lungfuls of air. Finally, the truck swung its ladder around toward him.

The terrified young dog squirmed in his arms. “Easy, girl,” he murmured as he swung his leg out over the ledge and waited until the bucket attached to the ladder was within reach.

The smoke billowing out of the window behind him was growing thicker, choking him and the dog, who was now squirming and coughing so much he could barely hold her. He glanced back to see flames licking through the apartment’s doorway. The entire building was in imminent danger of collapse.

The bucket finally reached Adam’s precarious ledge and he stepped into it. “Everything’s okay, girl,” he said as they cleared the building. “We’ll have you down in a moment.”

His tone seemed to calm her and she settled in his arms, whimpering softly as they were lowered to the ground.

Once there, he was immediately surrounded by other firefighters. Molly licked his face. That small act of gratitude drained the tension of the past few desperate minutes from Adam’s body. He smiled and ruffled her ears. She was grubby with soot, and the soot covering the gloved hand he was petting her with wasn’t helping but he was too spent to pull off his gloves.

Exhausted, he allowed Martin Bourne to take her from his arms, then fell onto the stretcher under a triage tent set up by the EMT who was attached to their firehouse. After she’d placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, she fitted another one on Molly, who lay on a stretcher beside him.

The dog was coughing pretty badly. “Look after her,” Adam croaked, pushing the EMT’s hand away as she began to wash out his burning eyes.

She ignored him and continued squeezing liquid into his eyes, then checked his vitals. He closed his eyes against the pain in his lungs and tried to relax in spite of his still-racing heart.

The flash from a camera bored through his eyelids. He looked up into the lens of Ken Piper, photographer for the local paper. “How does it feel to be a hero, Adam?” he asked.

Adam grunted.

“How about one of you and the dog? Smile!” Molly was lying on her back, all four legs in the air. She’d stopped coughing, so it was hard to tell if she was dead, playing dead or wanted her tummy rubbed. Ken’s camera flashed again, then he melted into the crowd.

“Adam!” Hearing the familiar sound of his mother’s voice, he opened his eyes again. Sure enough, his mom was elbowing her way through the crowd gathered around him and Molly.

He felt about twelve years old as he looked into his mom’s piercing blue eyes and she glared down at him.

Positive that he was in for a lecture, he offered her a sheepish grin. “I got her out,” he said, reaching across to rub Molly’s tummy, hoping his mom would go easy on him since she was an animal lover. He didn’t need a dressing-down in front of everyone.

“You sure did, darling,” Sarah said, and dropped to her knees beside Adam and threw her arms around him. “I’ve never seen anything braver in my life.”

She hugged him so fiercely the air whooshed out of his lungs, which started a coughing jag that felt as if daggers had been plunged into his chest.

“Careful, Mrs. O’Malley,” his captain said. “Your son’s just saved a baby, an elderly woman and a dog. Give him breathing room. There’s little enough oxygen at this altitude as it is.”

His mom drew back and cupped his cheek, making Adam feel like an eight-year-old instead. Why didn’t she do this to any of his other brothers? Being the youngest of five boys was a curse. Since he was about to turn thirty, you’d think she’d accept that he was an adult now.

His mother’s voice shook as she said, “I’ve never been prouder of any of my sons than I am today.” Then she burst into tears.

Adam didn’t know what to do. His mother rarely let her emotions show—except when she was really angry—but now she was in all-out blubbering mode.

Luckily, Martin was good at dealing with emotional women and led his mom away, shouting over his shoulder at his men, “Find out if there’s a veterinarian in the crowd to check out that dog.”

Adam rubbed his eyes, unsure if his vision was blurred by the smoke or by his reaction to his mom’s emotional display. Guaranteed, she’d be talking about this for a few years to come.

He’d been back in Spruce Lake less than a week and he’d had to fight his first big fire.

And then his mom had shown up. Great! Just great.

One of the reasons Adam had postponed returning to his hometown to fight fires was because of this very situation. He didn’t want any of his family seeing the risks he took. His brother Matt, the county sheriff, knew full well the dangers of firefighting, but Adam had always played down the risks when discussing his job with his family.

There was another reason he’d stayed away from Spruce Lake. The reason he’d spent half his life trying to run from his hometown. Someday soon, he needed to confront that.

Adam rubbed his eyes again and started to sit up. He needed to get out of there, but found himself pushed back down as the paramedic washed out his eyes again. “I’m fine,” he protested.

“I decide when you’re fine,” she said, placing the oxygen mask over his face again. “Breathe,” she commanded. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got other firefighters to see. It’s not all about you, Adam—you dog-rescuer, you.” He could hear the gentle sarcasm in her voice.

“Don’t hurry back,” he muttered, and closed his eyes, breathing in the cool air, feeling it surge into his lungs, restoring the O2 levels to his bloodstream. He coughed again and sat up, then removed his mask and coughed up black goop that had gotten into his lungs. He spat it out.

Only it landed on a pair of white sneakers. He looked up into the pale blue eyes of the mother of all those children.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“No problem,” he gasped between more coughing. “Anything else you want me to spit on?”

“Do you always do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

She crouched beside him. “Deflect a compliment. I was thanking you for saving my son. And Molly. What you did was extraordinarily brave. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

He gave her a tiny salute, muttered, “All in the line of work,” and lay back down. He didn’t want to talk to this woman. To anyone. He wanted a long shower and clean sheets. Cool, clean sheets.

CARLY SPENCER STOOD for a moment watching the firefighter who’d saved her son Charlie’s life, knowing he’d shut his eyes to get rid of her.

She’d wept as he carried Charlie out of the burning building. She’d been so sure he wouldn’t be found. Jessica, the babysitter she’d hired to care for her children after school, had been sick today and sent a friend to fill in for her.

Since today, the last day of school before the February break, had been declared a snow day, although the weather had turned unexpectedly mild, so it was actually more of a slush day, her three oldest children were home. And since Carly had back-to-back massage appointments booked at the Spruce Lodge spa—and God knew, she needed the money—she’d had to get moving and hadn’t taken enough time to run through the children’s routines with Tiffany. The girl had obviously panicked and forgotten all about eighteen-month-old Charlie sleeping in the bedroom that was farthest from the living room.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Spencer!” she’d cried as Carly pulled up in her vehicle in front of the burning building. “There was this huge explosion and all I could think about was getting the kids out…. But then when we got down here, I remembered the baby was sleeping in the back room.”

Her words had sliced into Carly’s heart. Without hesitating, she’d raced into the building and collided with a firefighter who was coming out with Mrs. Polinski in his arms.

He’d handed the old woman to a colleague and grabbed Carly by the arms.

“You’re not going in there!” he’d yelled through his mask.

“My baby’s inside!” she screamed. “I have to get him out!”

“Which floor?”

“Third. First door on your right!”

The words had scarcely left her mouth when he released her and ran back into the building as another firefighter carried Mr. Polinski outside.

Someone grasped her by the shoulders. “Come over here away from the danger, ma’am,” he said. “Adam will find your baby.”

The man seemed confident of Adam’s ability to find one tiny little boy in a huge inferno, but the sound of the building disintegrating and the amount of smoke billowing from the windows and doorways eroded her hope that the firefighter would get to Charlie in time.

Alex, Jake and Maddy had huddled around her, trembling with fear and shock. Carly hugged them close and waited.

She’d felt a prickle of apprehension go up her spine—as if someone was watching her. She glanced around at the crowd. Of course people are watching you, she chastised herself. Still, the sensation was so weird…. She searched the faces, but saw no one familiar. Shrugging it off, she put it down to her fears for Charlie.

When the firefighter returned, holding Charlie protectively beneath his coat, she’d rushed to take her son from him.

But then Alex had raced back toward the building to find Molly. Carly hadn’t had time to wonder about the Polinskis leaving her behind; maybe everything had happened too quickly for anyone to think rationally. The fact that her babysitter had left Charlie behind was evidence enough of that.

The firefighter had charged into the building to rescue Molly. Carly had held her breath, fearing for his and Molly’s lives. And then she’d heard the glass shattering as he’d kicked out the window. The smoke was so thick as it poured out of the window that she couldn’t see him clearly. But Carly knew without a doubt it was the heroic firefighter who’d saved her son, and now he’d saved Molly.

She’d needed to thank him and had waited until he’d been checked out by the EMT before approaching. But then an older woman had come by and made a fuss over him. She’d soon realized the woman was his mom. And she was annoying her son. Carly smiled. She would’ve acted in exactly the same way had it been one of her children who’d acted so fearlessly.

“ADAM? WHAT THE …?”

He opened one eye to find Dr. Lucy Cochrane on the other side of the stretcher.

Lucy knelt beside him, opened his jacket and put her stethoscope to his chest. The EMT had already checked his signs and was now working on some of his colleagues. Adam didn’t have the energy to point that out to Lucy so he let her examine him. She was an old school buddy of his brother Matt’s. Bossy, but a good friend to the family. And if Lucy was around, the woman with too many kids might leave him alone. She made him uncomfortable.

Made him yearn for things he’d denied himself for too long.

“I heard you’d come back to town. Just as well, or that dog might not have survived. Brave boy.” She patted his cheek.

Adam resisted the urge to groan. His older brothers’ friends still acted like he was a kid. And they all wondered why he couldn’t wait to get out of town once he’d finished high school. If they’d known the truth, they sure wouldn’t think he was so heroic.

Lucy listened to his chest and nodded. “Keep breathing,” she said, and put the mask back on his face.

“Thanks. I intend to,” Adam said with a note of gentle sarcasm as Lucy did a thorough exam under the watchful eyes of the toddler’s mother. He thought again that she looked way too young to have so many kids. She resembled Meg Ryan—skinny legs, flyaway blond hair—and she seemed so vulnerable that Adam experienced an unwanted but overwhelming urge to protect her.

He wondered where all her kids were now. Had she managed to misplace one of them again? And where exactly was her husband?

Lucy departed with a promise to return again soon. Adam closed his eyes, then jumped as something wet and slimy collided with his cheek. He opened his eyes. Louella, Mayor Frank Farquar’s pet pig, was standing over him. He wiped the slobber with the back of his hand. What the hell was Louella doing at a fire?

She grunted at him and went to shove her snout against his face again, but Adam pulled away in time. That was when he noticed Louella’s feet. She was wearing bright red rubber booties.

“What the hell?”

“Who knew old Lou doesn’t like the feel of snow between her dear little trotters?” his brother Will said from behind Louella.

“A pig in rubber boots. Now I’ve seen everything,” Adam said. Could this day get any weirder?

“You did good, little brother,” Will told him. “Lou was only showing her appreciation.”

Adam groaned. Will and Louella had, in Adam’s opinion, an unnatural relationship. Will didn’t mind hanging out with Louella and, stranger still, she didn’t mind hanging out with him.

He and Will were opposites. Will loved everyone and they all loved him. So did their animals. Adam had always found social situations difficult and preferred his own company, much like his older brother Luke, who ran the family ranch.

A camera flash went off in his face just as Louella swooped in again. “You put that in the paper, Ken, and you’re dead,” Adam growled through clenched teeth.