Informed Risk & A Hero for Sophie Jones: A 2-in-1 Collection (Harlequin Bestselling Author) - Softcover

Carr, Robyn; Rimmer, Christine

 
9780373180752: Informed Risk & A Hero for Sophie Jones: A 2-in-1 Collection (Harlequin Bestselling Author)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373180756 ISBN 13: 9780373180752
Verlag: Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Mike Cavanaugh was a firefighter; it was his job to rescue people. Though inviting them home wasn’t usually part of the job description. But when he pulled Christine Palmer out of her burning house, something about the gutsy single mom made him want to protect her, to make her life a little better. Only somehow Chris and her family ended up giving Mike’s life new meaning, and he was happier than he’d been in years.

But Chris was smart and resourceful. She’d get back on her own two feet—sooner rather than later. And when she no longer needed Mike’s support, would she still want his love?

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Robyn Carr is an award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including highly praised women's fiction such as Four Friends and The View From Alameda Island and the critically acclaimed Virgin River, Thunder Point and Sullivan's Crossing series. Virgin River is now a Netflix Original series. Robyn lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit her website at www.RobynCarr.com.

A New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, Christine Rimmer has written more than a hundred contemporary romances for Harlequin Books. She consistently writes love stories that are sweet, sexy, humorous and heartfelt. She lives in Oregon with her family. Visit Christine at www.christinerimmer.com.

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Chris heard a loud thump. The furnace had turned on: soon warmth would begin to flow through the rickety little house. She wrinkled her nose, then remembered that heaters always smelled of burning dust and soot the first day they operated. She returned her fingers to the laptop keys, and her concentration to the last chapter of her story about a twelve-year-old boy named Jake. After seven rewrites, Jake was finally about to enjoy some resolution to the previous 122 pages of pubescent tribulation he'd suffered in his first year of junior high school.

This was her fourth attempt at a young adult novel, and Chris knew she was getting closer. Of earlier attempts editors had used such words as brisk, lively, smooth. Also words such as awkward, unresolved, clumsy in places.

She stopped typing and wrinkled her nose again. Should it smell that bad? She had asked the landlord if the furnace should be serviced or cleaned before she set the thermostat, but he'd assured her it was fine. Of course, he said everything was fine, and this old rat-trap was anything but. To be fair, she had never actually seen a rat, but she had swept up plenty of suspicious little pebbles, which she assumed were mouse turds. The traps she set, however, remained—thank you, God—abandoned.

She and the children had made do with oven heat until now, waiting as long as possible before turning on central heat. Utility bills were hard on a Christmas budget, and, when you got right down to it, hers was hardly a budget. But the temperature might drop to freezing tonight, and sleeping bags alone wouldn't keep the kids warm.

She looked at the kitchen clock. Nearly midnight. Her eyes were scratchy, but tonight she was determined to finish the last chapter. To be published…finally? Much of this great push, she had to admit, was for Jake himself, a great kid who deserved a resolution that was not awkward or clumsy in places. As did she.

As for publishing, the responses she collected had been consistently more encouraging, asking her to send future work. "Write what you know," a writing instructor had advised. Chris certainly knew what it was like to be twelve, to be struggling for self-reliance while simultaneously fighting feelings of incompetence. She knew this dilemma even better at twenty-seven.

The shrill siren of the smoke detector interrupted her musings. The sound wrapped strangling fingers around her heart and squeezed. Stunned, she looked up from the gridlock of library books, photocopied magazine articles and her laptop on the kitchen table. Through the kitchen door, her wide eyes quickly scanned the little living room with its two beanbag chairs, old television, clutter of secondhand toys and card table littered with the remnants of the macaroni-and-cheese dinner she had given the kids hours earlier.

And there, from the floor vents in the living room, poured smoke.

She bolted from the chair, fairly leaped to turn off the thermostat and raced into her kids' room. She grabbed one in each arm—five-year-old Carrie and three-year-old Kyle.

"There's a fire in the house," she said, hustling them through the thick smoke and toward the door. "We have to get outside, quick." As she rushed past the smoking vents, she prayed the situation wasn't as grim as it looked. Maybe it was only dirt? Soot? Dead bugs? But she didn't pause in her flight out the front door.

Only when they were safely outside did she stop to take stock of her predicament. The neighborhood was dark. Even in broad daylight it left something to be desired; at night it seemed almost threatening. There was not so much as a yard light shining. Her seven-year-old Honda sat on the street, and she opened the car door, nearly threw the kids inside and reached into the back seat for a blanket. "Wrap up in this, Carrie. Wrap Kyle up, too. Come on, that's a girl. I have to get someone to call the fire department. Don't get out of the car. Don't. Do you hear?"

Kyle started to whimper, rubbing his eyes. Carrie pulled the blanket around her little brother and nodded to her mother. Then she began to comfort Kyle with little crooning, motherly sounds of "'s'okay…'s'okay…."

Chris slammed the car door shut and ran to the house next door. Like her own house, it was small, ramshackle and in need of a paint job. She rang the bell and pounded on the front door. After a minute or two she gave up, ran to the house across the street and began ringing and pounding and yelling. She was panicked. How long do you wait for someone to get up? She jumped from one foot to the other, cursing her decision to cancel her cell phone because it cost too much money. No light came on at this house, either. "Come on, c'mon! Anybody home?" The porch light across the street went on, where she had begun. "Damn," she muttered, turning away from the door to run. The porch light behind her came on. "Jeez," she hissed, doubling back.

A sleepy, unshaven and angry-looking man opened the door. He was holding his robe closed over boxer shorts. That was when Chris remembered she was wearing only an extralarge T-shirt, moccasins and her undies. Purple silk undies, to be precise. That was it.

"Call the fire department," she begged her unsavory-looking neighbor. "The furnace is on fire. My kids are in my car. Hurry. Hurry!"

She turned and ran back to her car. She opened the door. "Are you okay?" They looked like two little birds peeking out from under the blanket.

"Mommy, what about Cheeks?" Carrie asked.

"Cheeks is in the backyard, sweetie. He's okay." She lifted her head to listen. "He's barking. Hear him?"

Carrie nodded, and her yellow curls bounced. "Can Cheeks come in the car with us?"

"I'll get him in a minute. You stay right here. Promise?" Again Carrie nodded. "I'll be right back. The fire truck is on its way. Pretty soon you'll hear the siren."

"Will our house burn down?"

"Burn down?" Kyle echoed.

"It'll be okay. Stay here now. I'll be right back."

Chris knew it was stupid to go back into a burning building; people died that way. But under these circumstances, she rationalized, it wasn't entirely stupid. First of all, she had seen only smoke, no other evidence of a bona fide fire. Second, the house was so tiny that the kitchen table, where her laptop and all her research lay, couldn't be more than ten steps inside the front door, which she intended to leave open in the event she had to make a fast getaway. Third, she wasn't going inside unless it looked relatively safe.

She heard the distant trill of the siren. The station was only about a mile away. She would be quick. And the smoke was not terrible, not blinding or choking. She had a plan.

She filled her lungs with clean air and bolted toward the kitchen. Even if the whole house burned to a cinder, the refrigerator would remain intact, like the bathtub in a tornado, right? Since she couldn't possibly gather up all her materials and her laptop and get them out of the house in one trip, she opened the refrigerator door and started heaving papers into it. It wasn't even supposed to be a long book. How had she ended up with so much stuff? And the books—the sourcebooks and expensive reference volumes—went in next. One marked Sacramento Public Library landed in the butter dish, but she didn't have time for neatness. She yanked out a half gallon of two-percent milk to make room for a pile of photocopied pages—the sirens were getting closer—and replaced a jug of apple juice with the large, old...

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Verlag
Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373180756
ISBN 13 
9780373180752
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
512
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
HarperCollins Publishers Ireland
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

Mayor Street Upper 39/40
Dublin
D01 C9W8
Irland