CHAPTER ONE
April
Mitchell ‘Mitch’Alexander sat in his late model pickup truck and closed his eyes. Memories slammed into him faster than a freight train. The heat from the flames shooting into the sky. The noise of the wild beast descending on them seconds before they’d all taken cover in their fire shelters. Anxiety clawing at him to escape.
He bit back a moan and forced his eyes open, focusing on the scene in front of him. A crowd gathered in the massive field near the Hunt Volunteer Fire Department building. He was at the town celebration. Lights whirled and people on rides twirled. Living a carefree life. He should’ve been there as a participant on the dunk tank, but he’d called Gene, Hunt’s VFD fire chief, that morning and told him he couldn’t do it. He’d understood and hadn’t pressured Mitch. Everyone in town, and surrounding areas, were there to celebrate the work the volunteer fire department had done to stop a massive wildfire last month. The fire he’d just been remembering. No matter how hard he tried,he couldn’t forget. At the end of the day, it was another memory to add to all the ones he couldn’t say goodbye to.
Why he thought becoming a volunteer fire fighter was a good idea, he’d never know. The back-breaking work in clearing scrub was mind-numbing. Sometimes the urge to ignore the callouts almost overwhelmed him, he never did though. He always answered. His innate sense to heal, protect and serve were as much a part of him as his blue eyes. He couldn’t shut it off. Perhaps he should’ve tried harder.
He concentrated on his breathing. The slow inhalation of breath through his nose filling his lungs. The whoosh of the air out his mouth as he exhaled. He repeated the action a few times and slowly began to feel in control.
As a former Army doctor he’d seen plenty of grotesque injuries, but the sight of the burned man, with his skin melted off his face, turned even Mitch’s cast iron stomach. When they’d come across the woman suffering a major allergic reaction, he’d let his teammates take the bulk of the work. Still, it had been hard to stand on the sidelines and not push them aside so he could work on the woman. All he’d done was deal with the oxygen mask.
Bridget, her name is Bridget.
One of the reasons he’d left the Army, and his medical career was because the injured had become objects instead of people. He said and did all the right things with his patients. He saved their lives with the surgeries he performed, but it was as if he was operating outside of himself. There, but not really.
It hadn’t been a hard decision to not sign up for another stint when his papers arrived. Some days, though, when a situation the HVFD were called to required medical assistance, the urge to be the one who treated the victims was huge. But, always, when he wanted to move toward them his feet seemed to be glued to the ground. Fortunately, Eric and Dean were also medics andthey took the lead. All the men on his team were aware of his medical skills. They were also aware of his PTSD issues, not how deep they went, but that he had things he was working on. They never pushed him to act when they knew he could do a better job than them, and for that he was grateful. Occasionally, when his mind was clear and everything felt good within him, he’d take the lead. Those situations were very rare.
A tap on his driver’s side window drew him out of the pit his thoughts had tumbled into. Gene gazed at him. His brows furrowed in concern.
Mitch opened the door and stepped out of his truck. The scent of charcoal and grilling meat, laughter and squeals of delight from people on the rides he’d seen as he’d driven up, wafted around them. His stomach grumbled, reminding him that his last meal had been a long time ago.
“Everything all right, son?” asked Gene. Every member on the team was Gene’s honorary son. It didn’t matter if their parents were alive, like his were, or they were parents themselves, Gene cared and looked after everyone. It made him a great leader for the team.
“Yeah. Just, you know.” Mitch didn’t need to elaborate Gene understood. Because of the type of person Gene was, Mitch had shared all he was going through with the other man. Like his teammates, his family only had a surface understanding of the demons he battled. He hadn’t wanted to burden them, not when Mom and Dad were both so happy to see him back and elated that he was going to work on the family dude ranch. They’d accepted his explanation that he was taking some time off after he’d left the Army before trying to find a job as a doctor at one of the regional hospitals. What they didn’t know was that, right now, he had no plans to ever go back into the medical field.
“Well, son,” Gene said, slapping him on the back. “Greasy, grilled food, beer and friends are a good way to get out of your head. Come on, let’s get something to eat and drink.”
Mitch allowed himself to be led away like a recalcitrant teenager and not a thirty five year old man.
Some days it was good to let others take the lead.
“Are you sure this looks okay?”Nadia Fletcher asked her roommate and work friend Cerise. Staring at herself, she didn’t quite recognize the woman looking back at her. She resembled nothing like the doctor that lived in scrubs every day.
A pink sparkly cowboy hat sat atop her brown shoulder length hair. The black dress she wore had a low neckline, showing off a little more cleavage than she was used to baring. There was a large blue and silver crystal encrusted cross on the dress’s back and a smaller one on the front. To finish off the ensemble she had on black cowboy boots.
If her fellow medical school friends from Boston could see her now they’d be laughing their asses off. Asking if she was now going to be a Cowboys’ fan instead of a Patriots’. Like that would ever happen. She may have left Boston, but when it came to football, she was a New England girl through and through. No way would she change that.
“Girl, you look perfect and you’ll fit right in. No one will ever know you’re not from around here.”
“I look like a trussed up Christmas tree. I hate sparkles and glitter. I can’t believe you talked me into all of this. I’m going to make Eric pay as well.”
Eric, one of the nurses they worked with, invited her, Cerise and a few of the others from the Hill Country Medical Center ER department to a community event in the town where he was also a volunteer fire fighter. As she was new to the area, and because Cerise wanted her to go, here she was. What she hadn’t agreed on was her friend dragging her to a western outfitters store to get her some real “Texas” clothes instead of the clothes from home that graced her closet. Even Nadia had to admit her New England clothes weren’t suited to the hot humid Texan climate, but she wasn’t going full cowgirl mode with her clothes. No way.
“No, you won’t, Eric’s a good guy.” Cerise laughed and donned her own cowboy hat, a black sparkly version of Nadia’s. Her friend was decked out head to toe with sparkles. Even her red cowboy boots had rhinestones on them. Nadia had drawn the sparkle line when Cerise wanted to put glitter gel on her cheeks. Her friend had pouted but then proceeded to apply the gel to herself. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Nadia couldn’t deny it looked good.
“Are you sure about that? Because I would’ve been quite happy sitting at home catching up on some reading. By myself.” She loved being alone. The byproduct of growing up in a house with two brothers and a sister—all older. All overachievers like her. Everything was a competition among the Fletcher siblings. As much as she missed them, moving to Kerrville Texas had given her some much needed breathing space.
Cerise propped her hands on her hips. “Nadia, I love you and I love sharing this house with you. You arriving in town when my other roommate left was fate, but girl, you spend too much time by yourself. Now come on, we’re going to a party where there will be smoking hot firefighters along with rough and ready cowboys. It’s going to be glorious.”
Nadia chuckled at her friend’s enthusiasm. Cerise was as different from her friends back in Boston as night was to day.The difference being that Nadia had a feeling that Cerise would drop everything if Nadia called for help. Something she wasn’t sure her other friends would do.
She shook off that thought. Cerise was right, today was all about having fun and the likelihood she’d meet anyone who would interest her wasn’t going to happen. Her focus was on establishing herself as the best ER doctor the Hill Country Medical Center had ever seen.
A few hours later, Nadia sat on a bench with Cerise, and her fellow workmates who’d come along. Some of the members of Eric’s team joined them as well. The guys had been busy manning the dunk tank as well as other things. The day had been full of food, beer and laughter, although there had been a solemn moment when Bridget, the woman the team had saved during the fire, had spoken to the gathered crowd. Nadia couldn’t believe the story she’d told. How she’d been kidnapped and had set the fire to save her life. How her allergic reaction to bees could have done what the crazed man she’d been escaping hadn’t been able to do—kill her.
All the while Bridget had been talking Nadia’s gaze had been drawn to a man at the far end of the table. Mitch, she thought his name was. He looked handsome in his uniform. Mitch was part of Eric’s team and joked with the guys. However, it was like he was there in body, but not in mind and soul. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses so she couldn’t tell if he was bored and wanted to get the hell out of there or there was something more and he was having an inner battle with himself.
