Christy Jeffries - The Firefighter's Christmas Reunion

Can a chance reunion spark a Yuletide proposal?

Anything can happen in Sugar Falls!

Home for the holidays with her adopted son from Ghana, Hannah Gregson runs straight into her former flame—fire chief Isaac Jones. Though the pair are determined to keep their distance, the local matchmakers throw them together at every holiday event, and Hannah’s son worships the brave ex-soldier. If Isaac isn’t careful, he just may go from hero to family man by Christmas!

CHRISTY JEFFRIESgraduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a degree in criminology, and received her juris doctor from California Western School of Law. But drafting court documents and work-ing in law enforcement was merely an apprenticeship for her current career in the dynamic field of mummyhood and romance writing. She lives in Southern California with her patient husband, two energetic sons and one sassy grandmother. Follow her online at christyjeffries.com.

Also by Christy Jeffries

A Proposal for the Officer

A Family Under the Stars

The Makeover Prescription

The Matchmaking Twins

From Dare to Due Date

Waking Up Wed

A Marine for His Mum

The Maverick’s Bridal Bargain

The Maverick’s Christmas to

Remember

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Firefighter’s Christmas Reunion

Christy Jeffries

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07849-8

THE FIREFIGHTER’S CHRISTMAS REUNION

© 2018 Christy Jeffries

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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To Francie Freetly Huttner—

my favorite mother-in-law, an adoring grammie

and the life of every party. Becoming your daughter

has been a wonderful blessing and I hope that

I always make you proud. Also, thank you for not

deleting my voice mail when I called your house

sixteen years ago looking for your son…

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Chief Isaac Jones commanded the stainless steel griddle in the kitchen of the Grange Hall the same way he did the Sugar Falls Fire Station—with a steady hand and a slight wonder that he’d ended up in this position in the first place.

Flipping a row of pancakes, he caught the flash of a blue shirt and gold neckerchief out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, partner,” Isaac said to one of the young Cub Scouts balancing three loaded paper plates between two small hands. “Can you find Mister Jonesy out there and tell him we’re gonna need more batter?”

“We’re almost out of syrup, too,” the chief of police, who also happened to be the pack leader for Troop 1307, said from the pass-through window separating the kitchen from the rows of tables and chairs set up in the main room. “I’ll run to Duncan’s Market and grab everything they have on their shelves.”

“I knew I should’ve ordered all the supplies before I left,” Isaac mumbled to no one in particular. It might be the last Saturday of October, but Sugar Falls was experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, and the unusually high temperatures meant nobody wanted to linger in the overheated kitchen this morning. When he’d originally volunteered the fire department to cosponsor the Scouts’ pancake breakfast fund-raiser, he hadn’t anticipated that the National Guard would move his unit’s annual two-week training up an entire month. Which meant that he hadn’t been in Sugar Falls ordering supplies for today.

“What can I do to help?” someone asked over the whirling of the industrial fan behind him.

The back of Isaac’s neck tingled at the familiar sound of the woman’s voice. His breathing stuttered. He hadn’t seen her in over ten years, and last he’d heard, she was joining the Peace Corps or a similar outfit volunteering in Africa somewhere. So surely it couldn’t be...

His dread was confirmed the second he turned around. Hannah Gregson.

His lungs refused to draw air for at least ten seconds as she stood there, her blond hair twisted into a messy knot and her proud shoulders pushed back as though she was ready to take on the world’s problems. She didn’t wear an ounce of makeup, but her complexion was as pure and fresh as it had been the summer after their senior year of high school.

“Your pancakes are burning,” she said, grabbing the spatula out of his clenched hand and easily swinging her tall, lithe body in front of his to scoop the blackened circles off the griddle.

Had she not recognized him?

Sure, Isaac had filled out a bit since he was eighteen, and he no longer sported the longer, fuller curls he’d worn in his youth. In fact, his hair was more of a fade now, a shorter style he’d grown accustomed to when he’d joined the Army after college. But he hadn’t changed that much.