Contents

      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

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THERE was a woman in the bed.

      An astonishingly beautiful woman.

      Judd Harwood stood still, gazing at the sleeping figure under the white hospital bedspread. He must have the wrong room. It was a man he was looking for, not a woman. Yet instead of leaving and asking someone for better directions, Judd stayed exactly where he was, his slate-gray eyes focused on the bed’s occupant. Her right shoulder and upper arm were swathed in an ice pack. Her face was very pale; the livid bruise marring the sweet curve of her jawline stood out in sharp contrast to the creamy skin. Had she been in a car accident, or fallen on the ice encrusting the city streets? Or had it been something worse? Surely she hadn’t been assaulted.

      His fists curled at his sides in impotent anger. Could it have been her husband? Her lover? He’d flatten the bastard if he ever got his hands on him. Flatten him and ask questions afterward. And how was that for a crazy reaction? A woman he’d never even met, knew nothing about.

      He wasn’t into protecting strange women. He had better things to do with his time.

      His jaw a hard line, Judd continued his scrutiny. The woman’s brows were delicate as wings, her cheekbones softly hollowed; he found himself longing to stroke the silken slope from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth. An infinitely kissable mouth, he thought, his own mouth dry. Her eyes were closed; he found himself intensely curious to know what color they were. Gray as storm clouds? The rich brown of wet earth? Her hair was red, although that word in no way did justice to a tumble of curls vivid as flame.

      Flame…

      Blanking from his mind a surge of nightmare images, Judd gave himself a shake. He didn’t have the time for this; he needed to find the fireman who’d saved Emmy. Thank him as best he could and then go back to his daughter’s bedside. Emmy was sedated, the doctor had assured him of that, and wouldn’t wake for hours. But Judd wasn’t taking any chances.

      So why was he still standing here?

      Scowling, purposely not looking for the woman’s name on the chart at the foot of the bed, Judd strode out of the room. A nurse was hurrying toward him, her flowered uniform a splash of color in the bare corridor. He said, “Excuse me—I’m looking for the fireman who was admitted earlier this evening…he rescued my daughter and I need to thank him. But I don’t even know his name.”

      The nurse gave him an harassed smile. “Actually it was a woman,” she said. “I don’t believe—”

      “A woman?” Judd repeated blankly.

      “That’s right.” Her smile was a shade less friendly. “They do have women on the fire and rescue squads, you know. Room 214. Although I don’t believe she’s recovered consciousness yet.”

      Room 214 was the room he’d already been in. The room with the woman lying so still on the bed. Trying to regain some semblance of his normal self-control, Judd said abruptly, “I shouldn’t have made the assumption it was a man. Thanks for your help.”

      “If you need to talk to her, tomorrow would be better. She won’t be released before midmorning.”

      “Okay—thanks again.”

      The nurse disappeared into a room across the hall. Slowly Judd walked back into Room 214. The woman was lying exactly as she had been a few moments ago, the smooth line of the sheet rising and falling gently with her breathing. He walked closer to the bed, staring at her as though he could imprint every aspect of her appearance in his mind, teased by a strange sense that she resembled someone he knew. But who? He couldn’t put a finger on it, and he prided himself on his memory. Surely he’d never seen her before; he could scarcely have forgotten her. The purity of her bone structure. The gentle jut of her wrist bones. Her long, capable fingers, curled defencelessly on the woven coverlet.

      Ringless fingers. Did that mean she didn’t have a husband?

      Her fingernails were dirty. Well, of course they were. She was a firefighter, wasn’t she?

      This was the woman who’d saved his daughter’s life; Judd didn’t even have to close his eyes to remember the horrific scene that had greeted him when the cab from Montreal’s Dorval airport had dropped him off in the driveway of his house.

      Clutching his briefcase, Judd saw three fire trucks parked on the lawn, their red lights flashing into the darkness. Yellow-jacketed firefighters shouted back and forth, barking orders into two-way radios. Water hissed from coiled gray hoses. Great billows of black smoke, rising from the roof, were licked by flames that appeared and disappeared with the wicked unpredictability of vipers. For a moment Judd was stunned, his feet rooted to the ground, his heart thudding in heavy strokes that overrode all the other sounds. He’d known fear before. Of course he had. Some of the situations he persisted in subjecting himself to saw to that. But he’d never known anything as devastating as the terror that clamped itself to every nerve and muscle in his body when he pictured Emmy trapped in that heat, in the choking smoke and vicious destruction of fire.

      A tall metal ladder was angled against the wall of the house, reaching toward the windows of the family wing. The wing where Emmy slept…