Rescued By The Firefighter. Catherine Lanigan
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You prove that to me every day. I love you to the moon and back and all the universes and galaxies between and beyond.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincere thanks to my agent, Lissy Peace, who said, “Why don’t you write about a Youth Camp and a smoke jumper?” Little did I know that this story would take on a life of its own—like a raging fire—so quickly. Thank you to Claire Caldwell, my former editor, who worked on the initial story line with me. And a big hug to my editor, Adrienne Macintosh, who took over after Claire’s departure and jumped into the story with me. I’m looking forward to the next books with you, Adrienne.
To Kathleen Scheibling, Heartwarming’s executive editor, and always to Dianne Moggy for over two decades of working together.
The next twenty years won’t be enough.
Contents
Indian Lake, Indiana July
THE SUMMER NIGHT sounds of chirping tree frogs and cicadas drifted through the open screen window of Beatrice Wilcox’s sixty-year-old log cabin. Loving the wildlife melodies, she closed her eyes, her weary body spent from a long day with ten rowdy, sometimes frustratingly taciturn children and preteens.
But running this camp was her dream. She wanted to create a summer idyll for kids who faced challenges in their young lives, as she had when she’d been a camper herself as a child.
But how to pay for it? Worrying over money often kept her awake at night. Tonight being no exception.
She kicked the old patchwork quilt off her body. Then she flung her forearm over her brow. She was still wide awake.
Breathing a sigh, she sniffed the air. And froze. Then sniffed again.
“It...can’t be.”
Curling through the screen was pungent smoke. Not the smoke from a cigarette or cigar, or the acrid, bitter smoke from a country farmer burning garbage. This was clean smoke. The kind from burning vegetation.
Beatrice bolted upright in her bed, her eyes wide. She tossed aside the sheets and swung her legs to the rag rug she’d made herself that covered the painted concrete floor.
“No!”
Going to the window, she cranked the casement window open wide. The smell of smoke was unmistakable. “Not a fire. Not now. Not ever!”
Spinning around, she shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her cell phone off the varnished tree-stump