Page 7 of His Big Holiday Firefighter (Bigger Is Best #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

I sat at the old desk in the back of the bakery, thinking that despite the success I’d achieved in Seattle, none of it filled me with the same sense of purpose as this worn wooden desk and the kitchen beyond it.

This place, where my grandmother had first taught me to fold butter into dough, where years of flour dust had settled into every groove of the floorboards, where her handwritten recipe cards still lived in their weathered tin box—this was real.

My sleek professional kitchen in Seattle with its precision equipment and pristine surfaces. That was real, too. But I was beginning to realize that something else was calling to me, pulling my heart back to this place.

A far away siren’s wail cut through my thoughts.

The sound grew louder. Something made me move to the window. Three fire trucks raced past, their lights painting the falling snow in red. Through the flurries, I saw an orange glow against the dark sky coming from across town.

Before I could think better of it, I was grabbing my coat and running.

The scene that greeted me was organized chaos. Firefighters moved with practiced efficiency, their gear reflecting the flames that licked at the old Grange Hall’s roof. The building was now wreathed in smoke and steam.

“James?” Mrs. Wu appeared beside me, clutching a thermos with mittened hands.

Her usual cheerful expression was drawn with worry, her voice shaky.

“Noah’s team just went in. They think some of the Christmas decorations caught fire in the main hall, and there are people trapped in the back office. The book club was meeting late...”

My heart stuttered. I scanned the scene, trying to distinguish individual firefighters through the smoke and snow. They all looked the same in their gear until?—

There.

I’d know those movements anywhere, even encased in protective equipment.

Noah emerged from the building carrying an elderly woman, his powerful stride unmistakable as he carefully delivered her to the waiting paramedics. Without hesitation, he turned back toward the flames, disappearing into the smoke-filled doorway.

“He’s good at what he does,” Mrs. Wu said softly, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Your grandmother always said some people are born knowing how to take care of others.”

The next twenty minutes were the longest of my life.

I watched Noah make two more trips into the building, each time emerging with someone who needed help.

The snow fell harder, turning to steam where it hit the flames, creating an otherworldly atmosphere of fire and ice.

The flames painted the night sky in angry oranges and reds, its heat pushing back against the winter’s chill.

Teams of firefighters worked in coordinated precision, their hoses cutting through the darkness with powerful streams of water.

The building groaned and hissed. A window shattered from the heat.

Each crack and crash from within made me flinch, my mind racing, wondering if Noah was anywhere near the danger.

The flames retreated slowly, fighting against the onslaught of water until only wisps of smoke curled into the night sky. Finally, I watched the activity shift as the fire chief gave the all-clear.

Flames now extinguished, and those rescued from the fire attended to, the emergency vehicles began to disperse. The aftermath revealed a scarred but still standing structure.

Every time Noah had vanished into that building, I felt my heart constrict, and I understood suddenly and completely what it meant to love someone who ran toward danger instead of away from it.

He wasn’t just the firefighter everyone relied on. He was the man who remembered how everyone took their coffee. Who climbed trees to rescue cats. Who learned to bake because he believed everyone deserved something sweet on hard days.

He was the person who’d taken my grandmother’s recipes and treated them like precious gifts. Who looked at an old bakery and saw not just a business, but a legacy.

The same man who’d looked at me like I was something worth fighting for.

Through the chaos of cleanup and the swirl of snow, he emerged from a cluster of firefighters, pulling off his helmet and running a gloved hand through his sweat-dampened hair.

He paused mid-stride, his tired eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on me.

Recognition flickered across his face, followed by surprise and something deeper, more meaningful.

“What are you doing here?” Noah’s voice was rough from smoke, but something in it made my heart skip.

He took slow steps toward me, his face smudged with soot and exhaustion.

But his eyes, when they met mine, were clear, carrying the same warmth they’d held when he’d talked about baking and belonging.

“I had to know you were okay,” I admitted quietly, the truth of it settling in my chest like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place.

“I’m okay. You don’t have to worry.”

“But I do worry.”

“Why?”

I was momentarily stymied. “What do you mean ‘why’?”

“Why are you so worried about me, someone you barely know?”

The question hung between us, heavy with everything we’d left unsaid. I looked at the man before me—this brave, gentle soul who ran into burning buildings and baked cookies from memory and loved this town with his whole heart.

“Because I think I’m falling in love with you. I know it’s too soon to say something like that… it’s just that I’ve got these feelings, and it terrifies me more than anything I’ve ever felt.”

Noah closed the distance between us in two strides, cupping my face in his hands. His touch was gentle, warming my cold skin. “Being scared is okay,” he said softly, his breath visible in the cold air between us. “Running away isn’t.”

This kiss was different from our first—slower, deeper. I melted into it, pulling him closer.

Everything else fell away. The cold, the fear, the uncertainty.

Leaving only this moment, this choice, this love.

“Just in case it isn’t obvious, I’m falling for you too,” Noah murmured against my mouth.

His thumbs traced my cheekbones. “But being with a guy like me, a firefighter, isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

Every time I go into a burning building, that’s a risk.

But I can promise I’ll always try to come home. To you, if you’ll let me.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket—Sarah, probably wondering why I hadn’t signed the papers. For the first time since arriving in Pine Ridge, I knew exactly what to do.

I pulled out the phone and turned it off.

Noah’s smile, when it came, was brighter than all the Christmas lights in town. “Does this mean you’re staying?”

“I’m staying.” The words felt like coming home. “Someone has to make sure you don’t keep running around with cups of coffee, terrorizing the citizenry of this quiet little town.”

Noah laughed, pulling me close again. “Only happened once. And look how well that turned out.”