Chapter 1

Millie

I thought the Christmas spirit was about family and goodwill towards all mankind, not big, boofy men shoving themselves closer to the bar waving money in my face. Right now, it was more like working in the middle of a footy field than a pub.

“Four schooners?—”

“A couple of rum and Cokes?—”

“Tequila shots?—”

Things could get a little hectic on a Friday night, but this was next level. Half the businesses around the pub had decided to hold Christmas drinks tonight of all nights.

Without giving me a heads up so I could put more staff on.

“Millie…” The frantic whine of one of my more experienced barmaids had me moving.

I reached under the bar and grabbed the baseball bat I used when things got seriously hairy and slapped it down, silencing every single one of them.

“Can you all just chill the hell out for a second?”

Mouths snapped shut abruptly, and suddenly I had all eyes on me. The dulcet strains of Steve Tyler from Aerosmith playing through the jukebox ruined the effect, but I had the quiet I needed. I regarded each and every man, then caught the eyes of my harried staff.

“We want to get you your drinks.” I said, then frowned slightly. “Except for you, Bluey.” The man was barely able to stand, let alone find money to buy another drink. “You should’ve been cut off ages ago.”

“I’m fwine…” he slurred.

“Yeah, because that’s a word.” I looked over at the door and then nodded to the bouncers standing there. Jonah, a massive man, ambled over and then started to shepherd Bluey towards the door where he’d call the man a cab to get him home safe. “Now everyone else…”

I had three brothers. The only way I was going to hold my own with those dickheads was if I learned how to assert myself, so I drew on that little sister energy as I regarded each man with a steely eye.

“How about you all stop barking orders at my staff? They’re moving as fast as they can and?—”

Of course, the minute I got silence, everyone else decided to take that as an opportunity to raise their concerns.

“Millie, the keg’s run dry.” Annie, one of my longest serving staff members, pulled the tap, the subsequent ejaculation of white foam and no beer underscoring the point.

“I was supposed to go on break an hour ago,” one of the guys that picked up empty glasses said.

“My babysitter just rang.” One of the kitchen hands came rushing out through the swinging doors. “I need… Oh fuck!”

That, that panicked tone had me spinning on my heel. People swore like sailors here, because hey, it was a bar for working men, but this…? It was something else again. I was moving before I could even think about a response, striding over to the kitchen doors, just in time to see fire flare bright in the deep fryer.

Oh fuck, indeed.

For a second, I just stared at the flickering flames, unable to process what I was seeing. I wish I could say the same for my staff. Geoff, one of the cooks, went running over to the sink and filled a bucket half full of water and then ran towards the fire.

“Nooo…”

It felt like my shout stretched out the word so far it became unrecognisable. Everyone was screaming all at once, not paying any attention to me. Geoff rushed forward, slopping water as he went, resulting in one of the kitchen hands slipping in the puddle he left behind, forced to grab the kitchen bench with white knuckled fingers lest she go crashing down onto the tiled floor. Raj, another one of the cooks, looked just as stricken as me, snatching up a tea towel and lurching forward, as if that would help.

“No water!” I roared, my brain coming abruptly back online.

I’d been forced to sit through a long and boring fire safety training session with this crusty firefighter guy who wasn’t even hot, but that was the problem with working in hospitality. The high turnover of staff meant things like training and safety went out the damn window, as evidenced here. Geoff’s head snapped around, his eyes meeting mine, but that didn’t stop his feet from moving. Instead, I watched his eyes go wide as he tripped and the bucket went flying towards the oil fire.

“GET BACK!”

My mum was a petite little thing, but she could conjure a mum voice from the depths of her soul that had us all shutting up and doing what she said without question. I experienced a brief moment of joy when I channelled that same energy right now. Everyone leapt backwards, and thank god for that. The bucket didn’t hit the oil, but the water did, and just like they showed us in the scratchy old footage, the flames exploded upwards.

Get out , that’s what my heart was telling me, thumping too hard and too fast in my chest. Run. But I didn’t have that kind of luxury, forced to ignore my steadily panicking hindbrain as flames raced up the walls of the kitchen.

“Everyone outside, now!”

My shout was almost deafened by the scream of the fire alarms, the bloody sprinkler system kicking in, but that wasn’t helping anything. My nice blouse stuck to my skin as I marched forward, snatching up the deep fryer covers from where they were stored and using the metal lids as a shield before I slammed them down on top of the fryer. Geoff got a damn clue, smashing his hand down on the red button and stopping the gas supply, but that didn’t change the situation we were in. I heard the shouts and screams of the customers as they all tried to get the hell out of the pub at the same time, but I could only stare.

Fire, licking paper safety notices stuck to the wall, eating into the painted walls above the stainless steel splashback, melting the polystyrene ceiling panels. Now. That came almost as an afterthought, a whisper said in another room. Run, now. My feet didn’t move, but a hand grabbed mine, and that broke the spell the fire had cast over me. Raj’s panicked eyes met mine as he tugged me out of the kitchen and then out the front door.

“I’ve called 000—”

“Fuck, look at those flames!”

“The firies are coming?—”

“Do we need to call Jim?—?”

Everyone was talking at once, but for quite a different reason now. Not to get another beer, but to work out what the hell to do about this disaster.

Disaster.

How could it go up so fast? I thought dimly, watching the pub go up in flames from the safety of the car park. How could it burn so quickly? I had smothered the source, turned off the gas…

Gas.

My eyes jerked sideways to the other end of the building where the gas bottles stood, then shifted again, taking in the darkened shops, the houses nearby. People were coming out of their homes to look at the fire, but that just put them closer… I remembered what the old firie had said about gas bottles and fires. The gas was highly pressurised inside, and when that got heated up, they would explode like a massive grenade, sending shrapnel everywhere.

I don’t know why I went marching towards a fire, especially when I heard the wail of a fire engine’s siren. What the hell could I do? I was still formulating that plan as I walked, then ran, across the asphalt. But I was here, I was in charge, and right now that meant removing one last threat to public safety. One of my heels gave out from underneath me, twisting my ankle painfully, but I just kicked them off.

“Get back!” I shouted, but I was all out of mum voice. People just stood by the side of the road and stared. “Get…! Bloody hell.” The rough surface of the car park bit into my feet as I began to sprint towards the gas bottles.

And so did the fire.

It was like a living thing, eating up the building in great big gulps, and I was trying to snatch the gas bottles from its jaws. My chest was tight, smoke smothering me. I coughed and coughed, then was forced to put my arm across my mouth to try and keep it out of my lungs. It didn’t work. The closer I got, the more stupid I realised I’d been. My eyes were streaming like they used to in the bad old days when people were allowed to smoke inside pubs and clubs. What the hell was I thinking getting closer to this mess?

He apparently thought the same thing.

“What the hell…?”

All little boys want to grow up to be firefighters, and grown up girls? They just want a big, muscular man in a uniform rushing in to save the day. All my experiences with firies in the past had been disappointing, not giving me one fella to add to my spank bank, but apparently my luck was changing. Tall, with broad shoulders, the smoke was forced to part around him as he strode closer. He stared at me with eyes the most perfect shade of grey, my brain somehow fixated on that, the colour of the sky after a massive storm.

Oh. My. Lanta.

Knox Ryan, read the badge on his uniform.

I didn’t feel the heat of the fire when the kitchen was burning down, my brain not able to deal with that information, but I wondered if I’d been burned. My cheeks stung, my hands moved restively, not sure what to do with them as his lips thinned down. He studied my face, really looked at it, closer than even my last few disastrous dates, and I soaked that attention in, right before a coughing fit hit me.

Big, hacking convulsions tried to eject smoke from my lungs, but there was nothing else to breathe. Instead, my lungs worked over time, whooping in clouds of smoke, only to cough them right back out again, and that’s when he moved. Like all my hottest firefighter fantasies, I was picked up like a doll, carried across the carpark, and held close to a chest that threatened to dwarf me until I was set down on the bonnet of a car.

“Are you OK?” Gloves were ripped off and massive hands cradled my face, forcing me to push my cheek into them. Warm, dry thumbs turned my head one way, then another, so very gently as he looked me over. “How’s your breathing?”