Make it Hot Read Free

ever felt. He fought fires because he loved helping people. He fought fires because he was a part of an elite group of men who lived to do what no one else would: run into the blaze not away from it. He didn’t have the kind of personality that would allow him to just sit behind a desk day after day. He needed to be out and in the thick of things.
    Taming a fire before it spread and took lives or wrestling a life out of the fire’s hands by carrying a child or adult to safety from a burning building made him feel as if he could really do anything he wanted. To say his profession was intimately connected to his sense of manhood would have been an enormous understatement, and that was why he had to be able to fight fires again. That was why he would be able to fight them again. He couldn’t let anyone or anything stand in his way.

Chapter 1
    Six months later

    J oel Hightower entered the physical-therapy stage of his rehabilitation feeling less like his normal upbeat self.
    Okay, make that nothing like his normal self.
    After the two operations on his back, he had spent the bulk of the past five months in traction, and once the casts had come off, he’d had to get used to walking around with a cane for a little while, walking around feeling like half the man he used to be.
    As far as he was concerned, he was allowed to be in a bad mood. His entire life had been snatched from under him, and he had to literally learn how to walk on his own two feet again.
    The inside of the clinic looked as drab as the adjacent hospital had. Sure, the walls of the waiting room were a bright shade of Pepto pink, but everything else screamed stale and antiseptic. He really hoped the rest of the clinic wasn’t the same color scheme. He couldn’t take three months of constant puke pink.
    He had to get his body back functioning properly so he could get a clean bill of health to return to his job. That was the most important thing. Getting back to work. Putting out fires. Until then, he felt as if he was on hold.
    Too bad his physical therapist was keeping him waiting, too. He stood, freed himself from his brother Lawrence’s helpful grasp and steadied himself on his cane as he walked over to the receptionist’s desk for the second time in twenty minutes.
    The short, perky woman had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore very little makeup on her almond-colored face. He glanced at the nameplate on her desk. Jenny Saunders.
    “Ms. Saunders, I—” he started, only to be cut off with a honey-sweet smile.
    “She’s running a little behind. This isn’t normally the case. She’ll be right with you. Again, I apologize for the delay. We had a therapist call in sick today, and Samantha had to take on some of his patients.”
    The woman gave him another pleasant grin and a stare that seemed to suggest he go and sit down somewhere. He could tell Jenny Saunders was getting a little tired of him.
    So what? He was tired of waiting.
    His therapist’s first-impression points were going down—way down.
    “Why don’t you just chill, man? Have a seat. Relax.” His brother Lawrence was only a couple of years older than him. The way the narcotics detective was always telling Joel what to do, one would think Lawrence had him by decades.
    Although all the Hightower men shared the same mahogany complexions, dashing good looks and athletic builds, he and Lawrence had often been mistaken for twins when they were growing up. He used to hate that.
    He decided to ignore Lawrence for the moment.
    “It’s not like you walking up there every five minutes is going to make your therapist come any faster,” Lawrence offered.
    When he realized Joel was not going to respond, Lawrence shrugged and went back to flipping through the Vibe magazine he’d gotten from the humongous pile of reading materials on the coffee table.
    “I’m sorry I’m late. I’m Samantha Dash, and you must be Mr. Hightower.”
    He turned to set eyes on a curvy