Fighting For Jemma Read online

  Fighting for Jemma (Police and Fire: Operation Alpha)

  Badge of Honor: Tarpley VFD #4

  MJ Nightingale

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Books by MJ NIghtingale

  More Special Forces: Operation Alpha World Books

  Books by Susan Stoker

  Fighting for Jemma © 2020 MJ Nightingale

  Published by MJ Nightingale

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  © 2020 ACES PRESS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  [email protected]

  Editing: Goller Editing

  Cover Design: © Buoni Amici Press, LLC

  This book is intended for a mature audience of eighteen and older.

  Created with Vellum

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Police and Fire: Operation Alpha Fan-Fiction world!

  If you are new to this amazing world, in a nutshell the author wrote a story using one or more of my characters in it. Sometimes that character has a major role in the story, and other times they are only mentioned briefly. This is perfectly legal and allowable because they are going through Aces Press to publish the story.

  This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I might have assisted with brainstorming and other ideas about which of my characters to use, I didn’t have any part in the process or writing or editing the story.

  I’m proud and excited that so many authors loved my characters enough that they wanted to write them into their own story. Thank you for supporting them, and me!

  READ ON!

  Xoxo

  Susan Stoker

  About the book

  High school science teacher Jemma Haner is ready for love, but she doesn’t do firefighters. Period. Never. No way. But Angel is everything she is looking for. Tall, dark, handsome and kind. As a veterinarian he shares her love of animals, nature, and the outdoors. She’d been burned in the past and had lost too much already to risk her heart to a firefighter.

  Angel, “Short Shit” to his friends with the Tarpley Volunteer Fire department, can rescue cats and kids out of trees without a ladder. He works hard and loves harder, but when he meets Jemma he thinks only of making her his. Only problem--she won’t date firefighters. Can he get her to change her mind and give love a chance? Can he win her heart?

  And when the storm of the century hits Tarpley, Texas, can Angel save Jemma from the dangers that come at her from all sides, and still do the job he loves? Find out in Book 4 of Badge of Honor: Tarpley VFD, part of Susan Stoker’s Badge of Honor series.

  Chapter 1

  The images of what was left of Lovelace, Pennsylvania flashed on the projection screen in the front of the classroom. The F3 tornado that Lars and his team had followed through the downtown area, risking their lives in the name of science, laid to waste hundreds of homes at the mercy of nature’s fury. Over eight hundred residents had reported damage to their properties and businesses in the small suburban community.

  “Luckily, an early warning system had been put in place, and when the alarms sounded, residents went to their designated shelters, or hunkered down in their homes and basements,” Lars Wagner stated to the group of students sitting before him.

  His European accent had charmed Jemma’s female students right away. Yet, his charm and good looks were soon overlooked by the amazing presentation he was giving. In fact, all her students’ eyes were transfixed by the images and video footage recorded by his storm team’s cameras and equipment.

  “The town went black when the tornado hit several electrical poles. The residents faced this horror in the darkness. Cars were lifted completely off the ground and fell four football field lengths away when the 206 mile per hour winds swept through the city.” The accompanying video made several students gasp at the sheer power of the destructive winds.

  “Were you scared?” asked Tiffany from the front row.

  “Yes, of course. But this is my job, and I love it. I felt my ears pop when I heard the roaring winds sideswipe the vehicle Miss Haner’s friend Calliope and I were in.”

  Jemma clutched her ribs, seeing her friend beside Lars in the vehicle he was driving down the main thoroughfare through Lovelace. She knew Calliope being a part of Brittney Hart’s storm chasing team was dangerous, but seeing her in the thick of it, following the path of the storm in their armor covered vehicle meant to weigh it down as they traveled perilously close to such a raging monster of wind, rain and debris, hit her in the gut.

  It was Calliope’s job and passion, Jemma knew, but it also put her closest friend in danger. The wind in the video sounded like a hungry monster feeding on everything in its path. When Calliope described it to Jemma, she spoke of the excitement and adrenaline. Not the terror Jemma witnessed on the screen. Until that moment she hadn’t realized just how terrifying it actually was, and it only increased Jemma’s resolve to get Calliope to give it up and try her hand at teaching.

  “How big was the tornado? I mean how wide?” asked Charlotte, one of her best students.

  Lars answered quickly. “It was over 300 yards wide. It touched down at 8:12 PM south of the town, and traveled due east. It stayed strong for over fifteen minutes and traveled nearly 11 miles.”

  “Wow!” came a gasp from the back of the room. The normally silent Michael was in awe. “Was anyone hurt?” he added.

  Lars nodded. “Tragically, yes! Two people died, one in a vehicle that was hit by another vehicle, and one elderly man in his home when the roof collapsed on top of him. There were twelve other injuries, but none of those were life threatening, thankfully. That’s why it’s so vital to pay attention to the early warning systems and to watch the news and heed the warnings of your local experts and first responders. When you hear the Civil Defense alarms go off, you must get to shelter right away.”

  The next few images showed Lovelace High School. The gymnasium roof was gone, ripped away by the winds. Jemma saw the kids shudder involuntarily. The area they lived in experienced occasional tornadoes, but luckily nothing as deadly as the tornado that had struck Lovelace.

&
nbsp; “It sure was lucky it did not happen during the day,” one student stated matter-of-factly.

  “Absolutely,” Jemma repeated. “That’s why we practice our drills and go to the interior corridors, away from the windows and where we have solid concrete protecting us from any possible flying debris. The duck and cover position may seem silly to you, but it protects your face, eyes, and the back of your head from glass or other dangerous projectiles.”

  Lars piped in again. “Miss Haner is correct. The flying debris is what caused the most danger in this particular storm, and most storms, but there are other dangers, too.”

  “Like what?” asked another student from the back of the class.

  “Well, flash floods can be problematic if the storm brings in a lot of rainfall, and falling objects like trees and branches can knock down power lines. Lightning can start fires as well. The most important thing to remember is to stay indoors if possible, or in a shelter, stay away from water, and keep low to the ground if you’re caught outside. The best place to be is a shelter, though, or in your basement. They tend to be more sturdily constructed being the foundation of the home.”

  Lars finished the presentation by reviewing a few other safety tips and answering several more questions. As the bell rang, the students packed up and thanked their guest speaker profusely before leaving.

  Jemma helped Lars out and thanked him again for making the trip to Medina from San Antonio.

  “Not at all.” Lars shook Jemma’s hand. “I was happy to do it. So, I’ll see you later, then?” He towered over her as he finished putting his materials away into his jeep.

  “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll head home after the faculty meeting and see you in a few hours.”

  Jemma was looking forward to it, too. She loved her home in Tarpley, Texas, but it was out in the country, and she was ready to be around adults and people her own age for a bit. It had been quite some time since she’d gotten away for the weekend. Her friend Calliope and her entire team had gone to San Antonio for a conference, and she was going to join them for their final weekend before they hit the road to chase storms throughout the Central United States.

  Chapter 2

  Jemma put on her pink jacket before leaving her classroom. For March it was surprisingly cold in Medina. The temperature was barely 55 degrees. The heater in her Volvo was on the fritz again, and she didn’t relish her long drive to Tarpley. Her home was nearly an hour away, but her small town, if you could call it that, did not have a high school of its own. But she loved her family home and would never leave it despite the current run-down condition.

  Over the past ten years it had fallen into disrepair, though she was currently working on fixing the place up. Her aunt had left her the house on Indian Mound Road. It had been in her family for over 150 years. The Haner’s were one of the original ranching families in the small community, though her aunt had sold a great deal of the land during hard times. But the house and outbuildings were still in her name as well as the last 100 acres of the once 1500- acre ranch. It was her only connection to her family. Her roots. There was no one else. She and her father both had gone to live with her aunt when she was just a toddler after her mother split. Then, tragically, her father had died when she was barely a teenager in the line of duty with the Tarpley Volunteer Fire Department. After her father’s death, her aunt had become her guardian, so she stayed with her, attending the very high school where she now taught.

  While Jemma was in college her aunt had battled cancer alone, not telling her until after she graduated with her teaching degree that the stage III cervical cancer she had been diagnosed with was robbing her of her life, and Jemma’s last remaining family member. Her mother did not count. Jemma had no wish to find her after her mother had abandoned her and her father when she was just two. The abandonment they felt had been a sore spot for them both.

  Pushing the gloomy thoughts away, Jemma smiled as she made her way across the faculty parking lot. Her old Volvo stood out amongst the Ford pick-up trucks and Chevy’s most proud Texans drove. But her funds were limited. Student loans and house repairs came first. Her reliable car had gotten her through high school and college, and she was sure it would see her through a few more years.

  She waved at a colleague who was getting into his vehicle and continued to her own car. She was looking forward to the weekend. Her friend Calliope had invited her to crash at the hotel where she was staying. It would be like old times when they had been together at OU.

  She smiled as she got behind the wheel of her trusty vehicle. Her college friend was fun and the closest thing she had to family now. They’d met in college, and had become immediate friends though the two were like night and day.

  She made the familiar drive home in under an hour and dropped her bundle of papers to grade on Sunday on the oak table in the large kitchen of the ranch style home. The old table could seat twelve comfortably. It had been around since the days of her grandparents who had operated the Haner homestead as a working ranch. The ranch hands had always been welcome to eat their meals with the family, or so she had been told by her father.

  After a quick shower, she went to the master bedroom she had claimed after her aunt passed. It made her feel closer to her aunt Eden who had been more than just a mother figure to her. She’d been a friend, parent, confidante, and counselor. Jemma loved the room with its warm yellow paint and fireplace. It also had the best view of the property and the river that ran through it. Off in the distance purple mountains jutted out of the flat land covered in wild Texas scrub. When cattle had been on the land, her father had said it looked flat and pristine, but that was no longer the case. Now it looked wild and abandoned. Many of the smaller ranches had been bought out by large developers or agribusinesses in recent years though a few privately owned ones still remained in operation.

  She threw some clothes in an overnight bag, anxious to get on her way to San Antonio. Anxious to have a little fun. It would be good to let her hair down and relax. Being a high school science teacher, she had an image to uphold locally and did not often go out to the local gin joints and honky-tonk bars in town.

  Meeting someone had been put on the back burner for her. Though, at times, she did get lonely. Most of the local men were ranchers or firefighters, and she wanted nothing to do with firefighters. The shock of losing her dad when she was barely a teenager had torn her apart. The explosion that no one had seen coming when he was putting out a blaze at a derelict gas station in a neighboring county had been tragic. His team of firefighters had mourned him, and had tried to be there to comfort her. But seeing their sad faces every time they came around had only brought back the pain. So, she had focused on her schooling, and then college and a career, followed by making her aunt as comfortable as possible in her final days. Coping with the loss of her father was something she still dealt with every day. He had been the center of her world, raising her alone, doting on her, and spending all his free time with her even to the point of rejecting a social life of his own. It’s also why finding her own love interest had never been easy. She had dated two different men over the years, but those relationships hadn’t lasted. One had been a ranch hand who had moved to Tennessee, and the other had been a mechanic she had met when she’d brought her Volvo in for some repairs. However, he had lived too far away and both had chosen to amicably end their relationship.

  In Tarpley, most of the men were already taken, or one of the volunteer firefighters that worked for David West, aka Pops, as all the locals called him. A few had tried to get her number when she ran into them at the Rite Aid or the grocery store, but she point blank told them she did not date firefighters, and they eventually stopped trying. But she did keep her eyes open. She loved animals, so a rancher or ranch hand would not have bothered her, but firefighters were definitely out. Her father had been a dedicated one, and though she had loved him dearly, his career choice had cost him his life. She didn’t want to risk loving a firefighter again only to lose
him.

  With everything ready to go, she locked up the house, and hopped back into her car to make her way to San Antonio for a little fun with her friend Calliope. As she left the long driveway and turned at the bend, a damn little donkey, moving like no donkey should, popped out of the woods and blocked her path. She rolled down her window and yelled at the beast.

  “Smokey, move out of the way, you ass!”

  She honked her horn, and the donkey looked at her nonchalantly as donkeys do and went back to munching the bit of grass growing between the trail made by her tire tracks on the dirt road she’d been driving over for years. She honked again, but the beast continued munching until the bit of grass was gone.

  Jemma shook her head. Smokey was as dumbass a donkey as donkeys could get, but he was also a bit of a celebrity in Tarpley and was allowed to roam freely by its current owner and protector, a firefighter named Penelope. She’d actually gone to high school with the woman. Penelope had rescued Smokey in the big blaze last year that wiped out thousands of acres of Texas forest land on the wild life preservation.

  Penelope, a local celebrity in her own right, was also former military. She had taken the beast in and made sure he’d gotten medical treatment for the burns he’d suffered in the fire. Some of the scars were still visible, though all looked to have healed. Jemma shot the woman a text message in case she was out looking for him.