She woke fully with a gasp, her eyes flying open in the hospital room. There were two narrow beds pushed together side by side, but Summer’s was empty, her daughter obviously choosing to climb in with her at some point during the night.

The fire.

Oh God, the fire.

She’d almost lost—

No. Summer was right here, in her arms.

Megan pulled her daughter closer and Summer shifted to look up at her.

“Mommy?”

“Hey there, baby.” The words came out rough and ragged. As if she’d swallowed fire. Which she pretty much had. Megan kissed her little girl on the forehead and each cheek, following those kisses up with a puckery smooch on her soft little lips. “How are you feeling?”

Summer gave a little wiggle. “Okay, but I want them to take this itchy tube out of my arm.” She lifted up her left arm and looked at Megan’s. “We match.”

Smiling through the tears that insisted on falling, she agreed, “We do,” then held up four fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Six.” Her daughter’s crooked grin told her she was teasing. “Four.” Summer held up one finger. “What about me?”

“One,” Megan said with a kiss to the tip. “How about we call the doctor and see about getting set free?”

A smiling middle-aged doctor came in shortly after Megan hit the call button, clearly pleased to see them awake and doing so well. The doctor quickly checked their vitals, smiling as she wrote on their charts. “You’re welcome to stay here a while longer if you’d like, but I’m happy to say it doesn’t look like either of you have any of the serious aftereffects of prolonged smoke inhalation, probably because you’re both young and healthy.”

Megan shot a glance at Summer. “Thanks, but I think we’d both like to head home.” A moment too late, she realized she didn’t have a home to go back to.

The doctor gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sure you’d like to get washed up and changed.” Before Megan could remind her that they didn’t have any clean clothes to change into, the doctor brought over a bag. “The hospital keeps a stash of clothes for people in your situation. I’m so sorry about what happened to you, but I’m very glad you’re both doing so well.”

Tears threatened again. She was in a situation. How she’d hoped that her situations were behind her.

Well, she thought as she ruthlessly pushed more tears away, she and Summer had survived the first situation five years ago and they’d survive this one, too. Heck, they already had survived, hadn’t they? Now it was just down to details.

If there was one thing Megan knew how to do, it was details. Her work as a CPA meant she was a master at taking the often messy financial details of her clients’ lives and transforming them into clean, well-organized accounts and spreadsheets. She’d simply have to do that for herself now.

Thankfully, she was religious about backing up her clients’ files. She’d be okay there, at least, once they’d found another place to stay and she was ready to get back to her job.

Before leaving, the doctor reminded them to take it easy for a few days and to check back in with her if they had trouble breathing, had coughing spells, or felt dizzy and confused.

When they were alone again, Megan told her daughter, “I’m going to take a shower and then you can go on in and clean up.”

Summer nodded, reaching for the remote control and turning big, pleading green eyes on her. “May I watch TV?”

Even though Megan was usually strict about not watching TV during the day, she quickly decided that something mindless would be a very good thing for her daughter right about now. She nodded, ruffling Summer’s short blond hair before scooting off the bed. “Just for a little while.”

“Yay!”

As Megan headed into the bathroom toward what was going to be the best shower of her life, she was glad to know that, where her very resilient daughter was concerned, it looked as if she was going to be okay.

Only, as she stood under the warm spray that was slowly washing away the black smudges of smoke on her skin, along with what she realized were the charred ends of her hair, she didn’t have any idea how long it was going to take her to feel okay, too. Not with the visions of what might have happened to them running through her head one after the other, mental pictures of their ordeal that were blurred with the dark edges of a thick, black fog.

And yet, despite how exhausted and drained she felt, she could never forget the heroic firefighter who had pulled them out of their flaming apartment. He’d risked his life for theirs. Once she and Summer were back on their feet, she would go find him. Not just to say thank you, but to find a way to repay him for the incredible gift he’d given them.

The precious gift of life...when death had been so horribly close.

Closing her eyes tight, as if that would keep the dark visions at bay, she lifted her face to the water and let it wash away her tears of shock—and joy that she got to live another day with the little girl who meant absolutely everything to her.

* * *

As they walked through a nearby Target store a couple of hours later, Megan was amazed to find that, despite the horrors of the fire they’d lived through, Summer had returned almost immediately to her normal energetic personality.

Megan wished she could rebound so fast. Of course, the two zillion forms she’d just filled out for the insurance company hadn’t exactly helped her state of mind. She was used to plenty of paperwork, but this had been over the top even for her.

She’d purchased their small but charming apartment last winter and had been fixing it up in her spare time. Now all she had to show for her hard work was a promise of money from the insurance company. After they did their assessments, of course. Until then, they’d given her enough cash to get by for a while until she could contact her bank for a new ATM and credit card. They’d also informed her that she had been checked into a Best Western hotel near the hospital until she could make other arrangements.

As soon as she bought a new cell phone, she’d call her parents and try to break the news of the fire to them without giving them a heart attack. No doubt they’d be on the next plane out from Minneapolis to come take care of her and Summer. Of course she wanted to see them, wanted to feel their warm arms around her, but at the same time...well, she wasn’t looking forward to a repeat of five years ago when David died.

No doubt about it, they were going to put the pressure on her to come “back home.” They’d use this fire as the perfect example of how much safer she and Summer would be in the small town she’d grown up in.

Megan unconsciously lifted her chin. She was proud of how well she’d done raising her daughter by herself. And regardless of what her parents thought, she’d learned her lessons about safety perfectly well. The men she’d dated the past couple of years were accountants like her, or teachers, or engineers. She’d never again make the mistake of giving in to the thrill of being with a man who thrived on risk, who ran toward danger instead of away from it like any sensible, reasonable person would.

Summer tugged her toward the food court and Megan broke another one of her rules, this time about junk food as they bought hot dogs and nachos and big cherry Slushies. But although Summer polished everything off, Megan couldn’t do more than take a couple of bites of the greasy fast food.

Knowing how much her daughter liked new clothes—oh, who was she kidding, they both did—Megan told her, “We’re just going to buy a few essentials like jeans and T-shirts today.”

“But we’ll need to get a whole bunch of new stuff soon, right?”

Silently thanking God that her daughter was more pleased about getting new clothes than she was distressed about losing her old ones in the fire, they went to try on a handful of things and were on their way to the front of the store to buy them, when Megan realized she’d forgotten something very important.

Yes, they needed clothes. Of course, they needed to buy some food. But despite how cheerful Summer was being about their situation, her daughter had just had all of her things taken away from her...including the Rapunzel doll she slept with every night.

Knowing they needed to be extremely careful with their cash for the time being, she put down one of the T-shirts she’d been planning to buy on the dressing room re-shelving cart and steered her daughter toward the toy section.

“Look, I think they have Rapunzel dolls here.”

Summer’s eyes lit up and she threw her arms around her mother. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!” As she ran down the aisle to get the doll, Megan had found herself standing in the middle of the big store with tears threatening to come again.

When they were trapped in the bathtub, she’d hoped, she’d prayed that she and her daughter would live to do something as mundane as go shopping together, but the fact was that as the fire had raged hotter and bigger, as the sirens had rung out louder without anyone coming to help them, she’d almost stopped believing.

Quickly wiping away the evidence of the emotion threatening to spill out again, when Summer returned with the brand new doll, perfect in its shiny package, Megan knew she had a lot to learn from her daughter’s smiling face, from her happiness over something as small as a pretty doll.

They’d lost things, but they still had each other.

All she wanted to do now was check into their hotel room and curl up with Summer for a much needed nap. But as soon as she arrived at the hotel, her neighbor and friend, Susan Thompson, pulled her aside.

“Megan, Summer, thank God you’re all right.”

The older woman brought both of them in for a hug. Again, tears threatened and Megan had to hold her breath and focus on a patch of dried gum on the carpet to keep them from falling. She wasn’t normally a crier, hadn’t let herself give in to tears even after David’s death. She’d been too busy then trying to keep up with her two-year-old; trying to hold on to her accounting job and keep them fed with a roof over their heads; trying to deal with the pressure from her parents to come back home immediately and never, ever leave again.

Mrs. Thompson, however, had no such qualms about crying. Her cheeks were shiny with tears as she finally let them go. “As soon as I told the firefighter you were both inside, he ran straight in for you.”

Again and again throughout the past hours, Megan’s brain had flashed back to the firefighter who had found them in the bathtub, his firm, confident voice directing her. Her skin, her muscles and bones, still felt the phantom imprint of his hands, the strength of the way he’d lifted, moved, pulled her and Summer forward toward safety.

Susan sat with her on the nearby faded couch in the lobby. “He had just helped me and Larry out onto the sidewalk when I looked around and realized you and Summer weren’t standing there with the rest of us.” Her mouth trembled. “I’d seen you come in just a little while before. I knew something was wrong.”

Megan swallowed hard, reaching out to cover the other woman’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “If you hadn’t told him—”

No, she thought as she shot a glance at Summer, who was happily unwrapping her doll, Megan couldn’t finish the sentence. Her daughter seemed to be totally engrossed in her toy, but Megan knew darn well that she was actually taking in every little thing around her. Every expression, every word. Megan didn’t want Summer to turn what had almost happened into a fear that she’d take forward with her.

But Mrs. Thompson was shaking her head. “That firefighter was the real hero. They didn’t want to let anyone else into the building, but he didn’t hesitate to run in to save you. I just hope he’s all right after what happened to him.”

Megan looked up at her friend in horror. “He was hurt?”