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She leaned forward intently, forearms on her knees. “You know how you have dreams you want so badly to make happen you can nearly taste it?”
“I guess.” He was wary, watching her.
“Well, I have a dream. Someday I want to have a ranch. It wouldn’t have to be big, maybe just a few dozen acres. I’d invite all kinds of disadvantaged children there—children from broken homes, or who’ve had some behavioral problems, or who just need a place to go after school instead of a dark, empty house.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’d teach them how they can be a part of taking care of the land. I’d show them how we need to be good stewards and protect and preserve our environment and wildlife. And maybe by doing that, the children will learn how to be responsible and helpful and purposeful. And they’ll feel safe and secure themselves. And happy.”
“You think that will do it?” Ash asked. His voice wasn’t skeptical so much as carefully neutral. “Spending some time on your ranch is gonna turn these kids’ lives around, and it won’t matter what they have to go back home to each evening?”
“I think it will help, at least a little, or maybe just enough.” She dropped her chin, studying the sooty toes of her lug-soled boots. “I get frustrated, though, knowing that there are so many children and animals who are going without that help every day, every single day.”
She gave a huff of frustration, and again she couldn’t have said with whom she was frustrated.
“You can’t save the world, Maura,” Ash said, and it was now as if he were trying to convince her of something that meant a great deal to him.
She wouldn’t go there. She couldn’t go there.
“If I help rescue just one soul,” Maura said stubbornly, “it’d be worth it. I mean, don’t you feel your life has been given new purpose by saving mine?”
He didn’t answer, only gazed at her with that same wariness.
She rose, needing to move, and went to stand at the entrance to the passage that led to the outside. Even from several yards in, the sound of the wind was like getting up close and personal with a volcano. The worst of the fire would have passed by now, but the danger—and the fury—were not over. They would never be over, for there would always be forest fires. There would always be the suffering of the innocent. It was a law of nature.
Panic again fought its way upward in her chest.
Distracting herself, Maura passed a palm across the back of her neck. “Heavens, I feel grubby. I’d give anything for a nice hot shower.”
“I’d suggest freshening up in the spring,” Ash said from behind her, “but it’s just a little spit of water, and the pool it flows into isn’t something you’d give your dog a bath in, much less yourself.”
She turned to regard him. He had exhibited little reaction to her diatribe, except for his eyes returning to that cool silver that created enough distance between them you could have inserted the Grand Canyon with room to spare. She knew she hadn’t changed his mind a bit. Of course, she knew what he believed; he’d said it outright.
“Just a spit of water, eh?” She elevated her chin an inch. “Not exactly my idea of clean, but better than nothing.”
She found the bar of Ivory she always kept in her pack and took it and her helmet with her as she headed stalwartly down the tunnel. She wasn’t going to let Ash Whatever-his-last-name-was get her down.
She gave the doe a quick check on the way by. Smokey was still glued to his mother’s side. Maura stooped to soothe a hand down the bridge of the doe’s nose. She barely responded. She seemed to be resting better, though. Maura would take the next turn bathing the burns after her own abbreviated ablution.
The spring, she discovered, was the trifling affair Ash had warned it would be, barely a trickle down the side of one wall into a small muddy pool at the bottom. She sighed. It would have to do.
Wedging her helmet into a crevice in the opposite wall, she removed her fire shirt, then hesitated with her hands on the hem of her T-shirt, listening. The only sounds were that of the spring echoing in the chamber. Not that Ash would peek; she knew that without asking. She drew the T-shirt over her head, reveling in the feel of fresh, albeit cold, air on her skin, and impulsively removed her bra as well. She used the red bandanna she’d had tied around her throat to catch the meager stream from the spring, soaped the dampened area and washed herself as best she could, shivering a little in the cool of the cave. Meager as it was, the bath did revive her spirit.
She didn’t know why she cared, anyway—about what Ash thought or if he had the disposition of a badger and an outlook so gloomy it would take a trip to the far side of the sun to brighten it up a bit. But she had to wonder what had made him that way: wary, secretive, cynical.
Something flitted past her ear, ruffling her hair. Maura knew it was a bat—she knew it—but she couldn’t stifle a startled cry.
She gave another when barely three seconds later Ash appeared around the corner, his Pulaski gripped in his hand, his eyes wide with concern, his features taut. His stance that of knight ready to do battle.
Except that there was nothing to do battle with. And that’s when Maura realized why, actually, his expression was so strained: Ash’s headlamp had zeroed in like a spotlight on her naked torso. She felt like Gypsy Rose Lee on stage at the burlesque.
Maura gave yet another screech, this one of embarrassment, as she stooped, fumbling for her fire shirt to cover herself.
Realizing where the beam of his headlamp was trained, Ash whipped his helmet off his head and shoved it under his arm with military precision, so that the light now fell in a pool at his feet.
“Are you okay?” he asked belatedly. He had obviously been ready to come to her rescue for the second time that day. It wasn’t the fact that she was standing there virtually half-naked that a thrill of goose bumps swept over her.
It was immediately followed by a thoroughly warming blush at the spark that leaped to his eyes, remote no more.
“A…a bat startled me,” Maura stammered, clutching her shirt at her throat with one hand while holding it spread over her breasts with the other. “I’m fine…just embarrassed, is all. That I screamed, I mean, and made you come running. I must have scared the life out of you.”
He finally averted his eyes, obviously nearly as embarrassed as she was.
“I didn’t know if—or what—had happened.” He actually shuffled his feet. “You know, if you’d seen a spider or if there was some kind of animal you’d come across that was threatening you…”
He shoved a hand through his dark hair. “Oh, hell.”
Maura broke out into a smile. How sweet of him, just when she was about to give up on him. As much as he might pretend he was a hard case, she had a feeling Ash might be in the same league of softie as her father.
“I’m fine,” Maura said, suddenly lighthearted, where a few moments ago she’d been ready to throw in the towel. “Really. I’m used to spiders and bats and most everything else. But thank you for coming to my rescue—again.”
He mumbled something not quite sounding like “You’re welcome,” and stormed back down the passage without so much as a by-your-leave.
Maura’s smile only widened. He couldn’t have seemed more uncomfortable than if she’d caught him in a lie.
And maybe she had.
Ash stalked—as best as one could hunched over and boot soles slip-sliding on a damp, uneven cave floor—back to the chamber where he and Maura had set up camp. Once there, he drew in half a dozen bracing breaths through clenched teeth.
He needed to get a grip on himself. He was taking this rescue business way too far. Maura was no shrinking violet who needed him to stomp on bugs or chase away critters. That had been clear from the start. It had been the whole point of calling her a powder puff. She had a degree in forestry, for Pete’s sake, had probably spent more time braving the wilds of Montana than he had.
But, damn, it felt good to have her look at him with those big, blue eyes as if he was her own personal hero. And damn, but seeing her standing there, her skin wet and glowing, that red braid of hair, itself alive as the fire outside, spilling over one breast—it had been like glimpsing heaven.
A heaven he didn’t even dare dream about.
And tonight was going to be hell, confined here in this cave with her. Ash swore, vividly and succinctly. He would almost rather have fought a thousand forest fires.
He looked around as he heard her return to the chamber.
“I can’t tell you how much better I feel,” she said cheerily and without a bit of her earlier embarrassment. He had to admire her gumption. But then, she hadn’t heard his next bit of news.
“Well, if you’re done for the night, I’m thinkin’ we’d better get some sleep.” More brusquely than he meant to, he continued, “It’s best if we shut off the headlamps to conserve our batteries. Chances are we’ll make it out tomorrow, but we’ve actually got no idea how long we might have to hole up here before we can get out or someone else can get in.”
He paused, then decided he might as well give it to her straight. “Once we turn out the light, it’ll be black as six feet under in here, just to let you know. It could be kind of spooky.”
She looked at him strangely before nodding. “I’ll be fine.”
“Then I’ll let you get settled.”
He headed back down to the spring for his own quick swab off. Ten minutes later he came back to find her on her side, her back to him, her space blanket wrapped around her, with her hard hat for a pillow. The small mound she made lying there looked not much bigger than a bag of feed.
Well, he may as well get this over with.
He dropped to his own space blanket. “Ready for me to turn off the headlamp?” Ash asked without preamble.
“Yes—oh, wait,” Maura said, pushing back the blanket and half sitting up. “I forgot to take my turn at bathing the doe’s burns.”
Making a show of rustling around to get comfortable, he mumbled, “You don’t have to. I…I checked on her while I was washing up.”
“How is she doing?”
This was the worst news of all, and he’d have given his right arm not to have to tell it to her. But he owed her the truth.
“Maura, she died,” Ash said.
Her eyes widened in shock, then closed as her mouth tightened into a thin line.
He felt like a twenty-four-carat louse. “It’s for the best, you know,” he said tersely. “She never did have a chance.”
“I guess.” Her head bent and she said nothing for a long moment. “And the fawn?”
“He seems to be doing fine, but he’s not budging from her side.” He paused, then added, “We won’t leave him here. We’ll get him out with us somehow.”
She lifted her chin, and the watery smile she treated him to was so grateful it had him regretting his momentary weakness.
“So, you ready for me to turn out the light?” he said.
At her nod, Ash switched off his headlamp. Maura gave a soft gasp of surprise, and even he was momentarily taken aback. The darkness was absolute and enveloping. It was difficult to ignore it. Difficult to keep it at bay.
He distracted himself by experimenting with a more comfortable way to rest his head than on his helmet, and finally settled on using his bent arm. Either way, however, was about as conducive to sleep as trying to bunk in a herd of stampeding cattle. The space blanket had the flexibility of sheet metal and it crackled every time he breathed, but there wasn’t any other choice for warmth.
He’d known it was chilly in the cave, but lying still without cover other than his clothes and the space blanket, and with the overwhelming darkness, it was like being shut up in a meat locker.
And nightmarishly reminiscent of another time in his life, when the darkness had been as complete, almost in danger of permeating his skin, like being submerged in a vat of blackest ink, until he became the darkness itself.
Ash shuddered. With effort, he concentrated on the sounds of the cave—the trickle of water, the soft whir of bat wings, the faint but ominous crackle and pop of the dying fire…a muffled sniff, and then another.
“Maura?” Ash said. “Are you okay?”
“Y-yes,” came the muffled answer. There was no sound for a prolonged moment—and then a sob that sounded as if it had come bursting out of her like a cork from a bottle.
He fumbled for his headlamp and flicked it back on. Blinking to get his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out Maura huddled on her space blanket with her back to him.
“Maura, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you and have you call me powder puff and make some pithy comment about how real firefighters don’t cry about the loss of wildlife and forest. After all, it’s just p-part of the job, right? A part of life. No need to get all maudlin and teary-eyed.”
“I wouldn’t say those things,” he denied rather sourly. “I mean, I know you’ve got a low opinion of me—one I haven’t taken a lot of pains to discourage—but I’m not a complete hard-ass.”
“And I am not a powder puff! Just because I believe in things turning out for the best and that I can have an impact on them, doesn’t make me a lightweight or a Pollyanna or whatever you choose to call me.”
She gave a flounce, but the effect was lost in a cellophane-like crinkling. “Maybe you believe I shouldn’t have even tried to save that poor animal, or tried to ease her pain or her little one’s fears. Just leave them alone and let nature take its course! Maybe you should have done that when you came up on me struggling to get out of the fire!”
“I don’t believe that, and I wouldn’t have let you get burnt to a crisp,” Ash protested. But he could see he wouldn’t change her mind that way. And he wanted to change her mind, he realized.
He took a deep breath, doubting what he was doing even as he was about to do it. “Just like I wouldn’t let you lie over there crying without any comfort. So come here.”
And without asking, he reached an arm around her waist to scoop her against him and hold her soft, small body against his.
Miracle of miracles, she turned into him as she sobbed against his shoulder. And miracle of miracles, it felt damned good—oh, not that it was good she was in such distress. But that he had even a prayer, simply by providing that shoulder, of easing her sorrow and pain.
It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. And he liked it a lot.
“What makes you think other firefighters aren’t as torn up inside at the destruction they’re witness to?” he asked once the storm of weeping seemed to abate.
“Oh, I don’t think that about other firefighters.” She sniffled. “Just you.”
“I see.” He hadn’t exactly been a font of compassion, had he? “Well, actually, I fight fires because I have to. Like you, I can’t sit by and watch this land go up in smoke. I…I love it too much.”
“I knew that you did.” Her voice wasn’t triumphant, just quietly matter-of-fact. “Then why do you try to make people believe different?”
“I don’t try to make people believe different,” he said in echo of her own assertion. “Just you.”
He was certainly treading on dangerous ground, now. But he didn’t have to tell her how he’d gotten into volunteering to fight fires—that, indeed, he’d had a need to help out, but he’d also had a need to get out. Get out of the four walls that confined him, if only for a little while.
But that time—and those reasons—seemed of little significance at the moment. What counted was now, with Maura in his arms. Needing him in a way he hadn’t let himself be needed in a decade.
She actually snuggled against him, and his arm tightened almost reflexively to bring her closer still. She was so small, so delicately built, he found himself marveling at the determination it must have taken for her to pass the physical test to qualify to be a firefighter. He had no doubt that she would achieve her dream of running a ranch for kids who needed a guiding hand. No doubt that somehow, some way, she would save that one soul that would make any amount of pain or disappointment worth it to her.
How he himself could have used that kind of support! His life might have turned out much differently…?.
“You know, I’ve kind of nourished a small dream myself,” Ash said. He could barely believe he was speaking these words aloud—he’d mulled them over in his mind, certainly, millions of times—and yet he couldn’t have stopped himself even if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. “A dream of owning a spread, too.”
“You have?” He couldn’t see her face, but her tone was encouraging.
“Yeah. In the past five years I’ve worked on a bunch of ranches from here to the Canadian border. That’s how I got ranching in my blood. I’m foreman of a ranch right now—temporary foreman, that is, although it could turn into something long-term. Working in the role every day, knowing the herd better and better, along with every section they’re grazing… It’s only made me hunger for a place of my own, where I can look out across a herd and know every one of those cows is mine—mine to tend and raise up—and that the land they’re standing on is well taken care of.”
“It sounds like the ranch I want to have for disadvantaged children.” Maura shifted to look up at him, and the movement brushed her breast against his ribs. He had to concentrate with all his might to temper his physical response. “I want them to learn about the land, how to think of the world beyond themselves.”
He didn’t want to put a damper on her enthusiasm, especially when it seemed he might have been able to turn her attitude about him a notch toward the positive, but he felt compelled to be honest with her. “It may be hard to do that, though, when their world is filled to the brim with worries about survival—where the next meal’s coming from, how they’ll stay warm at night. How they can ever feel safe and secure.”
He touched two fingers to her lips, forestalling her protest. “I’m not tryin’ to discourage you from following your dream, Maura. It’s just that some kids struggle with a lot of problems that have to be addressed before they can even begin to think of others.”
I know that from experience, he thought but didn’t say. That definitely was a subject for a whole different time.
Yet Maura must have gleaned enough information from his advice to guess. Gently she pulled his hand away. “It must be a terrible, terrible thing to feel there’s no one in the world you can count on. And I know that I don’t have that kind of experience to help me relate to kids like that, Ash.”
She lifted her arm and, in a move that shocked him with its intimacy and power, she placed her palm on the side of his face, her thumb caressing his cheekbone. “But I do know what it is like to feel safe…as safe as I feel in your arms right now, as if nothing can hurt me as long as I’m here. It’s a wonderful feeling to give someone, too, even if you haven’t felt it yourself.”
It floored him—that she felt safe with him. Secure. Despite everything.
“You don’t even know me, Maura,” Ash felt duty bound to warn her. “You don’t know.”
