Rescued by Her Rival Read online

  God, she was going to cry again.

  “You’re doing all this for me, and I barely know you. Except that you’re brave, and good, and you have a very sad story. I guess I just want to know.”

  He made some sound that let her know he’d heard, but didn’t say anything until they’d reached a large, gnarly tan oak, leafless and charred, which he, strangely, patted on the way past. “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. What was the workshop for?”

  “Mom was a carpenter. Artist, actually. Sculptor. But making ornate furniture was more lucrative than sculptures. She custom-made modern replicas and new designs with old-fashioned techniques and beautiful carvings. Paid well.”

  His mother had been a carpenter. She’d never actually heard those words from someone before. Father? Sure. Mother? Never.

  “That’s amazing. Have you ever looked for any of her work?”

  “To buy back?”

  “Yeah. To have it. What was her name? Did she mark her pieces?”

  “Her name was Molly, and she’d mark the pieces with a brand in hidden places. I’ve never looked for anything, but I do have a trunk she made. It survived the fire. It’s at my cabin.”

  The walk through the woods was probably a couple of miles, and then another mile south along a winding state route, but it flew by. Beck had said once he didn’t like to talk about his mother, but in the woods, with Lauren’s hand in his, he talked. Quietly. Reverently. How it was to grow up in such a quiet, isolated way. Home-schooled. Taught to tend a garden and help in the workshop. The two of them building him a treehouse he used to sleep in when it was warm enough. A life that taught a love of nature, and books, and quiet evenings looking at the stars. It sounded so idyllic she didn’t want to think about what his life became after, and he’d only spoken of that enough that she knew it had involved foster care.

  Soon he let go of her hand and waved to a taxi speeding down the highway, which pulled onto the shoulder to wait for them.

  Before they got in, she asked one final question. “Have you ever been to see what’s become of the land now? If someone bought it, built new?”

  A quick, slight tilt of his head showed his confusion. “Nothing’s built there.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “I still own it. There’s a trust and it’s paid the taxes.”

  He’d kept it, but he never went there.

  He gestured toward the open door, and she did the only thing she could: climb in and scoot to make room.

  Asking why he’d kept it but avoided going there for over a decade felt like a bridge too far, even for their new little relationship. Their friendship. Partnership. Whatever. She couldn’t ask him that. Not yet.

  And not for the whole ride to the nearest airstrip, where Gavin was waiting for them to fly back.

  From the moment they climbed into the taxi, he was different. Quieter. She didn’t need to ask the question burning through her. The words he’d pick to answer didn’t really matter, the act itself was an answer. It would’ve been more financially smart to let the unused land go, or to build his own cabin there rather than buying new land, but he’d done neither. It was a place he couldn’t let go of, but still didn’t want to go to.

  They went through the motions for the rest of the evening, grabbing dinner on the way back to camp, eating, talking about her and the Autry clan—exploits of her ancestors and immediate family rather than him. He’d earned an emotional rest after their walk through a burned-out, lifeless landscape. But the switch in subject hadn’t eased him.

  As the hour grew late, she went to knock on his bedroom door and found it open, and he was pulling on a pair of sweats over a fresh set of gym clothes and a hoodie.

  “Cold?”

  He turned and looked, shifting the clothes for comfort before he sat and reached for clean socks.

  “I’m going to go up the wooded trail. There’s a tan oak I like...”

  “The one you were sitting in that evening on the first run?”

  He nodded, his expression too closed to read.

  “You’re going to go sleep in the tree?”

  “It’s really fine.”

  “I’m not worried about you falling.” She was more worried about his insides than his actual body.

  “No need to worry at all. I’ll be there for morning PT.” He zipped into his hoodie and came toward the doorway where she stood, stiff, wary, blocking his escape route. “Bring me a coffee when you come down?”

  He tilted to slide through the space between her body and the door, but she still moved out of the way.

  As bad an idea as she knew it was, the urge to stick beside him and get closer had grown beyond her control. Especially considering that today she understood his retreat wasn’t just about maintaining distance with her, it was a reaction to something. The burned woods. Maybe her questions.

  Tomorrow she might not be able to say the thing in her heart she needed to say to him.

  “You know, if you ever wanted to visit your land, I would go with you.”

  He stopped on the way to the front door and half turned back, his expression sad but at war with something lighter. Something like hope.

  It was only a second and he prowled right back to her. No more hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. The next instant, his warm, soft lips pressed to hers, one slow, long, tender kiss, so different from the frantic, need-filled devouring kiss he’d laid on her after her bad jump. It was just his mouth on hers, one slow, sweet press of flesh, gentle and tender, and somehow more substantial, not built on out-of-control emotions or a needed confirmation of life. Intimate. An acknowledgment of the closeness they’d forged this week.

  When he lifted his head to look at her, there was no way to conceal the tears she felt stinging her eyes.

  “I’m okay,” he said softly, then released her and backed toward the door. “Don’t forget my coffee. You know I’m useless without it in the morning.”

  Not true. Words meant to normalize what was so far from normal, but she still felt herself going along with it, nodding and watching as he slipped out the front and closed the door behind him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ANYTIME BECK NEEDED to find peace, he went to the woods. It always worked, at least enough to still whatever had unsettled him or prompted extreme inner tension.

  When he’d been able to fall asleep in the crook of the tree, he’d expected that the off-feeling he’d been having would be better in the morning. It wasn’t. It still twisted at his insides.

  His offer to help Laura gain the jump experience she’d needed hadn’t been as altruistic as she’d thought. Sure, he’d wanted to help her, but he’d also expected that once satisfied she could handle herself. However, the fear that had set up house in his guts when she’d been stranded and had needed to hike out of a wildfire alone hadn’t dissolved. It was still there.

  The prospect of her going back up into the air and to another fire filled him with the kind of anxiety he’d have thought would be reserved for someone actively in danger, not just someone in possible future danger.

  Lauren wasn’t just someone. She was the only person he’d actually allowed to get close since Mom had died, and even the idea she could die the same way brought the most horrific visuals to his mind.

  He’d tried to fake normal with her all day, through the long looks and the faint worry line that kept appearing between her brows. Hadn’t pulled it off, but didn’t know what to say about it.

  The last run of afternoon PT finished and they were both still catching their breath when Treadwell surprised everyone by slowly walking onto the field.

  “He looks better,” Lauren said quietly, a safe subject, one he could talk about. “Still pale, but not that terrible gray.”

  Unlike the rest of the group, they hung back and
let the mob gather to welcome the chief. He wasn’t a man to suffer fawning, and the shrill whistle he loosed through tight lips both cut through the din and summoned Beck and Lauren at the same time.

  “I’m not back,” he announced first. “Call just came in for assistance from a local station with a big fire at an apartment complex. It’s bordered by woods and they need help. Anyone up for it, go now.”

  He finished with directions by pointing toward the main building, then turned to slowly walk back in that direction.

  Beck needed only a glance at Lauren to know she was going. Her gaze connected with his, and they turned in unison to jog for the main building. They were a team now, and he had no choice about letting her face any fires alone. In the future, when she was assigned to a team, that would change—something he didn’t want to think about. Right now, he only knew that, no matter how skilled she might be, she’d be safer at his side than anyone else’s.

  Half an hour later, they were both in full gear at the site and being directed to the last building at the back, which was supposed to have been evacuated but had finally caught fire and needed a final sweep.

  Others followed with hoses and began the attack.

  “Upstairs down,” she said. “Keep to the cement breezeways as much as possible. These buildings are built with metal skeletons. If the floor looks iffy, stick to the joists.”

  Over what was probably only ten or fifteen minutes, they scouted the third floor of the building, found nothing, and moved down to the second.

  She moved quickly, assessing everything and gesturing him off on different paths he might not have traveled without her. Contrary to how he always felt in a wildfire, really contrary to how he’d felt in the hours she’d outrun one alone, even contrary to knowing structure fires were statistically more dangerous, Beck didn’t feel that spike of chained-up terror in his chest. Until the back of the second floor, when he suddenly did.

  It took him a heart-squeezing to realize what his body had reacted to.

  Screams. He’d heard a woman screaming.

  And behind it a baby’s cries.

  One look at Lauren confirmed she’d heard it too, and had flipped up the visor on her helmet so she could hear more clearly, and it was there in the whiteness around her mouth.

  Woman and child, trapped behind a burning doorway, and who knew what else.

  “Is there another way?” he asked, praying she had an idea that hadn’t come to him. All the apartments had balconies, but getting in through a balcony would require leaving, getting a ladder, climbing in—time they didn’t have.

  She flipped down the visor and gestured to the stairs and took them at a run, and he followed. In building fires, she was definitely the more experienced, and he’d take whatever wisdom that experience brought. A moment later, they were on the ground below a balcony, and she’d thrown down all the equipment except for her protective clothing.

  “I’m going to climb, and you’re going to lift me.”

  “Alone?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  He gaped for only a second, tempted to tell her to wait. To tell her if they didn’t know she could go in safely, she shouldn’t go—things she’d said to him before, but which he knew neither one of them believed at that moment. Woman. Baby. It was worth the risk.

  Sweat that had been pouring off him below the gear ran like ice water down his spine, but he linked his fingers to offer her a step up. “Use the wall to steady yourself as I lift, and when you’re high enough, grab the balustrade.”

  If she could reach it. If he could lift her high enough.

  Climbing would require a sure grip, so she pulled the bulky gloves off and stashed them in the pockets of her jacket, then stepped into his hand.

  A moment later, he’d heaved her up to the height of his shoulder. She tested the heat of the wrought-iron bars framing the balcony, then grabbed hold and began to lift herself, allowing them to share the burden as he extended his arms up over his head and she was high enough to reach one foot up to the balcony and climb.

  In less than a minute she was over the bar, had her gloves on again and peeked into the sliding glass door. The locked door.

  “Axe,” she called down to him, then leaned over to catch it as he tossed it up.

  That was the last word she said to him before he heard shattering glass, and then he was running, around to the front again to call for a ladder and crew. It couldn’t have been longer than seconds, but time slowed, seemed like hours before his shouting was heard and he finally saw men with a ladder running for him, leaving him free to barrel back around to the balcony.

  By the time they got back there, she’d returned and was leaning over the railing, a screaming toddler wrapped in her jacket, his face out in the air.

  “He’s okay. Needs oxygen. I need your help with the mother.”

  Beck stepped back for the men to place the ladder, then pushed through, climbing fast to reach for the child. He passed the terrified toddler off to the next pair of hands, then hammered up the ladder and over the rail while she buckled her jacket again.

  One look back into the burning apartment explained why she’d had the baby inside her coat—the living room was a wall of flames. They were going to have to run through.

  She flipped her visor down again, put her gloves back on, pointed, and repeated her earlier advice. “Stay on the joists.”

  It only took seconds for her to explain the distance between floor joists, then she was gone. He followed.

  Once inside, even in a room on fire, the consuming fear he expected didn’t come. The fire that surrounded them in that building wasn’t a monster. It was a thing. It was her conquering the deep end of the pool, no one there to stop her. Not something plotting to hurt this family, just a sad, unfortunate event.

  “Mrs. Rhodes,” she called, visor up again, and moved around a recliner to the floor where the woman was sprawled.

  The first sight of her almost took Beck’s breath. The pink plaid pajamas she wore were singed on the top and almost entirely missing on the bottom, melted into her legs or consumed by the fire.

  Her legs...

  “We can’t carry her out like that. She needs protection...”

  “I have the fire blanket.” Lauren was already shaking it out, but the bathroom was just right there...

  Beck stepped in and yanked open the closet inside to fish out a couple of towels, which he tossed into the bathtub, and turned on the cold water.

  “Beck?”

  “One minute,” he called, moving the towels under the fully open faucet until they were saturated, then carrying both out. “Here. Lay these over the burns to keep them from getting heated when we run through.”

  Lauren had already spread the fire blanket on the floor and eased Mrs. Rhodes onto it, but took one of the towels Beck offered and laid it over the leg that had taken the worst of it. The skin was gone in some places, and bubbled up to terrible blisters in others.

  “I have flu,” the woman sobbed, shaking her head. “I was asleep. I... The alarms...”

  “It’s okay. We’re going to get you out.”

  “My son...”

  “He’s scared, but he’s fine.” Lauren spoke firmly, projecting confidence Beck didn’t feel. Couldn’t feel. Not while seeing those burns... “We’re going to take you to him now, okay?”

  Mrs. Rhodes nodded, and since they had her covered in the wet towels, Beck flipped his visor down then flipped Lauren’s down as well before bending to wrap the poor woman in the blanket so they could pick her up and make a run for it.

  In nothing less than a joist-to-joist sprint, they made it back through the fire and out onto the balcony, then down the ladder and on to the ambulances.

  The fire alarms had woken the woman, and she’d run through fire to her son. She hadn’t hesitated. No shoes, no protection,
and she had gone for her son.

  The story stuck to him, along with the way she’d sobbed her apologies to them, to the baby who didn’t know what his mother had done to save him. The kind of love that allowed such sacrifice shouldn’t hurt to witness, but even well outside the heat of the fire it burned straight through him.

  Lauren handled all communication, getting new orders once their building was clear, and waved for him to follow. She’d already started moving to another building, setting a pace he’d fight to keep up with the rest of the evening.

  They worked for hours, first making sweeps and then manning the hoses, and she’d never lost a drop of that energy. At the site or inside burning buildings, there was no hint of the hesitation he’d seen when they’d been digging or even at camp. She was confident and certain of herself, every bit the force of nature they fought, and he had to wonder if she’d joined the smokejumpers because she wanted to do the job or because she thought it would finally give her the validity in the eyes of her family.

  This seemed to be what she was made for. If he was honest, he craved this for her. He needed this woman in his life, whatever way she’d take him, even after training ended. So he’d just have to accept her on the crew, battling wildfires, because he had no choice.

  Unless she changed her mind.

  * * *

  “I know you’re happy to have been able to help them, but I’m just not feeling celebratory,” Beck said, driving them back from the fire in his faithful pickup, hands gripping the wheel and that scowl she saw so often on his face magnified by his surly profile.

  Was that anger? “How are you feeling?”

  The more they talked about things, the less she had to badger him into putting his thoughts into words. At that moment, she only had to ask and he admitted, “Can’t stop thinking about what life’s going to be like for them. There’s no scenario here that has a happy ending.”