Giving her a wry look now, Matt refolded his schedule and shoved it back into his pocket. “That’s what Barbara tells me all the time. I believe her, but it’s been a long haul with Megan. I guess I was losing hope. Until…well…you came along.” He lowered his voice and said, “Casey, I’m so relieved that you’re here for Megan. I’m grateful beyond words that you’ll do this for her. I know we’re strangers and we have sort of crashed into one another’s lives. It’s heroic of you to take this on. Most people wouldn’t.” He grimaced. “There’s a lot of people out there in the world today who don’t feel they’re responsible to anyone but themselves. The whole fabric of being a human has changed since about 1970. There’s a segment of our population that just doesn’t care anymore. But here, in this valley of ranchers, cowboys, trappers, miners, oil men and rugged individualists, that extended care never got destroyed. Neighbors do rely on one another. Friends help where and when they can. We’re a tight-knit community from that standpoint and you sure fit into it.” Matt gave her a warm smile meant to make her feel good about her volunteering to help Megan.
“I grew up in a large family, Matt. We were taught reliance on one another, and that our neighborhood was everyone’s responsibility.” Casey smiled a little, feeling her heart opening even wider as Matt stood relaxed, a happy glint in his green eyes. “I’m finding that Jackson Hole isn’t like the rest of the world. Gwen Garner told me the same thing you just did. I like being with people who care, with people who are their neighbors’ keepers. It takes a village, as Hillary Clinton wrote in her book. We’re all connected. We all have to work together or we perish together, as I see it.” Casey had experienced amazing support not only from her friends at the university, but from the faculty, as well, after she left the hospital. For a moment, she wanted to share that very special and private experience with Matt. She felt he would understand. And right now, he looked achingly vulnerable despite being the rugged, heroic man he was. Casey could see on his face and in his eyes his emotions and concern for his daughter and her welfare. His whole life was focused on Megan.
“I’m in this for your daughter,” Casey assured him. “Megan needs a village right now. We all come together like the warp and weft of the village fabric to cradle and support her getting better. That’s how I see it, Matt—we’re fabric. Each strand is a person. We overlap, we touch and we are connected. And to sit here and turn you down or say no to helping Megan isn’t something I could ever do.” Casey opened her hands. “I just pray to God that I don’t make her worse.”
“You can’t possibly do more harm to her,” Matt said with fierce emotion in his deep tone. “Megan reached out to you, Casey. Not the other way around. I was shocked when she threw herself into your arms.” Hell, he wanted to be in Casey’s arms! But that desire would never see the light of day and Matt swallowed those words. “There’s just something unique about you, Casey. Megan saw it. I see it. I can’t put it into words, either. There’s just this feeling around you and because of it, Megan gravitated to you like the moon wanting to orbit Earth. I feel on a gut level that Megan sees you as someone not only to be trusted, but someone she feels safe with. She’s never felt safe since the fire.” And then he added hoarsely, “I no longer make her feel safe, either.”
His words tore at Casey’s heart. “Stop being so hard on yourself, Matt. Time heals all. I believe that.” Not for her, but at least in Megan’s world, it appeared to be happening. As Casey sat absorbing Matt’s tall, powerful frame, his rugged face and his eyes burning with care, she stifled the urge to hold him. That’s exactly what he needed, Casey realized. Matt needed to be held. She was sure he hadn’t let anyone help him through all of this from what Gwen had told her. He was an iconic battle-weary knight fighting the dragons to save his daughter’s precious life. He’d ignored his own needs and healing for hers, instead. In her eyes—and heart—Matt Sinclaire was a true hero.
CHAPTER SIX
FRIDAY WAS BLUSTERY WITH chilling rain off and on. It was near freezing as Casey made her way to the converted greenhouse where Katie Bergstrom kept her raptors. Katie met her at the door and smiled.
“Hi, Casey! Come on in! Matt and Megan are already here.”
Friday was her day off, so Casey was bundled up in civilian clothes. She pulled off her purple knit cap and quickly moved into the large, airy greenhouse. It was warm and she gladly began to unwind her purple muffler and open her bright red squall jacket. She saw Matt with Megan standing at the opened office door halfway down the long expanse. As she lifted her hand to greet them, Casey felt her heart take off once more.
“Hey, Katie, how are you?” Casey asked, shrugging out of her jacket and hanging it on a nearby hook.
“I’m fine. How do you like our late-April weather? Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“A lot of mud out there,” Casey agreed. She lowered her voice. “How long have they been here?”
“Oh, about ten minutes,” Katie said. “Come on…”
This was the first time Casey had seen Katie’s headquarters. There were mews—cages—on both sides of the huge greenhouse. It was spotlessly clean. Every hawk, falcon and owl had several large perches plus a warm “house” to go into when chilled. The cages were huge, about twelve feet by twelve feet, giving each raptor room to fly a little bit. Huge shallow pottery bowls of water in the bottom of each cage were large enough so that if the raptor wanted to wash itself, it could. Raptor rehabilitators had to be licensed by the state with frequent inspections of their facilities and Casey was sure that Katie’s operation passed on all counts.
Katie smiled as she and Casey drew up to Matt and Megan. “Okay, we’re all here.”
Casey nodded to Matt, whose gaze burned through her, making her pulse quicken. Today he wore a pair of jeans and a dark green long-sleeved polo shirt. His clothes did nothing but emphasize the breadth of his powerful chest and the masculinity that throbbed like sunlight around him. Casey stood within the circle of Matt’s invisible sunshine. He smiled.
“Thanks for making it out on this rainy, cold day,” Matt said. He looked down at Megan. “Meggie was coming no matter what the weather was like.” He laughed a little.
Casey laughed with him. She crouched down in front of Megan. The child’s eyes were bright and filled with excitement. “Hi, Megan. How are you today?” Casey wasn’t going to treat her as if she were mute. She would speak to her as she would anyone else.
Megan pulled her hand out of her father’s hand and began flapping her arms for Casey.
Grinning, Casey said, “Ah, you’re going to take off today, are you?”
Raspy, excited sounds came out of Megan.
Standing, Casey turned to Katie. “Okay, what do we do next?”
Katie said, “I thought I’d take Megan from one end of the rehab center to the other and explain things as I go. You two can follow me. If you have questions, just pipe up.” Katie opened her hand and Megan instantly slipped her hand into hers.
Casey fell back as Katie took Megan to the front of the greenhouse. Matt fell in beside her. The aisle was a good four feet wide, but when two people walked side by side, it became very intimate. Casey railed inwardly. She put her hands behind her back, but even that did not stop them from occasionally touching one another. It couldn’t be helped.
As Katie took Megan to the work area where there were jesses, feathers picked up from the cleaning of the mews and other items, Casey tried to focus. It was impossible. She felt Matt’s gaze on her from time to time. What to talk about? Certainly not last night’s torrid dreams of Matt kissing her! Feeling her cheeks grow warm, Casey cleared her throat.
“How is the firefighting business going?” she asked.
“We always have a lot of wood-fire calls this time of year,” he said in a low voice, not wanting to disturb Katie’s talk with Megan.
“I was over at Quilter’s Haven yesterday,” Casey confided to him, “and Gwen said there was a bad fire out on Cox Road.”
Grimacing, Matt sa
id, “Yeah, I was on that call. We had our tanker that carries about twenty-two hundred gallons of water sink down to its axles in the mud. We were half a mile away from the home when it happened.”
“Gwen said the house burned to the ground.”
“Yes, it did.” He scowled. “You’ll find that a lot of the ranches out in the valley are situated one to five miles off the main asphalt road that goes north to south through Jackson Hole. No one has the money to asphalt that kind of road. It would cost millions and most ranchers don’t have that kind of money. So, every year, spring and fall, their roads turn to a mire. This isn’t the first time our trucks have sunk down to their axles and been unable to make it to the fire in time to save the structure. It’s hard on the people who called us and it’s hard on us.”
“Heartbreaking,” Casey agreed, seeing the turmoil in his gray eyes. “Gwen said they saved the dog and cat and family, but everything else went up in flames.”
“At least they have their lives,” he murmured in agreement, thinking back to the time three years ago when the same thing had happened with Senator Peyton’s home. Only then, his wife and two children had burned to death. Matt would never forget that horrible night.
“Gwen said you had to call two eighteen-wheeler wreckers in to get you unstuck.”
Nodding, Matt said, “That’s right. Won’t be the last time, either.”
“Isn’t there something the people can do to their roads to make them passable?” Casey wondered. Katie was finished showing Megan the soft kangaroo-leather jesses that fitted around the raptor’s legs.
“We work with the land owners and the county,” Matt said, following Katie and Megan to the first mew. “Tax money is spent on putting gravel on these roads, but that’s expensive. The gravel gives the soil some purchase. Over the last two decades the fire department has sent men and equipment to gravel these roads to help the ranchers. It’s not a perfect system.”
“Gwen said about three years ago Senator Peyton, who lived two miles up on a steep hill, refused to upgrade his road. And then his house burned down and his family died. I find that mind-blowing. Here’s a guy who is a millionaire fifty times over and he refuses to help pay for gravel on his dirt road? What was he thinking?” Casey shook her head.
Squirming inwardly, Matt knew he had to be careful what he said. Senator Peyton had sued the fire department after the loss of his family. The lawsuit was decided in the fire department’s favor, and the senator had decided not to sue Matt in civil court. “I don’t know what he was thinking” was all Matt said.
Looking up at him, Casey saw darkness in his narrowed eyes. His mouth was thinned. Realizing he wasn’t saying all he could, she added, “Gwen said he sued the fire department and lost. And he was really pissed about the verdict.”
“It was a messy lawsuit,” Matt agreed quietly. “It was sad. I couldn’t be angry with the senator. He lost his wife and two children. That’s a terrible price for anyone to pay.”
Studying Matt’s rugged face, Casey sensed the tight emotional reactions he wasn’t going to divulge. There was so much to Matt. He didn’t give up anything about himself easily. But how could he? Casey had had a lot of time to think through Matt’s situation. His wife Bev had been murdered. His child had nearly died in an arson fire. He’d lost a home he’d built with his own two hands. He’d had to start all over again. Casey realized that in some ways, she faced a similar path, only her loved ones had not been lost. She had lost a huge part of her happy-go-lucky self, though, to the beating by the druggies. Once, before the near-death experience, she had been an ebullient, outgoing person. Afterward, she became tight-lipped, conservative, distrustful of men, and she rarely gave any of herself to anyone. Casey saw the parallels.
Did people who had suffered through terrible trauma attract one another? Casey didn’t have an answer except to know that she had looked forward to this day more than she should have. And for all the wrong reasons. She cared deeply for Megan’s plight, but what made her heart beat with excitement was realizing Matt would be here. It gave her another chance to absorb him without his knowledge. In some ways, Casey felt like a thief. Matt didn’t know she liked him. What did that make her?
“I don’t know how you live with all of that,” Casey confided in a lowered tone. “I mean…being stuck in mud and watching a house go up with people inside it.” She lifted her chin and stared into his eyes. “How do you live with that, Matt?” Maybe her question was too personal because she saw him flinch. His mouth tightened and then it relaxed. Matt’s gaze went from surprise to sadness and then bleakness.
“I have a tough time with it even now, Casey.” He shrugged. “I try to forget it, but I can’t. I have thought about that call a thousand times and replayed it as many times in my mind. Did I do something wrong? What could I have done differently? The elements were against us. When your tanker and engine sink to their axles in mud, there’s nothing else you can do. We didn’t even know if Senator Peyton’s family was in there. Word was that they’d all flown back to Washington, D.C. That didn’t stop me from ordering my men up to the residence, however. We did what we could, but by that time, his family had died of smoke inhalation. We had no idea they were in there until the fire chief called Senator Peyton’s office in D.C. and found out his family was home. When the 911 call came in, I thought it was a neighbor calling it in. Everyone assumed the senator and his family weren’t here.”
“That must have hammered you emotionally,” Casey said. She kept her gaze on Megan, who was staring into a mew that had an injured red-tailed hawk in it. Katie was crouched next to the little girl explaining about the hawk being shot by a rancher and losing part of its left wing.
Matt, under ordinary circumstances, would have shut these kinds of questions down. But this was different for him. The softness of Casey’s lips, the burning care in her gaze all conspired against him. Because of the lawsuit, Matt had swallowed his comments and feelings about the situation. Senator Peyton had sworn that if anyone talked about the loss of his family, he’d sue them. Matt didn’t want to go through a second lawsuit with the angry senator. Once was enough. Swallowing, he rasped, “We’re charged with saving lives. It was hard on everyone, Casey. No one has forgotten it happened. There isn’t a day that goes by even now that I don’t run the scenario through my head.”
“Mud up to the axles is your answer,” Casey said. “It’s pretty black-and-white. What I don’t understand is, with the senator’s millions, why he didn’t fix the road?”
“Well, therein lies the seeds of debate,” Matt told her. “The senator’s road was the next that was to be graveled by the county that coming summer. He felt the county should bear the entire burden of upgrading his road because he was a senator. Our county commissioners told him that on all the other roads, the ranchers pitched in as much money as they could to help. Why shouldn’t Peyton ante up? If our ranchers, who are always struggling with the bottom line and eking out a living, can do it, why didn’t he?” Matt felt old anger stirring within him. He felt the senator was trying to bleed the county dry. Like many of the rich, he wanted to hang on to his money and let the others be damned.
Shaking her head, Casey muttered, “Wow, that is beyond beyond—”
Wasn’t it, though? But Matt didn’t speak the words. Bad blood still ran deep in Jackson Hole be cause of that night and the senator’s loss. It was worse because Peyton had a home here in Jackson Hole—his favorite. He also had a residence at the state capital in Cheyenne. Matt hated running into the senator, although truth be known, the places Peyton frequented weren’t on Matt’s itinerary. Except for the gym. There, he had run into the senator more than he wanted to. And every time they met, the hatred was alive in Peyton’s eyes and was always aimed at him. He made Matt feel as if he were a criminal. And he knew he wasn’t.
Megan screeched with joy and they both returned their focus to her. Katie had fitted her with a leather glove and she was in front of Hank’s mew. Matt moved down the wa
lk and pulled a small camera out of his pocket. Casey followed. For the next ten minutes, Megan learned not only how to get Hank to move from his perch to her glove, but also how to fly him.
Katie came over to Casey and offered her a leather glove. “Put it on. You stand down at the other end of the walk. I’ll stay with Megan and we’ll fly Hank back and forth. This is what we do on awful days outside. Hawks won’t fly in rain or snow. They’re grounded. So we use the flyway here to give them daily exercise. You game?” She grinned.
“Of course,” Casey said, relieved to be away from Matt’s powerful masculine presence. She fitted the glove and Katie gave her instructions.
Turning at the end of the walk, Casey’s heart melted with joy as she saw Megan with Hank perched proudly on her thin little arm. The child-size glove was too large for her. Her eyes glimmered with excitement. Katie had soothingly told Megan she couldn’t make noises, laugh or jerk her hand around. All those things would upset Hank. The girl quickly understood. She was a model pupil. In Casey’s eyes, Megan was as smart as her handsome father. The only difference was, she couldn’t talk.
Casey had been given some rabbit meat in a pouch that she had belted around her waist. She placed a small bit of the meat between the thumb and index finger of the glove. Hank saw that and launched himself off Megan’s glove to fly straight toward Casey. She was surprised at the power of Hank’s “pounce” as his claws gripped the glove and he quickly gobbled down the red meat. The hawk turned and looked toward Megan and Katie. Smiling, Casey saw Katie place a bit of meat on Megan’s glove. Instantly, with surprising power, Hank opened his wings and flapped through the air to land on Megan’s glove.
It was a joy to watch Megan’s face light up with incredible happiness as Hank landed on her glove. Matt was busy taking photos about halfway down the aisle where he could get good shots of Hank and his overjoyed daughter. Katie was all smiles and praised Megan. Casey put more meat on her glove. Hank missed nothing and launched off Megan’s glove with a powerful flap of his wings.
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