Sweet Home Carolina

by Rice, Patricia

  He could see weak light flickering inside the humble home where Amy had grown up. It was little more than a clapboard cottage, with a sagging front porch and a sturdy rock chimney, but it had withstood the harsh elements over time.

  He had to hope Amy was standing strong now, because looking at the dark shack, he realized he couldn’t leave the children here without heat or water. The well would be on an electric pump. He knew all about old houses.

  The hurricane-force winds had snapped a giant oak in half, missing the house by feet, emphasizing the danger. Zack offered up a prayer of thanksgiving and turned off the vehicle.

  The graying front door opened, silhouetting Marie Sanderson’s spare frame against a backdrop of lantern light. If anyone could keep the children safe, it would be this dragon lady Amy called Mother. Unable to summon the charm that had been his cover for so long, Zack limped out of the Hummer and up the porch stairs.

  “The children?” he asked first.

  She stepped back to let him in. Her cropped blond hair contained as much silver as gold, her face was lined with years of illness, but she gestured at a room full of active children as if she were his age.

  “Rambunctious but all in one piece,” she replied.

  Louisa ran to leap into Zack’s arms. He hugged her lithe body close and looked over her head to Josh, who was frowning with worry but easing toward him. Behind him were Flint’s adolescent boys playing with some battery-operated game. Unfazed, they glanced up at him, then returned to virtually shooting each other.

  The scene was so homelike and reassuring that Zack would have wept had he been a crying man. Instead, he crouched down and offered Josh a hug. “We were worried about you, big man. Thought you might have eaten everything in the pantry by now.”

  Josh’s freckled nose wrinkled. “Nana has jars and jars of green beans. Where’s Mommy?”

  “She’s still down at the mill. I have to go get her after I leave here.” Zack figured that wasn’t too much of a lie. He was getting Amy, one way or the other.

  He glanced up at Marie. “There is room in the car to take all of you over the mountain to a hotel. It will get cold tonight.”

  She shrugged. “We have oil heat.”

  He didn’t want to leave them here, not after what he’d seen. “I have to drive over the mountain until I find a place where my phone works. You will be safer out of this. The roads are bad and could get worse. You could be cut off for days.”

  He could see that concerned her. He pressed home his advantage. “I can persuade your daughters to join you more easily if we take their children out of here.”

  “They’re all right?” Her eyes finally expressed the fear she had been hiding. She’d been up here all alone with these children through hurricane winds, toppling trees, and a deluge. Her spirit was tough, but the body was weak, and a mother’s heart worried.

  “They are being stubborn, so they must be fine,” he agreed. “I have not seen Flint, though. Jo was concerned about him.”

  “He dropped off the boys and went to check on a friend for me. He’s probably hauling people out of the hollow back there.”

  Flint could take care of himself. Zack had to look after the women and children. “Go pack their bags. I have heard of Gatlinburg. Perhaps the worst of the rain has not reached there.”

  “Dollywood,” one of the boys suggested, proving he was listening for all his pose of blasé disinterest in the conversation. “They’re still open.”

  Zack had no idea what Dollywood was, but if it was in Gatlinburg, then it was only an hour away. He prayed it was high and dry and had cell reception because he already knew the road to Asheville was dangerous and didn’t.

  He prayed the river wouldn’t rise any higher until he could rescue Amy from the valley.

  * * *

  The battery on their last flashlight was weakening. Luigi snapped it off, casting the second floor loft into darkness.

  Below them, the water lapped against the walls of the old stone foundations and washed across the plank floors.

  “I think the rain is letting up,” Amy said with forced cheer, trying to ignore the emptiness of her belly.

  “Don’t mean the water’s going down,” Hoss replied laconically. “If you folks would keep more food in your desks, we’d be a sight more comfortable.”

  “A desk drawer ain’t gonna hold enough food to fill you, Hoss,” one of the workers responded. “We need to move the Stardust down here.”

  They’d run out of songs to sing when they’d run out of fresh water and food. The toilet facilities were no longer functioning either. Everyone was soaked to the skin from kneeling in the rising water, unbolting the heavy machinery from the warping wooden floor.

  “Maybe we ought to set up a dock on the river and keep sailboats for times like this,” some other wit suggested.

  Amy decided she could do without food and water, if she just knew that her babies were safe. She hoped Evan had come for them and taken them off the mountain. Maybe Jo and Flint had taken them down, if the road hadn’t washed out.

  She prayed Zack had had the sense to stay in High Point. The roads would be treacherous by now, and he wasn’t accustomed to driving in hurricane conditions. She didn’t want to have to worry about him on top of everything else. She wanted to think about Zack living his lovely, wealthy life in safety in the years to come.

  Years that couldn’t include her. She’d weep over the loss, but now she had to remain strong and fearless for the brave people around her. If Zack hadn’t shown her how to be brave and stand up for her self, she would never have had the courage to do what she was doing now. She didn’t know how she would go on without him.

  People needed to come in pairs so that one could be strong where the other was weak. Life was much nicer having someone to rely on.

  She would not cry.

  “We can’t see to do anything until morning,” Luigi said matter-of-factly. “Might as well get some sleep.”

  “You planning on swimming out?” Hoss asked, propping his big feet on a bolt of velvet. He’d had to take his boots off after wading back and forth half the afternoon, hauling benches to prop up the machinery.

  “Wrap up good in one of the heavier fabrics,” Amy ordered, her maternal nature taking over. “We can’t handle hypothermia under these conditions.”

  “Nicest covers I ever had,” someone commented. “Have to get my wife something like this someday.”

  Amy distracted her thoughts from Zack and the rain and the lapping river and her empty belly by designing tapestry bed covers in her head.

  “Don’t suppose anyone has a gun on them, do they?” Hoss called through the silent darkness. “I think I hear rats down there.”

  Shoot. Amy propped her arms on her knees and buried her face against them. She had a long night ahead in which to face her stupidity.

  She was far better suited to a life without rats in it, a life that Zack had offered with all the best intentions. It was stubbornness and pride that had forced her to refuse him. And fear of another failure.

  If she hadn’t retreated to her usual fear of change, she could have asked Zack what his intentions were. That he wanted her to meet his parents had to mean he saw this as more than the affair she’d thought he wanted. She knew Zack. Underneath all that charisma, he wasn’t the playboy type. Somehow, they might have made things work.

  Stripped down to the raw essentials, she realized, all she had ever wanted was love and family. The community might appreciate what she could do for them, but they couldn’t love her as her kids could.

  Not as Zack could, if he would let himself. He’d wanted to take her and the kids with him to London, not leave her as her father had left her mother.

  And she’d told him to go away.

  Thirty-two

  With the first rays of dawn, the roaring knock-knock of a helicopter woke the weary, damp occupants of the mill.

  Amy forgot the cold and her hunger and raced to a window.


  Under a sky of thick gray clouds, the choppy river covered as far as the eye could see. The tops of trees indicated where the road had been. At least the rain had stopped. She couldn’t locate her house from this viewpoint behind the roof of the main building.

  “Don’t see any boats out there,” Hoss said, checking from a different angle. “Current is still pretty bad.”

  Someone else checked over the balcony to the floor below. “Ain’t risen any. Foundation’s holding.”

  That was a relief. They wouldn’t be washing away. Yet.

  The flap-flap-flap of helicopter rotors roared louder. Amy pushed at the window to pry it open, but years of paint sealed the casement.

  “Over here,” Luigi shouted, pointing at the ceiling. “Help me shove that desk over so I can climb on it.”

  Three men pushed the old wooden desk under the framed rectangle on the ceiling that gave access to the building’s structural components. Luigi climbed up and shoved at the door, pounding until he’d loosened the paint and knocked the plywood into the attic.

  “False ceiling,” Luigi called back, his voice muffled from above. “Ductwork. Framing. Nothing sturdy to climb on unless you’re into swinging on rafters.”

  The helicopter seemed to be hovering overhead.

  Irrationally, hope rose in Amy’s heart. She ran to another window, a wider one. When it wouldn’t open, she picked up a metal folding chair and smashed it through the glass.

  Hoss grabbed the chair from her and smashed out the mullions, knocking out glass shards with the chair legs before sticking his head out to look upward.

  “Crazy bastard is climbing down a rope ladder!” he shouted in mixed dismay and excitement.

  Crouching down to peer around him, Amy looked out and lost her breath.

  Zack was dangling from a ladder, three stories above the flood, directing the helicopter with one hand while hanging on with the other. At sight of her, he waved and shouted something she couldn’t hear.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” she muttered, falling to her knees and clinging to the sill. “I’m closing my eyes now. Tell me when he falls.”

  Luigi arrived beside her, sized up the situation, and cursed mildly. Elbowing Hoss out of the way, he lifted Amy to one side, then sat on the sill to watch the helicopter maneuver.

  “I am so not watching this,” Amy muttered again. “Are you telling me he was an acrobat in the circus as well?”

  She was so terrified her teeth chattered. Sitting down more firmly, she clutched her knees and hid her face against them rather than watch disaster strike. She would kill that idiot man the instant he appeared. If he survived.

  At the same time, she started to shiver with joy and relief, and big fat tears slid down her cheeks.

  “That’s a damn big help. How is he figuring on getting us out that way?” Luigi growled as loud thumps hit the flat tarpaper roof.

  Or the side of the building. Amy couldn’t tell. She wasn’t looking.

  The silence was deafening as they listened to footsteps overhead. Amy finally opened her eyes to study the desk the men had pushed under the attic entry. The others gathered around it as Luigi climbed back onto it. Amy stayed crouched where she was, her heart pounding in terror.

  “Look out below!” Zack’s voice shouted from overhead.

  Amy watched in disbelief as a rope ladder dropped through the opening and Zack clambered down. She could only shake in shock and stare at this wonderful, terrifying man who’d literally come through the roof for them.

  “We didn’t know if the structure was safe to land on,” Zack was saying to Luigi, who’d caught the bottom of the rope and held it steady. “What have you been doing all night if you haven’t found a way out?”

  Amy stopped thinking about their plight and simply fell head over heels in love all over again at the sight of Zack stepping down from the desk, wearing a parachuter’s coveralls. At least he had a helmet on, though that would do precious little for his knee. She would kill him once she caught her breath again.

  Zack’s smile flickered out as he located her huddled against the wall and crossed the loft to her. She’d have held out her hand for him to help her up, but she didn’t think her knees would lock just yet. And her heart needed to stop thumping so hard.

  “My babies?” she whispered.

  “They’re safe in Dollywood,” he choked out quietly, as if keeping his voice under tight control. Before his words faded, he reached down and dragged her into his arms, holding her tightly. “You are the one who needs a nanny,” he growled. “What possessed you to risk — ” His voice cracked and broke off.

  She felt his arms tremble in the same terror she’d shared, heard the quaver of relief in his voice before he stopped talking. Zack never stopped talking. She wanted to smile, but his strong arms tightening around her felt too good, and she couldn’t lift her head. “You are officially insane,” she murmured in wonder. “You could have been killed out there.”

  Zack had come back for her. For all of them. And no one seemed surprised except her. She let those realizations slowly sink in and warm her frozen blood.

  She had no idea where they would go from here or how. She just knew Zack was with her, and the whole world was suddenly a miraculously brighter place. Even though the circumstances hadn’t changed, she knew she was safe — because he was here.

  “I didn’t want Luigi and Hoss to engage in cannibalism while waiting for the water to recede,” Zack said drily, leaning back just enough to cradle her face in one hand, to stroke her cheek as if to verify her existence. “You are all right?”

  She nodded.

  “You saved all the machinery and the fabric.”

  “Of course,” she said with a slight shrug. “We all did.”

  “Of course,” he muttered, and pulled her close again to bury his face in her hair. “She saves all that is important to me and then she saves the mill for good measure, and she thinks it is as natural as breathing.”

  It took her a moment to absorb his words, and to laugh — laugh — in relief and sheer joy. She framed his face and kissed him softly in promise, then more deeply to show she would keep that promise. “While you risk my future climbing down that damned rope! You could have fallen!”

  He pressed his forehead against hers, noses touching, their lips a breath apart. “Only if you offered to catch me. Come along, Miss Pessimism. I promised your children that I would bring you home safely, and I would not dare to disappoint.”

  “Do we sprout wings and fly?” she asked, unable to resist tucking a small kiss at the corner of his mouth.

  “You climb the ladder to the helicopter,” he said patiently.

  Amy’s knees suddenly melted to useless at the realization it was finally all over — the mill was safe and the town would survive and she would soon see her children again and Zack had come back. All the stress of the last weeks, the last years, drained out of her, and she collapsed against him, knowing that he would not let her fall. Trusting him not to let her down. She buried her face against his chest and tried to take deep breaths, but she kept hiccupping, and tears streamed down her face. She had no words for how she felt.

  “I think that’s how I feel, too,” he murmured into her hair. “We will talk later, when this is all over.”

  She nodded into his shoulder. Borrowing from his strength, she locked her knees and stood straight. He reluctantly released her.

  “How many does the helicopter hold?” she asked.

  For the first time, Zack looked around him. He’d had eyes only for Amy. Now he saw a dozen employees anxiously shifting from foot to foot, trying not to stare. He glanced over the balcony railing to the flooded mill below and saw the muddy water swirling around his looms — or around the benches holding his looms out of the currents.

  Stacks of fabric spilled across the balcony and into the second-floor offices. They’d saved everything.

  “You are brilliant,” he said in awe, understanding the heroism that had place
d his investment over their lives.

  “The mill closed the last time the inventory got wiped out,” Amy explained. “We couldn’t let it happen again. The town’s existence was at stake.”

  No one disagreed with her.

  “If I could give out medals for heroism, I would,” he declared fervently. “I have never seen — ” His voice broke over the enormity of explaining how he felt about near strangers having the courage and selflessness to risk their lives for him. For their town.

  “I think the ladder’s strong enough to hold us,” Luigi called, interrupting Zack’s sentimentality.

  “If you climb up first, Luigi, you can help Amy out. When we’re all on the roof, the crew will drop a hook to pull the ladder up.” Zack counted heads. “But some of us will have to wait for a second trip. They can only take six people at a time. People with families first.”

  “Up you go, Miz Amy,” Hoss hollered, dragging her toward the ladder.

  She cast a terrified look back to Zack, but he remained determinedly smiling. He didn’t want her going anywhere without him ever again, but the truth was, his life was worth far less than hers. Far less than these other men here with families at home. If a river of water came rushing downstream to wipe this building off its blocks, he’d prefer it took him and not the others who had so gallantly tried to save it.

  All his knowledge and wealth were worth nothing next to the love of family. And if life was about making the world a better place and taking chances on love, then there was no greater challenge than living life to its fullest.

  “Haul her out of here, Luigi,” he called to his friend.

  Zack glued on a smile as Amy disappeared into the attic. He let the other men decide who would climb up next. They had already proved capable of making their own choices. He’d once thought he could play God and change the lives of people, but it seemed they had changed his.

  He didn’t know them well, but he wanted to.