Blazing Fear

by Leisl Leighton

  A distressed neigh sounded behind them and he turned to see Rey trotting up and down behind them. The little colt was fine. They were all fine. But they wouldn’t be if something wasn’t done about that fire.

  ‘Go. I’ll be fine here with Cherry, but you need to go deal with that before it takes everything.’

  He looked down at her, this woman he loved so much it was an ache in his body, knowing she’d read his mind, read his worry, and was giving him what he needed. He breathed in deeply, choking a little on the smoke in the air, tensed but didn’t freeze. The fear was still there, the horrid memory ready to swamp him that smell brought forth. But he didn’t feel weakened by the fear and the sickening memories, he felt strengthened in this moment. Helped by the woman, the doctor, his lover, who despite her own trauma and injuries—it hadn’t escaped his notice the blood on the back of her head—was busy saving another.

  If she could do it, so could he.

  A siren sounded in the distance and then he heard the rumbling of a truck, closer than the sirens. Someone was driving one of their tankers down the road towards the cottage. They were going to be able to get water on it sooner than he’d imagined. Reid must have got back.

  But then the door swung open and it was his mum and Connie and Lisa and Ben. They all piled out and, in a moment, had the hose attached and water spraying down on the house and bush around, Ben and Barb manning the hose and Connie and Lisa with packs on, running around looking for spot fires to put out.

  He had to go and help. He looked down at Prita. ‘Go,’ she said.

  She understood, as nobody had understood before, the push and pull inside him, the terror that he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t strong enough, but in her eyes, he saw that she was sure. She had faith in him. She knew he could tackle anything thrown in his path.

  And he could, as long as she was standing there beside him.

  ‘I love you.’

  The words were flung out of him, like he had no choice but to say them even though this wasn’t the time or the place. But it was right, so right, as she stood and clasped his face, and brought his lips down to hers. The kiss was brief—it had to be—but it was everything he needed in that moment to do what must be done. As were the words she said as she pulled away. ‘I love you too.’

  He kissed her again hard, then let her go to tend to Cherry as he ran towards the tanker and the CFA truck that was screaming down the dirt road even now. A part of him wanted to turn back and take Prita in his arms, keep her there and take her away to somewhere safe where he could tell her he loved her again and then show her that he’d welcome her into his life in any way she could give him. Married to Chandra to help him keep face with his family—he knew how worried she was about that—or not. He didn’t care. He would build a life with her regardless of the barriers in their way. But that could keep for later. Now he had to save his farm.

  Chapter 30

  The fire was still raging when Prita left with Frank to drive Cherry to the hospital after making sure Carter and the others were safe. Mac was already in surgery when they arrived and Cherry was whisked off soon after to surgery as well.

  The doctors in emergency wanted to look at her wounds, but she didn’t want to leave Frank—he was so desperately upset about Cherry and she couldn’t help but feel responsible.

  ‘Don’t be silly, love. It’s not your fault some madman stabbed my Cherry.’

  ‘He was here because of me.’

  ‘No. He was here because he was a greedy bastard with no moral compass.’ He rubbed his hand over his face then through his thinning hair. ‘I’m just so glad you were there to look after her right after.’

  ‘I’m the one who is grateful. She saved my life.’

  ‘I think you saved each other. But go on.’ He nodded towards the doctor hovering a metre away. ‘Go get your wounds patched up. I’ll just get some coffee and meet you in the waiting room.’

  She went grudgingly and escaped emergency as quickly as possible. Then started the longest wait of her life. Waiting to hear how Cherry and Mac were. Waiting to hear what was happening at CoalCliff. Waiting to hear if they’d caught the bastard responsible for all of this.

  She wanted to call Flynn—she was so worried about him and how he was dealing with everything—but she didn’t have her phone. Besides which, he’d be too busy to answer his phone. She just had to wait to hear what had happened.

  The hours ticked by.

  A commotion at the door had her lifting her head. Barb and Ben rushed in.

  ‘How’s Dad?’ Ben asked at the same time Barb said, ‘How’s Mac? What about Cherry?’

  She stood and held her hands out to them. ‘They’re in surgery. We should hear something soon.’ She swallowed, desperate to ask, but terrified of the answer. ‘What about CoalCliff? The fire?’

  ‘It’s out. Only the cottage was lost. Everything is saved. Everyone’s safe.’

  ‘Oh, thank god.’ She sank down on the hard couch behind her, feeling a little dizzy.

  Barb sat down next to her and took her hand, hers shaking a little. ‘Flynn wanted to come down but there was too much to do and the police needed to speak to him.’

  ‘I understand.’ They each had their responsibilities. ‘He’s okay?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’ll be even better when he sees you later.’

  She gave Barb a wobbly smile. ‘Good. Me too.’

  A little while later, a surgeon came in to report on Cherry. She was doing well and resting comfortably. There was still no word on Mac. The looks on Ben’s and Barb’s faces had her going and asking a nurse for any information they might have about him. A little while later the nurse came back. There’s been cerebral haemorrhaging and the surgery was taking longer than expected, but he was doing okay.

  She gave Ben and Barb the news. They were still waiting when Frank was allowed to go and sit with Cherry.

  Finally, the surgeon appeared in the doorway. She could tell by the look on his face the news wasn’t all good. ‘Mr Permien has made it through the surgery and is in recovery. We’ve got him in an induced coma. The swelling on his brain was quite severe and there was a lot of haemorrhaging. We did the best we could, but there could be some brain damage. We won’t know until we wake him from his induced coma in a few days.’

  Barb sat down with a plop and burst into tears. Ben stood there gaping, looking lost. Prita went and spoke to the surgeon and after getting the full details, went back and explained things to them properly. She stayed with them until they were allowed to go and see Mac, standing back. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ she said, as much to herself as to them.

  ‘He will be,’ Barb said. ‘He’s a strong old coot.’ Barb hugged her then turned to watch Ben as he stood staring down at his dad. ‘Why don’t you take my car and drive back to CoalCliff? There’s little point in all of us staying here and I know you must be desperate to get back to see Carter. And I know Flynn’s waiting for you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. We’ll be fine here. You go.’ She handed Prita her keys, told her where they’d parked and shooed her off.

  She pulled up outside Barb’s house and didn’t have to go far to find Carter. He came bounding out of the house, Diarmuid hot on his heals, both of them smothering her in hugs and kisses. She let herself be dragged inside where Nat and the kids were—Flynn and Reid and other volunteers were busy with post fire clean up and wouldn’t be in until later. That was fine. She’d see him later. She reported on the injured and then helped Nat organise a roster to help Ben and Frank cope while their loved ones were in the hospital.

  Prita couldn’t help but smile at how quickly it all got organised. With the CoalCliff mob backing her up, she was never going to be without help again. She loved the idea more than she ever thought she would.

  She sat with Carter and Aaron, making certain they were settled and happy, but when Diarmuid came back from talking to his private investigator contact, she pulled him into the kitchen to
find out what had been said. Keith Blake/Max Smith was mixed up with some bad people and despite what he’d said, the police had been looking at him for the fire that killed his stepmother.

  ‘If only we’d known he was a professional arsonist before now, we would have known it was him who was after you,’ Diarmuid said, gripping her hand. ‘We might have stopped all this.’

  She cupped her papa’s face and kissed his cheek. ‘There’s no point wishing it different. It happened and we’re all safe. The police will find him and he’ll never get to me or Carter again. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘Yes. Yes it is, my aingeal.’ He pulled her in for a tight hug, and she held on, but then pulled back. ‘Why don’t you go and see your man?’

  ‘He’s busy with the fire clean up.’

  ‘He was, but I just saw him. He came in for a shower and then headed down in the direction of the cottage.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come in and let me know he was here?’ She tried not to feel hurt, but it was there, an ache in her chest. He’d said he loved her. But did he blame her for what happened?

  Diarmuid took her shoulders and gave her a little shake. ‘Hold up with the worrying, aingeal. Your man wants to see you alone, is all. He asked me to send you down there. I was actually coming in to tell you when you pulled me in here and demanded to know what my buddy had to say. I’ll stay with Carter. You go be with your man, aingeal. He’s waiting for you.’

  She didn’t need him to say that twice. She slipped out the back door, running down the hill towards the cottage. She pulled up short when she saw Flynn standing in front of the ruins, leaning on a crutch. She walked up to him tentatively, not wanting to shock him out of the deep thought he was in, noting the fresh change of clothes, the brace on his knee. At least he’d been smart enough to put that on. But despite her worry over the damage he’d done to his knee, she couldn’t keep her gaze from continuing to rove over him, drinking him in as if she’d been in the desert for fifty years and he was an oasis. How she loved the breadth of his shoulders, the upright way he held himself. He wasn’t wearing his usual Akubra and she couldn’t help but notice how his hair curled around his nape, still wet from the shower he’d taken not long ago, the dark red in it shining in the early evening sunlight. She watched him for signs of fear, of trauma, but the way his shoulders rose and fell, calm and sure, suggested he wasn’t fighting the demons that had tortured him ever since the day he’d lost Anna. God he was strong. She hoped that he’d started to see just how strong he was. That he could see past the damage done by the fires that Max Smith/Keith Blake had set in his effort to scare and then kill her, to the massive step forward he’d made in these last few days in particular. She hoped, despite the charred mess of what was once their beloved cottage that meant so much to so many people here at CoalCliff, he could see the brightness of the future for him, for Aaron.

  For them.

  She knew saying ‘I love you’ didn’t mean ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you’. But it was one step forward. A step she could work with.

  And work with it she would. This was one love, one man, she wasn’t going to give up for anything.

  She took another step closer to him, about to speak up and announce her presence softly, gently, so as not to startle him, but he swung around, dropped his crutch and took her in his arms. Before she could take her next breath, their lips meshed, moulded, taking, giving. His hands pushed into her hair and hers into his. Her fingers tangled in the damp silken curls then ran over his shoulders and down to his waist, over his tight bum and then back up again. She pressed closer, needing to feel all of him with all of her. His strength, the scent of him—hay and dust and horse and man and the lemon soap he used—filled her with warmth and longing and need just as much as his touch and kisses did. She loved him. She loved him so much, it was like a tightness in her chest she couldn’t breathe past.

  ‘Me too,’ he whispered against her lips. ‘I love you too.’

  She smiled against his lips. She’d done it again. Spoken her thoughts out loud. It had always been something that had embarrassed her, a sign of lack of mental control, but now, she saw it as a strength, a positive, a way of always telling the truth that was in the heart of her. There were no secrets inside of her that couldn’t be told to him. Her Flynn. She leaned back and looked up into his beautiful eyes. ‘I’m sorry about the cottage.’

  He nuzzled his nose against hers. ‘That isn’t something you have to apologise for. They have the man responsible for that in custody.’

  She angled back further. ‘They caught him?’ Diarmuid hadn’t mentioned that.

  ‘Yes. It’s why I wanted you to come down here and not tell you back at the house. I didn’t think you’d want Carter to chance overhearing this.’

  ‘No. Of course. What happened?’

  ‘They only found him a little while ago. A tree had fallen on his car as he was driving out of the gully. It was one of the trees that had been marked as needing to be cut down because it had been damaged in the fire he set yesterday.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No. But from what Bryce told me when we spoke just now, he won’t be walking any time soon. And even if he does walk again, he won’t have far to walk in jail.’

  She smothered a smile, but he saw it, his brows raising. ‘I know I shouldn’t be happy about that, but after all the grief and damage he’s caused, the lives he’s taken and almost took, I can’t say I’m unhappy.’

  He broke into a grin. ‘Me neither.’

  He pulled her back into him and she went willingly, snuggling into his warm, strong chest, giving him support too so he didn’t have to put too much weight on his sore knee.

  She revelled in the feel of him, knowing how close she’d come to never having this. Never feeling such a sense of peace. To sink into it and not talk or think but just feel. But there was more to say. They’d promised each other that. To always talk. To share, no matter how bad it was. So she shared with him now how frightened she’d been and how, in the darkest moments, all she’d been able to think about was him and Carter and never seeing them again. ‘He thought he was so much cleverer than all of us. Was so certain he’d get away with it.’

  ‘He was never a criminal mastermind. There was no way he wasn’t going to be caught for this. Too many people had seen him in Wilson’s Bend and could testify to that fact, no matter what name he used.’

  They had been lucky. So lucky. And now the bastard was caught and she and Carter were safe and nobody could take him from her.

  She didn’t have a home—again. Or a business. Both were gone. But she would build again, because that’s what she wanted. That’s what she needed. Carter and her clinic and this man who was holding her, his touch saying that she was his breath. His heart. And when she looked up at him, his gaze said the same thing. She didn’t need words from him, but she was so glad she had them. ‘We’re going to work this out.’

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Chandra today. I won’t out him and will do everything I can to help him keep his sexuality from his family if that’s what he needs—I’m not turning my back on him.’

  ‘I would never expect you to.’

  ‘But I will start talks about a divorce.’

  ‘I’ll take you any way I can get you.’

  She smiled up at him. ‘You don’t want to marry me?’ she teased.

  ‘More than anything.’

  ‘Is that a proposal?’

  ‘Yes.’ He kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips, but before she could sink into another kiss, he drew back a little and smiled. ‘We are meant to be together. One way or another, it will happen. I have faith in that.’

  ‘Me too.’

  They kissed again, softly, slowly and then he pulled away to look into her eyes. ‘I love you, Prita Brennan.’

  ‘Ditto.’

  He laughed. ‘Did you just Ghost me?’ She laughed and he kissed her breathless, then pulled away enough to
murmur against her lips, ‘You are the best person I know, Doctor Brennan. You deserve more than the ghost of a man to be in love with and to love you.’

  ‘You’re not the ghost of a man anymore.’

  ‘No. At least, I’m planning on working towards being everything you need. Because, you deserve the best of everything.’

  ‘So do you. I want to be part of the best of everything with you.’

  ‘Ditto,’ he said, laughter filling his voice until she grabbed his face and kissed it from his lips. And as he returned her kiss and stole her breath away, she knew, just knew, that the blazing fear that had marked both their lives was never going to touch them again and from here on in, it was only going to be blazing passion, blazing love, blazing a new trail of family and happiness together.

  Chapter 31

  ‘I now pronounce you husband and husband. You may kiss your spouse.’

  Prita whooped and threw the rose petals she’d been carrying in a basket over the man who had been her best friend, then her husband and was now her best friend married to the man of his dreams. A big hand came over her shoulder and grabbed up rose petals and threw more at the happy, beaming, kissing couple and she looked up at Flynn. Her husband. The man of her dreams.

  He was smiling almost as much as she was, so happy for the man who had become his friend over the last year. He was so good like that. He’d had his own hard journey to navigate, but he’d been there for her and Chandra as they’d navigated the divorce and the disappointment from their respective families.

  Not her father—Diarmuid was happy she was finally in a relationship like the one he’d had with her mother. As was her Taaii Ameera and Taauu Sashi. They’d known all along why she’d married Chandra and hadn’t said a word, and they’d supported her this last year, sticking up for her with the rest of her mother’s family who were still stuck a little too much in the past.