Discover Me & You, A Devil's Kettle Romance: Book 2

by Susan Sey

  “She was so brave,” Willa murmured. “You should’ve seen her swim.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t think I’d have lived through the sight of you going after her. All right, face down.” Willa tucked the wolf into her body and rolled until she was lying on top of it, her cheek pressed to the sharp gravel of the bank. Eli spread himself over her back, his knees on either side of hers. He stretched his arms as wide as the shelter would allow, pressed his cheek next to hers and punched his fists into the silt on either side of her and the wolf, dropping them all into a dark, hot pocket of mud, water and noise.

  For a heart beat, maybe two, the world was still and suspended. Then the fire fell on them. It leapt from the forest behind them, rained down onto the bank around them like death. It took the skies for its own — wind, air, and cloud, they were all fire. It raked at their fragile shelter, rattled it violently, twisted and shoved at it like a tornado. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around the wolf and pressed her back into the heat and strength of Eli above her. He was protecting her with his own body once again, she thought wonderingly. And even though the wolf took up precious space and oxygen, he’d never even suggested leaving it outside. If this was it, if this was the end of Willa’s road, she didn’t have the first complaint.

  A thought occurred to her suddenly and she twisted her head so she could shout in his ear.

  “Eli! The lawyers! Are they all right?”

  “I got them deployed a little ways downstream. They were damn close to going into the Kettle but that girl’s a fighter. Got herself and her boyfriend to the bank instead. If they stay inside the shelter, they’ll be as all right as we are.”

  Which wasn’t making any promises but she laid her cheek back in the mud, satisfied. Eli had done everything he could for them. He wouldn’t have any complaints either. She kept one arm around the wolf, but wrapped her other hand around one of Eli’s wrists, and added her strength to his to hold their whisper-thin sanctuary tight.

  CHAPTER 37

  PETER SLIPPED INTO the Wooden Spoon, found a space on the wall and put his back against it. When the fire had turned nasty so abruptly, O’Malley had sent out a shelter-in-place directive for locals, but declared Peter’s bar a temporary shelter for the tourists. This meant that while Peter was selling a shitload of beer, he was also violating the taproom’s maximum capacity by a long shot, along with his own personal space requirements.

  After an hour or so of that nonsense — Peter had never been a people-person, per se — he had volunteered himself to step next door to the Wooden Spoon to see if he could get an update from Gerte, O’Malley being her cousin and all. Turned out most of the town had had the same idea and it was as ass-to-elbow in here as it was at the taproom. He felt his shoulders trying to crawl up to his ears and consciously relaxed them. He was steeling himself to slap some charm on his face and approach Gerte when the door banged theatrically open.

  Peter turned to find Matty standing in the doorway, panting, his eyes — Willa’s eyes — huge.

  “The wind turned!” he announced. The crowd sagged visibly with relief, and a ragged murmur went up. “I was just at the fire station, and I heard Mr. O’Malley say so. The wind’s straight out of the south now, pushing the fire up toward the Boundary Waters. He’s calling on the Gunflint Trail guys and the BWCA rangers to start evacuating any campers they can find but we’re safe! The fire’s going the other way!”

  Georgie was suddenly right there next to Matty. Peter would have loved to say he hadn’t noticed her before, lounging in the back booth the Davis family favored, but of course he had. He noticed Georgie everywhere.

  She curled a hand around her brother’s elbow. “What about Jax?” she asked urgently. “Jax and Willa? Eli and Mr. Zinc?”

  “Wait, what?” Suddenly, Peter was right there next to Georgie. He had no memory of moving, only knew that he now had her by the elbow, his head strangely light. “Willa’s in the forest?”

  “Jax and Mr. Zinc just got back to the fire station,” Matty told his sister. “So did the park rangers evacuating the fire zone. A couple of them had to deploy their fire shelters, but they did it in the river so they were okay.”

  “Thank God.” Georgie closed her eyes and breathed a moment. Then she gripped her brother by both shoulders and said, “What about Willa and Eli?”

  He hesitated, swallowed visibly. “We’re not sure.”

  “Not sure?” Peter’s voice sounded miles away even to his own ears. “Not sure about what?”

  Those gray eyes flicked his way, then went back to Georgie and held. “They were on the Kettle trail and the fire caught them,” he said. “Jax thinks they might’ve made it to the river, too, and deployed their fire shelters there but—”

  “But what?” Peter’s face was numb, and his fingers tingled ominously. Was he going to pass out? Surely not. He’d never passed out. He’d been knocked out a few times but his brain had never just given up on consciousness of its own accord. Maybe he was hyperventilating. He pulled in a slow breath and held it, counted to ten before he let it go.

  “Well, nobody’s been able to get them on the radio,” Matty said reluctantly. He shifted on his enormous sneakers but held Peter’s eyes bravely. “There was a hotshot crew ready to start cutting line near the trailhead where Willa parked. Now that the fire’s turned, they’re moving north. But Mr. Bayfield said he’d send them up the trail to the river, to see.”

  “To see?” Peter asked. His head was clearing, thank Christ. He could feel Georgie peering at him and didn’t care for the scrutiny. “To see what?”

  “If Eli and Willa are there.”

  “Their bodies, you mean?”

  Matty glanced uncomfortably at Georgie, who frowned at Peter. “Don’t be a jerk,” she snapped. “Now’s truly not the time.”

  “Okay.” Peter shrugged. Loss was a gaping wound inside him. Why hadn’t he known he cared about Willa until it was too late? Why hadn’t he felt anything when it mattered? What was wrong with him? “I’ll be a jerk when it’s more convenient for you. How’s Tuesday?”

  She ignored that. Ignored him. Better, Peter thought. Much better.

  “Matty,” she said, “go back to the fire station. Text me when you know more.”

  “Right.” He pivoted on the spot and dashed away, the door jingling merrily shut behind him.

  “You.” Georgie pointed at Gerte. “Can you confirm what Matty just said?”

  Gerte held up her cell phone. “Already did. Wind’s straight out of the south, fire’s moving north, Devil’s Kettle’s out of the woods, so to speak.”

  “Great.” She nodded decisively and pointed at Peter this time. “You. Go next door and charm the tourists. Sell a bunch of beer, then wait for O’Malley to give you the okay to tell them we’re all clear.” She lifted her voice. “Same goes for all of you. Get out there and make some money.”

  A cheer went up and shopkeepers hustled for the door. Peter found himself standing like a rock in the middle of a stream, splitting the current. But he couldn’t make his feet move. Willa was gone. He was living in a world without his sister in it. The one and only person on the face of the earth who knew what his childhood had been. Who knew because she’d lived it, too. But where Peter had drowned in it, Willa had made herself a boat. She’d risen above it, and ridden the current to someplace that even Peter in his extensive fantasy life had never dreamed existed — happiness. And now she was dead and he was alive. Without her.

  Goddamn, the world was a fucked up place.

  “Peter.” Georgie was right there in front of him. He blinked and focused. Bright blue eyes, nearly on level with his. She must be wearing heels. “Peter, are you all right?”

  “Of course.” He stretched his lips into his company smile. “I’m fine.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe.” He pushed the smile harder. “But nothing makes money like tragedy, and you know me and money. So excuse me while I go profit off my sister’s death, as
instructed.”

  He stepped around her and headed for the door.

  “She’s not dead.”

  He stopped. “How do you know?”

  “I hated her too much for too long,” she said quietly. “If she were gone, it would leave a hole in my universe. I’d know.”

  “I hated her more,” he said, just as quietly. “I thought I’d know, too. But I don’t know shit, and neither do you.”

  In the end, it was the wind that saved them. Or maybe the lake, being the architect of all wind on the North Shore, had saved them. Either way, shortly after the fire jumped the river, the wind had spun around the compass, settled in the south and blasted straight north. It forced the fire to flee up into the Boundary Waters, leaving Devil’s Kettle in peace. Leaving Eli and Willa — and an unconscious wolf — sweating inside their own personal oven, breathing shallowly and waiting. Waiting for the air to cool, the wind to change, the fire to come back, the world to end. Who knew?

  Then suddenly, somebody was rattling their fire shelter. “Ahoy the shelter!” a voice boomed. “Olly olly oxen free. Anybody home?”

  Joy leapt inside Willa. Holy hell, had they really survived?

  “Two of us,” Eli shouted back. “Plus a wolf.”

  “Whoa.” The rattling stopped.

  “It’s unconscious,” Willa shouted.

  “And a long story,” Eli added. “Can we come out now?”

  “I think you’d better.”

  Eli flexed his fingers and released the loops that had held the shelter safe over their heads. Willa slid a finger under the edge of the hood and lifted it a cautious inch. What had once been mud was desiccated hard-pack now, veined with cracks and ash. The air was intensely hot but breathable and Willa lifted the hood away from their heads. Eli lifted himself off her, and she felt forlorn and light without his sturdy weight. He helped Willa to her feet and she stared at the utterly transformed forest all around them. Tree trunks stood like black spikes arrowing into the sky, every branch burned away. Great basalt boulders had split at the seams, falling away from each other like slices of an orange.

  “Good God,” she murmured. “It broke the rocks.”

  “Didn’t break you guys.” A sooty-faced hotshot beamed at them, his teeth a brilliant flash of white in his dirty face. He slapped Eli’s shoulder. “Long time, no see, Eli. Who’s your pretty friend?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just keyed a radio and spoke into it. “I got Eli Walker here with a pretty girl and a wolf. Shit you not.”

  The radio shot back, “Awesome, because I got some chick who won’t stop yapping about how Eli stole her phone. Get him over here to shut her up, will you?”

  Willa wasn’t sure how Eli managed it but she suspected it had something to do with the fact that he knew every single firefighter on the hotshot team that rescued them. By the time they’d sucked down enough oxygen to satisfy their paramedic and hiked down the trail to the parking lot — in the company of a couple of filthy baby lawyers who’d been firmly persuaded that filing a lawsuit against the people who’d saved their lives would be criminally ungrateful — a helicopter was waiting for them.

  A woman in a jumpsuit hopped off and ran in a crouch to meet them. “I’m Dr. Lawson,” she shouted over the rotor blades. “I’m looking for a Willa Zinc?”

  “I’m Willa Zinc,” she croaked. Christ, her throat was sore. “But I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor.”

  “I’m not a medical doctor, I’m a vet,” the woman said. “I’m with the International Wolf Center in Ely. I understand you have a wolf for me?”

  Willa stared in disbelief, first at the vet, then at Eli. He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure they’d be able to send anybody,” he said. “Didn’t want to get your hopes up if they didn’t. Consider this your third supervised removal.” His smile was very white in his dear, dirty face. “Congrats.”

  “Where is it?” the vet asked. “The wolf?”

  Willa, still speechless, hooked a thumb over her shoulder to the pair of hotshots who’d rigged up a litter for the wolf she’d saved. Hoped she’d saved, anyway. Dr. Lawson hustled over to the litter, and Willa hustled after her. “She’s pretty bad off,” Willa rasped, “but she’s a fighter. You think you can do anything for her?”

  “Jesus God,” the doctor said, looking over the unconscious wolf strapped to the litter. She shook her head. “She’s going to need every bit of fight she’s got in her.” She nodded to the hotshots holding the litter. “Load her up, guys. It’s going to be a long night.”

  There was a blast of filthy air as the helicopter lifted into the sky and shot west toward Ely. The chop of the blades died away and suddenly there was nothing but the crackle of the hotshots’ radios. Eli’s hadn’t survived its swim in the river, and the fact that civilization still impatiently existed shocked her somehow.

  “Come on,” said one of a dozen sooty-faced men Willa couldn’t tell apart. “Hop in the buggy. We’ll take you to town. Bet there are some folks who’ll be glad to see you.”

  Willa exchanged a look with Eli. She wasn’t sure about that, and neither was he.

  “What about the baby lawyers?” Eli asked and Willa only barely resisted a fond eye roll. Of course he’d still be concerned about those ungrateful snots.

  “They went with the other buggy,” another hotshot said and she recognized him as the paramedic who’d literally stood over her while she breathed obediently into an oxygen mask. “You’re welcome.”

  Eli grinned at him. “Thanks, Heathrow.”

  “Heathrow?”

  The guy smiled, and it transformed him from just large and filthy to strikingly charming. “I’m an Anglophile.”

  “Listen to him,” Eli said. “He’s an Anglophile.”

  “Good on ya, mate!” called another hotshot in a Disney-thick cockney accent. “We can throw some shrimp on the barbie later, what?”

  “That’s Australia, asshole,” Heathrow called back. He kept his eyes on Willa and Eli. “Seriously, you two. In the buggy.”

  Eli shrugged and Willa shrugged back. Next thing she knew they were crammed into the back row of a converted passenger van big enough to hold an entire football team. It smelled the part, too. She thought she might be sitting on half a bag of Funions and somebody’s tangled earbuds. They jerked into gear and the driver put his foot down. He was maybe nineteen and whooped with delight every time they caught air off a pothole. Eli dropped an arm over the back of the seat as they jounced along, picked up the grimy end of her ponytail and toyed with it.

  “So,” he said casually. “You’re in love with me.”

  She considered the back of the seat in front of her with great care. “Did I say that?”

  “You did. Right before I saved your life.”

  “Maybe it was gratitude talking.”

  He studied the ends of her hair gravely. “Maybe it was.”

  She slanted him a sideways look. This was Eli. He’d come back for her. Nobody had ever come back for her until him.

  “Then again,” she said, “maybe it wasn’t.”

  “No?” He looked up, met her gaze with all that deep, sad blue. The sorrow was still there, she saw, all of it. And it still packed a punch that shoved the breath from her lungs, but it was different now. Not less, just…mellowed, maybe. Softened. And it was all tangled up with a new-born hope that had her heart crawling up her throat and trying to fling itself into his lap.

  “Maybe it was true love.”

  The smile started deep in the bottomless blue of his eyes, spread like the sunrise until it finally curved his lips. “True love? Is that a thing?”

  “I never thought so. I do now.”

  He tipped his head, considered her while he flicked the end of her ponytail with his thumb. “Why?”

  “Because you came back.” Her throat tried to close on a rush of emotion but she coughed it away. Heathrow shot them a narrow-eyed paramedic look from two rows up. “I’m fine,” she told him. He gave her a jerk of the chin that said we’ll s
ee and Eli tugged her ponytail until she met his eyes again. “You came back,” she repeated helplessly.

  “Willa.” He wrapped her hair around his hand until her forehead rested against his. “I will always come back for you. If I had my way, I’d never leave but I can’t promise that. Life’s too…” He moved his shoulders vaguely to fill in the blank. “…uncertain for promises like that. But as long as I’m alive, I’ll come back for you.”

  She wrapped her hand around his. “I have a life here, Eli.”

  “I know. I’ll have one, too.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure it out.”

  Joy tried to close her throat again and she swallowed down a cough. She didn’t want Heathrow giving her the evil eye again. “Okay,” she whispered and pressed her mouth to his. “Okay.”

  Hoots and whistles filled up the van.

  “What?” the driver shouted and aimed for another pothole. “What?”

  “Eli just got engaged!” somebody called back.

  “Or something,” somebody else said.

  “Or something,” Eli said and smiled into her eyes.

  “Our something,” Willa said and kissed him again.

  “Damn,” somebody else said wistfully while the hooting and cheering started up again. “I have got to get me a girlfriend.”

  CHAPTER 38

  THE HOTSHOTS DROPPED them off on Main Street before turning north and roaring toward the leading edge of the fire. Eli stood on the sidewalk beside Willa and watched the van take the corner on two wheels. The squad boss riding shotgun banged on the ceiling and shouted with glee.

  “They’re excited,” Willa said, bemused. “They’re filthy, and they must be exhausted. I doubt they’ve seen a bed for forty-eight hours.”

  “Or more,” Eli said.

  “But they’re acting like toddlers who heard there might be marshmallows.”

  “Well, there’s a fire.” Eli waited for the envy, for the bite of nostalgia. They were a band of brothers, marching off to fight a war Eli had spent his life training for. A war he loved. He glanced at the woman beside him, filthy and exhausted herself, reeking of smoke and wet wolf, and knew he didn’t want to be anywhere but right beside her for the rest of his life.