by Gina Wilkins
Maddie didn’t even know if she wanted to believe it, herself. She’d fallen for the dashing, adventurous man she’d met in Cancú, the man who’d introduced her to passion and excitement and a whole world of possibilities. Did she really want him to change, to be like the other men here? Hadn’t she already come to the conclusion that she wanted more out of life than she could find within the limited boundaries of Mitchell’s Fork?
Case was already on his way back to her, a paper cup in each hand. Seeing her watching him, he smiled. A dangerous, reckless, adventurer’s smile.
Yes, she thought with a shiver. Case wasn’t like any other man she’d ever known.
He slipped onto the bench beside her and pressed his thigh tightly to hers. She felt the heat building inside her, and knew it was reflected in the blush on her cheeks. Hoping to conceal her reactions from her openly interested cousin, she cleared her throat and tried to think of something to say. “There will be fireworks a little later this evening.”
Case gave her another wicked smile. “I certainly hope so,” he murmured.
Lisa giggled.
Maddie’s cheeks flamed.
The band started playing a crooning country ballad. Couples melded into each other’s arms, dancing beneath the stars, their backdrop the glittering lights and cheery decorations of the festival. Case stood and held out a hand to Maddie. “Dance with me,” he said.
She placed her hand in his and allowed him to lead her onto the packed-dirt dance floor. He took her into his arms and the noise and the crowd fell away, leaving Maddie aware of only Case and the music, and the heat that slowly built between them as they swayed gently, hardly moving.
“It’s been a great day, Maddie,” Case murmured into her ear. “I like your town, your festival, your friends. And I love—”
Whatever he would have said—and she’d held her breath in anticipation—was interrupted by a loud, splintering crash, followed by a chorus of horrified screams.
Case stiffened, and then he was gone, dashing in the direction of the noise, leaving Maddie to follow, her head spinning from the abrupt change in mood.
11
SEVERAL OLD WOODEN bleachers ringed the main arena of the fairgrounds. A few people had already begun to gather there to view the fireworks display scheduled to begin at 9:00 p.m.—still twenty minutes away.
Maddie was horrified to see that one of the larger bleachers had collapsed in the center, and the remainder of the structure was teetering dangerously. Five children—looking to be between seven and twelve years old—were perched at the top, clinging to the swaying wooden railings and screaming.
Several of the benches below them had fallen, leaving the children balanced precariously on the top seat, some fifteen feet above the ground, a gaping dark hole below them. The sun was setting, and the scene was illuminated only by the glaring arena lights overhead, casting long shadows over the crowd and adding to the terrifying sense of looming disaster.
“Oh, my God,” Maddie whispered, standing very still as she pictured the rest of that structure falling, landing in a jumbled pile of debris and children.
There was pandemonium around her—people running, shouting, screaming. No one seemed to be in charge, though McAdams and his deputy were scurrying among the others, looking panicky and indecisive.
The situation quickly changed.
“You!” Case shouted to a group of strong-looking teenage boys—one of them Jeff. “Brace the supports!”
The boys took only a moment to catch his meaning. And then they circled the swaying supports of the bleacher, grabbing hold and straining to hold them upright. Several other men and women rushed to help them. Coming out of her temporary paralysis, Maddie threw herself into the group around an outer support, planting her feet and holding the wooden leg with both hands. Though there were six other people surrounding the same support, she felt the wood swaying and she knew they wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.
Hearing something above her, she looked up at the children. One of them, a boy of about ten, moved as though to climb down once the adults were in place beneath him. “No!” Case yelled, making the child freeze in automatic reaction to the deep voice of authority. “Stay put,” Case shouted to the boy. “I’m coming after you.”
Maddie swallowed an automatic cry of protest. Case was going up? What if he fell? What if he brought down the structure with him, children and all? Shouldn’t he wait until someone arrived with a ladder?
The bleacher groaned and shifted. Maddie and the people around her frantically shuffled closer, throwing their weight against the wooden legs, trying to serve as human beams.
“It’s all going to come down!” McAdams yelled from somewhere behind Maddie. “Everybody clear out of here.”
A woman screamed. Maddie recognized her as the mother of one of the children stranded at the top. Glaring over her shoulder at the ineffectual and tactless sheriff, Maddie spoke to the horrified woman standing behind her, looking tearfully up at the children. “It’s all right, Carol,” she called over the noise. “Case will get them down.”
For some reason, that seemed to reassure the woman almost as much as it did Maddie.
Jackson and Mike appeared suddenly beside Case, who’d been checking each support, making sure the volunteers were in place to provide the most strength. After a hurried consultation, Jackson, Mike and two other men boosted Case upward. He caught hold of a horizontal support and tested his weight against it. The wood groaned.
Maddie caught her breath. Her arms were beginning to tremble as the wood swayed against her. She braced her feet more solidly into the dirt and trampled grass beneath them.
Very slowly, while Maddie craned her neck upward to watch, Case made his way toward the top, testing each board before placing his weight. Around Maddie, the crowd, which had been shouting suggestions and instructions, had fallen silent, as though afraid loud noise would adversely affect the outcome of the tense drama taking place above them.
“Get that man down from there,” McAdams suddenly yelled, his voice loud and strident in the silence. “He’s going to bring it all down. We’ll wait for the rescue team.”
“This bleacher isn’t going to hold long enough for the team to get here,” someone snapped at the sheriff. “Brannigan’s doing all he knows to do.”
Case had almost reached the top. Maddie kept thinking of his weak leg. Would it hold him? What if...?
She gasped when a board broke beneath him. It fell, landing two feet from where Maddie stood. She flinched in automatic reaction, then forced herself to remain still, knowing that only she and the others around her were keeping the whole bleacher section from falling over.
Case snatched at the seat on which the children waited for him, and a moment later, he had safely joined them. Maddie released a long shaky breath, dimly aware that the spectators around her did the same.
Case had his hands full, balancing up on that narrow bench with five children clinging to him in panic. Maddie noticed how calm and gentle he was with them, soothing their fears even as the splintered wood strained beneath them.
“How will he get them down?” the frantic mother behind Maddie moaned. “Oh, I should never have let Bobby play up there with the other kids. I should have made him stay with me.”
“You didn’t know this would happen,” Maddie murmured reassuringly. Why hadn’t anyone noticed how rickety the old bleachers had become? Why hadn’t something been done to ensure safety before the festival?
“Oh, God, what’s he doing now?” the woman asked in a whisper.
Maddie looked upward as Case leaned over the railing and shouted something to Jackson. Jackson promptly climbed onto the shoulders of burly truck driver Andy Smith, a bearded, former high school football star who was a frequent customer in Maddie’s restaurant. Two other men moved to support Jackson’s legs as he stretched upward.
Case turned to ten-year-old Bobby, and motioned him forward. Wide-eyed in the artificial lighting, Bobby shoo
k his head.
Maddie watched as Case smiled and urged the boy to him. Moving slowly, painstakingly carefully, Case held the boy around the waist and lowered him to Jackson’s waiting arms. Half a dozen other people were waiting to take the child from Jackson.
“Oh, thank God,” Carol gasped when her son was safely on the ground. She ran toward him.
Sirens were wailing in the background now. Dividing her attention between the action above her and the chaos around her, Maddie noticed for the first time that someone lay on the ground near where the center section had collapsed, and that some people were grouped in that area. She still didn’t understand what had happened.
One by one, Case lowered the next three children to Jackson, two small boys and then an older girl. Finally, he was left on the bleachers with the last child, a small, crying girl who’d been clinging to his leg since he’d joined her. He turned to lift her. She shook her head and buried her face in his shoulder, obviously afraid to be lowered over the side.
“C’mon, Polly, let the man get you down,” someone yelled.
“That’s right, sweetie, help him out now,” a woman cried, her voice quavering.
Polly shook her head and burrowed more deeply into Case’s arms.
Something snapped loudly beneath the bleachers. People screamed and shouted as another section collapsed. The ones who’d been standing beneath that section scattered, just missing being hit by falling wood and benches. Maddie flinched, but remained where she was, praying the section above her would hold.
Case and little Polly were roughly shaken, the wood swaying wildly beneath them as the human supporters threw everything they had into trying to hold the structure upright a little while longer. Case had the child gripped solidly in one arm as he clung to the railing, one leg dangling over the yawning abyss in front of his narrow seat.
Very slowly, Case eased the child over the side. Jackson was waiting. So were the child’s shaken parents. The crowd broke into cheers.
The sound of wood splintering made itself heard above the noise. “It’s coming down!” Case shouted, both legs dangling now as the bench he’d been on began to tilt sideways. “Everyone move away. Go! Maddie! Get out from under it!”
He was trying to keep anyone else from getting hurt, Maddie realized, staying where she was. Without thought to the danger he was in, he was trying to run off the people who were holding up the structure he was on so that none of them would be trapped beneath the bleachers when they came down.
A group of firemen were running toward the bleachers with a ladder. Maddie knew they wouldn’t make it in time. She kept praying. Could Case survive a fall of that distance, trapped among lengths of wood and jutting nails?
On his feet again, Jackson leapt toward the bleachers, motioning the men around him to join him. “Brannigan!” he yelled. “Jump!”
Without hesitation, Case released the support he’d been clinging to and dropped. Jackson, Andy and several other men caught him in a classic fireman’s hold just as the rescue team reached them.
The bleachers came down right behind him. Maddie threw herself out of the way, along with everyone else around her. She stumbled and fell, landing on top of someone else, but neither of them were hurt. The crash was almost deafening, followed by a heavy cloud of dust kicked up in the fall.
Shoving herself upright, Maddie threw herself into Case’s arms, frantically checking to make sure he was in one piece. He seemed a bit shaky, but solid. “Oh, my God, you scared me half to death,” she said, catching his shirt in both fists and glaring at him. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Are you all right?” he asked, just as anxious as she. “You weren’t hit by anything that fell?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him.
He caught her against him for another hug.
Suddenly, they found themselves in the middle of a mob. Parents of the children tearfully thanked Case for his daring rescue. Others wanted to congratulate him on his quick thinking. The reporter from the Mitchell’s Fork Weekly wanted to interview him on the spot. Someone pushed the man impatiently aside.
“What the hell is going on here?” McAdams demanded, pushing through the crowd, belatedly taking charge. “How did this happen?”
“It was Kale Sloane who done it,” an adolescent boy insisted, shouting to be heard. “He was on his four-wheeler and he barreled into the bottom of the bleachers. The whole thing started coming down. Me and Curtis had to jump off. I skinned my knee.”
Danny Cooper, who’d been standing beside his father on the outskirts of the crowd—both well out of range of any potential danger—stepped forward belligerently. “Kale didn’t mean to run into the bleacher. He hit a slick patch of grass and lost control.”
Maddie looked toward the medical technicians now bending over the body she’d seen on the ground earlier. She saw the ATV that lay on its side nearby, a pile of rubble half covering it. She spotted the mayor and his wife hovering over their son. “Is Kale all right?”
Someone nodded. “He’s okay. Looks like he might have broken a leg, but it doesn’t look serious. They’re taking him to the emergency room now.”
Anger seething in his narrowed eyes, Case turned on the sheriff. “Why the hell didn’t you stop those kids from running around the fairgrounds on those things? I’ve known all day someone was going to get hurt if no one did anything about them.”
McAdams didn’t like being criticized in front of his constituents. “They weren’t doing anything illegal,” he insisted. “They were keeping the ATVs out of the crowd. The kid lost control. It was an accident.”
“It was an accident waiting to happen,” Case insisted. “Those bleachers have to be fifty years old. The wood’s rotted, the supports were a joke. It’s a wonder they haven’t already fallen. As for the ATVs, only an idiot would be racing one through a fairground full of kids!”
Danny spat out something Maddie didn’t quite catch. The look he gave Case contained pure hatred, an ugly emotion Maddie found deeply disturbing in a boy Danny’s age.
His father scowled. “I was watching the boys,” Cooper insisted. “I’d told ‘em to stay away from the crowds, and they were. It was all an accident. We don’t need an outsider coming in criticizing our way of doing things around here, do we?” he demanded, turning to the silent onlookers who were watching the confrontation.
To his displeasure, they remained silent.
Cooper scowled. “Let’s go see about Kale, son,” he said, turning to his sullen boy. “Everyone’s just shaken up over what almost happened, that’s all.”
McAdams was still glaring at Case. “He’s right, you know,” he said more quietly, trying to sound menacing. “We don’t need outsiders telling us what to do.”
“I’m not an outsider,” Case replied, sounding completely menacing without particularly trying. “I’m a property owner in this town, and I’ll be a registered voter soon. You’re an elected official, McAdams. If you can’t handle the job, or the troublemakers in this town—no matter how much money or influence they have—then the voters just may have to find someone who can.”
“That’s telling him, Case!” someone called out of the crowd. Maddie recognized the voice as Jill’s.
McAdams flushed and scowled. He turned to motion at the townspeople staring at him. “All right, clear out. We’ve got to let the emergency crews through.”
“I guess the fireworks display is canceled,” the boy who had skinned his knee grumbled.
Cooper had come back into view by then. “No, it’s not,” he said quickly. “I’ve paid to bring this town a spectacular exhibit for Independence Day and we’re still going to have it. We’ll call it a celebration that no one was seriously injured here today.”
Some people applauded. Others drifted away.
“I think I’ve had all the excitement I can take for one evening,” Case muttered.
“Me, too,” Maddie agreed fervently.
“Want to get out of here?”
It took them over half an hour to leave the fairgrounds. It seemed that nearly everyone wanted to personally congratulate Case on his rescue. Maddie noticed that Jackson was getting a fair amount of attention, as well—and seemed to be enjoying every minute of it, unlike Case, who was looking more and more desperate to get out of the limelight.
Maddie took his hand. “Run,” she whispered during a brief lull in the attention he was getting.
He lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
She was already tugging at his hand, pulling him toward the parking lot. “Run!”
Catching her meaning, he smiled and ran.
* * *
MADDIE SPRAWLED limply in the passenger seat of Case’s new Grand Cherokee as he drove swiftly away from the fairgrounds. She noticed that he was heading in the direction of his house, rather than hers. She didn’t protest.
“Still sure you want to make Mitchell’s Fork your home, Case?” she asked, finding it hard to believe he was still clinging to his idealized vision of “normal life.” “There’s not usually this much excitement around here, but there will always be the gossip and the hypocrisy and the petty politics and everything else that comes along with a small, relatively poor town.”
“Yes. But this is also the same town that welcomed me with friendly smiles and foil-covered casseroles, the town that turned out en masse when your grandfather was taken to the hospital, where the people have watched you grow up and rally around to protect you now. This is where I want to make my home, Maddie. With you.”
She fell silent, unable to argue with his defense of her town, and reluctant to do so, anyway.
The brass porch lights were burning when Case pulled up in front of the house. Their golden glow lighted the front porch, a welcoming sight that warmed Maddie’s heart. It looked like a home, she thought wistfully.