by Beverly Bird
“I don’t believe this!” Carly burst out.
Jack’s heart stumbled. He had the sneaking suspicion that the assassin was trying to fix it so that they would leave when he wanted to leave, on Saturday. And Scorpion had beaten him to the draw.
“Move!” Carly gasped. “I have to—”
He grabbed her hand instead and dragged her into the foyer. That was as dark as the parlor had been. Carly began to feel oddly disassociated, lost in her own home.
“Where’s the generator?” Jack demanded.
Surprise kicked through her. How could he know that that was what had happened?
“Out back,” she managed. “Behind the kitchen, beside the porch.”
He began running. “Good place for a fire.”
She flinched and went after him. “Isn’t it, though?” All that wood.
They reached the kitchen. Carly realized with a sick, sinking sensation that she could see here. She could see because orange flames were already licking up the outside wall. They had consumed the kitchen door.
“No,” she moaned. “Oh, God, no.”
“Where’s a fire extinguisher?” Jack shouted over the live, hissing sound of the fire.
Carly was wildly certain that using an extinguisher would be akin to spitting on the flames to put them out—the fire was that bad. She flung open the pantry door anyway, grabbing the extinguisher, and he snatched it out of her hand.
Where were the others? Oh, God, Holly was upstairs in bed, and she had guests all over the ranch!
Carly hesitated, her eyes going helplessly to the back stairs. She and Holly were sharing a room this week, and it was all the way at the front of the house. She’d be safe—please, God, let her be safe—because surely this fire could be handled before it went that far. Probably Holly would even smell the smoke and run out the front door on her own. Either way, it would take Carly only a short time to get things under control here, and she had to get things under control here first, had to, because there was no one else to do it. Theresa was waddling, pregnant, useless, and nowhere to be found, she realized. If Carly went for Holly first, then the whole house would burn to the ground.
She heard her daughter’s name and realized it was her own voice wailing it.
Something angry and violent clawed suddenly at her throat. Damn the ranch! She was sick to death of always putting it first, before her own needs. Oh, God, just let it burn, then I’ll be quit of it.
Strong hands caught’ her from behind, pulling her around. “Go on!” Jack shouted. “I’ll get Holly. Get out of the house!”
The porch roof collapsed outside. It fell with a whoofing roar, and the fire at the door flared brighter.
“Snap out of it!” he yelled. “Go on!”
Carly finally stumbled to the door. She put her hand on the knob and bright pain seared across her palm. She gasped and flinched back.
“Not that way!” Jack hollered. “Open that door, and your kitchen’s gone!”
The pain cleared her head. Carly dragged in a deep breath, then coughed as smoke filled her lungs.
She went for the window over the sink instead. She hoisted herself up into the basin even as she heard the hiss of the fire extinguisher behind her. Jack was quickly cooling off the interior surfaces before he went upstairs, keeping all points of combustion wetted down.
Someone to help. Someone to lean on, a precious, extra pair of hands.
She couldn’t allow this, she realized, couldn’t let him put himself at risk. He was a guest. She looked over her shoulder at him, but he was already gone.
She scrambled out through the window, landing awkwardly. Pain shot up from her ankle, but it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t ignore it. She limped around the corner of the house to the back porch. It was already engulfed in flames, but she had known it would be.
She wasn’t going to be able to get to the dinner gong to alert Plank and Gofer in the old bunkhouse. She ran, hobbling, for the first barn instead. The guests were still there, gathered outside. Only Jack seemed to have finished with his horse. They were all staring, aghast, at the house, and Theresa was with them.
Carly grabbed the hose there, twisting the spigot, then she thought shakily, Thank God, Tee’s out here. That left only Holly inside. She thrust the hose at Winston. She was fresh out of nonpregnant family and employees. The guests would have to do.
“Haul it up to the house and start spraying,” she told him.
He stared down at it as though a snake had somehow appeared in his hands.
“Now!” Carly cried.
The big man lumbered off. She left and half ran, half hopped, to the next barn, her ankle throbbing now. She grabbed Brad’s arm as she passed him and pulled him along with her.
“Here,” she gasped. “You can take this other hose.”
“What took you so long to get out?”
The question was just strange enough to stop her for a moment. As she stared at him, he took the hose.
“Were you with Jack? What were you doing?”
Her heart started thundering even harder. He seemed angry. Dangerously so. His expression dragged icy fingernails over her skin.
Why? What was it to him?
Before she could pursue it, he dragged the hose away. Carly got the last one available and limped more slowly after him. Winston was aiming a pathetic stream at the house from his nozzle. Almost impossibly, it actually seemed to be doing some good, she realized dazedly.
Then Carly saw that it was Jack who was making a difference.
She stumbled and stared at him. He had gotten Holly. Her daughter was helping with the bucket brigade. He’d long since sprayed out the first extinguisher he’d found, and as she watched, he sent Myra to the barns for more. Now he took the hose from Winston and did something to the nozzle. The water sprayed in a more forceful arc.
There was nothing left for her to do.
Nothing.
She forced herself to walk again. By the time she reached the others, the ground was thick, clinging mud. Water dripped from the eaves. The back door was charred and the generator and the porch were unrecognizable. But the fire was out.
She looked dazedly at Jack. A livid burn streaked across his left cheek. That side of his hair was singed, too.
She tried to remember if she had been able to make the last insurance payment on the house.
The adrenaline went out of her fast. She dropped the hose from her nerveless hand and sat in the mud where she stood. Her tears came in a rush, shocking her.
Chapter 5
Carly couldn’t remember the last time she had actually cried. She hadn’t done it when Brett left, and she’d been much too angry to do it when her father died. In that magical moment when Holly was born, she had laughed.
But now, now that her house clearly wasn’t going to burn to the ground after all, she fell apart. It was cumulative, she realized, trying to catch her breath. It was the fire and the IRS, the auction trip and the six tourists. And if she’d had to handle the fire on her own, the way she did everything else, she knew she would have held herself together until she got to her room. By then, enough time would have passed that she would have been shaky, but she wouldn’t have…well, blubbered.
But it hadn’t happened that way because Jack Fain had put the fire out, because Jack was here, hunkering down in front of her, reaching a hand toward her face, and something inside her spasmed with need, and that terrified her.
What was he doing? Drying her tears? Nobody had dried her tears in so long, she suddenly found herself crying harder.
“Knock it off,” she gasped, turning her face away.
“Let me see your hand.” Oh, God, his voice was too gentle.
“No!”
“You touched the door.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Leave me something to take care of.
“Suit yourself.” His voice turned short. He stood up again, and her heart hitched, almost as though she was disappointed.
“
Theresa, are you okay?” he called out.
“I’m fine,” her sister answered tremulously.
Carly finally looked up, swiping her hands over her cheeks. She combed her fingers through her hair. Holly came to sit beside her, leaning in to her for comfort as she hadn’t done in a very long time.
“Wow, Mom,” she whispered. “That was something.”
“Yeah,” Carly said shakily. “Wow.” She held her too tightly for a moment, then she tipped her daughter’s face up to look at her. “Are you all right?”
Holly nodded. “I was sleeping. That guy came and got me.” She straightened away from her, looking at Jack. “He’s awesome.”
Well, he’s something, Carly allowed. She just didn’t know what yet.
She realized that Leigh was missing. She twisted around to find the blonde standing beside the henhouse, looking rooted to the spot.
“Somebody ought to go get her,” she muttered, “and remind her how to walk.” But no one was listening to her. They were all watching Jack, waiting for guidance. If it seemed odd to them that it was coming from one of the other guests, no one seemed to notice.
“Theresa, can you make some coffee without electricity?” he asked.
Her sister nodded. “The range is gas, and I think the tanks are okay.”
“Good. Dig up some candles, too. Come on, everybody, let’s go inside and sit down.”
They all began moving. Holly got up and Carly struggled to her feet as well. Jack caught her good hand and hoisted her the rest of the way.
“Thanks,” she said stiffly; pulling away from him as soon as she was upright.
“You’re welcome. Where’s the first-aid kit?”
“In the kitchen. I said I’d take care of it.” She looked at her burned palm again. Her ankle was beginning to put up a steady howl, too.
“I was thinking more along the lines of this welt on my face, cowgirl.”
Carly stumbled.
What was he doing to her? It wasn’t like her to think of herself first! Then again, it wasn’t like her to feel hot awareness slide through her at a stranger’s look, either. And having someone else take over her responsibilities definitely wasn’t the norm.
It wasn’t like her to fall apart.
“Right,” she managed hoarsely. “I’ll take care of that, too.”
Jack started to argue, then he decided against it. She looked as though she badly needed something to do.
She negotiated the burned steps and went into the kitchen. Holly followed on her heels. The others had settled down at the kitchen table. They were all present and accounted for. Someone had thought to get Leigh after all. Carly went to dig the first-aid kit out of the pantry, then she came back and pushed at Jack’s shoulder.
He sat and she studied the burn on his cheek in the dim candlelight, trying to avoid his eyes. How could anyone have eyes that color?
“It’s not really that bad,” she murmured.
“Hurts like hell.”
“Don’t be a wimp.”
She patted at the burn, cleaning it, and was unsettled to realize that her hands were shaking. Of course they’re shaking. Your house just damned near burned down with your daughter in it. But even as she thought about it, she knew that that wasn’t entirely what was making her tremble.
She hadn’t gotten this close to him before.
Jack sat with his legs splayed and it hit her suddenly that she was standing between them, that her right knee was flush against his thigh, and that in spite of everything the day had held he smelled good. A little sooty and sweaty, sure, but somehow, indefinably male. Her throat closed hard because it had been so long since she had been aware of such a thing, since she’d been close enough to a man to have it fill her head and her senses and make her want.
Oh, yes, she was definitely beginning to want. No, please no, I can’t let that happen.
She finished up quickly, stepping away from him, and noticed that Holly was watching her closely.
“Did anyone see what happened?” Carly asked quickly.
Jack clenched his hands and dragged his mind back to the problems at hand. When she had begun working at his burn, he had expected her ministrations to be as fast and capable as everything else about her. He hadn’t been prepared for her touch to be gentle, like a kiss of breath. When she had stepped back from him, he’d had the almost overpowering urge to grab her hips and pull her back to him.
She settled down in the chair beside him to tend to her own palm. There were murmurs to her question but no one really answered. Jack had lost his hat somewhere in the confusion. He didn’t dare look at Scorpion, but he felt him, was so sharply aware of the assassin right now it was almost a physical hurt.
Finally, Carly looked up again. “I think something hot must have hit the generator,” she said suddenly. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. Once, a long time ago, lightning struck it, and it sounded just like it did tonight. But…” She trailed off, looking out at the clear sky through the open kitchen window.
Too close, cowgirl. There was no lightning tonight, Jack thought, but there had been a very small, low-percussion bomb. He’d bet good money on it. It had been one of those that were ignited by heat, he thought. The fire had to have started first. He could think of no other way the flames could have spread so far, so fast, in the short time it had taken them to get from the parlor to the kitchen.
He watched the others’ faces covertly. He wondered if any of them might possess the kind of knowledge necessary to figure that out for themselves.
“I’d guess there was probably a short in the wiring or something,” he offered finally.
Carly opened her mouth to argue but Theresa cut her off. “It must have been. Except that I just had it serviced last month and-”
“Well, there you have it,” Jack interrupted.
“She does?” Carly asked warily. “I don’t.”
“While the technician was tinkering around in there, he must have crossed wires or something.”
“And it took a whole month for it to go berserk? No way.” Then, suddenly, her mouth went dry.
She didn’t like the look in his golden eyes. She couldn’t quite define it, and she scowled at him harder. He was trying to tell her something. Shut up and let it go.
But why? What was going on here?
Carly shut her mouth slowly. For some absurd reason, she trusted him even as she knew with fresh conviction that it might be smarter not to. Maybe it was because he had saved Holly, she thought, because he had interceded so that she wouldn’t have to make the agonizing choice of letting the house burn so she could go to her daughter. But for whatever reason, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
For now.
God, she was tired. Too tired to think clearly. Almost too tired to care. And maybe it really was all her pessimistic imagination.
She stood up carefully. “Okay, everybody. The excitement’s over. The house is still standing. The rooster crows early in the morning and we’ve got a big day ahead of us, so I suggest we all get some sleep.”
Jack risked a fast glance at Scorpion, then he stood as well. “Sounds like a good game plan to me.”
There were murmurs and yawns all the way around. Theresa handed out more candles so the guests could find their way to their rooms. They each leaned over the ones on the table to light them, but Jack noticed that Carly only stood where she was, flipping hers from hand to hand.
Holly kept hovering curiously in the kitchen as well.
“Go on,” Carly said quietly, glancing at her. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
The girl’s eyes moved between them. “Sure,” she answered, and grinned.
Carly’s heart skipped a beat. Oh, no. She couldn’t let Holly get her hopes up that something was happening between her and Jack. It would be devastating to her when she realized that it was all in her imagination again, yet another dead end. How in the world had she gotten such a thing in her mind in the first place? Car
ly wondered wildly, then she sighed.
Holly’s hopes in that department were legendary. She had tried to play matchmaker before, more and more often in the recent past, but she’d always had fertile ground to plow before. Someone would flirt with Carly at a county social, or something Holly could grab and run with. And when Carly just didn’t have time for the man, when there was nothing about him to entice her to make time, then Holly would go through a period of even worse withdrawal.
Carly just couldn’t face another one.
She smiled weakly back at her, and Holly finally left the kitchen. Carly watched her, hurting, then her gaze slid back to Jack. She had bigger problems here than Holly’s perception, she realized.
“Why do I feel like you know a lot more about what happened tonight than you’re letting on?” she asked finally, slowly.
Jack kept his voice idle. “I have no idea.”
For a second, her temper tried to flare. Then she thought that arguing with him would require more effort than she had in her right now. She felt as though every ounce of her adrenaline, every bit of her strength, all her will, had been suctioned right out of her.
A fire. This was too much.
She turned mutely for the stairs. That bothered Jack more than anything. He’d been prepared for her to try to grill him. Instead, he felt as though he were dropping a few more pounds onto her shoulders.
“Carly.”
“Never mind,” she managed. “I honestly don’t care right now. Thanks for helping.”
“Look—”
She glanced back at him. He met her eyes. Something happened in the exchange.
Carly felt sensation rush through her again, the kind she had put out of her mind long ago, yet had never really felt before now. The tantalizing twitch of awareness that she’d felt while fixing his face quickened into an ache at the very core of her. Titillation became longing. And longing hurt.
She curled her hands carefully into fists and tucked them beneath her arms. She didn’t even know him.
And he called her cowgirl.
Something flared and heated inside Jack in response. There was a moment of suspended anticipation, a catch of breath, a waiting. He knew she was thinking again of that moment when she had stood between his legs. And so, impossibly, was he.