by Elle James
“Are you talking about Selena?” Rider demanded. He shoved Chance aside and yanked Lydia to her feet. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
Lydia wrapped her arms around Rider’s neck. “I told her you’d come back to me. When this place was gone, when she was gone, you’d come back to me.”
Rider peeled her arms from around his neck, gripped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Where is Selena? When did you talk with her last?”
Lydia smiled. “She came to see you. I just made sure she stayed until you got home.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a fool to think you could fall in love with someone like her. She’s not even in the same class as you are.”
Rider shook Lydia. “Where is Selena?”
Her grin broadened. “I guess you’ll have to find her.”
Rider shoved Lydia toward Chance. “Don’t let her get away.” And he raced towards the steps leading up to his apartment. Only the steps were consumed in flame, the boards charred and falling through the risers. He couldn’t go up them. Fire had already eaten through the planks and the railing. He had no way to get to the upstairs apartment.
Chance passed Lydia to Nash. “Cuff her or something. Don’t let her get away. She’s responsible for this. And she may have hurt Selena. We have a fire to put out.” He ran around the side of the garage and found a water hose. The puny hose was the best they could do until the firetruck arrived.
Already Rider could hear the wail of the sirens in the distance, but he was afraid they’d arrive too late to save Selena if she was in the upstairs apartment. Rider ran to his brother Nash. “Give me a boost. Help me reach that upstairs window.”
Nash glanced at the window and looked back at Rider. “You’ll never reach it.”
“I have to. Selena’s in my apartment.”
Nash’s eyes widened. “You can’t get up those stairs. They’re already destroyed.”
“Then I have to get up to a window,” Rider said, jabbing a finger toward one of the windows above.
“Can you get inside the garage? Is there a ladder anywhere?” Beckett asked.
A ladder? Yes! Rider thought. “Inside the garage hanging on the wall. If I can get inside the bay, I can get the ladder and climb up to Selena.”
Flames fueled by the gasoline climbed the walls of the exterior of the garage. Rider stripped his T-shirt from his back, wrapped his hands in it and ran for the door to the garage. Using the T-shirt, he grabbed the hot knob and twisted it.
The knob wouldn’t turn.
He dug in his pocket for his keys, slipped the key in the door, and then using the T-shirt, he twisted the knob. The door opened. He pressed the T-shirt to his nose, ducked low and ran inside the garage. Smoke blackened the walls and filled the air, stinging his lungs as he breathed through the fabric of the shirt. He felt his way along the inside of the garage until he found the ladder hanging on the wall and removed it.
Hunching below the ceiling of smoke, he worked his way toward the overhead door. He laid the ladder on the ground, slid the lever open on the overhead door and raised it above his head. Smoke billowed out. Rider dove through the door, out into the fresh air. He coughed and pointed back toward the ladder he’d left on the floor. “Get the ladder,” he said, his voice coming out gravely, the effort to speak painful.
Nash ran in, grabbed the ladder and brought it back out. He extended it as far as it would go and leaned it on the outside of the garage. It came up four feet short of the window above.
Flames rose up all around the ladder. Anybody would be a fool to climb it.
Rider had to if Selena was up there. He had to get to her. Refusing to leave her to die, he started up the ladder, the flames licking at his clothes and the gasoline Lydia had splashed on his legs. Seconds later, his jeans caught fire. Forced to stop, he jumped back to the ground and rolled until the flames were extinguished. Immediately he leapt to his feet and started up the ladder again. Chance grabbed him before he got too far and pulled him back.
“You can’t do it.” Chance said.
“I have to,” Rider said. “Selena’s up there.”
Chance shoved the water hose into his brother’s hands. “Then I’ll go up.”
Rider shook his head no. “I need to.”
Chance started up the ladder. “I’m the one who does this fulltime. I know what I’m doing. You man the water hose until the truck arrives. While you’re at it, rinse the accelerant off your legs.”
Rider watched as his brother climbed the ladder, flames rising up around him, smoke billowed into the air.
SOMETHING TICKLED SELENA’S THROAT, making her cough. The cough shook her awake, and she blinked her eyes. Some kind of fog hovered above her, and heat built in the air around her. She tried to take a deep breath, but all she got was smoke pulled into her lungs. Again, she coughed and rolled over onto her hands and knees. That was when she remembered she was in Rider’s apartment. An apartment filled with smoke, with flames climbing up at the walls. She had to get out.
Still on her hands and knees, she crawled for the door, reached for the handle and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t open. She braced her feet against the wall and pulled as hard as she could on the doorknob. Still, the door refused to budge. Crawling back toward one of the windows, she tried to slide the window up, but the paint on the window and the sill was stuck together. She couldn’t open the window, and the smoke was getting thicker.
Selena pulled her shirt up over her mouth, but she couldn’t stop coughing. Her eyes burned, and her lungs burned. She only had minutes, maybe seconds, before she succumbed to smoke inhalation. If she didn’t get out soon, she would die. Hunkering as low as she could to the floor to avoid the smoke, she felt her way around until her fingers closed on the leg of a chair. Hope surged as she climbed to her feet. Dragging the chair along behind her, she moved to where she thought a window was.
Selena rose with the chair in her hands and swung it as hard as she could, hitting the window. Her first swing only cracked the glass. She reared back and swung again. The chair crashed through the window, catching on the jagged shards.
Coughing with every breath, she jerked the chair back and used it to scrape the glass away from the windowsill. Smoke swirled through the opening. She gave it a second or two to clear enough that she could put her head through the window and stare down at the ground.
A few men milled about on the driveway below, mere shadows in the fading light. With her eyes stinging, she could barely make out who they were. Someone had put a ladder up against the window on the other side of the room. A man was climbed up amid the flames. She recognized him as Chance Grayson.
Someone called out from the ground. “Selena.”
Selena glanced down at the man whose familiar voice made her heart swell with hope. “Rider,” she tried to say, her voice coming out no more than a croak. And she coughed. After she coughed, she inhaled, sucking more smoke into her lungs.
An explosion below shook the building. Selena gripped the window frame. Pain shot through her as her hands were sliced by jagged edges of glass.
“Jump, Selena,” Rider urged. “You have to get out of the building, now.”
Glancing around her, she pulled an afghan from a nearby chair and placed it over the edge of the window. Then she slung her leg over the window sill, turned over on her stomach and eased herself out through the broken pane. She lowered herself until only her hands were holding onto the windowsill, her feet dangling in the air.
“Let go, Selena,” Rider said. “I’ll catch you.”
She couldn’t tell where he was. All she could do was go on faith and pray she didn’t hurt him in the fall.
“Let go, Selena,” Rider urged. “It’ll be okay. I’ll catch you.”
With smoke and flames rising up around her, Selena released her hold on the windowsill and dropped through the air. As she neared the ground, arms grabbed hold of her, breaking her fall. But she came down so hard that Rider’s legs crumpled beneath him, and t
hey both ended up on the ground.
He scrambled from beneath her, lifted her and carried her away from the burning building. When they were well out of danger, he laid her out on the ground and pushed sooty hair out of her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She coughed, nodded, and coughed again. She couldn’t seem to clear the soot from her lungs.
By that time, the fire engine had arrived, the lights strobing in the evening dusk. An ambulance pulled up on the street, and emergency medical technicians jumped out, grabbed a medical kit and converged on her. In the next few seconds, she was fitted with an oxygen mask, transferred to a stretcher and loaded into the back of the ambulance. She held out her hand and coughed. “Rider,” she called out.
Rider appeared at her side. He climbed into the ambulance with her, and together they rode off to a nearby hospital.
Selena blinked her eyes, trying to clear the smoke from them so that she could stare up at the most wonderful man she could have ever imagined. And he was holding her hand and saying soothing words to her she didn’t understand, nor did she care. They just sounded good. She held on tight to his fingers, afraid to let go, afraid that if she closed her eyes, he would disappear. Despite all her effort to keep her eyes open, they drifted closed.
At the hospital, they wheeled her back into an examination room. When they asked Rider if he was a family member, he nodded and said, “Yes, I’m her fiancé.” They allowed him to come back with her, without asking for proof. Selena didn’t care what he told them, as long as he remained with her.
The doctor examined her and declared she had a case of smoke inhalation, insisting she remain overnight for observation. They also wanted to get Rider on oxygen and keep him as well, but he insisted he was fine and that he would stay with Selena through the night.
They moved Selena to a private room where Rider sat in a chair beside her. She fell asleep with him holding her hand. When she woke later that evening, others had arrived in her room, including her father, her mother, Big John Grayson, and all the Grayson brothers and Lily.
She laughed and coughed. “How did they let you all in?”
Everyone smiled. Big John had the biggest grin, answering, “We told them we were family. They didn’t ask questions; they just let us come in.”
Selena glanced up at her father. “Papa?”
He took her hand in his, and he brought it up to his face. “Yes, mi hija.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m going to be all right.”
Her father shook his head. “I will always worry about you, mi corazón.”
Her mother moved up beside her and brushed her sooty hair from her forehead. “We will always worry about you,” she said, and she glanced around at all the Graysons crowded into the room. “We are familia,” she said. “We will always worry about the people we love.”
Big John Grayson slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. “Come on, gang, let’s give her some air. She looks like she can use some. We love you, Selena. Get well soon.”
Her father bent and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I love you, mi hija,” he said.
Her mama kissed her as well. “We’ll be close by,” she promised.
The room cleared out of everyone except Rider, who sat beside her in a soot-covered tee and jeans.
She looked at him and gave him half a smile. “You don’t have to stay.”
He shook his head. “Yes, I do.” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
She liked the feeling of his lips on her skin. “I’m going to be all right,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
He shook his head. “Yes, I do,” he repeated. “When I saw you in the window with the smoke and the fire all around you, all I could think was I don’t want to live without you. I can’t. Babe, you’re my heart, my soul. You’re everything I’ve dreamed of, the missing piece that makes my life complete. When you let go of the windowsill, I thought I’d lose you. That split second that you fell, everything became crystal clear to me. You’re the person I want to spend my life with. You’re the one I love.”
Selena’s heart swelled. Her eyes filled with tears. “What about Lydia?”
His hand squeezed hers, and his jaw tightened. “Lydia is in jail. She’s been charged with attempted murder. I’m sure her father will have her out in no time. But as far as I’m concerned, she can rot in hell for what she tried to do to you.”
Selena’s lips curled into a gentle smile. “I almost feel sorry for her.”
Rider stared down at her, a frown pulling his eyebrows together. “The woman tried to kill you, and you feel sorry for her?”
Selena nodded, “Yes. Somewhere along the line, someone should have told her no, and they didn’t. I have a feeling she went through life getting everything she wanted, and then when she couldn’t have you, she didn’t know how to respond.”
“You’re much more generous to her than I’d be. When I found out she’d tried to kill you, I was ready to kill her myself. And I might have, but I had to get you out of that burning apartment first.”
Selena lifted his hand to her cheek and pressed her lips to it. “Thank you for catching me when I fell.”
“Thank you for trusting me to catch you.” He bent and pressed his lips to hers in a gentle kiss.
Selena wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and pulled him close, deepening the kiss. But when a cough shook her, he backed away and gave her the space she needed.
She chuckled and coughed again. “Sorry about that.”
He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Sweetheart, I’m just glad to hear you coughing. It means you’re alive.”
She scooted over on the bed and patted the sheet beside her. “Come here,” she said.
He climbed up on the bed, laid down beside her and gathered her in his arms.
She snuggled against him, pressing her cheek against his chest where she could hear the strong, steady beat of his heart. “Tell me what just happened with my parents and with all the Graysons crowded into one room at the same time.”
“The Sanchezes and the Graysons came to an understanding. I think we all realized that we’re just one big family, and that we should always treat each other as if we are brothers, sisters, and whatever. Lily and my brothers think of you as their sister,” Rider said.
Selena smiled. “And you?”
Rider’s lips spread into a wide grin. “Sweetheart, I don’t think of you as a sister.” He nuzzled her neck. “Nope. Not a sister.”
Selena chuckled and coughed. “Good thing. Because I don’t think of you as a brother. I certainly wouldn’t kiss a brother like I want to kiss you.” She lifted her face to accept his lips on hers.
EPILOGUE
ONE MONTH LATER.
“I have the steaks,” Rider called out as he pushed through screen door out onto the back patio where the Graysons and the Sanchezes had gathered to celebrate. “Grab the chicken and the barbecue sauce, and we’re good.”
“How is it that we’re celebrating your engagement to Selena, but you and Selena are doing all the cooking?” Nash sat in a lounge chair with his fiancée Phoebe beside him.
“At the rate they’re going, Rider and Selena will be married before you and me,” Phoebe said.
“I told you I was willing to fly to Vegas and make an honest woman of you, pronto,” Nash teased.
“I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of wedding day jitters, wearing a tuxedo and standing in front of every resident of Hellfire, Texas to pledge your love and say your I do’s to me.” Phoebe patted his hand. “Two more months, sweetheart. You’ll have to wait.”
Nash lifted Phoebe’s hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “It’ll be well worth it. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“And I with you.” Phoebe stared into Nash’s eyes, her love practically glowing in her cheeks.
Rider grinned, happy to see his brother so much i
n love. A month ago, he would’ve cringed at all the mushy talk, but now that Selena had promised to marry him, he found himself feeling just as love-struck.
Two men walked around the back of the house enjoying the party on the patio.
“Shane, Raul, I’m glad you two could make it,” Rider said.
Shane gave Rider a chin lift and a wave. “We appreciate the invite.”
Raul nodded. “Besides, the fish were biting at the lake.” He winked.
Rider chuckled. “Nice to know our little party won out over a fishing trip.”
Selena stepped onto the porch carrying a tray full of raw chicken and a bottle of barbecue sauce. She smiled at Shane and Raul. “Oh good, you made it after all.”
Rider took the tray from her hands and laid it beside the grill. Then he turned to the two men and cleared his throat. “Selena and I wanted to thank you two personally for bringing us together.”
Shane frowned. “How did we do that?”
“If you two hadn’t gotten into that fight in front of the convenience store that day, Rider and I might not be together now.” Selena smiled up at Rider. “Thank you for being big jerks that day.” She winked. “I’m happy to see you’ve formed a friendship. I’d hate to have to break up another fight between you.”
Shane elbowed Raul in the belly. “Yeah, who knew Raul liked fishing as much as I do?”
“We wouldn’t have known if that grassfire hadn’t nearly destroyed his home and his boat parked beside it.” Raul shook his head. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“How did your ex take the news of your engagement?” Chance asked Rider.
“Her father let us know she took it better than he expected,” Rider’s mother said. “Apparently, her rehab is going well. She’s been off the hard drugs for a few weeks, and is learning how to cope with her anger issues.”
“That’s nice of her father to give you an update on his daughter,” Kinsey said.
“He felt awful about what Lydia did to Selena,” Rider said.
“And how she destroyed Rider’s garage,” Selena added.