Deep Haven [03] The Perfect Match

by Susan May Warren

  “So, why don’t you let them help?” she asked again as Dan climbed the ladder, still holding his end.

  “I dunno. I just want to do it myself, I guess. Free time is a precious commodity. I don’t like to interfere.”

  Yeah, that sounded like the man she was beginning to know. Considerate to a fault. So considerate he hadn’t tried to break her rules. Not once in the two days since their beautiful stroll down the boardwalk under the waxen moon did he do more than smile knowingly in her direction at work.

  Of course, by the thunderous tone of her racing pulse, she didn’t doubt that the entire station could guess that she had serious, dangerous feelings for the local man of the cloth.

  “What did you think of the sermon today?” He levered the plywood onto the roof, his muscles stretching the sleeves of his shirt. It conjured up the feeling of those same arms around her, holding her tight, evoking every urge to surrender, to let him protect—

  “Ellie?” Dan peered down at her, and she realized she was staring.

  “Um . . . it was interesting. Usually missionaries are so . . . uh . . .”

  “Boring?”

  She shrugged, feeling heat edge up her face. “I guess. This guy and his family intrigued me, however.” She envisioned the man—dressed in blue dress pants, a light blue shirt with a silver tie—his blonde wife, and their four sons, who’d sat in the front row like angels, beaming as their father preached. The picture of a well-behaved and well-groomed family. For a moment, she wondered if their behind-the-scenes life matched the Sunday service performance.

  “Why, exactly, would a man drag his family overseas for nearly a decade and subject them to illness, trauma, and poverty?” she asked, voicing her question. “How do they do it?”

  Dan put a wad of nails in his mouth, and Ellie watched as he pounded them in at the base, then climbed onto the roof and finished at the top. He moved like a carpenter, as if he’d been born with a hammer in one hand and glue on his boots. It didn’t do her heart any good at all to see him climbing around fifteen feet above the ground.

  And just how would she feel when he was wearing a turnout coat and armed with a chain saw, smoke billowing out of the windows below him? The wind hissed through the leaves, and she crossed her arms against a sudden shiver.

  Dan finished pounding in the last of his nails and climbed down the ladder. “One day at a time, I suppose.”

  “Huh?” Ellie frowned at him.

  Dan frowned back, tease in his eyes. “The missionaries? They get by one day at a time, holding on to God’s love. Trusting in His grace to keep them going.”

  “Uh, right.”

  He smiled, stepped close, and suddenly she found herself in his arms. He smelled so profoundly masculine it nearly swept her heart right out of her chest. Oh yes, she liked these arms around her. Probably too much. He swept back her hair and kissed her in the soft well behind her ear, just above her neck, sending a ripple of pleasure down her spine. Then he met her eyes. “I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, whether you’re a missionary or not. Hanging on to God one day at a time, so we can see Him in our lives.”

  She heard whispers from her chat with Liza and swallowed hard. The more we seek to serve Him, the more we need Him. It’s a circle of joy. She’d spent more than a few moments pondering that paradox, unsure as to how God could be seen in the stress and sacrifice that accented her daily life. And joy? Yeah, right. She hadn’t felt joy since . . . well, never, really.

  Ellie hoped her confusion didn’t show on her face.

  Dan gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his eyes roaming her face. She attempted a smile, but he kissed her, this time on the lips. Gently. As if he cherished her, as if nestled in the embrace of rich forest colors, the smell of autumn, the song of the trees, they’d found a simple, quiet peace. Just Ellie loved by just Dan.

  Loved?

  She stepped back, away from his embrace, her heart pounding. “I’ve never heard that story he preached on before. King Uzziah?” Ellie’s voice came out just a tad too high, on the fine edge of vulnerable. Oh, brother. The last thing she needed was to start hoping this man loved her.

  Except hadn’t she begun to entertain those very hopes the moment he took her in his arms on the boardwalk, with Lake Superior lapping the shore?

  Why, oh why, couldn’t she listen to the voice of common sense screaming in the back of her brain?

  Dan looked at her, the faintest hint of hurt in his expression, then turned back to his work. “Yeah, he chose an interesting passage, that’s for sure. Second Chronicles 26. I remember when our seminary professor preached on it once in chapel. I always felt a bit sorry for Uzziah, and I prayed that I’d never take my eyes off the source of my strength and hope.”

  He’d picked up one end of plywood and stood there, waiting patiently.

  Ellie swallowed her heart back into place and grabbed her end. Take his eyes off his source of his strength. Oh, Seth, if only you could meet this guy. She muscled the plywood over to the ladder and watched Dan carry it up. You’d love him.

  Just like me.

  No.

  Definitely not. No.

  But if he smiled at her one more time, the sun framing his wide shoulders, she just might be a goner.

  15

  Ellie felt as transparent as a piece of Saran Wrap. This relationship wasn’t going to work. And it wasn’t Dan’s fault. The poor guy did his dead-level best to toe the line when they were together. Could he help it that every time he looked at her with smoke in his eyes or a grin on his whiskered face, she turned into a soggy pile of goo? She couldn’t think with Dan in her presence.

  Ellie clunked her head down on her desk, listening to him laugh in the kitchen, and groaned. Her lack of focus had been dreadfully evident during the drill on Saturday when she’d nearly set the field to inferno as she watched him and his team battle the blaze. Something about the way he faced the fire without fear, the determination on his hard face while he battled with a Pulaski, a two-sided axe used for clearing brush, sent shock waves through her. She’d fought hard to pull herself together to order the second line to attack with retardant.

  If she thought that having to watch him during the drill left her weak-kneed, his easygoing laughter around the firehouse deleted any hope of getting work done. After their building “date” on Sunday, one she could barely get out of her mind, she’d sat in her office all day Monday, listening to him joke with Bruce or razz Craig during a dangerous game of darts. The most she’d accomplished was to write a report of the Garden fire for the fire marshal’s office and send the forensic office another box of evidence.

  She’d highlighted her suspicion that the fire may have been—again—an arsonist’s handiwork. The debris and burn pattern in the Garden’s bathroom smacked of familiarity, and if the forensics office confirmed traces of alcohol, she’d have to face reality. Deep Haven had an arsonist in their midst. A fact that had her hanging her head in her hands.

  Dan was so much like Seth it dug her breath right out of her chest. Thankfully, despite their conversations, Dan didn’t probe her silences or try and unearth the source of her comments or questions. Nor did he add to Liza’s words, although she hadn’t been able to expunge them from her mind.

  Liza had proved accurate on one account—Dan was a great cook. He’d made her dinner every night this week and walked her home under the starlit sky. And last night he’d whisked her away in his VW, up the shoreline to Paradise Beach, a patch of shoreline covered with pearly, Superior-smoothed stones. As the sun simmered over the horizon, he’d spread out a picnic of Italian sandwiches on focaccia bread, a strawberries-and-spinach-leaves salad, and homemade chocolate-chip cookies that had left her dumbfounded for the better part of ten minutes. Dressed in a thick Minnesota Wild jacket and with the wind raking his dark hair, he looked nothing like the groomed pastor who manned the pulpit every Sunday.

  Then again, looks could be deceiving. Here she was hiding in her office, trying to pull
off the steel-toed, fire-chief routine, thinking only about diving into Dan’s arms the second she snuck away from work, which had become more of a habit than she realized. She had no doubt that he wielded serious power that could make her sink roots in this town, and if she didn’t have her lifetime goals hanging over her head to yank her back to reality, she would have surrendered happily to his charm.

  The fact that he’d also kept his promise about not protecting her felt—respectful. Despite the fear in his eyes, he’d held his emotions in check as she’d dangled herself down a fifty-foot cliff to rescue a trapped climber. And when she answered the call to scoop a couple of overboard fishermen from the drink out in the bay, she’d returned to find him onshore, his face grim, his hands in his pockets. He’d said nothing, and although his smile felt forced, she knew he just barely had a grip on his promise.

  She couldn’t decide if she admired him for it or if, deep down, she longed for him to shatter that promise and haul her to safety. But Seth had already done that, and one life given for hers seemed one too many.

  Lifting her head off her desk, she stared at the newest edition of Firehouse Magazine, attempting to read an article about hazardous-materials management.

  Dan’s voice filtered into her office along with the smell of sizzling omelettes. The man was enticing her with food. It worked. Her stomach groaned, loudly enough to wake Franklin, and when she realized she’d read the same sentence three times, she accepted defeat.

  Ellie opened her office door. “You’re trying to kill me.”

  Dan looked up from the stove, where eggs popped and sizzled. The smell of bacon and onion frying was enough to send her to her knees begging.

  “Hardly,” he said, a crooked smile on his face. His eyes, however, twinkled, and she couldn’t escape how devastatingly handsome he looked in his uniform—black pants and blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal his hockey-player forearms—and his wide I-can-carry-your-burdens shoulders. It nearly took her breath away. She managed to cross over to the table and lean on a chair.

  “I didn’t know you were on today,” she said casually. Liar, liar. But she didn’t want him to think she’d memorized—no, dreamed—about working with him for the last five days. Just having him around made her day seem bright and sunny, even amidst the thunderclouds of unsolved investigations, firemen who continued to harass her, and one very angry Mitch Davis, who had placed a complaint about her with the mayor. Oh, joy.

  Dan folded the omelette, slid it onto a plate, and set it in front of her. “You need your nutrition. You’re wasting away.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, nodding, “I’m a regular skin and bones after the way I’ve been eating this week. You know, you might want to think about feeding me once in a while.”

  He laughed. “I’m at your service, Jammie Girl.”

  She always turned to indiscernible mush when he called her that. “Thanks for the omelette. Is Bruce around?”

  “He’s upstairs reading, I think. I saw him with a firefighting strategy book.”

  Ellie forked her omelette. “Yeah, I gave it to him. He said he’d be interested in applying for a deputy fire chief position. I thought I’d help him prepare for the test.”

  He sat down opposite her with his own omelette. “Good. You carry too much. You need some assistance.” He covered her hand with his. “Not that you aren’t up to the task.” His eyes glinted with tease.

  She stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Let’s pray for lunch,” he said, and before she could agree, he bowed his head. “Lord, thank You for this time with Ellie, for Your provision for another deputy chief. Please help her to share her burdens with others. Please bless this food, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

  She frowned at him when he raised his head. “Do you really think I carry too much?”

  His incredulous, eyebrows-up expression made her squirm.

  “No, really.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Ellie, you’re not happy unless you’re doing three things at once. While one half of your brain is inventing new training for us, the other half is investigating the Deep Haven fires. You stay up past midnight and are out riding your bike at 5 a.m. You never eat unless I feed you, and you’ve filed more reports than Chief Halstrom did in his entire fifteen years as chief. Yes, you carry too much.”

  She grimaced. “I just want to do it right.”

  He nodded, but his expression had lost amusement. “When will it be good enough? When will you have done enough to make yourself happy?”

  She stared at her food and didn’t know the answer.

  He reached across the table, brushing her closed fist with his thumb. “You’re doing everything right, Jammie Girl. But leave the rest of us something to do, okay?”

  She didn’t look at him.

  “Besides, I have to admit, you make a man wonder—will he be enough for you if you’re not enough for yourself?”

  She looked up. His eyes brimmed with compassion and a hint of fear. She wanted to reach out, rub his cheek, and tell him how he had been enough—more than her wildest dreams, in fact—all week. But his words resonated deep inside and drummed open a secret chamber in her heart.

  Why wasn’t she enough for herself? The question clawed at her. Did she fill every spare moment and then some with additions to her to-do list to fill an empty place inside?

  No, of course not. She was happy. Content. Thrilled with her life, thank you. After all, she’d finally made it to the top—Deep Haven fire chief.

  So why, then, did panic grip her chest every time she looked down from her perch?

  Her appetite vanished. Pushing her plate away, she was about to form a negative response to Dan’s invasive question when the alarm sounded.

  Structure fire on Main Street.

  Ellie wore her firefighter’s face—gritty and fierce. She’d snapped on the persona the moment the service tones chimed. Thirty seconds later she was in her turnout gear and sitting in the officer’s seat, calling in the page for another squad.

  Her instincts proved correct as usual. Dan drove the rescue vehicle and only had to follow the billow of black smoke to find the source. For a chest-gripping second, he’d thought the smoke came from the Footstep of Heaven Bookstore. It wouldn’t be the first time the DHVFD had responded to Mona’s address to fight a fire. He vividly remembered the scene, nearly three years earlier when they’d answered the call and found a fire chewing up the back of her house. But quick thinking and plenty of water had kept it from turning the Footstep—and the neighborhood—into a conflagration.

  They’d need more than that to stomp out the inferno eating the General Trading Store. A two-story log building that once housed voyagers in town to trade furs and other wares from Canada, the General Store now sold everything from postcards to moccasins to art. It easily hosted the most business in town, and no tourist left Deep Haven without a licorice twist and a General Store satchel bulging with purchases.

  There would be no shopping today. Smoke billowed out of the upper-level window, and flames leaped from a ground-story wing on the lake side. Next to it, Mack’s Smoked Fish Stand had succumbed and now shot flames thirty feet high.

  Dan screeched up behind the pumper engine and hopped out. A crowd had gathered in the Red Rooster parking lot across the street, and he motioned for them to get back as he ran to the engine. Ellie was already out, assessing the situation. He heard her voice over his radio calling in the units from Moose Bay and St. Francis Township and asking Marnie to dispatch the rest of her squads.

  “We might have to shoot for containment on this one,” she said.

  Dan snatched his air pack and his chain saw and ran for the thirty-foot ladder, assuming Ellie would want him on the roof. For once, he wished Mitch were here. But Ellie had placed the oaf on disciplinary probation, deciding to give the dog a cooling off in hopes she wouldn’t have to permanently cut loose one of her few capable captains. Outside a fire, Mitch made even the pastor in D
an want to turn him into mulched meat. But working on the crew, Mitch had a cool head, fire savvy, and courage.

  “Joe, Doug, give me an assessment and search the place,” Ellie barked. “Listen, I don’t want any kamikaze firefighting or Lone Rangers. You see a tight spot, you back out, understand?”

  Dan watched Joe and Doug head into the fire, armed with their axes and SCBA gear. While they did a room-to-room search, he’d climb to the roof and start venting so the gathering smoke might escape and lower the possibility of flashover.

  Ellie stalked the perimeter of the building, her radio to her mouth. “Simon, cut the power to Main Street. Then find the gas main and shut it down. If this thing goes up, it’ll take out the entire business district.”

  A canopy of black, toxic fumes was quickly blotting the firmament with trauma, choking out the daylight and littering the air with ash. Dan saw the owner of the Loon Café standing white-faced on the corner. Dan’s jaw tightened as he climbed the ladder. This blaze could level Deep Haven’s tourism trade and bankrupt the little town.

  “We have wind off the lake pushing the smoke toward the city. The flames will want to run that way. Be alert, men. Craig, get another line into the lake. Bruce, you and Guthrie lead—”

  “We need a master stream, pronto!” Mitch’s voice boomed over Ellie’s. Dan turned, halfway up his ladder, to spot Mitch on the ground, dressed in his turnout gear and helmet, equipped with a radio.

  “Mitch, if you want to help, join Dan on the roof,” Ellie growled in a dangerous voice. She looked like she wanted to rip his eyes out, but she stood her ground in the middle of the street. “Guthrie, get a spray on the store.”

  With a sick gut, Dan watched Guthrie aim a hose toward the store. “No—!” Ellie’s voice came a second too late, and Guthrie opened the stream. The force of water knocked him flat, and he landed in the dirt. The hose sprayed like a snake through the air.

  “Get the hose!” Ellie yelled. Dan saw her start for it, then stop. “Bruce, grab that hose!”