Healing the Boss’s Heart

by Valerie Hansen

  In the distance, Tommy’s dog was disappearing into the maelstrom. Unless the frightened animal responded to commands to return, there was no chance of anyone catching up to it.

  Gregory took a deep breath and hollered, “Charlie,” but Maya could tell he was wasting his breath. The soggy mongrel didn’t even slow.

  “Take the boy and head for the basement,” Gregory yelled at her. Ducking inside, he had to put his shoulder to the heavy door and use his full weight to close and latch it.

  She shoved Tommy back at him. “No. I have to go get Layla.”

  “In this weather? Don’t be an idiot.”

  “She’s my daughter. She’s only three. She’ll be scared to death if I’m not there.”

  “She’s in the preschool at the church, right? They’ll take care of the kids.”

  “No. I’m going after her.”

  “Use your head. You can’t help Layla if you get yourself killed.” He grasped her wrist, holding tight.

  Maya struggled, twisting her arm till it hurt. “Let me go. I’m going to my baby. She’s all I’ve got.”

  “That’s crazy! If the hail doesn’t knock you out cold the tornado’s likely to bury you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t! Let go of me.” To her amazement, he held fast. This was the kind of crude treatment she’d refused to accept in the past and had thought she’d escaped for good. No one, especially a man, was going to treat her this way and get away with it. No one.

  “Stop. Think,” he shouted, staring at her as if she were deranged.

  She continued to struggle, to refuse to give in to his will, his greater strength. “No. You think. I’m going to my little girl. That’s all there is to it.”

  “How? Driving?” He indicated the street, which now looked distorted from the vibrations of the front window. “It’s too late. Look at those cars. Your head isn’t half as hard as that metal is and it’s already full of dents.”

  “But…”

  She knew in her mind that he was right, yet her heart kept insisting she must do something. Anything. Please, God, help me. Tell me what to do!

  “We’re going to take shelter,” Gregory ordered, giving her arm a tug. “Now.”

  She couldn’t think and stumbled along as he pulled and half dragged her toward the basement access.

  Staring into the storm moments ago she had felt as if the fury of the weather was sucking her into a bottomless black hole. Her emotions were still trapped in those murky, imaginary depths, still sinking, spinning out of control. She pictured Layla, with her silky, long dark hair and beautiful brown eyes.

  “If anything happens to my daughter I’ll never forgive you!” she screamed at him.

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Maya knew without a doubt that if her precious little girl was hurt she’d never forgive herself for not trying to reach her. To protect her. And she’d never forgive Gregory Garrison for stopping her. Never.

  She had to blink to adjust to the dim light of the basement as he shoved her in front of him and forced her down the wooden stairs.

  She gasped, coughed. The place smelled musty and sour, totally in character with the advanced age of the building. How long could that strip of brick-and-stone stores and offices stand against a storm like this? If these walls ever started to topple, nothing would stop their total collapse. Then, it wouldn’t matter whether they were outside or down here. They’d be just as dead.

  That realization sapped her strength, leaving her almost without sensation. When her boss let go of her wrist and slipped his arm around her shoulders to guide her into a corner, she was too emotionally numb to continue to fight him. All she could do was pray and continue to repeat “Layla, Layla” over and over again.

  “We’ll wait it out here,” he said. “This has to be the strongest part of the building.”

  Maya didn’t believe a word he said.

  Tommy’s quiet sobbing, coupled with her soul-deep concern for her little girl, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back, hoping she could control her emotions enough to fool the boy into believing they were all going to come through the tornado unhurt.

  As for herself, she wasn’t sure. Not even the tiniest bit. All she could think about was her daughter. Dear Lord, are You watching out for Layla? Please, please, please! Take care of my precious little girl.

  Chapter Two

  Upstairs, the noise of the storm was increasing drastically. Things crashed. Banged. Glass shattered. Dust was shaken from the rafters. Bits of old plaster and goodness knows what else rained down on them. The single overhead bulb swung wildly, flickered, then went out, leaving the basement in total darkness.

  Instinctively, Greg pulled Maya closer. She put her arms around both him and Tommy and bowed her head against his shoulder.

  He felt her tremble. “Hang on. We’ll be okay.”

  “But what’ll happen to my baby? You shouldn’t have stopped me. I shouldn’t have let you.”

  He accepted the rancor in her tone because he knew his decision to take shelter had been the right one. “You’ll feel differently once we look upstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the worst tornado outbreak High Plains has seen since the big one in 1860.”

  He felt her shudder. “That would be devastating.”

  “Exactly.”

  Tommy was still sniffling. Greg didn’t have much experience with kids but he supposed the little boy was as concerned about his missing dog as Maya was about her family and friends. He knew he would have been at that age.

  He was about to try to encourage Maya by mentioning the short-lived character of such storms when the building suddenly began to shake. Heavy wooden beams creaked and groaned overhead. Furniture, or something just as weighty, was being thrown and skidded across the office and hit the walls directly above their heads!

  Maya screamed and pressed her cheek to his chest, holding tight.

  The noise increased until it sounded as if a jet plane was taking off and flying right over their heads. The pressure in his eardrums made him feel as if he were rapidly descending a mountain road.

  “Tornado!” Greg shouted.

  Her shrill “I know!” was muted against his shoulder.

  Time slowed to a crawl. Sounds of destruction seemed to echo endlessly.

  Maya’s heartfelt pleas for deliverance were barely audible, but Greg could tell she was praying. He was tempted to do the same until his memories stopped him. He had decided long ago that he was in charge of his own destiny and nothing had happened since to change his mind. Let the woman pray if she thought it helped. He knew better.

  Maya’s thoughts focused first and foremost on her daughter, then on the rest of her family. Jesse was running the Logan ranch north and west of town. He and Clay were all the blood relations she had besides Layla—and Jesse’s newborn triplets, of course.

  If anything good was to come out of this terrible storm, perhaps it would provide enough incentive to draw Clay home again, to cause him to make his peace with Jesse. It tore her up to see her only siblings estranged from each other, especially now that Jesse and his wife, Marie, had three premature babies to worry about, too.

  She tried to pray aloud, failed to find words, then resorted to quoting scripture. “The cares of the day are sufficient,” she whispered, hoping that would help relieve her unbelievable distress.

  She felt Greg’s muscles tense. He stood very still, barely breathing. “What?”

  “It’s from the Bible. In Matthew, I think. My paraphrasing.” She cringed against him again and stifled a whimper as the building gave another shimmy. The roaring was starting to lessen enough that they could hear each other speak without having to actually shout.

  “I wouldn’t know if it was verbatim,” he said. “I never went to church much after my mother died.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It didn’t do her much good.”

  Touched
, Maya gave him a barely perceptible hug. “We won’t know that until we get to Heaven.”

  Although he didn’t answer, she was glad she’d spoken her mind. Gregory Garrison might not claim to be a believer at present, but since he’d gone to church in the past, there was a chance he’d eventually come around again. She certainly hoped so because she couldn’t imagine the suffering he might have to go through if he continued to deny his faith. Especially if the destruction from this storm turned out to be as bad as she thought it was going to be.

  Everyone had doubts at times, even the most devout Christians. It was those who continued to believe, in spite of outward circumstances, who coped best.

  And as far as she was concerned, any man who would risk his own life to save a child he didn’t even like still deserved to share in the Lord’s daily blessings.

  Greg held tight to the two he was guarding and listened to the battering on the floor and walls above. He desperately wanted to venture out, yet he wasn’t willing to endanger Maya or the boy merely to satisfy his curiosity.

  Tommy had stopped sobbing and was now hugging Greg’s neck as if he never intended to let go, while Maya seemed to be holding her breath.

  Finally, as the thudding and banging upstairs lessened perceptibly, his impatience won out. “I’m going to go take a peek. You two wait here. I’ll tell you if it’s safe to follow me upstairs.”

  When he pried the child’s arms loose and passed him to Maya, Tommy began to sob again.

  “We’ll go up in a few minutes,” Maya said soothingly, patting the little boy’s back through his damp T-shirt. “I promise. We have to let Mr. Garrison look around first to see if it’s safe.”

  “I w-want Charlie,” Tommy wailed. “I want my dog.”

  “I know you do, honey. Just be a little patient. I’ll help you look for Charlie soon.” She looked in her boss’s direction. “We both will, won’t we?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” He had started to cautiously edge his way toward the stairway. “Sounds like the wind is still pretty strong. No telling how much is blowing around up there but I suspect the worst is over.”

  “I hope so.”

  He put one hand on the railing of the stairway and paused. “So far, so good. You’ll have a little light once I open the door. Are you going to be all right down here by yourself?”

  “I won’t be alone,” she replied, sounding more assured than before. “I haven’t had to face anything on my own since I came to Jesus.”

  Greg didn’t comment. He’d grown up in a household where his mother had professed Christianity and his father had made light of it every chance he got. There weren’t many things he agreed with his dad about, but that was one of them. Any God who would take his mother from them in the prime of her life, in spite of all the prayers for her healing, was no God for him.

  Easing open the door at the top of the stairs, he had to push its leading edge through a pile of refuse on the floor. The office was a shambles, thanks to the wind that was still whistling through the gap left by the shattered plate-glass window. The front door was hanging partly off its hinges, too. Considering the fact that his building was still standing, he figured he was one of the lucky ones. Especially if the upstairs suite where he currently lived still had a roof over it.

  Stepping through and around the rubble, he proceeded far enough to peer through the space where the window glass had been. All his breath left him in a whoosh. He’d never seen anything like it. Parked cars had been upended like matchbox toys. Lumber, pink insulation, broken furniture and who knows what lay strewn from one end of Main Street to the other. Some of it was even stuck in trees. What was left of them.

  Behind him, he heard Maya call, “Is it okay for us to come up?”

  “Not yet.” There was no way he could deny her the eventual right to look, nor was there any way he could soften the blow of seeing their beloved town in such sad shape. He simply wanted to put it off as long as possible and keep her from dashing into the still unsafe street.

  “Give me a few seconds to run upstairs and check my apartment first. We need to be sure there’s no real structural damage before you chance it. I don’t want the roof caving in on us.”

  “Hurry.” He could hear the barely controlled panic in her voice.

  “I will. Stay put till I call you. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Greg dashed up the interior stairway. To his relief the roof seemed intact and he’d had only one small window cracked in his apartment, so the place was relatively dry and undamaged.

  Hoping that Maya had obeyed, he quickly returned and found her peeking through the partially ajar cellar door.

  “Well?” she asked impatiently.

  “It’s safe enough. At least in here. But watch your step and don’t put the boy down unless you have to. There’s broken glass everywhere.”

  He braced himself, not sure how Maya would react when she saw everything that had happened. If she got hysterical, the way she had earlier, he’d have to be ready to intervene.

  For the first time in the few weeks she’d worked for him, Greg looked—really looked—at his executive assistant. Her dark eyes were wide and expressive, set in a lovely oval face. Her short hair was tousled more than usual. And her cheeks were flushed. She not only impressed him with her natural beauty, she suddenly looked much younger than the twenty-five years he knew her to be. She had an innocence, an appealing naïveté, that made her seem so vulnerable that he wanted to rush to her and once again hold her close for her protection.

  Maya’s jaw gaped. Then she began to pick her way carefully across the wet, littered office floor to join him near the window.

  “The church?” she said breathlessly. “Can you see if the community church is still standing?”

  “Yes. It looks fine,” Greg replied. “But the old town hall that was next to it is gone.”

  “Gone? It can’t be gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stepped aside and took Tommy from her so she could lean far enough to see the area where the old church stood as he said, “The preschool annex looks untouched, too.”

  “Praise God! I have to get Layla.”

  “You can’t go out there yet.” He made ready to grab and restrain her again if it became necessary. “Look. There are power lines down and the wind is still blowing stuff all over. If you don’t get electrocuted, you’re liable to get your head knocked off.”

  “It’s my head. Get out of my way. I’m going.”

  “No!” He reached for her arm but she dodged his grip so he resorted to more reasoning. “You’re the only parent your daughter has. Are you really willing to risk making her an orphan?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then wait. Think of her.”

  “I am thinking of her. She needs me. You can’t force me to stay here.”

  “I’m not forcing you to do anything. Be sensible. We can see that the church is okay and that’s where she was. Right?” Greg had placed himself between her and the door in the hopes his presence would be enough added deterrent.

  Maya ignored his logical argument and tried to edge around him.

  He sidestepped to continue to block her exit.

  “Move,” she demanded.

  “Okay. Just take a deep breath and listen to me for a second. We’re safe here and Layla is safe there. She needs her mother alive and well, not lying in the street unconscious.”

  “I’m calling the preschool.”

  “Now, you’re being smart.”

  He watched her struggle to pull herself together emotionally and tiptoe cautiously to where her desk had landed, pushed up against the far wall. She found the telephone beside it on the floor and lifted the receiver. It didn’t surprise him when she reported, “No dial tone.”

  “Try my cell if you can find it,” Greg said. “It was in my top, center drawer.”

  Maya circled his heavier mahogany desk, yanked open the drawer with difficulty, found the cell phone and did as he’d suggest
ed.

  Dejected, she grimaced, sighed and shook her head. “No service on that, either.”

  “I suppose the relay towers are down.”

  “That settles it. I’m going over to the church and nobody’s going to stop me.”

  “Then we’ll all go,” he countered.

  “That’s ridiculous. You can’t take Tommy out in this awful wind. He’ll get hurt.”

  “Point taken. Now, you were saying…?”

  “All right, all right.” Maya pressed her lips into a thin line. “You win. For now. But the minute the storm dies down enough that we can safely chance it, I’m going after my little girl. With or without your support.”

  Even if Greg had been able to come up with a more valid argument, he wouldn’t have used it. Maya was like a mother tiger protecting her cub, and he was not about to get between her and her daughter.

  Still, he knew without a doubt that his instincts were on target. She must be prevented from risking her well-being. He didn’t know why he felt so protective of her all of a sudden but he did. And he was stubborn enough to insist on getting his way. This time.

  In the next war of wills they faced, maybe he’d let her win, or at least think she had. In this case, however, he was not about to back down. Lives hung in the balance.

  As Maya stood beside her boss and stared at the havoc the storm had wrought, she was speechless. Breathless.

  The town gazebo had become a scattered mass of wood that looked like a carelessly tossed handful of splintered matchsticks.

  The usually pristine, well-manicured green grass of the park that paralleled Main Street and bordered the High Plains River on the opposite side was strewn with all kinds of materials, including puffy, pink shreds of fiberglass insulation that had apparently been torn from houses nearby. To release that kind of interior construction, Maya knew that roofs and sidewalls of homes had to have been ripped apart.