by Misty Dietz
Oh my God. She was going to burn alive.
The flames began to consume the curtains across the room, their blaze lighting up the entire space so brightly it hurt her eyes. Mya ran to the nearest door as the flames tore across the floor. Locked from the outside? She grabbed a floor lamp and tried to break a window, but there was wood boarded up behind the glass panes. Over and over she slammed the brass fixture into various windows, but whomever had wanted to keep people out had done a damn good job at making sure no one would ever escape from the inside either. She swung around, screaming, the heat surging at her back. She dropped to her knees, coughing in the thick, black smoke.
What would Cole, her firefighter brother, do? She could try to get upstairs and escape from there, but what if the windows were boarded up there, too? Heat rose and the smoke was thicker in the stairway going up, so that left downstairs. Maybe there was something she could push toward an egress window and climb out of. She crouched over, hurrying back to the basement stairwell. At the stairs, she pulled the door shut behind her, praying that she wasn’t sealing her own tomb.
Chapter Nineteen
Jack stood at the airport window gazing out into the pre-dawn inkiness as the plane arrived that would carry him across the globe. He could’ve slept sitting up as quiet as the airport was, but his bleary eyes refused to shut. His brain unable to get the message that Mya really wasn’t going to call and offer him a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she hadn’t shown up.
But she’d already made her choice, and it didn’t include him. How could he have been so wrong?
He put a forearm against the cool glass, seeing Timber rise from her seat in the window’s reflection. She approached him cautiously, but he didn’t turn around. They hadn’t spoken much since she’d shown up at the departure gate over an hour ago, explaining that Dr. Erickson was arranging their replacements at the University so she’d be joining them a day or two later than expected.
He’d follow up with Lilith upon arrival. He wasn’t in any mood to talk to anyone unless she had hazel eyes, sassy dimples, and a body built for his hands. He groaned quietly and leaned his forehead against his arm. His breath fogged the window glass as he tried to erase her from his thoughts.
Impossible.
“Is there anything I can do to help you prepare for our sojourn in Jerusalem?” Timber asked.
He lifted his head, rubbing his eyes. “No, but I appreciate your thoroughness.” Just leave me to my misery.
He turned around as a commotion erupted down the hall a few gates away. It was all the more pronounced because it had been so silent before. Police began to herd individuals to one side of the building, while three helmeted, gun-bearing SWAT officers spread out in a deliberate fashion toward Jack’s gate.
What the hell?
“Timber Hollows, you’re under arrest. Put your hands on your head and drop—”
“No!” The graduate student yelled gutturally and lunged for a child sleeping on the opposite bench from her. The scene exploded into action. The center SWAT officer went to his left knee to sight his rifle, while other officers continued to evacuate the area and surround Timber.
Jack moved to the left, watching Timber’s grip tighten around the startled toddler’s neck. Jesus Christ. He turned to the SWAT officer who was trying to round him up with the other bystanders. “She’s in my department. Let me try to talk to her.”
The officer’s eyebrows pulled down lower. “If that baby gets one shade darker blue, it’s over.”
Jack nodded and turned back to Timber who was now crying almost as much as the toddler’s mother. “Timber, stop. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but let the little girl go, and we can talk about it, okay?”
Timber squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as the child squirmed wildly. “It’s not okay. It’s not ever going to be okay.” Her eyes opened, black makeup tracking down her cheeks. Her gaze cut him deeply, but he didn’t understand why.
“You are a woman of logic, Timber. This is neither an expedient nor scientific way to solve your problem. Let me help you.”
She shook her head, her lips quivering. “Fuck love. Love isn’t logical.”
“No, it isn’t.” Jack desperately wanted her fingers to relax on that child’s neck. Behind him, the SWAT officers’ tension was a palpable thing. He didn’t know how much longer they’d let him attempt to negotiate. “Love can make us damned miserable, but the choice you’re contemplating would bring you unhappiness that would far outlast this short-term adrenaline flood you’re high on right now. Use your powers of reason, Timber, please. Release the little girl.” He held his breath as the fingers of one hand looked like they were relaxing.
“I just wanted to make you happy,” she whispered, before clamping her hands roughly against the child’s neck, lifting and shaking her violently.
Jack froze as the bullet whistled through the air, slicing into Timber’s brain. The grad student collapsed, knees-chest-face to the ground, her head twisted to the side, eyes open and unseeing, a thin red pool spreading out across the commercial-grade carpet.
Jack gasped, roughly shoved aside as law enforcement swooped in to surround Timber and see to the toddler. Jack walked woodenly toward the officer checking Timber’s pulse. A cold feeling poured through him. He had a sudden overwhelming need to hold Mya. “What else did Timber do?” he demanded.
“Sit down, Mr. Whiteside. We’ll brief you in a few minutes.”
“You know my name? What’s going on? Do you know anything about Mya Castillo or Lilith Erickson?”
The officer got in his face. “I said, sit down and stay put.”
Jack didn’t sit. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Mya with shaking fingers. He tried her number twice more when he finally realized someone was calling his name frantically.
Mya? He hurdled over several suitcases and skirted rows of seats until he saw her.
“Mya! My God, what the fuck is going on? Timber’s d—Jesus, you’re hurt!” Her face was a map of scratches and bruises, her forehead covered with a thick bandage.
And she smelled like a gas can.
He pulled her into his arms and curled his body as tightly as possible around her, knowing without being told that she’d suffered something that would haunt them both for a long time to come. “After waiting for you for more than an hour, I returned to your house and saw that you’d read the note. I thought you’d decided you no longer wanted me.”
“I thought you wanted to let me down easy, but I was going to face you anyway. Then Timber had other plans for me.”
He pulled back and placed his palms on her cheeks, careful of her cuts. “I can’t believe this.”
“Te quería. She loved you, Jack. She left the note in your truck, saying I held you back from your dreams.”
Even as Mya explained the sequence of events, he shook his head, trying to comprehend it. Somehow she had managed to move a workbench in the basement to one of the small, not-to-code egress windows, then used her fist wrapped in a curtain she’d taken from upstairs to smash through the glass. Then she used the curtain to protect herself from the worst of the broken glass to slide through the window. By the time she emerged from the house, sirens were already sounding down the block. Her brother Cole had been on duty, hosing her down in the middle of the street to prevent the gasoline from further damaging her skin until the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital.
Jack pulled her to him and wouldn’t let her go as they answered questions put to them by various law enforcement officers. Afterwards, Jack kissed Mya’s hair, angling her toward the hallway. “Let’s get you back to the hospital.”
Mya stopped him with a hand to his chest. “No.”
Contrary to the end. “What do you mean, no? We need to make sure the gasoline residue is completely flushed from your skin and hair.”
“They’ve done all they can do. I’ll take several more showers in the next twenty four hours, but listen to me.”
Her eyes were so earnest. He’d never love another woman the way he loved her. He kissed her gently until she pulled back.
“Listen. Before anything else gets in the way again.” She took a deep breath, her gaze steady and serious. “I’d love to never leave my family, but I want to make a home with you. You are my home. Where you are, there I shall be.” She pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket and held it up for him.
A plane ticket. To Jerusalem.
His throat tightened. “You just secured a sponsorship for a new studio. And what about Nat and Andre?”
“Cole and Ivy have said before they’d settle into my place if I ever had to move. My place is bigger anyway, and that way Nat and Andre don’t have to move all their things.”
“What if you lose the sponsorship by the time we get back?” He held his breath, his heart thudding in his chest. He had to make sure she’d thought this through.
That she wanted him as much as he needed her.
As soon as he saw her racing toward him moments ago, he knew he’d never be able to walk away from her again. Knew he was done with long-term assignments overseas.
He held back a smile as she put on a determined face.
“My sponsor told me tonight that he’d planned to help me start a new studio whether we placed in the top three or not. He really believes in my mission. What we’ve started brainstorming is bigger than either of us imagined. It’ll take a long time to implement all our plans. He and I can stay in touch and plan everything online. And if he has a problem with me being gone…” she shrugged, “well, then it wasn’t meant to be. I’ll move to plan B. I refuse to miss any more time with you.”
He laced their fingers together, moved by how much she was willing to sacrifice for him. She had only her purse and her phone, yet she was ready to walk into the unknown with him all the way to the other side of the world. He kissed her knuckles and looked in her eyes. “Mya, I’ve loved you ever since you rode your hot pink bicycle over my cousin Blake when he broke my Geode Growing Kit. We’ve matured, together and individually, creating layers like the earth. Those stratifications tell a story. Ours will be fascinating to mine when we’re old and gray.” He kissed her lips.
She laid her palm over his chest. “What are you saying?”
“When I asked you to come to Horsetooth, I’d planned to tell you I want to start over with you here in Fort Collins. I want to teach and get married and start a family.”
“Really?” Moisture welled in her eyes making them sparkle.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
Chapter Twenty
3 weeks later
Mya sat on top of the picnic table in the middle of her backyard, surrounded by all the people she loved most in the world, swiping at the tears that wouldn’t abate tonight. Happy tears. Cole, her brave brother who’d carried the weight of their family on his broad shoulders when their papi died and their mother got so sick…he was finally being rewarded for his long years of selflessness.
He’d just gotten down on one knee and proposed to the love of his life, Ivy.
Of course, she’d said yes.
Mya had helped her brother set it all up. The night, the food, the music from the mariachi band…the people…It was all magical, as if they’d special-ordered the night just so. The stars had begun to pulse, piercing the gauzy haze of the falling dusk above the dozen strings of white lights that Mya had spent all afternoon arranging between the silent, stately cottonwood trees that communed between Rosie’s and her backyard. Crickets, happy that August had finally come, chirped, calling to their own, their song a pleasant harmony to the buzz of voices flooding the yards with congratulations, jokes, and speculation about how many people would have to be seated in overflow for the upcoming wedding.
Cole slid onto the picnic table beside her, then bumped her shoulder with his own like he’d always done when she was a moody teen who thought she didn’t need anyone. Not her dead and buried father. Her sick mother. Certainly not a big brother who stuck his damn nose in her business Every. Single. Day.
Time and perspective had given her new eyes.
This time she bumped him back and wiped her eyes on his sleeve. She looked over and caught his grin.
“Getting emotional in your old age, I see,” he said, eyes twinkling like their father’s had.
She sniffled harder, her lips beginning to wobble. “Don’t you d-dare make me get the ugly c-cries in front of this crowd, or I’ll make sure you regret it, hermano.”
He nodded earnestly. “I don’t doubt it for a second.” His lips curled up once more as he slung an arm around her shoulders. “Thanks again for all your help today…and for everything you’ve done to help with Nat and Andre over the last couple of years. I’m really proud of you, lobita.”
Little wolf. His name for her since she’d been a child. She couldn’t speak right now so she turned her head into the nook of his shoulder and squeezed him around the waist.
Cole patted her back. “Hey, heeey. Es una noche maravillosa, no? Let’s have you dry those tears…especially if you don’t want me to make up some story about your period to the guy who’s headed our way with a look on his face like he’s ready to mount his white horse and ride on up to the castle to slay his lady’s dragon. That dragon being me.”
Mya peeked her head up from Cole’s embrace to see Jack striding across the yard, his long legs eating up the space, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to expose strong forearms, his face set in serious lines. Here was a man on a mission, his eyes behind those sexy glasses laser-focused on her, seemingly oblivious to anything and everything he passed—the band crooning to Rosie as she blushed, children laughing and running, high on sugar and the energy of the night, couples dancing under lights that softly swayed in the gentle, late summer breeze coming off the foothills. He bypassed it all, his face a study of concentration, and for Mya, everything fell away.
Cole kissed her cheek and slipped away. In the next heartbeat, Jack held out his hand for her, and she took it without a word. He drew her into his arms and kissed her long and slow and deep like there weren’t fifty of their closest friends and family milling around them. Kissed her like his life depended on it. Kissed her so she was weak and breathless and completely undone when he finally lifted his head and smiled into her eyes like all was now truly right in the world.
Raucous applause and whistles rang through the night around them, the mariachi band shifting their attention to them. Captive to the band, Jack kept her plastered to his side, his hand wandering so incessantly her cheeks heated until she decided to distract him with a dance. When their bodies began moving to the music, the musicians shifted their next song to a slower, heart-throbbing tune. This night would ever be etched in her memory.
They danced for hours, and when the last of the guests filtered to their cars or taxis, laughing and reinforced with hope for the vagaries and troubles of life, Mya and Jack linked hands and went in search of Rosie. They found her fast asleep in Mya’s bed. Jack closed the door softly, then chuckled, the deep sound making Mya’s heart alert and eager.
“You realize she planned it this way,” he said, drawing her back out into the night, walking with her under the strings of lights to Rosie’s place.
“So we’d have her place to ourselves tonight. I love her so much, for so many reasons.” Mya tipped her head back and breathed deep.
“You want to stay out here longer?” He suppressed a yawn.
She looked at him, smiling, knowing everything she was feeling was out there, raw and open in her gaze. “I only want to be where you are.”
He made a distinctively masculine noise in his throat and grabbed her, wrapping her around his trunk as was their way, and entered the house where he took her straight to the bedroom, not bothering with the lights. Tenderly, he lowered her back on the blankets, then stepped away to open the curtains to let the light of their happy backyards spill across the bed.
She went up on her knees
to pull the covers back, then stripped her strappy sundress off. Clad now in nothing but her silky fuchsia underwear, she watched his clever fingers unbuttoning his shirt with deliberation. One button at a time, his chest came into view, then his abs, and she felt her body go liquid. She shivered in anticipation.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice low, his eyes like a predator, raking over her nakedness.
“Not one bit. In fact, I feel slightly feverish. I think I need a doctor.”
He wrapped a palm—warm, big, gentle—around her neck, guiding her back into the pillows. “I’m a different kind of doctor, my love, but I know I can fix what’s ailing you.”
Ooo, such confidence. “Show me.”
“Always so demanding.” His body covered her, and they both moaned at the long-awaited contact. She wriggled her legs, anxious to feel him settle into the cradle of her pelvis. He lifted his weight slightly so she could spread her thighs.
“I love you,” she whispered. She felt him at her center, hot, throbbing, perfect. “For always, Jack. This time I’m not letting you go. I hope you know what you’re getting into with me and my family.”
“You should know by now I like layers. I’ll never let you push me away again. You are mine, and I am yours.”
She gasped as he filled her slowly, his gaze locked on hers.
“You are mine, and I am yours,” she repeated.
Waves of desire built and crashed over them as the first fingers of dawn crept over the mountains in their backyard, and he showed her just how much he’d always love her.
And she finally believed.
Misty would love for you to check out the other Hard Men of the Rockies titles by Chick Swagger authors. Here’s a sneak peek at Knox’s story…
Leather and Lace
A Hard Men of the Rockies novella
