Fear fired instantly in her chest, and she arched back and pressed herself into the mattress.
“Fire, Leah. The house is on fire,” he said urgently.
Fire! Understanding broke through her panic, and she sprang from her bed. My God. Charlee. “Charlee?”
“I’ll get her, you get out. I’ve already phoned emergency. Go.” Mac turned and ran into the hallway, and only then did Leah notice the golden gleam of fire.
Go? Where?
Leave Charlee?
She’d never leave without her daughter. Ignoring the desperate need to fill her lungs with oxygen, Leah followed Mac into the hallway. Flames fanned the hall ceiling, the acrid stench of burning insulation making movement nearly impossible. She dropped to her knees and crawled toward her daughter’s room. “Get Charlee. Charlee!”
Her eyes burned as she peered through the swirl of thick smoke. There they were. Mac had Charlee. And clasped in her daughter’s arms was her favorite toy.
Her daughter’s cry reaching her through the roar of the fire was the most reassuring and precious sound Leah had ever heard, and her relief surged.
Flames licked the length of her kitchen, windows exploding, the instant flow of oxygen feeding the fire as it burst anew into a vicious coiling lick of death. Leah recoiled into the crook of Mac’s arm, and he dragged her from the horror, pushing her toward the front door. “Keep your head down. Let’s go.”
Leah obeyed, willing the terrifying scene to disappear.
It didn’t. It followed them.
They reached the lounge, but the moment the door opened, a wave of stabbing flames detonated through the doorway. Mac stumbled back. “We can’t go this way. Get down, crawl, Leah. Crawl.” He dropped to his knees, pushing her in front of him while clutching Charlee. “Make for the bathroom.”
Bathroom? Which way? She knew this house in her sleep, but through a thick, choking veil of smoke? She prayed she headed in the right direction. It seemed to take forever, a lifetime of moments flashing through her brain.
Was she going to die? Would Charlee? And what about Mac?
She couldn’t die. She had to survive for Charlee.
Leah bumped into a closed door and crab-walked her fingers upward to the handle, but one touch and she yanked them back, seared from the scalding metal. “I can’t open it. It’s too hot.”
Mac’s curse died amid a jackhammer of discharges as windows exploded from the heat. He passed Charlee to her, and for one fleeting moment where fear had no control, she relished the comfort of her daughter in her arms, soothing her sobbing with whispers.
Mac stepped back, then kicked at the door and broke the latch. He pulled Leah to her feet, pushed them into the tiny bathroom and followed, closing the door as best he could.
Safety was theirs, for now.
Leah gasped for air in a room thankfully barely tinged by the lethal smoke. “I want to go back to bed.” Charlee’s plaintive cry tore at Leah’s heart.
“I’m sorry, darling, we can’t. We have to get outside.” She looked to the closed door. On the other side, fire raged. How had it happened?
The wiring!
“My fault. It’s my fault.” She turned to Mac. “We’re stuck, we can’t get out. I should have…”
“No time, Leah. Grab the towels, soak as many as you can.”
Leah put Charlee on the floor and reached under the vanity for the towels, then tossed the entire contents into the bath. Mac turned on the tap, soaking them within seconds. He laid several at the base of the door to smother the plumes of smoke that had already begun to seep beneath, then passed her two sopping towels. “Wrap one around your head and the other around Charlee’s.”
“How do we get out?”
“Through there.” He pointed to the window above the vanity. It seemed far too small. “Stand back.” After he wrapped the last towel around his fist, he punched the window out. The glass shattered, and Leah jumped back, protecting Charlee with her body as her daughter erupted into a fresh onslaught of tears.
“Up you go,” he said.
“But Charlee…”
“You go first. Then I’ll pass her out.” Mac pulled her from her crouching position and took a sobbing Charlee from her arms. He caressed Charlee’s head, and for a split second time stood still. His worried eyes captured Leah’s, holding her in an invisible embrace. Leah wanted him to caress her too, to calm her. Tell her it would be all okay.
A burst of flames snaked beneath the door, the sopping towels no longer of any use, and the moment snapped apart. She faced the window and then hesitated, turning back to Mac, lips trembling. “I can’t get out, it’s…”
Sitting Charlee at his feet, he grabbed her hands in his. “You can do anything, Leah. Believe it. You have to. Now do it.”
Bitter fumes clawed at her eyes, her nostrils, stinging her skin. The explosive heat was bone-melting
“Climb out, Leah.”
Her muscles deprived of energy, she struggled to climb on top of the vanity, then angle herself through the small window, first her head, then her shoulders.
Fresh air. Oh, sweet joy, she could breathe. She wriggled some more, and from behind, broad hands cupped her derriere; then she was out and down on the deck.
Dizzy with relief, she hauled herself upright, one part of her acknowledging the sound of sirens in the distance. She reached back into the syrupy haze and found Charlee’s hands poking through the window. Leah prayed for strength, for safety and for survival as she pulled Charlee through the opening.
At last Charlee was safe in her arms, and they stumbled down the few steps and across the paved courtyard and slumped to the ground.
Her relief was short-lived as a ball of fire leapt from the bathroom window. The echoes of other windows shattering and the roar of the fire devouring oxygen intensified by the second. Horror clawed along her skin as she waited for Mac.
But there was no Mac climbing out the window. No shape or shadow of human form. Simply the rage of fire.
Time stood still.
Still nothing, except for the detonation of a fiery rage.
A tiny hand tugged at her side, “Mummy, Mummy, where’s Uncle Mac?” Charlee burst into a flurry of tears. “I want Uncle Mac. I want Uncle Mac.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.” Leah patted Charlee’s tangled curls, trying to calm her down. She turned back to the raging inferno that only a short while ago had been her home. Voice raw, she called, “Mac! Mac!” And beside her, Charlee called too, again and again.
But no Mac at the window. Or door. No big, bossy Mac stumbling from the fire. Dear God, where was he?
Backing up to the small garden a few meters away, Leah placed Charlee down. “Stay, darling. Don’t move. Promise me.”
Fear-filled eyes lifted to hers. Mac’s eyes? Curtis’s eyes?
Leah plopped a kiss on her daughter’s cheek and, spinning on her bare feet, ignoring the jagged stab of burning insulation, raced back to the bathroom window, getting as close as she could. She saw nothing except the coat of thick and pungent smoke and the orange haze of fire.
Had Mac dropped to the ground, overtaken by the brutal fumes of melting plastics and burning wood?
A barrage of explosions from inside rocked the house, and the roofing iron of her beloved home began to collapse. Leah’s legs buckled beneath her, and she tumbled away from the window.
Tears streamed down her face. Mac. Had she lost him?
No! She wouldn’t let it happen.
She crawled along the deck toward the front door, but like the bathroom door, it too proved too hot to touch. She elbowed it, but it held fast.
Try again.
She shouldered the door, the heat and pain intense. In the background, she heard Charlee’s cries and the wail of the sirens, but not one sound from Mac.
One part of her wanted to run to her child, soothe her, but she couldn’t leave Mac, couldn’t walk away and let him die.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, kickin
g repeatedly at the door. Finally it split away from the doorjamb, flames leaping out to greet her. They soared above her head, their greed unchecked. She called out, but it was no use, her voice deadened by the enveloping roar.
Covering her mouth with the sodden towel, she crawled down the hallway a few feet, and then a few feet more, searching in the smoky haze for Mac.
Nothing.
Deeper and deeper into hell, she clawed at nothing. Then suddenly her fingers scraped over bone and flesh. Mac? Thank God. She ranged over his inert form.
Dead?
No, she wouldn’t think that. He couldn’t be. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she shook him. “Get up. We have to get out. Come on.”
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Was she too late?
Balancing herself on her haunches, she looped her hands beneath him and tugged. But Mac was too big, a dead weight in her arms.
Dead? The word wouldn’t go away. She didn’t want to think it, wouldn’t let it be true.
“Why don’t you do what you’re told, woman?”
“You’re alive?”
A groan escaped his lips, eyes fluttering. Dear Lord, he even tried a smile.
Hope restored, she tried again. “Come on. Get up.”
“Leave me,” he choked out.
“Not bloody likely.”
He lifted his head a fraction. “Stubborn woman.” But it was as if those two words sapped all his energy, and his head dropped back down to the floor.
“Damn right. Now get up, Mac Grainger, get moving.”
For what seemed an eternity, he lay inert, and then with a shuddering groan he hoisted himself up on all fours. Holding him as best she could, she directed him toward freedom, rejoicing as they reached the threshold, wrapped in the elixir of fresh air and into the welcoming arms of the fire crew.
“We’ll take over now,” a fireman said as he took Mac from her hold.
Rescued! Leah gave herself over to the crew, sinking into exhaustion as they guided her across the courtyard.
They were alive. She and Charlee. And Mac. Yes! And Mac.
Charlee! Leah spun round to where she’d left her daughter. “Charlee!”
“Is safe and enjoying sitting on one of the fire engines.” A fireman close by pointed toward the two engines. Charlee waved from her perch on the shiny chrome front bumper.
Relief tore through Leah, and on blistered feet she raced over to her daughter, scooped her up in her arms and held on tight. “Oh, Charlee.” She didn’t want to ever let her go again. “I don’t know what I’d do…”
“Don’t even go there.”
Warm fingers caressed her shoulder, and she turned slightly and looked up. Mac stood at her side, offering her an ash-covered smile of reassurance.
“It didn’t happen,” he said. “She’s alive. Happy. We’re all alive.”
They were, and that was all that mattered.
Working with efficiency, the crew checked Charlee out and then moved to Leah. When it was Mac’s turn, he waved them away. “I’m okay. A few scratches, that’s all. Nothing that a bit of good fresh air won’t fix.”
“Can I go back to the fire engine?” Charlee asked, surprising Leah with her resilience. She nodded, and Charlee slid from her arms to hop off toward the crew, who were quickly getting the fire under control and had already started clearing up.
Lashes smudged with soot, Mac focused his red-rimmed eyes on her. “You okay?”
She nodded. “And you?”
He offered a strained smile. “Yeah, it takes more than a few flames to knock me out.” Then his gaze darkened, saddened, as he peered over her shoulder.
Despite the surrounding heat, ice suddenly chilled Leah’s blood. She spun around, pressing a hand to her mouth and stifled her screams. All gone. Where once there were walls, smoke lingered above charred ruins. The fire had taken everything. Her dreams. Her home. Her past. Her future…
Surrounded by embers that danced through the breeze, she stepped toward the wreckage. “Gone. Everything is gone.”
Then Mac was pulling her back into his arms, cradling her from the horror.
She coveted his reassuring warmth. “My house…is gone,” she hiccupped.
His hold on her tightened. “You can rebuild.”
Her voice trembled, and she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “You don’t understand,” she sobbed, “I have nothing left. Nothing.”
“You have your daughter.”
The wiring had caused this. It had to be. The electrician had already warned her, and yet she’d put it off. It was her fault, all her fault.
The words taunted, censured, punished her as they reverberated on continual overload in her brain. Her fault. Could have. Should have.
Chilled to the core, she curled her fingers into her sodden clothes, wishing to hold on to something, anything, to stop her hands shaking. She blinked several times. She would not cry. Instead, she looked at Mac, and although she tried very hard not to, her heart skipped a fluttery beat. In pain, in exhaustion and in heat, Mac Grainger hypnotized her. It was because of him she and Charlee were safe. They could have died. She’d been exhausted, deep in sleep.
A shivery chill slid along her spine, and she hugged her arms around herself as she imagined what could have been. Her lips trembled, shock setting in as she began to slip in the unreal world of unconsciousness.
“Whoa.” Mac made a grab for her, his arm snaking around her waist. He held her tight, his ragged breath grazing her ear, her neck. She tried to smile, but it was as if it were too much effort. “Thank you.”
“Shouldn’t that be my line? I’d be toast if you hadn’t come back for me,” he said drily.
“I couldn’t leave you.”
“Really? I’d have thought that was one way to get rid of me.”
Leah couldn’t hide her shock at his statement, and her eyes widened. “You think so little of me, that I would let you die?”
“Easy way out.”
Oh, Mac. Her lips pursed.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“That pouty mouth thing; that kiss-me look you get.”
Heat rushed at breakneck speed to the tips of her toes. With his strong arms around her, she could feel his heat, reveled in it. Her tongue slid along her lips, a silly move, because his fueled gaze fixed solely on her mouth.
“Reminds me of when we…when I kissed you,” he teased.
Oh dear Lord.
“Makes me want to do it again.”
Leah’s heart skipped another beat.
Get a grip. It’s adrenaline, you’re grateful, not attracted to him.
“You shouldn’t,” she finally said, though she really didn’t believe it.
“I know, but it doesn’t stop the wanting.”
Definitely not.
“But you don’t like me. Don’t trust me.”
“I think that’s vice-versa, sweetheart. But as I say, it doesn’t stop the wanting.” He caressed her face with the back of his hand, thumb teasing the outline of her parted lips.
That he knew her so well refueled her shame. She looked away, watching the residue of flames and smoke waft up to the heavens, and whispered a prayer for redemption.
Charlee wandered over to her then and threaded her small fingers through Leah’s. It was a timely interruption, and her daughter’s hold on her hand felt good, real, like a charm to ward off temptation.
The fire chief nodded toward his crew still poking around in the ruins. “We’ve cleared up here, though a base crew will stay overnight, just in case some of the embers decide to start up again.”
Leah wanted to say thank you, anything, but no words would form. All she could do was think of what she had lost. Not just a house, but a home. Heritage from the only grandparent she remembered, the only relative who’d ever really cared. Now all that was left was a scarred pile of ashes.
Mac shook the fire chief’s hand. “Thanks, for everything. Any idea what started it?”
Leah’s breath stilled. The man knew. Knew she was to blame. She should have paid the deposit, got the wiring underway. Asked for help. But oh no, she held back because of stubborn pride. And dear God, that pride could have killed them all.
“It seems the place was past due for some major rewiring,” the fire chief said as he lifted his helmet and rubbed his brow.
Leah caught Mac’s probing stare.
Acknowledging the shouts of the other firemen as they reloaded the hoses and climbed aboard the fire engines, the chief said, “We’ll be off. You’ll get a copy of my report.”
“Thanks.” Mac waved him away and then turned to her, blocking out all but the smoking ruins of her home behind him. But he didn’t, couldn’t block out the guilt searing a raw path straight to her heart. “Wiring, Leah?”
“I…” Words snarled across the tip of her tongue, along with guilt that rode shotgun, and she clammed up.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped. We could have died.” He grabbed her shoulders, fingers biting into tender flesh. “Charlee could have died.”
Tears streamed down her face. Tears for life, for death, that she could have lost Charlee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…” If she told him she couldn’t cope, would he use that against her to get Charlee? “You’ve come here, run roughshod over me. I didn’t know what to think…” Or if I could trust you. You’re a Grainger.
For the next few moments, neither said a word as they watched the remaining fire crew inspect the rubble for any hint of fire beneath the ashes, then, unexpectedly, he reached out a hand to her. “Come on.”
“What?” She held fast, refusing to budge.
“We can’t stay here. We’ll go to my place.”
Leah rocked on the balls of her bare feet. “No!”
Mac dragged a sooty hand through his ash-sprinkled hair, his expression pure exhaustion. “You don’t have a choice.”
“You expect me to come with you?”
“Leah.” Her name was a husky whisper between them, and for just the briefest moment she thought he was going to kiss her. She felt ashamed for thinking it and wanting it. But she did. She wanted his reassuring arms around her.
Secrets and Seduction Page 8
