Charlotte Douglas: Licensed To Marry

“You’re almost here.” Kyle’s encouraging voice echoed through the wreckage. “Keep coming.”

“My arm hurts,” Jeremy whimpered.

She bit back tears at the little boy’s pain. “We’ll have you fixed up real soon.”

When she reached the opening, Kyle was gone, and she panicked, wondering if they’d been deserted. Debris continued to fall in the stillness of the wreckage, and she feared the rest of the building might collapse any moment.

“Hello? Anyone there?” she called.

Kyle’s handsome face reappeared, and she chastised herself for her lack of faith in him. She should have known from the reliable look in his amazing green eyes that the man wouldn’t desert them.

“I’ve sent my partner after the paramedics and a stretcher.” He couldn’t fit his wide shoulders through the narrow hole, but he thrust his arms, clad in a denim jacket, into the opening. She noted the strong, slender fingers and square nails, streaked with dirt and marred with nicks and scratches from clawing through the wreckage.

“Let me have him,” Kyle said. “We’ll take good care of him.”

“Careful,” Laura warned as she transferred Jeremy. “His arm may be broken.”

With a gentleness she hadn’t expected in such a rugged man, Kyle took the boy in his arms as carefully as if the child were made of glass. A tear slid down the man’s face, but Laura couldn’t tell if he cried for the child or if the dust from the wreckage irritated his eyes.

Jeremy opened his eyes and gazed up at Kyle. “Who are you?”

“I’m helping the firefighters, big guy.” The man’s voice was kind and encouraging. “My friends and I will get you out of here and find your mother.”

Jeremy relaxed in his arms. Kyle maneuvered the boy’s body through the narrow aperture, and the two disappeared.

“I’ll be back for the rest of you,” Laura heard Kyle call.

She returned to Jennifer and Tiffany, grabbed each one by a hand and helped them pick their way through the tangle of beams, wires and drywall to the opening, their only route of escape.

“Will he come back?” Jennifer asked, once again sniffling with fear.

“He’ll be back.” Laura placed a supportive arm around the girl’s shoulders. She didn’t have to fake confidence. Something about the man, the assurance in his eyes, the tenor of his voice, told her Kyle Foster was a man who didn’t make empty promises.

A horrific boom reverberated behind them in the rest room, and a major portion of the ceiling gave way and crashed to the floor. The girls screamed, and Laura jumped. If they’d stayed where they’d been earlier, all of them would have been crushed. What remained of the building was deteriorating fast, and if Kyle didn’t return soon, they might be buried alive.

She pulled the girls close to bolster their courage and tried to squelch her own rising panic. “He’ll be here any minute now.”

True to his word, Kyle thrust his face through the opening. Laura had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. How could any man look so damn sexy with so much dirt on him and seem so at ease with a building raining down around his ears?

“Who’s next?” he asked.

Laura felt Tiffany stiffen against her. “You go, Jennifer,” the little redhead insisted. “I’m older. I’ll stay here and look after the lady.”

“You’re not older.” Jennifer sniffed. “We’re both six.”

“I’m six and a half,” Tiffany said in a superior tone.

“You’re both coming,” Kyle said. “I have people with me to carry you out.”

The urgency in the look he threw Laura set her into instant motion. She scooped Jennifer into her arms and handed her to Kyle. He threaded the girl through the opening as if she weighed no more than the dust that swirled around them, a testament to the strength in the well-developed muscles of his arms.

“What’s a good-looking kid like you doing in a mess like this?” he asked Jennifer. She responded to his teasing grin by throwing her arms around his neck and holding tight.

With a tenderness that brought tears to Laura’s eyes, Kyle patted the girl’s back, then handed her off to someone behind him. He immediately shoved his arms through the opening again. “Next?”

Laura picked up Tiffany. The girl leaned back in her arms and looked at her. “Aren’t you coming?”

“In a minute,” Laura said.

“But the hole’s too small.” Tiffany locked gazes with her, eyes filled with worry, as Kyle took the girl from Laura’s arms. “How will you get out?”

“Don’t worry.” Kyle spoke to Tiffany but his eyes met Laura’s. “We won’t leave your friend in there.”

He disappeared for a moment. When he returned, he thrust a hard hat and his own denim jacket through the hole toward Laura. “Put these on and move as far from the opening as you can. We’re going to frame some supports before we tear open this hole.”

Only then did Laura realize she’d been standing there the whole time in only her bra and skirt. She’d thrown aside her jacket, now buried beneath the wreckage behind her, and used her blouse to bind Jeremy’s wounds. But Kyle Foster had acted as if finding a woman only half dressed in the halls of the capitol building was nothing out of the ordinary.

She tugged on his jacket, still warm from his body heat, and was inundated with a melange of scents: sunshine, meadow grasses, saddle soap, leather and a pleasingly masculine musk. As she slid her arms into the sleeves, it was as if Kyle Foster had wrapped his arms around her, a comfortable illusion. The thought and the jacket warmed her. She hadn’t realized how hard she’d been shivering until she stopped. Caring for the children, she hadn’t had time to think about herself. Now, the solitude and vulnerability of her situation hit her full force.

Her distress must have shown in her eyes, because Kyle reached out through the opening, his eyes fierce with emotion, his jaw set with determination, his lips curved in an encouraging smile, and ran his fingers down her cheek in a tender salute. “You’re a hell of a brave lady.”

She didn’t want to move, to break the warm, heartening contact of his touch. She wanted to lean into the cup of his hand, the only place in this hellhole of a building she felt safe.

He patted her cheek and gently shoved her away. “Move. Now,” he ordered.

Jamming the hard hat on, she scurried back against the wall of the access corridor.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Kyle spoke through the opening. “You’ll hear a lot of noise out here, chain saws and jackhammers. We have to clear a path for you. There’ll be some debris shaken loose. Hunch down against the wall and keep that hard hat on.”

“I understand.”

“Hey.” He took off his own hard hat and thrust his head through the opening. His forehead was tanned above the line of plaster dust and his hair a golden brown, a perfect complement to his eyes, the deep green of summer leaves. “You’re going to be fine. I’ll get you out.”

This time he didn’t smile, but there was intensity and solemn promise in his expression.

His confidence was infectious. She nodded and huddled closer to the wall.

He broke into a grin then, an appealing expression that made her wish she’d met this man before in another time and place.

“Better stick your fingers in your ears—Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Laura, Laura Quinlan.”

“Stop up your ears, Laura. The noise will be brutal.”

He pulled back and was gone. True to his word, the scream of chain saws and thunder of jackhammers assaulted her senses and sent a rain of dust and debris around her. She crouched low and raised her arms above her head, praying her rescuers would reach her before the building collapsed on top of her. The bone-jolting racket seemed to go on forever.