Annie Hemby - Healing His Widowed Heart

Lexie didn’t bother glancing around to make sure she went unnoticed. No one was here. Everyone in Chesterfield Estates had evacuated. And with good reason, she thought now, feeling her world tilt and re-center like a ride at the amusement park.

A siren stopped her in her tracks. Looking up, Lexie saw a man with dark hair and a hard jawline leaning toward the passenger-side window of a white pickup truck. It was marked with the local fire department’s logo.

“What are you doing out here?” he called. “Don’t you know there’s a mandatory evacuation in this neighborhood?”

Lexie erupted into a fit of coughing as she tried to explain. She wasn’t a material girl, but the dress was sentimental to her. She couldn’t risk letting it burn up in the forest fire.

Stumbling toward him, Lexie doubled over as she coughed. “I...was just...”

Just about to fall over if I don’t get fresh air soon.

“Get in,” he ordered.

Lexie straightened, still wheezing. “Am I under arrest?” she asked through painful speech.

His brows lowered over disapproving blue eyes. “I’m not a cop. If I were, then absolutely. Being here right now is against the law.”

She approached his vehicle and pulled weakly on the door’s handle. She’d gladly accept a ride into fresh air. If not for him, she wasn’t sure she’d have made it out of the neighborhood and back to her car without collapsing. Clearly she’d misjudged the situation.

She tried to open the door, but her hands wouldn’t work.

“Ma’am?” she heard him say, although his voice was fading quickly. She thought she heard his truck door open, and then two hands turned her around and firmly grasped the front of her shoulders. “Ma’am? Are you okay?” He leveled his eyes with hers, forcing her to look at him.

Her knees went weak and not because of his rugged good looks, which didn’t go unnoticed even in her condition.

“Take a deep breath,” he told her, his voice calm and in control.

Her vision grew dim. She clutched the fabric of his shirt in her hand, holding on to him so that she didn’t fall. The garbage bag that she’d stuffed the dress into minutes earlier dropped to the ground below. “Don’t let me die,” she pleaded, feeling her legs buckle. Then she felt the weight of her body being swept up into the man’s arms. He opened the passenger door of his truck and laid her inside as she struggled to hold on to consciousness, watching the colors around her blur like the view inside a kaleidoscope.

“You still there?” he asked, flipping the sirens on as he took the driver’s seat.

The loud sound made her head throb. She tried to nod or say something intelligible. Instead her eyes closed, the world and the handsome stranger beside her fading away.

* * *

Mason Benfield had been hoping to find someone in the evacuated neighborhood, but it wasn’t the woman lying across his passenger seat right now. On a tip, he’d driven through the neighborhood, looking for a teenage girl and suspected runaway. If the runaway was here, he needed to find her before she got hurt like the woman beside him.

He glanced over. The woman appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. And either she couldn’t read, didn’t watch the local news, or had a death wish.

He dialed 911 as he sped toward the neighborhood’s front entrance a few blocks away. “I have an unconscious woman who suffered a possible asthma attack. We’re at the entrance of Chesterfield Estates,” he told the operator. He relayed a few more details, and then slowed the truck as he drove past the orange caution cones. He parked and got out, waving over one of the policemen enforcing the evacuation.

Mason wasn’t up for giving the guy a lecture about making sure no one got past. If anyone, the woman in his passenger seat was the one who needed a harsh speaking-to. What she’d done had been senseless. They’d evacuated the neighborhood because it was dangerously close to the forest fire. They were trying to control the blaze, but one change in the wind and the flames could rage in this direction. The fire could engulf miles in a matter of hours. Walking inside the neighborhood on foot was a foolish thing to do.

As he scooped her body into his arms, she stirred, drawing his eyes down to her oval face. He didn’t recognize her. Must be new to town, he thought, carrying her to a patch of grass near the road. He laid her gently on the ground, letting her legs drop first and then cradling her head until her soft auburn hair splayed out around her. He slid his fingers to the side of her neck and checked her vitals—good. Her complexion was rosy—and beautiful.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

“She okay?” the officer asked, walking up beside him.

Mason’s jaw tightened. “Talk to your guys and make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said, straining to hear any sign of help coming their way. “And keep a lookout for a teenage girl in this area. There’s a suspected runaway that’s been spotted around here.”

The officer nodded. “Will do.”

Mason couldn’t stand the thought of a child finding themselves helpless in the dense smoke. Hopefully the girl had relocated. Hopefully, he thought, she’d gone home where she belonged. His late wife crossed his memory. Once a runaway, too, someone had helped her find her way. Because of that she’d founded the Teen Center, a cause close to her heart, and had helped a few dozen teens when she was alive.

Mason angled his head, listening as the sound of sirens grew in the distance. The woman on the ground stirred. Her eyelids flickered and then she reached for his hand. The feel of her skin on his was like silk. Reflexively, his fingers tightened around hers. He stared down at their interlocked fingers for a long moment, unable to break away. She was scared, that’s all it was, which intensified his desire to keep her safe.

Don’t let me die.

Her words back on the street had been too close for comfort. Pressing down the memories of his late wife, he nodded at the paramedics as they arrived.

“She breathed in a little too much smoke. Maybe an asthma attack,” he said, as they carefully picked the woman up and laid her on a stretcher. His hand broke free from hers. Mason had the sudden urge to follow her inside the ambulance and ride along just to make sure she got there okay, to relieve her fears and tell her everything was going to be all right. He knew from experience, though, that sometimes things didn’t turn out all right.

“My bag,” she said in a barely audible voice.

Mason stepped closer as she was carried away on the stretcher. “What did you say?” he asked.

Her eyes opened just slightly. “My bag. I need that bag,” she said, her eyes widening. Then she was lifted inside the small confines of the ambulance and the doors shut behind her.

What could possibly be so important that she would put it in a black garbage bag and risk her life to save it? Watching the ambulance scream into the distance, he climbed back into his truck to go find out. As he drove, he pushed back those haunting memories of the day his wife had died. His chest throbbed with the deep wound that the memory always reopened.

Everything is going to be okay, he’d told her. The doctors will fix you right up.

At the time he’d truly believed in what he was saying. He’d put his faith in the young doctors at Carolina Memorial, and his late wife had put her faith in his words.

Mason parked on the cul-de-sac and slipped on a mask this time because the air was thick. Just because he was a firefighter didn’t mean he could gulp in smoke and not be affected. Somehow the woman had thought herself invincible. He grabbed the bag and carried it back to the truck. Inside, he ripped open the knot cinching the plastic, surprised when white lace fabric peeked through.