Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!

“Once I get my life in order, I’d like to look you up.

“I mean, if you want me to,” Ash added.

The seconds before Maura nodded were torture. “I’d like that, very much.” Ash’s heart pounded in his chest.

Until he heard the masculine shout.

“Maura!”

An alarm went off.

He should have known better. Known that luck was not currency that could be hoarded and stored up until you really, really needed it—or really wanted it.

And, oh, he’d wanted Maura! Ash had wanted her so much, he had drained his luck, just so he might have a chance with this woman. A chance at life. A chance at happiness.

Clearly, that was impossible now.

Not when the man coming toward them was one of the most powerful men in the county.

And not when he was Maura’s father.

Unless…somehow, he could convince this woman that, while he wasn’t yet the man she believed him to be, he intended to become that man. Or die trying.

The Rancher’s Daughter

Jodi O’Donnell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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JODI O’DONNELL

grew up one of fourteen children in small-town Iowa. As a result, she loves to explore in her writing how family relationships influence who and why we love as we do.

A USA TODAY bestselling author, Jodi has also been a finalist for Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award and is a past winner of RWA’s Golden Heart Award. She lives in Iowa with her two dogs, Rio and Leia.

For Carol and Cindy, for keeping me laughing

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

“It’s a blowup! Run!”

The shout was like a shotgun blast in Maura Kingsley’s ears. She didn’t even hesitate. Without turning to see who’d issued the order—she knew, anyway, that it was Hal Chatsworth, the boss of her crew of firefighters—Maura took off in a sprint across the pine-studded steppe and away from the forest fire that the national media had recently dubbed the worst in Montana’s history.

Her ax-hoe-hybrid Pulaski clutched in her right hand, she dashed through the bone-dry forest duff, dodging ponderosa pines that were as drought-stressed as Maura had ever seen in her three years with the Forest Service. She was aware of her crewmates, as well as others who’d been on the burnout detail, running toward the good black in the riverbed that Hal had designated a safety zone at the beginning of the shift, should the winds change direction.

There was no predicting when a fire might achieve the critical mass it needed to reinforce itself with its own heat and instantly incinerating flames, creating the vicious vortex called a firestorm. The only way to fight that kind of fire was to get out of its way.

The problem was, Maura realized as a crackling branch fell to earth in front of her, the fire was crowning above their heads, leaping from treetop to treetop at a pace faster than the firefighters were running. Embers rained down on her like the sparks of a firecracker as she picked up her pace.

Good heavens, but it was moving fast. Too fast for her to outrun.

She could feel its heat, like the draft from a blast furnace, on her back. Gasping for breath as she ran, she clutched the pouch on her belt as if it were a talisman. It contained the collapsible fiberglass and aluminum fire shelter that would be her only chance of survival should she truly become overcome by the flames licking at the heels of her lug-soled boots. It was a firefighter’s worst nightmare, getting caught in a burnover, where the white-hot heat of a raging wildfire could reach over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not for the first time in her life Maura prayed for a little height and longer legs as she felt herself falling behind the others. Her goggles obscuring her peripheral vision, she turned her head from side to side, trying to get an idea of what her options might be. To her right was only more sparsely treed forest, to her left the craggy limestone face of a rock mountain. Neither left her much to choose from. In fact, she’d be in ten times worse trouble heading for the mountainside if the flames chose to follow her. A fire moved faster up a slope because the uphill fuels became preheated.

She’d have to do something, though, and quick. The wind whipped around her, scaring up more sparks. She could almost taste more than smell the acrid, black smoke. It burned in her throat like a draft of home-stilled whiskey, and as she ran, she tugged the protective mask around her neck over her mouth and nose.

It was the noise, however, that started panic rising in her chest. Even from half a mile away, a forest fire sounded like a tornado, jumbo jet and fifty-car pileup all rolled into one. This close, it was the very incarnation of chaos and destruction. She had a wild thought that, like surviving a deadly battle, one couldn’t completely understand the sound of a forest fire without experiencing it firsthand.

If she survived, for abruptly she was not in front of the fire. It was around her, ahead of her, above her.

And the realization hit Maura in an avalanche: She was not going to make it out.

Her life fast-forwarded past her mind’s eye: her childhood growing up on a ranch, good times with her family—her three older brothers who alternately teased her unmercifully and pampered her unstintingly. Her mother, so regal and refined. Carolyn Kingsley was like a rose growing out of wild and rugged Montana grassland, and Maura had always been puzzled by the difference between mother and daughter, for she herself was of that land as much as it was of her.

Like her father, Stratton. Headstrong, loving, imperious, tender. She’d spent her life trying to thwart his protectiveness.

There was no way he could protect her now.

Around her, trees were literally exploding where they were rooted. The sound was like so many dying screams for mercy.

With a choking cry, Maura made the agonizing decision to pull out her fire shelter and take refuge under it. Survival using the shelter was not a certainty. One breath of superheated air would kill her, if she didn’t die of sheer terror before the fire passed over her. But it was her only hope.

Then, just as she slowed, her heart like a melon in her throat, Maura felt herself swept forward from behind.

“Come on,” a masculine voice rasped into her ear. “There’s got to be cover along that mountain slope that’ll be safer than out in the open under nothin’ but a flimsy tent.”

She hadn’t the presence of mind—or desire—to argue as the man, a fellow firefighter, although she didn’t know exactly who, cut to the left at an angle, half carrying her. Her feet glanced the ground as she ran beside him, the black canvas fire pack containing her water bottles, rations and other essential supplies bouncing against her lower back. Her own effort was nearly useless; his long strides ate up territory as if he himself was the fire and wind rolled into one.

They reached the face of the mountain in less than a minute. Barely slowing his pace, he groped feverishly with the gloved hand of his free arm at the outcroppings, overhangs and ledges in the craggy gray limestone.

“There’s got to be some kind of decent shelter here, damn it!” he shouted over the roar of the wildfire. She dared a moment’s pause to shoot a glance at him and could see only grim eyes behind his goggles, his own fire mask and yellow helmet obscuring any other features.

The ground was rougher here, punctuated with rocks and boulders surrounded by sprigs of parched wheat and needlegrass. In college, she’d studied the geology of every major forest and mountain range in Montana and knew he was right. Caves were not unusual in this kind of sedimentary rock. But who knew where one might appear or if it would be deep enough to provide adequate shelter from the fire?

Perspiration from the exertion, heat and fear ran in rivulets down every vertical plane of her body. Her eyes smarting from the smoke, Maura’s gaze searched the mountainside as desperately as that of the firefighter who’d come to her rescue. Maybe he hadn’t rescued her, though. Maybe he’d sealed his death warrant by coming to her aid.

For the fire had again caught up to them, and here, along the slope, there was no place to go to escape it.

Her legs like jelly, Maura tripped over a rock and stumbled to her knees, and he lost his grip on her waist.

“Leave me!” she gasped when he turned back to her. “Save yourself.”

He said nothing, just grabbed her by her upper arm and yanked her up. She staggered to her feet and against his side.

As soon as she did, a flaming fifty-foot-tall pine came crashing down behind them, directly across the spot where she’d knelt a second before. Maura screamed reflexively as the firefighter shoved her behind him, protecting her from the billow of sparks with his own body. She fell again, this time backward into a clump of bone-dry sagebrush sprouting horizontally from the mountain’s side. But she didn’t stop there; she continued falling, plunging through the shrubbery. She cracked the back of her helmet on the ground and for a moment believed she’d lost consciousness when everything went dim. Then Maura realized that, miraculously, she was lying at the lip of a cave.

She sobbed her relief. “A ca—” Her cry was cut off by a cough that felt as if she’d dislodged a piece of lung. Maura struggled to sit up and batted madly at the prickly dry sagebrush to part it. Sucking in a desperate breath, she shouted, “It’s a cave!”

But the firefighter had already comprehended her discovery. He reached down to give her a boost to her feet, then led the way into the dark, unknown interior of the cave, pausing only to flick on the headlamp strapped to the front of his helmet.

The difference in temperature and noise was day and night. Still sucking air through a raw windpipe and smarting where she’d jarred her head, Maura turned on her own headlamp and, although she could see not much more than the back of the firefighter’s head and shoulders, she knew they’d lucked out. She’d lucked out for the second time in only a few precious minutes, the first being this man’s rescue of her.

Now that she was out of the thick of it, the closeness of the tragedy they’d both barely escaped dropped full-blown on her consciousness like a cougar from a tree.

“Wait!” she gasped, slumping against the rough wall and tugging her mask down to draw in a much-needed draught of cool air.

The man stopped and turned. “What’s the holdup?” he asked tersely.

She lifted her forearm to shade her eyes from the beam of his headlamp. It didn’t help. She could see nothing, just the bright, white light. Coming out of the encompassing blackness behind him, the glow seemed otherworldly, and it set her nerves jangling even more.

“We almost got killed out there!” Her voice wobbled revealingly. “I…just need a moment to catch my b-breath.”

“Really.” There was a moment of silence, then he said, “I know this fire is some kind of wicked, but I didn’t think the NIFC was so desperate for bodies to fight it they’d started letting powder puffs onto Type Two crews.”

That got her spine straightening, as well as adding a precious half inch to her five-foot-two height. “I passed the work capacity pack test, just like everyone else, hiking three miles in forty-five minutes carrying a forty-five-pound payload.” She drew in another breath. “I made it with time to spare, too, I’ll have you know! And I held my own on both the Deadwood and Durango fires last year.”

He cocked his head to one side, sending his headlamp’s beam in another direction and out of her eyes, and she got an impression of sardonic eyes a color she still couldn’t make out.

“Really,” he repeated, and this time the word was loaded with skepticism. “Then this oughta be a piece of cake.”

And he headed farther into the mountain again, with Maura, now more vexed than scared, scrambling to keep up.

Powder puff, indeed! She supposed he had some right to be annoyed at having to come to her rescue, but some aspects of firefighting had not so much to do with speed and strength and everything to do with intuition and luck.

The passage was narrow and low, but navigable. The cave floor sloped gently downward, and very quickly became wet and slick, as did the walls striated in golds and reds and browns.

They had gone what Maura estimated to be about a hundred feet when the cave opened up into a large chamber. Its ceiling rose ten feet above them, and she simply stood there flatfooted and openmouthed as her headlamp made a sweep of the rock formations: glowing yellow stalactites jutted from the ceiling like jagged sharks’ teeth. The walls were both smoother and rougher looking than in the passageway, with humps of smooth flowstone and ragged “popcorn,” the cauliflower-shaped clusters on the cave walls that she knew could be sharp as coral.

Though she’d studied caves in college, she’d never been much of a spelunker, and the sight of this one took her breath away.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, her recent fear receding as quickly as the heat, noise and threat of the fire had in the cool confines of the cave. It had the still, musty smell of condensation and earth, which was just fine with Maura, since any air movement might bring the smoke into the cave and suffocate them. Mingled with the smell was a pungency she knew had to be coming from the guano that littered the cave floor.

“Bats,” she guessed aloud. They were notorious cave dwellers, along with other wild animals.

The man noted the direction of her gaze and nodded. “It’s also our home, at least for the night,” he said, tugging off his gloves and tucking them into his belt. He removed his own face mask and goggles, letting them dangle around his neck.

Undoing the straps to his fire pack, he examined the cave room with a much more critical eye. “It looks like it goes on, who knows how much deeper into the mountain. I’ll take a look in a sec. Are you injured at all?”

“Incredibly, no. My throat is sandpapery from inhaling some smoke, but otherwise I’m fine.” She felt for her eyebrows and found them both intact. They were usually the first to go.

“Good,” the man said. “One less thing to have to worry about.”

He removed his helmet, headlamp still on, and balanced it on a ledge about shoulder height, so that it lit the interior of the room. “Better take a reckoning of water and supplies.”

As she divested herself of her own pack, Maura seized the opportunity to get a good look at her rescuer. He looked vaguely familiar, but then everyone did after a few weeks working on a firefighting crew, even with volunteers being trucked in from across the nation. He was as sooty and begrimed as she was, his face blackened around the outline of his goggles in a kind of reverse raccoon look. He was wearing the same Forest-Service-issue brown fire-retardant Nomex pants and yellow fire shirt, which he was absently unbuttoning, but the uniform looked different on him than others. His shoulders seemed uncommonly broad, his forearms, as he rolled up the long sleeves of his shirt, were muscular, his hands wide and competent looking. He appeared the very definition of an able-bodied man, she thought, as her gaze lifted to his face again, and she was confronted with his as-thorough scrutiny of her. It was only then that she noticed his eyes: gray, they were. Almost silver, only richer. They were remote and inviting at once, and she was equally torn in two directions gazing into them. Afraid yet fascinated.

He was right in that they would be spending at least the night here together. Neither of them had radios to call for help, and even if they had, there would have been no way to pick up a frequency this deep in the mountain—or any way that rescue crews could get to them at this point, with the fire still going full force outside.

That wouldn’t stop the rest of her crew and their boss, Hal, from worrying about her, as would this man’s crew worry about him. News of their disappearance would go all the way to the command of the National Interagency Fire Commission. She hoped they wouldn’t notify her family that she was missing. The thought of her family’s concern and fear for her made her eyes sting with tears.

I’m fine, she telepathed to them. I’m safe in a cave with the firefighter who saved my life. I couldn’t be in better hands.

“I haven’t thanked you for rescuing me,” Maura said aloud, cursing the shakiness in her voice. She was battling a bout of nausea from the smoke. “I mean, I was ready to use my fire shelter, but I’ve heard firefighters say they’d rather spend a month in solitary confinement than an hour in a burnover.”

“Really.” His eyebrows lowered in sudden ferocity. “Well, as you pointed out, you’re a trained firefighter. So it stands to reason you’d’ve done what you needed to do to survive.” He’d finished unbuttoning his fire shirt, revealing the perspiration-stained T-shirt beneath, and now yanked its tail from his waistband with what occurred to her to be undue force. “Or am I wrong there, powder puff?”

“I certainly hope that, had you not come along, I would have done as I was trained,” she said with crisp enunciation. “I was simply conveying my thanks.”

She lifted her chin in Carolynesque regality. It was becoming difficult to be nice to this man, but she was determined to, precisely for the reason that he had saved her life. Still, she wasn’t about to let him get away with the jibe about her size and gender.

“And you can stop calling me powder puff any time now,” she warned mildly.

One corner of his mouth lifted almost in amusement as he looked her up and down, all five feet and two inches of her. But he said gamely enough, “All right. What’s your name, then?”

“Maura. Maura King—”

A rustle coming from one of the openings that led deeper into the cave interrupted her. The man, whose name remained a mystery to her, grabbed his helmet as he headed without hesitation down the passageway. The other animals, aside from bats, that might have taken refuge in the cave—grizzlies, cougars and wolverines among them—had Maura snatching up her own helmet to follow him, her boots slipping in the loose rock on the cave floor. She wasn’t afraid; it might turn out that he would need her help this time.

So closely was she following him that she came up against his solid back when he stopped short several yards into the tunnel.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Shh,” he admonished with a half turn of his head. He was hunched over in this part of the cave, which had a clearance closer to her height.

Curious, Maura peeked past his shoulder to see what had brought him up short: a young deer—it couldn’t have been more than a month old—and an adult mule deer that had to be its mother, lying on her side.

The doe barely lifted her head at the sound of the intruders, and Maura realized she must be injured badly.

In a trice she’d stepped around the man and knelt beside the deer. The fawn’s tiny hooves scrabbled in the dirt as it startled backward on stick legs.

“It’s okay, little one,” Maura soothed. She sat very still, waiting for the fawn to calm. She used the time to turn her headlamp upon the doe for a visual examination.

She was no veterinarian, but it didn’t look good. The deer had suffered third-degree burns in places, the fur along its side, back and haunches singed a ruddy black. The animal’s eyes were wide with fear, her breath was coming in short, labored bursts, nostrils flaring in distress and pain.

Maura swallowed back the lump that rose to her throat. “You’re okay,” she soothed. But she knew that, indeed, the doe was not okay.

The fawn, which stood quivering a few yards away, startled again when the man dropped to a crouch beside her.

“Looks pretty grim, doesn’t it?” he said softly.

She set her mouth firmly. “We’ve got some options for making her comfortable.”

He glanced sideways at her, doubt infusing every inch of his face. “You got a horse-size dose of painkiller somewhere in your fire pack? ’Cause that’s what it’ll take.”

She cocked her head to one side. “No, but do you hear that?”

He listened, and obviously detected what she had—trickling water coming from around the curve in the passage.

“An underground spring. The water’s coolness will help ease the pain of the doe’s burns, and drinking it will keep her hydrated,” the man said with a nod toward both deer.

“How to get her to it, though?” Maura watched the rapid rise and fall of the doe’s chest. “I mean, I’ve got a bottle of water in my pack but it’s full and we’ll need it ourselves. Still, even if I had an empty container to fetch water for her, she can’t lift her head to drink.”

He glanced about as if hoping to spy a solution within the confines of the cave. Then, in one fluid movement, he stood and shrugged out of his yellow fire shirt, then peeled off the T-shirt beneath it.

Maura tried not to stare. In the glow of light bouncing off the cave walls, every muscle of his arms, shoulders, chest and torso were as if carved in stone, like a Michelangelo statue.

And as perfectly built.

“Wh-what are you doing?” she croaked.

“Unless you’ve got a better idea, I’m going to soak this T-shirt in the spring, then trickle water into the doe’s mouth as I wring it out.”

She smiled. “It’s a simple solution, but it’ll probably work as well as any,” she admitted.

He disappeared around the curve of the tunnel, and when he returned he had the sopping T-shirt in his palm. He knelt again and held the shirt over the doe’s head. Squeezing gently, he dribbled water into her mouth. At first too frightened by the sensation to do anything but blow the water out with puffs of air, the doe quickly caught on and was soon lapping spasmodically at the droplets her rescuer continued to aim into her mouth.

He was concentrating on dribbling water into the doe’s mouth, so Maura gave in to the fascination of watching him. As powerful as the strength was in those hands of his, there was also a gentleness that moved her almost to tears.

So engrossed was she in the process, it took Maura a few moments to realize what his comment of “Looks like someone else is thirsty” meant. The fawn had toddled a few tentative steps closer, nose, ears and body quivering in simultaneous need and fear.

“Here,” she said, cupping her palms under the trickle of water until she had collected a few ounces. Walking slowly forward on her knees, she held out her offering to the baby.

He skittered back two steps. His eyes were huge and dark.

“Come on, Smokey,” she cooed, spontaneously naming the youngster after the famous bear cub. “Don’t be frightened. You’ve got nothing to be scared of. See how Mama’s drinking? Why don’t you take a drink, too.”

His ears alternating between pricked forward in curiosity and flattened back in fear, the fawn was a study in the contradictory urges of doubt and trust. Maura wondered madly what reassurance to give him so he would take those last few steps toward her.

“Okay, so maybe you do have a few things to be scared of,” she said softly. “There’s a big, mean fire out there. Your mama’s pretty sick, and you don’t have a clue what’s going to happen to her…or to you.”

She extended her cupped hands an inch more. The fawn quivered like an aspen. From the corner of her eye, she was aware that her companion had stilled his movements so as not to frighten the fawn. Aware that he watched her with interest.

“I’m here now, though, along with this guy here,” she murmured, tipping her head slightly in his direction. “He saved my hide, and that was not without some doin’. I just met him, but I’ve got the feeling he’ll take care of you, too, just like he’s helping your mama.” Another inch forward. “We’ll get out of this, Smokey, I promise. But we’ve gotta stick together, okay?”

The fawn still had not moved, and the animal seemed to teeter on a precipice of indecision that had to be worse than his thirst. It tore Maura’s heart.

“Take a drink, sweetie, please,” she whispered. “Trust me—trust yourself, too—and take a drink.”

The velvet brown eyes grew larger, the black nose trembled. Then the fawn took a tentative step toward her. Maura remained motionless, her arms and shoulders aching with the effort. She knew she could depend upon the firefighter remaining still, but if the doe showed any signs of agitation right now, that would be it for gaining the fawn’s trust.

She met the animal’s eyes unwaveringly.

And then he took another step, then another, before stretching his neck forward—and taking a tiny lap at the water in her palm. His nose tickled, yet Maura twitched not a muscle. He drank all that she had to offer, then toddled backward and sank down next to his mother.

Relieved and happy, Maura let her arms drop to her lap.

“You got some kind of sweet-talkin’ ability there,” the firefighter said quietly.

“Which has its merits…and its faults,” she said pensively.

“What do you mean?”

The fawn had begun licking his mother’s ear in his own offering of comfort. “I had quite a bit of contact with wildlife during my fieldwork in the forestry program at the University of Montana,” Maura answered. “I learned then that animals should be afraid of us humans. We’ve done nothing to earn their trust. We’ve ruined their home, rather than taken care of it for them. The Rumor fire is proof positive of that. When it comes down to it, that’s why I became a volunteer firefighter. I know the NIFC is still investigating how the Rumor fire got started, but it’s pretty clear it was a person—”

“And so it’s only fitting that we humans risk our lives to stop it,” he finished for her.

“Right. And if we’re able to save even one of the thousands of animals who’ll die before it’s contained for good—” she lifted her chin a notch in defiance “—then I’m glad to have taken the risk.”

To her dismay, she found herself fighting tears yet again.

“Maura.”

She took her gaze off the fawn to look at him. Those gray eyes of his virtually glowed, fascinating her. How could a shade one normally thought of as cool and remote be so vibrant and compelling?

“Okay, so maybe there is a place for powder puffs on a major fire,” he murmured with such respect—albeit somewhat grudging—that she forgot to chafe under the nickname.

Yes, her fascination for him was strong. But so was her fear as his gaze dropped to her mouth in a movement that was blatantly erotic.

Maura had a sudden urge to scamper backward with as much wariness as the fawn. She didn’t, though, just lifted her chin and asked tartly, “So what’s your name—unless you want me to make up some offensive nickname to call you?”

Chapter Two

Maura’s question, oh-so-innocently posed, brought him up short. A thousand emotions assailed him in that brief moment—sharp regret, shame and dread foremost among them. But this woman wouldn’t know, didn’t need to know, his entire history.

He drew in a calming breath, then answered succinctly. “Ash.”

“Ash?” Maura repeated inanely.

“Short for Ashton. It’s an old family name.” He didn’t offer his last name, and he knew Maura had to be wondering why. It was firefighter etiquette, especially when crews were being called in from all over the nation, to lead off with your full name, where you hailed from, how long you’d been firefighting and how long on this particular fire. It gave you a sense of your own time and place in the life of the fire.

But he had an aversion to volunteering too much information, developed over ten years of hard lessons. Brutal lessons.

Still, he found himself muttering, “Been a volunteer firefighter for the past five years, mostly in Montana and Idaho. This is my first week on this fire.”

He grabbed his T-shirt and rose to his feet. “I’ll go soak this in water again and bathe the doe’s burns as best I can. There’s not much else we can do.”

If Maura was puzzled by the abrupt change of subject, she didn’t show it. She bit her lower lip in thought, which only made her look ten times more earnest—and naive—than she already did. And ten times as irresistible.

He couldn’t believe she was old enough to have graduated college, much less have been in the Forest Service long enough to work a couple of big fires. She barely came up to his shoulder, and with that schoolgirlish braid of red hair trailing over her shoulder and those innocent blue eyes, he’d have guessed her age closer to sixteen than twenty-something.

Except for when she stretched behind her for her helmet and one had a glimpse of the curve of a full, womanly breast and nipped-in waist.

She set the helmet so its headlamp shed better light onto the doe’s injuries. “I’ll take the first turn at bathing her burns, if you like. If we keep it up through the night, it’ll ease her discomfort until we can get her proper veterinary care, don’t you think?”

Ash simply stared at her. She had to know the animal wouldn’t make it to morning. He wasn’t going to clarify the point, however, not when Maura was looking up at him with her big blue eyes as if he could turn the world on its axis.

“Why not, I guess,” Ash said, curbing the cynicism in his voice. “Let me take first crack at it, though, while you set up camp in the chamber where we left our gear.”

She smiled, and it was like the sun breaking over the horizon. “Thanks, Ash.”

She disappeared down the passage while Ash soaked and resoaked the T-shirt, being careful not to touch the doe’s burns with it as he ran water over them. Her breathing did seem less labored, but that might be because she was barely clinging to life. He gave her another drink of water and tried to coax the fawn into taking one and failed.

Of course, ministering to the downtrodden and discouraged was Maura’s specialty. That and her seemingly unrelenting optimism.

Ash sat back on his heels. Optimism. Now there was a word he’d long forgotten the meaning of. And a state of mind he hadn’t been able to revive in himself since…well, since forever, it seemed.

But today he’d experienced the whiff of a remembrance, like a familiar scent from childhood drifting on the wind, of a time when he hadn’t been skeptical of every hope that lifted its wings being dashed to pieces when it inevitably fell to earth. A time when every small taste of sweetness didn’t come with a castor-oil dose of bitterness. A time when he wasn’t constantly wary, could be open with his heart and know how to keep another’s heart in trust.

And he supposed he had Maura to thank for that— or should he curse her instead? Because she had only underscored how difficult, if not hopeless, was his journey toward redemption. Toward regaining such trust, in others as well as in himself.

With a shake of his head, Ash roused himself from his contemplation. Well, he only had to make it through the night with Maura and her hopefulness. And kindness. And honesty. And tantalizing appeal. He could keep her at a distance until the morning. Then, with any luck, he could say goodbye and return to reality.

Placing his hands on his thighs, Ash hauled himself to his feet and went to see how he could help her.

Maura glanced around as Ash entered the chamber, where she’d made inroads to getting organized for the night.

His gray eyes turned abruptly stormy as they took in the results of her efforts.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“I discovered the space blanket in your fire pack,” she explained. “I laid it out next to the one I had, you know, so we could share our b-body heat.” She couldn’t believe she was stammering and blushing like a girl. “It’ll help us keep warm.”

“Really,” Ash said in that one-word commentary she was coming to learn had a lot of different meanings. Such as right now, with how he’d slipped his fire shirt back on but hadn’t buttoned it, as if oblivious to the cool temperature in the cave. He was also back to being remote, it seemed, and she wondered why.

“I also have a bunch of water purification tabs in case we need to go that route,” she prattled on almost nervously, “but with a combined total of four bottles of water, we should be good for a few days, if needed. And we both have compasses, duct tape and first aid kits, as well as some pretty complete rations.”

She spread her hands, indicating the food she’d assembled on their space blankets. “Your three power bars along with my MRE,” she said, referring to the ready-made meals that were available for firefighters to take with them when it seemed likely they might not make it back to fire camp that night.

“An MRE, huh?” He picked up the retort pouch the meal had come in and scrutinized it as if it were vermin. “‘Hearty Beef Stew.’ The problem is, it could say chicken or pasta or veggie delight on here, and it wouldn’t matter. It all has the taste and texture of corrugated cardboard.”

“How on earth did you get to be such a sourpuss!” she finally burst out, half teasing, half serious. “I think we can count ourselves lucky to have any kind of nourishment at all. And that we’re in here, relatively safe and sound, instead of being the ones getting eaten alive by that fire out there!”

He looked at her strangely for a long moment, then shrugged. “You’re right. Let’s eat.”

They settled into their spare meal, Maura sitting cross-legged across from Ash, who was doing the same. After her previous nausea, she was surprised to find herself as hungry as a bear, and it was difficult not to bolt her food. The MRE had come with a helping of apple crisp, and despite Ash’s dearth of expectations, the dessert tasted as close to ambrosia as Maura could imagine.

Ash ate methodically and without enthusiasm, as if in the past he had indeed had to eat corrugated cardboard and like it. She couldn’t help but be curious about his history, but she had a feeling they weren’t going to pass the evening chummily sharing their life stories. Although it would be nice to know his last name, for crying out loud.

She was about to ask when he said, “It’s true, you know.”

“What is?” Maura asked.

“That the fire is alive. That it has a purpose. That it’s vengeful. And it will swallow you up, just like the whale did Jonah.”

She glanced sharply at him, wondering again at this change of mood. “You can’t think about it that way. You know that. That’s one of the first rules of firefighting. You make the fire too real and you lose your ability to combat it. And it’ll consume you.”

“Exactly.” He continued eating methodically, musingly. “Either you’re consumed with combating it, or it’ll consume you. Either way, you lose something of yourself.”

Was he right? Maura asked herself. Her thoughts turned to the fire that had been scorching the countryside for more than eight weeks since it started just outside of her hometown of Rumor. It had steadily marched, like a plague of locusts, south-southeast into the Custer National Forest, one of the most diverse and spectacular pieces of forestland in the state of Montana. Already the fire had torched more than 250,000 acres, leaving nothing in its wake, the soil charred so badly it was as hard as her plastic helmet.

And the fire didn’t seem to be letting up. It did seem possessed, in fact, with its own vicious temper and capricious moods that were as unpredictable as that of a wild man, making the damage it did that much more senseless.

Maura set her dessert aside, no longer hungry. “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “But even if I try to be objective about forest fires, the truth is, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about a lot of things having to do with the land.”

She gave a rueful shake of her head. “It’s the main reason I got a degree in forestry and natural resources management, because I love this state—love it like it’s a part of me. This fire…well, you know how it goes. Its effects will reverberate throughout the whole ecosystem. The jackrabbits, sage grouse and ground squirrels lose food, shelter and nesting cover with the cheatgrass and sagebrush gone. With those animals dying off, there’s nothing for raptors and snakes to prey on. And it goes on and on from there.”

“It’s called survival of the fittest,” Ash murmured. He had set his meal aside, too. The dank, depressing smell in the cave seemed worse all of a sudden.

“Is it? Or is it not getting the God-given right to thrive and have a normal existence, like Smokey and his mother?”

He gazed at her calmly. “No one’s ever said that life was fair.”

She gestured around her, rather urgently, she realized. “And we’re not to try and do our best to make it a little more fair?”

Was she trying to convince Ash? Or herself? She only knew she had to try.

She leaned forward intently, forearms on her knees. “You know how you have dreams you want so badly to make happen you can nearly taste it?”

“I guess.” He was wary, watching her.

“Well, I have a dream. Someday I want to have a ranch. It wouldn’t have to be big, maybe just a few dozen acres. I’d invite all kinds of disadvantaged children there—children from broken homes, or who’ve had some behavioral problems, or who just need a place to go after school instead of a dark, empty house.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’d teach them how they can be a part of taking care of the land. I’d show them how we need to be good stewards and protect and preserve our environment and wildlife. And maybe by doing that, the children will learn how to be responsible and helpful and purposeful. And they’ll feel safe and secure themselves. And happy.”

“You think that will do it?” Ash asked. His voice wasn’t skeptical so much as carefully neutral. “Spending some time on your ranch is gonna turn these kids’ lives around, and it won’t matter what they have to go back home to each evening?”

“I think it will help, at least a little, or maybe just enough.” She dropped her chin, studying the sooty toes of her lug-soled boots. “I get frustrated, though, knowing that there are so many children and animals who are going without that help every day, every single day.”

She gave a huff of frustration, and again she couldn’t have said with whom she was frustrated.

“You can’t save the world, Maura,” Ash said, and it was now as if he were trying to convince her of something that meant a great deal to him.

She wouldn’t go there. She couldn’t go there.

“If I help rescue just one soul,” Maura said stubbornly, “it’d be worth it. I mean, don’t you feel your life has been given new purpose by saving mine?”

He didn’t answer, only gazed at her with that same wariness.

She rose, needing to move, and went to stand at the entrance to the passage that led to the outside. Even from several yards in, the sound of the wind was like getting up close and personal with a volcano. The worst of the fire would have passed by now, but the danger—and the fury—were not over. They would never be over, for there would always be forest fires. There would always be the suffering of the innocent. It was a law of nature.

Panic again fought its way upward in her chest.

Distracting herself, Maura passed a palm across the back of her neck. “Heavens, I feel grubby. I’d give anything for a nice hot shower.”

“I’d suggest freshening up in the spring,” Ash said from behind her, “but it’s just a little spit of water, and the pool it flows into isn’t something you’d give your dog a bath in, much less yourself.”

She turned to regard him. He had exhibited little reaction to her diatribe, except for his eyes returning to that cool silver that created enough distance between them you could have inserted the Grand Canyon with room to spare. She knew she hadn’t changed his mind a bit. Of course, she knew what he believed; he’d said it outright.

“Just a spit of water, eh?” She elevated her chin an inch. “Not exactly my idea of clean, but better than nothing.”

She found the bar of Ivory she always kept in her pack and took it and her helmet with her as she headed stalwartly down the tunnel. She wasn’t going to let Ash Whatever-his-last-name-was get her down.

She gave the doe a quick check on the way by. Smokey was still glued to his mother’s side. Maura stooped to soothe a hand down the bridge of the doe’s nose. She barely responded. She seemed to be resting better, though. Maura would take the next turn bathing the burns after her own abbreviated ablution.

The spring, she discovered, was the trifling affair Ash had warned it would be, barely a trickle down the side of one wall into a small muddy pool at the bottom. She sighed. It would have to do.

Wedging her helmet into a crevice in the opposite wall, she removed her fire shirt, then hesitated with her hands on the hem of her T-shirt, listening. The only sounds were that of the spring echoing in the chamber. Not that Ash would peek; she knew that without asking. She drew the T-shirt over her head, reveling in the feel of fresh, albeit cold, air on her skin, and impulsively removed her bra as well. She used the red bandanna she’d had tied around her throat to catch the meager stream from the spring, soaped the dampened area and washed herself as best she could, shivering a little in the cool of the cave. Meager as it was, the bath did revive her spirit.

She didn’t know why she cared, anyway—about what Ash thought or if he had the disposition of a badger and an outlook so gloomy it would take a trip to the far side of the sun to brighten it up a bit. But she had to wonder what had made him that way: wary, secretive, cynical.

Something flitted past her ear, ruffling her hair. Maura knew it was a bat—she knew it—but she couldn’t stifle a startled cry.

She gave another when barely three seconds later Ash appeared around the corner, his Pulaski gripped in his hand, his eyes wide with concern, his features taut. His stance that of knight ready to do battle.

Except that there was nothing to do battle with. And that’s when Maura realized why, actually, his expression was so strained: Ash’s headlamp had zeroed in like a spotlight on her naked torso. She felt like Gypsy Rose Lee on stage at the burlesque.

Maura gave yet another screech, this one of embarrassment, as she stooped, fumbling for her fire shirt to cover herself.

Realizing where the beam of his headlamp was trained, Ash whipped his helmet off his head and shoved it under his arm with military precision, so that the light now fell in a pool at his feet.

“Are you okay?” he asked belatedly. He had obviously been ready to come to her rescue for the second time that day. It wasn’t the fact that she was standing there virtually half-naked that a thrill of goose bumps swept over her.

It was immediately followed by a thoroughly warming blush at the spark that leaped to his eyes, remote no more.

“A…a bat startled me,” Maura stammered, clutching her shirt at her throat with one hand while holding it spread over her breasts with the other. “I’m fine…just embarrassed, is all. That I screamed, I mean, and made you come running. I must have scared the life out of you.”

He finally averted his eyes, obviously nearly as embarrassed as she was.

“I didn’t know if—or what—had happened.” He actually shuffled his feet. “You know, if you’d seen a spider or if there was some kind of animal you’d come across that was threatening you…”

He shoved a hand through his dark hair. “Oh, hell.”

Maura broke out into a smile. How sweet of him, just when she was about to give up on him. As much as he might pretend he was a hard case, she had a feeling Ash might be in the same league of softie as her father.

“I’m fine,” Maura said, suddenly lighthearted, where a few moments ago she’d been ready to throw in the towel. “Really. I’m used to spiders and bats and most everything else. But thank you for coming to my rescue—again.”

He mumbled something not quite sounding like “You’re welcome,” and stormed back down the passage without so much as a by-your-leave.

Maura’s smile only widened. He couldn’t have seemed more uncomfortable than if she’d caught him in a lie.

And maybe she had.

Ash stalked—as best as one could hunched over and boot soles slip-sliding on a damp, uneven cave floor—back to the chamber where he and Maura had set up camp. Once there, he drew in half a dozen bracing breaths through clenched teeth.

He needed to get a grip on himself. He was taking this rescue business way too far. Maura was no shrinking violet who needed him to stomp on bugs or chase away critters. That had been clear from the start. It had been the whole point of calling her a powder puff. She had a degree in forestry, for Pete’s sake, had probably spent more time braving the wilds of Montana than he had.

But, damn, it felt good to have her look at him with those big, blue eyes as if he was her own personal hero. And damn, but seeing her standing there, her skin wet and glowing, that red braid of hair, itself alive as the fire outside, spilling over one breast—it had been like glimpsing heaven.

A heaven he didn’t even dare dream about.

And tonight was going to be hell, confined here in this cave with her. Ash swore, vividly and succinctly. He would almost rather have fought a thousand forest fires.

He looked around as he heard her return to the chamber.

“I can’t tell you how much better I feel,” she said cheerily and without a bit of her earlier embarrassment. He had to admire her gumption. But then, she hadn’t heard his next bit of news.

“Well, if you’re done for the night, I’m thinkin’ we’d better get some sleep.” More brusquely than he meant to, he continued, “It’s best if we shut off the headlamps to conserve our batteries. Chances are we’ll make it out tomorrow, but we’ve actually got no idea how long we might have to hole up here before we can get out or someone else can get in.”

He paused, then decided he might as well give it to her straight. “Once we turn out the light, it’ll be black as six feet under in here, just to let you know. It could be kind of spooky.”

She looked at him strangely before nodding. “I’ll be fine.”

“Then I’ll let you get settled.”

He headed back down to the spring for his own quick swab off. Ten minutes later he came back to find her on her side, her back to him, her space blanket wrapped around her, with her hard hat for a pillow. The small mound she made lying there looked not much bigger than a bag of feed.

Well, he may as well get this over with.

He dropped to his own space blanket. “Ready for me to turn off the headlamp?” Ash asked without preamble.

“Yes—oh, wait,” Maura said, pushing back the blanket and half sitting up. “I forgot to take my turn at bathing the doe’s burns.”

Making a show of rustling around to get comfortable, he mumbled, “You don’t have to. I…I checked on her while I was washing up.”

“How is she doing?”

This was the worst news of all, and he’d have given his right arm not to have to tell it to her. But he owed her the truth.

“Maura, she died,” Ash said.

Her eyes widened in shock, then closed as her mouth tightened into a thin line.

He felt like a twenty-four-carat louse. “It’s for the best, you know,” he said tersely. “She never did have a chance.”

“I guess.” Her head bent and she said nothing for a long moment. “And the fawn?”

“He seems to be doing fine, but he’s not budging from her side.” He paused, then added, “We won’t leave him here. We’ll get him out with us somehow.”

She lifted her chin, and the watery smile she treated him to was so grateful it had him regretting his momentary weakness.

“So, you ready for me to turn out the light?” he said.

At her nod, Ash switched off his headlamp. Maura gave a soft gasp of surprise, and even he was momentarily taken aback. The darkness was absolute and enveloping. It was difficult to ignore it. Difficult to keep it at bay.

He distracted himself by experimenting with a more comfortable way to rest his head than on his helmet, and finally settled on using his bent arm. Either way, however, was about as conducive to sleep as trying to bunk in a herd of stampeding cattle. The space blanket had the flexibility of sheet metal and it crackled every time he breathed, but there wasn’t any other choice for warmth.

He’d known it was chilly in the cave, but lying still without cover other than his clothes and the space blanket, and with the overwhelming darkness, it was like being shut up in a meat locker.

And nightmarishly reminiscent of another time in his life, when the darkness had been as complete, almost in danger of permeating his skin, like being submerged in a vat of blackest ink, until he became the darkness itself.

Ash shuddered. With effort, he concentrated on the sounds of the cave—the trickle of water, the soft whir of bat wings, the faint but ominous crackle and pop of the dying fire…a muffled sniff, and then another.

“Maura?” Ash said. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes,” came the muffled answer. There was no sound for a prolonged moment—and then a sob that sounded as if it had come bursting out of her like a cork from a bottle.

He fumbled for his headlamp and flicked it back on. Blinking to get his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out Maura huddled on her space blanket with her back to him.

“Maura, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you and have you call me powder puff and make some pithy comment about how real firefighters don’t cry about the loss of wildlife and forest. After all, it’s just p-part of the job, right? A part of life. No need to get all maudlin and teary-eyed.”

“I wouldn’t say those things,” he denied rather sourly. “I mean, I know you’ve got a low opinion of me—one I haven’t taken a lot of pains to discourage—but I’m not a complete hard-ass.”

“And I am not a powder puff! Just because I believe in things turning out for the best and that I can have an impact on them, doesn’t make me a lightweight or a Pollyanna or whatever you choose to call me.”

She gave a flounce, but the effect was lost in a cellophane-like crinkling. “Maybe you believe I shouldn’t have even tried to save that poor animal, or tried to ease her pain or her little one’s fears. Just leave them alone and let nature take its course! Maybe you should have done that when you came up on me struggling to get out of the fire!”

“I don’t believe that, and I wouldn’t have let you get burnt to a crisp,” Ash protested. But he could see he wouldn’t change her mind that way. And he wanted to change her mind, he realized.

He took a deep breath, doubting what he was doing even as he was about to do it. “Just like I wouldn’t let you lie over there crying without any comfort. So come here.”

And without asking, he reached an arm around her waist to scoop her against him and hold her soft, small body against his.

Miracle of miracles, she turned into him as she sobbed against his shoulder. And miracle of miracles, it felt damned good—oh, not that it was good she was in such distress. But that he had even a prayer, simply by providing that shoulder, of easing her sorrow and pain.

It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. And he liked it a lot.

“What makes you think other firefighters aren’t as torn up inside at the destruction they’re witness to?” he asked once the storm of weeping seemed to abate.

“Oh, I don’t think that about other firefighters.” She sniffled. “Just you.”

“I see.” He hadn’t exactly been a font of compassion, had he? “Well, actually, I fight fires because I have to. Like you, I can’t sit by and watch this land go up in smoke. I…I love it too much.”

“I knew that you did.” Her voice wasn’t triumphant, just quietly matter-of-fact. “Then why do you try to make people believe different?”

“I don’t try to make people believe different,” he said in echo of her own assertion. “Just you.”

He was certainly treading on dangerous ground, now. But he didn’t have to tell her how he’d gotten into volunteering to fight fires—that, indeed, he’d had a need to help out, but he’d also had a need to get out. Get out of the four walls that confined him, if only for a little while.

But that time—and those reasons—seemed of little significance at the moment. What counted was now, with Maura in his arms. Needing him in a way he hadn’t let himself be needed in a decade.

She actually snuggled against him, and his arm tightened almost reflexively to bring her closer still. She was so small, so delicately built, he found himself marveling at the determination it must have taken for her to pass the physical test to qualify to be a firefighter. He had no doubt that she would achieve her dream of running a ranch for kids who needed a guiding hand. No doubt that somehow, some way, she would save that one soul that would make any amount of pain or disappointment worth it to her.

How he himself could have used that kind of support! His life might have turned out much differently…?.

“You know, I’ve kind of nourished a small dream myself,” Ash said. He could barely believe he was speaking these words aloud—he’d mulled them over in his mind, certainly, millions of times—and yet he couldn’t have stopped himself even if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. “A dream of owning a spread, too.”

“You have?” He couldn’t see her face, but her tone was encouraging.

“Yeah. In the past five years I’ve worked on a bunch of ranches from here to the Canadian border. That’s how I got ranching in my blood. I’m foreman of a ranch right now—temporary foreman, that is, although it could turn into something long-term. Working in the role every day, knowing the herd better and better, along with every section they’re grazing… It’s only made me hunger for a place of my own, where I can look out across a herd and know every one of those cows is mine—mine to tend and raise up—and that the land they’re standing on is well taken care of.”

“It sounds like the ranch I want to have for disadvantaged children.” Maura shifted to look up at him, and the movement brushed her breast against his ribs. He had to concentrate with all his might to temper his physical response. “I want them to learn about the land, how to think of the world beyond themselves.”

He didn’t want to put a damper on her enthusiasm, especially when it seemed he might have been able to turn her attitude about him a notch toward the positive, but he felt compelled to be honest with her. “It may be hard to do that, though, when their world is filled to the brim with worries about survival—where the next meal’s coming from, how they’ll stay warm at night. How they can ever feel safe and secure.”

He touched two fingers to her lips, forestalling her protest. “I’m not tryin’ to discourage you from following your dream, Maura. It’s just that some kids struggle with a lot of problems that have to be addressed before they can even begin to think of others.”

I know that from experience, he thought but didn’t say. That definitely was a subject for a whole different time.

Yet Maura must have gleaned enough information from his advice to guess. Gently she pulled his hand away. “It must be a terrible, terrible thing to feel there’s no one in the world you can count on. And I know that I don’t have that kind of experience to help me relate to kids like that, Ash.”

She lifted her arm and, in a move that shocked him with its intimacy and power, she placed her palm on the side of his face, her thumb caressing his cheekbone. “But I do know what it is like to feel safe…as safe as I feel in your arms right now, as if nothing can hurt me as long as I’m here. It’s a wonderful feeling to give someone, too, even if you haven’t felt it yourself.”

It floored him—that she felt safe with him. Secure. Despite everything.

“You don’t even know me, Maura,” Ash felt duty bound to warn her. “You don’t know.”

“Oh, I think I do. What I don’t understand is why you want people to believe the worst about you. Because I won’t. I won’t believe you’re not a hopeful person, too. You wouldn’t have dreams if you weren’t hopeful.”

Ash couldn’t speak. The air in the cave was filled with emotion, ripe with desire. Even in the indirect light from his headlamp, her eyes were the clearest, purest blue, the expression in them heartbreakingly untouched. He would have given anything, anything to assure her she was right. And at that moment he almost felt he could assure her that he’d make his dream come true. Make her dream come true.

He didn’t know how he might make it happen for her, make it happen for them both. But it just might be possible—if they did it together.

“I can’t say as I completely buy your reasoning, but you make a pretty convincing argument, powder puff,” he said roughly.

She frowned engagingly. Adorably. Her lower lip pouted, and he knew just what he wanted to do with it. With her.

“Apparently I haven’t convinced you how singularly unappealing I find that nickname to be,” she said in that oh-so-proper manner he’d witnessed earlier that evening. He wondered where she’d picked it up, being as how she was as elemental as the fire outside.

“Really,” Ash drawled. “’Cause I find it—and you—smack dab the opposite.”

And he lowered his head to take her mouth with his.

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