Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (41 page)

Since the marks weren’t rubbed out or painted over, Grandma Rose must not have found them. That, or she treasured them with the same sentimentality as Aubrey.

She was tempted to carve another
X
, one for this summer, then chided herself for her silliness. She wasn’t a kid anymore. And Annie wasn’t with her to make a game of the ritual.

Besides, marking the headboard would be admitting she was really and truly leaving Blue Ridge...and Gage.

Aubrey and her parents were scheduled to depart in less than an hour, and she still wasn’t fully convinced she was doing the right thing.

Everyone she ran into yesterday asked her why she was leaving and wished her good luck in a singsong voice suggesting she’d need it where she was going.

Did they know something she didn’t?

“Aubrey?” Grandma Rose tapped lightly on the door.

“Yeah. Just a minute.” Aubrey climbed awkwardly to her feet. Butting her legs against the footboard, she pushed the small bed back into place and winced guiltily at the loud scraping noise. “Hey,” she said, flinging the door open. “What’s up?”

“Everything all right?” Grandma Rose studied Aubrey’s face.

“Fine.”

“You look flushed.”

“Oh.” Aubrey dismissed her grandmother with what she hoped passed for a nonchalant laugh and gestured her into the bedroom. “I was crawling around behind the bed looking for any forgotten items.”

And she’d found some. Fourteen
X
s.

“Is this a bad time?” Grandma Rose asked.

“No, not at all.” Aubrey smiled. She’d been smiling a lot the last day or so, and it had yet to feel natural.

Grandma Rose perched on the edge of the bed. “I have something for you.”

“What’s that?” Aubrey sat down beside her.

Souvenirs were another farewell tradition. Grandma Rose would present Aubrey and her sister with a token gift their last morning in Blue Ridge. It was never much. Just a little memento to remind them of the summer.

“Here.” Grandma Rose reached into the pocket of her floral smock and withdrew a small object. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to give this to you.”

The gift was hardly token and not what Aubrey expected. Her grandmother placed it in her hands, prompting a protest.

“I can’t accept this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too special.” Emotion caused her throat to close.

Housed inside the antique sterling-silver frame was a black-and-white photograph of Grandma Rose and Grandpa Glen taken more than fifty years earlier on their honeymoon in San Francisco. Arms linked and dressed smartly in the fashion of the day, they stood on a grassy knoll. Behind them, stretching endlessly, was a magnificent view of Golden Gate Bridge. And yet, they had eyes only for each other.

The photograph had occupied a corner of her Grandma Rose’s dresser since shortly after it was taken, and Aubrey knew her grandmother cherished the keepsake.

“Which is why I want you to have it,” Grandma Rose insisted. “I’m getting older and there’s too much stuff in this house for me to take care of. With my bum hip, I need to lighten my housework.”

Aubrey couldn’t imagine how much extra housework one little framed photograph could cause. She mentally placed her and Gage in the picture, calculating how old they would be if their marriage had lasted fifty years. But then, they didn’t have a photograph from their honeymoon, mostly because they’d never gone on one. Not a real honeymoon, leastwise. Unless an overnight stay in a cheap Las Vegas hotel counted.

It seemed to Aubrey that the cosmos was forever conspiring against them. Each time they came close to making a life together, something intervened.

Something? Or
someone?

“Grandma,” she said, “do you think I let Dad control me?”

“Well...” Her grandmother pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’d put it that way.”

Half annoyed and half intrigued, Aubrey asked, “What way would you put it?”

“You’re very bright and talented. Always have been. People like you are expected to do well. Be incredibly successful. Problem is, parents of bright and talented children can do them a disservice. They see the potential, are proud of it and push their offspring too hard.”

“Like Dad?”

“He can be a force to be reckoned with when he wants to.”

“Which is most of the time.” Aubrey thought back on her relationship with her father, attempting to look at it from a different angle. “You think I’m afraid of failing?”

“And of letting your father down.”

“Sounds like classic first-born syndrome to me.”

“It does.”

Aubrey had intended to be funny but her grandmother obviously took her seriously, which sobered Aubrey.

“Oh, I’m not saying you haven’t ever rebelled,” Grandma Rose continued. “You did that just recently by coming here when he wanted to hire someone.”

“But I haven’t exactly cut the apron strings, either,” Aubrey said glumly.

She traced a finger back and forth across the photograph of her grandparents, thinking more of her love for Gage than her somewhat dysfunctional relationship with her father.

The pink-and-turquoise Barbie phone on the small desk started ringing. Grandma Rose creaked to a standing position and went to answer it. When Aubrey first arrived two months ago, she’d been surprised and amused that the once adored possession still functioned.

“Hello. Oh, hi, Eleanor.” Grandma Rose nodded at Aubrey. “She’s still here. Do you want to talk to—” Deep creases formed in her grandmother’s brow. “What’s that?”

Several seconds passed during which her grandmother’s concern visibly increased. Aubrey set the photograph on the nightstand and went to stand near her.

“Thank you for calling, Eleanor. I appreciate it.” Grandma Rose hung up the phone and turned to Aubrey. “The fire changed direction during the night. It’s fifteen miles east of Blue Ridge and heading this way.”

“What!” Aubrey struggled to digest the unexpected news. “It was thirty miles away and headed in the opposite direction when we went to bed last night.”

“Apparently the wind changed course around midnight.”

“Oh, my God.”

Shock set in as Aubrey realized the seriousness of the situation. She ran to the window behind her bed and pushed aside the curtain. Smoke filled the distant sky, hanging low over the hilltops and shining an eerie incandescent silver in the early morning light. Fear seizing her, she stumbled away from the bed.

“I have to go tell Mom and Dad. No way are we leaving now. Did Eleanor recommend you evacuate?”

“Not yet. She said she’d keep everyone advised of the fire’s status.”

“Still, I think we should prepare for the possibility. Fifteen miles isn’t that far.”

How was Gage doing, she wondered, and what was he feeling having to fight a fire so close to his hometown? Something her grandmother said about the direction of the fire suddenly penetrated her brain and triggered a rush of alarm.

“The Raintree ranch is east of Blue Ridge. At the rate the fire’s traveling, it could reach there in a matter of hours!”

“Dear heaven.”

“I think I’ll call Susan. Ask if she needs any help.”

Before Aubrey could pick up the phone, it rang again. Grandma Rose answered it.

“Hello. Yes, just a moment.” She passed the phone to Aubrey, her eyes solemn. “It’s someone named Larry Newcombe. Says he’s a commander with the wilderness firefighters.”

A dozen questions raced through Aubrey’s mind in the three seconds it took her to place the phone to her ear, most of them centering on Gage and whether or not he was safe and unharmed.

“This is Aubrey Stuart,” she said in a tight voice.

Commander Newcombe didn’t waste time with a greeting. “I hope you don’t mind me contacting you at home, Ms. Stuart. We were in contact with the local authorities and they gave us your name and number.” He cleared his throat. “We need your help.”

“My help? How?”

“We’re short medics and injuries have been heavier than usual. The BLM and Forest Service are flying some more in, but they won’t arrive until this afternoon.”

“I see.”

“Is there any chance you can come?”

Weeks of resistance to the idea of volunteering with the Hotshots vanished in a flash. “Of course, I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Thank you, ma’am. We sure appreciate it.”

She gave the commander her cell phone number, then opened the desk drawer and removed a pad of paper and pen. “I’ll need directions.”

“Fire camp is on Verde Road, about four miles south of where it junctions with the highway. Look for the markers. Once you arrive in camp, we’ll transport you to the front line.”

Front line?
The term sounded scarily like warfare to Aubrey. “How close will I be to the fire?”

“A mile or two.”

Aubrey swallowed.

“I take it you’ve been recruited,” Grandma Rose said when Aubrey disconnected with the commander.

“Appears so.” Folding the paper with the directions and stuffing it in her pocket, Aubrey filled her grandmother in on the details as best she knew them.

“How long will you be away?”

“I don’t know.” Aubrey shrugged. “As long as they need me, I suppose.”

“You be careful.”

“You, too. And call Susan for me if you don’t mind.” Together they left the bedroom and went in search of her parents. “The folks will evacuate you if it comes to that. And speaking of the folks...”

Aubrey sighed. She didn’t figure her parents would be happy with the news or the least bit understanding. Her father especially.

To her utter and complete astonishment, she was wrong.

“Naturally, you must go,” her mother said when Aubrey finished explaining to her parents about Commander Newcombe’s phone call. “I’ll contact the hospital for you, explain your delay.”

Aubrey’s mother been doing laundry most of the morning, catching it up for Grandma Rose before they left. Clean clothing and linens were folded and stacked in neat piles on the kitchen table, filling every available space.

“Thanks, Mom.” Aubrey gathered her purse and a few personal necessities she thought she might need. Spying the clean laundry, she decided a change of clothing was in order. And sturdier shoes. Turning in a half circle, she made a beeline back to her bedroom, where she’d left her packed suitcases.

A few minutes later, her father met her on the porch and walked her to her SUV. “You say the Hotshots are understaffed?”

“That’s what I’m told.” Aubrey opened the driver’s side door and tossed her tote bag onto the passenger seat.

Admittedly, she’d been a little cool to her father since the other night, though she couldn’t blame him entirely for what had happened. He might have been the catalyst for her and Gage’s argument but not the cause of it, in spite of what Gage claimed.

She had only herself to blame for that fiasco.

“Wait a minute, Aubrey,” he said when she would have escaped into the SUV.

Expecting a lecture, she cut him short. Her father was
not
going to talk her out of helping the Hotshots. “Dad, I need to leave. Now.” In the short time it had taken her to get ready to leave, the columns of smoke had doubled in size.

“Do you...” Her father hesitated, something he rarely did. “Do you think the Hotshots could use a doctor, as well as a nurse?”

“What?” She was tempted to glance at the sky and see if it had fallen. Surely she’d heard wrong.

“If they’re short of medical help, they could probably—”

“Are you serious?”

“Well...yes. I’ve already spoken to your mother. She’ll drive your grandmother to a motel in Pineville if the authorities recommend evacuating Blue Ridge.”

Stupefied, Aubrey stared. Her father, the great Alexander Stuart, heart surgeon
extraordinaire,
had just offered to help treat firefighters under conditions that were bound to be harsh and with equipment that, compared to the ultramodern operating room he was accustomed to, could only be called primitive.

“Wow.” She blinked and when he didn’t disappear, she smiled.

“Is that a yes?”

“An unequivocal yes!” Leaping into his arms, she hugged him fiercely. “Thank you, Daddy.” Abruptly, she pushed away from him and frowned. “Do you still remember basic triage?”

“Get in the car,” he said gruffly, giving her a playful shove. “And quit picking on your old man.” He went around to the passenger door. “I’ll have you know I could outsuture you with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Just checking.” Laughing, she started the engine and passed him the paper with the scribbled directions. “Here. You be navigator.”

Their camaraderie lasted for several miles. Aubrey had never worked with her father before and discovered she eagerly anticipated the opportunity. Or was it practicing emergency nursing again after a too-long absence that had her blood pumping and her nerves tingling? Except for when she and Gage were making love, she hadn’t felt this alive, this excited, since leaving Tucson. In hindsight, she’d been wrong not to accept Captain Greenough’s invitation and become a volunteer medic when he first asked her.

Could this be the happy medium she and Gage were searching for the other night?

The question and its possibly significant answer were instantly forgotten as Aubrey and her father rounded a bend and reached a large clearing.

The entire mountainside glowed a fiery orange. Smoke rose from the tops of the flames in giant, fluffy white columns that seemed to tower as high as the clouds themselves. In the wake of the flames lay acres upon acres of scorched landscape.

Aubrey hit the brakes and parked the SUV. For several moments, she and her father stared in stunned silence.

“Good Lord,” she said, her voice scratchy from having been temporarily silent.

Her father grunted and cleared his throat. “If there really is a hell on Earth, I do believe we’re looking at it.”

His sentiment matched her feelings exactly. She pressed the accelerator and resumed driving, thinking not of herself and her father, but of the perils Gage and all the Hotshots faced while fighting this unholy monster.

Chapter 14