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After tucking her under the sheet, Lucy stood back while Malcolm scooped up Ellie, sheet, light blanket and all, and carried her along the corridor to the front door. She was still fast asleep.

'Uh...' he began after Lucy had ducked ahead of him to open the door.

But there was really nothing safe to say at this point. Instead, they both laughed ruefully, then shrugged and managed words of farewell.

'Oh, Charlotte,' Lucy sighed to her sleeping daughter a few minutes later as she went in to check on her one final time. 'I should thank you, shouldn't I? I've never seen a man look so hunted and so horrified at the mention of one simple word, and, of course, it's best to know at once where I stand.

'I knew it, deep down, anyway, after everything he said—and didn't say—tonight. In other words, I'm so far from standing beside him at the altar that I'm not even within sight of the church. But, I admit, I would rather have gone on with the illusion for a little longer, rather than having it shattered in such an embarrassing way, my innocent, gorgeous sweetheart.'

She bent down and gave Charlotte a last kiss, then took herself off to bed and spent a restless night.

Lucy didn't need to study the bleary faces of the night staff going off work on Monday morning to know that it had been a difficult shift.

The ever-thickening haze of smoke, the unrelenting heat and persistent wind and the voice of the newsreader on the radio this morning all told the same story. There were major fires near the town of Braidwood, in the Brindabella Ranges, and in Stromlo Forest, with at least one of the fires having been deliberately lit.

To anyone who'd ever lived on a farm or had had to deal with bushfire-related casualties—and Lucy had done both—the idea was appalling. Fortunately, the Stromlo Forest fire was now under control and wouldn't spread to threaten the city, but the weather still hadn't changed, and Black Mountain Hospital's Accident and Emergency department had received seven injured firefighters overnight, after a wall of fire had blown back on them, as well as four more the previous day. Lucy learned that Malcolm had worked most of Sunday and had been at the hospital all Sunday night.

The first of today's casualties had been treated for minor burns, smoke inhalation and a broken leg, and had now been transferred to the orthopaedic ward, but the others, admitted just half an hour earlier, were more seriously injured and not yet stable enough to be moved to the hospital's burns unit. In addition, the smoky air hanging over the city had triggered asthma and other respiratory complaints in many people, some of whom required hospitalisation to get their condition under control.

With her counterpart on the night-shift, Mark Conrad, staying only long enough to get her up to speed on volunteer firefighter Kim Turner's status, Lucy was immediately plunged into a working day so absorbing that she didn't manage to eat at all at lunchtime. All she had time for was a quick phone call to the school to ascertain that Charlotte was as well as she'd seemed that morning, and that her illness the previous day had really only been a twenty-four-hour virus.

Kim Turner, in contrast, hovered dangerously close to death. He had suffered burns to his face and arms, as well as severe smoke inhalation and dehydration, and they had to work over him for a long time, setting up oxygen equipment for his breathing, starting an IV line for fluids and pain medication, dressing his burns and battling for his life for hours until it finally seemed possible that he'd pull through.

He still had a long road ahead of him, however, and would spend weeks in the small and very specialised burns unit that formed part of the hospital's intensive care ward.

Meanwhile, the news had come through that there was fire on Black Mountain itself, and it was spreading, though not out of control. This only added to the urgency in the atmosphere, for Malcolm as well as for everyone else.

'I hope they're happy with what we've done,' Lucy heard him comment tightly in reference to Kim Turner, an hour after he'd handed their patient over to the burns unit team. 'He had a massive shock to his whole system and it was a real balancing act to get his treatment right. I know Gil Henderson isn't in favour of—'

'Don't keep thinking about it,' Heather Woodley interrupted. 'Go home, Malcolm,' she ordered, just as Lucy was handing over to the nurse who'd just come on for the evening shift.

'And there are two others waiting for beds,' Lucy ended her summary, having to force her concentration. 'But you won't be concerned with those, other than stubbing your toes on their trolley wheels in the corridor as you go past.'

'That kind of a day, huh?' said Noelle Burnford sympathetically.

'Yes, and the weather still hasn't broken, though I'm sure they said on the forecast this morning that a change was due.'

She wasn't really fully focused on what she was saying. Heather and Malcolm were standing just a few feet away, and she couldn't help noticing the possessive caress in Heather's tone as she lectured him, 'You
know
you're worried. About Ellie, and about your house. And we'll all understand if you need to go now. None of the rest of us live close enough to Black Mountain to be threatened, and the hospital itself has two suburbs and a four-lane main road between it and the fire, so there's no danger there. But
you...'

Malcolm raked a tired hand through his hair as he began to walk down the corridor, with Heather still at his side. Lucy was walking just behind them.

'All right, then,' he conceded finally. 'I
am
concerned, of course. Not about Ellie's safety. I'm sure Jenny would leave the house if there was any danger. And, of course, everyone may be asked to evacuate, to be on the safe side. But Ellie is probably scared...worried about the cat...and the smoke could well trigger an asthma attack. Again, Jenny can handle it, but I'd like to be there.'

'Of course,' Heather soothed him. 'Would you like me to drop over with some take-aways tonight after I finish? I'm due to go off at sevenish.'

'No, thanks, Heather. You'll be far too tired yourself by that time to want to be rushing over to my place,' he answered, apparently just as concerned for her well-being as she was for his.

'Really, it'll be no trouble,' she insisted eagerly.

'I'm sure it wouldn't, but, please, don't.' This time Malcolm's real meaning was clearer—to Lucy, at least. He honestly didn't want Heather to come.

But Lucy was dismayed at the way her heart suddenly lifted.

Just because he's not interested in Heather Woodley, it doesn't mean he
is
interested in me, she reminded herself. It's pointless to go around viewing every other woman in his orbit with suspicion. If that kiss on Saturday was just a mistake, and he doesn't want to pursue it any further, the reason lies far more deeply inside him, and in the past, than that.

'Bye, Lucy,' he said as they started to go to different sections of the car park. Heather was still at his side, and echoed his goodbye.

Lucy answered both of them as politeness demanded, and could still hear Heather chatting away in a determined fashion for another thirty seconds as their paths diverged.

The last thing she heard was, 'I know it's none of my business, but you really don't look after yourself as well as you should.'

At after-school care, Lucy found Charlotte hopping up and down, impatient to leave. 'Mrs Girdlestone says there's a fire on Black Mountain,' she said, 'right near where Elbe lives. We have to go round there and tell her, so she can escape.'

'I'm sure she knows about the fire already, and isn't in any danger, love,' Lucy said soothingly.

But Charlotte was tearfully insistent, to the point where Lucy put a hand to her daughter's forehead again. No, she seemed quite cool—or as cool as was normal on a dry-roasted day like this—and she didn't show any of the listlessness which had coloured her behaviour for most of yesterday.

'Do you feel well, Charlotte?' Lucy asked all the same.

'Yes, but I want to go and help Ellie look for the cat. Mrs Girdlestone says cats often go missing when there's a fire, and Ellie and I couldn't
bear
it if Pioneer got burned to death.'

Lucy sighed. She didn't normally allow herself to be pestered into action by her daughter, but on this occasion she had to admit to herself, It's exactly what I want to do, as well—go round to Malcolm's just in case there's something I can do. If they're being told to evacuate, or something, he and Ellie might want to stay with us.

She ignored the many obvious dangers inherent in this possibility and said aloud to Charlotte, 'Let's go home and change first, shall we?'

'Do you mean we
are
going?'

Again, Lucy sighed. 'Yes.'

'Oh, Ellie will be so glad. She really
needs
me, Mummy. I wish you could grasp that fact.'

Good heavens! Lucy stifled a laugh at the pompous choice of words. Charlotte frequently came out with gems of this sort. She had a retentive memory for adult conversation, and liked to practise phrases she'd heard. Lucy suspected that the school principal, Mr Halifax, was the culprit in this case.

At home, they ate a snack of fruit and iced chocolate, then changed quickly. Lucy insisted on long pants for both of them, just in case there was any question of tramping through the long grass and scratchy bush that sloped up from the back of Ellie's and Malcolm's house in search of the cat.

When they got there at a quarter to five, however, they found Pioneer safely shut indoors and no suggestion of an evacuation yet, although a yellow bushfire service vehicle was grinding its way along the back of the houses with a bulldozer in its wake, scraping a firebreak of raw brown earth.

The four of them went out to the gate in the back fence to watch, and a suited firefighter came up to them and told them, as he'd told several neighbours along the route, 'Stand by for any information. We're going house to house at the moment, telling people to fill up their baths and hose their wooden decks and back gardens. Close your windows facing the fire, and open the ones away from the fire. Keep your pets inside.'

'Yes, we've got the cat already.'

'The southerly change has hit Victoria, with some good rain. It should be here in a few hours. At the moment it's moving faster than the fire, and we have the front of the fire pretty well controlled. But if the wind picks up just ahead of the change, we may find it gets around us and it might get this far.'

Malcolm nodded. 'Stay put, then?'

'Yes, and get your hose ready.'

'What about the water pressure?'

'There aren't too many houses backing onto Black Mountain, so the system should be able to take it.'

'There you go, Charlotte,' Lucy told her daughter. 'We didn't need to worry after all. We can go home.'

Wrong.

'I can't leave Ellie in danger!' Charlotte said theatrically. 'I
need
to protect her.'

'No, you don't!' Ellie said indignantly. '
I
need to protect
you
because I'm older!'

'But I'm bigger.''

'So?'

'And
you sound wheezy!'

'I just had my inhaler, and Daddy checked me and said I'm fine. I
never
get really bad asthma any more since I started swimming a lot.'

'Anyway, the point is, we need to protect each other, so we can't go home yet. I'm sorry, Mummy.'

Malcolm was laughing. It was a lovely sound, rich and warm, with no hint in it of the complicated pain of his past. 'Stay if you like,' he told Lucy, his fingers running in a quick caress down her bare arm. 'In fact,
please,
stay!'

'But you told Heather—'

'You're
not
Heather.'

'Oh. No. I suppose I'm not,' she replied meekly, wishing her heart wasn't singing quite so loudly, and well aware of the significant look the two girls had just exchanged when they'd seen Malcolm touch her.

Charlotte had obviously relayed the whole story of that late-night, Beauty-and-the-Beast kiss at school today, with attendant speculations on the subject of marriage. Oh, dear...

They stayed for another three hours, and Lucy conceded to Malcolm halfway through it, 'This is rather fun.'

'In a dangerous kind of way.'

He meant the fire, she hoped.

The situation had hotted up as the wind had increased, and the fire had burned out the powerlines that serviced the area, so they got take-away pizza and ate it on the lawn as darkness fell. They could actually see the line of flame up on the slopes of Black Mountain, several hundred metres off, and hear the shouts of firefighters and the noise of truck engines grinding through the bush.

Then, just as it was completely dark, another of the yellow emergency vehicles came toiling along the new fire-break, stopping at each house.

'All occupants accounted for?' they wanted to know. 'Is there anyone who has a teenager, perhaps, who isn't home yet? We really need to know if everyone in the houses along here is safe, and if there are any kids who play a lot up the back there, we'd like to talk to them.'

'What's happened?' Malcolm asked. Lucy could tell that his instincts had been alerted. This wasn't simply a routine question. 'Has a body been found?'

Lucy looked over towards the girls. They were still playing hide and seek in the garden, their mood very wild under the influence of all the excitement. But Malcolm's words had reminded her that the danger was real, and she didn't want the two little ones to be confronted too closely by the shocking possibility of death.

'No...' To her relief, the emergency worker shook his head. 'Nothing like that, thank goodness. And my men are all OK so far. But we've found the remnants of a camp up in a gully where the fire passed through. There would have been a lot of heat at that point because the trees were pretty dense. We're trying to find out if it was just kids who made the camp, or if someone was living there.'