The Rancher's Daughter

He and Maura had come so close to losing their lives.

She was stirring when he returned, blinking and struggling to sit up as the beam again filled the chamber.

Ash glanced at his watch. “It’s coming up on 6:00 a.m. I figure we can pack up and try making our way to the riverbed to see where the fire went from there. If it looks unpassable or like we’re just putting ourselves in more danger, we’ll come back here for another night and try our luck tomorrow. But we better make an effort to get back to camp, if at all possible, so we don’t draw firefighters off the fire and maybe into danger trying to find us. If that plan suits you, I mean,” he hastily amended.

He knew he was being brusque, which had to confuse the hell out of her, but he was deathly afraid of what he would—or wouldn’t—see in her eyes.

“That sounds like a good approach. What about Smokey?”

He finally looked at her, and it was in exasperation. “I said we wouldn’t leave him behind, and we won’t. I keep my word.”

“Of course you do, Ash,” Maura said calmly. She met his gaze steadily, and it took him by surprise to see there all of what he’d glimpsed in her eyes last night, and more.

Relief came in a tidal wave. He gave a nod. “I’ll fetch him just before we’re ready to leave, then.”

They packed quickly and efficiently, the way fire-fighters do, and once he’d strapped his pack on, Ash went to retrieve the fawn. He thought he’d have a struggle on his hands, but the little guy barely protested when Ash stooped to lift him in his arms, where the fawn rested his head wearily against Ash’s biceps.

He hoped to heaven the youngster wasn’t falling ill, too. It’d kill Maura to lose him as well as the doe.

He spared a glance at the doe’s body. “She’s not in pain anymore, Smoke,” he murmured to the baby deer. He noticed that his throat constricted with a sudden anguish he wouldn’t have let himself experience before last night. “Nothing can hurt her again. At least there’s that comfort.”

Once outside, he and Maura followed the edge of the slope for a few miles, looking for a way to climb up to a ridge so they could get an idea of where the fire had gone. They soon found a fairly easy grade that at least got them a hundred or so feet above the valley floor. Once there, Ash saw the impact of the fire in full detail.

The destruction went on as far as the eye could see. Acres and acres, miles and miles of nothing but devastation, as if a nuclear bomb had struck.

And still the fire burned. A plume of smoke rose over another ridge in the distance.

The day was already hot and dry. It was going to be another scorcher, in more ways than one.

He turned to Maura, whose face was white with shock.

“Oh, Ash!” she cried softly. Her eyes filled with tears.

He resisted the almost overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and comfort her, first because he already carried an armful of baby deer, and second because he had no appreciation that such comfort would help all that much. Last night had been an escape from the world and all of its pain, he realized. He wouldn’t trade that moment for anything, but it had only been temporary, fleeting. This was reality, and it was here to stay.

“It looks like the fire headed southwest,” he said without inflection. “We should be good to head to fire camp about four miles up the riverbed, and from there we can get a ride to command in Limestone.”

She swiped at her eyes, nodding.

The way was rough, part of it through still-smoldering debris, a dangerous route to take. One didn’t know when a still-standing tree trunk might topple. At one point, they came upon an abandoned fire shelter, and Maura and Ash simply exchanged looks, not speaking. Hopefully the firefighter who’d employed the shelter had survived and was also making his or her way back to camp.

It took them all of the morning and into the early afternoon to reach fire camp, where they were greeted with hugs and slaps on the back, their return hailed a miracle, for when the wind had shifted and started the fire’s deadly run, not every firefighter had been as lucky as Ash and Maura: two National Park Service firefighters had gotten caught on a slope and died.

Ash and Maura looked at each other solemnly. Yes, they had come close to dying. But they hadn’t. Whether it’d been sheer luck or destiny, they’d survived.

They reported to the incident commander, who released them to return to Limestone on the next truck, and from there, home. Hal, Maura’s crew chief, radioed ahead for a veterinarian to be in Limestone for the fawn.

It was just a little one-horse town, but to Ash, Limestone looked like paradise as the truck came to a stop in front of the mercantile that was being used as a command center for the NIFC. As he and Maura stepped onto the street, Ash found himself blurting out, “Maura, wait.”

“Yes, Ash?”

Glancing around, he pulled her aside with his free arm. With the other he was still holding on to Smokey, who’d nearly panicked earlier when Ash had tried to put him down.

He found a spot behind the truck for privacy, and she stood before him, looking up at him expectantly. He wanted badly to make good on that expectancy.

“Look, before we go our separate ways, I wanted you to know that last night meant something to me. What that something is, I still haven’t figured out yet.” He actually found he could give a short laugh. “But I hope you’ll give me your address—you know, I just realized I don’t have a clue what part of Montana you’re from—and once I take care of some old business, get my life in order, I’d like to look you up in a few months or so. I mean, if you want me to.”

The few seconds before she nodded were torture. “I’d like that, very much.” Her smile could make flowers bloom.

Ash’s heart was pounding like a drum within his chest. He could barely believe he was here, asking these things of her, promising some of them himself. “I still can’t make you any guarantees, Maura.”

“I know you’ll do your best to give what you can.” Her confidence meant everything to him.

He gave an answering nod. It would work out, some way. He’d make a name for himself managing the Holmes ranch and build up some savings, start scouting around for where he might be able to lease some grazing land, as a start. More important, he’d make peace with his family, put to rest the lingering demons that still haunted him. And then he’d be free to give Maura the kind of happiness she deserved. He had to borrow some of her hopefulness, enough to believe it was possible—

“Maura!” Ash heard a masculine shout.

They both turned, and striding toward them was a tall man in his sixties or so with a head of steel-gray hair. Although the relief wreathing his weathered features told of the recent fear he’d experienced, he walked with the air of a man used to being in command, used to being in control.

“Dad?” Maura said wonderingly, then with a cry of joy, “Dad!”

An alarm went off in Ash’s brain, a warning of the self-preservation kind that he hadn’t experienced since his days in the pen at Deer Lodge. His first reaction was to put his back to a wall, any wall, to protect it, so that any danger he had to confront would be in front of him; so that if he was going down, he’d have the best chance of taking at least one other with him.

But he was no longer a prisoner, not of that sort, at least. And he wasn’t in the position of being able to take out the opponent.

Not when that man was none other than Stratton Kingsley, one of the most powerful men in the county.

And not when he was Maura’s father.

Maura was swept up in a powerful, rib-cracking embrace that left her gasping for breath and happy enough to walk on air.

“Dad! What’re you doing here?” She pulled away to peer into his craggy, beloved face. It was a study in worry.

“The branch director at the BLM is an old friend of mine, and I’ve had him keepin’ an eye on you ever since you took up this fool notion of firefighting. He called me at the ranch the minute you turned up missing.”

Maura lifted her eyebrows, not entirely happy to hear this. “I should have known.”

“Don’t give me that look. I’ve had enough grief today.” He drew her head back against his shoulder, and she could feel his Adam’s apple bob. “I thought I’d lost you, little girl.”

“Well, as you can see I’m right as rain, Dad,” Maura chided, even though it was pure heaven to feel those familiar arms around her, hugging her so tight she was beginning to get dizzy. “And it’s all on account of this man.”

She extracted herself from her father’s embrace to tug Ash forward by his elbow. “Ash here saved my life—and Smokey’s, too. We wouldn’t have made it without him, Dad.”

Smiling, she glanced up at Ash’s face, only to find his expression as stony as granite. He was staring at her father with eyes full of shock and suspicion. Puzzled, Maura turned to her father—only to find the same emotions shooting lightning bolts from his eyes.

“Dad? Ash? What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“You?” Stratton said, his piercing green gaze, which Maura had seen many a man whither under in less than ten seconds, still riveted on Ash. “You’re the firefighter my daughter was holed up with all night long?”