Barking increased as dogs ran everywhere. There had to be at least five cats crammed into the dog crate she’d carried out—a good seventy-five pounds. And she’d lifted it as if it were nothing. He couldn’t help but feeling a grudging admiration for her tenacity. He’d underestimated her grit.
She was still coughing when they reached Gabe Brenner. Chris took off his mask and helmet and nodded at the paramedic. “Smoke inhalation,” he said, putting down the crate.
“Chris…” Her voice was raspy from the smoke.
He turned to face her again. The woman who had handed him back her engagement ring and told him she’d changed her mind. The woman who’d broken his heart three years ago. It bugged the hell out of him that he still had a weak spot for her.
“Thank you,” she said, her watery eyes filled with gratitude.
“I’ve got to get back to work.” He turned away, needing to keep perspective and not doing a great job of it. “Someone round up these dogs!” he yelled, crossing the grass.
He was going to catch hell later. Mark hadn’t looked too impressed, but Chris hadn’t wanted to leave the animals trapped inside either. He wished he could have gone back in to get the last of the shelter animals. They’d done the right thing by setting them free.
No, the person Chris was really angry at was himself. For three long years he’d convinced himself that Ally Gallant didn’t matter.
Today the cold fear in his heart had told him she still did.
Her chest still burned and her head ached. Ally stood on the grass outside the shelter, tears running down her face. The fire department was still here, putting out hotspots, but the old building had been so badly damaged that she knew it would have to be leveled.
All her hard work…gone. And the animals…
She reached in her pocket for a tissue. It could have been worse. They’d lost the three kittens and only one dog—Chester. Moose was still missing. He’d run off in the chaos, but the other dogs, all ten of them, had been found. Most were being treated at a local veterinarian’s. A few had already been fostered. For now.
But the four that had been lost still made her heart ache, and though she’d only had them a short time, she grieved for them. Chester had been a sweet Miniature Schnauzer with bad eyesight and a loving heart. The kittens—Marmalade, Jelly and Jam—had been three orange-and-white sisters from the same litter who’d been dumped on the side of the road in Canning. Ally had been going to set up their spay appointments this week so that they’d soon be ready for adoption.
She wouldn’t need to do that now.
When the fire crew finally packed up and left the scene, Ally sat down on the grass and hugged her knees. The shelter had been her labor of love, the one thing in her life that made her feel as if she amounted to something. She was twenty-five years old and what did she have to show for it? She’d done two years of university and hated it. She worked instead at a drugstore in town and lived with her parents.
Since the shelter was a charity, Ally didn’t make any money, but it didn’t matt
er. It had been her idea and she’d been the one to get backing for it. She’d done the research, looked after the legal details and sweet-talked people into sitting on the board and lending their expertise. She’d worked out a deal with a local vet for care for the animals, including spays, neuters and vaccinations.
This place was her home.
And now it was gone. She sat, shocked, stunned and grieved both for the animals she hadn’t saved and for the loss of something that had meant the world to her.
Footsteps sounded behind her. She looked up and saw Chris standing beside her, staring at the building. Her heart squeezed. It had been something, seeing him in the middle of the smoke today. In that moment, all her panic had fled. It had been a moment where all her fears, centered square in her gut, mixed with a surge of relief that he was there, a knowledge that it would be okay.
He’d been right to pull her away when she’d wanted to go back in. She didn’t want to admit that, but it was true.
“How’re you doing?” he asked quietly.
“I’m okay. Could have been worse. Gabe let me go.”
“Putting a towel over your face was pretty smart.”
She shrugged.
“And staying inside was stupid. You could have been seriously hurt, Ally. Killed, even, if you’d been unconscious and we couldn’t find you.”
The raw edge of his voice made her tears well up again. Stupid. That was her. She knew what people thought of her in this town. It wasn’t that they disliked her. They just accepted that she was none too bright. She made up for it by being friendly and outgoing.
Sometimes it was exhausting.
“I had to try to get them out. I couldn’t just leave them all in there to die.”
But Sue and Laverne had. They had pulled the alarm and gone out front to wait for the fire department, just like they were supposed to. For a moment, Ally was angry. If there’d been three of them, they might have been able to get all the animals out in a shorter amount of time.