A glance at his watch told him he still had about fifteen minutes to kill. Since he’d bought the place as is, he decided to use the time to see what he’d gotten himself into. The front door was locked and the windows boarded up. After stowing the blanket in the backyard and climbing the back porch to find the door there locked as well, he checked a side door. Basement access, he guessed, based on the location, and locked like the other doors, but weather had invaded the wood frame, and the lock had some give due to dry rot. Awesome.
One shoulder slam and the door gave way. The dank basement smell greeted him first, followed by a sticky net of spider webs. The waning light and boarded-up windows wouldn’t allow him to conduct much of an inspection. He thought briefly about fetching the flashlight he kept in his truck, but decided not to bother. A quick run-through was all he wanted, just to get a sense of the basic layout and how rustic the place was after all this time. He had no intention of crawling into the attic or under the stairs and disturbing whatever wildlife currently called those spaces home. The open basement door offered enough light to make out the stairs leading to the first level.
The stairs led to a laundry area that smelled almost as moldy as the basement. The small room opened to a kitchen in need of a gut renovation. Off the kitchen was a nice-sized dining room. Front room with a big fireplace, foyer, small study or den, powder room, and an extra room he imagined would make an ideal playroom.
Four tiny bedrooms and a bathroom made up the upper level. If they took a wall down and gave up a bedroom, they could get a decent master with an attached bathroom. Luckily, the dank smell didn’t permeate upstairs. Actually, up here it smelled like…smoke.
He ran into the hall. The dim light trickling in from the haphazardly boarded windows didn’t help matters, but he saw a gray haze rising from the floor below. Had Melody come in while he’d been roaming around up here and, what? Tried to light a fire in the fireplace, or flicked a light switch and set off a spark in the ancient electrical system?
“Bluelick?” He hurried downstairs and into thicker smoke than he anticipated. Hot, stifling, and disorienting. His heart stalled at the thought of her wandering around in the mess, looking for him. “Melody,” he called again, inhaling a lungful of smoke in the process. He fought off a wave of dizziness, crouched lower to get under the smoke, and pulled his shirt up to screen his nose and mouth. Without gear, that was as fireproof as he could get. He started a sweep of the first floor.
…
Ninety degrees in the shade and some fool is burning leaves. The thought flitted through Melody’s mind, and then disappeared when she spotted Josh’s Yukon parked in the cul-de-sac. Her pulse raced. After days without him, the sight of his vehicle alone was enough to send her heart into overdrive. Anticipation and nerves added an extra boost. His choice of meeting spot had sent her thoughts careering in a thousand different directions. Was he simply looking for a private place to talk that might constitute neutral territory, as opposed to her house or his? Was he trying to soften her up, or let her down easy, or what? Only one way to find out.
She pulled into the gravel driveway and immediately stomped on the brake to avoid rear-ending the silver pickup truck parked there. Who else had Josh asked to this meeting? And jeez, what was burning? She put her purse on her shoulder and wiped her damp palms on the gauzy skirt of her pink sundress. Then she turned to the cottage, partially in view behind the overgrown oaks, and the answer to her last question stared her in the face. Flames engulfed the entire front porch.
Adrenaline took charge of her system and sent her up the drive and around the side of the house. The heels of her sandals sank into the grass. She kicked them off and kept running. When she rounded the house and saw flames licking their way up the back porch, too, she screamed his name. Her eyes scanned the yard as she ran, but he was nowhere to be found.
Her purse bounced against her side. Without stopping, she dug for her phone. When it tumbled into her hand, she pulled it out and called him…and reached his voicemail. Dammit. She disconnected and called the firehouse.
She rounded the other side now and spotted the open basement door. At the same time, her phone clicked and a voice said, “Bluelick Fire Department.”
“This is Melody Merritt. There’s a fire. Come quickly. I think Josh is inside.”
“Where are you?”
She didn’t know the freaking address. “The cottage. The white cottage on Overlook Road. Hurry—”
“Melody!” This voice came from behind her. She whipped around to find Rusty running up.
That was fast, was her first hysterical thought, and then she dropped everything and latched onto Rusty’s shirt. “He’s inside. Josh is in there.” Belatedly she realized Rusty wasn’t suited up, and his eyes were red and full of panic.
“Nobody was supposed to be inside.”
She dropped her hands. “What?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she shook her head. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except Josh. She ran into the house.
…
Goddammit, Bluelick, where are you? He couldn’t see a fucking thing. Smoke burned his eyes, forcing him to crawl along the baseboards to keep his bearings. He didn’t know the layout well, hadn’t planned a backup exit route, didn’t have a sense of where the fire originated or the path of the burn, but he refused to leave until he was sure she wasn’t inside, which meant completing the sweep.
When he reached what he estimated to be the laundry room, he heard her screaming his name. For one horrified, disoriented moment he though the sound came from the smoke-filled rooms behind him, but then he realized it came from below. He crawled toward the basement and saw her come through the door. Competing waves of relief and alarm flooded him, even as he tried to shout, “Get back.” The words came out in a debilitating fit of coughs. Before he recovered, her arms were around him. His head spun, but he forced himself to his feet, and kept his watering eyes on her as she half led, half dragged him to the basement stairs.
Midway down the stairs another set of arms caught him, and a frame much bigger and sturdier than Melody’s supported him. A heartbeat later they cleared the basement door and fresh, oxygen-rich air hit his face. He dragged it into his lungs.
Somebody stumbled—probably him—and the
next thing he knew he was kneeling in the grass and Melody was right there with him, crying, babbling, squeezing him so tight she threatened the supply of hard-earned air to his tortured lungs. He wrapped an arm around her, buried his face in her hair, and let her have at him. Sirens screamed in the distance.
Melody switched from hugging him to running her hands all over him, from his head, down his neck, over his chest and back…anywhere she could reach…while sobbing, “Are you hurt? Oh, God, please don’t be hurt. I love you. I want to spend my life with you, and I don’t care where. Just please be okay.”
The sirens got louder. He moved his mouth to her ear. “Bluelick…don’t cry.” Three measly words tore his throat up like razors, but he sucked in a deep breath and kept talking. “Marry me.” He dug the ring out of his pocket and shoved it her way. Not exactly the sunset proposal he’d planned, but he wanted to assure her he felt the same way, and speech was a problem at the moment.
The effort backfired because she cried harder. She closed his hand around the ring and said, “Shush. Just tell me you’re okay. We can talk about the rest later.”
Stubborn woman. Around him he sensed movement. People running, shouting—the sound of hoses on full blast and the hiss of water hitting fire. “No. Now.” His bloodshot eyes made things difficult, but he took her hand and put the ring on her finger. Possibly the wrong finger, but he didn’t care. He wanted the damn thing on her hand. Then he took the deed out of his back pocket and gave the document to her. “This is our…future. Bought it for you…for us.” He spread his hand over her stomach. “All of us.”