The Rancher's Daughter. Jodi O'Donnell

      “Then I’ll let you get settled.”

      He headed back down to the spring for his own quick swab off. Ten minutes later he came back to find her on her side, her back to him, her space blanket wrapped around her, with her hard hat for a pillow. The small mound she made lying there looked not much bigger than a bag of feed.

      Well, he may as well get this over with.

      He dropped to his own space blanket. “Ready for me to turn off the headlamp?” Ash asked without preamble.

      “Yes—oh, wait,” Maura said, pushing back the blanket and half sitting up. “I forgot to take my turn at bathing the doe’s burns.”

      Making a show of rustling around to get comfortable, he mumbled, “You don’t have to. I…I checked on her while I was washing up.”

      “How is she doing?”

      This was the worst news of all, and he’d have given his right arm not to have to tell it to her. But he owed her the truth.

      “Maura, she died,” Ash said.

      Her eyes widened in shock, then closed as her mouth tightened into a thin line.

      He felt like a twenty-four-carat louse. “It’s for the best, you know,” he said tersely. “She never did have a chance.”

      “I guess.” Her head bent and she said nothing for a long moment. “And the fawn?”

      “He seems to be doing fine, but he’s not budging from her side.” He paused, then added, “We won’t leave him here. We’ll get him out with us somehow.”

      She lifted her chin, and the watery smile she treated him to was so grateful it had him regretting his momentary weakness.

      “So, you ready for me to turn out the light?” he said.

      At her nod, Ash switched off his headlamp. Maura gave a soft gasp of surprise, and even he was momentarily taken aback. The darkness was absolute and enveloping. It was difficult to ignore it. Difficult to keep it at bay.

      He distracted himself by experimenting with a more comfortable way to rest his head than on his helmet, and finally settled on using his bent arm. Either way, however, was about as conducive to sleep as trying to bunk in a herd of stampeding cattle. The space blanket had the flexibility of sheet metal and it crackled every time he breathed, but there wasn’t any other choice for warmth.

      He’d known it was chilly in the cave, but lying still without cover other than his clothes and the space blanket, and with the overwhelming darkness, it was like being shut up in a meat locker.

      And nightmarishly reminiscent of another time in his life, when the darkness had been as complete, almost in danger of permeating his skin, like being submerged in a vat of blackest ink, until he became the darkness itself.

      Ash shuddered. With effort, he concentrated on the sounds of the cave—the trickle of water, the soft whir of bat wings, the faint but ominous crackle and pop of the dying fire…a muffled sniff, and then another.

      “Maura?” Ash said. “Are you okay?”

      “Y-yes,” came the muffled answer. There was no sound for a prolonged moment—and then a sob that sounded as if it had come bursting out of her like a cork from a bottle.

      He fumbled for his headlamp and flicked it back on. Blinking to get his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out Maura huddled on her space blanket with her back to him.

      “Maura, what’s wrong?”

      “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you and have you call me powder puff and make some pithy comment about how real firefighters don’t cry about the loss of wildlife and forest. After all, it’s just p-part of the job, right? A part of life. No need to get all maudlin and teary-eyed.”

      “I wouldn’t say those things,” he denied rather sourly. “I mean, I know you’ve got a low opinion of me—one I haven’t taken a lot of pains to discourage—but I’m not a complete hard-ass.”

      “And I am not a powder puff! Just because I believe in things turning out for the best and that I can have an impact on them, doesn’t make me a lightweight or a Pollyanna or whatever you choose to call me.”

      She gave a flounce, but the effect was lost in a cellophane-like crinkling. “Maybe you believe I shouldn’t have even tried to save that poor animal, or tried to ease her pain or her little one’s fears. Just leave them alone and let nature take its course! Maybe you should have done that when you came up on me struggling to get out of the fire!”

      “I don’t believe that, and I wouldn’t have let you get burnt to a crisp,” Ash protested. But he could see he wouldn’t change her mind that way. And he wanted to change her mind, he realized.

      He took a deep breath, doubting what he was doing even as he was about to do it. “Just like I wouldn’t let you lie over there crying without any comfort. So come here.”

      And without asking, he reached an arm around her waist to scoop her against him and hold her soft, small body against his.

      Miracle of miracles, she turned into him as she sobbed against his shoulder. And miracle of miracles, it felt damned good—oh, not that it was good she was in such distress. But that he had even a prayer, simply by providing that shoulder, of easing her sorrow and pain.

      It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. And he liked it a lot.

      “What makes you think other firefighters aren’t as torn up inside at the destruction they’re witness to?” he asked once the storm of weeping seemed to abate.

      “Oh, I don’t think that about other firefighters.” She sniffled. “Just you.”

      “I see.” He hadn’t exactly been a font of compassion, had he? “Well, actually, I fight fires because I have to. Like you, I can’t sit by and watch this land go up in smoke. I…I love it too much.”

      “I knew that you did.” Her voice wasn’t triumphant, just quietly matter-of-fact. “Then why do you try to make people believe different?”

      “I don’t try to make people believe different,” he said in echo of her own assertion. “Just you.”

      He was certainly treading on dangerous ground, now. But he didn’t have to tell her how he’d gotten into volunteering to fight fires—that, indeed, he’d had a need to help out, but he’d also had a need to get out. Get out of the four walls that confined him, if only for a little while.

      But that time—and those reasons—seemed of little significance at the moment. What counted was now, with Maura in his arms. Needing him in a way he hadn’t let himself be needed in a decade.

      She actually snuggled against him, and his arm tightened almost reflexively to bring her closer still. She was so small, so delicately built, he found himself marveling at the determination it must have taken for her to pass the physical test to qualify to be a firefighter. He had no doubt that she would achieve her dream of running a ranch for kids who needed a guiding hand. No doubt that somehow, some way, she would save that one soul that would make any amount of pain or disappointment worth it to her.

      How he himself could have used that kind of support! His life might have turned out much differently…?.

      “You know, I’ve kind of nourished a small dream myself,” Ash said. He could barely believe he was speaking these words aloud—he’d mulled them over in his mind, certainly, millions of times—and yet he couldn’t have stopped himself even if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. “A dream of owning a spread, too.”

      “You have?” He couldn’t see her face, but her tone was encouraging.

      “Yeah. In the past five years I’ve worked on a bunch of ranches from here to the Canadian border. That’s how I got ranching in my blood. I’m foreman of a ranch right now—temporary foreman,