Page 102 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

Worry tightens around me to the point where I can barely breathe. What if I lose them both? What if Rowan dies but Jester survives, and I know it’s all my fault?

“Damn it, Rowan. Damn it,” Ivy says, and I can tell she’s jumping in her skin, same as me. Neither of us are wearing coats. We took them off in the car and didn’t think of it when we got out, but I can barely feel the deep chill. I’m numb. I’m full of excruciating pain. I’mterrified.

“This is all my fault!” Harry bellows.

“What happened?” I ask, vaguely remembering that he’d promised Rowan to provide a distraction so no one would go looking for us. If it’s his fault, I guess it’s partially ours as well.

“It’s not his fault,” Marcus says calmly. “We were all worried about you, obviously”—he eyes me curiously, probably wondering about the wig and glasses disguise—“and Harry suggested a cookie baking competition to keep our mind off things. But Jonah here…” His mouth firms. “Misread the recipeand set the oven to 523 instead of 325 and then forgot to set the alarm. We’re guessing the fire started in the kitchen.”

“It could have happened to anyone,” Jonah says in a sulky tone, watching as more flames lick through the broken window.

Rowan is in there. He’sin there.

Ivy eyes that window too before saying woodenly, “I doubt that could have caused a fire like this. Are you sure nothing else happened?”

“I’ll never make a cookie again,” Harry says. “I’ll never eat one again as penance!”

Colton gives Jonah a lingering look. “You were gone for a long time before we started the cookie thing. You never explained where you went.”

“The pool room,” he says, sounding annoyed. “Don’t the rest of you get bored and wander around?”

Jeff shrugs in agreement. “The rooster room’s my favorite,” he offers.

“That’s because you’re a dick,” Jonah says, snickering.

“Can you stop it?!” I shout, my voice louder than intended. “Rowan is in danger. Doesn’t anyone care?”

“Who’s Rowan?” Marcus asks, his brow wrinkled. Something flashes in his eyes, a connection being made, and then he says, “Is he the guy who said you were already out of the house?”

I can feel myself breaking because I’m not supposed to act like Rowan is important to me. I’m not supposed to act like my heart is in there, in danger. To them, he’s no one, someone who tinkered around on set for a few days before leaving—the relative of a woman they don’t much care for. To me, though, to me…

A figure bursts through the door in a cloud of smoke, and tears instantly fall from my eyes, because it’shim. It’s him. He’sokay. And there’s a little bundle cradled in his hands that can only be Jester.

My heart beating hard in my chest, I take a step toward him, then another. The fireman who was blocking Ivy tries to sidestep in front of me, but I can’t let him. I can’t. Other people shout at me, and I hear Harry, in particular, but I don’t pay them any attention. I run to Rowan as he steps away from the burning building, Jester in his arms. I run to him.

Someone stops me before I get very far, but I don’t even look to see who it is. Because I’m crying too hard, my arms are extended toward them.

I need to know they’re okay. I need to see Jester breathing. I need to see Rowan’s face.

The next thing I know, Ivy is taking me from whoever stopped me. She’s hugging me hard.

“They say the building’s going to go, Kennedy,” she says into my ear. “We need to get Jester and get out of here.”

“But…Rowan,” I say through sobs.

“He’s okay,” she tells me softly, running a soothing hand through my hair. “He’s going to be okay. We’re going to get Jester from him so we can bring him to the emergency vet, and then we’ll let him do his thing. He’s not in any more danger.”

She says something to the man who was holding me back, and he signals to someone, who signals to someone else, and we’re led over to the back of one of the fire trucks. Rowan’s sitting there with his helmet and mask off, his face red and streaked with soot. He’s drinking water from a straw someone gave him, and there’s a medic next to him, taking his blood pressure.

Jester is in his lap. He looks groggy, but he’s awake.

Rowan saved him.

I want to race across the distance between us. I want to cover him in kisses. I want to take him back to his house and make love to him for hours.

But he takes a look at us, emotion washing over his face, his eyes brimming with it, then says, “I think he’ll be all right, ma’am, but you’ll need to take him to an emergency vet for smoke inhalation. No one else was harmed in the fire.”

The blood in my veins turns to ice. He’s pretending he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t want any of these people to know we mean something to each other. Part of my mind recognizes why he’s doing it—I don’t want the show to end and he doesn’t want to be on it—but I figured that this situation—an emergency—would supersede all that. I figured that he, like me, couldn’t give two shits about the show right now. I guess I was wrong.

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