Page 58 of Snowed in with the Rancher

Tate laughed outright then. “Marjory threatened to stop making you dinner, did she?”

Vince nodded as he squinted at the bright snow in the yard. “Worse. Told me I'd been an ass and said if I didn't let you back on the team, and pronto, she'd go visit her sister in Butte for the next month.” He looked at Tate with desperation in his gaze.

“Well,” Tate said, clapping Vince on the shoulder. “I'll save you then and come back. I can stop by the office and fill in my shifts tomorrow.”

“I'd appreciate it.” The older man cleared his throat. “And I was happy to hear about you and Olivia giving things a try. I know I came down kind of hard on you—”

Tate held up a hand, palm out. “Nope. Don't apologize. I deserved every word. I was badly in need of a kick in the ass right about then. Yeah, it was a shock to find out about the girls the way that I did, but that doesn't excuse my behavior. If my dad taught me anything, it's that you take care of the people who need you. He never failed me once. He never let my mom down. I know better, and you were right. I needed to get over myself and take care of my family.”

Vince gave him a cheeky grin then. “Well, I'm happy to hear it's all working out. She's a mighty fine young woman, your Olivia. Marjory thinks the world of her.”

“I do, too,” Tate said. “I do, too.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Olivia woke, disoriented. Her clock said two a.m. The alarm was persistent, penetrating her mind and the darkness that surrounded her. She tried to assess what was happening when the odor registered.

Smoke.

“Oh my God!” she cried out as she climbed from her bed. Smoke was streaming under her bedroom door as the shrill alarm continued its keening wail. Her heart raced. The girls! She had to get to them. Her hand reached out to touch the doorknob. Warm but not hot. She braced herself as she twisted the knob and pulled it open.

Smoke rushed into the vacuum created by the opening, but it spread out and seemed to dissipate in the larger space. She turned toward the girls' room, eyes stinging. Finding it hard to breathe, she pulled her t-shirt over her mouth. Coughing, she stumbled down the hall. She couldn't tell exactly where the fire was coming from. It almost looked to be all around her. Smoke seemed to be oozing from the walls, and as she looked behind her toward the living room, she saw flames licking up from the baseboards in the hallway, crawling up the walls, seeming to come from inside the very bones of the structure.

The door to the girls' room was open, and smoke had filled the space from floor to ceiling. Olivia kept her t-shirt pulled up over her mouth, but she could barely see, and her eyes were watering so heavily that she could see little more than a blur of darkness surrounding a small glow where she knew the girls' nightlight was plugged in.

“Mommy!” she heard Jackie's frightened voice in the murk ahead of her. Her shin slammed into something heavy, and she leaned down, her hands searching desperately to find what she'd run into. A pair of tiny hands met her grip.

“Mommy!” Jackie screamed again before climbing up Olivia, wrapping her arms and legs around her mom's torso.

She held Jackie's head tightly against her shoulder as she tried to navigate to the next bed where Melissa ought to be.

Her lungs burned now, and she coughed heavily. Jackie was still and silent, clinging to Olivia and keeping her face covered.

Olivia's thoughts were like the smoke, thick and clouded. She knew two things: she needed to get Melissa, and she needed to get them all outside. She tried to navigate in the direction she thought Melissa's bed was.

But she couldn't see a thing—she had to close her eyes completely to keep out the stinging smoke. She stumbled forward, calling hoarsely to Melissa in between fits of coughing. Tears streamed down her face as she grew more and more disoriented. She couldn't hear Melissa. She couldn't find her, couldn't see her.We're all going to die here,she thought.

And then other people were suddenly in the room with them. Firefighters.

“Bedroom!” one yelled as his big mask came into view next to her. Then, “We have occupants! I repeat, we have occupants!”

After that, everything became a blur, Jackie was taken from her arms, and Olivia, half-supported, was being pulled out of the room despite her resistance. She tried to tell them about Melissa, but all she could do was cough, and choke, until everything went black.

* * *

“Where are they?” Tate shouted frantically as he entered the waiting room of the hospital. Lucy and Thomas's house was ten minutes closer to town than his cabin, which meant they were already standing at the front desk talking to a nurse.

“Son,” Thomas said with a grim expression. “This is Loren, the nurse who's been working on Olivia.”

“Is she okay? Where are my daughters?” Tate demanded.

Loren gave Thomas and Lucy a look that suggested they needed to get their son to calm down.

“Tate?” Lucy said softly before laying her hand along his cheek. “Tate, honey, look at me.”

His wild-eyed gaze fell on his stepmother's face. His heart was racing, and his skin felt like it had a hundred tiny bugs crawling beneath it.

“They got all three of them out,” Lucy continued, her touch helping to ground him somewhat. “They're all being treated for smoke inhalation, and we'll know more soon, but you need to take a breath and calm down so you can help them. They're going to need you.”

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