Page 12 of A Convenient Heart
She would’ve sworn she’d completed her routine as usual, but in the chaos of her own excitement and the children’s finding out about Jack…had she missed something?
Was this her fault?
The flames licked higher. She was stationed next to the restaurant, two dozen yards away from the school building, yet she still felt the frightening heat from the fire.
Was there any way the building could be saved?
“Stop for a minute.”
A man’s voice interrupted her frantic movements as she tried to pass the next bucket along.
“Miss Harding. Stop.”
But she couldn’t?—
And then two strong hands wrapped around her upper arms, and she was bodily moved out of the bucket-brigade line.
“Miss Harding!”
She fought against the hands holding her, moving her away from the chaos of those fighting the fire.
It was Jack, she realized through her overwhelming emotion.
“Stop! Miss Harding!”
She shoved against his chest as they stopped several yards away from the bucket brigade, on the boardwalk across the street. “Why don’t you call me Merritt?” she demanded. Her chest heaved on the words.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until he pressed a handkerchief in her hands.
“Merritt.” Her name was spoken in a tender drawl.
The moment she stopped fighting, her energy flagged. Her knees gave way but she didn’t fall. Because Jack pulled her in close against his chest.
His coat was open, she realized, as the warmth of his body slowly seeped into her skin. The small heat bit her skin, almost frozen from the air outside and drenched with water.
“You’ll catch your death,” he chided her, one hand running up and down her back.
When had she let her cheek press against his broad chest?
She couldn’t seem to summon the wherewithal to straighten, to move away from him.
He brushed at her cheek with one hand, fingers cold, as more tears ran silently down her cheeks.
“My school,” she said with a sob.
His jaw pressed into the top of her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The skin on her hands and wrists pricked and burned where she was tucked beneath his coat, feeling returning painfully to what had been numb extremities. How long had they been out in the elements?
“Over an hour,” Jack murmured into her hair.
Had she said the words aloud?
An hour that the school building had been burning. There was no saving it.
“No,” he said, and she must’ve been speaking her thoughts aloud again. “The wind picked up, and the men are trying to keep the fire from spreading.”
Oh.
