Page 74 of A Forgotten Heart
Nick’s eyes caught Elsie’s and held. “But the bunkhouse could go,” he said.
Elsie saw his determination. If someone was even now riding toward the house, guns drawn, how could he think about going out into the night? She whirled and pressed her hands onto thecounter. She could see the bunkhouse from the kitchen window. But it was so far away…
Clare and Nick were speaking in low murmurs, plans for something at the front door, but Elsie’s mind had tuned out the sound.
She hadn’t told him that her feelings for him had changed. How could she let him walk out of the house?—
By the time she turned around, Nick was already moving toward the back door and the lean-to beyond.
“Wait!” She crossed the room after him, reached for him when he turned to her. Faltered when she fell into the intensity of his eyes. “Nick, I?—”
He lowered his head and kissed her.
She stretched up on tiptoe to meet his kiss, let her hands slide behind his neck as waves of emotion broke over her.
Nick wasn’t kissing her because he’d forgotten their past, because he was muddled by amnesia.
This kiss was real.
And over too soon.
She was aware of Clare still in the room as Nick pulled away, and the reality of what she’d done crashed over her. Her cheeks burned.
Nick gave her one more intense look before he rushed through the door into the lean-to. Running into danger.
All she could do was breathe a prayer he’d return.
Nick forced his whirling mind off Elsie’s kiss and into focus as he pulled on his coat in the coolness of the lean-to.
He knew their neighbors. The Landerses and the Wilsons. Even though it was the middle of the night, they would come.
But would they get here in time?
Nick’s shoulder flared with pain as he reached up to the shelf where they kept an extra lantern. His fingers fumbled with the box of matches. Tucking the matches into his pocket, he moved over to the corner and grabbed the can of kerosene.
Please, God, let this work.
He hesitated only a moment with one hand on the door’s latch. Had he given Clare enough time to get ready?
He knew she wouldn’t let him down. Could imagine her and Eli ducked low, waving the broomstick and dress out the front door, on the opposite side of the house.
The distraction would likely only buy him a few seconds.
He had to make it count.
He whistled as loud as he could, hoped the sound carried through the wall. And pushed the door open, darted through it, his feet crunching through the snow as his legs pumped.
Gunshots rang out from the woods in front of the house.
An answering shot came from an upstairs window. David?
The wound in his shoulder pulsed. He strained to hear over the heartbeats in his ears.
Another shot rang out from around the side of the house. This one zinged just overhead and slapped into the wall of the bunkhouse as Nick approached at a full run.
Only a few more feet…
A man’s shout.
