The Rancher's Daughter. Jodi O'Donnell
so maybe you do have a few things to be scared of,” she said softly. “There’s a big, mean fire out there. Your mama’s pretty sick, and you don’t have a clue what’s going to happen to her…or to you.”
She extended her cupped hands an inch more. The fawn quivered like an aspen. From the corner of her eye, she was aware that her companion had stilled his movements so as not to frighten the fawn. Aware that he watched her with interest.
“I’m here now, though, along with this guy here,” she murmured, tipping her head slightly in his direction. “He saved my hide, and that was not without some doin’. I just met him, but I’ve got the feeling he’ll take care of you, too, just like he’s helping your mama.” Another inch forward. “We’ll get out of this, Smokey, I promise. But we’ve gotta stick together, okay?”
The fawn still had not moved, and the animal seemed to teeter on a precipice of indecision that had to be worse than his thirst. It tore Maura’s heart.
“Take a drink, sweetie, please,” she whispered. “Trust me—trust yourself, too—and take a drink.”
The velvet brown eyes grew larger, the black nose trembled. Then the fawn took a tentative step toward her. Maura remained motionless, her arms and shoulders aching with the effort. She knew she could depend upon the firefighter remaining still, but if the doe showed any signs of agitation right now, that would be it for gaining the fawn’s trust.
She met the animal’s eyes unwaveringly.
And then he took another step, then another, before stretching his neck forward—and taking a tiny lap at the water in her palm. His nose tickled, yet Maura twitched not a muscle. He drank all that she had to offer, then toddled backward and sank down next to his mother.
Relieved and happy, Maura let her arms drop to her lap.
“You got some kind of sweet-talkin’ ability there,” the firefighter said quietly.
“Which has its merits…and its faults,” she said pensively.
“What do you mean?”
The fawn had begun licking his mother’s ear in his own offering of comfort. “I had quite a bit of contact with wildlife during my fieldwork in the forestry program at the University of Montana,” Maura answered. “I learned then that animals should be afraid of us humans. We’ve done nothing to earn their trust. We’ve ruined their home, rather than taken care of it for them. The Rumor fire is proof positive of that. When it comes down to it, that’s why I became a volunteer firefighter. I know the NIFC is still investigating how the Rumor fire got started, but it’s pretty clear it was a person—”
“And so it’s only fitting that we humans risk our lives to stop it,” he finished for her.
“Right. And if we’re able to save even one of the thousands of animals who’ll die before it’s contained for good—” she lifted her chin a notch in defiance “—then I’m glad to have taken the risk.”
To her dismay, she found herself fighting tears yet again.
“Maura.”
She took her gaze off the fawn to look at him. Those gray eyes of his virtually glowed, fascinating her. How could a shade one normally thought of as cool and remote be so vibrant and compelling?
“Okay, so maybe there is a place for powder puffs on a major fire,” he murmured with such respect—albeit somewhat grudging—that she forgot to chafe under the nickname.
Yes, her fascination for him was strong. But so was her fear as his gaze dropped to her mouth in a movement that was blatantly erotic.
Maura had a sudden urge to scamper backward with as much wariness as the fawn. She didn’t, though, just lifted her chin and asked tartly, “So what’s your name—unless you want me to make up some offensive nickname to call you?”
Chapter Two
Maura’s question, oh-so-innocently posed, brought him up short. A thousand emotions assailed him in that brief moment—sharp regret, shame and dread foremost among them. But this woman wouldn’t know, didn’t need to know, his entire history.
He drew in a calming breath, then answered succinctly. “Ash.”
“Ash?” Maura repeated inanely.
“Short for Ashton. It’s an old family name.” He didn’t offer his last name, and he knew Maura had to be wondering why. It was firefighter etiquette, especially when crews were being called in from all over the nation, to lead off with your full name, where you hailed from, how long you’d been firefighting and how long on this particular fire. It gave you a sense of your own time and place in the life of the fire.
But he had an aversion to volunteering too much information, developed over ten years of hard lessons. Brutal lessons.
Still, he found himself muttering, “Been a volunteer firefighter for the past five years, mostly in Montana and Idaho. This is my first week on this fire.”
He grabbed his T-shirt and rose to his feet. “I’ll go soak this in water again and bathe the doe’s burns as best I can. There’s not much else we can do.”
If Maura was puzzled by the abrupt change of subject, she didn’t show it. She bit her lower lip in thought, which only made her look ten times more earnest—and naive—than she already did. And ten times as irresistible.
He couldn’t believe she was old enough to have graduated college, much less have been in the Forest Service long enough to work a couple of big fires. She barely came up to his shoulder, and with that schoolgirlish braid of red hair trailing over her shoulder and those innocent blue eyes, he’d have guessed her age closer to sixteen than twenty-something.
Except for when she stretched behind her for her helmet and one had a glimpse of the curve of a full, womanly breast and nipped-in waist.
She set the helmet so its headlamp shed better light onto the doe’s injuries. “I’ll take the first turn at bathing her burns, if you like. If we keep it up through the night, it’ll ease her discomfort until we can get her proper veterinary care, don’t you think?”
Ash simply stared at her. She had to know the animal wouldn’t make it to morning. He wasn’t going to clarify the point, however, not when Maura was looking up at him with her big blue eyes as if he could turn the world on its axis.
“Why not, I guess,” Ash said, curbing the cynicism in his voice. “Let me take first crack at it, though, while you set up camp in the chamber where we left our gear.”
She smiled, and it was like the sun breaking over the horizon. “Thanks, Ash.”
She disappeared down the passage while Ash soaked and resoaked the T-shirt, being careful not to touch the doe’s burns with it as he ran water over them. Her breathing did seem less labored, but that might be because she was barely clinging to life. He gave her another drink of water and tried to coax the fawn into taking one and failed.
Of course, ministering to the downtrodden and discouraged was Maura’s specialty. That and her seemingly unrelenting optimism.
Ash sat back on his heels. Optimism. Now there was a word he’d long forgotten the meaning of. And a state of mind he hadn’t been able to revive in himself since…well, since forever, it seemed.
But today he’d experienced the whiff of a remembrance, like a familiar scent from childhood drifting on the wind, of a time when he hadn’t been skeptical of every hope that lifted its wings being dashed to pieces when it inevitably fell to earth. A time when every small taste of sweetness didn’t come with a castor-oil dose of bitterness. A time when he wasn’t constantly wary, could be open with his heart and know how to keep another’s heart in trust.
And he supposed he had Maura to thank for that— or should he curse her instead? Because she had only underscored how difficult, if not hopeless, was his journey toward