Single Dad To The Rescue. Cari Webb Lynn
Note to Readers
“CAN I OFFER you a ride?” A man’s deep voice broke through Brooke Ellis’s stupor.
Brooke squeezed Luna’s dog leash and tried to squeeze a sense of composure through herself.
Why were simple questions the hardest?
Maybe they’d always been hard and that was why Brooke had chosen to live alone in the mountains of Northern California for the past five years.
Until two days ago.
Exactly fifty-two hours earlier, a wildfire had ripped through the forest, forced Brooke and her neighbors to evacuate and destroyed lives.
Brooke turned in her gravel driveway and stared at the older gentleman watching her from inside an oversize pickup truck.
He smiled and repeated his question, “Do you need a ride someplace?”
She stepped closer, found patience in his kind gaze and her answer. “I have no place to go.”
He got out of his truck and walked toward her—he was wearing a volunteer fire-and-rescue jacket. The man may have been older, but he towered over Brooke by at least a foot and seemed to understand his height might make her guarded. He knelt and held his hand out for Luna to sniff. “There’s a shelter set up in town. I could drop you off there.”
Brooke indicated the two pet carriers near her feet. Archie, her one-year-old cat, slept in one. The veterinarian hospital had to evacuate its patients and he’d been sent home too soon after his abdominal surgery. Inside the other carrier, Cupid meowed. “The shelter reached capacity last night and I have pets with special needs.”
“Do you have family nearby?” Luna rolled over onto her back, encouraging the man to rub her belly. He obliged the large but gentle German shepherd with a soft grin. “I could take you to a relative’s place.”
Another simple question. The answer wasn’t so easy. Brooke managed a quick shake of her head, enough to knock the tears back down inside her.
All she had left of her life was in a large black garbage bag beside her. The family members she had were the four-legged ones surrounding her. She clutched Luna’s long leash as if the leather anchored her.
The man rubbed his chin and stared at the blackened landscape behind her. Her house was nothing more than ash. Only the axle remained of her truck. The old diesel had refused to turn over and guide her to safety two nights ago. She’d had enough time to grab her animals and the one garbage bag from the truck bed, and cram into the waiting police cruiser. The roaring winds and fire-breathing sky had chased the police car down the mountain to the evacuation site.
“Do you have any plans?” the gentleman asked.
Brooke stared