Out of Practice. Penny Parkes
firefighters shouted back and forth, barking orders into two-way radios. Water hissed from coiled gray hoses. Great billows of black smoke, rising from the roof, were licked by flames that appeared and disappeared with the wicked unpredictability of vipers. For a moment Judd was stunned, his feet rooted to the ground, his heart thudding in heavy strokes that overrode all the other sounds. He’d known fear before. Of course he had. Some of the situations he persisted in subjecting himself to saw to that. But he’d never known anything as devastating as the terror that clamped itself to every nerve and muscle in his body when he pictured Emmy trapped in that heat, in the choking smoke and vicious destruction of fire.
A tall metal ladder was angled against the wall of the house, reaching toward the windows of the family wing. The wing where Emmy slept…
Judd ran forward, yelling her name. Four policemen jumped him, grabbing his arms as they fought to restrain him. A fifth went flying when Judd flung him aside. And then Judd saw a small bundled figure thrust through the window into the waiting arms of the firefighter on the ladder. He gave a hoarse shout, and as the fireman passed the bundle to another man waiting further down the ladder, the policemen finally released him.
He ran across the frozen, snow-patched lawn faster than he’d ever run in his life. As the fireman transferred Emmy to his arms, the panic in her eyes cut him like a knife, the small weight of her catching at his heartstrings.
Holding her with fierce protectiveness, he climbed into the back of the waiting ambulance. But as he did so, Judd threw a quick glance over his shoulder, in time to catch part of the roof collapsing in a shower of sparks that under any other circumstances might have been eerily beautiful. A blackened beam struck the firefighter who’d shoved Emmy through the window. The helmeted figure staggered and almost fell, and in dreadful fascination Judd watched the fireman at the top of the ladder seize a yellow sleeve, hauling the other firefighter’s body over the charred sill by sheer, brute force. A cheer went up from the watchers on the ground. Then Judd turned away, shielding Emmy from the leaping flames and surreal, flickering lights…
Judd came back to the present with a jolt, licking his lips. Emmy had been pronounced out of danger from the smoke she’d inhaled. Because of her sedative-induced sleep, he’d taken this opportunity to find the firefighter to whom he owed a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid.
The woman on the bed.
She couldn’t be much over five-seven or five-eight. Her features lacked the perfection of Angeline’s: her nose slightly crooked, her mouth a touch too generous. Angeline was his ex-wife, mother of Emmy. An internationally known model, who wouldn’t have been caught dead with dirty fingernails.
He didn’t want to think about Angeline, her poise and stunning looks, her seductive body and cool, midnight-blue eyes. Not now. He’d divorced her four years ago, and had seen almost nothing of her since then.
The woman on the bed stirred a little, muttering something under her breath. Her lashes flickered. But then her breath sighed in her chest and she settled again. Somehow, in the midst of a maelstrom of smoke and flame and the night’s darkness, this woman had found Emmy and carried her to the ladder, into the waiting arms of the other firefighter. To safety.
Judd walked to the foot of the bed, frowning slightly as he started reading the neatly typed words on the chart. Then the woman’s name leaped out at him. Lise Charbonneau. Age twenty-eight.
His frown deepened, his eyes intent in a way some of his business associates would have recognized. Angeline still went by her own name, which was also Charbonneau. And Angeline’s young cousin had been called Lise. He’d met her at the wedding, all those years ago.
It couldn’t be the same person. That would be stretching coincidence too far.
But Lise at the age of thirteen or so had had flaming, unruly red hair, and cheekbones that even then gave promise of an elegance to come. She’d also had braces on her teeth and the gawkiness of a foal new to the field, and no social graces whatsoever. Her eyes, though, had been as green as spring grass, almond-shaped eyes that were already beautiful.
He searched his memory. Hadn’t she been living with Angeline and Marthe, Angeline’s mother, because her own parents had died tragically? And hadn’t they died in a house fire?
Was that why Lise Charbonneau had become a firefighter?
Angeline’s cousin responsible for saving Angeline’s daughter…what a strange and unbelievable irony. Speaking of which, he’d better try to reach Angeline. He himself was always fodder for journalists; he didn’t want Angeline hearing about Emmy’s escape on the late-night television news.
But then the woman in the bed shifted again, moaning slightly under her breath. He stiffened to attention, going over to stand by the bed, watching her struggle toward consciousness. And to pain by the look of it, he thought grimly, reaching for the buzzer that was pinned to the pillow by her head, and with an effort restraining himself from taking a strand of her vivid hair between his fingers. Hair that could warm a man’s heart. He said gently, “It’s okay, I’m calling the nurse.”
Her eyes flickered open, closed again, then opened more widely, focusing on him with difficulty. They were a clear, brilliant green, exquisitely shaped. Tension rippling along his nerves, Judd waited for her to speak.
The man’s outline was blurred, throbbing in tandem with the throbbing in her shoulder. Lise blinked, trying to clear her vision of a haze of pain and sedatives, and this time he was more distinct. More distinct and instantly recognizable.
Judd. Judd Harwood. Standing beside her bed, gazing at her with an intensity that made her heart lurch in her breast. He’d come for her, she thought dizzily. Finally. Her knight in shining armor, her gallant prince… How many times, as a teenager, had she fantasized just such an awakening? His big body, so broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, his square jaw and fierce vitality: she’d known them—so she’d thought—as well as she’d known her own body. Known them and longed for them. Hopelessly. Because all those years ago Judd had been in love with Angeline.
But now it was as though all her adolescent dreams had coalesced, and she’d woken to find the first man she’d ever fallen for watching her in a way that curled heat through every limb. She’d been madly and inarticulately in love with him back then, no matter that he was married to her cousin. How could she not have loved him? To a lonely and impressionable teenager, his looks and personality had had the impact of an ax blade, splintering her innocence. Since then, of course, she’d been hugely disillusioned, all her trite little daydreams shattered on the hard rocks of adult reality.
Judd Harwood. Unfaithful husband of her beloved cousin Angeline. The man who had refused Angeline custody of her own daughter, who’d been too busy amassing his fortune to be anything other than an absentee husband and father. The jet-setter with a woman in every major city in the world.
But what, she wondered frantically, fighting to overcome the fuzziness of her thoughts, was he doing standing by her bed? And where was she anyway? Because this was no dream. The dull, thudding pain in her shoulder and the sharp needles of agony behind her eyes were all too real. So was he, of course. His thick black hair now had threads of gray over the ears, she noticed in confusion. But his eyes were still that chameleon shade between blue and gray, and his jawline was as arrogant as ever.
“Where—” she croaked.
“I’ve called the nurse,” he said in the deep baritone that she now realized she’d never forgotten. “Just lie still, she’ll be here in a minute.”
“But what are you—”
The door swung open and on soft rubber heels a nurse came in the room. She went straight to the bed, smiling at Lise. “So you’re awake—good. And not feeling so great by the look of you. I’ll give you another shot, that’ll help the pain in your shoulder.” With calm efficiency, she checked Lise’s pulse and temperature, asked a few questions and gave her the requisite painkiller. “It’ll take a few moments to take effect,” she said briskly, and glanced up at Judd. “Perhaps you could stay until she’s asleep again?”