Page 60 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“Can you stand?” he rasped as they burst out into the fresh night air. Jules had never been so grateful to see the stars.
“I’m fine,” she told him, as her legs took her weight gingerly. She swayed, and his arm wrapped tight around her again.
“Okay now?”
She nodded, wiping her streaming eyes with the back of her hand and trying to force some air into her lungs against the constrictionof her chest. Her chest ached as though she were drowning in the tar of a thousand cigarettes.
“Bloody hell,” came a rough Devon accent. “Were you two in there?”
Jules and Roman turned to the fireman and nodded apologetically.
“Any more?”
Roman shook his head. “Only this idiot,” he told him as the unlikely trio walked through the passage to the front of the shop, where a small crowd had congregated and was being kept back by several burly firemen.
“Are yousure?” the fireman went on. “It’s important.”
“I’m completely sure,” said Roman firmly. “I checked and locked the building myself less than an hour ago.”
“That’s good, cos I’m not liking the idea of sending any of my lot in there,” remarked the fireman. “You the owner?”
Roman nodded.
“The building’s a goner, I’m afraid,” the fireman went on. “The best we can do is try to stop the spread now.”
Roman put his thumb up, temporarily unable to speak as a coughing fit convulsed him. When he was able to catch his breath, he turned his attention to Jules. “You bloody idiot,” he yelled. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
Luckily for her, the shouting brought on more coughing, making a reply unnecessary.
They stood in front of the plate glass window, the inferno within lighting Roman’s soot-streaked face as he glared furiously at her. The fireman was right. The destruction was total. Books burned well, it turned out. Jules could see the sweeping oak staircase, now nothing more than a skeleton of glowing embers and blackened timber. She could feel the heat of the flames scorching the side of her face as she stood, stunned, in her thin pajamas. The firemenwere training their hoses on the roof now, trying to prevent the flames skipping to the building next door.
Gazing greedily at the man she loved, as he glared back at her, a hacking cough making his eyes stream nearly as much as hers were, Jules felt incredibly alive. Wired. She could feel the ache of the cold pavement on her bare feet, the searing heat radiating through the window from the fire beyond it; she could hear the shouts of the firemen, the clanking of chains... and then a sheering, cracking, pinging sound like twigs snapping, gathering in volume, then a bellow: “Stand clear!”
It must have been only microseconds, but, as if in slow motion, Roman’s arms went around her, and he spun her around, throwing her to the ground. He landed heavily on top of her, forcing the last of the air from her lungs as a whoosh of heat and shards of glass blew toward them like a lethal hurricane. She put her hand up to her cheek, and it came away with blood on it. She looked at it blankly and then turned her head to meet Roman’s gaze. He lifted his weight off her and pulled her carefully to her feet.
“Watch out,” he said. “Don’t move your feet. There’s broken glass.”
He was right, the ground was now strewed with a layer of glass splinters, large and small, as the fire devoured the wooden frame of the plate glass window that had shattered in the heat, blowing outward onto the street like a hand grenade.
Picking her up carefully in his arms, Roman walked her to the rear of the nearest ambulance and put her down on the tailgate to submit to the attentions of the two green-clad paramedics standing there.
“Smoke inhalation,” he told the nearest.
“What about you?” asked Jules. “The glass...”
He was turning away from her, looking back at the dying moments of Portneath Books, when she gasped.
His shirt, blackened with soot, was torn in numerous places across his back. It was glistening with a dark fluid that was soaking the tattered fabric.
“You’re bleeding,” she told him. “He’s bleeding,” she exhorted the tired, gray-haired paramedic who was busy clamping an oxygen mask onto her face and sitting her up on the gurney inside.
The paramedic looked like he had seen it all. He probably had.
“Trip to the hospital for you both, I reckon,” he said, holding out a hand to Roman to usher him up onto the other stretcher. Roman acceded reluctantly, tearing his eyes away from the terrible scene he was leaving behind.
“I’m so sorry about the shop,” Jules took off her oxygen mask to tell him. She would be heartbroken to lose her precious bookshop. Hang on—she remembered shewaslosing her bookshop. And yet she had thrown herself into harm’s way to save the man she was losing it to.
“Put it back on,” he barked, but his expression was gentle as he reached to tenderly place the mask back over her face himself.
