Page 40 of Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
Fear and dread filled Camille, extinguishing her brief flash of hope. She struggled to move, needing to escape—not from the flames, but from the person bearing down on her. She’d hoped for a rescuer, but everything inside her was screaming to get away from the menacing figure inexorably closing in on her.
She was too late.
Unable to move anything below her neck, she lay frozen, her breath coming in terrified pants, as the dark shape loomed over her, silhouetted by the roaring flames. As the figure bent closer, gloved hands reaching out, Camille squeezed her eyes closed and choked on a scream that couldn’t escape, waiting for the first bite of pain.
Camille’s whole body jerked, waking her up. She lay still for a moment, her eyes closed, reorienting herself, trying to figure out what was real and what had been just a terrifying dream.
The light was wrong.
There was too much of it, and it turned the insides of her eyelids red, not letting her sink back into sleep. As she blinked them open, she took in the unfamiliar room, and everything came back in a rush—the fire, Steve saving Lucy and then offering them both a place to stay. Oh, but the house and all her things…
She sat up abruptly, cutting off that line of thought before she could tumble into a deep lake of grief. The quick movement disturbed Lucy, who’d been curled against her hip. The cat gave an annoyed grumble before closing her eyes again. Glancing at the clock sitting on the nightstand, Camille saw it was almost noon, which explained why everything was so bright.
The sun-drenched room was such a far cry from the burned wreck she imagined her own bedroom was now that her stomach pitched. All her fear and sadness threatened to seep into her thoughts again, and she firmly pushed them back, swallowing down her nausea. “I’m alive,” she said, and the words sounded loud in the quiet room. “Lucy’s alive. Steve’s alive. That’s all that matters.”
Knowing that she needed to move, to distract herself from her lingering thoughts, she slid out of bed, looking around the room—Steve’s bedroom. He’d had to finish the “mopping up,” as he’d called it, so Ryan had dropped her off. Steve had texted Joe, so he knew the basic details of her situation, and he’d shown her to Steve’s room.
When she’d protested, saying that she’d take the couch, Joe had scowled and said gruffly, “Steve’ll take the pullout in the den. He wants you in here.” Since Camille found cranky Joe a little intimidating, she didn’t argue with him. She did feel bad about pushing Steve out of his room, though.
It was a really nice room, too. The kids’ rooms were bigger—there were two people in each of those, after all—but Camille liked Steve’s the best, and not just because it had an en-suite bathroom. The bed was large, with a simple headboard, and it took up a great deal of the space. There was a large window on the south wall, which was the source of all the sunlight that had woken her, and the east had another with a window seat. The best part was that the top portion of that window was made of stained glass. She could just imagine how the rising sun would splash the room with bright colors.
Despite the light pouring through the windows, the room was chilly. She shivered, hugging herself. After showering, she hadn’t wanted to put any of her smoky, dirty clothes back on, so she’d borrowed a T-shirt and some exercise shorts from Steve’s dresser. They hung off her, so loose that the shorts threatened to fall off her hips, reminding her that the clothes she’d been wearing the previous night were the only ones she had left.
The creeping grief started to sneak back in, and Camille once again shoved it back. “They can be washed,” she said firmly. “Maybe one of the kids has something that will tide me over for a few hours.”
She used the bathroom, making a face at the sharp smell of acrid smoke coming from her pile of abandoned clothes. She borrowed Steve’s hairbrush and scrubbed her teeth with a little toothpaste on her finger, adding a toothbrush and floss to the mental list of things she needed to buy. First, though, she needed to talk to her bank and get a new card, or she wouldn’t be able to buy anything—or even withdraw any cash without ID.
She realized that she needed to start writing things down. Otherwise, she’d keep running through her mental list, and that would just make her sadder and more frantic. Gathering up her smoky clothes, she left Steve’s bedroom to search for a washing machine.
The house was so quiet it seemed empty, and she found herself tiptoeing down the stairs, feeling like an interloper. Even though Steve had invited her, she still felt strange to be alone in a house that wasn’t hers, especially while she was wearing his clothes. It wasn’t all bad, though—even though it was obviously clean, his T-shirt still smelled like Steve. The bedding had as well, and being able to bury her face in a pillow bearing his scent had allowed her to drift off into fitful sleep.
The door to Steve’s study was closed, and Camille figured he was still sleeping. She hadn’t heard him return from the fire the night before, so she wasn’t sure what time he’d gotten back. She hadn’t climbed into bed until after 4:00 a.m., so he’d probably been dumping water on the remains of her house until close to dawn. The mental image of Steve and the other firefighters working on the blackened, ruined shell of her house popped into her mind, and she stopped in the middle of the living room and squeezed her eyes closed.
That only made it worse, so she opened them again to find Steve standing in the now-open doorway of his study, looking rumpled and sleepy and incredibly tempting. “Oh! I mean, good morning.”
The greeting struck her as wrong—it wasn’t a good morning, not when her house had just burned down—and she grimaced.
“’Morning.” Glancing at his watch, he amended that. “Afternoon now.”
She clutched her smoky bundle tighter against her chest, feeling awkward and vulnerable in her oversized clothes—hisclothes. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” His gaze flicked down to her bare legs before snapping back up to meet her eyes, his face reddening. “I’m just bad at sleeping during the day, even after staying up most of the night on a call or when one of the kids is sick.” He rubbed a hand over the lower part of his face, which was covered in rough stubble that made him even more attractive than his usual clean-shaven look. Camille hadn’t thought it was possible for him to be hotter; obviously, she’d been wrong.
Dragging her gaze off the sexy, scruffy shadow that covered his jaw, she glanced down at the bundle of clothes in her arms. “Would you…” Her voice came out raspy, and she cleared her throat before continuing. “Do you mind if I wash these things? I was hoping to get the smoke smell out of them.”
“Go ahead. The laundry room is off the kitchen. It’s the door next to the bathroom.”
“Thanks.” It was a chicken move, she knew, but she took advantage of the out that doing laundry offered. If she continued talking to mussed, sleepy-eyed, just-rolled-out-of-bed Steve much longer, she knew she’d end up saying something embarrassing—or just standing there and staring at him, which would be just as bad. It was better to run while she had the ability to pull herself away from temptation.
In the archway leading to the kitchen, she stopped. She couldn’t leave without at least trying to express her gratitude for everything he’d done for her in the past twelve hours. “Thank you,” she said, looking over her shoulder to catch him staring at her—her butt, to be exact.
He jerked his head up, quickly shifting his gaze to meet hers, but it was too late for him to pretend it didn’t happen. His eyes were lit with heat. “What?”
In all the years she’d known him, Camille never seen him so off-balance, and it made her like him even more. “Thank you,” she repeated, unable to keep a smile off her face. Steve Springfield had been checking her out. She’d honestly never expected that to happen. “Thank you for everything you did last night, and for letting me stay here…and giving up your bed. You didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re welcome.” He was obviously working very hard to keep his gaze from wandering, and her pulse began to flutter. “I wouldn’t have felt right knowing you were down here on the pullout.”
“Is it awful?” The ever-present guilt floated up again. “Didn’t you sleep well?”
