too late,” he said.
“Yeah. I’d like to see twenty-eight, even thirty.”
He tugged her closer to him, adjusting his body to hold the shelter.
“Can I help hold it down?” she asked, and then realized this was the very first time she’d offered to do anything. She’d drunk his water, complained about the lifesaving shelter and whined about how hard it was to breathe. She sagged. Maybe he should have rolled her out from under the shelter like a log. She knew she would have been tempted if their situation had been reversed.
“You’d need gloves. The edges get hot.”
Yet the thing had been flapping against him for what seemed like hours. He’d never uttered a word of complaint.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
He seemed older, acted older, she realized.
“I’m going to lift the shield,” he said. “Hold your breath.”
Meadow drew as deep a breath as she could in the scalding hot air as Dylan lifted the edge of the shelter.
A blast of hot winds rushed in below the fire shelter. The burning air made Meadow’s eyes tear.
“Everything is black,” she said, releasing her breath and then gasping at the heat of the air now rushing into her lungs. She hurried to be rid of it. The next breath seemed just as hot.
“Good. Did you see any fire?”
“No.” She pressed her hands over her stinging eyes and rubbed. “Hot.”
“Don’t rub them. Just keep your eyes closed.”
After a few minutes he asked her to hold the edge of the shelter. She tried but the metal was too hot. He piled some sand on the inner edge and she was able to press down the lip with her palm.
He used his free hand to retrieve his radio. She gaped at the melted top to the antenna. What did her car look like? It was miles to anything. A new fear tripped her heart rate. They couldn’t walk out. It was too far.
“Help is coming. Right?” she asked.
“Someone will be here as soon as it’s safe.” He lifted the edge again. The air was hot, but not as hot. “Stay here.”
“What! No!”
“Meadow, I’m wearing boots, a fire-resistant shirt, cotton jeans. You’re naked.”
That was true.
“Stay here until I tell you.”
She nodded. “Be careful.”
He slid off one glove. “Put that on. Use it to hold the shelter down. Use your feet to hold the bottom edge.”
With that, he lifted the right side and rolled away. The edge flapped as she tried and failed to catch it. She felt as if her skin blistered. From outside the shelter the edge dropped and she was able to get her gloved hand down on the perimeter.
“Feet!” he yelled.
She spread her legs until her sandaled feet were in place. Meadow tried and failed to ignore the pain of her burning toes.
“Stay there,” he called from outside the shield.
She heard the crunch of his feet on the scorched earth. Meadow’s legs and arms began to tremble from the effort of keeping the shelter steady against the constant wind. How had he held the shield down all that time? It seemed impossible. Again she realized that Dylan Tehauno had saved her life. She knew he had come back just for her, and, because of that act, everything in her life that was good was a gift from him.
Meadow’s eyes burned and she was surprised she had enough water left in her body to cry. But the tears came, sliding over the bridge of her nose and dropping into the dry sand. Even the tears were thanks to Dylan. The sobs came next. Meadow was so grateful and so undeserving.
How did a person like her repay a man like him? Money? Sex? A new truck? He said he was looking for a job. She could help him with that. Her father employed lots of people. Her brother Phillip, too. If she asked, her dad would give Dylan a job. Especially when he found out what he had done. She needed to call her father. But her phone was in her car. Or it had been.
The crunch of his boots signaled his return.
“Meadow. I’m taking off the shield.”
The foil wrapper lifted away and the hot air rushed past her. She pressed her hands over her mouth to cool the next breath as she rolled to her side looking up at him.
He stood shirtless, his skin smudged with ash and glistening with sweat. Dylan dropped his shirt over her naked body.
“Put that on.”
She drew to her knees, tugging the garment over her shoulders and holding it closed before her. The sand stuck to her skin and poured under her sandals. He offered his hand and, looking around, she rose beside him. The fire now raced far back along the road she had traveled, a line of orange glowing beneath the billowing gray smoke.
They were surrounded by a forest of tree trunks charred black and smoking. How many animals had died in that fire? She shivered at the thought. How many houses in the valley below them were now at risk? She’d driven through a new development that butted against the national forest. She remembered her father complaining about the expensive homes positioned with views of the sunset over the ridge. He’d called them hypocrites because they had objected to the mansion that broke the ridgeline for obstructing their views.
They were likely evacuating now.
Meadow glanced at the trench he had made. There lay the only patch of earth devoid of flammable vegetation. The only place the earth was not black. Her pink lace bra lay in the sand and a diamond on one of her rings twinkled. Then she spotted her GoPro. She stooped to recover it and paused. The camera was intact, but the tripod had not been wholly under the shelter and it had melted to a lump of black plastic. She stared at the evidence of how much hotter it had been outside the shelter than inside. Dylan crouched beside her and offered a wet bandanna, and she washed her face, horrified at the black soot that came away on the red cotton. He rinsed the cloth and used it to wipe off her throat. The simple act of kindness undid her.
She turned to him and fell into his arms, sobbing. He stroked her tangled hair. He whispered to her in a language she could not understand as she clung to him and wept. His hand stroked her back, rubbing up and down over the shirt he had given her. Everything she had and everything she was she owed to him. She lifted her chin to look up at him.
Why hadn’t she seen the kindness in his dark eyes or the strength reflected in his blade of a nose and the strong line of his jaw rough with dark stubble and sand? All she’d seen was a nuisance ruining her shot. His black brows lifted and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. That mouth was so tempting and she was so lost.
Meadow threaded one hand in his thick, short hair and tugged, angling her chin, and rose onto her toes, pressing her mouth to his.
* * *
DYLAN STARTLED AT the unexpected contact and the unprecedented wave of desire that swept over him. Reflexively, his arms contracted, drawing her tight to his chest. Only after the contact of her bare skin to his did he remember she had not yet buttoned his shirt and he had removed his T-shirt to check his back for burns. Her bare breasts molded to the hard planes of his chest, setting off a firestorm inside his body. Her tongue flicked out and he opened his mouth, allowing her to deepen the kiss that soon consumed them both. When her fingers scored his bare back, Dylan’s need overwhelmed him, but the fluttering in his belly and the stirring below that did not quite overtake the whisper of danger.
Bobcat growled a warning.
The