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The desperation in his voice cut through her panic, and she hesitated long enough to look back at him.
He shook his head. “I can’t risk losing you both. Now you’ve got to get out.”
Without waiting for her to answer, he hurried across the kitchen, collecting items as he went. He rested a pair of silicone oven mitts on the counter and tossed a white tablecloth into the sink and turned on the faucet. After wringing it slightly, he wrapped it around his head to cover his nose and mouth, shoved on the mitts and rushed for the door.
“Please bring back my Luna.”
“I will.”
He didn’t look back as he opened the door and barreled up the stairs. At the top, he pushed open the second door. Willow gasped as smoke poured out, but Asher didn’t hesitate as he crouched low and slipped inside.
“I love you,” she called after him.
Her heart squeezed with the knowledge that he couldn’t hear her. Maybe would never hear the truth that she’d known all along. Her vision smeared with welling tears, she jogged down the sam
e hall she’d followed so recently to meet him. Once outside, she hurried all the way past the decorative blond brick barrier that bordered the street and marked the edge of her property. Then she dialed for emergency assistance.
A sob escaped her just as a loud click came on the line.
“911 operator, what is your emergency?” the woman said.
“Fire” was all she could manage.
The emergency worker spoke calming words as she extracted information and then assured Willow that assistance was on the way. Willow clicked off the call and stared down at the phone in her hands. His phone. She glanced up at the house again. Smoke was already billowing from the upstairs window. Were those flames climbing the pretty curtains next to her dinette? Asher had promised he would bring her baby to her. What if he couldn’t keep his promise? What if he couldn’t get out?
Sirens already blared in the distance. In minutes, the fire trucks would arrive, but would they be soon enough? She couldn’t just stand there and wring her hands while two of the people she loved most in the world were inside that building. Maybe hurting. Maybe—no, she couldn’t let that happen.
She rushed up the walk again. She had to get to them. Had to save them. Or she would die with them.
“Willow, stop!”
She felt more than heard his words as they slowed her at the bottom step. Had she imagined the sound that seemed to have come from the west side of the house, the section with no access to the second floor? The shrill whirr of the approaching emergency vehicles crowded her brain, forcing out the sound she longed for. With it, her hope.
Her world swam in and out of focus as she was suddenly enveloped in a mob of firefighters in heavy yellow jackets. One of them guided her outside the low brick wall.
“Miss, you have to stay back.”
“But my...baby. My—”
“Your what?”
Where Asher had come from, she wasn’t sure, but he was there, sweat and soot painting his face, a filthy tablecloth-covered bundle in his oven mitt–covered arms. She could only stare at the lump, her hands covering her mouth to hold in a scream. Her knees buckled, her legs no longer having the strength to hold her upright. Someone behind her, probably an EMT, caught her.
Asher rushed forward. Only then could she see the burns on his upper arms where his shirt used to be.
“It’s all right, Willow. It’s going to be okay.”
A female EMT lifted the package from him, and they all unwrapped it. And there she was, her jammies dirty, her face and hair sweaty and filthy. Then Willow’s wonderful, high-strung, perfect Luna started to cry.
Chapter 24
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
Asher grinned at Willow as she stood outside the cracked curtain in Mustang Valley General’s ER department, her face still looking as if she’d seen a ghost. Earlier, when he’d emerged from her burning house, she probably thought she had.
“Are you coming in?” he asked when she didn’t.
Finally, she slid past the curtain and stepped inside, hugging herself as if she couldn’t get warm enough. If only he could take her in his arms and hold her until all those storms disappeared from her eyes. But with these bandages near his elbows, he probably shouldn’t be holding anything, even Harper, for a few days.
