Risking It All...: A High Stakes Seduction / For the Sake of the Secret Child. Yvonne LindsayЧитать онлайн книгу.
evacuating the building and moved everyone to the far end of the parking lot. They trained their hoses on the fire, but whenever the flames and smoke died down in one area, they sprang up in another.
“It’s a tinderbox,” muttered a man standing behind her. “All that carpet and curtains and bedspreads. Deadly toxic smoke, too.”
Soon the entire motel complex—about twenty rooms—was ablaze and they had to move farther back to escape the heat and smoke. Constance and the other guests stood there in their pajamas, watching in stunned disbelief.
At some point she realized she’d put her briefcase down while helping people out, and she had no idea where it was. It had her almost-new laptop in it, her phone and all the notes she’d made in preparation for her assignment. Most of the information was backed up somewhere, but putting it all back together would be a nightmare. And her wallet with her driver’s license and credit cards! She started to wander around in the darkness, scanning the wet ground for it.
“You can’t go there, miss. Too dangerous.”
“But my bag. It has all my important documents in it that I need for work.” Her voice sounded whiny and pathetic as she scanned the tarmac of the parking lot. The fire glowed along almost the entire roof of the motel, and acrid smoke stung her nostrils. What if she didn’t find her bag? Or if it got soaked through?
“Constance.”
She jerked her gaze up and realized John Fairweather was standing in front of her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a volunteer firefighter. Are you cold? We have some blankets on the truck.”
“I’m fine.” She fought the urge to glance down at her pajamas. How embarrassing for him to see her in them, though it was pretty selfish and shallow of her to be thinking about how she looked at a time like this. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You could try to calm down the other guests. Tell them we’ll find room for everyone at the New Dawn hotel. My uncle Don’s driving over here in a van to pick everyone up.”
“Oh. That’s great.” She’d made quite a fuss about not staying there. Now apparently she would be anyway.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You look kind of dazed. Maybe you should be treated for smoke inhalation.” His concerned gaze raked over her face. “Come sit down over here.”
“I’m fine! Really. I was one of the first ones out. I’ll go talk to people.” She realized she was flapping her hands around.
John hesitated for a moment, then nodded and hurried off to help someone unfurl a hose. She stood staring after him for a moment. His white T-shirt shone in the flashing lights from the fire trucks, accentuating his broad shoulders.
Constance Allen, there is something very, very wrong with you that you are noticing John Fairweather’s physique at a moment like this. She picked her way barefoot over the wet and gritty tarmac to where the other guests stood in a confused straggle. One little girl was crying, and an older lady was shivering even under a blanket. She explained that a local hotel had offered them all rooms and that a bus would be coming to fetch anyone who couldn’t drive there.
People realized they’d left their car keys locked in their rooms, and that started a rumbling about everything else they’d lost and only intensified Constance’s own anxiety about her briefcase and all her clothes, including a nice new suit she’d just bought. She tried to soothe them with platitudes. At least no one was hurt. That was a big thing to be grateful for.
Still, she didn’t have her car keys, either. If she’d flown here and rented the car she could have just called the rental agency. But she’d decided to be adventurous and driven her own car all the way here, so now she couldn’t even get into it. She was starting to feel teary and pathetic when she felt a hand on her arm.
“I found your bag. You left it at the bottom of the stairs.” John Fairweather stood beside her, holding her briefcase, which dripped water onto the tarmac.
She gasped and took it from his hand, then noticed with joy that it was still sealed shut. “You shouldn’t have gone back over there.” The fire was now out, but the balcony and stairs were badly damaged and collapsing.
John’s T-shirt was streaked with soot. “You shouldn’t have brought it with you. We firefighters hate it when people retrieve stuff before escaping.”
“My...my laptop.” She clutched the handle tightly. Tears really threatened now that she had her bag back. “It has everything on it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just teasing you. I’d have a hard time leaving my laptop behind even after all the training I’ve had.” His warm smile soothed the panic and embarrassment that churned inside her. She felt his big hand on her back. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.”
Her skin heated under his unwelcome touch, but she didn’t want to be ungracious after he’d found her bag and offered her a place to stay. The flashing lights from the fire trucks hurt her eyes. “My car keys are gone.”
“We’ll get you another set tomorrow. I’ll drive you back in my car.” His broad hand still on her back, he guided her through the crowd toward his vehicle. Oh, dear. Even amid all the chaos, her skin heated beneath his palm as if she was still too close to the flames.
And now she was going to be trapped in his glitzy hotel in nothing but her pajamas.
“We were lucky the motel had a good fire alarm system.” John steered his big black truck down a winding back road. “It went up fast. Everyone got out, though.”
“That’s a relief. I’m glad the firefighters got there quickly and had time to check all the rooms. How long have you been a volunteer?”
“Oh, I joined the first moment they let me.” He turned and grinned. “More than fifteen years ago now. When I was a kid I wanted to be a firefighter.”
He should have become one. Much better than a gambling impresario. On the other hand, her strict upbringing had formed her distaste for gambling, but now that she was here it didn’t seem so different from any other business. She admired how John had pitched in and done anything and everything he could to help. He was thoughtful, too, talking to the other evacuees and reassuring them that the hotel staff would help them track down car keys, clothes and things like that in the morning. There was certainly no need for him to have offered everyone rooms at the hotel. He was being very generous. “What changed your mind?”
He shrugged. “I discovered I had a head for business. And at the time I was glad to leave this quiet backwater behind. I got seduced by the bright lights of the big city.”
“New York?”
“Boston. I’ve never lived outside of the great state of Massachusetts. After a while, though, I started to miss the old homestead. And that’s around the time I cooked up the whole casino idea. But when I came back I signed right on with the fire department again.” His disarming grin cracked her defenses again. “They missed me. No one can unfurl or roll up a hose as fast as me.”
“I’m sure they appreciate the help. But there don’t seem to be too many people around here.” They were driving through dark woods, not a house in sight. The area around the casino was very rural.
“Nope. That doesn’t seem to stop fires breaking out, though. Last week an abandoned barn caught fire out in the middle of nowhere. We had to pump water from an old ice pond to put it out. Could have set the whole woods on fire, especially right now when everything’s so dry.”
It was early summer. Not that she really noticed the changing seasons much from the inside of her pale gray cubicle.
As they continued driving, she could see the pearl-white moon flashing through black tree branches. The woods were