Jodi O'Donnell - The Rancher's Daughter

“It looks like the fire headed southwest,” he said without inflection. “We should be good to head to fire camp about four miles up the riverbed, and from there we can get a ride to command in Limestone.”

She swiped at her eyes, nodding.

The way was rough, part of it through still-smoldering debris, a dangerous route to take. One didn’t know when a still-standing tree trunk might topple. At one point, they came upon an abandoned fire shelter, and Maura and Ash simply exchanged looks, not speaking. Hopefully the firefighter who’d employed the shelter had survived and was also making his or her way back to camp.

It took them all of the morning and into the early afternoon to reach fire camp, where they were greeted with hugs and slaps on the back, their return hailed a miracle, for when the wind had shifted and started the fire’s deadly run, not every firefighter had been as lucky as Ash and Maura: two National Park Service firefighters had gotten caught on a slope and died.

Ash and Maura looked at each other solemnly. Yes, they had come close to dying. But they hadn’t. Whether it’d been sheer luck or destiny, they’d survived.

They reported to the incident commander, who released them to return to Limestone on the next truck, and from there, home. Hal, Maura’s crew chief, radioed ahead for a veterinarian to be in Limestone for the fawn.

It was just a little one-horse town, but to Ash, Limestone looked like paradise as the truck came to a stop in front of the mercantile that was being used as a command center for the NIFC. As he and Maura stepped onto the street, Ash found himself blurting out, “Maura, wait.”

“Yes, Ash?”

Glancing around, he pulled her aside with his free arm. With the other he was still holding on to Smokey, who’d nearly panicked earlier when Ash had tried to put him down.

He found a spot behind the truck for privacy, and she stood before him, looking up at him expectantly. He wanted badly to make good on that expectancy.

“Look, before we go our separate ways, I wanted you to know that last night meant something to me. What that something is, I still haven’t figured out yet.” He actually found he could give a short laugh. “But I hope you’ll give me your address—you know, I just realized I don’t have a clue what part of Montana you’re from—and once I take care of some old business, get my life in order, I’d like to look you up in a few months or so. I mean, if you want me to.”

The few seconds before she nodded were torture. “I’d like that, very much.” Her smile could make flowers bloom.

Ash’s heart was pounding like a drum within his chest. He could barely believe he was here, asking these things of her, promising some of them himself. “I still can’t make you any guarantees, Maura.”

“I know you’ll do your best to give what you can.” Her confidence meant everything to him.

He gave an answering nod. It would work out, some way. He’d make a name for himself managing the Holmes ranch and build up some savings, start scouting around for where he might be able to lease some grazing land, as a start. More important, he’d make peace with his family, put to rest the lingering demons that still haunted him. And then he’d be free to give Maura the kind of happiness she deserved. He had to borrow some of her hopefulness, enough to believe it was possible—

“Maura!” Ash heard a masculine shout.

They both turned, and striding toward them was a tall man in his sixties or so with a head of steel-gray hair. Although the relief wreathing his weathered features told of the recent fear he’d experienced, he walked with the air of a man used to being in command, used to being in control.

“Dad?” Maura said wonderingly, then with a cry of joy, “Dad!”

An alarm went off in Ash’s brain, a warning of the self-preservation kind that he hadn’t experienced since his days in the pen at Deer Lodge. His first reaction was to put his back to a wall, any wall, to protect it, so that any danger he had to confront would be in front of him; so that if he was going down, he’d have the best chance of taking at least one other with him.

But he was no longer a prisoner, not of that sort, at least. And he wasn’t in the position of being able to take out the opponent.

Not when that man was none other than Stratton Kingsley, one of the most powerful men in the county.

And not when he was Maura’s father.

Maura was swept up in a powerful, rib-cracking embrace that left her gasping for breath and happy enough to walk on air.

“Dad! What’re you doing here?” She pulled away to peer into his craggy, beloved face. It was a study in worry.

“The branch director at the BLM is an old friend of mine, and I’ve had him keepin’ an eye on you ever since you took up this fool notion of firefighting. He called me at the ranch the minute you turned up missing.”

Maura lifted her eyebrows, not entirely happy to hear this. “I should have known.”

“Don’t give me that look. I’ve had enough grief today.” He drew her head back against his shoulder, and she could feel his Adam’s apple bob. “I thought I’d lost you, little girl.”

“Well, as you can see I’m right as rain, Dad,” Maura chided, even though it was pure heaven to feel those familiar arms around her, hugging her so tight she was beginning to get dizzy. “And it’s all on account of this man.”

She extracted herself from her father’s embrace to tug Ash forward by his elbow. “Ash here saved my life—and Smokey’s, too. We wouldn’t have made it without him, Dad.”

Smiling, she glanced up at Ash’s face, only to find his expression as stony as granite. He was staring at her father with eyes full of shock and suspicion. Puzzled, Maura turned to her father—only to find the same emotions shooting lightning bolts from his eyes.

“Dad? Ash? What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“You?” Stratton said, his piercing green gaze, which Maura had seen many a man whither under in less than ten seconds, still riveted on Ash. “You’re the firefighter my daughter was holed up with all night long?”

“That would be me,” Ash said with deadly calm. He hadn’t moved a muscle, but his skin had turned white under his five-o’clock shadow, and Maura wondered what could have made it so.

“If you’ve, by God, touched a hair on her head, I’ll horsewhip you and leave you for the buzzards to pick over, you young outlaw,” Stratton warned.

Maura gasped. “Dad! What on earth is wrong with you? Chances are I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for Ash!”

She stepped between them, although she couldn’t have said what impulse told her to do so. “Why are you acting this way toward the man who risked his life to save mine?”

Stratton jabbed a pointed finger in Ash’s direction. “Did he tell you, then, who he is and just what kinds of risks with people’s lives he’s normally used to taking?”

“What?” Maura asked, thoroughly confused, except for the thin thread of a memory that spun its way through her head like a familiar melody that she couldn’t quite identify the name of.

“You remember Emmeline McDonough, don’t you, Maura?” her father went on. “She was in the grade ahead of you in school—till she got taken out when she was about thirteen and put in a foster home over in Big Timber. See, her mama’d died and there was no one to take care of her on account of her brother Karl fighting over in Desert Storm—”

“And her other brother being in prison, sent there on a drug conviction that disgraced the family and broke his mother’s heart.”

This had come from Ash.

He turned to face her at last, his face a mask even as he held his strong chin not aloft in defiance nor tucked in shame, but level, as would a man who’d come to terms with his faults and mistakes and was going on with his life.

Then she looked into his eyes and saw the real story. For they no longer glowed silver, as they had when he’d made tender, passionate love to her.

Ash’s eyes instead were the dull gray of ashes, cold and lifeless.

“That’s right, Maura,” he said in as colorless a tone, “you’re lookin’ at none other than Ash McDonough—otherwise known as the bad seed of Rumor, Montana.”

He should have known better. Known that luck was not currency that could be hoarded and stored up for a rainy day when you really, really needed it—or really, really wanted it.

And, oh, he’d wanted Maura! Ash had wanted her so much he had drained his luck down to a zero balance, just so he could believe for one night that he might have a chance with this woman. A chance at life. A chance at happiness.

Clearly, that was impossible now.

Who’d have known that out of the hundreds and hundreds of firefighters from all over the country, the one he’d share such an encounter with would be from his own hometown, giving her ready access to every sordid detail of his past, like it was on loan at the library.

It wasn’t as if he’d intended to keep his history a secret from Maura forever—just until he’d made it right and put it behind him for good. And even with her finding out about that past now, he might have had a chance of convincing any other woman that while he might not yet be the man she believed him to be, he intended to become that man or die trying.

But not Stratton Kingsley’s “little girl.”

How? How was he to know the unpretentious, gutsy, warm, accepting woman he’d spent the night with was a member of one of the wealthiest families in this part of Montana? The Kingsley ranch alone would have put them up in rarefied air, but they also owned MonMart, the superstore chain that was poised to give such giants as Walmart a run for their money. There was even a Kingsley Avenue running smack-dab through the middle of Rumor!

There was no way he could convince Maura Kingsley—or her father—that he could make her happy.

So. He didn’t have much choice now but to get through the next few minutes and go on with his life.

“I guess I’m not surprised to be treated like a noaccount by you, Stratton, or anyone who’s acquainted with my past,” Ash drawled, getting a bit of his own back when the other man’s eyes widened in anger at the use of his first name by Rumor’s bad seed.

He shifted the fawn to the side, hiking the little guy on one hip and tucking him under his arm, thoroughly aware of how ludicrous he must look standing there holding Bambi. “Rest assured, though, that you’ve got nothing to worry about when it comes to compromising your daughter here. There’s no reason for either of us to have anything to do with each other from here on out.”

Maura’s face filled with confusion. “But, Ash, you just said you wanted for us to—”

“I said a lot of things, Maura,” he cut her off. He couldn’t stand for Stratton to hear his most private of desires. “But you’ll remember the one I kept repeating was that I couldn’t make you any guarantees.”

He saw the shock in her eyes at his harsh tone, and he hated himself for it. But it was best to make this quick and final. She’d thank him some day.

“We both’ve got to live in the same town, and contrary to what your dad here is thinkin’, I don’t want any trouble,” Ash went on. “Sure, I’m still on parole for a few more months, but I paid my dues and now I’m back to make amends to family and build a respectable life for myself. I don’t want any trouble,” he repeated, and hoped he didn’t sound as desperate to Maura and her father as he did to himself. “And from my point of view, you’re exactly that.”