Cinderella Busted (The Cinderella Romances #1) (30 page)

“Garrett will be so sorry he didn’t get to hear you admit you were wrong,” she said softly.

He inhaled sharply and then a smile twitched at the edges of his mouth and slowly spread across his face. She had left the door open without committing. The next move was his, and like Rhett, he wasted no time. He covered the distance between them in two strides and pulled her into his arms, crushing her so hard against his chest she could barely breathe.

And she felt wonderful.

“Oh Lily,” he whispered into her hair, “I’ve missed you so much. Forgive me. Tell me you forgive me.” He pulled back and cradled her cheeks in his palms to see her eyes.

“I’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me for not telling you about my nursery right when I met you.”

His mouth was on hers before the last words left her lips. Holding tight to her cheeks, he ran gentle strafing runs across her lips to tease them apart and steal her breath. When she parted her lips, his tongue sank into her mouth deepening the kiss until she clung to him, weak-kneed and dizzied. He slowly made love to her mouth with the same rhythm she knew he planned for her, and she felt not the slightest hesitation.

Her desire pressed her into him, and her tongue curled into his in passion’s sensual tango. His hands were everywhere, her shoulders, her back, her bottom. She threaded her tingling fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck and held on for dear life and tried her best to keep his lips pressed against hers until she absolutely
had
to come up for air. She had been so sure she would never feel his arms around her ever again, and now that those muscular arms had her all wrapped up, she felt like a dying-of-thirst wayfarer who suddenly stumbled into an oasis.

She felt the words
I love you
bubble up from her throat, and then an explosion rocked the earth beneath their feet and spun them backward toward the building.

Chapter 15

Rhett pushed Lily back against the nursery office and shielded her body with his. Her ears felt like they had turned inside out, and for several seconds, she could only cling to Rhett with her face buried in his shirt and wait to see if another explosion would follow.

His grip felt like a vise around her ribs, and she finally wheezed in his ear, “I can’t breathe. You’re squeezing me too tight.”

“Oh Lord, I’m sorry.” He pulled back to brush the hair from her face. “Are you all right?” His voice sounded hoarse.

She nodded. “What happened?”

Still shielding her under his arm, he turned them, and she shrieked, “It’s the cottage!”

Visible flames leaped high in the air on the far side of Lily’s cottage. She tried to bolt, and he held her firmly in place.

“Did you have a propane tank?”

“Yes,” she cried, trying to wriggle free.

“Then it just blew up. You stay here and call 911. I’ll get a hose,” he ordered.

He gave her a push toward the back door of the office and then streaked for the cottage as flames scrabbled up the clapboard siding and across the eaves on the far side of the structure.

Lily yanked out her cell phone and called 911 and Rob in rapid succession as she raced after Rhett. He’d grabbed a hose from the garage side of the house and had a stream centered on the worst of the flames by the time she reached the driveway.

“You get back!” he roared when he spotted her. “I lost you once. I’m not losing you again.”

She ignored him and ran to the palm field bordering her small lawn and straight to the closest hose bibb with its attached coil of hose. She’d ordered two-hundred-foot hoses for the palm field and wondered briefly if that had been
one of them God things
Hank always mentioned.

Rhett saw her lumbering back toward the cottage under the weight of the heavy coils, water flying out the end in all directions as she ran. “No, Lily! Stay back!”

She could see the panic in his eyes even at this distance and knew it was all for her. “It’s my home, Rhett,” she shouted back.

Nothing remained of her propane tank but a black metal husk, and she used her spewing hose to flood the smoldering grass as she passed by. The storm brewing out in the Atlantic earlier had headed inland, and she said a silent prayer for rain. Only wind showed up for the fireworks party and threatened to blow the flames quickly out of control. Their two small-diameter hoses couldn’t keep up with the spreading flames. They needed the gushing fire hoses to do proper battle.

Gusts of wind grabbed sparks from the roof and scattered them in every direction like miniscule sparklers. Lily adjusted her aim to send her stream of water onto the roof, but the flames grew higher and inhaled the thin stream like a sadistic magic act. Gusts fluttered more sparks into a shower overhead, and Lily put up an arm to cover her head.

“Dammit, Lily, get back!” Rhett roared again.

Still she ignored him and shifted her stream of water to the highest flames.

“Lily, I mean it!”

She made the mistake of glancing over. Rhett looked furious, but no way would she move back. The tiny cottage was the only home she had ever known. Her parents’ pictures and homemade Christmas decorations were inside, along with her family Bible, her yearbooks, and her father’s landscape references.

The crackling and snapping of the flames merged into a dull roar, and somewhere nearby, she heard a vehicle fly up and spew gravel. Seconds later, large hands closed over hers. “Let go of the hose, Lily,” Rob said. “The house is gone. We have to save the shadehouse.”

She whipped around and saw small flames teasing at the edges of their new annuals shadehouse. No sprinkler system existed inside as all the annuals were specially hand-watered, according to their needs. “No!” she screamed and took off running.

Rhett had her around the waist before she took three strides, and she pummeled his shoulders to get free as the sound of sirens echoed from nearby. “Let me go! Let me go!”

He crushed her arms down to her sides in a bear hug. “Hold still, dammit!”

Tears filled her eyes. Her whole life was going up in smoke.

“I’m going to let you go, but I need you to run to the entrance to guide the fire trucks back here, or they’ll drive straight through your planting fields.”

She nodded and he released her, but kept an eye on her as he jogged toward another hose bibb in the palm field, this one even closer to the shadehouse. Rob was already soaking down the roof of the shadehouse with the hose he’d heisted from Lily. She did exactly as Rhett ordered until he turned his hose and attention on the shadehouse, and then she sprinted toward the back door of her cottage. She had to get her pictures of Hank. They were all she had left to remember him.

Smoke billowed out through holes in the roof as Lily raced around the side of the house. The wind caught the smoke and swirled it in all directions. An especially strong gust shoved a blanket of smoke down over her as she reached the back door. Her lungs coughed violently against the invasion, and she drew her T-shirt up and over her mouth and nose, then yanked open the back door.

A wall of flames spread across the front of the house and inched steadily toward the family room in the rear. Thick smoke filled the inside of her cottage, and Lily couldn’t see into the kitchen to her left or the family room to her right. Memory alone would guide her steps to retrieve the beloved pictures.

She had only seconds. Barely enough time to reach the frames on the end tables and maybe, the frames on the fireplace shelves at the far wall. Thick smoke stung her eyes. Squinting her eyelids to slits, she took careful measured steps through the family room to avoid falling over any furniture. If she hit her head, she died right here.

Moving steadily forward, she skirted Hank’s recliner to get to the end table just beyond, which held two precious photos of her and Hank at Disney World. Rhett shouted her name outside, and she quickly shuffled forward, knowing he would charge in and drag her out. As she reached for the end table, dozens of stinging sensations erupted on her forearms. Her eyes opened wide. A shower of sparks fluttered down onto her arms. Her gaze jerked up in time to see the blazing beam break free from the roof above and drop straight for her head.

When Rhett glanced up the gravel drive and didn’t see Lily, a wave of all-out panic hit him like a sledgehammer. He spun toward the flame-engulfed cottage. No sign of her.

“Lily!” he roared.

Rob shot him a panicked look. “Where is she?” he hollered.

“I don’t know!” Rhett shot back. “Lily!” He glanced back at the cottage and then hollered to Rob, “Is there a back door to her cottage?”

Rob’s eyes widened in alarm, and Rhett’s heart kicked up in his throat. He raced for the cottage, shouting her name.

Dear God, don’t let her have gone in there!

He careened around the back corner of the cottage, and sparks fluttered like rain around him as a strong gust of wind whipped across the flaming roof. He spotted the back door yanked wide, and his heart almost stopped.

“Lily!” he yelled into the billows of smoke pouring from the interior.

He yanked his polo shirt up and over his nose and mouth. Right or left? A light was still on in the room to the left, and two steps later, he bumped into a counter.
Kitchen
. Knowing Lily, she went after personal belongings, probably pictures. Squinting to shield his eyes against the onslaught of smoke, he moved through the arch to the right of the back door.

“Lily!” he shouted and took two strides into the room.

He caught movement through the smoke. One more step and he spotted her as a shower of sparks fluttered down over her head. She glanced up, and he followed her gaze. The beam overhead tore free of the flaming roof, leaving a gaping hole and creating a second thicker shower of sparks.

As though in slow motion, Rhett lunged for Lily and yanked her to the side as the fiery beam bounced hard off his shoulder. His subsequent roll to their right snuffed out the burst of flame on his shirt.

Ignoring the blast of pain in his shoulder, he held his breath, scooped Lily into his arms, and hustled toward the back door, moving via memory through the opaque gray curtain. Gulping a lungful of air once he exited the house, Rhett marched toward the halogen security lamp atop a pole at the rear of her property. When he reached a picnic table well back from the burning cottage, he set her down. Immediately, a spate of coughing overwhelmed her, and he brushed the hair back from her face.

“Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely.

The halogen lamp lit the area around them, and he tilted her face toward the light. Streaks of tears washed a path through the sooty grime on her cheeks, and her desolate expression tore at his heart.

“I’m not hurt,” she managed to wheeze.

“Take slow deep breaths to clean out your lungs. Are you nauseous?” he probed, searching for symptoms of smoke inhalation.

“I kept my mouth and nose covered.”

“Oh thank God,” he said, and gently pulled her into his arms.

She hesitated for a heartbeat, then her arms went around his neck. He held on for dear life, finally realizing just how much that clichéd phrase meant and how close he had come to losing Lily. Permanently.

A couple hours later, Lily was still seated at her picnic table, though now she was draped in a blanket supplied by a Jupiter firefighter who had arrived with his team only minutes after Rhett pulled her from the flaming cottage. Several Jupiter police vehicles had followed the fire rescue vehicles in and stayed until the firefighters extinguished the blaze. Her blanket-bearing firefighter told her the fire inspector would go over the scene later with a fine-tooth comb to determine the exact cause of the blaze and the extent of the damage.

Rhett stood near the shadehouse with the Incident Commander, giving a step-by-step account of the exploding propane tank and resultant fire. Watching him in the distance telling his story, she wondered if he would tell the Incident Commander how close she came to dying tonight. The commander’s questions for her had been blessedly brief, no doubt because she looked pitiful. This she knew because she felt pitiful.

The trauma of watching the enormous fire hoses extinguish the flames in her cottage and leave behind a blackened shell had left her feeling numb. The pain and anguish would come later.

Rob appeared alongside the picnic table carrying her purse and the car keys, which he had retrieved from her truck parked outside the nursery office. Luckily, she’d been upset when she locked up and headed out of the officer earlier and hadn’t remembered her truck parked out front. If she had remembered her truck, she would have been at the cottage when the propane tank blew. She had trouble working up any enthusiasm over not losing her money and credit cards in the fire along with everything else.

“Rhett saved us tonight,” Rob said grudgingly. “We would have lost the shadehouse and maybe the annuals and interiors greenhouses, too, if he hadn’t been here to help.”

She glanced up at Rob, and what he said finally pierced the protective shield she had erected to fight off shock. She slowly nodded.

“Why was Rhett here, anyway?” Rob asked. “And at night?” His face probably mimicked hers, blackened with long smudges of soot.

She glanced back up the drive at Rhett, still gesturing to the commander with his tale, and a spark of hope flared in her heart. Then another and another, like the shower of sparks that fluttered over her in the cottage.

Turning back to Rob, she felt the cool relief of tears forming in her dried-out eyes. “He came back for me,” she said softly.

His eyes widened slightly. “Because?” he asked warily.

“Because Rhett’s sorry. For everything.” More sparks of hope fluttered over her as she recalled his words right before the explosion.

Rob frowned. “How sorry?”

“He explained things. We’re okay, Rob.” She gave him a weak smile, all she could manage, considering her present condition and frame of mind.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m real sure. Now.”

He sighed heavily, and something like relief filtered through his expression. “Well, Rhett saved you and he saved the nursery, so I guess he’s okay with me.”

Her smile felt stronger this time. She had lost her pictures and her mementos, but she had her memories, and her future suddenly looked brighter.

“Come on, Lil. You need to get some rest. I’m taking you home with me,” Rob said.

“The hell you are!” The deep voice sounded from behind them, and an angry Rhett stepped into the circle of light near the table.

Rob didn’t flinch or step back from the glare that would make any sane man falter. He stood his ground and glowered back at Rhett.

“She’s going with me,” Rhett said, brooking no disagreement and reaching for Lily. “I’m taking care of her tonight.”

Rob glanced at her. “Lily?”

She smiled up at Rhett’s sooty frown. “I’ll go with Rhett.”

Rhett insisted on carrying Lily into his mansion and up the stairs. Too exhausted to argue now that the adrenaline had worn off, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tucked her head on his shoulder to marvel at how easily he carried her up the stairs as though she weighed no more than a feather. He strode down the upstairs hall and into what had to be the master suite due to the sheer size alone.