ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (101 page)

Chapter 4

In those first moments Sylvia couldn’t be sure what had pulled her from sleep. Thoughts came slowly to her sluggish mind as she struggled for consciousness. It was too early for breakfast, she felt sure, and she didn’t hear anything, but…then it came to her: smoke.

The scent was in the air, far thicker than the stoves that warmed the house should have allowed. It stung her eyes, forcing her to blink against the sensation several times. Where could it be coming from though?

That question pulled Sylvia the rest of the way into wakefulness. Confused, she pulled a dressing robe over her nightgown and plodded into the hallway, intent on finding the source of the smoke that was contaminating the air. There was a glow coming from the window in the bedroom opposite her own…
Fire.

“Vincent? Vincent, I think the barn is burning!”

Sylvia hurried down the hallway to his room, only to find his bed empty. She hurried on, calling out for him even as she rushed outside to see if Vincent had already seen the flame and was combatting it. She reached the front door just in time to see him as he rushed into the barn…an instant before the roof collapsed.

It seemed as though time stood still for an instant as shock froze Sylvia’s body in place. It seemed for a moment as though her mind would deny what her eyes had seen. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. She wouldn’t
let it
happen.

The thought spurred her into motion. Sylvia ran across the open ground toward the barn. Sticks, rocks, and the burrs that grew so commonly in that region dug into the soles of her bare feet, and vaguely Sylvia realized that she hadn’t really dressed in her haste to tell Vincent about the fire. But she couldn’t stop now.
Vincent.

She did stop, when she reached what had been the entrance to the barn. The heat seared her skin. It felt as though surely the hair was being singed from her scalp. Fear froze her to the spot where she stood as she gazed into the flames that engulfed the entire building.

Then she saw him. A beam had fallen on Vincent’s leg. He didn’t cry out, but he was struggling to pull it from beneath the wood. It hadn’t caught fire fully yet, thank goodness. If it had he would be lost for sure.
Lost….Vincent couldn’t be lost.

Sylvia took a deep breath and then started forward. Every step seemed to get hotter and soon she was afraid to take deep breaths. It felt as though the heat would sear her lungs away to nothing. Determination propelled her forward. One step at a time she moved forward. When she was almost to him Vincent looked up and met her eyes.

“Sylvia? Get out of here! Go!”

She didn’t answer. How could she, when she could hardly breathe? Rather than answer she let her actions speak for themselves. She continued moving toward him, one step after another. Only the knowledge that pausing between steps would leave her in the flames even longer kept her pace fast.

Fear showed in Vincent’s eyes, and understandably so. Sylvia’s first attempt to lift the beam failed. Though it wasn’t burning it was still unbearably hot to the touch and Sylvia instinctively pulled her hands back. Smoke burned her eyes, causing them to tear up…although some of the tears might have been born of fear and pain. She couldn’t stop though. Not while Vincent was still trapped. She quickly took off her dressing robe and used it to shield her hands from the worst of the wood’s heat.

Sylvia tried to lift the board first, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t budge. Finally she began to push it. It would rake against Vincent’s leg this way, but that seemed like the least of his worries at this point.

Soon coughs wracked Sylvia’s small frame and a ring of white formed around her vision. Dizziness caused the world to waver before her, and she realized that if she were going to get Vincent out of here it would have to be
now.
Any longer and she would pass out. Then they would both perish.

With one final, desperate burst of strength Sylvia shoved the board. She felt a second’s relief as the board seemed to give way. Before she could free Vincent’s leg, though, the world went black. A brief feeling of dread filled her as she realized she’d failed before that too was lost to unconsciousness.

“Her name was Sophie, but you already knew that, didn’t you? She was…not beautiful. Not quite. She was…fragile, delicate. I think half the reason I fell in love with her was because I wanted to protect her.”

“She was sick…even in childhood she always fell ill, and it only got worse with age. Looking back it was obvious that she wasn’t destined for a long life. At the time I was younger, and convinced that death would never touch us. It did, of course. You know that part to, Sylvia.”

“Afterward I didn’t blame anyone but I…withdrew. I thought that if I just stayed alone then I wouldn’t feel that kind of pain again.”

The words penetrated the fog that had taken over Sylvia’s brain. It was Vincent’s voice, to be sure. And if she was hearing it then she must have survived…somehow. The last thing she remembered was being unable to save him. Then she fell. With an effort she opened her eyes. She struggled to sit up and felt Vincent’s strong hand at her back.

He gently helped her up and gave her a sip of water, pausing only for a moment as he arranged the cushions that he used to prop her up. Sylvia’s head throbbed a bit at the change in position but other than that, surprisingly, she seemed no worse for the wear. Once she was settled he kept speaking as though he hadn’t stopped to help her.

“I was wrong Sylvia. Being alone didn’t save me from pain. When you lost consciousness, when I thought that you would die in that fire…What were you thinking? You could have died!”

Sylvia replied, though the answer was obvious. “I was thinking that you were stuck in that same fire. At least I went into the blaze to save my husband.
You,
on the other hand…What would you have saved? A horse, perhaps?” Her voice was raw from the smoke she’d inhaled, but there was no mistaking the teasing tone in her voice.

“Well…yes. A horse. Only it turned out the animal had made it out the back at some point before the building collapsed.”

“I’m certainly glad that someone had some sense. Remind me to give my compliments to the horse.”

Vincent chuckled softly before he continued. “I think that I didn’t give you a fair shake Sylvia. Sophie was fragile, sickly…But you aren’t her. You proved your strength last night. And even if you were the weakest little slip of a think ever to exist…well…not wanting love didn’t keep me from loving you. It only kept me from enjoying it fully.”

“When I thought you would die in that fire with me…That was the only thing that gave me the strength to push that beam the rest of the way off my leg, Sugar. Loving you doesn’t make me weaker. It makes me…more.”

Tears formed in Sylvia’s eyes as her husband dropped to one knee before her. “Will you be my wife, Sylvia?”

“My darling husband,” she whispered softly, “I thought you’d never ask.”

THE END

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1

A yellowing sheet of paper had been posted in the local bar of Sawtooth, Nevada. An image of a thin woman with large hair and high heels had been printed on the paper. In large black letters, the paper read:

NOTICE!

Due to the increasing number of mail order brides and the over-hasty marriages that follow, several complaints have been lodged by no-longer happy grooms.

Let it be known therefore that any man who is seduced into marriage by the use of:

False Hair

Cosmetic Paint

Artificial Bosoms

Holstered Hips

Padded Lines

Without the man’s knowledge shall stand null and void if he so desires.

Jacob Renmyer took some time to read the notice. He wasn’t exactly sure what a “holstered hip” might be. He tried to imagine women stuffing cotton balls into their pants, but the image that came into his head did not match up with the picture on the paper. He rubbed his chin while he thought about the mail-order bride notice that he himself had put in three days before in both the Nevada Ledger and the Nevada Tribune. He had been told to cast as wide a net as possible by someone who had already done it.

              His friend, the person he had come to Shaky’s Motel and Bar to see, had advised him that he could be sure of having his choice of women if he was willing to pay for a variety of advertisements. Thus far, that had not proven to be the case. He was beginning to wonder whether he had wasted his money sending in advertisements to the two newspapers. When he had first seen the advertisements, he had decided that he would give it two weeks. If he didn’t hear anything by then, he would take the rest of his money and head back east to Philadelphia, the city where he had been born and raised.

              His leather boots thunked on the wooden floor of the bar as he pushed open the creaky saloon doors that every bar seemed to have. He suspected that the owner of the building made a point of not repairing the two swinging doors- each the size of a window pane- to ensure that he heard anyone who came and went.

              Then, like clockwork, the overweight man with his large curly mustache and sideburns halfway across his chin made his appearance. He said, “Mr. Renmyer, you are early today aren’t you? I assume you are aware that the bar opens at five o’clock?”

              Jacob kept track of the time by listening to the chiming of the bells in one of the town’s three churches. The Catholic Church, run by Father Flaherty, kept time so exact that Jacob sometimes wondered where the priest got his timepieces from. The last tolling he’d heard had declared the time to be one o’clock in the afternoon. First the bell chimed three times, then it chimed once, each one a solemn note offered to anyone who cared to hear. Since that had been what he felt to be half an hour ago, he put the time at 1:30 in the afternoon.

              He said, “I am aware, Mr. Scribner. As it happens, I’ve come here to meet someone.”

              Zebediah Scribner twirled his mustache and said, “That’s quite all right. You’re always welcome here. Make yourself at home.”

              Jacob found himself an empty table, which wasn’t difficult. The bar on the ground floor of the hotel was empty. No one in town came into the bar except for Jacob and a few stragglers on a Friday afternoon. It just so happened that he had Fridays off, on account of how the man he worked for, Matthew Callahan, took Fridays off to get what feed, seed, and what fertilizer he could. He then used his Saturday to sell what product he had, or else do the odd chores around his seventy-acre property that needed doing.

              Jacob had taken a job as a cowpuncher a year and a half ago for Matthew could not tend to his crop and his cattle at the same time. Jacob had moved across the country a month at a time, stopping here and there to get enough work in so that he could move on. He had intended to settle down somewhere in California’s Salinas Valley. He had made the journey across the country that way until he found a job he liked well enough to stick around for a while. As he put his feet up on the table, he supposed that there were worse things that being a cowpuncher in Nevada.

              He had tried his hand at shucking wheat, and though that paid more than herding cattle, he had never been able to acclimate himself to a day’s work that wasn’t done on horseback. It didn’t feel natural to him. A full day in the wheat field left his feet throbbing and his stomach growling. On horseback, he had to use a different set of skills. He had to notice where the cows went for shelter. He had to notice rustlers waiting for the chance to make off with a wandering here or there. He had to notice whenever cattle with different brandings than that which Callahan used got themselves mixed up with the herd for which he was responsible. He had to have a sharp eye and a quick mind, or else he would quickly find himself out of a job. That he had been able to do the job through all kinds of weather had earned him some amount of trust in Sawtooth. People had come to know his name. They knew him as the man who rode on the back of a brown and white Spanish horse that had retained the fiery temperament of his ancestors.

              After his work ended every day- and that was late enough at night to leave him little enough time to do anything else- he went home to eat what food he could. As often as not, that was a can of pork and beans held over the makeshift fireplace in the cabin he had built over the course of a year. He had not been able to bring himself to buy or install a proper stove for his cabin. Doing so would mean that he had committed himself to living in Sawtooth on a permanent basis. The fireplace was a reminder of that, and a reminder of all the days he had slept in a hammock he had strung between two trees while he built his cabin.

              Now that he actually had time to himself to reflect, he felt restless. There was nothing further for him to do at the cabin, not unless he wanted to upgrade it to a permanent living space. He had patched up the roof, and mucked out the outhouse. That had been a chore that he had not relished doing, but which he needed doing nonetheless. The whole time, he had wondered why he had even bothered digging a latrine pit in the first place.

              He let out a sigh of exasperation. He muttered under his breath, “Jake old man, you’re going to have to make your mind sooner or later.”

              It was then when he sat reflecting on he should put down roots in Sawtooth or move on to somewhere else when the swinging doors of the bar pushed open. He looked from the table. Surprise came over his face when he saw who had entered.