Wild and Wonderful (16 page)

"Do you want some help with this?" Bruce knelt down beside her.

"Sure." Glenna handed him a plate with its tissue-paper covering.

Bruce unwrapped it and added it to the stack on the counter, announcing almost casually, "I start work Monday morning at the mine." Outside of that one remark he'd made when Jett had left, Bruce hadn't referred to him since.

Glenna sat back on her heels to look at him. "They offered you the position of manager."

"Yes."

"And you accepted it?"

"Yes."

"Why?" That question was too blunt. She quickly tempered it with an explanation. "I thought you were going to take a couple months off before starting another job."

"I discovered I had too much idle time on my hands with no way to pass it. Plus, the offer was a good one." He concentrated on his task, not looking up as he named his reasons. "And I liked the idea of going back to your father's mine. I feel as though I left a job half done and I need to finish it. Are you sorry I accepted it?"

"No." Glenna shook her head, auburn hair swaying at the movement. "As long as you didn't take it for the wrong reason." Which was to stay near her.

"I don't think I did."

With the last of the dinner plates out of the box, Glenna stood up and positioned the step stool in front of the cupboard. Climbing it, she opened the door to the top shelf where the china was being stored.

"Would you hand me the plates, Bruce?" She half turned to take the plates he passed up to her a few at a time. The phone rang when he gave her the last. "Will you answer it? It's probably for dad."

"Sure." Bruce walked to the extension phone on the wall. "Reynolds residence, this is Bruce Hawkins. Yes, just a moment." As she climbed down the step stool, he extended the receiver toward her. "It's for you. Jett Coulson."

Her heart flipped over, and her hand was unsteady as she reached for the phone. "Hello?" Glenna had been half expecting to hear from him before the weekend, but now that the moment had arrived, she was disturbed by it.

"Hello. I guess I don't need to ask whether you have company." There was a thin thread of grimness in his tone.

"No." She couldn't elaborate, not with Bruce able to overhear her side of the conversation. He was kneeling beside the box on the kitchen floor, unpacking the china sauce dishes.

"Did I interrupt anything?" His question was slightly challenging.

"No. I was unpacking the last of the boxes, trying to get the last of our things put away," Glenna explained. The suspicion of jealousy in his voice was a little gratifying even if it was unjustified. At tiffs point it was a difficult thing to let him know.

"Did Hawkins tell you he's going to work for my company?"

"Yes."

"You aren't very talkative," Jett accused. "What's wrong? Is he listening?"

"Yes." She wound her fingers in the coil of the telephone cord.

"In that case I might as well come straight to the point," he sighed with a trace of disgust. "I can't get away this weekend to see you."

"Oh." That one small word was filled with disappointment.

"I have no doubt that Hawkins will do his best to keep you entertained," he inserted dryly and continued without giving Glenna a chance to comment. "I should be able to adjust my schedule to have an afternoon and evening free one day next week. I should know by Monday afternoon whether it will be Wednesday or Thursday. I'll call you then."

"Don't forget I work until four-thirty," she reminded him.

"I'll pick you up after work."

"All right."

"I'll talk to you Monday. Hopefully there won't be anyone listening then and you'll be more communicative." It was a clipped statement that betrayed his impatience. "Goodbye, Glenna."

"Goodbye, Jett." She waited until she heard the disconnecting click on his end of the line before she hung up the receiver. When she turned, Bruce was quietly studying her.

"Are you in love with him, Glenna?" he asked.

She hesitated, then rubbed her arms, remembering how it felt when Jett touched her. "Yes, I think so," she admitted on a warmly confident note.

"Is he in love with you?" was Bruce's next question.

That required a more cautious answer. "I don't know. I'm not sure." Glenna bit at her lower lip, positive that it couldn't all be one-sided. "I think so."

Bruce straightened and walked to the step stool. "Where do you want these sauce dishes? On the same shelf with the plates?" The subject was changed, not to be raised again by him.

Chapter Eleven

ON MONDAY, Glenna left the printing office early to make some deliveries for the company on her way home. Although she knew most of the customers where she stopped, she didn't stay to chat. Jett had said he would call her today. She wanted no delays that might make her miss the phone call.

That was the reason for the gleam in her gray green eyes and the smile that hovered, on her lips. Even the mountain air seemed electric with anticipation as she turned into the driveway. She wasn't quite used to the small home where she lived, but it was the last thought in her mind when she stopped the car.

The slamming of her car door coincided with a ringing of the telephone in the house. Certain it was Jett, Glenna raced for the front door only to hear the telephone cut off in mid ring as her father answered it. Still she hurried into the house, breathless yet radiant.

"Is that—" She never completed the question, silenced by the sharply raised hand of her father and the stern white look in his expression.

Glenna only heard him make one response to the caller on the phone before he hung up, and that was a clipped, "I'll be there immediately."

"What is it? What's wrong?" She read all sorts of dire things in his expression. "Has something happened?"

He measured her with an even look as he moved into action, taking her arm and steering her back toward the front door. "There's been a cave-in at the mine. That was Bidwell on the phone." He opened the door and ushered her outside.

"Bidwell." Glenna remembered he had been one of the foremen on the shifts. Evidently he'd been rehired. A single line creased her forehead as she dug the car keys out of her purse again. "Why did he call instead of Bruce? Was anybody hurt?"

"They think there are six men trapped." He left her and walked around to the passenger's side of the car while Glenna slid behind the wheel.

"Oh, no." His statement stopped the hand that started to insert the key in the ignition. On the heels of her alarm came another more frightening thought. "Bruce?"

"He's one of the men believed trapped." It was a simple statement not designed to spare her.

Its bluntness caught at her breath, squeezing her lungs until she wanted to cry out. Her rounded eyes sought her father. Neither had to say the things that were silently understood. Bruce could be trapped or buried under a rubble of rock, He could have escaped harm or be seriously injured. He could be with the others or isolated from them. Yet her father's calm strength reached out to invisibly steady her, and prevent any panic from letting her imagination run riot.

"Was there an explosion?" Her hand trembled as she succeeded in insetting the key in the ignition. "Fire?"

"No fire." He relieved one of her fears. "Bidwell was outside the entrance and said he felt the ground vibrate, then heard the rumbling inside the mine and saw the coal dust belch from the opening."

Glenna started the car and reversed out of the driveway, picturing the scene in her mind and feeling the terrible dread that must have swept through the workers on top. She blocked it out because she knew it would give rise to panic. She concentrated on her driving, suddenly impatient with the twisting mountain roads that denied speed.

"When did it happen?" she broke the chilling silence that had descended on the car.

"About twenty minutes or so before Bidwell called me," her father answered. "He notified the main office first, then called me."

Even though her father had no more to do with the mine, Glenna understood the reasoning. This was a close-knit community. In a time of crisis everybody helped. When miners were trapped, every mining man in the area volunteered his services. With her father's intimate knowledge of the mine and experience, he was an obvious choice to be notified in the event of an emergency.

Time was the enemy. It ticked away as Glenna drove as fast as she dared. She wondered if the word had reached Jett. Surely it had by now. Bruce, and the men trapped with him, had to know that every available resource was being galvanized to effect their rescue. If they were still alive. A chill went through her bones, making her shudder.

On the last mile to the mine Glenna encountered other traffic headed for the same destination. News of the cave-in had traveled fast through the West Virginia hills. Others were already arriving on the scene when she turned the car into the parking lot.

Leaving the car parked alongside others, Glenna hurried with her father toward the fence gate. There was already a hubbub of milling people outside the mine buildings and entrance. They were an assortment of miners, families, and townspeople.

A small wiry man separated himself from the group to meet her father. Glenna recognized him as Carl Bidwell, the foreman who had called her father with news of the accident.

"Am I ever glad to see you, Mr. Reynolds," he declared.

The man's face was pale and etched with lines of stress and worry. Glenna knew her face showed the same brittle tension marked with latent fear as the faces of all those around her. Her gaze sought the mine entrance, but the steadily growing crowd of people blocked it from her view. Bruce was somewhere inside that mountain. Glenna clung to the belief that he was still alive. He had to be.

"Has anything developed since you called me?" her father questioned. "Have you made contact with any of those inside?"

The negative shake of Bidwell's head was in answer to both questions. As others in the milling crowd recognized Orin Reynolds they pressed forward, besieging him with questions he hadn't had a chance to ask for himself.

The chopping whir of a helicopter interrupted the conversation, drowning out the voices as it approached. All eyes turned to it. Glenna recognized the Coulson Mining insignia on its side. Coming in low over the heads of the crowd, it whipped up a wind that swirled dust clouds through the air. Turning her head aside, Glenna shielded her eyes from the blowing particles of dirt with her hand and tried to keep the dark copper length of her hair from blowing in her face.

It landed on a helicopter pad within the fenced area around the mine, kicking up more dust to obscure the vision of those on the ground. Three men in business suits emerged from the chopper and crouched low to avoid the whirling blades as they hurried toward the crowd. The minute they were clear, the helicopter lifted off.

With a profound sense of relief, Glenna recognized Jett as one of the three men. Just the sight of his sun-bronzed craggy features gave her strength. Once free of the overhead threat of the chopper blades, he straightened his tall frame and let long strides carry him to the knotted group of onlookers. A hand reached up to absently restore some order to the untamed thickness of his black hair.

The concentration of concern had darkened his eyes to an ebony pitch. Glenna felt the penetration of his gaze the instant he singled her out from the crowd. He altered his course slightly to approach her, but it was to her father that he spoke.

"I'm glad you're here, Orin." He grasped her father's hand, the edges of his mouth lifting in a grim semblance of a smile.

"Bidwell phoned me," her father replied.

"We can use your help," Jett stated.

"I'll help any way I can. Even if you hadn't asked, I would have been here. Like the others—" her father's glance encompassed the crowd of people gathered at the site "—waiting to lend a hand if needed."

"What's the status?" Jett made a search of the encircling ring of people. "Where is Hawkins?'"

Someone on the outer edge answered, "He was in the mine when it collapsed."

Jett's gaze swerved sharply to Glenna, revealing his ignorance until that moment of the fact that Bruce was one of the missing men. His piercing look seemed to question while it reached out to comfort. Tears sprang into her eyes and her chin began quivering. Desperately she wanted to have his arms around her and ward off the chill of uncertainty with his warmth. But it was impossible and improper in this mob of
people.

Something flickered across his expression, a raw frustration mixed with a savage kind of anger. Then a poker mask covered his features and his gaze was withdrawn from her, This was the time for cold clear thinking—not emotions.

"Let's go to the office." At his clipped statement the milling crowd separated to form a corridor through which Jett walked toward the mine buildings. Bidwell, the two men from the helicopter, Glenna and her father followed him. Jett continued issuing directives as he walked. "I want to see a diagram of the mine. I want to know the location of the collapse and the approximate location of the men inside when it happened."