He was back in Alaska, outrunning a wildfire, or maybe Montana, or even Syria, waiting to get ambushed.
Heat pressed down on them from above while flames reached out from both sides, turning the barn aisle into a corridor of hell. Rowan’s lungs burned with each breath, and sweat poured down his face despite the October evening air.
They burst through the doorway just as the main support beam gave way with a thunderous crash. Rowan stumbled and went down on one knee in the gravel, but kept his arms wrapped around Huck and the puppy.
He took the blow on his back, scuffed up, breathing hard, the kid alive against him.
“Huck!” Sierra. She ran over as they stumbled away from the fire, pulled her son from Rowan’s arms and crushed him against her chest, sobbing.
Rowan sat up, heart thundering.
Sierra just held the kid, rocking him. “Don’t you ever, ever do something like that again!”
Huck shuddered in her arms, still holding the puppy.
Brave little kid, for an eight-year-old. Stupid, but brave.
“Bandit was in there.”
She pulled away, put her hands on his face. “Bandit’s not worth your life. Nothing is worth your life.”
Rowan pushed himself to his feet, coughing smoke from his lungs. His shirt was singed in several places, and he could feel the beginning sting of minor burns on his forearms, but he was alive. They were all alive.
And he intended to keep it that way.
Five
Sierra had spent ten years teaching herself not to need Rowan Wallace.
And one night, one split second, had obliterated that lie.
The volunteer fire department had arrived with sirens wailing and lights flashing, but by then the barn was beyond saving. Captain Murphy and his crew had focused on containing the blaze and protecting the house.
Now, an hour later, the acrid smell of smoke still clung to everything—her clothes, her hair, the air itself.
Sierra stood on the back deck with Rowan and Samantha Williams, one of the firefighters, watching the barn’s charred skeleton cool under the star-filled sky. Occasional sparks still glowed orange in the ruins where four generations of her family’s history had turned to ash.
“Captain Murphy asked me to give you the preliminary findings,” Sam said. Petite with shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, she had the kind of no-nonsense demeanor that came from years of dealing with emergencies. She still wore her helmet, her turnout gear. “How do you think the fire started?”
“I don’t know.” Sierra shook her head. “I came home and it was in flames.”
“Could’ve been faulty wiring,” Rowan suggested. “Old barns, rodents chewing through insulation.”
“Possible,” Sam said, but her tone suggested she wasn’t convinced. “Though the burn patterns are unusual. Fire seems to have started in multiple places, spread faster than it should have for natural causes.”
“Unusual how?” Rowan stood with his arms crossed, his attention focused entirely on Sam’s explanation.
And of course, Sierra’s attention was focused on Rowan—the angry red burn marks across his forearms where embers had caught his skin, the soot streaked across his cheekbones, the way his flannel shirt was singed at the shoulders.
And oh—she couldn’t stop seeing him the way he’d looked, a man practically on fire as he burst through those barn doors with flames licking at his back, Huck clutched against his chest.
Her entire life, packaged in the arms of the man she’d tried to forget.
Right.
And he’d had no idea—zip—that he was saving his own son.
“We found a burned patch in the back corner of the barn that doesn’t match the rest of the fire pattern,” Sam was saying. “Could be where accelerant was used, but we’ll need to do a full investigation to be sure.” Sam’s mouth pressed into a thin line as she watched the crew finish the mop up, wind the hoses back into the truck. “I’ll be back tomorrow with the state fire investigator to run some tests.”
