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Nisa gasped so suddenly that I jerked her at arm’s length to study her, convinced she must be injured.

Her horrified eyes met mine. “Izzy! She’s still in there!” Nisa tried to get out of my grip, but I kept my hands firmly around her arms, pressing my lips together.

“Nisa, no. You can’t go back in there.”

“But I have to save her!” her voice was a wail, tears streaming down her cheeks.

A searing sensation about cut my heart in two and, without thinking, I turned her to face the end of the driveway, where I spotted Archie coming across the road toward us. “Stay with Archie. I’ll get Izzy.”

The look of horror on her face became all the more acute. “No, Kerr, you can’t! I’ll do it.”

I pushed her toward Archie, who caught her. Then I gave him the hardest look I’ve ever given anyone in my life. “Get her away. And do not, under any circumstances, let her follow me.”

Archie gave me a grim nod. I caught one last glimpse of Nisa’s distraught expression and her struggling against Archie as he led her onto the pavement, then I turned and ran into the house, the sound of Nisa yelling my name ringing in my ears as I lifted the bottom of my T-shirt across my face.

“Izzy!” I called. There sure was a lot of smoke for a small fire, but luckily it must have been contained in the living room, and Nisa had had the good sense to shut the door on it.

A mewling noise became apparent from the kitchen, and so, keeping low to avoid the worst of the smoke, I headed in there. “Izzy,” I called, keeping my voice low and soothing. “Where are you, puss?”

I followed the mewling and discovered her tucked inside her bed in the utility room. I grabbed a jumper off the drying rack, bundled her into it, and then cradled her against me as I took us both back toward the front door, keeping low all the way. As we made it into the hallway, the sweet sound of sirens was audible in the distance. Thank goodness.

I dashed out into the front garden, and Nisa was the first thing I saw standing in the street, held by Archie on one side and her neighbor Sally on the other. At first I thought she was screaming Izzy’s name, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that it was my name she was still calling.

I ran down to them on the street. “It’s okay,” I said, my voice catching in my raw and dry throat and ending up in a coughing fit. “I got her,” I rasped out, holding out the jumper/​cat combo.

Nisa made a grab, but not just for Izzy. My eyes widened as she got me around the middle, pulling me in with Izzy between us. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” she kept saying over and over. “Thank God you’re okay. I would never have forgiven myself . . .”

For a couple of seconds I stood there with my arms dangling, my heart beating an erratic rhythm in my chest. Then I raised my arms to hold Nisa’s warm, satin-​covered body, Izzy nestled in between us. A shock of heat fired through me, bursting to scatter burning sparks onto my skin. It was like I’d swallowed a firework.

Nisa seemed oblivious to the firefighters who had pulled up outside the house and were now rushing in to tackle the fire.

I pulled her and Izzy as close as I could without crushing the poor wee cat. But she didn’t seem to mind. She poked her head out of the jumper and rubbed her face against Nisa’s and against my chest.

Nisa was okay. Izzy was okay. Nisa had been screaming my name and now she was holding me so tight, like she never wanted to let go. A weird thrumming sensation buzzed under my skin, warming me where I should have been standing shivering against the cold, wintery night air.

I almost swore at the first responder when he tugged us apart, wanting to perform a preliminary assessment. Begrudgingly, I let Nisa and Izzy go and let him do his duties. Nisa insisted he attend to me first, and as he led me to his car, a larger ambulance arrived.

I tried to keep my eyes on Nisa as I was tended to. Every time my gaze landed on her, she was already looking at me, and I’d get this little pulse of awareness. I watched her sitting in the back of the ambulance, getting checked over, until they shut the door for privacy. I nearly yelled out for them to let me see her, but at the last second I realized that would be highly inappropriate in more ways than one.

I let the paramedic finish checking me in silence.

“I’ll need to take you in to the emergency room for some monitoring. But hopefully you won’t need admission if it all goes well.”

I jerked my head toward the ambulance. “Will they be taking Nisa too?”

“Yes. It’s pretty standard procedure.”

“Okay,” I said, getting into the back of his car without protestation. I waved Sally over—​she was still carrying Izzy after Nisa had handed her over to her neighbor to look after. “Call my friend Katie Wallace at the Highland Vet Center in Auchness. She’ll get Izzy checked out, and then if she needs any further treatment I can take over once I’m out of hospital.”

Sally nodded. “No problem.”

Izzy would be fine with Katie. She was the vet who had performed her surgery when she’d been run over, because Nisa had refused to let me near her cat at the time, convinced I’d been the one who’d injured her. I let out a wry laugh as we drove away, and the paramedic gave me a quizzical look in the rearview mirror. “Everything okay, pal?”

“Yeah, fine. Just thinking about how ironic all this is.” Nisa had been convinced I’d tried to kill her cat, and now she had directly witnessed me saving the same cat’s life. Her head must have well and truly blown.

“Yeah,” the paramedic said uncertainly, then looked away again, probably thinking that I was a complete weirdo.

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