seemed like a fall from a cliff. Heat blistered his face. His clothes felt as if they were being pressed by a hot iron on laundry day with him still in them.
“Emma!” Her name ripped out of his throat, scalding as though the flames had gotten inside him.
So faint that he barely heard it, she murmured, “Pearl.”
“Get up, darlin’. We’ve got to get where we can breathe.” More murmuring, mostly nonsense, trembled against his ear.
A fit of coughing shook Matt. A nest of hornets buzzing in his chest would have felt better. Without fresh air he wasn’t sure that he could lift Emma onto Thunder’s back. He scooped his arms beneath her and managed to stand, but he still had another foot to lift.
“Come down, boy.”
The good horse, going against every instinct that would be natural to him, dipped closer to them.
Emma was a little thing and it shouldn’t have winded him to set her on Thunder’s back, but the strength had been robbed from his muscles.
It felt like a duel with gravity just to climb behind her. He coughed the order for Thunder to get going. Luckily the stallion understood the need without having to be told in clear words.
Matt prayed that the horse would get clear of danger before he, too, felt weak from the effects of the strangling air. Trusting Thunder to do what needed doing, Matt braced his thighs about the horse.
Run like hell, boy, he thought when the words would not shoot past his raw throat.
Let’s go, Pearl, he said in his mind, but when he looked back she was gone. He thought he heard an equine cry in the distance, but he couldn’t be sure.
In only a minute, the air grew clearer. Roaring flames became a distant crackle. Thunder didn’t slow to a trot until the only sound whistling about their heads was the natural wind.
* * *
“That’s good.” Matt’s voice! Sounding raw…coughing.
“Take a deep breath, darlin’.” Calloused fingers stroked her throat. A stone cut into her back. Fingers pressed her breastbone and then her ribs. “One more time, Emma, breathe!”
She coughed and tasted smoke and charred soot. With a long gasp her body filled with clean prairie air. Breath after deep breath filled her lungs.
Gradually the unnatural lethargy that had overcome her mind cleared. Her gaze focused on his eyes, simmering amber and worried. But relieved, too.
She hadn’t died after all.
“Matt?” His breathing seemed as labored as hers. With a groan that stretched to heaven and back, he snatched her up, freeing her of the pebble biting her back. He rocked her against his chest, so that his mad heartbeat was like her own.
He held her the way Lucy held her rag doll, tender but possessive. Since a rag doll is what she felt like, she relaxed into the embrace, listening to the rush of Matt’s breath near her ear.
“You scared the hell out of me. I thought I’d lost you for sure.” His arms, tight with tension, braced her. Sanctuary in a world spun out of control.
At last he set her away at arm’s length with his steadying hands gripping her elbows. With a quick glance he checked her over from head to boot toe.
How cruel fate was, to bring her this man out of the blue, get her to love him until she couldn’t think straight and then force her to send him away. Her heart was breaking into sharp slivers of regret for what would never be.
Matt had the look of a man redeemed, so thankful that he hadn’t lost her.
But he had lost her. And she had lost him. In only a few hours he and his family would be on the train out of Dodge. How did a body find the strength to face it?
It didn’t have to be this way, though. He had given her a choice. Leaving her land could not be any more heart-wrenching than this. Didn’t the sun rise in Matt’s smile as well as over her land?
She pushed away from him, aching over the parting to come. Knowing that she had a choice, that she could prevent it by giving up her home, only made the pain worse.
“Get up, Matt.” She tried to stand but couldn’t, yet. Matt helped her up and brushed soot from her ruined skirt. “There’s no time for that now. Hawker’s here, in Dodge.”
“So you came to warn me?”
“You can’t think I would be out here for any other reason.”
She took one step toward Thunder with Matt holding her