Love in Disguise (30 page)

She felt his hand pressing against the small of her back. He dipped his head lower. Ellie watched his lips draw nearer, felt his breath flutter her lashes. Her eyes drooped halfway closed.

“Jessie.” His soft murmur sent renewed heat flooding through her veins.

A harsher sound pierced her consciousness. Ellie pulled back, suddenly aware that she had been about to let Steven kiss her right out on the boardwalk. In broad daylight, no less. A flush of embarrassment scorched her cheeks, but a quick glance reassured her that no one seemed to be paying the slightest attention to them. As the strident clanging continued, she realized people were shouting, running west along Grant Street.

She looked up at Steven. His face had lost its ardor, replaced by a chiseled sternness. Dread clutched at her with cold talons. “What is it?”

Steven’s mouth set in a grim line. “That’s the bell at the Redemption hoist works. It means there’s a fire.”

23

A
fire at your mine?” Even as Ellie spoke, her mind registered that couldn’t be the case. People weren’t running south of town, where the Redemption was located. Instead, they seemed to be converging at a point farther west on Grant.

“There.” Steven pointed to the plume of black smoke spiraling upward. “The hotel.” He set off at a dead run, with Ellie at his heels. Moments later, they joined the crowd of townspeople, some staring, some shouting, all showing a devastating awareness of what could happen if the fire got out of hand.

Six men wheeled a hose cart down the middle of the street. “Come on, boys!” their leader shouted. “Let’s get the pump going.”

A man tossed a bucket to Steven, who hurried off to join the bucket brigade forming at a nearby horse trough. As he ran, he yelled back over his shoulder, “Stay back! This is going to be dangerous.”

Ellie couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. She stood transfixed, her horrified gaze focused on the cloud of smoke pouring out of the hotel’s front windows. The fear she’d felt once before when standing outside a burning building threatened to engulf her even as the flames began licking along the eaves.

Once again she was a helpless child standing on a Chicago street, held back by a policeman’s strong arms while she watched the flames devour the theater where her parents were trapped inside.

“I got more buckets.” The man carrying them bumped into her as he ran past. Ellie did a quick sidestep to maintain her balance, and the movement jolted her back to the present.

The powerless feeling remained, though. How well she remembered the raw terror of the night her world came down around her in a heap of blazing timbers, leaving her an orphan, dependent on her parents’ theater associates to take her in.

Was anyone still inside the hotel? As the question popped into her mind, the paralyzing fear fell away, and the urgency of the moment galvanized her into action.

Ellie gathered up her skirts and ran to the man barking orders near the hose cart. “Did they all escape?” When he paid her no mind, she grabbed his arm and shook it. “Did everybody get out?”

He barely gave her a glance. “I don’t know, lady. We’re trying our best to keep this thing contained. If it takes off like that fire did in Tombstone last summer, we could lose this whole section of town.”

Ellie looked around frantically for someone else to ask. No one paid her the least bit of mind. They were all scrambling to save the hotel and the adjacent buildings.

A knot of people moved. Beyond them, she spied two men dragging Donald Tidwell across the street. After propping him up against a hitching post, they ran back to join the others fighting the fire.

Ellie sprinted across the street, dodging a falling ember as she ran. She could hear Donald’s racking coughs over the tumult of the crowd. When she reached him, she fell to her knees at his side. “Donald, are you all right? Where’s Myra?”

Another fit of coughing seized him. Ellie waited for agonizingly long seconds until the spasm ended. Donald looked up at her blankly, his head lolling to one side. Seizing both his arms, Ellie bent over him and repeated the question: “Where is Myra?”

Grief darkened his eyes. “I tried. So help me, I tried, but it was too late. I couldn’t get to her.” He bent over double, his body convulsed this time by sobs.

Ellie caught sight of a woman hurrying past. Seizing the woman by the sleeve, she pointed to Donald. “This man needs help. Go get the doctor. Hurry!” Without waiting to see if her command had been obeyed, she dashed off toward the hotel.

Heat from the flames pushed against her as she drew near, and a stocky man blocked her way. “Get back! Get back. You’re too close.”

“But someone is still inside!”

The man’s face paled, and he looked over his shoulder at the twisting flames. He turned back to Ellie and shook his head. “It’s too far gone for anyone to go inside now. It won’t help to send someone else in there to die.”

He gave her a little push. “Go on, now. You need to get back to where it’s safe.”

Ellie stumbled backward, her eyes fixed on the burning building. The memory seared in her mind from long ago threatened to overpower her once more.

“Not Myra.”

The words seemed to bolster her courage. No, not Myra. It wasn’t going to happen again, not if she had anything to say about it. She wasn’t a frightened little girl anymore. She was a grown woman, with a will of her own.

She studied the scene with a critical eye. Most of the smoke seemed to be confined to the front of the hotel, while the back appeared to be relatively clear. Myra’s bedroom was somewhere in the back.

Maybe, just maybe . . .

“Please, God,” she breathed as she dashed around the corner to the alleyway that ran behind the hotel.

Which room? She had never seen the hotel from the rear before.

She ran up to a small window near the west end and peeked inside. A sink, a stove, a set of cupboards. Obviously the kitchen.

She backed away, trying to picture the layout of the hotel in her mind. If that was the kitchen, the window next to it probably belonged to the office. And if that was the case, the one to the right might be the bedroom.

Ellie rushed over to it and cupped her hands against the glass. Her calculations were correct. Inside she could see the bed, its rumpled sheets pushed to one side, as though someone had scrambled out of it in a hurry. She stood on her tiptoes and gasped when she saw Myra’s frail body lying on the floor.

Gripping the bottom of the sash, she shoved it upward until it gave way. Then she hopped up on the sill and swung her legs inside the room. “Myra?”

A sob of relief escaped her when the other woman turned her head at the sound of Ellie’s voice.

“Donald. I need to find him.”

“He’s already outside, waiting for you.” Ellie looked toward the door. For the time being, the air inside the bedroom was relatively clear, but she could see smoke seeping in underneath and around the top. “Do you have any guests? Is anyone else inside?”

Myra shook her head. “The last one checked out this morning.” She looked at Ellie as if registering her appearance for the first time. “Do I know you?”

“Of course you do. I’m—” Ellie bit back the words. Today she was Jessie, a woman Myra had never seen before. “I’m Lavinia Stewart’s niece.”

Without giving the other woman a chance to reply, she added, “Let’s get you out of here. Can you stand if I help you?”

Myra made feeble attempts to push herself off the floor, but in the end Ellie had to wrap her arms around the fragile woman from behind and bodily drag her toward the window.

She took in a deep breath and immediately choked. It was getting harder to breathe, and she felt herself getting weaker. Another glance at the door showed the smoke increasing. The door itself was now smoldering.

Ellie leaned against the sill, longing to gulp in a breath of clean air. But that would have to wait. She had to get Myra out first.

But how? The bottom of the sill was above Ellie’s waist. Under normal circumstances she probably would have no problem lifting Myra’s light frame up over the window ledge and out to the alley, but now it seemed an insurmountable task.

The smoke grew denser, reducing her breathing to shallow gasps. Ellie tightened her hold on Myra and heaved upward. She only managed to raise her an inch or two. Not nearly enough.

Keeping her arm tight around Myra’s waist, Ellie leaned out the window and looked down the alleyway. “Help.” She intended it to be a scream, but the words came out in a dull croak.

A muffled thump sounded behind her. Ellie whipped her head around. The door had popped open, admitting a scorching wave of heat. Through the smoke that filled the room, she could see flames dancing their way inside, licking up the walls to the ceiling.

Time was running out, and no rescue was at hand. Ellie took a fresh grip on Myra. “You’ve got to help me. We can do this if we work together.”

“I . . . can’t.” Myra’s breath came in a series of weak little puffs. “Don’t have . . . the strength. Go on. Bless you for . . . trying, but it’s time . . . to save yourself.”

No.
Ellie gave her a little shake. “I’m not leaving you. Here, hold on to the ledge a moment. Please!”

Before Myra’s tenuous grasp gave out, Ellie swung herself up on the sill, sitting half in, half out of the window. Turning back around, she reached under Myra’s arms and laced her fingers behind Myra’s back. Holding the other woman tightly against her, Ellie breathed a prayer and flung herself backward.

For a sickening moment, she didn’t know if her gambit would work. Then as gravity took over, her leverage increased, until both of them dropped out the window and landed on the hard-packed ground.

A loud roar sounded from inside the room, and a plume of flames whooshed out the window above them.

Ellie lay with Myra’s weight atop her, trying to get a breath. They weren’t home free yet. The heat was so intense it was almost unbearable.

She felt a vibration thrumming along the ground, and a voice called out, “Over here, boys. I need a hand.”

Strong arms reached down and lifted Myra. Freed of the other woman’s weight, Ellie rolled to her side and sucked in a ragged breath of air, then another one. Mindful of the need to flee, she scrambled to her hands and knees and pushed herself to her feet.

The man holding Myra yelled above the roar of the flames. “We have to get out of here! No telling how quick that wall’s going to come down!”

Ellie nodded. “I can walk. Get her over to her husband. The doctor should be there helping him now.”

The man ran off, and Ellie staggered across the alley. Air. She needed air.

She leaned against the back wall of the neighboring building for support as she stumbled toward the corner, trying to make her stinging eyes focus through the billowing smoke.

“Jessie!”

Her heart leaped at the sound of Steven’s voice. She gathered the strength to totter forward a few more steps. The next moment, he appeared through the haze. He opened his arms, and Ellie fell into them, unable to do more than let him sweep her up and carry her away from the inferno.

Ellie felt her head bounce against his shoulder as he dashed past the bucket brigade and the men wielding the town’s only fire hose. Not until he reached a point far enough removed from the fire that the air tasted blessedly clear did he stop and stand, chest heaving from exertion.

He didn’t seem any more ready to put Ellie down than she was to be set on her own two feet again. His arms made a sweet haven after her ordeal, one she wished she never had to leave.

“How did you know I needed you?”

He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “I didn’t. I saw one of the men carrying Myra out and ran to lend a hand. He told me there was someone else back there. When I saw it was you . . .” His voice thickened and trailed off.

The next moment, he set Ellie back on her feet and turned her to face him. “What on earth were you doing back there? You could have been killed.”

Ellie clutched at his shoulders to steady herself. “Donald told me his wife was still inside. I had to get her out.”

Steven goggled at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “You didn’t think to get help? Send someone else?”

“I tried, but no one would pay any attention to me. There wasn’t time to wait for someone to listen.”

Steven’s mouth twisted. He traced her cheeks with his fingers and cradled her face in his hands. “It was a brave thing you did, but it could have turned out so differently.” He rested his forehead against hers, and his voice dropped to a rough whisper. “I could have lost you.”

Ellie pressed her palms over his hands, and her eyes welled with tears. “I know, but I had to try.”

Steven straightened and stared at her with a look of wonder. “Do you even know Myra?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Ellie swallowed back a sob. “No one deserves to die like that. No one.”

A shout from the street made them both wheel around. The crowd in front of the hotel scrambled back as the walls collapsed, sending up a shower of sparks.

A hoarse cry went up. “Look out! It’s going to take the furniture store next!”

Steven looked down at her. “I’ve got to help. If we don’t get this stopped, we could lose the whole town.” Concern crinkled his brow. “Can you get home by yourself?”

Ellie bobbed her head. “I can manage. Don’t worry.”

His lips lifted in a crooked smile. “Don’t give me any more reason to worry, all right?” He leaned down to brush a light kiss across her lips before he turned and ran back to join the effort to contain the fire.

She watched him go, her fingertips pressed against the spot where his lips had grazed hers. She saw him grab one side of the hose cart and help push it into place farther along the street, his cotton shirt straining across the muscles of his back. Smoke streaked his shirt, his hands, his face, and a thick lock of sandy brown hair tumbled down over his eyes. At that moment, he was the most heroic man she’d ever seen.

And he cared about her. She’d felt it the moment he swept her into his arms, heard it in his voice when he talked about losing her. With one look, one word, one touch from her, he could be hers.