Sweet Home Carolina (38 page)

Amy was down at the mill, saving his wretched ass. He’d have
to kill her for that, once he got his hands on her. Terror that he might never
touch her again hollowed out his insides. He shot the Hummer into gear and
proceeded up the mountain, deliberately not picturing rising rivers and
flooding mills and buildings crashing into swirling water.

Children came first. Amy would want that. He didn’t dare go
after her without word of her children. He understood her well.

Trying to see through a windshield blanketed by torrents of
rain, driving around boulders that had fallen from the bare cliff face, Zack
prayed as he’d never prayed before. Facing the possibility that Amy and her
children might be lost from this world, he lost his pride, his confidence, all
those things that had kept him whole all these years. He was stripped down to
raw nerves and a frantic desire to never again let them out of his sight —
ever
.

He’d sworn never to place his heart in the hands of another
again, but he finally understood that before Amy and her children came along,
he had been nothing. He’d built a shell of a man, and now all his carefully
constructed camouflage was disintegrating, revealing the true man beneath — a
man who needed a family.

He wanted to move forward. He wanted to be the man Amy
thought he was. The husband and father who laughed with children and built
communities, not the dilettante who played and pretended it was work.

He couldn’t do it without her. That knowledge grew as he
searched the side of the road for the decorative mailbox Jo had described as
belonging to their mother.

Finding the landmark he sought, Zack turned the Hummer up
another mountain of mud. If there was gravel on the drive, he couldn’t tell for
the rivers running down it. Was he fooling himself, or had the rain let up
slightly?

He could see weak light flickering inside the humble home
where Amy had grown up. It was little more than a clapboard cottage, with a
sagging front porch and a sturdy rock chimney, but it had withstood the harsh
elements over time.

He had to hope Amy was standing strong now, because looking
at the dark shack, he realized he couldn’t leave the children here without heat
or water. The well would be on an electric pump. He knew all about old houses.

The hurricane-force winds had snapped a giant oak in half,
missing the house by feet, emphasizing the danger. Zack offered up a prayer of
thanksgiving and turned off the vehicle.

The graying front door opened, silhouetting Marie
Sanderson’s spare frame against a backdrop of lantern light. If anyone could
keep the children safe, it would be this dragon lady Amy called Mother. Unable
to summon the charm that had been his cover for so long, Zack limped out of the
Hummer and up the porch stairs.

“The children?” he asked first.

She stepped back to let him in. Her cropped blond hair
contained as much silver as gold, her face was lined with years of illness, but
she gestured at a room full of active children as if she were his age.

“Rambunctious but all in one piece,” she replied.

Louisa ran to leap into Zack’s arms. He hugged her lithe
body close and looked over her head to Josh, who was frowning with worry but
easing toward him. Behind him were Flint’s adolescent boys playing with some
battery-operated game. Unfazed, they glanced up at him, then returned to
virtually shooting each other.

The scene was so homelike and reassuring that Zack would
have wept had he been a crying man. Instead, he crouched down and offered Josh
a hug. “We were worried about you, big man. Thought you might have eaten
everything in the pantry by now.”

Josh’s freckled nose wrinkled. “Nana has jars and jars of
green beans. Where’s Mommy?”

“She’s still down at the mill. I have to go get her after I
leave here.” Zack figured that wasn’t too much of a lie. He was getting Amy,
one way or the other.

He glanced up at Marie. “There is room in the car to take
all of you over the mountain to a hotel. It will get cold tonight.”

She shrugged. “We have oil heat.”

He didn’t want to leave them here, not after what he’d seen.
“I have to drive over the mountain until I find a place where my phone works.
You will be safer out of this. The roads are bad and could get worse. You could
be cut off for days.”

He could see that concerned her. He pressed home his
advantage. “I can persuade your daughters to join you more easily if we take
their children out of here.”

“They’re all right?” Her eyes finally expressed the fear she
had been hiding. She’d been up here all alone with these children through
hurricane winds, toppling trees, and a deluge. Her spirit was tough, but the
body was weak, and a mother’s heart worried.

“They are being stubborn, so they must be fine,” he agreed.
“I have not seen Flint, though. Jo was concerned about him.”

“He dropped off the boys and went to check on a friend for
me. He’s probably hauling people out of the hollow back there.”

Flint could take care of himself. Zack had to look after the
women and children. “Go pack their bags. I have heard of Gatlinburg. Perhaps
the worst of the rain has not reached there.”

“Dollywood,” one of the boys suggested, proving he was
listening for all his pose of blasé disinterest in the conversation. “They’re
still open.”

Zack had no idea what Dollywood was, but if it was in
Gatlinburg, then it was only an hour away. He prayed it was high and dry and
had cell reception because he already knew the road to Asheville was dangerous
and didn’t.

He prayed the river wouldn’t rise any higher until he could
rescue Amy from the valley.

* * *

The battery on their last flashlight was weakening. Luigi
snapped it off, casting the second floor loft into darkness.

Below them, the water lapped against the walls of the old
stone foundations and washed across the plank floors.

“I think the rain is letting up,” Amy said with forced
cheer, trying to ignore the emptiness of her belly.

“Don’t mean the water’s going down,” Hoss replied
laconically. “If you folks would keep more food in your desks, we’d be a sight
more comfortable.”

“A desk drawer ain’t gonna hold enough food to fill you,
Hoss,” one of the workers responded. “We need to move the Stardust down here.”

They’d run out of songs to sing when they’d run out of fresh
water and food. The toilet facilities were no longer functioning either. Everyone
was soaked to the skin from kneeling in the rising water, unbolting the heavy
machinery from the warping wooden floor.

“Maybe we ought to set up a dock on the river and keep
sailboats for times like this,” some other wit suggested.

Amy decided she could do without food and water, if she just
knew that her babies were safe. She hoped Evan had come for them and taken them
off the mountain. Maybe Jo and Flint had taken them down, if the road hadn’t
washed out.

She prayed Zack had had the sense to stay in High Point. The
roads would be treacherous by now, and he wasn’t accustomed to driving in
hurricane conditions. She didn’t want to have to worry about him on top of
everything else. She wanted to think about Zack living his lovely, wealthy life
in safety in the years to come.

Years that couldn’t include her. She’d weep over the loss,
but now she had to remain strong and fearless for the brave people around her.
If Zack hadn’t shown her how to be brave and stand up for her self, she would
never have had the courage to do what she was doing now. She didn’t know how
she would go on without him.

People needed to come in pairs so that one could be strong
where the other was weak. Life was much nicer having someone to rely on.

She would not cry.

“We can’t see to do anything until morning,” Luigi said
matter-of-factly. “Might as well get some sleep.”

“You planning on swimming out?” Hoss asked, propping his big
feet on a bolt of velvet. He’d had to take his boots off after wading back and
forth half the afternoon, hauling benches to prop up the machinery.

“Wrap up good in one of the heavier fabrics,” Amy ordered,
her maternal nature taking over. “We can’t handle hypothermia under these
conditions.”

“Nicest covers I ever had,” someone commented. “Have to get
my wife something like this someday.”

Amy distracted her thoughts from Zack and the rain and the
lapping river and her empty belly by designing tapestry bed covers in her head.

“Don’t suppose anyone has a gun on them, do they?” Hoss
called through the silent darkness. “I think I hear rats down there.”

Shoot. Amy propped her arms on her knees and buried her face
against them. She had a long night ahead in which to face her stupidity.

She was far better suited to a life without rats in it, a
life that Zack had offered with all the best intentions. It was stubbornness
and pride that had forced her to refuse him. And fear of another failure.

If she hadn’t retreated to her usual fear of change, she
could have asked Zack what his intentions were. That he wanted her to meet his
parents had to mean he saw this as more than the affair she’d thought he
wanted. She
knew
Zack. Underneath all
that charisma, he wasn’t the playboy type. Somehow, they might have made things
work.

Stripped down to the raw essentials, she realized, all she
had ever wanted was love and family. The community might appreciate what she
could do for them, but they couldn’t love her as her kids could.

Not as Zack could, if he would let himself. He’d wanted to
take her and the kids with him to London, not leave her as her father had left
her mother.

And she’d told him to go away.

With the first rays of dawn, the roaring
knock-knock
of a helicopter woke the
weary, damp occupants of the mill.

Amy forgot the cold and her hunger and raced to a window.

Under a sky of thick gray clouds, the choppy river covered
as far as the eye could see. The tops of trees indicated where the road had
been. At least the rain had stopped. She couldn’t locate her house from this
viewpoint behind the roof of the main building.

“Don’t see any boats out there,” Hoss said, checking from a
different angle. “Current is still pretty bad.”

Someone else checked over the balcony to the floor below.
“Ain’t risen any. Foundation’s holding.”

That was a relief. They wouldn’t be washing away. Yet.

The
flap-flap-flap
of helicopter rotors roared louder. Amy pushed at the window to pry it open,
but years of paint sealed the casement.

“Over here,” Luigi shouted, pointing at the ceiling. “Help
me shove that desk over so I can climb on it.”

Three men pushed the old wooden desk under the framed
rectangle on the ceiling that gave access to the building’s structural
components. Luigi climbed up and shoved at the door, pounding until he’d
loosened the paint and knocked the plywood into the attic.

“False ceiling,” Luigi called back, his voice muffled from
above. “Ductwork. Framing. Nothing sturdy to climb on unless you’re into
swinging on rafters.”

The helicopter seemed to be hovering overhead.

Irrationally, hope rose in Amy’s heart. She ran to another
window, a wider one. When it wouldn’t open, she picked up a metal folding chair
and smashed it through the glass.

Hoss grabbed the chair from her and smashed out the
mullions, knocking out glass shards with the chair legs before sticking his
head out to look upward.

“Crazy bastard is climbing down a rope ladder!” he shouted
in mixed dismay and excitement.

Crouching down to peer around him, Amy looked out and lost
her breath.

Zack was dangling from a ladder, three stories above the
flood, directing the helicopter with one hand while hanging on with the other.
At sight of her, he waved and shouted something she couldn’t hear.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” she muttered, falling to
her knees and clinging to the sill. “I’m closing my eyes now. Tell me when he
falls.”

Luigi arrived beside her, sized up the situation, and cursed
mildly. Elbowing Hoss out of the way, he lifted Amy to one side, then sat on
the sill to watch the helicopter maneuver.

“I am so not watching this,” Amy muttered again. “Are you
telling me he was an acrobat in the circus as well?”

She was so terrified her teeth chattered. Sitting down more
firmly, she clutched her knees and hid her face against them rather than watch
disaster strike. She would kill that idiot man the instant he appeared. If he
survived.

At the same time, she started to shiver with joy and relief,
and big fat tears slid down her cheeks.

“That’s a damn big help. How is he figuring on getting us
out that way?” Luigi growled as loud thumps hit the flat tarpaper roof.

Or the side of the building. Amy couldn’t tell. She wasn’t
looking.

The silence was deafening as they listened to footsteps
overhead. Amy finally opened her eyes to study the desk the men had pushed
under the attic entry. The others gathered around it as Luigi climbed back onto
it. Amy stayed crouched where she was, her heart pounding in terror.

“Look out below!” Zack’s voice shouted from overhead.

Amy watched in disbelief as a rope ladder dropped through
the opening and Zack clambered down. She could only shake in shock and stare at
this wonderful, terrifying man who’d literally come through the roof for them.

“We didn’t know if the structure was safe to land on,” Zack
was saying to Luigi, who’d caught the bottom of the rope and held it steady.
“What have you been doing all night if you haven’t found a way out?”

Amy stopped thinking about their plight and simply fell head
over heels in love all over again at the sight of Zack stepping down from the
desk, wearing a parachuter’s coveralls. At least he had a helmet on, though
that would do precious little for his knee. She would kill him once she caught
her breath again.