Sweet Home Carolina (39 page)

Zack’s smile flickered out as he located her huddled against
the wall and crossed the loft to her. She’d have held out her hand for him to
help her up, but she didn’t think her knees would lock just yet. And her heart
needed to stop thumping so hard.

“My babies?” she whispered.

“They’re safe in Dollywood,” he choked out quietly, as if
keeping his voice under tight control. Before his words faded, he reached down
and dragged her into his arms, holding her tightly. “You are the one who needs
a nanny,” he growled. “What possessed you to risk — ” His voice cracked and
broke off.

She felt his arms tremble in the same terror she’d shared,
heard the quaver of relief in his voice before he stopped talking. Zack never
stopped talking. She wanted to smile, but his strong arms tightening around her
felt too good, and she couldn’t lift her head. “You are officially insane,” she
murmured in wonder. “You could have been killed out there.”

Zack had come back for
her.
For all of them. And no one seemed surprised except her. She let those
realizations slowly sink in and warm her frozen blood.

She had no idea where they would go from here or how. She
just knew Zack was with her, and the whole world was suddenly a miraculously
brighter place. Even though the circumstances hadn’t changed, she knew she was
safe — because he was here.

“I didn’t want Luigi and Hoss to engage in cannibalism while
waiting for the water to recede,” Zack said drily, leaning back just enough to
cradle her face in one hand, to stroke her cheek as if to verify her existence.
“You are all right?”

She nodded.

“You saved all the machinery and the fabric.”

“Of course,” she said with a slight shrug. “We all did.”

“
Of course
,” he
muttered, and pulled her close again to bury his face in her hair. “She saves
all that is important to me and then she saves the mill for good measure, and
she thinks it is as natural as breathing.”

It took her a moment to absorb his words, and to laugh — laugh
— in relief and sheer joy. She framed his face and kissed him softly in
promise, then more deeply to show she would keep that promise. “While you risk
my future climbing down that damned rope! You could have fallen!”

He pressed his forehead against hers, noses touching, their
lips a breath apart. “Only if you offered to catch me. Come along, Miss
Pessimism. I promised your children that I would bring you home safely, and I
would not dare to disappoint.”

“Do we sprout wings and fly?” she asked, unable to resist
tucking a small kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“You climb the ladder to the helicopter,” he said patiently.

Amy’s knees suddenly melted to useless at the realization it
was finally all over — the mill was safe and the town would survive and she
would soon see her children again and
Zack
had come back
. All the stress of the last weeks, the last years, drained
out of her, and she collapsed against him, knowing that he would not let her
fall.
Trusting
him not to let her
down. She buried her face against his chest and tried to take deep breaths, but
she kept hiccupping, and tears streamed down her face. She had no words for how
she felt.

“I think that’s how I feel, too,” he murmured into her hair.
“We will talk later, when this is all over.”

She nodded into his shoulder. Borrowing from his strength,
she locked her knees and stood straight. He reluctantly released her.

“How many does the helicopter hold?” she asked.

For the first time, Zack looked around him. He’d had eyes
only for Amy. Now he saw a dozen employees anxiously shifting from foot to
foot, trying not to stare. He glanced over the balcony railing to the flooded
mill below and saw the muddy water swirling around his looms — or around the benches
holding his looms out of the currents.

Stacks of fabric spilled across the balcony and into the
second-floor offices. They’d saved everything.

“You are brilliant,” he said in awe, understanding the
heroism that had placed his investment over their lives.

“The mill closed the last time the inventory got wiped out,”
Amy explained. “We couldn’t let it happen again. The town’s existence was at
stake.”

No one disagreed with her.

“If I could give out medals for heroism, I would,” he
declared fervently. “I have never seen — ” His voice broke over the enormity of
explaining how he felt about near strangers having the courage and selflessness
to risk their lives for him. For their town.

“I think the ladder’s strong enough to hold us,” Luigi
called, interrupting Zack’s sentimentality.

“If you climb up first, Luigi, you can help Amy out. When
we’re all on the roof, the crew will drop a hook to pull the ladder up.” Zack
counted heads. “But some of us will have to wait for a second trip. They can
only take six people at a time. People with families first.”

“Up you go, Miz Amy,” Hoss hollered, dragging her toward the
ladder.

She cast a terrified look back to Zack, but he remained
determinedly smiling. He didn’t want her going anywhere without him ever again,
but the truth was, his life was worth far less than hers. Far less than these
other men here with families at home. If a river of water came rushing
downstream to wipe this building off its blocks, he’d prefer it took him and
not the others who had so gallantly tried to save it.

All his knowledge and wealth were worth nothing next to the
love of family. And if life was about making the world a better place and
taking chances on love, then there was no greater challenge than living life to
its fullest.

“Haul her out of here, Luigi,” he called to his friend.

Zack glued on a smile as Amy disappeared into the attic. He
let the other men decide who would climb up next. They had already proved
capable of making their own choices. He’d once thought he could play God and change
the lives of people, but it seemed they had changed his.

He didn’t know them well, but he wanted to.

He was the last to climb out onto the roof. He unfastened
the rope ladder from the knots he’d tied around a roof truss while Luigi caught
the hook the helicopter lowered. The rushing wind of the rotors dropped the
already chilly temperatures several degrees, but no one complained. They waited
silently, their clothes flapping in the air stream, while the ladder was drawn
back into the helicopter and fastened securely.

Zack held the ropes steady. He didn’t dare reach for Amy
again, or he might not let go. He nodded at her. Hoss pushed her from behind.
She looked reluctant.

“For the children,” Zack told her. “Go.”

That did the trick, as he’d known it would. Hair blowing
across her face, she scampered up the rungs. Unable to let a wisp of female
outdo them, the rest of the selected group hurried to follow.

With a lump in his throat that he suspected was his heart,
Zack waved them off. At least he knew she would be safe in the world somewhere.

As the helicopter swept away, he shoved his hands into his
pockets and looked out over the swirling water far below. “How well can you
swim, gentlemen? The dam upstream is in danger of breaking.”

* * *

“He hired a helicopter,” Amy said in incredulity, wrapping
her hands around a mug of tea in the hotel room where Flint had taken her. She
had no idea how Flint had learned where Zack had taken everyone, but the whole
family was together now. “How does one hire a helicopter? Hand over a credit
card?”

Picking at a guitar and trying to pretend she wasn’t
watching the TV, Jo shrugged. “The rich know these things.”

Amy couldn’t tear her gaze from the TV news. So far, the dam
had held steady. If she’d known the damned dam was about to break….

She shook her head. She would have gone anyway. She couldn’t
have left her children motherless. But she might have insisted that Zack leave,
too.

“Then he should have hired two helicopters,” she replied,
trying to keep the sob from her voice.

“I’m sure he would have if he could have,” Flint said
pragmatically from the bar of the suite they occupied. Pots of coffee and tea
and bottles of soft drinks littered the counter. In the far room, the children
shouted and tumbled on the beds, oblivious of the drama playing around them.

The national television news had finally picked up on the
thrill of six men stranded on the roof of a mill as the floodwaters threatened
to wipe the town off the face of the map.

“The town ain’t in any danger,” Marie said with disgust at
the newscast’s hyperbole. “It’s just the mill down in the valley. If they’d
send their TV helicopters out there, they could pull them off the roof.”

Amy wished her mother were right, but she knew better.
“Those small ’copters only have two seats. The pilot can’t let down a ladder.”

“Well, if Zack hired them, why doesn’t the crew go back out
for him?” Jo demanded. “It just doesn’t seem right to leave him there.”

“He didn’t know there were a dozen idiots out there.”
Sipping his coffee, Flint watched the news from behind Amy and Jo on the couch.
“He only hired them for one trip. They had other jobs. And the National Guard
can’t be everywhere at once. They’re safe for now. Others aren’t.”

“Then we ought to hire a helicopter, too.” Amy pulled a pillow
against her and hugged it, trying not to become hysterical. But talking about
hiring a helicopter brought her pretty close to hysteria. Her credit was maxed
out, and Flint and Jo were still living on the edge, paying off bills.

“I’m thinking you need to keep boats on that roof,” Flint
said. “Might come in handy occasionally.”

“The water’s not high enough. And they don’t have a ladder
to get down. Stairs should have been installed on the roof long ago.” Amy
prayed the day would come when they could add stairs. If the dam broke, there
would be no building left to worry about.

She had rejected Zack’s offer to meet his parents because of
a crumbling old building that could soon be rubble? Was she that terrified of
leaving her narrow world?

Evan had certainly done a number on her, if that was so.
He’d made her afraid to move forward, to live and love again.

She clenched her jaw and corrected that thought. Evan hadn’t
made her do anything. She’d done it to herself by attempting to be the ideal
wife, bending to his will instead of asserting herself and looking for
compromises they could both live with.

If she’d understood that sooner and said yes, Zack wouldn’t
be out on that roof.

Facing Zack’s world, leaving the safety of her own, couldn’t
be any scarier than what he was suffering. He deserved a woman who was as brave
and strong as he was.

Be safe, please
,
she prayed.
I want to be like you
.

The realization of how deeply she’d fallen in love with Zack
tore at her heart, and she hugged the pillow harder to hold back tears.

She’d have to trust Zack. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to
tell her she was afraid to trust again. But if she wanted love, she would have
to learn. Zack was worth facing her fear of abandonment. He was the only man in
her life who had come back for her.

Chilled to the bone and weary beyond belief, Zack could
scarcely persuade his trick knee up the rope ladder when the National Guard
finally sent aid just before nightfall. He didn’t curse the knee or the cold.
He held all his emotions tightly wrapped in a neat little ball, and would
continue so until he saw Amy again. She held his life in her hands. Until he
had her answer, he didn’t know what to do next.

If she turned him down, he supposed he could return to
Europe and let her run the mill here, seeing her once a year or so. He didn’t
know if he could tolerate such a situation for long.

He could go back to his old life, but he knew now that
wasn’t living.

Or he could put down roots and become so much a part of her
life and her town that she could deny him nothing. It was how these people
thought and lived. Family wasn’t just blood relations. Every individual was a
thread that held together the fabric of the community. He wanted to be a part
of that.

Shivering, with an army blanket wrapped around him, he sat
on the floor of the helicopter, stared down at the water, and waited.

At least the dam had held. They hadn’t had to swim for
safety. The mill was still in one piece. They would need new floors, but the
machinery might be salvageable. Those were all good things. If he wanted to
plan a future, he could think about the orders they needed to fill. With sales
like that, he could borrow money and hire more people. That should bring some
relief to an area devastated by flooding.

The happiness of a town was not something he would have
considered before Amy. He had much to learn from her. Maybe one step at a time
was the way to go.

His knee was so stiff, Luigi had to help him climb from the
helicopter when it landed. Zack let the gears of his brain concentrate on how
he would get from this strange airport to wherever Amy was staying. At least it
wasn’t raining here.

Hoss opened the door to the low-lying building where they’d
been herded. The other men stepped back respectfully to allow Zack to limp in
first. He’d learned all their names and life stories over this past day. He
wanted to make the mill a success so he could make all of them managers. He
knew he was being irrational, but he was grateful for their support and for
their courage. Medals weren’t enough.

It took a moment for his frozen brain to process the screams
of joy and blaring horns and colored confetti falling on his head. Not until
familiar warm curves collided with him, nearly knocking him backward, did he
wake up and smell the coffee. And Amy.

And Amy
. Wrapping
his arms tight around her, Zack whooped with joy and surprise and nearly wept
in relief. Letting his spirits soar free again, he swung her in delighted
circles, forgetting his knee, his weariness, and his shivering. She clung to
his shoulders, buried his face in kisses, and even the roar of the band and
Jo’s soprano disappeared into the background.