Fiona frowned like she was thinking it over. “Well, maybe.”
“We got a real sweet tempered little mare named Harriet. Give ‘er a try.”
Fiona sat on a soft pillow on her cot till the wee hours of the morning. Her muscles ached from her uneventful introduction to Harriet, but she was brimming with ideas for the bunk house and wanted to get them down in charts and diagrams before she forgot. The colors and vistas she saw on the ride today took her breath away. They were perfect combinations for her new home. The rustic look she was developing was exciting. The weathered boards of the outside of the bunkhouse some people would pay a fortune for. She’d have them sanded and stained and polished to a soft patina. She wanted to use glass bricks for one side of the bathroom to let in the amazing light of the high desert. The front porch would be peeled juniper logs. She knew just the person she’d track down for that. She had seen an article in a local magazine about a man who was a juniper artist.
Harriet was a sweet horse. Jake had been encouraging. They’d had to lead Harriet to a rock so she could mount. It was only a short ride into the section of the valley that he wanted to show her. They kept a herd of Angus cows and calves in an isolated valley ripe with early summer grass and fed by a small meandering stream. It was a place of dreams but difficult to access.
She was glad the ride was short. Harriet probably was too, though she was extremely patient. There was something romantic about the whole adventure. About being in the saddle with big sky overhead, sun streaming, cows calling to their calves, Jake explaining what she was seeing. She knew he had a huge crush on her but she didn’t know if she liked him enough to call this place home and stay and see what would become of their relationship. But she was enjoying his attentions. He was thoughtful and kind, and she wondered if he would always be like that or if the shiny silver of their being together would tarnish when he realized how much of a city girl she was and what a lousy homemaker. She sensed that was what Jake wanted. A home and a woman to run it. That didn’t sound like Fiona Marlowe.
Lost in thought and the exciting designs for the bunkhouse, she didn’t hear the scratching noise. She realized the sound must have been in her consciousness for a while, but she had ignored it. Something was scratching at the door. Tonight there was no wind just the stars that she could see through the unshaded windows. There was no moaning this time, only the scratching followed by a thud. Was it the sound of a heeled boot on the dilapidated porch? Fiona pulled her robe tighter and looked through the windows. She saw nothing but stars. She had hoped the ghost had taken off to haunt some other more promising habitat, but apparently he, she or it was back.
She turned off the small desk lamp she had positioned on the straight back chair by her bed and listened. She really needed to get some drapes but that was one of the last things done in a remodel after all the dust had settled from contractors tearing things up and putting them back together.
She waited, listening, not sure what to do. Maybe it was some desert animal making its rounds for the night. Quietly, she re-arranged the bed clothing so she could lie down. Every muscle in her body ached. Maybe if she ignored whatever was out there it would go away like the last time.
Jake sensed the flames before he saw them.
He had been tossing in bed, unable to sleep after the ride with Fiona. Visions of her kept intruding upon his sleep. He threw back the covers and sat on the side of the bed, scrubbing his face and cursing his luck at having ever met Fiona Marlowe. He pulled on a pair of jeans and padded to the kitchen looking for something to drink. There was a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator, and he poured a glass. The night was still, and he was alone with his thoughts that kept returning to Fiona.
He felt twitchy. There was a funny tension in the air. He had lived here long enough to be in tune with what went on outside as well as inside the house. He stepped onto the front porch and immediately saw the rose hue on the knoll where Fiona’s old bunkhouse sat.
The front of the house was in flames.
“Opal,” he yelled, not sure if she would hear him since she slept on the opposite side of the big house. “Fire!”
He ran for his boots, then the axe that was kept by the fire extinguisher by the front door, and yanked the fire extinguisher from its cradle. He charged up the knoll. The nearest fire truck was at least an hour away. Opal kept a slip-in unit for the pickup but that would take too much time to mount on the truck and fill with water.
He had to find Fiona.
At the top of the knoll he searched the inferno before him for a way to enter the building. The front was lost, flames leaping and dancing everywhere. He didn’t hear her screaming for help or see any sign of her. Fear exploded into every cell in his body. He ran for the back by way of the north side where the flames were lower. He shouted her name every other second.
He looked in the north window to a curtain of dull red smoke. The window was hot to the touch, and it was high enough off the ground he would have to struggle through broken glass to gain entry if he axed it. Flames danced across the roof. The heat was intense. The roar of the fire made his shouts unintelligible. He rounded the back corner and saw smoke pouring out the open door. He raced for the door and stopped to peer in.
Fiona was on the floor crawling toward the door, her computer clutched in one arm.
He helped her the rest of the way out the door, but they couldn’t stop there, the heat and smoke were too intense. He picked her up in his arms and ran away from the burning building, stumbling over rocks and roots in his haste. She held onto his neck with a death grip, her computer in the other arm. When he was far enough away from the intense blaze, he stopped and set her on the ground as gently as he could.
She started coughing, and he brushed her hair back from her face so she could breathe easier. He had forgotten the cell phone so he couldn’t call Opal to get help to put out the fire. He looked back at the bunk house. There was no use calling anyone. The whole building was engulfed in flame. The roof made a retching sound, and as they watched it caved in.
The bunkhouse was a total loss.
Fiona sat on the front porch of Opal’s house, wrapped in a Pendleton blanket and nursing a glass of iced tea. The smell of smoke clung to her clothes. She could taste it in her mouth. Her throat and lungs burned. But she was unable to move from the chair to even shower.
She remembered trying to toss her suitcase out the back door. But she couldn’t remember where it landed or if anything was in it. The computer lay on the table beside the chair she sat on, the only one of her possessions she was sure made it out of the burning bunkhouse. Her dreams for the bunkhouse were gone. Her mind couldn’t grasp the idea.
The dawn was chilly as the sky lightened to the east, but she didn’t feel any chill. All she felt was numb.
Opal had rallied the ranch hands, Ruben Sweet and Tommy Hide, but by the time they had installed the slip-in tank on the back of the truck and filled it from the well, the fire had consumed the building. It was a smoldering heap.
Jake and the hands had watered down the ground around the house with a system of sprinkler hoses, worried that the sparks would set the big house on fire. The draw of water was too much for the pump, and it had burned out. Jake was in the pump house fixing the pump so they’d have water again.
What a disaster. Her house-in-the-country dreams had gone up in a rage of smoke and flames. This was beyond anything she could ever have imagined. If it hadn’t been for Jake she would not be alive. He had said he couldn’t sleep and had a funny feeling. Thank heaven for second sight.