was plunged back into the nightmare of the guesthouse fire. The flames. The doorknob searing the flesh of his hands. His voice raw from screaming Jodi’s name.
His heart thudded so hard it made him breathless. He forced his paralysed legs to run down the laneway at the side of the shop, around to the back entrance. Dark grey smoke billowed out through a broken pane in the back window.
The wooden carvings. The books. So much fuel for the fire. A potential inferno.
Sandy could be sprawled on the floor. Injured. Asphyxiated. He had to go in. Find her.
Save her.
He shrugged off his jacket, used it to cover his face, leaving only a slit for his eyes. He pushed in his key to the back door and shoved. The door gave. He plunged into the smoke.
‘Sandy!’ he screamed until his voice was hoarse.
No response.
Straight away he saw the source of the smoke. The old air-conditioning unit on the wall that Ida had refused to let him replace. Smouldering, distorted by heat, but as yet with no visible flames.
The smoke appeared to be contained in the small back area.
But no Sandy.
Heart in his mouth, he shouldered open the door that led through into the shop. No smoke or flames.
No Sandy there either.
All the old pain he’d thought he’d got under control gripped him so hard he doubled over. What if it had been a different story and Sandy had died? By opening up to Sandy he’d exposed himself again to the agony of loss.
He fought against the thought that made him wish Sandy had never driven so blithely back into Dolphin Bay. Making him question the safe half-life that had protected him for so long.
Like prison gates clanging shut, the old barriers against pain and loss and anguish slammed back into place. He felt numb, drained.
How could he have thought he could deal with loving another woman?
A high-pitched pop song ringtone rang out, startling him. It was so out of place in this place of near disaster. He grabbed Sandy’s mobile phone from next to the register and shoved it in his pocket without answering it. Why the hell didn’t she have it with her?
He headed back to the smouldering air-conditioning unit, grabbed the fire extinguisher canister from the nearby wall bracket and sprayed fire retardant all over it.
Then he staggered out into the car park behind the shop.
He coughed and spluttered and gulped in huge breaths of fresh air.
And then Sandy was there, her face anguished and wet with tears.
‘Ben. Thank heaven. Ben.’
* * *
Sandy never wanted to experience again the torment of the last ten minutes. All sorts of hideous scenarios had played over and over in her head.
She scarcely remembered how she’d got from the hospital to Bay Books, her heart pounding with terror, to find horrible black smoke and Ben inside the shop.
But Ben was safe.
His face was drawn and stark and smeared with soot. His clothes were filthy and he stank of acrid smoke. But she didn’t care. She flung herself into his arms. Pressed herself to his big, solid, blessedly alive body. Rejoiced in the pounding of his heart, the reassuring rise and fall of his chest as he gulped in clean air.
‘You’re okay...’ That was all she could choke out.
He held her so tightly she thought he would bruise her ribs.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it looked. There’s just smoke damage out the back. It didn’t reach the books.’
He coughed. Dear heaven, had the smoke burned his throat?
Relief that he was alive morphed into anger that he’d put himself in such danger. She pulled back and pounded on his chest with her fists. ‘Why did you go in there? Why take the risk? Ida must have insurance. All that wood, all that paper... If it had ignited you could have been killed.’ Her voice hiccupped and she dissolved into tears again.
He caught her wrists with his damaged hands. ‘Because I thought you were in there.’
She stilled. ‘Me?’
‘You weren’t answering your phone. I was worried.’
The implication of his words slammed into her like the kind of fast, hard wave that knocked you down, leaving you to tumble over and over in the surf. His wife and son had been trapped inside a fire-ravaged building. What cruel fate had forced him to face such a scenario again? Suffer the fear that someone he cared for was inside?
She sniffed back her tears so she was able to speak. ‘I’d gone to visit Ida. To talk...to talk business with her.’ And to mull over what a future without kids might mean. ‘I’m so sorry. It was my fault you—’
‘It was my choice to go in there. I had to.’
His grip on her hands was so tight it hurt.
‘All I could think about was how it would be if I lost you.’
He let go her hands and stepped back.
Something was wrong with this scenario. His eyes, bluer than ever in the dark, smoke-dirtied frame of his face, were tense and unreadable. He fisted his hands by his sides.
She felt her stomach sink low with trepidation. ‘But you didn’t lose me, Ben. I’m here. I’m fine.’
‘But what if you hadn’t been? What if—?’
She fought to control the tremor in her voice. ‘I thought we’d decided not to play the “what-if?” game.’
Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. ‘It was a shock.’
She heard the distant wail of a fire engine and was aware of people gathering at a distance from the shop.
Ben waved and called over to them. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just smoke—no fire.’
He wiped his hand over his face in a gesture of weariness and resignation that tore at her. A dark smear of soot swept right across his cheek.
‘Sandy, I need to let the fire department know they’re not needed. Then go get cleaned up.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said immediately.
This could be their last evening together.
He hesitated for just a second too long. ‘Why don’t you go back to the hotel and I’ll meet you there?’ he said.
One step forward and two steps back? Try ten steps forward and a hundred steps back.
‘Sure,’
