Bo needed a few encouraging digs of her heels to keep moving. Slowly he picked his way across, and then scrambled up the steep bank, his big hooves sliding in the mud.
Hayley leaned forward, one hand gripping the mane. Adam started to slide backward. “Hang on.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and leaned forward, reaching for his own bit of mane. His fingers dug into her just below her ribcage and his hard chest pressed against her back. “Are we having fun yet?” he said, his warm breath close to her ear.
In the midst of feeling uncomfortable about his closeness, she laughed. Bloody Adam Banks. She should have let him get his damn shoes dirty. Or she should have gone farther upstream before attempting to cross. It was her own darn fault for wanting to make this journey as short as possible.
At the top of the bank, Bo made a final surge, crashing through the tree ferns. Adam lost his grip and slid right over the horse’s rump, landing in the mud. When he scrambled to his feet, dark brown streaks covered the front of his polo shirt and his pants. Hayley hooted with laughter, then quickly covered her mouth.
Adam tried to brush off the clods but only smeared them around. “Only the truly depraved laugh at other people’s misfortunes.”
“Sometimes if you don’t laugh, you cry.”
He glanced up sharply, then smiled. “Glad I could provide you with some light entertainment.”
“Want to get back up?” she asked, hoping he’d say no.
“Thanks, but I’ll walk from here.”
“Suit yourself.” And no, she was not disappointed. Well, maybe a little. But that must only be because she truly was depraved.
All levity evaporated as they walked up the slope of the ridge. At the highest point they emerged from the untouched forest and into a stand of trees with charred trunks and bare limbs, stark reminders of the firestorm that had swept through nearly a year ago. Another fifty yards and even these blackened ghosts petered out. Then there were no trees at all. The mountain was a wasteland as far as the eye could see, down into the valley and halfway up the other side of the hill.
Adam’s steps slowed, then stopped altogether. “Holy shit.”
“No kidding,” Hayley said grimly.
He glanced back to the untouched forest a mere hundred meters away. “So how did it happen? How did your property get razed and mine escaped with barely a singed leaf?”
“A fluke of nature.”
“Tell me more. All I know is that the wind pushed the fire up the mountain.”
“That’s right.” Hayley didn’t like to relive that day. She actively tried to cast it out of her mind, but the stark landscape never let her forget. “The wind was blowing steadily from the northwest, seventy miles an hour and gusting up to ninety, ninety-five. Leif led his firefighting crew down the slope below Timbertop, clearing and back-burning to create a firebreak. During the afternoon the wind veered around to the northeast.” Just as the Bureau of Meteorology had predicted. “It pushed the fire in the other direction.” She swallowed. “Toward the volunteer fire crew.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak and the taut silence stretched.
“It’s okay,” Adam said. “You don’t have to talk about it. I get the picture.”
“The fire roared up the mountain like a freaking freight train,” Hayley said, barely hearing him. “Jumping the break and taking out everything in its path.... Including Leif and his crew. They...they were dead before they could retreat.”
Her halting recitation of the details stalled on the choking pain in her chest. Breathe, just breathe. After a few seconds she was able to go on. “The fire continued to advance this way. There was no one to stop it. My house and outbuildings were burned to the ground. Leif sent me a message about an hour before he died. He couldn’t get out. He wanted me to head into town and stay with his parents. But I couldn’t leave the horses.”
Why hadn’t Leif listened to the weather bureau and positioned the firebreak on their side of the ridge? Was it because the fire was heading toward Timbertop and he wanted to help their neighbor? It had been a judgment call. A fatal one.
Damn Leif. Always had to be the hero.
“Where were you when the fire went through?” Adam asked.
She turned her gaze toward him but she wasn’t seeing him, she was seeing the black sky and hearing the unearthly roar of the fire, breathing in the choking smoke. “I was in the dam. Shane and I got in the dam, right out in the middle where I had to stand on my tiptoes. Shane kept wanting to swim to shore. I had to hold him in my arms. Hold him up so he could breathe. There were only three inches of air between the surface of the water and the smoke. We stayed in the dam for four hours.”
Adam swore. “That must have been awful.”
“I was lucky.” He looked surprised. She went on fiercely, “When people commiserate and tell me how sorry they are for me, losing everything, I say, no, I was the lucky one. I’m still alive.” Whenever she started feeling sorry for herself she thought about Leif, caught out in the bush with no protection from the inferno racing up the mountainside.
She had the garage to live in and her horses had shelter, albeit temporary. One day, the house and stables would be rebuilt. She would have a home again.
She started Bo walking again, and soon they came to the paddock. It was black and barren all the way from here to the garage, three hundred yards on the right.
She and Adam didn’t speak again until they approached the horse shelter, a three-sided corrugated iron box. Major emerged and whickered to Bo.
“What are your horses grazing on?” Adam said. “There’s not a blade of grass in there.”
“I buy timothy-hay and have it trucked in.” It was expensive, but she was used to most of her income going toward the horses. Some days the road back to solvency and a normal life seemed like a mountain she was climbing, but there was only one way she could go—onward.
She slid off Bo, removed his bridle and replaced it with a halter before letting him into the paddock. She would brush him down later.
“Did the horses get into the dam as well?” Adam asked.
“No. When the fire got close I opened the gate and let them out. They ran around the yard for a bit and then headed into the woods.” She still had nightmares about hearing their screams as burning shards of the barn’s corrugated iron roof rained down. One had struck Asha in the neck.... “Four of the five I have left came home one by one over the next week. Blaze was found months later. The rest I never saw again.”
“Do you think they’re alive somewhere out there?”
She cut him a scathing glance. “I’m too old to believe in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.” She’d tried to find her horses. For weeks she’d gone up to the high country, scouting the alpine meadows and talking to the ranchers and park rangers.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
There was that pity again. Pity and charity. They had
