CHRISTMAS AT THUNDER HORSE RANCH (7 page)

“He’s going to hit your Jeep,” Emma said, diving for the door. She flung it open and started to shout to the driver to stop.

Before she could get a word out, the world seemed to explode in front of her.

* * *

E
MMA
WAS
BLOWN
backward, hitting Dante square in the chest, knocking him onto the floor of her apartment. He fell flat on his back and Emma landed on top of him. With the wind knocked out of him and his ears ringing, he lay for a moment trying to comprehend what had just happened.

Then he was scrambling to his feet and racing down the steps to the parking lot below. His Jeep was a blackened hulk with a hole blown through the driver’s side.

The truck that had been backing out of the space next to his was drifting backward across the icy surface of the pavement, the hood had been blown upright and the driver was slumped at the wheel. Smoke billowed out of the engine.

Dante ran to the truck and yanked at the door. It was locked. He banged on the window and shouted to get the driver’s attention, but he wasn’t waking up no matter how hard Dante banged or how loud he shouted.

The truck slid back into a car and stopped, but smoke billowed from the engine compartment and then flames sprang from the source of the smoke.

Desperate to get the man out of the truck, he glanced around for something to break the window with. The ground and the sidewalks were covered in snow from the night before and nothing jumped out that would be strong enough to break the glass.

Behind him, he heard footsteps clambering down the stairs and Emma slid to a stop beside him. “Use this,” she said and slapped a hammer in his palm.

Dante gave a brief grin. Emma was smart and resourceful.

He rounded to the passenger side of the vehicle and slammed the hammer into the glass. It took several attempts before he broke all the way through and could reach his hand in to hit the automatic door-lock release.

As soon as he did, Emma pulled open the driver’s door and reached inside to unbuckle the seat belt.

The flame surged, the heat making Dante’s face burn. “Get back!” he shouted, racing around the other side of the truck.

Emma ignored his entreaty and tugged at the driver’s arm. “We have to get him out.”

Dante arrived at her side. As soon as she backed away, he grabbed the man and pulled him out, draping his limp body over his shoulder. He turned and nearly ran into Emma. “Move, move, move!”

With the burden of the man weighing him down and the ice-covered pavement slowing his steps, Dante ran after Emma, barely making it to the apartment building before the flame found the truck’s gas tank. The second explosion in less than ten minutes rocked the earth beneath them and he crashed to his knees on the concrete.

Emma appeared in front of him and soon other apartment dwellers emerged from their rooms to see what all the commotion was.

Emma pointed to a woman who stood in the doorway of her apartment with her hair up in a towel and yelled, “Lisa, call 9-1-1!”

The woman’s eyes widened and she spun back into her apartment and reappeared with her cell phone pressed to her ear, talking rapidly to the dispatcher on the other end.

“Here, lean on me. Let me help you up.” Emma slipped one of Dante’s arms over her shoulder and helped him to rise with the man in tow. Grateful for her help, he tried not to put too much weight on her as he clambered to his feet.

“We should get him inside where it’s warm,” Emma said, angling toward the woman on the cell phone.

She stepped back and let them enter.

Dante laid the man out on the couch and straightened.

“I need blankets,” Emma said.

Lisa, still holding the phone, nodded toward the hallway. “The ambulance and fire department are on their way. The dispatcher wants me to stay on the phone until they arrive. You can find blankets in the hall closet.”

“I’ll get them.” Emma disappeared and reappeared with two thick blankets.

Sirens wailed and soon the apartment building was surrounded by emergency vehicles, lights flashing. Firemen leaped out and quickly extinguished the blaze, but not before two other cars had sustained damage.

The emergency medical technicians brought in a backboard and loaded the driver onto it and carried him out to the ambulance.

By the time city police and the state police took their statements and the tow truck came to collect the disabled vehicles, day had turned to night. Not that the days were very long during the North Dakota winters.

Emma thanked Lisa for all her help and led the way back up to her apartment.

Dante followed her in, closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

She faced him with shadows beneath her eyes and a worried frown creasing her forehead. “If you had been in your Jeep...”

“I’d be dead. And if you’d been with me in the passenger seat, you’d be either dead or severely injured. I hope that truck driver makes it.”

“Toby,” she said. “His name is Toby and he’s a student at UND. I hope he makes it, too. He has a promising future as an aerospace engineer.” Emma ran a hand through her hair and stared across at him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

Dante’s heart squeezed at the desperation in her tone. He opened his arms and she fell into them. Wrapping her in his embrace, he leaned his cheek against the side of her head. “It’s not safe here.”

“If it’s not safe here, it won’t be any safer at your apartment.” She looked up at him with those anxious brown eyes. “We have nowhere else to go.”

Dante shook his head. “Yes, we do.” He turned her around and gave her backside a gentle slap. “Pack your bags. We’re going to the Thunder Horse Ranch. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Chapter Seven

Emma lay in her bed with the goose down comforter pulled up to her chin and stared at the ceiling. Exhaustion should have knocked her right out, but for the life of her, she couldn’t go to sleep. Too many thoughts tumbled in her mind, too many images of the past twenty-four hours kept replaying through her head like a recurring nightmare.

The only thing that kept her from having a full-blown anxiety attack was the man lying on the couch in her living room. Dante was the one island in the murky river of her thoughts keeping her afloat.

As independent as she thought she was, she’d give anything for him to lie beside her, take her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.

She’d lean her face against his naked chest and breathe in the scent of him and all would be well with her world and she’d finally be able to go to sleep.

Like hell. If he was lying naked beside her, she’d be too tempted to run her hands over his body and explore all those interesting places she’d missed when they’d made love in the cold interior of her now-destroyed camp trailer.

Achingly aware of the man in the other room and too wound up to lay still a moment longer, Emma finally gave in, flung back the covers and sat up.

A large shadow moved and Dante appeared in the doorway. “Can’t sleep, either?” He leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed and his legs crossed at the ankles.

Emma couldn’t see his expression, but the faint glow through the blinds from the security light outside her living room window backlit the man, making him appear larger than life and incredibly sexy. He wore nothing but gym shorts, his swarthy, Native American skin even darker in the dim lighting.

She swallowed hard. “No. I keep thinking back over everything that’s happened.”

“Me, too.” He crossed the room to sit on the edge of her bed. “As soon as I lay my head down, my thoughts spin.”

“You could have died. Four times.”

“And you could have died almost as many.”

Emma harrumphed. “I feel like a big wimp.” She smiled, though her lips trembled.

“Do you mind?” He moved to sit beside her and pulled her into the crook of his arm.

Emma leaned into his body, feeling immediately warmer and more secure than before he showed up in her doorway.

“As I see it, you’re pretty darned brave.” He held up a thumb. “First, you risked your life by nearly crashing your snowmobile into the man who shot me down. A wimp wouldn’t have done that.”

Emma didn’t think it had been at all heroic. “I didn’t think. I just reacted.”

“But you reacted. Most people would have hesitated. It took someone with a backbone to charge in...without thinking.” He unfolded his pointer finger. “Second, you kept your head when the trailer was caving in around us and got the hell through the window fast enough so that I could get out. Then you helped me squeeze through. I doubt very seriously I would have made it out in time without your help.”

“You would have,” she insisted.

He unfolded another finger. “You walked several miles in frigid cold without a single complaint, when I know you had to be hurting.”

She snorted. “And fell on my face before we made it to the house.”

“And gave me an opportunity to be a hero. Carrying you that last little bit was nothing, and it made me look good to Olaf and Marge.” He chuckled, the vibrations sending tiny electric shocks through her.

She turned her cheek into his bare chest and closed her eyes. Daring to touch him, she laid her hand on him and felt the rise and fall of each breath he took. “Keep talking. I’m still not convinced.”

Another finger unfolded as he scooted down in the bed until he was lying beside her. “When the truck was on fire and an explosion was imminent, you risked your life to help get Toby out.” His arm tightened around her. “Sweetheart, you’re not a wimp. You’re pretty impressive if you ask me.”

She wanted to ask if she was anywhere near as impressive as Samantha, but knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to compare herself to a dead woman. Dragging her into the conversation would only bring Dante more pain.

Instead, she settled against his side.

“Go to sleep, Emma. If you’d like, I’ll stay awake to be on the lookout until morning.”

“No, we have a long trip ahead of us and I’ll bet you plan on doing most of the driving.”

“I’m used to long stretches of sleeplessness. I can handle it.”

“You might be able to, but I can’t. Surely we’ll be okay if we both get some sleep. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll let you know if I hear anything strange.”

“I suppose it will be all right. Do you want me to go back to the couch?”

“No,” she said, her hand flexing against his chest as if that alone would keep him from getting up if he wanted to. “I promise not to seduce you.”

He chuckled. “Okay, but I wouldn’t be opposed if you did.”

Though she wanted to feel gloriously satiated like she had felt in the trailer, she also didn’t want him to think she was needy. For a moment she considered making the first move, but then squelched the idea.

Dante sighed and rolled her onto her side away from him, then spooned her body with his. “Sleep. It’s been a long day and tomorrow promises to be equally trying.”

“Let’s hope not. I could do with less drama.”

“You and me both.” His arm tightened around her middle and he drew her close.

For a long time, Emma lay in Dante’s arms, sleep eluding her. When his breathing became more regular and deeper, she relaxed, a little disappointed that he hadn’t tried anything.

Exhaustion finally claimed her and she fell asleep, cocooned in the warmth of Dante’s body, her last thought being that she could get used to this far too easily.

* * *

D
ANTE
SLIPPED
BACK
into
another nightmare when his helicopter had been attacked in Afghanistan.

Having taken hits, he was barely able to bring his helicopter back to Bagram. But he had and set it down as smoothly as if it wasn’t damaged. He was congratulating himself when one of the guys in the back said, “Giddings was hit. We need an ambulance ASAP.”

As he ripped his harness loose, he gave instructions to the tower, slipped from the pilot’s seat and dropped to the ground. He ran around to the other side where the gunner was being unbuckled from his harness and carried out of the craft.

Giddings had volunteered to be a gunner and had competed with others to claim the position. He’d been a damned good gunner, saving their butts on more than one occasion.

At twenty-three, he was barely out of his teens, a kid. And he had a young, pregnant wife back in the United States due to give birth in less than a month. Four weeks from redeployment back to the United States, he’d insisted on flying this mission.

Dante could kick himself for letting the kid fly. The closer they came to redeployment the more superstitious they became. It seemed that only the really good guys managed to be jinxed their last month in the sandbox.

When the ambulance arrived, Dante insisted on riding with them to the hospital and he stayed until Giddings was out of surgery and out of danger. He’d make it.

It had all happened so fast. One minute they were flying a mission, the next he was waiting for the doc to tell him the verdict on one of his crew.

It wasn’t until he was on his way back to his quarters that he made the turn to swing by Samantha’s room. She would be off duty by now and he really needed to see her.

She shared quarters with another personnel officer, Lieutenant Mandy Brashear. He might not get her alone, but at least he could share a hug and a kiss. After nearly losing a member of his team, he really needed the reassurance of her warm body next to his.

When he stopped outside her door, he heard the sound of someone sobbing. Without hesitating, he pushed open the door and entered. “Samantha?”

Lieutenant Brashear lifted her head from her pillow and stared up at him with tear-streaked cheeks, her eyes rounding as she recognized him. “Oh, Dante,” she said, ignoring the protocol of addressing a higher-ranking officer by his rank and last name. “You haven’t heard?”

Dante stiffened, his heart seizing in his chest, guessing what Mandy would say before she did. “What’s wrong? Where’s Sam?” He looked around the small room, although he knew she wasn’t there.

“Oh, God.” Mandy’s tears gushed from her eyes and her words became almost incoherent as she sobbed and spoke simultaneously. “She went to the orphanage today...I...can’t...believe...Oh, God.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed some more.

His hands and heart going cold, Dante gripped Lieutenant Brashear’s shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “Where is Sam?”

“She was in the hospital when I left her,” she blurted. “Dante, she’s...she’s...dead.”

Dante ran all the way back to the hospital where he’d been just minutes before, outside the surgical units, waiting for Giddings to be sewn up and released. He hadn’t known that in the unit beside Giddings, Samantha had taken her last breath.

He got back in time to see them zip her into the body bag. They wheeled her out on a gurney. All sealed up and final. He didn’t even get to say goodbye.

“Dante,” a female voice called to him.

For a moment he thought it was Samantha, but she had a gravelly voice; this was a smooth, sexy voice calling his name.

“Dante, wake up.” A hand shook his shoulder this time.

Dante opened his eyes and looked up into Emma’s face and blinked, for a split second wondering what she was doing in Afghanistan. Then he remembered he wasn’t in the Middle East, but back in North Dakota having been attacked on multiple occasions. He rolled off the side of the bed and landed on his feet. “What’s wrong?”

Emma smiled. “I’m sorry, but your cell phone is ringing. That’s the third time it’s rung in the past fifteen minutes.”

Shaking the cobwebs from his head, he hurried into the living room and grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table where he’d left it. In the display window was the word
Mom
.

It was two o’clock in the morning. She wouldn’t call at this hour unless it was an emergency. These thoughts whisked through his mind as he hit the talk button. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, thank goodness you answered.” She took a deep breath and let it out before continuing. “Pierce and Tuck were in an accident and are in the hospital in Bismarck.”

His hand tightened on the phone. The last time he’d been at the hospital in Bismarck, his father had died from injuries sustained when he’d been thrown by his horse. “What happened?”

“Yesterday, they were on their way home for the weekend when Pierce’s brakes gave out. From what the police said, they had been traveling pretty fast with the roads being clear still. This was before the big storm.” His mother spoke to someone in the background and returned to the story. “They had come up on an accident on the interstate. That’s when the brakes must have failed. Rather than slam into the vehicles stopped on the interstate, they drove off into the ditch. The truck flipped, rolled and landed upside down.” Her voice broke on a sob.

Dante’s heart squeezed hard. He wished he was there to comfort his mother. The woman was a rock and if she was in this much distress, it had to be bad.

She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” The phone clattered as if it had been dropped.

“Mom?” Dante listened and could hear female voices. “Mom!”

“Dante, this is Julia.” Julia was Tuck’s wife and the mother of his little girl, Lily. “Tuck was thrown twenty yards and suffered a concussion, but Pierce was trapped inside the truck until the fire department could get there from Bismarck and cut him out. They didn’t get him out until the storm hit. They almost didn’t make it back to Bismarck in the ambulances.”

“Damn.” Though he’d been away fighting in the war and then living on the opposite end of the state of North Dakota, he was still very much a part of the Thunder Horse family and he loved his brothers. To be that close to having lost one hit him hard.

“Tuck’s okay,” Julia continued. “It’s Pierce we’re all worried about. When the truck flipped he sustained a couple of broken ribs, a punctured lung and we don’t know what else. He’s had some internal bleeding and he’s still unconscious. They’ve sedated him into a medically induced coma until they can figure out what else is damaged.”

Dante pinched the bridge of his nose, his own crash pushed to the back of his mind. Apparently his mother hadn’t heard about it and hadn’t received the message on her answering machine at the ranch. He’d have to contact the ranch foreman, Sean McKendrick, and have him erase it before she got home. No use worrying her more when he was fine.

“How’s Mom holding up?”

“She’s doing okay, but the emotional strain is wearing on her,” Julia said. “We knew you’d planned to be here next week, but with Pierce and Tuck both in the hospital and Maddox on the other side of the world in Trejikistan with Katya and not due back until next week, we thought you might want to be here.”

Dante straightened. “I’m coming home.”

“Thank goodness.” Julia’s words came out in a rush. “Roxanne is here with Pierce, and with your mother here, the foremen of the two ranches are on their own. And, Dante...” Julia’s voice dropped and she paused. Footsteps sounded at her end as if she was walking down a hallway. Then she continued, “There have been some suspicious accidents happening out there. Your mother thinks it’s just bad luck, but Roxanne and I think someone is sabotaging things. We’re afraid if we don’t have a Thunder Horse out there keeping an eye on things, there won’t be a ranch to come home to. Amelia has gone so far as to hire a security firm to set up surveillance cameras.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She knows she can’t ask you guys to come home every time something goes bump in the night. With Maddox out of the country, she wanted something to make her feel safe. Thus the security system.”