Knowing Buzz couldn’t hold on for long with only one arm, she quickly tied her end of the rope onto the base of a stump, grabbed onto the rope and waded out as far as she dared. The current swirled with dangerous power around her ankles. “Hold on!” she cried.
She had no idea how Buzz managed, but with Eddie wrapped in one arm, he used the other to work his way along the rope until he was close enough to the bank to get his feet under him. Gripping the rope so hard her nails cut into her palms, Kelly waded deeper into the swift current, and held out one arm to her son.
“Eddie! Sweetheart. Come to me. Come to Mommy.”
As if with the last of his strength, Buzz shoved the boy toward her. Not daring to let go of the rope just yet, she wrapped one arm around him. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
“Mommy,” he cried. “Mommy.”
Emotion ripped through her at the sound of his sweet voice. That tiny voice she loved with every cell in her body. “Honey, are you okay?”
“I-I’m c-cold.”
“Are you hurt, sweetheart? Does anything hurt?”
“My knee hurts.” He started to cry. “And I’m scared.”
Closing her eyes, she put her hands on his face and kissed his forehead. His pink cheeks. His wet eyes. The top of his very wet head. “Don’t be scared, honey. Everything’s okay. You’re safe now.” She wanted to say more, wanted to reassure him, but her throat locked up tight as a drum.
Kelly didn’t remember picking him up and carrying him over the sandbar near the rocky shore. She didn’t remember crying his name over and over again as she laid him down on a bed of pine needles at the base of the cliff. When he looked up at her with the sweet eyes she had feared she would never again look into, all the bottled emotions inside her fractured. Hugging him to her breast as tightly as she dared, she bowed her head long enough to thank God, and then she wept.
Buzz lay face-down on the rocky sandbar for what seemed like a long time. Water soaked his clothes, the cold seeming to sink through his skin and go all the way to his bones. Rocks dug uncomfortably into his face and stomach and thighs, but he didn’t move. His back ached as if he’d been run over by a bulldozer, but he didn’t have the energy even to groan, so he just lay there and tried not to think about what had almost happened—or how damn lucky they were to be alive.
Over the roar of the water, he was vaguely aware of Kelly crying. Of the little boy crying. The sound of their voices—the fact that they were alive—made him smile. It didn’t matter that he felt like death warmed over. Or that he didn’t have the slightest idea how close the fire was. Or how the holy hell they were going to get back to the campground. All that mattered at the moment was that they were alive.
“Buzz? Are you okay?”
He raised his head and looked at Kelly. “Peachy,” he growled.
Blinking back tears, smiling tremulously and cradling her son—their son—in her arms, she mouthed the words “thank you.”
Several minutes passed before he was able to drag himself to his knees, then get unsteadily to his feet. His boots sloshed when he crossed the sandbar to where Kelly and her son—his son—were huddled against the base of the cliff. Buzz looked down at them, felt something vital shift, then freefall in his chest. The quick rise of emotions, the need to protect what was his stunned him.
He stared at the woman he’d once loved more than life itself. Her head was bowed, her cheek pressed hard against her child’s head. She held the little boy so tightly he wondered if the kid could draw a breath.
The child shivered in her arms. Even from where he stood, Buzz could hear his little teeth chattering. Though it was soaked, he could see that Eddie’s hair was the same pretty brown as his mother’s. In the moments he’d held him in his arms as they were being swept down the river, when he’d looked into his son’s eyes for the first time, he’d noticed a hundred things about him. The small, angular body. The sweet scent of child. A freckled nose. Eyes that were the same stormy gray as his own. Eyes that had been filled with a child’s trust.
For a moment, Buzz couldn’t speak, just stood there like an idiot, staring at them, aware that his heart was beating a hard tattoo against his ribs. He couldn’t believe this perfect little child was his. A precious life he and Kelly had created. A little boy he would gladly give up his own life to protect.
A little boy without a father.
The repercussions struck him with the force of a sledgehammer. His knees went weak. Nausea roiled in his stomach. He felt as if someone had just punched him right between the eyes. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought he was having some kind of damn anxiety attack.
Buzz had been involved in dozens of life-and-death situations in the years he’d been a cop. He’d participated in a hundred or more rescues in the course of his career with RMSAR. None of those events had ever made him feel like this.
He jolted when a gentle hand touched his forearm. “Hey, are you hurt? What’s wrong?”
He hadn’t noticed that Kelly had risen, and was now looking at him with concerned brown eyes. “Buzz?”
He stared back at her, shaking inside, wondering why this particular rescue had affected him that way. “I’m fine,” he said.
A tentative smile touched her mouth. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“Probably.”
“You saved his life.”
“You’re the one who threw the rope.”
“Buzz…for God’s sake, don’t argue.” Her voice broke. “Just…thank you.”
Because he didn’t trust his voice not to betray him, Buzz looked away, turned his attention to his son. Eddie was sitting on the ground, shivering, holding onto his mother’s leg. Buzz knelt so that he was eye-level with the little boy. “You okay, tough guy?” he asked.
The child blinked at him, sniffed hard once, then looked up at his mother. “I-m c-cold. I w-want to go home.”
“We’re going to take you home,” Buzz said. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
Another sniff, then Eddie used the back of his wet sleeve to wipe his runny nose. “My knee hurts.”
“Well, we’ll just have to check it out, then, won’t we?”
Eddie threw a questioning look at his mommy, held her leg tighter.
“My name’s Buzz.”
“That’s a funny name.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”
Eddie nodded, sniffed.
“I’m a Search and Rescue medic. Do you know what that is?”
“Kinda.”
“Then you know I rescue people when they get into trouble.”
“Like you did me?”
Buzz smiled. “That’s right. I’m trained to treat injuries that happen out on the trail, too.”
“Like a doctor?”
“Sort of.” Buzz glanced over when Kelly knelt beside him. “Do you mind if I have a look at your sore knee?”
Eddie looked over at Kelly, and she nodded. “Show him where it hurts, honey.”
Eddie stuck out his right leg then proceeded to roll up his pants. Buzz noticed Kelly’s hands were still shaking when she reached out to help him.
Buzz wasn’t an emotional man. But to look into that innocent face, into those little eyes and see his own reflected back was almost too much to bear. The knowledge that this child was his overwhelmed him. Emotions he’d sworn he’d never feel threatened to tear down his defenses, rip him open, make him doubt the beliefs he’d held close his entire adult life. Awe mixed with anger, love with a sense of betrayal, and cut him as deeply as any knife. The power of those emotions struck him over and over again until he felt as battered emotionally as he was physically.
Holding onto his composure by a thread, Buzz reached out and prodded the small knee. “He’s bruised, but nothing’s broken,” he said, relieved. “We need to get him dry and get some food into him.”
Kelly nodded. “Your pack is still up on the trail where we left it.”
Buzz rose and scanned the steep incline Kelly h
ad come down to reach the water. “I want you and Eddie to wait here. I’ll hike back up to the trail, pick up my pack and the radio and meet you back here.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll radio RMSAR headquarters, have them notify your family and see if we can get the chopper out here for a swoop and scoop.”
She nodded.
Buzz looked up at the treetops. “If anyone can fly a chopper in these winds, it’s Flyboy. I’ll know more when I get back.”
She looked as though she wanted to say more, but Buzz didn’t give her the chance. He didn’t like the way he was reacting to her, didn’t like the way he was reacting to Eddie. Most of all, he didn’t like the way he was starting to feel. He didn’t want to feel anything, because he knew in a few days it wouldn’t matter.
“Homer One this is Tango Two Niner, do you read?”
“Homer reads you Tango. What’s up, Buzz?”
Easing his backpack onto his shoulders, Buzz spoke into the radio as he started back down the trail. “I’ve got the missing child. You can call off the search.”
Dispatch let out an ear-splitting whoop. “Hot damn! What’s your twenty?”
“I’m half a mile north of the Panther Creek Blue River fork. What are the chances of getting Eagle out here for a swoop and scoop?”
“Negative. Flyboy got recalled to base. Winds are at fifty knots and we got thermals all over the place.” He paused. “You got injuries?”
“Negative, but we got a tired and hungry four-year-old kid.”
“Winds are supposed to die down overnight.”
Buzz cursed. “What about the fire? They got it contained?”
“Not yet. Smoke jumpers are out in force. A bunch of guys came down from Yellowstone. That makes about two hundred men working on it. Damn winds are feeding it.”
“We’ve got smoke here. Are we going to be all right?”
“You’ll be fine overnight. Flyboy should be able to make it out first light.”
“Tell Flyboy to get on the horn at 0400 with a pick-up point.”
“Roger that, Tango.”
“Over and out.”
Buzz didn’t relish the idea of spending another night in the mountains. He wanted to believe the dread curling through him was because that poor child had had a couple of very tough days and needed to get back home. Or maybe because he himself was tired and cold and hungry and needed a hot meal and his own bed.
But Buzz was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that the primary reason for his dread was because he didn’t want to spend any more time with Kelly. He knew that was selfish—perhaps even cowardly—but until he figured out how he felt about all this, he just didn’t want to get any closer to either of them.
He and Kelly had been so immersed in the search, they hadn’t yet properly discussed what kind of role—if any—Buzz would play in Eddie’s life. He hadn’t had time to think about it; hadn’t had time to sort out his feelings or decide a damn thing.
For the first time since finding out about Eddie, he felt trapped. How in God’s name was he going to handle this?
He couldn’t think of a worse situation for a man like him. A man who didn’t like to feel anything at all suddenly feeling too damn much. Not only for the boy, he realized, but for the woman who’d given him that child.
The situation nagged him as Buzz made his way down the steep trail toward where he’d left Kelly and Eddie. He tried to focus on the dull ache in his back, on the discomfort of being wet and cold and exhausted. Instead, all he could think about were the woman and child waiting for him and the fact that he didn’t have the slightest clue what he was going to do about either of them.
Chapter 11
T hey made camp at dusk in a small clearing at the base of a rocky slope that protected them from the winds driving in from the north. Buzz set to work digging a shallow pit for the fire. Kelly opted to gather some dry kindling. Since Eddie was wearing only her flannel shirt and an extra pair of socks while his clothes hung to dry, he had to stay at camp with Buzz. Of course, her awestruck son wasn’t complaining about that.
Kelly didn’t stray far from where Eddie and Buzz were working on the pit. She’d never considered herself an overprotective mom, but she was having a hard time letting her son out of her sight. Every instinct she possessed screamed for her to gather his forty-two-pound body into her arms, hold him tight and never let him go.
Of course, her son had other ideas.
Eddie liked to talk and wasn’t a bit shy about talking to strangers. Not that the man who’d saved his life was a stranger, exactly; they’d been hiking the trail most of the day. Kelly had watched father and son with an odd mix of pain and amusement. One minute they would have her smiling. The next, the pain, the sense of all the time they had lost was so intense, she nearly doubled over with it.
Early on, Buzz had done his best to ignore the little boy and his nonstop chatter. But as afternoon stretched into evening, Eddie had managed to draft him into several conversations.
“So what happened next?” Eddie asked excitedly about a rescue story Buzz had mentioned.
Buzz made a neat circle of river rock around the perimeter of the shallow pit. “The medic jumped out while the chopper hovered,” he said. “Wind from the rotors kicked up snow and debris, but we winched him down anyway.”
“What’s winched?”
“A winch is a long steel cable with which the medic is lowered down to the ground.”
“You mean he jumped out of the chopter! Wowwee! I wish I coulda seen it! I’ll bet that was cool.”
Kelly watched father and son, mesmerized by the picture they made. It was a picture she’d seen a thousand times in her dreams, but had known reality would never yield.
Buzz re-hung Eddie’s wet clothes from a tree branch above the campfire pit. Eddie sat on a log, kicking out his feet, and watched every move the big man made, a combination of curiosity and awe showing plainly in his young eyes.
“Was the lady hurt?” Eddie asked after a moment.
“We treated her for hypothermia.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s when you get really cold.”
“I got frosted on my big toe once when I was ice-skating.”
Buzz looked up from his work. “You mean frostbite?”
Eddie nodded. “That, too. Mommy had to take me to the doctor.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, but it was okay. I’ll bet I had hippo terma today. I was really cold.”
“You mean hypothermia.”
“Yeah. Hippo terma.”
Buzz rubbed his hand over his jaw, obviously trying to hide a smile.
“Do we get to ride in the chopter tomorrow, Buzz?”
“Sure do.”
“Do I get to ride on the winch?”
“That depends on where they pick us up. Chances are the pilot will land at a pre-designated point and we won’t have to use the winch.”
“Are you going to come with us?”
Buzz reached down and mussed his hair. “Yeah, kiddo, I’ll be there.”
Kelly wasn’t sure why the casual gesture of affection got to her, but it did. Like a hand reaching into her chest and giving her heart a single hard squeeze. She knew it was silly for her to be getting all emotional now that they were safe. She knew her emotions were riding high because she’d come so close to losing her son. And because the man she’d tried so desperately to exorcise from her life—from her heart—kept finding his way back to both.
Why did things always have to be so complicated?
Of all the men on this earth that she could have fallen in love with all those years ago, why did it have to be Buzz? A man who was everything she didn’t need, everything she didn’t want—everything she longed for.
For three years she’d loved him with every fiber of her heart. It hadn’t been enough. Experience told her he would eventually hurt her, hurt her again. Only this time, he would hurt her son, too. She couldn’t let that happ
en no matter how she felt about him.
Buzz Malone might be a good man, he might be courageous and daring and kind, but it took so much more to be a good father. Her own father had been a good man. Jack McKee had been kind and courageous and daring. But he’d also been a risk taker. He’d put his family through hell. When Kyle followed in his footsteps and they’d perished in that fiery crash, Kelly had lost the only two men she’d ever loved. Her life had been forever changed.
She’d grieved for months. But she’d also been angry with them. Angry that two men she’d loved had chosen their dangerous profession over their family. Over her.
In a small corner of her heart, she knew that was selfish. She knew that if it wasn’t for the brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day—police officers and firefighters and a dozen other nameless professions—countless innocent people would die. Still, right or wrong, Kelly had never been able to forgive.
No matter how powerful her feelings for Buzz, she could never give in to them. She could never open her heart to him, could never let him get too close to her son. If she did, she would not only risk her own heart, but her son’s, and she swore that was the one thing she would never do.
Realizing she was just standing there in the shadows of the trees holding an armload of kindling and watching them, Kelly shook the thoughts from her head and started toward the clearing where Buzz and Eddie were embroiled in yet another conversation.
“What does R-M-S-A-R stand for?” Eddie asked, referring to the letters emblazoned on the cap Buzz wore.
Buzz repositioned a tiny pair of jeans over a branch and looked down at Eddie. “Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue.”
“My mommy’s a tour guide.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
For a moment, Buzz looked flustered. “Your mommy and I are friends. She told me.”
“We’re going to move to Lake Tahoe. It snows a lot there.”
“I know that, too.”