LITMIR.BIZ

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left him feeling proud, maybe even a little smug. But he could truthfully say nothing he’d ever done felt as wonderful or satisfying as being able to place Peggy into her mother’s arms. And the elated smile that was now spreading across Kerry’s face was worth every minute he’d spent crawling through that muddy underground maze.

      Hugging her daughter fiercely to her breast, Kerry looked up at Jared. She was unaware of the crowd surging around them, nor did she hear their cheers of joy. There was only him and her and the precious feeling of her daughter’s arms clinging tightly to her neck.

      “Thank you, Jared. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

      The raw emotion in her trembling words humbled him, touched him in a spot he hadn’t known he possessed.

      “There’s no need for you to thank me, Kerry. I wanted to get Peggy out of there as much as you wanted to have her back.”

      Shifting Peggy’s weight to one arm, Kerry extended her hand to Jared. He folded his fingers around hers with a firm reassuring grip. As their hands warmed together, he realized the past horrific hours had connected him to this woman in an oddly intimate way. Even now he could feel her relief and joy in the same way he’d felt her earlier desperation and fear.

      “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me,” she said to him. “And when Peggy gets old enough to understand, I’ll explain to her that a very brave man saved her life.”

      Jared was like most any red-blooded male from eighteen months old to eighty. He liked to show off for any appreciative female, maybe even preen a little bit if the occasion warranted. But tonight was a different situation. And he didn’t want this woman to get the impression that he was hero material. He wasn’t. He was just a man who wouldn’t give up until the job was done.

      “Not brave, Kerry. Just stubborn,” he corrected.

      Her eyes still wet with grateful tears, she raised up on tiptoe and kissed his dirty cheek. “Then thank you for being a stubborn man, Jared Colton.”

      “Kerry! Is Peggy all right? Is there anything broken?”

      Stunned by the brief, intimate contact, Jared watched Kerry turn away to answer Enola’s frantic question. Moments later, he felt a nudge in his rib cage and looked around to see that he was now bracketed by a grinning brother and cousin.

      Gray, who was only a year younger than Jared, said, “Well old cousin, looks like you’re certainly the hero at this little gathering.”

      His description of the crowd around them as “a little gathering” was quite an understatement. It seemed like half the townsfolk were swarming around them like bees.

      Jared slipped off his hard hat. The night breeze felt cool against his sweating head. Pushing his fingers through his wet hair, he said to Gray, “Hell, I didn’t do anything but crawl into a hole.”

      Bram punched him affectionately in the shoulder and chuckled. “Looks to me like Kerry WindWalker thought you did more than that.”

      Jared glanced back around to see that she and her young daughter had been swallowed up by the crowd. It was just as well, he thought.

      “The only thing you saw was a woman grateful to get her daughter back,” Jared said, aiming the statement at both his brother and cousin.

      Bram was about to make another comment on the subject when one of his deputies approached with a question for his boss. The moment Bram turned his attention to the deputy, Jared used the opportunity to make his own escape.

      “I’m going home,” he told Gray. “Tell Bram I’ll deal with getting some of this heavy equipment back to its rightful owners.”

      Gray slung his arm around Jared’s shoulders. “Will do,” he assured him. “You go get some rest.”

      “Yeah. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Jared told him.

      As Jared slipped through the crowd, several people called out to him, a few even stopped him to shake his hand, pat his back and offer him congratulations on a job well done.

      Normally, Jared would have hung around and lapped up all the attention and praise. It wasn’t often a man was handed the chance to do something as meaningful and worthwhile as saving a child’s life. And it warmed him that people appreciated his efforts. Yet he didn’t linger in the crowd. Instead he continued toward the quiet, dark spot where his truck was parked.

      By the time Jared climbed into the vehicle, bone-weary exhaustion had overtaken him. He drew in a string of long breaths, then rested his forehead against the steering wheel for several moments before he finally started the motor.

      As he pulled away from the scene, he glanced toward the activity still going on around the excavation site. Rescue workers were already starting to move away the fire trucks and other recovery vehicles which had been needed during the long hours. Some yards away from the commotion, he spotted Kerry at the back of an ambulance with Peggy in her arms and talking happily to Jenna Elliot.

      Thirty minutes later as Jared fell into bed, he was still holding that happy image in his mind.

      Kerry waited patiently at the back of an ambulance while a petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed nurse named Jenna Elliot checked Peggy over for any sign of injuries.

      Kerry had never met Jenna before, but she knew of her family. Her father was a powerful businessman and politician in Black Arrow, and though corruption had been linked to his name, he was still an influential man. However, from the moment Kerry had walked up to the ambulance with Peggy, Jenna had seemed sincerely compassionate and caring. She also seemed to be casting more than a few furtive glances at Sheriff Bram Colton, too.

      “Your daughter seems to be perfectly fine,” Jenna said to Kerry as she handed Peggy back to her. “However, if it would make you feel at ease you could have her pediatrician check her over, too. But I’m sure you don’t have any worries. She seems like a very healthy little girl.”

      “And very adventurous,” Kerry added jokingly. And she could joke now, thanks to Jared Colton, she thought as she turned to go home, clutching a sleepy Peggy in her arms.

      Jared Colton. Of all the men in Black Arrow, Kerry wouldn’t have thought of him as a hero. Eight years ago, before she’d left for Virginia, he’d been a frequent diner at Woody’s Café where she’d worked as a waitress on the evening shift. For a man that was part Comanche, he’d done a lot of talking. Most of it directed at the adoring females who’d always seemed to flock around him. But Kerry hadn’t forgotten the small part of his glib tongue that had been aimed at her.

      For the most part, Kerry had tried to keep the conversation between them cool and impersonal, but there had been times she’d felt him looking at her in the same way a red-tailed hawk would look at a juicy little field mouse. On those occasions she’d always scurried back to the kitchen, her head down so that no one might see the scarlet color stinging her cheeks. No man had ever made her feel so naked and vulnerable. And eight years later she could safely say that hadn’t changed. He still left her breathless and rattled.

      “Kerry? Are you listening?”

      At the sound of Enola’s voice, Kerry pulled her eyes away from a nearby open window and looked up to see her mother standing at the entryway to the small living room of the WindWalker home.

      “Sorry, Mom. I was—lost in thought. Were you asking me something?”

      Her forehead furrowed with a frown, Enola stepped into the room. A dishtowel was twisted between her hardworking hands.

      “I was wondering if we should wake Peggy for supper. She hasn’t eaten hardly anything today. With everything that happened yesterday, she should get something in her tummy.”

      “I know. But I think she needs to rest more.”

      Enola moved closer to her daughter. “She’s been like a different little girl today. I doubt she’s said twenty words altogether. I couldn’t even get her to help me dig in the garden.”

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