A Special Kind of Family by Marion Lennox

Author:Marion Lennox [Lennox, Marion]
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2009-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

FIRST came a fire engine, screaming though the dark, screeching to a halt at the front gate, sending floodlights over the scene and disgorging maybe fifteen men and women, all in various states of undress. They were donning uniforms as they climbed from the vehicle, Erin saw from the safety of her under-veranda sanctuary. They’d be local volunteers, roused out of their beds, expecting anything.

‘We’re over here,’ she tried to call, but her voice wasn’t working properly, and then she saw them heading toward the gate and Marilyn’s puppies were right in the way.

‘Go stop them,’ Dom said, and she cast him a look of desperation. Because that was how she felt. Desperate. Her voice didn’t work. She wasn’t sure her legs would work.

‘The boys are safe here with me,’ Dom said. ‘Save the puppies.’

How did he know where the puppies were?

But then she looked out through the smoky haze and Marilyn was making a beeline for the gate and she thought it wouldn’t take much of Dom’s intelligence to figure out that’s where the puppies were.

‘Go,’ he said, and he reached out and touched her face in a fleeting gesture that could mean anything at all but it meant everything. It gave her the strength to pull herself up and stagger across the garden after Marilyn.

‘Watch your feet,’ she managed to scream, and the front firefighter stopped dead, long enough for her to reach the puppies and gather them up again into her arms. Poor Marilyn. This was not an ideal maternity hospital, she thought grimly, but at least they were alive.

And help was at hand. The lead firefighter was in front of her, his hands on her shoulders, his face grim and his voice sharply authoritative.

‘Is anyone inside?’

‘We’re all out,’ she managed. She tried to turn, and he relaxed his grasp, but only a little. And indeed if he’d released her completely she might have toppled over. ‘They’re by the veranda.’

‘Doc?’

‘And the two boys. In the garden by the steps. The fire’s upstairs.’

‘Put her behind the truck,’ the guy growled to someone behind him and she was placed firmly into the hold of someone else. Someone propelling her out of the way.

‘I need to go back to Dom.’

‘We’ll bring Dom to you,’ the man said.

And in minutes they did. She was sitting where she’d been led, on the far side of the fire truck, feeling reaction set in, feeling sick, holding an armload of puppies and with Marilyn draped over her legs.

Dom was carrying Martin, and a firefighter was carrying Nathan.

Martin was fully conscious now. His eyes were huge, full of fear. Only Nathan was no longer fearful. With terror past, this was a small boy’s dream. Firefighters and engines and fire.

For Martin it looked to be the stuff of nightmares.

‘We’ve rung an ambulance,’ the firefighter told Dom, but Dom shook his head and lowered himself to sit beside Erin, still holding Martin hard against him.

‘We won’t need an ambulance,’ he said, firm and sure. ‘Martin’s okay now.

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