Oh, the Weather Outside Is Frightful: a Montana Fire Christmas Novella: Montana Fire, #4 by Susan May Warren

Author:Susan May Warren [Warren, Susan May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, christmas, bull-riding, Susan May Warren, firefighting, nurses, nursing, firefighters, smokejumpers, hotshots, smokejumping, trauma, injury, suspense, christian, faith, grace, providence, miracles, weddings, scars, Summer of Fire, kissing, love, christian romance, christian suspense, christian kissing, kiss, novella, snow, winter, pregnancy, birth, roadtrip
ISBN: 978-1-943935-16-1
Publisher: SDG Publishing
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Every bone in CJ’s body screamed. He couldn’t breathe and fought through the darkness, the folds of his own moaning, for rescue.

I’m right here, CJ.

A voice sliding over him, and CJ saw himself from above, hovering over the crash scene.

Just a memory. No, just a nightmare. But it felt real.

He could nearly smell the forest, smoke and pine, the odor of oil oozing from the plane. Not far away, he spotted Cliff O’Dell’s dead body crumpled on the rocks. And a few feet from the plane, Jed curled against Kate, her body wrapped around him as she tried to keep him warm.

But beside CJ sat Hannah, shivering, her head bowed.

Then he returned to his body, to the agony, and the warmth of her hand in his, centering him.

Even now in sleep he longed to touch her face, soothe the scrape along her chin, thumb away the residue of fear still glistening on her cheeks. Then the howls lifted, and he sucked in a breath, razors in his chest.

Wolves.

Hannah got up, picked up a rock, threw it with a shout into the forest. Then another. Grabbed a third and hunkered down next to him, shaking. I’m not going to let them get you, I promise, she said, but her voice tremored.

Oh, Hannah.

Sometimes he had the power to dream a different ending for them. Not the bone-chilling hours spent with him trying to breathe, falling in and out of consciousness. Not the sight of her weeping with fear as she and Kate fended off the wolves. Not the hover of smoke from the nearby forest blaze creeping toward them.

Not the horror when he realized he’d cried in her arms from the pain.

No, in his ending he hiked out to get help. Parachuted back in with Reuben and Conner to save his team.

And somewhere in there, told Hannah he loved her.

At least that’s how it happened when CJ had a grip on his subconscious.

Not today. Today the pain wheedled through him, dug claws into him, tore from him the veil of happily ever after, and trapped him into the gritty memory of the crash. Of being thrown from the plane, waking to the bones in his pelvis crushed, his shoulder dislocated, his arm broken. And between the razored breathing caused by broken ribs seeped the fear that this time, he wouldn’t make it.

“CJ! Open the door!”

CJ jerked and it took a second to orient himself. Not the crash site. Not the middle of the night.

In the driver’s seat of the ranch truck, parked in the winter pasture, his uncle Nick pounding on the window.

He untucked his hands from his jacket, rolled down the window.

“You okay?” Nick was a big man, rough around the edges, and for years, he’d scared CJ. Now CJ just tried to avoid him.

Twilight turned the pasture a dark, bloody red. The Silver Buckle land ran over eighty-thousand acres, as far as the eye could see, east across the draws and knolls to the horizon, and west all the way to the smoky outline of the Bighorn Mountains.

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