With the first rays of dawn, the roaring knock-knock of a helicopter woke the weary, damp occupants of the mill.
Amy forgot the cold and her hunger and raced to a window.
Under a sky of thick gray clouds, the choppy river covered as far as the eye could see. The tops of trees indicated where the road had been. At least the rain had stopped. She couldn’t locate her house from this viewpoint behind the roof of the main building.
“Don’t see any boats out there,” Hoss said, checking from a different angle. “Current is still pretty bad.”
Someone else checked over the balcony to the floor below. “Ain’t risen any. Foundation’s holding.”
That was a relief. They wouldn’t be washing away. Yet.
The flap-flap-flap of helicopter rotors roared louder. Amy pushed at the window to pry it open, but years of paint sealed the casement.
“Over here,” Luigi shouted, pointing at the ceiling. “Help me shove that desk over so I can climb on it.”
Three men pushed the old wooden desk under the framed rectangle on the ceiling that gave access to the building’s structural components. Luigi climbed up and shoved at the door, pounding until he’d loosened the paint and knocked the plywood into the attic.
“False ceiling,” Luigi called back, his voice muffled from above. “Ductwork. Framing. Nothing sturdy to climb on unless you’re into swinging on rafters.”
The helicopter seemed to be hovering overhead.
Irrationally, hope rose in Amy’s heart. She ran to another window, a wider one. When it wouldn’t open, she picked up a metal folding chair and smashed it through the glass.
Hoss grabbed the chair from her and smashed out the mullions, knocking out glass shards with the chair legs before sticking his head out to look upward.
“Crazy bastard is climbing down a rope ladder!” he shouted in mixed dismay and excitement.
Crouching down to peer around him, Amy looked out and lost her breath.
Zack was dangling from a ladder, three stories above the flood, directing the helicopter with one hand while hanging on with the other. At sight of her, he waved and shouted something she couldn’t hear.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she muttered, falling to her knees and clinging to the sill. “I’m closing my eyes now. Tell me when he falls.”
Luigi arrived beside her, sized up the situation, and cursed mildly. Elbowing Hoss out of the way, he lifted Amy to one side, then sat on the sill to watch the helicopter maneuver.
“I am so not watching this,” Amy muttered again. “Are you telling me he was an acrobat in the circus as well?”
She was so terrified her teeth chattered. Sitting down more firmly, she clutched her knees and hid her face against them rather than watch disaster strike. She would kill that idiot man the instant he appeared. If he survived.
At the same time, she started to shiver with joy and relief, and big fat tears slid down her cheeks.
“That’s a damn big help. How is he figuring on getting us out that way?” Luigi growled as loud thumps hit the flat tarpaper roof.
Or the side of the building. Amy couldn’t tell. She wasn’t looking.
The silence was deafening as they listened to footsteps overhead. Amy finally opened her eyes to study the desk the men had pushed under the attic entry. The others gathered around it as Luigi climbed back onto it. Amy stayed crouched where she was, her heart pounding in terror.
“Look out below!” Zack’s voice shouted from overhead.
Amy watched in disbelief as a rope ladder dropped through the opening and Zack clambered down. She could only shake in shock and stare at this wonderful, terrifying man who’d literally come through the roof for them.
“We didn’t know if the structure was safe to land on,” Zack was saying to Luigi, who’d caught the bottom of the rope and held it steady. “What have you been doing all night if you haven’t found a way out?”
Amy stopped thinking about their plight and simply fell head over heels in love all over again at the sight of Zack stepping down from the desk, wearing a parachuter’s coveralls. At least he had a helmet on, though that would do precious little for his knee. She would kill him once she caught her breath again.
Zack’s smile flickered out as he located her huddled against the wall and crossed the loft to her. She’d have held out her hand for him to help her up, but she didn’t think her knees would lock just yet. And her heart needed to stop thumping so hard.
“My babies?” she whispered.
“They’re safe in Dollywood,” he choked out quietly, as if keeping his voice under tight control. Before his words faded, he reached down and dragged her into his arms, holding her tightly. “You are the one who needs a nanny,” he growled. “What possessed you to risk — ” His voice cracked and broke off.
She felt his arms tremble in the same terror she’d shared, heard the quaver of relief in his voice before he stopped talking. Zack never stopped talking. She wanted to smile, but his strong arms tightening around her felt too good, and she couldn’t lift her head. “You are officially insane,” she murmured in wonder. “You could have been killed out there.”
Zack had come back for her. For all of them. And no one seemed surprised except her. She let those realizations slowly sink in and warm her frozen blood.
She had no idea where they would go from here or how. She just knew Zack was with her, and the whole world was suddenly a miraculously brighter place. Even though the circumstances hadn’t changed, she knew she was safe — because he was here.
“I didn’t want Luigi and Hoss to engage in cannibalism while waiting for the water to recede,” Zack said drily, leaning back just enough to cradle her face in one hand, to stroke her cheek as if to verify her existence. “You are all right?”
She nodded.
“You saved all the machinery and the fabric.”
“Of course,” she said with a slight shrug. “We all did.”
“Of course,” he muttered, and pulled her close again to bury his face in her hair. “She saves all that is important to me and then she saves the mill for good measure, and she thinks it is as natural as breathing.”
It took her a moment to absorb his words, and to laugh — laugh — in relief and sheer joy. She framed his face and kissed him softly in promise, then more deeply to show she would keep that promise. “While you risk my future climbing down that damned rope! You could have fallen!”
He pressed his forehead against hers, noses touching, their lips a breath apart. “Only if you offered to catch me. Come along, Miss Pessimism. I promised your children that I would bring you home safely, and I would not dare to disappoint.”
“Do we sprout wings and fly?” she asked, unable to resist tucking a small kiss at the corner of his mouth.
“You climb the ladder to the helicopter,” he said patiently.
Amy’s knees suddenly melted to useless at the realization it was finally all over — the mill was safe and the town would survive and she would soon see her children again and Zack had come back. All the stress of the last weeks, the last years, drained out of her, and she collapsed against him, knowing that he would not let her fall. Trusting him not to let her down. She buried her face against his chest and tried to take deep breaths, but she kept hiccupping, and tears streamed down her face. She had no words for how she felt.
“I think that’s how I feel, too,” he murmured into her hair. “We will talk later, when this is all over.”
She nodded into his shoulder. Borrowing from his strength, she locked her knees and stood straight. He reluctantly released her.
“How many does the helicopter hold?” she asked.
For the first time, Zack looked around him. He’d had eyes only for Amy. Now he saw a dozen employees anxiously shifting from foot to foot, trying not to stare. He glanced over the balcony railing to the flooded mill below and saw the muddy water swirling around his looms — or around the benches holding his looms out of the currents.
Stacks of fabric spilled across the balcony and into the second-floor offices. They’d saved everything.
“You are brilliant,” he said in awe, understanding the heroism that had placed his investment over their lives.
“The mill closed the last time the inventory got wiped out,” Amy explained. “We couldn’t let it happen again. The town’s existence was at stake.”
No one disagreed with her.
“If I could give out medals for heroism, I would,” he declared fervently. “I have never seen — ” His voice broke over the enormity of explaining how he felt about near strangers having the courage and selflessness to risk their lives for him. For their town.
“I think the ladder’s strong enough to hold us,” Luigi called, interrupting Zack’s sentimentality.
“If you climb up first, Luigi, you can help Amy out. When we’re all on the roof, the crew will drop a hook to pull the ladder up.” Zack counted heads. “But some of us will have to wait for a second trip. They can only take six people at a time. People with families first.”
“Up you go, Miz Amy,” Hoss hollered, dragging her toward the ladder.
She cast a terrified look back to Zack, but he remained determinedly smiling. He didn’t want her going anywhere without him ever again, but the truth was, his life was worth far less than hers. Far less than these other men here with families at home. If a river of water came rushing downstream to wipe this building off its blocks, he’d prefer it took him and not the others who had so gallantly tried to save it.
All his knowledge and wealth were worth nothing next to the love of family. And if life was about making the world a better place and taking chances on love, then there was no greater challenge than living life to its fullest.
“Haul her out of here, Luigi,” he called to his friend.
Zack glued on a smile as Amy disappeared into the attic. He let the other men decide who would climb up next. They had already proved capable of making their own choices. He’d once thought he could play God and change the lives of people, but it seemed they had changed his.
He didn’t know them well, but he wanted to.
He was the last to climb out onto the roof. He unfastened the rope ladder from the knots he’d tied around a roof truss while Luigi caught the hook the helicopter lowered. The rushing wind of the rotors dropped the already chilly temperatures several degrees, but no one complained. They waited silently, their clothes flapping in the air stream, while the ladder was drawn back into the helicopter and fastened securely.
Zack held the ropes steady. He didn’t dare reach for Amy again, or he might not let go. He nodded at her. Hoss pushed her from behind. She looked reluctant.
“For the children,” Zack told her. “Go.”
That did the trick, as he’d known it would. Hair blowing across her face, she scampered up the rungs. Unable to let a wisp of female outdo them, the rest of the selected group hurried to follow.
With a lump in his throat that he suspected was his heart, Zack waved them off. At least he knew she would be safe in the world somewhere.
As the helicopter swept away, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked out over the swirling water far below. “How well can you swim, gentlemen? The dam upstream is in danger of breaking.”
* * *
“He hired a helicopter,” Amy said in incredulity, wrapping her hands around a mug of tea in the hotel room where Flint had taken her. She had no idea how Flint had learned where Zack had taken everyone, but the whole family was together now. “How does one hire a helicopter? Hand over a credit card?”
Picking at a guitar and trying to pretend she wasn’t watching the TV, Jo shrugged. “The rich know these things.”
Amy couldn’t tear her gaze from the TV news. So far, the dam had held steady. If she’d known the damned dam was about to break….
She shook her head. She would have gone anyway. She couldn’t have left her children motherless. But she might have insisted that Zack leave, too.
“Then he should have hired two helicopters,” she replied, trying to keep the sob from her voice.
“I’m sure he would have if he could have,” Flint said pragmatically from the bar of the suite they occupied. Pots of coffee and tea and bottles of soft drinks littered the counter. In the far room, the children shouted and tumbled on the beds, oblivious of the drama playing around them.
The national television news had finally picked up on the thrill of six men stranded on the roof of a mill as the floodwaters threatened to wipe the town off the face of the map.
“The town ain’t in any danger,” Marie said with disgust at the newscast’s hyperbole. “It’s just the mill down in the valley. If they’d send their TV helicopters out there, they could pull them off the roof.”
Amy wished her mother were right, but she knew better. “Those small ’copters only have two seats. The pilot can’t let down a ladder.”
“Well, if Zack hired them, why doesn’t the crew go back out for him?” Jo demanded. “It just doesn’t seem right to leave him there.”
“He didn’t know there were a dozen idiots out there.” Sipping his coffee, Flint watched the news from behind Amy and Jo on the couch. “He only hired them for one trip. They had other jobs. And the National Guard can’t be everywhere at once. They’re safe for now. Others aren’t.”
“Then we ought to hire a helicopter, too.” Amy pulled a pillow against her and hugged it, trying not to become hysterical. But talking about hiring a helicopter brought her pretty close to hysteria. Her credit was maxed out, and Flint and Jo were still living on the edge, paying off bills.
“I’m thinking you need to keep boats on that roof,” Flint said. “Might come in handy occasionally.”
“The water’s not high enough. And they don’t have a ladder to get down. Stairs should have been installed on the roof long ago.” Amy prayed the day would come when they could add stairs. If the dam broke, there would be no building left to worry about.
She had rejected Zack’s offer to meet his parents because of a crumbling old building that could soon be rubble? Was she that terrified of leaving her narrow world?
Evan had certainly done a number on her, if that was so. He’d made her afraid to move forward, to live and love again.
She clenched her jaw and corrected that thought. Evan hadn’t made her do anything. She’d done it to herself by attempting to be the ideal wife, bending to his will instead of asserting herself and looking for compromises they could both live with.
If she’d understood that sooner and said yes, Zack wouldn’t be out on that roof.
Facing Zack’s world, leaving the safety of her own, couldn’t be any scarier than what he was suffering. He deserved a woman who was as brave and strong as he was.
Be safe, please, she prayed. I want to be like you.
The realization of how deeply she’d fallen in love with Zack tore at her heart, and she hugged the pillow harder to hold back tears.
She’d have to trust Zack. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her she was afraid to trust again. But if she wanted love, she would have to learn. Zack was worth facing her fear of abandonment. He was the only man in her life who had come back for her.