Jake. The Old Barn was burning, and Jake was heading right into it. Charlie’s heart beat a staccato rhythm, and she could take only shallow sips of breath as she raced after Lila, who was heading to the alley behind the office where she parked her big silver Suburban.
Scenes from the fire at her grandparents’ house flashed in and out of Charlie’s mind. The nightmarish black smoke silhouetted against the malevolent yellow flames behind the bay window. The horrible popping and groaning, then the obscene crash when the roof over the family room collapsed. The screams of the onlookers. Jake, crawling out with Grandma Babe on his back.
She shook off the images. This situation had nothing to do with the past.
Lila’s white face had taken on a green tint, and tears ran down her cheeks. She dug into her purse for her keys and stumbled. Charlie caught her arm and steadied her. “You all right?”
“No,” Lila said baldly.
There was no debate over whether Charlie should come. They’d been friends too long for them not to face this emergency together, no matter who would get mad about alliances.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Charlie told Lila, fervently hoping that this was true. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Yes.” Lila’s normally steady, competent hands shook as she hit the fob to unlock the door and then, after scrambling in, tried to get her key into the ignition.
“Let me drive,” said Charlie.
Uncharacteristically, Lila nodded and moved over as Charlie rounded the rear of the truck and then climbed in. “Declan—please, God, don’t let him try to go in there.”
Charlie pulled the truck out and hit the road. “Deck isn’t stupid, and he knows that Jake and the boys are on the way, remember? He’s not going to go in.”
Lila nodded. “He must be losing his mind. He worked so hard to remodel and renovate it . . . If we lose the Old Barn because of my client . . . Oh God—I can’t believe this is happening. What was Felicity thinking? How did she even get inside?”
Grimly, Charlie shook her head. “Who knows?” She took a left, speeding past Piece A Cake, where Kristina’s cousin was visible through the window, waiting on café customers. Amelie’s shop flew by in a blur, then the insurance agency, the hardware store, and Petal Pushers.
The Suburban was a luxury vehicle compared to old rickety Progress, and it was a lot faster, too. Within moments, Charlie was gunning it down the highway, and soon they turned into the gates of the Braddock ranch and down the formal paved drive in the front. She braked hard when Grouchy appeared, agitated, and ran right in front of the Suburban.
She rolled down the window. “Hi, buddy. Hi! Go back to the house.”
Grouchy wasn’t having that. He ignored her, even when Lila repeated the order.
“Go play with Cat,” Lila suggested.
He barked, as if to say this was no time to play.
Charlie and Lila finally gave up, and the dog followed them for a ways, eventually peeling off after he apparently felt he’d given them enough of an escort. He sniffed the air and ran back toward the house, barking.
Charlie smelled the smoke long before they saw it. She wrestled the Suburban into the left turn down the gravel road that led to the east bend of the property. She then veered to the right, down another gravel road, and the Old Barn came into view. The entire back wall was in flames, the rising smoke weirdly backlit by the afternoon sun. Big Red stood by, hoses unspooled and snaking around the building.
“Oh God,” Lila moaned. “I can’t look.”
“Don’t.” Charlie drove them closer. They could hear the shouts of the men and the terrifying roar of the blaze. A massive figure in full uniform—it had to be Grady—came running toward them, shouting something.
Charlie lowered the window.
“Get back!” he yelled. “Get out of here. We got this under control.”
“Everyone’s okay?” Charlie’s voice came out in a weird rasp.
“Everyone.” He nodded, though his expression clearly conveyed his disdain for her. Charlie tried not to let it bother her, but it did.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can’t have you here. Go back to the main house. Deck took Felicity up. They’re safe.”
Lila leaned over to talk to him. “Is the Old Barn—?” She seemed unable to go on.
“We’ve got this under control,” Grady repeated. “Gotta get back to work.”
Charlie nodded and put the Suburban into reverse, backed off the gravel driveway, and turned them around. Wordlessly, they drove to the main house and got out, pulling in next to Will’s haphazardly parked BMW. Deck met them at the front door, looking like he’d missed a decade’s worth of sleep.
“Charlie,” he said frostily. “What are you—”
Lila rushed him and wrapped her arms around him. “Deck, you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, standing stock-still, as if unused to physical contact. Finally, he slid his arm around his little sister and hugged her close, though it didn’t last long. He pulled away, his hand to his face like he didn’t want anybody to see more than he was willing to share.
Charlie began to have an inkling of how Jake must have felt when her family had rejected him.
She suddenly felt not only superfluous and unwelcome, but voyeuristic. She had no right to see even a hint of the vulnerability hidden by this tough, rangy rancher.
Deck shifted his weight and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “We’re all fine,” he said. “Well”—he jerked a thumb in the direction of the great room—“more or less.”
Felicity’s uncontrollable sobbing was audible from where they stood.
Deck clenched his jaw, looking back and forth between the view of the fire over Charlie’s shoulder and the hall behind him leading to Felicity. Though he wasn’t about to abandon the girl, everything about his body language still communicated that he wanted to run out the door and join the boys at the fire line. Lila put her hand on his arm, maybe half to comfort him, the other half to stop him from going anywhere.
Felicity unleashed another wail of distress.
Charlie hesitated. “If you’ll let me inside,” she said, “I can help you with that part.”
Deck leveled his gaze on her, then nodded and stood aside. It wasn’t a warm welcome, but what could she expect? She left Lila with him and went to deal with Bridezilla.
“Charlie!” Felicity wailed. She was the very picture of pathetic. Mascara ran down her cheeks in twin torrents, her face was swollen and blotchy, and her artful curls were limp and shapeless. “Oh, Charlie, this is all my fault. I never meant for this to happen . . .” The rest of her words were swallowed by yet another sob.
Hug her, said Charlie’s better nature. She’s crying out for comfort.
Strangle the she-beast! said Charlie’s inner beeyotch. She’s the reason for this disaster.
Charlie summoned all the empathy she could muster. “Of course you didn’t mean for the barn to catch on fire.” She put her hand on Felicity’s shoulder and squeezed. This gesture only produced a fresh outburst of wails. “Okay, come on. Let’s go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea.”
Deck’s kitchen was cool and soothing, with blue walls. It was full of pale oak cabinetry and old-school white appliances with rounded edges. Charlie pulled a chair out from a corner nook and nudged Bridezilla into it while she hunted for a tea bag and a kettle. She found neither, so she settled for making coffee instead.
“Felicity, how did this happen?”
As Charlie scooped a breakfast blend into the basket filter of Deck’s coffee maker, the girl blubbered something unintelligible about lanterns.
Charlie shook her head. “I thought Mick went over all of that at the safety check.”
“I know, but I thought everyone was being overly paranoid, and the men were so bossy about it, and that ticked me off. I figured that these candles were enclosed in glass, so they were safe, and if they were already here, Lila would let it slide. Because it was my wedding . . .”
“So you hung the lanterns yourself? Inside?”
Felicity nodded, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
Charlie spied a box of tissues on a corner shelf and handed it to her. “Why didn’t you wait and talk to Lila?”
“She wasn’t answering her phone.”
Charlie nodded. She herself had seen Lila ignore the insistent barking from her phone. She sometimes let Felicity’s calls go to voicemail in order to retain her sanity. Maybe that had been intolerable to a neurotic bride.
“And I guess”—more shame crept into Bridezilla’s tone—“I just didn’t want to be told no. So I drove out here in Will’s car to hang them . . . and then I wanted to see what they’d look like when they were lit. So I turned off all the lights, and I was backing up to get a picture on my phone, and my elbow caught one of the lanterns and knocked it down. The glass broke, the candle ignited a roll of paper towels, and a pile of brochures . . . I tried to grab the roll of paper towels to put it out, but it unspooled to the opposite wall.
“And next thing I know, there’s fire everywhere! I didn’t know what to do. I ran outside screaming, and Declan came running, and we tried to throw water on the flames, but we couldn’t fill the bucket fast enough. So he called nine-one-one—”
“Okay, okay,” said Charlie, even though it really wasn’t. “So Jake and the rest of the firefighters evidently have things under control. Nobody got hurt, and that’s the most important thing.”
Felicity nodded, then blew her nose. She mopped at her eyes with another wad of tissues. “But the Old Barn,” she whispered. “Is it still standing?”
Charlie wasn’t sure. “They seem to think they can save it. We’ll know in a little while.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” Bridezilla sobbed. “I never thought—”
“I know.”
“Will . . . my parents . . . they’re going to kill me . . .”
True. But all Charlie said was, “Do you want me to call Will for you now?”
Felicity blanched. “No! No—I don’t even know what to say to him. How can I even begin to explain this?”
Charlie sighed. “All you can do is tell the truth.”
Bridezilla curled into a ball, and her wailing escalated once more. “Charlie, I can’t. Everyone already thinks I’m crazy—and maybe I am. I’ve lost my mind over this wedding. I just wanted everything to be perfect, and now it’s a nightmare . . .”
Charlie tried to think of soothing things to say. She needed to get Felicity out of here and back to the Hotel Saint-Denis, where she and her parents were staying.
So she bent and whispered into Bridezilla’s ear. “The Braddocks need some time and privacy to talk, okay? And you probably don’t want to be here right now anyway, do you?”
Felicity shook her head, eyes wide and full of shame.
“Right. Then we’re going to skip the coffee and sneak out the back door.”
Charlie led the Nuptial Nightmare outside, allowing herself one last glance toward the ghoulish orange and smoke-filled sky. Her heart pounded, thinking of Jake and his crew putting themselves in danger, and she wondered if there was a chance the fire could slip the line and eventually creep up to the main house. But in the absence of any meaningful firefighting skills to her name, Charlie knew that the best thing she could do for everyone was to get Felicity out of sight and mind.
So she took Felicity’s hand and ran for Will’s car.