She could no longer see the building’s entrance through the smoke. The hoses did their best to trip her but she snaked her way forward until she stood next to two men struggling to keep a stream of water aimed at an upper window.
“Everybody out?” one asked, and the other said something unintelligible.
“What do you mean?” she shouted. “Where is Jack? Where are the kids?”
The fireman could only spare her a glance without losing control of the water. “We can’t go in. It’s too hot and there’s industrial contaminants—hey!”
She made it five feet before someone grabbed her, for about the fourth time that day, and that became four times too many. She whirled and hit him in the chest, punching a second time with her other fist for good measure.
This accomplished nothing. Layers of fireproof garb protected him and hurt her hands. It didn’t stop her. She kicked, shoved, punched, screamed as the firemen held on tight enough to dislocate an arm bone or two. But she did not give up.
A window broke overhead, showering them with glass. The fireman reacted, his grip loosening by a millimeter. That was all she needed.
Two steps into her mad dash to the double glass doors, a figure emerged from the smoke.
* * *
Jack couldn’t see the exit doors, had no idea where he might be, but the steps had ended so he must be in the reception area. Red and blue and white lights strobed through the enveloping smoke; he followed the wisps of their beams, hoping like hell they would lead him to the door and not misdirect him to a window farther inside the building. Not until he plowed facefirst into the painted glass doors and felt the patches of ice-cold air through the smoke and flames did he believe he had actually gotten out.
The kids, one under each arm, were squirming and crying and coughing, but that meant they were alive. He focused on staying on his feet long enough for one fireman and one cop to emerge from the chaos to grab them before he let them slip. As they rushed the kids off, relief flooded through Jack, threatening to drop him to his knees right then and there.
Then a figure ran into him.
Actually it ran onto him. Maggie leapt into his arms, throwing her own about his neck—a bit unwisely, because he tottered and struggled to keep his balance, his body exhausted by lack of oxygen and the hazards of moving people and vehicles and hoses and damn cold air. But it was all right. He didn’t mind the strain in his calves, the ache in the arms that held her, the discomfort of his seared lungs, because he was still alive and so was she.
For a moment the world was perfectly all right.
Then it got a bit confusing.
Maggie was kissing him. Hands on his face, her lips moving over his, insistent and pulsing and only the tip of the iceberg as her whole body hummed and quivered and pulled him in with a power he had not known she possessed . . . or had not been allowed to see.
Worse, he was kissing her back, one hand supporting her bottom and pushing it into his hips and the other entwined in her hair, holding it too tightly and even in the fetid air he could smell her skin and—
Oh hell.
