Smoke burned the back of Lexie Campbell’s throat as she took a breath and kept walking, staying clear of the officers guarding her evacuated neighborhood. She only needed to get inside her home for five minutes—just long enough to grab the dress.
Heart pounding, she edged along the woods behind a row of houses. From the news, she knew the wildfire was still a mile away. She’d be completely safe to go to the house she’d rented for the summer and retrieve the only thing of importance she’d brought with her. She’d always dreamed of wearing her grandmother’s dress on her wedding day—a day that was supposed to be two weeks from now.
Change in plans.
Tree limbs crunched loudly beneath her leather boots as she broke into a run. Bringing the dress here had been foolish. She’d come to Carolina Shores, North Carolina to take her mind off her problems and focus on helping others. That was her grandmother’s remedy for a broken heart. Not the kind of medicine that Lexie practiced, but her grandma Jean had always known best. When Dr. Marcus had called to ask for help opening a free health care clinic here, Lexie had jumped at the chance. Looking at the black, smoke-filled sky now, she wondered if her decision had been rash. Unlike her ex-fiancé, though, she kept her commitments.
Seeing the house ahead, Lexie breathed a sigh of relief, which ended in a fit of coughing. She hurried toward the front porch and quickly unlocked the door. Inside, the air was stale, the smoke already seeping through the poorly insulated walls. She ran into the back bedroom and grabbed the dress from the closet. In the kitchen, she found a black garbage bag and stuffed the white-laced fabric inside. She wished she could throw herself in the bag right now. Surely no air was better than this.
Her head spun as she cinched the bag tightly.
Time to get out of here!
She hurried out the front door, making the mistake of sucking in another deep breath. Coughing again, she stumbled down the steps and started to cut across the lawn, heading in the direction of the neighborhood’s front entrance. No reason to sneak around now. She’d left her car parked along the roadside. If she could just make it back, then she’d be fine. After arriving and unloading her belongings here late last week, she’d gone away for the weekend to visit a friend, taking a few changes of clothes and her toiletries with her, which were still in her car—a blessing in disguise. Little had she known she’d be returning to a neighborhood evacuation.
Lexie didn’t bother glancing around to make sure she went unnoticed. No one was here. Everyone in Chesterfield Estates had evacuated. And with good reason, she thought now, feeling her world tilt and re-center like a ride at the amusement park.
A siren stopped her in her tracks. Looking up, Lexie saw a man with dark hair and a hard jawline leaning toward the passenger-side window of a white pickup truck. It was marked with the local fire department’s logo.
“What are you doing out here?” he called. “Don’t you know there’s a mandatory evacuation in this neighborhood?”
Lexie erupted into a fit of coughing as she tried to explain. She wasn’t a material girl, but the dress was sentimental to her. She couldn’t risk letting it burn up in the forest fire.
Stumbling toward him, Lexie doubled over as she coughed. “I...was just...”
Just about to fall over if I don’t get fresh air soon.
“Get in,” he ordered.
Lexie straightened, still wheezing. “Am I under arrest?” she asked through painful speech.
His brows lowered over disapproving blue eyes. “I’m not a cop. If I were, then absolutely. Being here right now is against the law.”
She approached his vehicle and pulled weakly on the door’s handle. She’d gladly accept a ride into fresh air. If not for him, she wasn’t sure she’d have made it out of the neighborhood and back to her car without collapsing. Clearly she’d misjudged the situation.
She tried to open the door, but her hands wouldn’t work.
“Ma’am?” she heard him say, although his voice was fading quickly. She thought she heard his truck door open, and then two hands turned her around and firmly grasped the front of her shoulders. “Ma’am? Are you okay?” He leveled his eyes with hers, forcing her to look at him.
Her knees went weak and not because of his rugged good looks, which didn’t go unnoticed even in her condition.
“Take a deep breath,” he told her, his voice calm and in control.
Her vision grew dim. She clutched the fabric of his shirt in her hand, holding on to him so that she didn’t fall. The garbage bag that she’d stuffed the dress into minutes earlier dropped to the ground below. “Don’t let me die,” she pleaded, feeling her legs buckle. Then she felt the weight of her body being swept up into the man’s arms. He opened the passenger door of his truck and laid her inside as she struggled to hold on to consciousness, watching the colors around her blur like the view inside a kaleidoscope.
“You still there?” he asked, flipping the sirens on as he took the driver’s seat.
The loud sound made her head throb. She tried to nod or say something intelligible. Instead her eyes closed, the world and the handsome stranger beside her fading away.
* * *
Mason Benfield had been hoping to find someone in the evacuated neighborhood, but it wasn’t the woman lying across his passenger seat right now. On a tip, he’d driven through the neighborhood, looking for a teenage girl and suspected runaway. If the runaway was here, he needed to find her before she got hurt like the woman beside him.
He glanced over. The woman appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. And either she couldn’t read, didn’t watch the local news, or had a death wish.
He dialed 911 as he sped toward the neighborhood’s front entrance a few blocks away. “I have an unconscious woman who suffered a possible asthma attack. We’re at the entrance of Chesterfield Estates,” he told the operator. He relayed a few more details, and then slowed the truck as he drove past the orange caution cones. He parked and got out, waving over one of the policemen enforcing the evacuation.
Mason wasn’t up for giving the guy a lecture about making sure no one got past. If anyone, the woman in his passenger seat was the one who needed a harsh speaking-to. What she’d done had been senseless. They’d evacuated the neighborhood because it was dangerously close to the forest fire. They were trying to control the blaze, but one change in the wind and the flames could rage in this direction. The fire could engulf miles in a matter of hours. Walking inside the neighborhood on foot was a foolish thing to do.
As he scooped her body into his arms, she stirred, drawing his eyes down to her oval face. He didn’t recognize her. Must be new to town, he thought, carrying her to a patch of grass near the road. He laid her gently on the ground, letting her legs drop first and then cradling her head until her soft auburn hair splayed out around her. He slid his fingers to the side of her neck and